1. Hey Marco,I'm Mircea from More Punk Than You Zine. Greetings from Romania. How are you?
Hi Mircea, nice to hear from you, thanks a lot for this great chance that you’re giving us: to be known also in Romania from the readers of More Punk Than You ‘zine! We are fine, the summer is beginning and the open air drinking time is approaching. It’s also the best period of the year to admire girls and to have fast adventures by the seaside so we’re looking forward to holidays!

2. Tell me something about Make It Happy, a little history.
Make It Happy is the meeting between melody, power and punk attitude at its core. Make It Happy were officially born in August 2005, when 4 musicians coming from totally different musical experiences met up after having replied to an announcement issued by me. Our first demo, titled “Lesson #1” was released in December 2006 and soon afterwards, ArciSana Records chose a song from it for its national compilation. Yet it’s only with the arrival of Riky on bass and Gabriele on vocals in 2008 that the project took off.
Let’s say that just like any other respectable punk band we have been through many changes in the line up. Currently I’m the only founder member in the band, but, hey, who cares? The band has never been so united and playing together has become extremely funny. Moreover, we are sure of our means and of our new songs and this feeling gives us a lot of enthusiasm and strength.

3. I know that you have a demo,called: "Lesson #1", Are you getting ready for something new? An album or something?
Yes, absolutely. Our demo “Lesson #1” dates back to 2006 and it’s time to release something new, especially because in the meanwhile we changed components, we changed our setup and we grew up together as a band. We are not going to repeat the same mistakes done in the past (musically speaking). We have some brand new songs ready, which we’ve been playing live since some months, and amongst all these, we have chosen 3 of them to be recorded in July or August. Therefore it will be a “single” composed by 3 brand new songs, which we guarantee will blow the heads away of whoever likes catchy punk-rock tunes and sing along choruses. Most likely it will be named “Where is the love”, from the name of our best track so far. All people attending to our gigs claim they have been impressed by these 3 new songs in particular, so the choice for us was very easy.

4. I saw some pictures from Bad Manners, how do you see yourself when you're gonna be the age of Buster?
Well, hopefully thinner! Ah ah ah, no I’m joking. I must admit he grew much thinner from the first time I saw him playing in London (2000). I’ll be probably still playing in a band, but most likely in a ska band this time. I would have little credibility playing punk-rock at the age of 50 years old… By that time I’ll have gone through many experiences, I’ll have visited new places and met interesting people. I’ll probably have a family of my own (and I underline “probably”), but I’ll still be looking for fun, alcohol and good friends to share my experiences with, just like I’m doing nowadays.
                          

5. By the way,about "Bad Manners", tell me something about your favourite bands. I saw that besides Manners you are fans of Specials. Hehe
Of course  I like The Specials! These lads really kicked asses, their sound was so fresh, so infectious, even nowadays it’s impossible to keep your feet and your legs quiet. Not to mention The Selecter, Madness, Laurel Aitken, Judge Dread and tons of others ska bands I listen to. As you might understand I’m a big ska fan. In this period of my life I’m appreciating a lot the so called early ska, therefore bands like Toots & The Maytals, Prince Buster, Jimmy Cliff, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires and so on. I’m more into the Sixties and the skinhead reggae right now.

6. Speaking about bands. Tell me something about your gigs. How is the atmosphere there in Padova?
First of all we must thank our friends and core fans who follow us at every concert, therefore we can say that we always have a great time when we play live, we never feel left alone and we are looking forward to performing the next shows. So far we’ve always been able to pack up the places where we played and this is a great achievement and a strong encouragement.
Padova is a shitty middle class city and most of the kids haven’t even listened to a single punk song in all their boring and rich lives. So the atmosphere at punk gigs in Padova is quite poor compared to other close countries like Germany, Spain and UK in general. I attended to gigs in all the UK, Germany, Spain, France and Norway and people over there are much more interested in new bands compared to Italy. In Italy there are a lot of cover bands, only too few people want to start a band to play their own music. They all choose the easiest way: play songs by somebody else and I believe this is really restricting Italian music culture. There is only room for bands who appears in MTV and cover bands. That’s what most of the people wants to see and to listen to when they go to a pub or in a venue. There are loads of great Italian bands who are struggling in the underground scene since ages. That’s also why we sing in English after all: we would prefer to play abroad for a bigger and more interested crowd. Hope dies last we use to say…

