Dirty Sound Magnet - Organic Sacrifice

Q: When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

A: I’m different from my fellow band members who see things like you. To me it’s more about feelings and concepts. So when we talk about music with Marco (bass) and Maxime (drums), we can talk about the same ideas but we experience them differently. When we jam I tell them for example that it sounded like “a trip through a magic forest or a middle Eastern army marching in the snow” but I will not see that. It’s a thought and a concept. The others will literally see these things. Eyes open or eyes closed, when music touches me deeply, nothing can get between us.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

I think that my skills have improved but the spark has not changed. It’s there or it’s not. To me being an artist means loving your art very deeply. It’s an expression of the sublime, something otherworldly, almost religious. Can you train that? I’m not sure. Some people are very skilled but are not artists because the spiritual element is absent. There is no harm in that.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

From age 13 until 15 I did not like music. Everybody at my school was listening to Hip-Hop and it did not appeal to me. There are things I like today but back then I did not like the fact that everybody was listening to the same music. I never liked mass movements where people don’t choose for themselves. Not listening to music was sort of a small rebellion in itself. And then a schoolmate showed me some punk music. I thought it was pretty cool and bought some records. My mom overheard that I was listening to guitar music. So she told me to sit down and listen. She said: “Let me show you a glimpse of the best”. She put on “Have a Cigar” by Pink Floyd, “Stairway to Heaven” and “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin. I was mesmerised. My life had taken a different turn in that very moment. I thought that it was music made by the gods. I was caught up in misty dreams. Nothing else mattered anymore. I started listening to music all the time and spent all my money on physical albums.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Well actually, I was not only a music fan when I was 15 but also a failed preacher. Because I started walking around in my school with headphones and wanted to show people that rap music was not the only music. I wanted others to be able to feel the intense emotions that music is able to generate. It was not a very successful enterprise. I realised that trying to put headphones on people’s heads was not the best way to preach my newly found fate and that is when I naturally picked up a guitar. And this was a new illumination. From the first notes on, I started creating and writing music. I never really learned other songs. The new melodies just came to me. This was the right way to transmit my love of music. I was now able to write the music I wanted to hear. That’s perfect. I’m now 35 years old and my love for music has not changed. I love listening to music, I love writing new music and today I’m able to transmit that burning passion on stage. This is the basic drive. The key ideas are: authenticity, passion and keeping all doors open. With every new song an entire universe opens up. It would be too bad to impose limitations to the infinity before me.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

I would like to quote the title track on our new album Dreaming in Dystopia which is an expression of my love of music and answers this question in the second verse:

“I can see life as it should be.
Follow the melody, deep into the sea.
Where there’s a magic song waiting to be freed.
And together we can make eternity.”

Music is infinite and writing great songs is simply unlocking a new hidden treasure chest. By diving deep within yourself, you can discover new melodies and new songs. Sometimes the melody just comes to me in my sleep. I just need to let it guide me and a new song is born. Again, the key to unlock these hidden treasures is intense burning passion.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I don’t really listen to our records. Here is the typical journey of a song I write. First, the musical idea comes to me. This puts me in a state of trance, fullness and happiness. Then I need to work on the idea to make it into a song. I write lyrics and from an early stage on, I work with the band so that everybody is able to put a part of themselves into the song. The song is not mine anymore, it’s ours. We then work countless hours on arrangements and finally we’re able to record it. Then there is a long process of mixing and mastering. After that, I think I honestly spend too much time working on the song order of an album. I become totally obsessed and try hundreds of combinations. By that time, I have listened to the song over a thousand times. When the song is released, I consider that it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to the audience and to whoever wants to listen to it. The song is dead to me in this form. But the beauty of death is resurrection and it’s on stage that the song continues to live and evolve. It takes on new shapes but the basic idea that once put me in a trance survives the process.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I think that the sounds found in nature are all beautiful and they guide our choices when we’re mixing music. We want music to be organic and natural. That is why we do not add frequencies that don’t feel natural. For example, it’s very rare to hear very low sub frequencies in nature. Most of the sounds we hear are in the mid frequencies. They are the ones that give character and texture to sound. It’s maybe an explanation why our music is mostly mid oriented. It feels more real and more magical. When I hear too many bass frequencies, I instantly think of a recording studio. And that is not something that allows evasion and freedom.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I love contrast. I like light and shade. I like variation. That is why I don’t like over compressed music because it’s in direct opposition with contrast. A boeing 747 makes a lot of noises but it’s constant noise. So you don’t feel the power. But if you are in a silent environment and all of a sudden there is an explosion, the effect is totally different. So yes extremes are important in music.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

