The Celibate Rifles

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The Celibate Rifles
This article originally appeared in NFH #16 in the spring of 1989.

The Celibate Rifles have clearly been one of the most important bands in Australia over the last several years from an artistic viewpoint, and they've also had more impact than almost anybody else. A fistful of their six lps (counting up to Roman Beach Party and including Quintessentially Yours) have been released in Europe and the US, and they've toured extensively outside of their homeland. In fact, it's not uncommon these days to hear bands from anywhere in the world cite the Rifles as a strong influence.

Although the Celibate Rifles can't claim total responsibility for the idea of a resurgence of guitars and energy in a worldwide rock and roll scene that was increasingly being dominated by synthesized music and "art", they certainly have had as much impact as any other band. For me, hearing Quintessentially Yours for the first time in 1985 was an experience on a par with Saul on the road to Damascus...for the first time in years I'd found a band that had something to say and was willing to say it to music that screamed with energy, yet retained a pop sensibility so you could sing the songs to yourself while driving to work.

The Celibate Rifles played their one and only ever gig in San Diego in September of 1987 at UCSD. They opened for the Dead Milkmen, a goofy, pop punk band that had scored some minor success among the college audience. In this show the Rifles played to a crowd of students who apparently would have been incapable of recognizing a good band if it hit them with a lead pipe, because the Rifles certainly did everything short of that, and the students just sat on the floor the whole time like it was a 60's love in or something. Sitting for the Celibate Rifles! Can you believe it? I mean, this is a band whose two guitar players, Kent Steedman and Dave Morris, are the only people on earth who can make Johnny Ramone seem slow (I mean REALLY slow).

The band just roared from start to finish, from the opening "Jesus On TV" to the closing "God Squad" (neat bookends there). Damien Lovelock's dry as the outback vocals were as good live as on the records, new drummer Paul Larsen pounded admirably on the borrowed Milkmen drum kit, and bass player Rudy Morabito was also OK, though he missed his one solo spot. But the Rifles are definitely a guitar band, and one can only gape in amazement at Kent Steedman wailing away at his instrument. The guy is an absolutely dynamo of crazed hammering and wah-wah’ed riffing, leaping across the stage and literally pounding his guitar with a fury that by any rights should have left the poor instrument a bludgeoned mass of broken strings and cracked frets, yet somehow translated to nothing more destructive than a full on assault on the ears.

The material was primarily from the new lp, Roman Beach Party, with several tracks from The Turgid Miasma of Existence and a couple from Les Fusiles Celibataires. "God Squad" was the only representative from Sideroxylon, and then only because one kid stood up and begged the band to play it. The Rifles apparently believe in keeping history buried, and though its always fun to hear old favorites, it's usually for the best for a band to concentrate on their newer stuff.

After the Rifles the Dead Milkmen came on and the crowd leaped to its feet and thrashed through the rest of the night. The Milkmen were fun and entertaining, but to me they couldn't hold a candle to the Celibate Rifles either for lyric content or for playing panache. Why the rest of the crowd couldn't recognize this will puzzle me forever.

The core of the Celibate Rifles since they started has been vocalist Damien Lovelock and guitar players Dave Morris and Kent Steedman. The rhythm sections have varied over the years, and Morris doesn't seem to say much in interviews, with the result that when you read about the band you tend to hear either from Damien or Kent, which is enough, as they both have a lot on their minds! Kent took the time to fill nearly an entire C-60 cassette with his views on everything from playing in the band to Central America. He talks like he plays guitar; a torrent of words that all manage to connect up. He's most animated talking about what's wrong with the world, and was fairly disgusted with being asked about band history, which he's probably provided five million times by now. I've tried to excerpt the most interesting parts of it here...I've rearranged the order of things as I saw fit, but otherwise from here out it's all Kent speaking.

We started a long time ago at school, a couple of us were playing just because it was fun and I liked playing guitar instead of doing homework, so that's what I did. It was good jamming, it was good experimenting with drugs and all that kind of stuff and just listening to music and getting inspired and sort of bashing away...being totally frustrated one day and hating the guitar and then the next day you manage to get something together and then you get together with some friends and the first time you play a song and everyone gets it right you get the feeling you go "Oh wow, this is gas, unreal", you know, so you strive to do that more. Right from the start I was writing songs. I always wanted to write them. The first five songs the Rifles learned were originals and then we started doing a couple of covers.

