It’s been a fantastic past 12 months for acoustic singer-songwriter Pete Green, formerly of The Regulars and now oft-spotted at indiepopshows across the land sporting a floppy fringe and “fragile”-stickered acoustic guitar. He released fantabulous single Everything I Do is Gonna Be Sparkly on Atomic Beat Records early last year, somehow managed to get away with playing two sets at last summer’s Indietracks festival, embarked on a ukelele mini-tour with fellow troubadour MJ Hibbett and – if that was not enough – also found time to play a whole host of other fun popshows in exotic places like Stoke! And Nottingham! Woo! Clearly he’s a very busy chap, so we were dead chuffed when he allowed Indie Mp3 access to his Sheffield hideaway (gmail inbox) to find out his plans for 2008…..

Hi Pete. I hear you’re playing at the Pop Art Bargelife event on Battersea Barge on Easter Sunday, where all the bands playing have been asked to incorporate a Britpop cover into their set. Any clues on what you might play? And were you a Britpop fan at the time?

People keep saying to me: "Go on - do a Menswear song! I dare you!" Hmm, but Britpop was all a bit grim really, I thought at the time. Listening to it now, I can enjoy a bit of Elastica and whatnot but I'm quite happy to leave most of it on the shelf. Too many of those bands seemed to be trying too hard. And it was very London-centric and self-referential. (Indie MP3 gently reminds Pete of all the awful grunge around at the time) Although, to be fair, in the context of grunge, certainly it was refreshing. And the whole Blur/Oasis on the Six O'Clock News thing was a giggle. It was kind of fun. I hardly listen to any of it now. But I do wish I hadn't spurned the chance to see Blur on Cleethorpes Pier. I was even living there that summer. Not actually on the pier, but in Cleethorpes.

Britpop was obviously a scene, do you feel part of a “scene” yourself nowadays? And will you always remain solo or do you think you might get a band together again?

Yes, I do feel part of a scene! And it's nice. I've become quite a bit busier since the new indiepop circuit started offering me gigs and I haven't had to play acoustic nights any more! My first solo gig was at the end of 2002, a month or two after The Regulars split up. It wasn't great; I was probably just trying to make a point and I didn't play live again for about 18 months. It's only since I moved to Sheffield that the solo thing has taken off. I only ever intended playing solo to be a stopgap until I got a new band together. But the solo thing sort of took off a little bit - people kept giving me gigs - and here I am five years later, still sidetracked with it! In terms of being on stage, and the thrill you get from that, playing solo is nothing like as hot as being in a band. I'm about to start practising with a rhythm section, as it goes. I've no idea at all how it will go. I've tried about four times to get a new band together since The Regulars split up, and it's failed abjectly every time. But this time it's kind of a backing band for my solo stuff, rather than a totally separate 'project'. If this doesn't work, nothing will, and I'll be doomed to solodom forever!

You mentioned the constriction of initially only being able to play acoustic nights- do you think "acoustic singer-songwriter" has still got negative connotations? I like to think the likes of yourself and MJ Hibbett are here to save the genre! And you’re both very much in the Billy Bragg vein….

Aw, bless ya! I think the antifolk thing went a long way towards that as well but Kieran from In Love With These Times In Spite Of These Times wrote that 99 out of 100 acoustic singer-songwriters should be culled, and I tend to agree. There are some fantastic ones, of course, but for every Nat Johnson there are 99 James Blunts. Yes, I was influenced by Billy Bragg when I started writing songs in 1863. But this was musically as much as lyrically. I bought a Billy Bragg songbook from a guitar shop when I was 16 and in my first band, and it had a flexidisc in it with Billy telling you how to play his songs! This was kind of a godsend for someone who'd barely picked up a guitar in his life, and was too intimidated by Johnny Marr's genius to even try playing along with Smiths records.

But if you have an acoustic guitar, does it mean that you are a protest singer?!