The creative process can take multiple forms in our band. Every song has it’s story. Here are two examples that show how broad the possibilities are. The track “Lost my Mind” on the new record Dreaming in Dystopia came to me in a dream. I wrote it in one night. We worked on it with the band and in just a few session we were able to record the final studio version. On the other hand “Insomnia” (the track that comes right after this one on the record), has been on hold since the creation of the band. It was a long instrumental jam but we knew it had the potential to become a great song. Years passed but every time we tried something was missing. We didn’t do the idea justice. The idea got stored on our shelf of great ideas that should become songs one day. It was there, not really alive but still somewhere in our collective memory. One day I wrote a small ballad about insomnia, It was good as it was but the idea resurfaced from nowhere. What about combing that jam that is waiting on the shelve with this ballad to make it an epic track. We tried and it worked. We instantly knew that this was it. “Lost my Mind” was written in a few hours and recorded not long after that while “Insomnia” took 15 years. Both tracks feel complete and I like them equally. They just have a very different story.

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

We do what feels right. We try to follow our instincts. Sometimes we experiment with sound, sometimes we feel that we don’t need to. We’re just trying to stay open and always do what will benefit music the most.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Music is an integral part of my life. Sometimes my own life doesn’t even matter. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. My social life and love life greatly suffer from it. Because I’m able to express my emotions through music I don’t have much left in my daily life. Don’t get me wrong, I am a super happy person. I feel full and complete. I’m just not able to make the distinction between music and life. They are the same thing. I actually use sports to understand things about myself.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Music is the expression of the sublime. I haven’t found other ways to express this. Maybe through words but then it becomes music again.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

I have an artist that does that to me: Frank Zappa. I wouldn’t even say he’s my favorite artist (one of the favorites, yes). When I get into a Zappa phase, I can’t listen to anything else. Everything else seems without substance. The crazy thing is that Zappa’s music is not charged emotionally. And emotion is what touches me the most. Zappa’s music is charged intellectually and with moments of grace and music genius. It’s like he’s so smart that he’s over emotions. So yeah his music has a strange effect on me.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I would like more variety. I would like the music to become important again. For the future, I wish we would go back. Back to something less digital, more emotional and more human.

From: https://www.15questions.net/interview/fifteen-questions-interview-dirty-sound-magnet/page-1/

 

Carmanah - Roots

Carmanah embraces the energy of Canada’s beautiful west coast and chose its name to honour the ancient rainforest on Vancouver Island, the Carmanah Valley. Known for connecting with audiences of all ages and musical preferences, the band delivers an eclectic sound that incorporates elements of folk, funk, rock and reggae. Four-part harmonies, supported by a grooving rhythm second, fiddle playing, guitars and a lap-slide, all give Carmanah its unique and captivating sound.
According to Jonathan Williams, popular radio host on The Zone 91.3, Carmanah band members "curate music from the heart and perform it with such zest and passion each and every time. Put them in a small intimate venue and they'll have the hairs on the back of your neck stand. Put them on a Victoria Celebrates Canada Day main stage, with a fair few thousand looking on, and they'll still have the hair on the back of your neck stand."
Carmanah has shared the stage with Ziggy Marley, Said the Whale, Wake Owl, Clinton Fearon, Spirit of the West and Current Swell, among others. The band has played at numerous music festivals, including Toronto’s Canadian Music Week and Victoria’s Rifflandia Music Festival. In 2014 the band performed in Ottawa at the closing event for Canadian Olympian Clara Hughes’ cross-country bike ride in support of mental health awareness (Clara’s Big Ride).
This past spring Carmanah completed its own cross-Canada tour and while on the road released their third album, Roots. In keeping with the band’s commitment to sustainability, the journey was powered mostly by vegetable oil gathered from local restaurants along the way. The tour’s grand finale was performing for a home crowd of thousands at Victoria’s Canada Day Celebration.
Carmanah is a dedicated member of The Jellyfish Project, an environmental initiative that brings musicians and bands into schools across Canada. Through the power of music and live performance, students are drawn into the environmental conversation and encouraged to become active participants in the sustainability movement. Increasingly known for its original songwriting and energetic delivery, Carmanah is a growing presence in the Canadian music scene.  From: https://www.musicglue.com/carmanah/about