We did the school dances and things, and in 1981 we started playing around; started deciding that yeah, we can play some pubs, and we made the decision early to try and make a record, because at the time I seem to remember it was like everybody wanted to make a record; it's something that...you play music, so let's make one record in our lives and that's all we need to do and you can be happy 'cos you've done it. You've got a piece of thing that you did. And we added up all our gig money and made the first one, "But Jacques The Fish", and that sold enough and it was quite popular and we seemed to earn enough money and kept putting gig money in and we made the album, and you know, it just went on from there. And basically I think we could be bothered to break up now; it'll happen sometime, you know. But the Rifles are quite good friends; we have our moments, but so does everyone. We just know how to live. Playing in a band you can all be total assholes or you can try and get along. And you realize that you're not going to like everyone every day. And we all know exactly how to shit each other and what to do, so if you feel like doing it you do, and you just realize when someone's doing it to you that that's how they feel at the time. It doesn't hurt to have the odd fight, get some shit out of it. We don't have much trouble; we just laugh our way through a lot of stuff. In any friendship with any group of people there's things you don't like about other people, which is basically your seeing something about yourself you don't like, so you react to it that way. That's my belief, you don't have to agree.

It's good in a spiritual sense I suppose, because you have five people with personalities, and you're constantly seeing things you don't like about yourself, so you can improve yourself in that respect. And it's a good lifestyle; you know I'm not into working in banks, I used to grow trees and plant them, and I like that stuff. But it's cool because I've traveled the world; we work very, very hard when we're touring. I won't tell you that it's easy, 'cos it's really hard. But it's good fun and you meet a lot of people. I sort of feel like a gypsy, and I like that kind of lifestyle. A lot of people couldn't do the stuff we do the way we do it...they like to have their regular paychecks and their debts and all that kind of stuff. I don't really have any debts, but I don't have a regular paycheck. But I scrounge around and have enough money to have fun. And I get to do the things I like, which is to go out and sit in the rain forest and be with trees and swim in duff a lot more than a lot of other people, so it all balances itself out. Some people can afford to do their stuff; they work their 11 months a year and have their four or five weeks off, or in America, you silly bastards have one or two weeks off and feel guilty. I think it's very important to have a lot of relaxation in this life, because we've made it very hectic for ourselves. So there's a few bits of Steedman wisdom, I don't even know if you're fucking interested.

Personally I go for music in any genre or form where I can get some kind of passion or feeling from the music; that the people who are making it either have some passion in it be it for total fun or piss-take, or be it very seriously in an attempt to portray their feelings. It sort of gets me that I can pick up about 5% of any style of music and like it. So that's probably what I see as; that it's good...that personally I can get something out of it; I can be moved in an emotional, spiritual or humorous way.

Bands that have influenced me and to varying degrees other members of the band...well the Only Ones were a band that I got into for quite a while. The Rolling Stones you can't beat. I like a lot of blues, John Lee Hooker has had a lot of effect on me, as a lot of the blues up from Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and all them dudes. It's hard to know, there's all this stuff, there's the Pistols, and the Birdmen and the Saints and all their spin-off bands that I actually got to see, like the Laughing Clowns, the early Hitmen, the Visitors, the Other Side, a great rocking band. A whole lot of bloody folks I went through...Midnight Oil was a band that I used to see a lot when I was quite young; that was a long time ago. Other groups; Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons played all right back then; the Sports were a band I saw; a few punk bands around the time...various ones...who the fuck else. And then you know bands like the Wet Taxis and Died Pretty that we used to play with and I used to love. I saw the Wet Taxis innumerable times. They were very special. But it's impossible to explain just being in a small pub. Which is something that Sydney did have which a lot of places didn't, and it doesn't anymore, was a profusion of small hotels, a lot of them free entry or just a couple of bucks that held maybe a hundred people. And the band would set up and just play, and that sort of atmosphere leads to wonderful pieces of music, and just inspiring nights.

Some of the bands I like at the moment...there are many; I just went and saw the Carbuncle Shack, which is a couple of the guys from the Wet Taxis, they were really good fun. I still like Died Pretty. The New Christs playing out here now are good; they're always very solid. The Cosmic Psychos are quite wonderful. I get a kick out of the Hard-Ons; they're a pretty good value. There's a whole lot of other bands; Examplehead are a great band, La Sect Rouge; a couple of less well known bands. feedtime I like a lot. A lot of these bands, and then there's bands in America and Europe we see playing with us you know. There was a band out of San Francisco called Spot 1019 that I liked a couple of times when we played with them. Mr. T Experience had a pretty good sense of fun. I saw the Replacements a couple years ago; they're a good value. Of course the Ramones have had a very big influence on us and our music, because they're a particularly wonderful band, and I hope they get filthy rich because I think they deserve it. Too numerous to mention; I have a lot of records. Bands like Green River and some of those ones out of Seattle and various areas; the Screaming Trees. There's something about each of them that sort of grabs me, be it songs or whole lots of stuff. It be hard to know. Skid and Mojo;; they're pretty funny, they're good to see live. I think they're from your town too, something good came out of there.

