Interview with Ian Manhire, singer/songwriter in The Retrospects Shock Treatment: So Ian, I'd like to start off with some questions about you if that's ok? What band or musician first inspired you to want to write your own music? Ian Manhire: I can't say for sure. Because I don't totally remember. It would have been at a young age. I took a lot of piano lessons as a kid. I remember in music lessons being less interested in learning the sheet music, and more interested in making up my own songs. I was in bands since a young age. I started playing drums in punk bands as a teenager, but never wrote the songs. Maybe contributed some ideas, as far as collaborative bands go. Through my 20's I continued playing drums in bands. I eventually started playing bass. Then I decided to pick up the guitar and learn how to play. The first band I picked up a guitar and stood behind the microphone was the White Wires. It was the first band I wrote the songs for. I had dabbled with so...

There was a time in the early 1980’s when I loved MTV and the videos they played, an era when it seemed rock music was still moving in new and exciting directions. The pop and new wave bands then had the ability to echo our own wide-eyed enthusiasm for the times and of the heartbreaking losses in love we went through and put it to terrific pop tunes. Well many listened but few learned, 1-800-BAND are some of the ones that took really good notes. They learned to channel a similar romanticism and inject it into fun and undeniably catchy songs similar to the Pretenders and The Cars. 1-800-BAND do what so many rock n’ roll bands wish they could accomplish: they make something old sound new again! This interview originally appeared in Audio Ammunition on November 7th, 2014 Interview by J Castro Shock Treatment: Ok Al, let’s start off by telling me who’s all in the band and what you all do to earn your place? AL: Al Huckabee on guitar and vocals, Polly Watson on keyboards, Robbie Kongr...