Acid Carousel - Kaleidoscope Symphony

Watching the seven-piece psych rock band Acid Carousel perform is like watching a pen full of well-dressed wolf pups wrestle with their favorite sticks. Frontmen and songwriters Gus Baldwin and John Kuzmick are young, at 18 and 21, respectively; there’s a lot of long hair; they have boundless energy; and the band is perfectly coordinated, partly due to their carefully styled ’60s thrift clothes. They’re in sync even as they thrash around, playing their instruments while flipping their heads to the beat of the music. The chaos is almost balletic. And their music, a throwback to the 1960s, is full of ebullient, catchy, get-stuck-in-your-head pop tunes like “American High” and “Everything I Am.” They’re the kind of songs that you can sing along to the first time you hear them.
The band popped on the scene about a year and a half ago. Baldwin, who is a student at Jesuit College Preparatory, and Kuzmick, who studies photography at University of North Texas, had already been working together in a project called Moon Waves, which just recently called it quits. Kuzmick recorded a six-song EP in the summer of 2015 and he showed it to Baldwin. “I was like, ‘This is our project now,’” Baldwin says. Kuzmick jumps in to correct him, “No, you were like, ‘I’m going to play bass for you,’ and then you lasted one show on bass, and we decided we wanted to play with more people so we’ve been evolving the lineup since then.” Like the Texas Gentlemen concept of a collective of players, yet not nearly as large, Acid Carousel plays with a full stage of seven band members who are frequently changing roles and instruments. For instance, Baldwin plays guitar, bass, drums, mandolin and ukulele, and Kuzmick plays guitar, bass and keys. And like the Gents, most of them are involved in side projects too.
At Club Dada last Thursday night, the guys stood five across on the stage: Kuzmick on bass, keys and guitar, and Baldwin on guitar, alongside Steve Gnash of the Steve Gnash Experience on guitar, Ian “Skinny” Salazar of Majik Taylor on bass, and Drew Wozniack, who just started playing keys for the band less than a month ago. They were backed by Fielder Whittington on drums. The lone woman is Ariel Hartley of Pearl Earl, who fills out vocals on some of the tracks. It’s a nice little outfit. That night the band played to a surprisingly full venue of mostly people under 25. Toward the end of the set, they brought excited participants on stage to dance, sing backup and play tambourine. It was an all-out party. The band knows more than a thing or two about showmanship and audience engagement. Having promised Kool-Aid jammers to anyone in the audience willing to dance, the guys regularly rewarded the crowd with flying packs of juice. They themselves like to get down, thrashing and hopping around while playing. In his signature move, Salazar pulled off his poncho and played the rest of the set bare-chested.
They’re not above using sex appeal or any of the other tricks of the trade to get noticed. And while their music is good enough to stand on its own, letting loose, touting their charming personalities and engaging with fans is no doubt part of the recipe for how they became successful at a young age. “Come to our shows, dance with us, be our friend,” Baldwin says. “We don’t want to be distant from the fans,” Kuzmick adds. “The more people we meet, the more friends we have, and the more connections we have the better. They can come find us on Instagram if they want to see us post a bunch of sexy pics of ourselves,” Baldwin says with a laugh.
In a move that any adoring fans would love to hear, Kuzmick offers, “If they’re ever up in Denton, they can hit me up and stay at my apartment.” Then he changes gears. “Ask us if we’re single. I’m single,” he responds before being asked. “I’m eligible,” Baldwin pipes in. Kuzmick and Baldwin excitedly step on each other’s words and banter like a pair of brothers, which makes sense considering they’ve been playing together since they were kids at Zound Sounds music school near White Rock Lake. Baldwin was 13 years old and Kuzmick 16 when they started their first band, the Psycho Sonics. “What the school did that really changed us, is that they put kids together in bands and had showcases here at Dada. That’s how we learned to play like that, and that’s where we met Skinny Salazar the bassist,” Baldwin says. The Psycho Sonics soon morphed into Moon Waves. Concert promoter Jeff Brown, owner-operator of King Camel, saw Moon Waves perform in 2014, which led to their real start in the Dallas scene. Both Moon Waves and Acid Carousel have recently played his resident Saturday night series, Locked and Loaded at Armoury D.E. "Their enthusiasm, talent and stage presence was not only beyond their years, but really top tier without considering age," Brown says. "I just saw a lot of talent that needed a few nudges in the right direction."
“We were gigging at the Door, Curtain Club, the Boiler Room,” Kuzmick says. “Eventually Jeff saw us at Boiler Room. He put us at Three Links. He was the first promoter who gave us a chance. That’s how we met everyone. From there I just started going to shows all the time and meeting people ... all of the other musicians in the scene who we’re friends with now.” Baldwin met the band Sealion that way, and he recently started playing drums for them. “Sealion was my favorite band when I was 16. I used to worship them and their early albums,” he says. Despite full schedules for all of the bandmates, Acid Carousel are hoping to tour this summer with Sealion, Pearl Earl and the Steve Gnash Experience. And in the meantime they’re sticking to a rigorous release schedule, putting out a record or an EP every three months. It’s ambitious, but so far, they’ve been on schedule. In 2016, they released a record in June, EPs in September and November, and they’re waiting on Dreamy Life Records to finish pressing the vinyl and cassettes for their next release, a double album. Surprisingly, quality doesn’t suffer at the hands of quantity; each release is cohesive and strong. The guys looked to their music inspirations like Brian Jonestown Massacre and Ty Segall on the release schedule. “We want to put out as many records as possible,” Baldwin says.
They started a record label called Get With It! Collective to make sure the releases happened on time. Besides taking guitar lessons at Zound Sounds, the guys are all self-taught — on their instruments, and in the recording studio — which speaks to how driven they were to make music, even as children. Baldwin says he’d originally wanted to play drums, but his parents pushed him into guitar to avoid having a drum set in the house, so he snuck into the drum room at the music school and taught himself. Kuzmick wanted to make music so he started writing songs on the fly with his brother, a drummer, and making videos. They say their work ethic is about more than achieving success. “I can’t not play music. If I don’t play music I get depressed in like five minutes,” Kuzmick says. Baldwin agrees. “If I don’t touch an instrument for like two days, I will get angry at everyone.” “Grumpy Gus isn’t fun Gus,” Kuzmick warns, and Baldwin confirms it. “When I don’t get to play music, I get grumpy. That’s why we joined a bunch of different bands. I just want to keep playing music and be able to support myself doing that.”  From: https://www.dallasobserver.com/music/young-seven-piece-acid-carousel-keeps-true-to-its-name-with-ebullient-rotating-lineup-9195200