There was an amazing thing going on here for a while. It is in fact quite dead and you would be surprised how blase) most people in Australia are about the music scene here. At the moment people aren't going out to see bands; it's very hard for bands 'cos a lot of the small pubs I was talking about earlier have closed down. The medium sized pubs...there's none of any more. So it's small or big, and the only people that can play...like we don't seem to have too much trouble...but the money for even bands like us is a lot less than it was, because people aren't going out and promoters have been taking a dive, and various reasons...I needn't go into all of them, but there have been special moments. In the past there were some things happening. Just things we did with the Rifles; we did a tour of part of Australia in a bus with Died Pretty, the Wet Taxis, and the Mushroom Planet, and that was a pretty special tour. Everyone hauled around in a bus; that was bloody good fun.

But I used to go out a few years ago when I was quite young and the band was only starting out, you could go into the city and within like maybe a two square kilometer radius you could walk to ten various corner pubs with ten various bands most of them for free, and if you didn't like it you moved on to the next one. There was lots of places to play and it built up quite a good lively scene. But I think people are very blase) about the music scene in Australia now, or Sydney anyway, because they don't realize that there is a lot of good music and still compared to a lot of the places I see, it still would be considered quite healthy. Whereas a lot of towns in Europe, they have one bar in that city that has music in one big place. They get a lot of bands coming through I suppose, but it's very hard for bands in that town to do anything. It's difficult, but it's still a little easier out here.

It was possible to play and people were interested, and they went out and you could get a grounding. The thing that made the Australian scene is that there were quite a few bands and a lot of places to play. If you couldn't play, if you couldn't cut it, people wouldn't come and see you, because it was all based on live; it was none of this more English attitude where you rehearse and rehearse and then make a record, and after you've had your second record or something you think about going out and playing, which isn't always the case of course, but, um...you had to be able, and it was possible to play a bit so you could get better, and you'd go out and play in front of people and had fun and got that rush that can't be described, or for me anyway, you just start playing and then there's that rush and then there's nothing like it you know. It's like ...drugs don't do the same thing at all. You just get really high from a great gig, there's that feeling...it's indescribable to anyone who hasn't experienced it, but you just know what it is, and then you keep going for that and if it can keep happening it's good.

I don't know what all it'll take to keep it going; it'll take people to decide it seems fashionable. People come and go. A few years ago it was really dead; there was only discos and the people weren't putting bands on. People realized that they could make money out of bands, but then you get some big places in the suburbs where they can get noise complaints from the neighborhood. It just needs an injection of life. A few more good bands, I suppose. One thing maybe you've noticed is that a few years ago you would've been getting trickles of Australian independent music through and you probably got a lot of the good stuff and then as it kept building and more and more people put records out you'd get probably everything so you'd have to sift through it to find what you like, because not all of it is going to be to people's personal tastes and some of it is as bad as any music you'd hear in any country or any town. The thing that's taking off at the moment in Sydney especially is covers bands. People doing like Free Company; so they do Bad Company and Free songs; or AC/DC cover bands, or Status Quo cover bands, or Led Zeppelin cover bands and all that kind of stuff. There's Eagles cover bands. There's a profusion of them; at any given night in Sydney there's probably ten to twenty of them playing and people go to see them; and they're the bands making money, where the independent bands or the good bands often have a lot of trouble doing the same sort of thing. And the venues have started booking them because it's easy, and they know people are going to come in, and they sell drinks. The bottom line is the beer companies run it all, so if the pubs are making money selling beer to people they'll have bands, and if they don't quite make money they'll try something else I suppose.

I don't know what rock and roll means to me. Rock and roll at the moment means that that's what I do. I like it. I like good rock and roll. I suppose I love it. But it doesn't mean anything special to me; I just like music.

What do I get out of being in a band? I dunno, deaf! It's a good emotional outlet; it's a good tension release being in a band. It's a fucking lot of fun, and it's a bloody lot of hard work and generally for bugger-all money. But finance doesn't seem to be a problem because as soon as I stopped worrying about money a couple of years about I've never had any trouble with it and I've always got enough. I enjoy playing music, it's a good way to travel the world; we manifested that well. I've met a lot of people. It's a good communicative medium; it gets through language barriers. It's a good way to meet like-minded or un-like-minded people. We've been around the world and I realize that there are other people in the world that do things in a similar way that perhaps I do, and there's nice people everywhere. There's a whole bunch of digits, too, but where ever you want to go, even America, even San Diego (what you live there for is beyond me, but we shall say nothing more of that!).

