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Howzat! with Jeff Jenkins
THREE DOWNLOW VOTES
The intro reminds Howzat! of LRB’s Help Is On Its Way. The opening guitars sound a little like the
Hoodoo Gurus’ Bittersweet. Overall,
the guitars jangle like Tom Petty, and the production dips its lid to the
genius of Jeff Lynne. And then there’s a cosmic synth break that reminds of
Heart and Kiss and maybe Kenny Rogers. Sounds incongruous, but it’s the new
Wagons single, Downlow (Spunk/EMI), and it’s a
cracker. “Your mamma don’t like me
none,” Henry Wagons sings, “she
got every reason under the sun.” But this is a song that’ll satisfy the
entire Wagons demographic. Downlow is
the first single from the new Wagons album, due out in May. The band is
launching the single as well as the
vinyl version of their previous album, The
Rise And Fall Of Goodtown, at the Corner on March 4.
NOT SO COOL WORLD
Australian legend Ross
Wilson has taken a swipe at Sony and iTunes in a savage piece at his
excellent website, rosswilson.com.au. Ross’ latest best-of, Mr Eagle Rock, is not available on
iTunes because Sony own the original Daddy Cool tracks and won’t allow
Shock to make them available for download. “They also have a bad attitude when it comes
to Daddy Cool’s compilation The
Essential Daddy Cool,” Ross writes, “you can’t download the entire
collection as an album, only track by track, and the biggest DC hits cost
$2.19 instead of $1.69! I swear it’s pissing off fans and it’s pissing off
moi. This is exploitation at its worst. Hello Sony, hello iTunes
Australia, our dollar is now worth $US1.00 so shouldn’t our iTunes tracks
now cost $0.99 like they do in the US? And they wonder why we shop online
offshore. These guys are supposed to be selling my music – reasonable
prices would lead to more sales and happier customers.” Hear, hear.
CLIP OF THE YEAR
Head to YouTube right now to check out the video for The Little Stevies’ Feel It. It’s fabulous.
GRANEY DAYS AHEAD
New record deal! New book! New album! 2011 is going to
be a big year for Dave Graney.
He’s signed to Liberation, who are releasing a new Dave Graney and the
Lurid Yellow Mist album, Rock ‘N’
Roll Is Where I Hide, in April. Dave says it’s a “full on rock ‘n’ roll
album”, featuring re-recordings of songs such as Night Of The Wolverine, Feelin’
Kinda Sporty, I’m Not Afraid To
Be Heavy and I’m Gonna Release
Your Soul. The album will coincide with Dave’s memoir, 1001 Australian Nights. “Not so much
a personal slant, but everything gets all mixed up along the way.”
SKATER BOYS
As the Xanadu
musical hits town, nouveau yacht rockers The Vaudeville Smash
are launching a single called Roller
Disco, a summer smash about falling in love, with a smooth groove and
tasty horns. “I have watched Xanadu and
I love the soundtrack,” says singer Marc Lucchesi. “I also think Olivia
looks pretty nice. But Roller Disco
is actually a song about my early teens, when I would go to the ice skating
rink every week with my first girlfriend. A coming-of-age song, if you
will. I thought falling in love ‘at the roller disco’ had a better ring
than ‘at the ice rink’, hence the change from hard water to hard
wood.” The video shoot at the Eltham roller rink saw keys player Ben
Timmis suffer for his art – he broke his leg, even though he wasn’t on
skates. The Vaudeville Smash are playing this Saturday at the Toff.
NICK ROCKS, GEORGIA FIELDS
You would have seen the logo on many local releases: Victoria
Rocks. It means that the disc was made with the assistance of Arts
Victoria’s Vic Rocks funding program. Nick
Batterham and Georgia Fields
are grant recipients. “Vic Rocks is great,” Nick
says. “It certainly filled my sails. The grant allowed me to mix the record
[Second Lovers] using a decent
desk, which turned my home recordings into a coherent record. Working in
isolation, any positive feedback from the outside world gives you a lift.”
Georgia was suffering from food poisoning when she got her Arts Vic letter.
“I had never felt so happy, violently convulsing my gut out into a
bucket, clutching my letter of funding acceptance,” she recalls. The
deadline for the next round of funding is March 7.