In a way it does! Because there's less going on musically, you've got to give people something to listen to, so you have to make more effort with your lyrics. I'm wary of the whole messianic Bono 'I have a message, I've come to save you' thing, but I do have a lot of opinions about all kinds of things, so it's only natural that some of them should find their way into the music.

Soooo, Best British Band Supported by Shockwaves, your new song about the NME awards....was there a particular trigger that you led you to write it, or had it been building up inside you for a while?

I hadn't really thought about writing a song on that subject, but when I came across that web page with all the NME award nominations in all the different categories, and every category had its own corporate sponsor, something just exploded in me. It's so, so sad, when you think about the amazing music writers who've come through the NME down the years, to see what that publication has come to today. Of course Conor McNicholas might say, well, if the NME hadn't taken this direction, we'd have gone the same way as Melody Maker and all the others, and just folded. But the NME just ending would have been better for music than it carrying on in this perverted form.

Do you think indiepop is reclaiming proper use of the DIY culture from those bands who claim MySpace catapulted them to stardom, when they're clearly just Keith Allen's daughter, for example?

Ah, Myspace. Didn't it turn out that the Arctic Monkeys had been carefully plugged all the way along? Indiepop has always been the direct descendant of punk in terms of the DIY thing. It kills me when you hear these eejits accuse indiepop of being 'middle class' because it's the most democratic and non-elitist genre of pop music there is. There's barely any boundary at all between musicians and non-musicians. Indiepop fans can start a band and then learn how to play, and even then, as long as they're doing it for the right reasons, they can get by with three chords - at least as much as any green mohican wearer of 30 years ago.

I guess you still won't be needing that MySpace account then! Do you have a favourite out of your own songs? And also, we hear news of a Lost Music single – gossip please!

I think my favourite me song is 'Tonight It's True'. I just really like the words. I look at them and it's as if they were written for me by somebody better - "did I really do that?" I don't play it live as often as I should because it's quite hard - it's finger-picky, and my hands sometimes shake too much on stage to be able to do finger-picky. Similarly, I like 'Let it go by' a lot. But I've forgotten how to play it well live. It's like it's too easy or something. But that's another song that says a lot about what I think and the way I try to approach life. Each moment in isolation from the past and the future. In terms of the single, Trev asked me to do a single for Lost Music after I played the Betsey Trotwood the other week on the Atomic Beat roadshow. What a night! It feels important that he actually approached me rather than the other way round. This is always quite a big deal to me. I like to just wait for the right thing to happen rather than run about like a blue-arsed fly trying to chase stuff - not just in music but in everything. So yeah, I'm delighted to be doing a record for Lost. But I don't know which songs will be on it yet. I think I'm waiting until I wake up with the right answer! With any luck it'll be this side of 2014.

The Indietracks festival – last year you played two sets. Are you playing this year at all?

No, I won't be playing this time, but there's talk of impromptu acoustic gubbins alongside the scheduled bands so we’ll have to see. This year I'll just be glad to enjoy all the ace bands who are playing without having to worry about whether I left my guitar underneath a reconditioned 1962 diesel when I was drunk.

Your single was played on the Radio 1 Rob Da Bank show recently – did this fulfil an ambition of yours? Do you even have any particular ambitions in regard to your music?

Yes, I always had a big ambition to send Radio 1 engineers running round in panic as the meters run into the red and the sound distorts like hell! It was a nice thing though, actually, and dead unexpected. My mum's really proud. But you won't be surprised to learn that I grew out of ambition long ago. I went to see a friend’s band last week and they were supporting some dreadful industry group who clearly had, you know, “ambition”. We were talking as we watched them, about ambition and the Industry and all of that. And I said to him: "I'll never make any money out of music. You'll never make any money out of music. And this lot will never make any money out of music. But the difference is, me and you will keep our dignity. And more importantly than that, we'll have a lot more fun."

Ha! Any quick, final message for Indie MP3 readers Pete? I know you have a daily haiku blog, so maybe a haiku for the site?

I have no message. I hate messages. I just have songs! But here's a haiku for you:

Questions and answers
pass across the worldwide web:
nothing's decided

Thank you Pete!