Richard Pree – Daily Telegraph July 1983.
IT is a strange phenomenon of Australian music that while overseas bands such as New Order or the Human League can regularly top our charts, home grown electronic new wave Is virtually unknown.
Why? In 1979 Gary Numan toured Australia and although his image and stage act really belonged in the Kraftwerk robot era, his concerts were sellouts and his records went to No 1. Three years pass. The Human League tour. Apart from a bass guitarist, they are total synth. Again the concert is sold out, their album, Dare, goes to No 1, and still not one Australian band follows their lead. The agencies blame the record companies for not picking up local product, and the record companies reply by saying there is no local product to pick up.
A spokesman for EMI says: “Sydney just doesn’t have the venues to support all the music that’s around, and synthesised bands are having to compete for that exposure. We’re always looking for new music and good bands and I’m not aware of any stance against synthesisers, I just don’t know of any synth bands existing.”
Virginia Moncrieff from 2JJJ says: “A lot of record company and agency people seem to have a very closed view of what the Australian public want. A lot of the bands being signed now are still belt-it-out rock and rollers – they seem to want to stick to a good thing. Real Life and the Venetians have recently broken a lot of ground, but it’s taken a hell of a long time before anyone was willing to take the risk.
That there is prejudice against synth players is obvious. As Virginia Moncrieff points out: The Musicians Union have a very hard line – to be a member you’ve got to say you play keyboards – not synthesiser.”
One of Sydney’s first synth bands, Severed Heads, is typical of the older style of machine dance synth bands and the problems they encounter. Lead singer, Tom Ellard,says: “We need so much equipment on stage to play live that we often fall back to tapes. The one time we did play with all the gear, we hit the start button and all we got were little puffs of smoke. The set began and ended right there.
We’ve been around since 1979, but it’s only been in the past year or so that people have actually approached us to play. In a few months we’re going to put out an album in England and it should do very well. The hope is that Australian audiences will pick up on it as an import on its way back.
Jason Wild, from one of Sydney’s largest musical agencies, Nucleus, says: “We don’t have any bands based primarily on synths, even though bands such as IQ are very professional. People have tried to market them but with very little success. That worries me.”
Despite this there is a small army of new, more commercially oriented synth bands on the way up. Playing at small inner city venues. bands like Sea Monsters, Legion of Grin, Idiom Flesh and Bring Philip are trying to change audience attitudes. The manager of Frenchs put on new synth dance pop band Legion Of Grin about a week ago and was impressed. “We were taking a risk because people here have come to expect rock and roll, but everyone was dancing and it was a good night.”
We may be having labour pains at the moment but one day we could well give birth to our own Human League.