The UseYourEars.com Live Music Night was held at Bush Hall in London on the 22nd March 2006 to a crowd of almost 300 music lovers and music industry professionals.

David McKenna interviews Susy Thomas and Mann Friday for UseYourEars.com

Susy Thomas Interview

Rather like David Saw at the first useyourears.com party last year, Susy Thomas opened proceedings at Bush Hall in the most direct, sincere fashion possible - no excess flash, no special effects, just one person, one guitar and a handful of memorable, finely crafted songs. She'll be back at the venue later in the year with a full band to promote her debut album, In The Morning, but was that undiluted essence of Susy - and you get the feeling that's the way she likes it best.

"I've written with other people (the list of collaborators includes Dave Stewart and Michael Kamen) but I wanted this album to be just me, to make sure I could get across the ideas and emotions the way I wanted." Susy has more than 200 songs written, and In The Morning is a mixture of numbers from her extensive 'archive' and more recent compositions. Could she envisage coming to a record entirely fresh and not relying on past compositions? "Yeah, I think I'll approach the next album from that angle." It probably won't be too daunting a task for somebody who's been writing songs since she was 14. What were those early songs like? "Oh God, dreadful... real 'cat on the mat' stuff," she laughs. These days, her songs frequently tackle affairs of the heart, based on personal experience or through "picking up stuff from friends, situations they tell me about."

Who does she picture as the likeliest audience for her music?
Susy's first reaction - "Oh, anyone from 18 to 80, I hope." She reconsiders it for a moment. "I think... girls mostly..." She stops herself again - "Oh, I don't know why I'm saying that, I think it's the sort of thing my Dad would buy too!" UseYourEars.com is keeping its fingers crossed that girls, Dads, 18 and 80 year olds will all be paying attention when the album comes out in June.

Mann Friday Interview

Either the passion bites or it doesn't, and I think when I'm having an awful night you can't quite tell... but when I start making grotesque faces, and screaming and growling, you know I'm having a good time. I really loved it tonight." Mann Friday's lead singer and rhythm guitarist is clearly enthused by the band's show at the UseYourEars.com party. It's taken them a while to get here, and not just because other commitments meant they couldn't make the first party last year. The four members hail from as far and wide as Zimbabwe, South Africa and Israel, and cut their teeth playing in Cape Town, which Robbie describes as "a good little test site for rock n roll, a good place to make your mistakes and learn about what you're doing." Eventually, though, they felt they had to set their sights on a bigger prize, and London was the chosen arena.

Coming to London has, it seems, been both an exciting and a bewildering experience. On the plus side, says Robbie, "It's particularly easy in London to get lost in that romantic idea of being in a band, to us the scene here is so lush, every day in every venue there's something happening." However, bassist reflects on the fact that "having grown up in a different society, there's been a bit of feeling our way through, wondering how you go about doing things."

At least one thing that Mann Friday do seem to be doing quite successfully is winning over a fervent, word-of-mouth fan base for their emotionally-charged performances. One song which stood out at the Bush Hall show: a song called Peter Pan Syndrome. Isn't being in a band the ultimate manifestation of that desire not to grow old and have your imagination diminished by the daily grind?

There's a unanimous "Yes!" from the group.