A ‘Normal’ Coming of Age for Ned’s

Backstage before a recent Arsenio Hall show taping, Jonn, the singer of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, glanced at the neatly engraved sign bearing his British band’s name that hung on the dressing-room door.

“We never thought we would get anything like this,” he said, still slightly out of breath after rehearsing the band’s latest single, “Not Sleeping Around,” for the late-night show. “We just got treated like stars for the day, which is not the kind of thing we are used to.”

But then the group has had to get used to a lot of new things since it started making a living with its brand of guitar-driven distortion pop. In fact, the recent release of Ned’s second album, “Are You Normal?,” and a six-week U.S. tour have been a sort of coming of age for the band.

The tour includes a stop Friday at the Hollywood Palladium. That concert is still scheduled despite continuing curfew problems that have led Palladium management to say they will be closing the facility--possibly after Ned’s show. The band also plays Saturday at UC Irvine’s Crawford Hall.

The carefree spirit of the group’s early days is gone, confessed the 24-year-old frontman who uses only his first name. Although more satisfied with the quality and direction of its latest work, the group now must deal with the responsibilities of playing in a successful band.

“I think before it was all fun, it was all an adventure, because everything was new,” Jonn said. “Now I think that how pleased we are with what we do is the most important thing--whether the songs are as good as they should be, or whether we played the gig as well as we could. We’ve got this kind of sense of pride now.”

It was more a sense of boredom that drove Jonn to form Ned’s in 1988. Looking for a diversion from college homework, the group--which includes guitarist Rat, bassists Mat and Alex and drummer Dan (they like to keep their last names private)--began playing shows around their Birmingham-area base. They soon caught the eye of fellow locals the Wonder Stuff, who offered Ned’s an opening slot on the group’s 1990 English tour.

After recording an EP for an independent label and establishing itself as a live act, the group hit the English Top 10 with its debut album, “God Fodder”--a disc that also found favor among the American alternative music crowd.

Not bad for five guys just looking for a way to kill time between classes.

“When things started getting big, we were all sort of astounded by it,” Jonn recalled. “But we’ve never really had time to sit back and think about it.”

In fact, the thinking part came when the band members learned that once the ink on the recording contract dried, they were no longer the sole masters of their destiny.

“Unless you take the time--and it’s not something you want to do--to learn how things work and understand how people market you and so on, you are utterly powerless,” Jonn said about the business side of the creative process.