THE VAUDEVILLE SMASH HIT
Howzat! thought it was going to be a quiet Friday night.
A mate suggested we check out a new band at Roxanne in the city. We arrive
about half-an-hour before they’re due on. It’s a big venue and not many
people are there. “This is not going to be good,” we think. But then, as
the band hits the stage, a couple of hundred people miraculously appear.
They seemingly know all the words and they proceed to sing along. You can’t
help but move. The gig is an event.
The Vaudeville Smash are a great
live band.
“You guys just make me happy,” one punter told singer Marc Lucchesi,
“you’re an antidote for the daily grind.” While another fan revealed: “The
child in my stomach was conceived to your music.”
The Vaudeville Smash say they took the name from an Italian
children’s karaoke machine that was around in the late ’80s. And they have
a great description for their sound: Nouveau Yacht Rock. “Yacht Rock is a
term for the smooth West Coast sound that came out of America in the late
’70s and early ’80s,” Marc explains. “Acts like Hall & Oates, The
Doobie Brothers, Toto and Kenny Loggins, to name a few. If you ever saw the
‘Soft Rock’ collection you could buy on late-night infomercials, you know
what I mean. While we’re influenced by a lot of different types of music,
this period is what gets us going the most; it’s music with incredible
melodies and harmonies, and, in many cases, an amazing groove, made by
incredible musicians. The nouveau part is just a fancy way of saying we’re
new.”
Like the Bee Gees, INXS, Kings of Leon and Hanson, The Vaudeville
Smash is a band featuring three brothers. Marc, Dan and Luca Lucchesi’s dad
sang Italian and Spanish folk songs and dug The Beatles. And their mum’s
dad was the conductor of the Adelaide Latvian men’s choir and taught the
kids classical piano. Marc’s first album purchase was Paul Simon’s Graceland (“I only really wanted You Can Call Me Al”) and his first
big concert was James Brown at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. “It was
also the night I lost my virginity,” he reveals. “Pretty good if you ask
me.”
Are the Lucchesi brothers volatile, like
the Gallaghers, or more mild-mannered, like the Farriss brothers? “We’ve done things that
would make the Gallaghers look like schoolyard freaks,” Marc laughs, “but
we’ve learnt to become more Farriss-like over the years. You sort of have
to, especially considering that we now all live together. There’s no brawl
like a brawl between brothers. The good thing is, five minutes later you’re
friends again. We have actually had a couple of very heated arguments on
stage. I think the punters think it’s part of the show – at least I hope
they do.”
As the guys put the finishing touches to their debut album with
producer Tim Johnston, they’ve released a single called Roller Disco. And before they head
to Austin for SXSW, they’re playing this Sunday at the St Kilda Festival,
and Saturday, February 19 at the Toff.
The Vaudeville Smash show a great sense of humour in their music and
on Twitter. December 12: “Amazing gig in Byron Bay last night. Timmis broke
hearts, Luca broke balls, Nic broke his guitar and Dan broke chairs by
simply sitting on them.” January 1: “Happy new year from everybody’s
favourite band. Our new year’s resolution is to get Dan to stop eating.” January
9: “Great show at the Toff last night. Crowd went a little bit nuts. Timmis
got man of the match. Percy found true love. Dan is still too fat.”
BIG BEN
Is there anything Ben
Lee can’t do? He’s now the Paul Shaffer-like music man on the Tom
Hanks-produced internet show The 3
Minute Talk Show With Barry Sobel. You can check it out at www.lstudio.com.
NATURAL D. SASTER!
Why did D. Rogers
call his new album Natural Disasters?
Since he settled on that title, the nation has been rocked by floods, fires
and cyclones. And then, as Dave launched the album last Friday, many
punters were left stranded, battling the Melbourne deluge. As Howzat! tried
to head to the Northcote Social Club, one friend pondered: “Why didn’t he
call the album ‘Sunny Nights & Good Times’?” And Dave joked that he was
going to call his next album “Perfect Album Launch Weather”.
HOWZAT! PLAYLIST
Roller Disco THE VAUDEVILLE SMASH
Biggest Bitch FIONA LEE MAYNARD
Buyer’s Remorse D. ROGERS
Mark The Day LAURA
Feel It THE LITTLE STEVIES
Seven Years GEORGIA FIELDS
I Got You ROSS WILSON
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