The Vibrators have been around a long time. Twenty-nine years, in fact. That includes a lot of albums (15), a lot of songs (over 200), numerous line ups and a split in 1980. As one of the founding fathers of 1970's punk rock, it was an honor for me to have front man of the Vibrators, Ian "Knox" Carnochan take time out from his busy days to answer some questions.

And be sure to catch the Vibrators on their American tour this fall, which kicks off in San Diego next month!

The Vibrators current line up: Eddie, Knox and Pete.

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Jones Violet: You recently played two festivals, the Anti Fest in the Czech Republic and the Summer Rock Festival in Croatia. What was that like? How is the atmosphere different from a show there compared to in England or America?

Pretty similar I have to say. The set up is the same. you're on a stage, you've got your amplifier behind you (in my case a guitar amp), the drums are going, and there's your audience in front of you, hopefully liking what you're playing. You get quite a lot of people at the European festivals, that's true, as the band only get to some of the more exotic places every now and again, like Croatia. so the fans will come out for you more. Apart from festivals the band usually plays clubs and bars. Around the UK we get a lot of older pople, most of whom we probably know personally, plus quite a few younger kids who come to check us out. In the States in particular we'll get a lot of young kids, in fact we do a lot of all ages shows out there.

JV: When the Vibrators started, was it your intention to be a punk rock band or did you just want to get together and play music?

When we got together you have to remember there was no punk rock. It hadn't started! We were the third band to start. Before us were the Stranglers and the Pistols, that's all. We were just a group of friends who decided to start a band. Initailly, so we could get out and play quickly, we were just knocking out pub rock stuff like Johnny B Good, that sort of thing plus a few songs of mine like "Whips 'n' Furs", "Sweet Sweet Heart" that I was doing in bands before The Vibrators, and which went onto The Vibrators' first album, and a couple of Iggy Pop songs (which we made into one song). Our first gig was supporting the Stranglers in March 1976. Quite soon we started playing the songs a lot faster and the audience picked up on that, they really liked it, so we in our own way contributed to the early start of punk rock in England. Around the summer that year punk rock became an established style, so you could start out as a punk rock band from that point, but when we started there wasn't any punk rock! I think in our small way we helped shape it. I know lots of bands started after they saw us play, as we were out playing just about everywhere.