Frenzal Rhomb : Unknown Interview 95/96

Frenzal Rhomb are in Melbourne to 'pull sounds' with Tony Cohen, sign a deal with Shock Records and play some shows. And they're punk-pop... or whatever you want to call 'em.
Vocalist, Jason Whalley, couldn't care less about what Frenzal Rhomb 'are'.

It was like, yeah, sure we are punk pop, cock-rock, post-grunge. Media categories - it's the same as beeron the rider, you grab 'em and consume endlessly until the little squares are crossed out.

He even said Frenzal Rhomb were doing the Green Day wourld tour and I sort of believed him.

So we are doing the current Green Day tour that's going to take us around the world, Japan, most of the continents...I'm just making this up, by the way... we are not doing any Green Day shows, actually. We are more like a pop bandand mostly have been able to jump on this bandwagon of the pop-funk thing and we are going to ride that in to the ground and just change styles completely in the resurgence of cock-rock.

No seriously?

That's the thing. We get lumped into that punk-pop stuff. But it's a good sound and stuff and we got elements of that. We never really called ourselves punk until this big wave came along and now, we will just do it until the cows come home.

But no, tell me what you think about the whole punk thing... living in a vacuum?

I don't know, as I said before, we've never really called ourselves punk.

So what would you call yourselves if there wasn't a punk resurgence?

Ah, whatever the resurgence was - cock-rock.

But that can never be a genre?

Oh it is. It's big. Big hair. Um, yeah, I just don't like these guys who have taken off their Nirvana shirts and got a mohawk and got a Rancid shirt and going around calling themselves punk.
But not many people have time for that. It's cool when you're 13 or whatever. The fashion side of it...
I don't really get into it. But I really like the music side of it, punk-pop or whatever you want to call it.

Frenzal Rhomb have other stuff to think about, like trying to get a sonic relationship going with producer/engineer Tony Cohen. Seems more important than wearing a hip brank of shorts. They are down in Melbourne to record 10 songs.

The guy that is doing it is Tony Cohen who did all that Bad Seeds stuff and some Cruel Sea. He's really cool. We turned up there and he said, 'Yeah, I think the sound you're looking for is, um, basically, you're trying to sound tuff and ya not.' And we actually thought, 'you're spot on, Tony'. He's right, we are actually just a bunch of spineless try-hards!

Well, Tony Cohen probably has a few years on Frenzal Rhomb and anyhow, these guys have a pop sensibility, and being tuff ain't always so desirable when ya young - and in a hurry.

We're coming down on Monday and we are going to record 10 songs - we recorded 10 songs last time we came down about a month ago and we are going down and finish with another 10 that we wrote in about three days.

Frenzal Rhomb seen to revel in this sort of attitude. It's makeshift but so far, it had brought-in the booty. Shock have put up the money (and a contract) for the Tony Cohen sessions, even though the guys booked the studio before the clinched the deal.

We sort of didn't know what we were going to do. We had sort of done the last records ourselves and we were kind of thinking about doing it again. But we didn't have enough money. We went down there, booked the studio and didn't actually know how we were going to pay for it. But Shock seemed pretty cool, it should work fine I reckon. We're hoping to go overseas this year at some stage, probably toward the end of this year. I think the deal will probably work... I mean, when you sign anything, you're taking a bit of a gamble, but the deal we've got is pretty cool.

Record deal or not, Jason saw no great changes for the band, except for having a producer.

Whatever happened, we were going to spend the same amount of time in the studio. Because we are such shit producers, we just wanted someone else to produce it for us. I think we are going to leave it up to him. We didn't really want to spend mega bucks on recording it.

But they have spent time thinking about a name for the album and that could cost mega bucks.

We are thinking of naming the album Gary Gary Beers. He's got the best name in rock history. Two Gary's and beers as a sirname - I love that action.

But he would take a cut - wouldn't he?

Yeah, but we wouldn't have to tell him.

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