You saw us in San Diego; I remember that concert. Well, that was their business to sit on the floor, what do we expect. We don't do very well in universities or university towns, but American college, which is where everyone says we should go and play, and which hopefully we won't ever have to again, they don't know how to accept us because we're not easy to categorize, we're not prissy pop, and we're pretty bloody full on and we make jokes of ourselves and I think that a lot of American college students have a hard time with anyone taking the piss out themselves because they're all a bit serious in their younger days. But that's not altogether true. It's a worldwide phenomenon at the moment, this conservatism, and it's really sad I think, because, it being the age of super consciousness and a very important time for nature and spirituality, the awakening of spirituality, it seems very strange to me that most of the human race is becoming very conservative. About sitting on the floor, that's their business; sometimes it brings out the best in us to have something like that going on, because we can take the piss out of them instead of ourselves for a change. And we have fun anyway.

In Europe they like us; there's parts of America where we're quite popular. They seem to like us in New York. San Francisco we do quite well. Some of the mid-west towns, Minneapolis and that they seem to like us. Ann Arbor, Philly and Boston; we've been popular up in Boston. It's pretty cool; I've enjoyed playing the bits of the south we've played; Carolina and stuff. England, the last time we played there we did quite well, but basically there's people there who really like us and appreciate what we do, but it's just a hard place, and people have a hard time earning any kind of money and doing anything except being pissed off and getting drunk, 'cos it's not a very nice place to be.

Europe is fun, I like it. Some places we do quite well. Most places we seem to do OK in Europe. They like us in Italy and Switzerland, Geneva of all places we're very very popular. Everybody says it would be boring, but the Swiss audiences are good. The Germans like us, the French seem to be quite into it. We did a show in Paris that was wild. I liked it in France because they sell wine in petrol stations...wine and cheese everywhere in the countryside. French people are nice, but they just don't realize what their government is doing. I don't think a lot of American people realize what their government is doing and the bad name that you have around the world purely because of your government. 'Cos a lot of American people are nice. But I could say the same about Australia. The Australian government is not much better.

So I enjoy playing in other places in the world, you know, communicating, and as I was saying earlier, breaking the language barrier, sharing emotion and feeling with people from the whole world, and hopefully sort of making the world one, you know. Rock and roll's a good way to do it.

It's still always nice to play in Australia, you know. Australian audiences are hard, you know, you've got to work hard. They're more appreciative I think in Europe and America. Especially in Europe, they treat you very well, they have a respect. It seems to me, the Europeans, they'll come and watch you play and it's rather than like being pigeon holed like in America and Australia where they say "I think you are like this, so you have to be like this", the Europeans seem to have more an attitude like, "OK, we'll go and see what this band does" and then they'll listen and say "Ah! So that's what you do. I like it" or "I don't like it". Which I think is a lot healthier and I respect a little more, because they're prepared to listen to what you do as an art form and as an emotion, I suppose. It seems more on the whole like that's how they view it. Let's see what they do and try and appreciate it rather than "Hey man, you didn't play any songs off the first record. I thought you guys were full on". Or "I thought you did this", or "C'mon you fucking bastards, play something off the first lp". But it's nice to play in Australia, it's nice to play to any good audience anywhere when we're having a good night and playing well. That's all good because we usually win people over. We're not too bad at that. And we genuinely enjoy playing.

I think we give our audience a lot, because we try very hard, we try to make each gig as important as any other, but we also don't take it so seriously...we believe very strongly in our music, personally speaking I'm quite passionate about it, but that doesn't stop me from having a good time, because music is a form of entertainment. I also believe that people pay money and we're there to entertain them and have a good time, you know; share emotions. They get an idea from our records what we're on about, and they come along and they can suss it out. And they also get a big energy release and a lot of fun and hopefully a lot of laughs and walk out of there feeling somewhat enlivened perhaps, if that makes any sense to you. We can give them a good time if they choose to listen. But we can also play hard rock and roll I reckon as well as anyone. And we have our own style of it.