John Renbourn's Ship of Fools - In Concert

John Renbourn's Ship Of Fools: Renbourn went back in time even more than normal for the title of his album and band: Ancient Greece. It was Plato who first coined the metaphor of a 'ship of fools', meaning a group of people adrift without a proper leader, although knowing his love of all things Medieval John probably discovered the phrase through the paintings by Sebastian Brant (from whose work the album cover is taken). At first this wasn't meant to be an album or even a proper band, but John was invited to perform a set for an outdoor festival in Central park and figured he needed some amplification. The friends who took up John's invitation included old hands from his solo and 'Group' days such as Tony Roberts, Steve Tilston and Maggie Boyle, who all had their interests in John's favourite era of music. The concerts were well received and led to a tour, which was also well received and led to this album which features the usual mixture of traditional tunes from the Middle Ages along with three new John originals. Though Maggie Boyle is no Jacqui McShee, she is thank goodness a Maggie Boyle - another one of a kind singer with a delightful warm and velvet tone that coats an iron fist, closer in style to Maddy Prior or Linda Thompson than Jacqui's purer style. She's a good fit for these songs as is the rest of the band.
The fuller band sound makes it one of John's more interesting and unusual albums, with a sound quite unlike his usual guitar-based albums and with its more traditional players doesn't sound like the folkier John Renbourn Group either. At times this is to the album's benefit: 'Searching For Lambs' works well with four contrapuntal parts weaving around each other with the vocals on top, while 'I Live Not Where I Love', a very 1960s ballad about loss despite written closer to 1460, is one of John's prettier arrangements. And at other times its the loss: John's playing is hard to hear under so many extras and at times he really takes a back seat to everything else going on, which just makes this another exercise in re-creating old music without the usual Renbourn magic ('Lark In The Clear' for instance is mainly a flute solo without the song). What pushes this album over the edge into being one of the better albums of Renbourn's career is the emphasis on actual songs for a change rather than just instrumentals.
The title track, for instance, is a poetic take on the old story about a rudderless craft, more interested in description than allegory ('Rainbow colours that befell from stem to stern entrances me so'). John's regular 'Traveller's Prayer' also makes the first of several appearances, here as a pure Madrigal sung by four voices which is a hymn to the moon that's very atmospheric, praying for salvation and help for those suffering a lonely night in distress (it's an insomniac classic!) 'The Martinmass Wind' (celebrating a pagan day dedicated to the coming of winter, held on November 11th) is a much overlooked song too, a gorgeous song about loneliness and wishing you were home, the narrator fearing their love is broken by the geographical distance between when a tree snaps from under them. Though the more traditional songs aren't quite up to this high standard, the three new songs alone make this one of Renbourn's most interesting albums, perhaps his best of the post-Pentangle records. Far from being a ship of fools, Renbourn has rarely been surrounded by players this good and this is perhaps his greatest band following Pentangle. A shame there wasn't a sequel.  From: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pentangle-sololivecompilationreunion.html

