Wolverhampton Civic Hall’s Promotions and Funding officer, Jonn Penney, is best known as the frontman of 1990s alternative rock band Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, whose hits include Happy, Kill Your Television and Not Sleeping Around. 

This month, the Neds are launching and performing in their Kill Your Television Festival - a one-night indoor event that also features The Wedding Present, The Primitives and Eat.

Lauren Foster recently met up with Jonn to talk about the new festival, the Neds and the Civic’s pending refurbishment...

Tell me about Kill Your Television Festival, Jonn?
We’ve done a couple of all-day festivals before. We thought they were great fun and our crowd seemed to like them a lot. Serendipity had it that we were asked to do the last Saturday at the Civic before it closes for refurbishment. I thought it would be really nice to start up something new for the Neds. Something that has our footprint on it, a real branding that’s recognisable to our fans and hopefully has some legacy for the future. 

We’ve never played with The Primitives before, so we’re really looking forward to that, and we’ve only played with The Wedding Present once before, a couple of years ago. We played half a tour with Eat. The first proper tour we did was supporting The Wonder Stuff in 1989/90, and Eat were the main support above us, so we got to know them. We got on well, so it’ll be nice to see them again and play with them. They were popular with our crowd.

What’s the story behind Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and how did the name come about?
Ok, so you’ve got five spotty A-Level students from Halesowen. Most of us were aware of each other, as we were all in our own bands, but we weren’t friends. All our bands split up almost simultaneously. I had some bizarre idea of myself as the frontman - God only knows why - who was going to get the coolest new band together. I put up posters around college stating I was looking for band members. I think the fact we didn’t know each other was our blessing and our curse. We all had a competitive edge. It was almost as if we were trying to prove to each other that we were worthy of being in the room. That was incredibly healthy because it’s a built-in quality control. You weren’t going to come into the room with something substandard because you stood a chance of the rest of them saying, ‘It’s rubbish, that is, mate’. 

For me - and maybe this was my own paranoia - I realised quite quickly that this leader bloke I fancied myself to be was probably the least gifted person in the room. I knew I needed to up my game otherwise the band would form and boot me out. What a great catalyst for creativity!  

As for the name - when I was younger there was a radio programme called The Goon Show, and one of its episodes was called Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. It’s ridiculous, and I thought, yeah we’ll run with that because no one else is going to have thought of it. So that’s what we did. And again, it’s been kind of a blessing and a curse. A blessing because every time someone asked what we were called, we’d say Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and they’d say ‘What?!’. So we’d say it again, and then they’d remember, and they’d remember how silly it was. An album and a half into our career, people were wondering whether we were a serious band or a joke band. We were never really up ourselves and desperate to be taken massively seriously, but I do think some people probably took us a little less seriously than we maybe deserved.

Twenty-eight years on, do you think you’ll be able to replicate the kind of high-energy performance with which you were associated back in your glory days?
The last three months, I’ve been doing two sessions a week in the gym and trying to eat healthily. The adrenaline generally gets me through, but these days I have to stick at it. I’ve never done drugs, but I do like a drink - but I’d never, ever go on stage with even an ounce of alcohol in my system, because I want to feel the fear. If you’re not afraid then your adrenaline doesn’t kick in, and without that you’re not going to get through it.

How do you feel that the band will appeal to a new and perhaps younger market?
Musically it’s rare I listen to one of our tracks and cringe on account of it sounding dated. Our fans are very loyal. They’ve probably forced our songs down their children’s throats, and those kids will have reacted in one of two ways, won’t they? They’ll either say, ‘Get lost, there’s no way I’m coming’  or they’ll come along to the festival because now they’re into us as well. I’d like to think we could attract a younger audience, and I think we’ve got a better chance of doing that if we’re on the radio. It’s only a niche section we’re likely to get to, but if, for instance, we had something new on 6 Music, I think we’d stand a chance of pulling people in. The other thing about us is that once someone has seen us live, that does seem to have a positive impact on them. 

Can we expect any new Neds material?
Well, every year up until this year I’d have said no - but this year, yes, finally, at last. About six years ago, we had a conversation about writing new songs. When we were writing stuff, I was a snotty young man who’d got the world against me, a girlfriend falling out with me and God knows what else going on. All of that’s very easily transmitted at that age - but what is there to say when you’re forty-seven? 

Nowadays, I’ve got a lot to sing about. Is it because I’m having a midlife crisis? Could be. And if I’m having a midlife crisis, then okay - at least that’s something honest and raw. It’s something I’m not going to manufacture in my mind. 

