At the moment, the most famous thing about the Warm Jets is that their lead singer, Louis, is going out with professional ligger and Sleeper rhythm guitarist Zoe Ball. However, this year they’ve made sure that they are going to be noticed a bit more than that, as they’ve grabbed support slots with Blur and Embrace and I spoke to them whilst they were touring with Teenage Fanclub. Unfortunately, this was before the Louis and Zoe thing was common knowledge, so I missed my chance to ask pertinent probing questions about going out with the alleged saviour of Radio 1 and presenter of Live and Kicking; the only reason to get up on Saturday morning.

I make it to the Birmingham Sanctuary after a bit of a rough day at work, grab a beer and get a decent place to watch them play. I’m very impressed. They cheer me up no end and they manage to combine a natural pop instinct with some weird guitar noises and a nice regeneration of past influences. They sound kind of retro-futuristic with a kind of skewiff pop ethic thrown in for good measure. Louis has a half decent voice that makes the lyrics sound interesting and the guitarist has a habit of wringing loud noises out of his guitar whilst grinning that I find endearing.

When I finally get backstage to interview them they are as likeable as their music. I speak to the guitarist Pete and singer Louis and although they are obviously tired from a long day answering inane questions posed by stupid hacks like me, they are still full of enthusiasm for their music and friendly towards someone interested in their music.

The thing is that they are a bit annoyed at having played, they feel, a lacklustre set.

“We were rushed and we’d been doing interviews all day and we didn’t have a soundcheck and the next thing you know you’re on stage and you’ve got to work it out while you play and we just didn’t have time to get into a stage kind of mentality.”

As I said, I thought they sounded great, but they seem to be running out of energy and getting bogged down in record company stuff. But at least they don’t have a nine to five job.

“I guess the best bits are that you have the chance to write music and release records which is what we love,” says Louis in response to my disgruntled moan.

“It’s a job, you know, but it’s something we love so to do it is just brilliant.”

“The worst bits are dealing with record company rubbish and having to talk to journalists, which is kind of tiring. It’s probably the most tiring thing we do actually.” But it’s important to keep in mind why you started producing music in the first place and not become some overrated tribute band like the majority of British guitar bands at the moment.

“Plagiarism is just so boring and so many bands do it.”

“It’s just lazy songwriting and going after the fast buck.”

“It happens everywhere. You know things like Puff Daddy. To me that’s just like the laziest form of music. It happens with guitar music as well, but to do that to hip hop, to me, is just criminal. If you think of people like Public Enemy who just rip the whole genre apart and then put it together again in amazing collage and then ten years later you have Puff Daddy doing this farcical commercial shit. You just think that that is actually evil.”

Well, to avoid the heavy good versus evil argument, I ask stock journalistic question number 23. Where’s the best place to listen to the Warm Jets?

“A bit stoned in the bath.”

“I think there’s more motion than that.”

“Yeah, listen to it whilst travelling.”

“Going somewhere you’ve never been before.”

“I know; a bit stoned, in a bath, on a plane going somewhere you’ve never been before.”

“Yep.”

Pete and Louis were talking to Ben, in November 1997.