The Bobs - Live Kentucky 1989

It all started when Western Union went bust, leaving all singing telegram deliverers broke and unemployed. Thus began the Great San Francisco Singing Telegram Depression of 1981. Gunnar Madsen and Matthew Stull, two of the newly unemployed, placed a free 25-words-or-less ad in the classifieds for a bass singer. They got one call--from bass singer, songwriter and recording engineer Richard Greene. After six months of rehearsal, the trio debuted at an open mike in a Cuban restaurant. They sang "Psycho Killer,” "A White Sport Coat" and a few others. The audience loved them. The Bobs were born.
At first, The Bobs’ material consisted of uniquely arranged cover tunes. As they began writing their own songs, the need for another voice became apparent. Auditions found Janie 'Bob' Scott. A contract with local record company Kaleidoscope Records produced an EP Out of the Mouths of Bobs  and then a first album, The Bobs. A Grammy® nomination for their arrangement of The Beatles’ "Helter Skelter" and a national concert tour resulted in radio airplay, television appearances, and concerts and festivals in Europe. The Los Angeles Daily News was moved to comment, “The Bobs prove that the best instrument in creating music is the human brain. They are nothing less than sensational.”
In 1986 The Bobs signed with Great American Music Hall Records and put out two albums, My I'm Large (1987) and Songs for Tomorrow Morning (1988). In 1990, Gunnar retired, replaced by Joe Bob Finetti, whose vocal percussion added a new layer to the sound.  Throughout the 1990's the Bobs were signed to Rounder Records and put out five albums: Shut up and Sing, Cover the Songs of..., Plugged, Too Many Santas, and i brow club. In 1995, The Bobs collaborated with German jazz composer Klaus Koenig on his large jazz orchestra plus vocal quartet and narrator project - "Reviews."
In 2004, Dan Bob Schumacher took over the role of resident groove-master and oral instrumentalist. In 1998, Amy Bob Engelhardt replaced Lori Rivera, who had replaced Janie Scott in 1997. In 2012 Angie Bob Doctor replaced Amy Engelhardt, bringing yet another dimension to the Bobs sound. Witnessing these ever changing yet always amazing four personalities and their combined musical wizardry, audiences tend to “spontaneously combust” (to quote a Bobs song) with alarming regularity.
Highlights of the group’s career include performing with Jason Alexander on the Emmy Awards telecast, and providing musical commentary for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.  Citations have included Contemporary A cappella Recording Awards (CARA) too numerous to mention since the Awards were established in 1992.  Composer/lyricists Richard Bob Greene, Gunnar Madsen, and Amy Bob Engelhardt have repeatedly garnered ASCAP Songwriting Awards for their Bobs compositions.
The Bobs have collaborated extensively with artists in other disciplines. Their first commission was a series of songs, "The Laundry Cycle," for the Oberlin Dance Collective in 1987.  Later that year, they improvised with the dance troupe Momix, (later known as ISO), yielding a show that toured fine arts venues worldwide for a period of years, resulting in a commission from Lincoln Center and a one-hour “Lonesome Pine Special” for PBS.  The program is now part of the media archives at the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of American History. The Bobs were also featured in a tribute special on comedian Andy Kaufman for NBC, on PBS’ Great Performances in “The Beatles Songbook” and in a special with Harry Shearer for HBO. The group returned to Lincoln Center in 2001 to headline the prestigious American Songbook Series and in 2003 collaborated with The Flying Karamazov Brothers in “A Comedy of Eras” at Seattle’s A Contemporary Theater. 
Next came “Rhapsody in Bob,” their breathtaking arrangement of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” for piano (guest artist Bob Malone) and The Bobs (as The Vocal Orchestra). A show built around this piece toured fine arts venues in the United States, and it was recorded shortly afterwards. In 2007, Coldfoot Films released Sign My Snarling Movie: 25 Years of the Bobs, a documentary about the group’s history and evolution. In 2008, The Bobs released their 14th album, Get Your Monkey Off My Dog. In 2011, Dan Bob and Angie Doctor released an album of vocal duets He Said, She Said. Angie Doctor would join the Bobs in 2011, replacing Amy Bob and thus becoming "Angie Bob." In 2013, The Bobs released an album of biographies of famous and not-so-famous people throughout history, Biographies.
The Bobs, described by the Seattle Times as “a musical equivalent of a Gary Larson drawing,” use just their voices and body percussion to fill a room with an orchestra of harmonious sound.  They have left an indelible mark on vocal music, expertly skewering standards and establishing their own hilarious norms.  Once dubbed the only New Wave a cappella group in history, “The Bobs,” commented The Washington Post, “prove that the human voice remains the most powerful instrument of all.”  October 21st, 2017 after 36 years of gigging and several thousand live shows, the Bobs gave their last group performance at the Barns at Wolf Trap.  From: http://bobsbestofbreed.squarespace.com/history

