WHEN Matt McHugh was growing up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney he was told by aspiring singers that band names had to masculine if it was going to be taken seriously by the public.
McHugh, Clay McDonald, Mitchell Connelly and Felipe Kmiecik now laugh at that way of thinking and credit those people for helping them come up with their band's name Beautiful Girls.
Singer and guitarist, McHugh said there band actually makes fun of their way of thinking.
``Where we grew up, anybody that played in a band played heavy music - either punk or hardcore or metal or whatever,'' McHugh said.
``There is a feminine element in all music and that's what they didn't understand.
``We made the name up to take the piss out of that macho way of thinking, to show them that you don't need to have a masculine name to sell music.'' Another stand McHugh has recently made is his public support of NSW's decision to implement the first stages towards banning smoking in pubs and clubs.
``Everytime you went and did a pub or club gig you felt like you'd breathed in 80 kilograms of second hand smoke,'' McHugh said.
``You'd come home smelling like an ashtray and you felt as stale as the smoke that was all through your clothes and hair.
``The new laws are great, anything that improves our health is a good thing.'' Since the band started the keen surfers have taken hold of their own career and put together four albums- Morning Sun, Good Times, Learn Yourself and We've Already Gone.
McHugh said the latest album, We've Already Gone, was their best yet.
``The songs on this album are vastly different to the ones we have previously recorded,'' McHugh said.
``There is a lot more jazz and blues influences in our music this time around.
``Over the past two years we have grown as a band and our music style has changed for the better.
``Way I see it if we played the same music all the time then we would be boring people and nobody would listen to our music... and that would suck.'' In fact normal is the last thing he or his band members said they would ever want to be because they believed life was about fun.
McHugh said so many wild things had happened in their lives while on tour very little shocked them anymore.
He said one of the tamer things that happened on tour that he could tell ifTE nf was day he was floored by a flying ice-cube.
``I was siting down on stage at a gig playing my guitar and a woman came up on stage and started dancing sexy on the stage,'' McHugh said.
``It started getting pretty scary because we couldn't get her off stage and security was doing nothing about it.
``Anyway the crowd started yelling for her to get off and some guy threw an ice-cube at her as hard as he could.
``It missed and hit right in the forehead- it really hurt.'' McHugh said one time they had a laugh at another band's misfortune.
``Some guy left his underpants in their dressing room with a love letter pronouncing his love and asking for a date with the female of the band,'' McHugh said.
``What a fool, who asks for a date that way? ``It was pretty funny and we all had a good laugh.
``But the way law of averages go I reckon it's only a matter of time before it happens to one of us.'' The Beautiful Girls will play at the Bar on the Hill on Thursday august 18 .
Tickets: Students $15, general public $20.
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