Frenzal Rhomb: They Came from Outer Space
Interviewing Frenzal Rhomb all at the same time is an activity that requires keen ears, patience, and ability to laugh extremely heartily at oneself, enjoy being laughed at most heartily and expect to travel down the wondrous, disgusting, ridiculous, very funny and tangential to where one began. It's also a good idea to leave your dictaphone with them when you go to the toilet. (Wracking sobs from the writer- Darryl Braithwaite?? I look nothing like him... sniff.) As luck would have it, this is the second story for me in as many weeks about an Australian band in the cavernous maw of America's black heart, so it seems surprising that the manic, generally industry/ capitalist-impaling cynicism of Frenzal Rhomb found some flecks of good. With many subjects and rumour to plow through, the speakers are Jay, Nat, Lex, and Lindsay, or shit-boy as he is aggressively referred to throughout the course of the afternoon. Imagine yourselves as flies on the wall of the Town & Country hotel in St. Peters, Rhomb are fresh and aromatic from a rehearsal, beer is hesitantly sipped, cigarettes last 2 mintues tops and virtually every conversation has a competetive nature for the funniest one-liner or ten-liner or ocean-liner, as the case may, and can be. Confused? Cool! Let's Rhomb!!
THE INDUSTRY THAT LOVES THEM
Rev: Rumour has it that you walked out on negociations with Poly because someone in the band said "Corporate Rock Sucks," which is very punk, of course. Is this a true story?
General commotion: WHAT? HAH!
Nat
The story (is) that, what's the name of that guy who works for them?
Jay
Craig Kamber
Nat
He came to a gig of ours at the Metro and grovelled on his knees for us to sign to Polydor..
Jay
I don't know about grovel
Nat
Yes, he did! He was drooling all over us saying "I'm going to make you guys the new silverchair", if I'm not mistaken. And we started putting things in his hair.
Jay
It was at that point that we had the old guitarist who will be known as God-boy, as opposed to Shit-boy..
Lex
We were doing a TISM support and Craig was telling us how great we were...
Jay
We were running around putting drink umbrellas in his frizzy hair, then on the next record we wrote a thank-you that said Craig Kamber fucks dead sheep.
Nat
So, after the coctail umbrella incident, it was all over.
They are signed to Shagpile and Shock and as a result, however, all are happy with their progress. We now cross to America, where Frenzal played over 44 shows in 46 days, experiencing the wonder of the land and people that is USA.
VIVA LAS VEGAS
Rev: How was it working with Double-up Donnell?
Jay
Ah, Double-up Donnell Cameron. He's a fucking alcoholic constantly, unprofessional and a bad junkie. (this is surrounded, as most statements by considerable mirth)
Nat
Before we met the guy (none) of the band had been to the Casino before. None of us. After meeting Double-up, halfway across the tour we ran into Las Vegas and put every single cent we had on a red five..... lost the whole lot. (General Hilarity).
Jay
We couldn't pay for the hire van. (Shit boy produces some VIP card from the Sydney Casino that entitles him to some sort of VIP treatment. It looks nothing like the Frenzal Rhomb Charge Card, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a regular credit card. I confess that I did give it a run at a restaurant- my sole preparation for the interview- simply so I could say "You don't accept the Frenzal Rhomb card??!!")
Lindsay
Yeah, a friend tried to use it for a taxi once.
Lex
If your'e still in a country that uses the old clicker ones, you can use it.
Lindsay
You can open the ATM doors, you know, the ones that have doors.
Lex
No you can't, because they don't actually have any magnetic data on them.
Jay
Yeah bullshit, Shit boy.
Rest assured Friends of Rhomb, it doesn't work, except in Mexico.
THE TRUTH OF FOREIGN OWNERSHIP
Rev: How was the accomodation for a band of your stature across America?
General Shouts: Motel 6!
Nat
Run by Nikki Sixx
Jay
A whole chain of motels run by Nikki Sixx. And Deni Hines runs a chain of restaurants called Denny's
Lex
And another chain of motels, one of which we stayed in once called the Day-zee (or possible Daisy) run by ex-ratcat member Simon Day. He did well for himself since Don't Go Now flopped. Since Tingles.
Jay
Superjesus have a large film company called Super8
Rev: You guys are, um, big on conspiracy theories.
Lindsay
Oh yeah. We saw tonnes of aliens in Montana.
Nat
Aliens are everywhere in Montana, literally.
Jay
We found out that they remove your penises and feed them to their alien dogs. Earth is a really good source for them.
Lex
The really interesting thing though is that Bozeman Montana has the annual Bass Fest there. A thousand bass players get together and jam.
Nat
Oh yeah!!
Lindsay
Bassplayer awareness week
Jay
It was in this place in Bozeman that we'd played about 4 bars into the first song...
Nat
Let it be said that they were the best 4 bars we'd ever played...