7. The girls on the website who have the name "make it happy" written in different parts of the body, are them fans? Did they got a free demo for their work?
Oh yeah, those girls are our pride! They were selected after hundreds and hundreds of pictures which overwhelmed us last year. We asked through MySpace if someone was interested in taking part into our slideshow and the response was incredible. There are still girls who want to send their pictures! So, it was not possible to send them all our demo as we hadn’t so many. We’ve just told them they will have a free gift in the backstage of our gigs and the fame of the next centuries…

8. Make me a top 10 with your favourite bands
I will list 10 names who are of great influence to the sound of the band but I can not list them per order of importance as every member of the group has its own musical taste and that would be too tough to choose:

1. Ramones 2. Green Day 3. Cock Sparrer 4 .Dropkick Murphys 5. Rise Against 6. The Specials 7. Laurel Aitken 8. The Who 9. Backyard Babies 10. Sum41

I personally haven’t got a single favourite band, though. I listen to many different musical genres and having a single favourite band would be too limiting for me. It also depends from my mood.

9. The last album listened?
The Police “Regatta De Blanc”. It’s because I’m getting ready to their gig here in Venice next Sunday… I’ve been listening to them since when I was a little kid because my parents owned some of their vinyls. From the moment I first saw “Quadrophenia” and I noticed Sting playing the role of Ace The Face, he became one of my youth heroes and I promised myself to catch The Police live one day. For any reader who hasn’t seen the movie “Quadrophenia”: GET IT!! You’ll learn more about youth subcultures like mods and rockers and the soundtrack is amazing.

10. About euro 2008 hihi heavy group. Tell me, what do you think about Romania? Who’s gonna win?
Oh yeah, every respectable Italian is fond of football and would talk about it for hours and hours, you know that too, huh? Romania has a good football team, it plays just like Italy has been playing since ages: with “catenaccio”. Therefore no Italian should ever complain about it. Moreover you have Mutu who is really a good football player. I think you can have some satisfactions during these European Championships. Italy doesn’t deserve to qualify to the quarter finals, we just hope to win our personal European Championship: beat France!
I believe the best teams so far are Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands. If Italy goes out I will support Spain for sure also because I have a lot of Spanish friends and I’d be happy for them if Spain wins the European Championships.

11. About the Stage in Romania, do you know something? Do you know a band, fanzine, or anything else?
I must admit I don’t know so much about Romanian scene, but MySpace in this case is very helpful. It gives me the chance to know and to listen to a lot of bands and to get in contact with a lot of people and a lot of fanzines, just like in our case, my dear Mircea. For example I know a fanzine called “No bollox just Oi!” which, I believe, is run by some Romanian lads. Then I know few Romanian bands but nothing else, sorry. So, please, any punk/Oi Romanian band out there, get in contact with us via MySpace or e-mail because in the future we could exchange some gigs! For us it is always helpful and useful knowing other bands from abroad.

12. Thank you for this interview, Marco. I wish you all the best and good luck. If you want to say something extra, please say it now.
Well, ok, thanks again to you and to your fanzine first of all. I hope to have created some interest towards us in all the readers of More Punk Than You zine. We invite you all to visit our websites and to leave a little mark of your passing-by in our guestbooks. Hopefully very soon you’ll be able to listen to our new songs in MySpace: remember to rise your glasses full of beer and sing along our choruses at home, in the pubs or in the streets, this is actual the way to enjoy them!

Official website: http://www.makeithappy.it
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/makeithappy
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/makeithappy77
E-mail: info@makeithappy.it

thanks to Marco and Make It Happy

(C)pictures my space.com/makeithappy

Interview by:Mircea