We won’t go and play five or six new songs at a gig - we know our fans won’t want to hear that. We’ll play one new song to them. We’ve taken our time about it, but to get to the point where I’m comfortable in those creative shoes again is a real privilege.

Which musicians influenced you and the band?
Oh, heaps and heaps. There wasn’t a great deal of common ground. For myself, I was unconsciously influenced by Simon and Garfunkel. At a young age, I appreciated simple, catchy tunes. I want people to be able to sing our songs back to me. I wouldn’t want them to have to listen to it ten times before they could do that. In terms of musicians at the time, it would’ve been Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, The Sisters Of Mercy - I was a goth for a while. The Cure, too.

 The other band members - The Chameleons, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Stranglers, Fields Of The Nephilim, New Model Army. The Chameleons were the one band that we all liked.

How do you feel that changes to the music industry over the past twenty years have impacted on creativity?
Even working for a music venue for the last decade, I still don’t feel fully qualified to know exactly what the music industry is currently about. It surprises me that there’s as much creativity out there as there is. It doesn’t seem to matter how many talent shows like The X Factor and The Voice are out there, there still always seems to be an opposite end of the spectrum, which is really heartening. There still seem to be people out there who want to plough their own furrow. 

What do you think about the rise of the DJ?
This is a difficult one for me because the whole movement of the DJ is a complete mystery to me. I’m no doubt ignorant of what they’re about and what they strive for. And so I should be, to a degree, because I’m forty-seven years of age and it’s difficult to teach old dogs new tricks.

 One of the other bands on the Stourbridge scene back in the day was Pop Will Eat Itself. They were pioneers of amalgamating musical styles and were probably pioneers of the DJ scene. At the time, I didn’t appreciate that at all. I just loved the songs they came out with; I didn’t recognise that a lot of it was stolen. I never minded listening to their records, but my ‘creative being’ doesn’t understand what they were doing. I want to express what’s going on in my mind - in my way and with my music. I don’t want to use someone else’s to do it. 

So do I understand the rise of the DJ? No, not really. But if people are massively into it, then great. If it helps people relax in the way that a live gig does, or in the way that their favourite album does, then great. Who am I to judge it? At least it’s people listening to music. Music is such a crucial part of life.

How has your experience of being in a band helped with your job at The Civic?
It’s very easy for people in the music industry to lose touch with the way that artists want to be represented. The Civic marketing department is like a sausage machine; it comes in, we process it, it goes out. My experience, I guess, is always of that little guy on the shoulder asking, ‘Is this what the band want to be presented like? Am I being true to what’s being dictated by them and what they’ve wanted? Am I looking after them properly?’.

With that in mind, I also realise there are certain audiences for certain things. I think that probably makes me a bit more sensitive in terms of who we should be targetting. I’ve played a lot of venues that are three thousand capacity and I’ve played in a lot of different countries around the world, so I have a yardstick. I know that the Civic is a phenomenal venue, and the reason I know that is because I’ve seen a few different ones in my time. When someone asks me what’s so good about the Civic, I can honestly tell them.

The Civic’s closing soon for a refurb. How will the venue be different when it reopens, and do you have an opening date?
The opening date is a little bit blurry, so I’m probably safer saying ‘to be confirmed’. We’re popping another balcony into the venue, so you’ll have another six hundred people in the same vicinity. The room isn’t getting bigger, we’re just putting more seats into it. So there’ll be another six hundred pairs of eyes to look at from the stage, creating more of a bear-pit atmosphere. When you walk into Civic Hall, on the ground floor or from the first balcony you’ll probably see very, very little difference at all. That’s important because we don’t want to break what we’ve got. The stage will be made slightly bigger so that we can access some bigger productions. 

The Wulfrun Hall, meanwhile, is getting its first balcony - it’s never had one. We’re trying to make that room much less like a school hall and a bit more comfortable for seated audiences so that, again, we can hopefully offer a better range of productions. Both rooms will still be able to have a full-on, sweaty, hardcore rock’n’roll gig in them, just as they always have. That part won’t change.

Any idea who’s going to play the opening night when the Civic re-launches?
Nothing’s been confirmed yet, but we want to give it the right kind of opening. It’s not necessarily going to have a vast name on the first night, but we want a vast name pretty rapidly after the re-opening.

Kill Your Television Festival - featuring Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, The Wedding Present, The Primitives and Eat - takes place at Civic Hall, Wolverhampton on Sat 19 December.