Not the roller coasters, clowns and cotton candy — but the darker side of a carnival explains the kind of music The Blue Meanies are touring behind this summer.

Starting out as a funk band eight years ago, The Blue Meanies have since changed to ska and now describe its music as “carnival punk.”

“You know when you go to the carnival and see the dirty carnies walking around with two teeth and two left arms and you go backstage and there is puke everywhere?” asked Bob Trondson, drummer for the Meanies. This describes the Blue Meanies’ carnival-ride version of punk.

“We are the darker images of the carnival,” Trondson explained.

Trondson described the Meanies’ sound as an onslaught of sounds and sights. “Our singer is like a carnival barker just going nuts, making people do things that they would not normally do. It is just us out there going crazy for 60 minutes,” he said.

Trondson said the band even occasionally uses a megaphone. He accredits its eclectic style of music to the fact that the Meanies are “seven different people with seven different interests and each bring their own unique thoughts to the table.”

The Blue Meanies, like many punk bands, see punk music going back underground where bands can avoid the bogus hype. “We want to do what we want to do, when and how we want to do it,” Trondson said.

“The industry took a cool movement with cool songs and put the label ‘alternative’ on it. Now they are taking anyone that looks alternative and saying ‘Okay, now sound alternative,'” he said.

Trondson blames a lot of what’s going on in the music industry on major record labels — an entity the Blue Meanies has stayed away from.

The difference between the larger record labels and the smaller labels, Trondson said, is that “big labels have the money, and therefore lose sight — and can afford to lose sight — of their integrity, while the smaller, poorer labels have only their integrity.”

“Money is not our focus,” Trondson said. “Our label and the band look at our music as a career.” The Meanies hope to avoid any disappearing acts by continuing to release a record every year.

The Meanies will be promoting its sophomore full length disc, “Full Throttle,” at the Safari Club in Des Moines tomorrow for an all-ages show.

Tickets are $7 in advance and $8 at the door. For more information, call the club at (515) 246-0414.