Jay
The entire power to the place was shut down and didn't go on for about an hour and all these really drunk guys in the front row thinking it was out fault and they were like "Give us our music man! We want our music!" and we're sitting there going "...Fffuck!"
Nat
In the middle of a one pub town
Rev: How many people were there?
Jay
About a thousand people
Nat
And they'd been drinking all day. It was their once a year Get Really Drunk Fest.
Lex
Yeah, on that beer, Papps run by Alex Papps.
Lindsay
Alex Papps! (General sily buggers and indecipherable commentary, then...)
Jay
When Alex Papps left Home and Away, he tried to branch out into the Music Business, but he ended up in Perth studying theatre in the Perth Equivalent of NIDA.
Rev: WAAPA: The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
Jay
Hey, that's like the Colorado of Canberra University Netball Team!
Lex
Anyway, after things didn't work out so well for him at WAAPA, he went to America and started making beers.
Jay
And joined the Colorado University Netball Team
SEX, GOD, MOTELS
Rev: With two of you single (Lex and Nat, which makes sense in many ways), how was the romance among the Americans?
Nat
We didn't see any girls at all.
Lex
It was very male dominant over there. We're saving ourselves.
Nat
I'll tell you why we didn't pick up any girls, it all came down to the bibles...
Rev: Ulp.....?
Jay
We were in our hotel rooms and we were tearing pages from a bible and crumpling them up and if you didn't fell like swallowing them, you spit them against the wall and they stick in little clumps and by the next morning they harden.
Nat
You see, apart from the Yellow Pages, they are the only publication that is known in American Hotel Rooms. So, you'd read it aloud and get some really funny things.
Jay
Some very funny things like "Come!"
Lex
"And they all came and the children came"
Nat
"And there was much rejoicing"
Lindsay
"Much weeping and gnashing of teeth"
Jay
There was this road sign too.... that said "Thank God for AIDS," that was pretty weird.
It was after they left Bozeman, Montana, having redesigned the interior of the room with little presents of spittle-ized bibles that the distressed booking agent made them pay for a cleaning bill for what the hotel described as someone shitting on the floor.
THE HEART OF THE BEAST (This is a serious bit)
Rev: Being the lefty punks you are, how did it feel pandering to the heart of the consumer beast?
Lex
To be serious for a second, you can't really hold the Americans responsible for the massive system that we see form here.
Jay
I think that's wrong! Because, where does accountability start, if they aren't accountable?
Lex
No, I don't think so, it's a massive system, with a massive amount of things going on. It could be Australians in the same position.
Nat
Besides, the kind of people that we ran into were aware of that and held similar opinions.
Jay
That's one of the luxuries about travelling in a band, you get the occasional redneck here and there but you generally meet the cool people with like minds. But, even the people who were the most politically aware, the most liberal thinking, would have the underlying patriotism that would bypass absolutely everything. They had no idea of the global effect of the USA on everything.
Nat
We did meet some lovely people though
Lex
My cynicism about the country was an uneducated one, so to understand America is to be there for a while, being around them. The lack of people voting is a big problem. A lot of people have, as Jason was saying, this underlying Patriotism. But a couple of people argued in a way that I'd never heard before, for Capitalism. Normally when you argue about Capitalism here, the other people don't have their act together and they are probably on your side anyway. I was amazed at the arguments responsible for Capitalism and the way capitalism can work.
Rev: How did you react to that?
Lex (grinning ferociously)
Kicked their heads off!
GIVING A SHIT
With the nature of all their material and particularly on the new spinner Meet the Family (which is original as modern punk gets really, Lex's backing vocals and the ingenious, Orstraylyan slant from which both the music and the vocals are laid, provide and excellent twist on what can be a derivative and repetitive style) is extremely teenage, Science geek humour. Funny, scatalogical and catchy. So, it is with little wonder that the mainstay of their audience is the all-ages scene. It is something they are conscious of, understanding that in certain ways, they are role models. This is both refreshing and disappointing. At least until you hear the why's.
Jay
We get a lot of fan mail and (although it is a minority of our audience) we get some racist sort of stuff...
Lex
And homophobic shit.
Jay
And so we're going to set up stalls at the next shows, campaigning against racism.
Nat
Yeah, we also have a song called 4 litres. There's nothing worse than seeing a twelve year old kid come up to you, pissed off his face, with an empty goon and saying "I drank this because of your song 4 litres" and we're like "Shit, we're doing the wrong thing here"
Jay
Not to generalise, we do attract some idiots. But that's fine, idiots buy records and that is just a generalisation.
So remember, kids. The songs are metaphors for a way of life that shouldn't be yours. But, fuggit, you'll learn. Grab whatever's handy and head to the show at the Hordern Pavillion on Sunday the 7th of December and catch Frenzal Rhomb play the tracks from the album that is mentioned in the interview, with a hand from Grinspoon and the Hard-Ons. Tix are on sale at the usuals now.
Danny Braithwaite Murphy