Mike, first and foremost, welcome in Brussels. Is this your first time in Belgium?
Mike Pelanconi aka. Prince Fatty: "I think I came here once when I was a kid, but as an artist it's definitely my first time, yes. Nice place, man; I don't know what this neighborhood is called (Molenbeek, red.), but it's a really cool area. When we arrived we parked the van and went straight out to have a cup of tea and we ended up in a super cool tea house where everyone was really nice."
If I put to you that your life changed drastically in 2005, would you agree?
Mike Pelanconi: "Yeah, the song ('Nina's Dance', red.) we recorded for Stüssy was definitely the catalyst for a lot of things. It was the beginning of the whole Prince Fatty movement, if you like. It took me a while to realize what had happened, though."
You were already involved in music way before the whole Prince Fatty thing started, but you weren't necessarily involved in reggae and rocksteady as you are now. What are your earliest connections with Jamaican music?
Mike Pelanconi: "Producing records and my engineering work were really like a day job to me. Reggae had always been in my heart, though. When I first came to London, I was only a seventeen year old kid and I found myself both working in the posh uptown studios as well as in the ghetto ones; one of these ghetto studios, Lion Music, located in Brixton, was a great reggae studio and that's where I met people like Little Roy, Roy Shirley, Winston Francis, Yellowman and a whole host of other reggae artists. Basically any artist coming over from Jamaica would stop by. That's where I laid the foundations for the sound that has now become Prince Fatty."
On your albums you feature songs with most of the artists you just mentioned; how does that work for live gigs and touring?
Mike Pelanconi: "Well, getting the full band out there is quite expensive, so I've been doing a lot of soundsystem type gigs with Horseman deejaying away and Holly (Cook, red.) sometimes joins us as well."
What's the story behind your Prince Fatty alter ego?
Mike Pelanconi: "People always told me my sound was "fat" as I tend to go for a really rich, full and mellow sound with a lot of bass. In Los Angeles I used to work for Delicious Vinyl for a while and that allowed me to collaborate with a lot of the old generation funkateers. They always enjoyed a fat bass as well, so that's basically where the name comes from, because physically I'm far from fat! (laughs)"
You're also the brain behind Little Roy's 'Battle For Seattle' Nirvana tribute album. How did that idea get form and why did you think of Little Roy for the vocals?
Mike Pelanconi: "I was never really into grunge music at the time when Nirvana was at the peak of their success, but I did see them live once at the Astoria somewhere in the beginning of the nineties and even though it wasn't really my style of music, I have to say that show was just crazy. I never really enjoyed their records as the production always sounded too American to me, but live they were one of the best bands around at the time. About twenty years after this concert at the Astoria I heard the MTV Unplugged album they did playing at a record shop I was visiting; now the shop was quite noisy so the only thing I could hear was the voice and a bit of the rhythm guitar and I thought to myself: "Wow, this really sounds kind of similar to the skanking in reggae music!" When I first pitched the idea of doing a reggae version of Nirvana's music to some of my friends, they all told me it would be impossible, but I'm the kind of person who when you tell me something is impossible, makes me want to try it even more. Having worked with Little Roy before, I knew that he had a kind of distortion in his voice that would suit the songs very well, so to me he was quite an obvious choice. More than anything else the challenge of this project is what really made it great for me, because it's probably the most non-reggae material you can find. (laughs)"
I know Little Roy as a humble Rastafarian reggae singer, how did he react to the project when you first proposed it to him?
Mike Pelanconi: "Little Roy and myself already had a longstanding working relationship and honestly speaking I think at first I was more worried about this project than he was. I was kind of wondering what people were going to think about an elderly respected Rastafarian singing this kind of music, but Little Roy basically likes good songs, so once he had heard the melodies of these songs he really got into it. Once we did the first two or three songs it became obvious where we were heading. I produced the album with Mutant-Hifi; he's a big Nirvana fan and I felt it to be important to have someone like that on board to do the arrangements."
Is this a one-off project or would you like to try something similar again in the future?
Mike Pelanconi: "This just felt right when we did it with the twentieth anniversary of the 'Nevermind' album coming up and all that. Some people already started comparing me to the Easy Star All Stars, who did reggae cover versions of albums by The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Radiohead, but I'm not really interested in doing that. I also wanted to do it with a lot of respect for Nirvana and that's why I didn't include all too obvious hits like 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', because I didn't want to make like this was just a quick commercial project; this way the real Nirvana fans like the album as well."
You're an independent producer turning out records in an age where records aren't really selling anymore. I noticed you've chosen to release everything on vinyl as well. Is that a financial thing - do vinyl records just sell better then CD's - or is it because you're fond of the vinyl sound?
Mike Pelanconi: "All our records are released on vinyl as well and we wouldn't do that if they didn't sell. There's definitely a market of vinyl addicts out there, but to me the most important thing is that when you decide to release a vinyl album, you make sure it's good quality. I've got a reputation with the pressing plants in the UK for demanding a quality product; if it doesn't sound 100% right I just send it back and believe me, I've already had to do that on several occasions in the past. These days my records are always checked three times before they send them to me, because they know how fussy I can be. I'm not afraid to say that where the Prince Fatty releases are concerned the vinyl releases sound way better than the CD's."