Frente! - Horrible

You know you’ve made it in Australia when the most successful thing you’ve done becomes the butt of jokes. For Frente!, the indie-pop band formed in Melbourne by Simon Austin and Angie Hart, their moment came when Accidently Kelly Street – the accidentally misspelled song that became their best-known song after its release in October 1992 – was the subject of a savage parody, Accidentally Was Released, by ABC’s The Late Show. Initially hurt by the backlash, Hart struggled to reconcile with the song. Its author, bass player Tim O’Connor, left the band shortly afterwards, citing exhaustion. Jane Kennedy, who impersonated Hart in The Late Show’s video (which included her fellow D-Generation and Working Dog alumni Tom Gleisner, Mick Molloy and Tony Martin) stresses to Guardian Australia via a spokesperson that she loved and still loves the band. Thirty years later, Frente! are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their full-length debut, Marvin the Album, with a national tour. The album’s winsome folk-pop, topped by Hart’s sweet, sincere vocals, was a breath of fresh air amid the prevailing grunge and hard-rock sounds dominating radio at the time – particularly Triple J, which broke the band via airplay of the band’s earlier hits, Labour of Love and Ordinary Angels. Frente! enjoyed their biggest hit overseas with an acoustic version of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle in 1994, but only made one other album, Shape, before dissolving. There have been occasional reunions between Austin and Hart as Frente! since, with other musicians filling in on bass and drums. They chatted to Guardian Australia about Marvin – and revealed they’re working on what would be their first album since 1996.

Simon Austin (guitarist, backing vocals, songwriter): We sort of knew what we were doing, but we didn’t, really. We knew 80% of what we were doing, and the other 20% we just blagged it. Some of it worked, some of it missed the mark.

Angie Hart (singer, songwriter): I think of all the things that we did, Marvin was the least turbulent. I think it was vigorous – it was really hard work, in a very exciting way.

Austin: We were signed to Mushroom, and they weren’t really known for doing bands like us. For them to give us all that money, and for them to make [US music producer] Michael Koppelman available to us, and to be in a big studio doing that – it was so exciting. For me, as a nerd, it was like being given the keys to the car.

Hart: We were very genre-based at the time in Australia. There were musical tribes and teams, and I think we felt very out of step with that. But we were like that anyway. We were loners that all came together to make a band that was really odd.

Ian Rogerson (broadcaster, host of Triple J’s Hard Coffee 1990 – 1995): Angie’s voice jumped out of the speakers. It was a counterpoint to a number of the harder-edged vocals around then. She brought a sweetness to their songs that wasn’t saccharine, but young and positive.

Austin: It was very special when Angie came in to sing. We’d all look at each other and it was like, “Riiight – this is why we’re here.” It was awesome.

Hart: Making both Marvin and Shape were some of the most joyous things that we’ve ever done; that was the reason for it all. The rest was like, what the fuck am I doing here? They were really satisfying times.

Austin: When we recorded it, I thought, this is going to be a big song. I didn’t know it was going to be a hit, but I knew it was going to do something! And then I thought, there’s going to be a bunch of people who don’t like it, because it’s really open-hearted.

Tim O’Connor (bass player, songwriter): I read an article about [songwriter and record producer] Mike Chapman, and he said to Blondie, “You’ve got the singer, you’ve got the tunes, do you want hits or not?” I think the quote was, “If you can’t write hits, fuck off and go chop meat somewhere!”

Austin: Tim is a fairly reserved kind of a guy, and a lot of the time when we were touring, it was not a happy time for him. So when he came out with the song, it was even more supercharged – the happiness in it – because I understood the man who wrote it.

O’Connor: Frente! were basically playing at the Punters Club and living in share houses in Fitzroy, and suddenly we were on fucking Hey Hey It’s Saturday. It was a big jump. In some ways it was too much too soon.

Hart: Tim left the band when we were touring overseas quite heavily. We were all really fucked to be around at that time, so I can totally understand why he did that, and it was a very gracious stepping away. We got on stage with him the other night and did the song and it was the most beautiful thing. It was very hard not to cry on the stage.

Austin: The Late Show parody was a fairly thorough dusting. It was hard! I thought, should I get really upset about this? And then literally a day later I walked into the Punter’s Club and a couple of the guys from The Late Show were there, sitting at the bar. They looked at me with sheer terror in their eyes, and at that moment I realised, they’re doing what they’re doing because they love it.

Hart: I had no tools to deal with that at that time. I was very young, very sensitive, and I didn’t take it well. It was always a good-natured thing, but at my age – a girl in her early 20s, in the public eye – I didn’t know what to do.

O’Connor: Angie was 19, 20 years old, a bit sincere about what she’s doing, and these university-educated wankers were taking the piss out of her. Later I met them at the Logies and they were apologising to us!

Hart: We got an apology, which there was no need for. I felt quite looked after, because they saw how that might have affected somebody like me. I tried to shake that song off for a long time, but I’ve come full circle, to the point where I feel a bit protective of it. Now it’s like, leave the fucking song alone! I think it’s a really positive thing that we did. We celebrated Marvin’s 21st years ago, but for some reason the 30th has really brought up a lot of processing. I feel like we’ve really squared a few things away this time, had a proper look at our dynamic, and I feel like I hear the songs differently, too.

Austin: We’re writing new songs – we’ve just started – and we aim to have a record out by the end of next year.

Hart: We’re starting from scratch, and it’s feeling good so far. It’s been really healing, as far as looking back at the way some things have happened. I’ve been joking about mid-careerism for women in the Australian music industry. It starts at about 25 and goes until you’re 65 – so I’ve been in my mid-career for most of my career.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/22/frente-on-success-and-backlash-i-was-very-young-and-i-didnt-take-it-well

Gary Jules - Mad World (Tears For Fears cover)

Mad World by Tears for Fears is one of those interesting songs for multiple reasons. For one, a cover of the song (by Gary Jules) arguably became more famous than the original song itself. This isn't even credited to the notoriety of Gary Jules, as more people have probably heard of Tears for Fears. This leads to the second interesting aspect, the cover is just so different from the original that it nearly turns it into a completely new song. By now it is evident that listeners find Jules's version to be more favorable. But why?
The lyrics of the song paint a bleak picture of dark realizations around the world of the author. The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had is anything but cheery. However as a 21st Century listener, the music of the original version seems to clash fiercely with the words. Upbeat, New Wave, and young British energy are the words some could use to describe the music, and this couldn't be further from the essence of the lyrics.
However in Gary Jule's version, the first thing we are presented with is the simple, sad, descending piano melody that carries the song. Musically the song is a bleak piano ballad. In essence, the music matches the words. Listeners seem to favor this. In my opinion, songs are always always more honest in their original version. They wrote the song, and I believe the music they wrote perfectly matched what they were trying to capture. It clashes because it's supposed to clash. The music is the world around them. Upbeat, cheerful, unaware. The singer is speaking from the heart masked behind music made to match what was the norm of that time. Some could say it falls along the line of satire. To me, this captures the feeling of the words better than Gary Jules's version. I love Jules's version, but I can't shake the feeling that Tears for Fears still did it better, because they made it.  From: https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/42h8ab/on_the_two_mad_worlds/