We've done live recordings, we've done sort of live-ish in the studio. But a gig isn't forever, a gig is an emotion that passes. So it doesn't matter if you make mistakes as long as you're having a good time, And you're putting out some of the emotion you wish to put through. But a record, you have to view it a lot harder, I suppose. It's sort of harder to keep the spontaneity in the studio because of the technology and because of the pressure 'cos it's being kept for a long time. You'd like to try and get it right because that's what people expect on records, that you don't make lots and lots of mistake. Keep it sort of tight, fast, with all the emotion and no mistakes, and keep five people happy at once, is a very hard thing, so recording can be very taxing, whereas playing a gig a couple of people might not be on the ball that night but generally speaking I know we've reached the standard where we can play and think we're doing a stinker and the audience can love it. Because they've only seen us once or twice before. So that's like...we don't rest on our laurels, or anything, but it is some consolation if you do a gig that you don't think is up to how you would like to play, that people can still enjoy it; if they saw a gig that we liked maybe they'd have a lot more fun, but they enjoy what we do. I like playing live, because you can be an idiot. I enjoy being a total fool on stage and trying to play guitar while at the same time it's direct communication. When you make a record and you put an emotion out, you don't know how people will react to it, but on stage you can see directly if you do something foolish or do something really good how people react, and you can have a good time. I like that kind of bouncing of energy and the show, just having good fun, it's cool.

Being from Australia is not a particular advantage. I don't see it as any different. To some people it's really interesting, like you know, the French love Australian bands. It's helped in some ways; people take a bit more notice than perhaps otherwise. But then we're not an American band...in America we wouldn't sell as many records, independently anyway. But it also is cool because the people that are tuned into Australian music realize that there is a lot that is coming out that is of some quality and has its own uniqueness. There's pop from everywhere. Pop's pop, you know, it's good or bad from where ever the fuck it comes from. But the Australian rock and roll has its own feel which I think relates to just the nature of the country and the cities you know. Our cities aren't so much different from anywhere else you know; I think Sydney's quite a beautiful place. But it's a very earthy place, Australia. You have a lot to do with the countryside, no matter if you never go out there. I try and get very close to nature, and Australia is a very strong place from the point of view of the ground and the earth. It's very powerful ground out here I think, and that has some reflection in the rawness; it's a very raw country. It hasn't been tamed like Europe or America or any of those places. The aborigines, they just cruised around and didn't mess too much, you know, a bit of burning here and there, but they lived in some sort of harmony with their environment and it's only been a couple of years since honkies have been here fucking it up.

So now in the UK it can be a pain in the ass, but in Europe it can be fine. In the UK they seem to have an attitude that nothing is any good from anywhere else except from the UK, and they don't even like their own music, and they have this big chip on their shoulder because they're not a world power and everything's fucked up. But there's a lot of nice people there. They should take a look at the Irish, because the Irish know how to live.

Damien the singer writes most of the lyrics. I used to write some for the first couple of albums, but I stopped because he sort of didn't want me to anymore basically. He decided he didn't like my words. Cos the way he was moving...I like to put things pretty straight and simple and he's not so into that because he likes to "use the language" and that kind of trip. I think they come from just observation and life. Some of the stuff he writes about we don't all agree with, but you know he's the singer and he's got to sing it. There's various attitudes to things. But there's always a fine line. We all care to certain degrees about the planet and the environment and about people taking drugs and all that sort of stuff. He's very concerned with sort of social issues. I think we've all gotta be concerned about the way our planet is being messed around, mainly by the multinationals and the World Bank and the pressure being put on Third World countries. A lot of it does stem from us in western countries taking everything for granted. Personally I try and do a lot of things like using only organic products and recycling discarded paper and bottles. All that kind of stuff. Just little personal things. If everyone makes that little bit of effort that's how you can affect things.

You know we have some politicians about wilderness things and stuff, but the politicians are in it for themselves. They'll just go where the money is, most of them. There are some exceptions, but most of them don't really care; they just worry about furthering their names, which is their business. But that's the kind of stuff, you know, just basically watching television and seeing how money and advertising can take hold of everything. I look at it just from the health thing; you can read so many stories about health issues and what's good and bad for you, and basically you read into it and it depends which company the fucking scientist is working for as to what he'll say. You know, if he's being paid by a company that is making a dodgy product to say that it's not going to harm you, he'll say it. Ethics, and that kind of stuff, and just general observations of life. The human race and what it's doing; how we've manifested and which parts are spirituality is at and that kind of stuff. But yeah, the words are quite strong. We don't believe in just singing about shit...I dunno, I don't want to use that term...to us there's not much point in singing lovey boy-girl songs because there's plenty of that and I think love is a thing that needs to not be so much spoken about; it can be very used and misused I suppose, if you understand what I'm going on about. But love is inside you and through that you direct it to others and the planet, and I think you don't need to sing songs about...like, um...basically blatantly fucking people, which is what most of the songs on the radio seem to be; it's like totally sexist, but it's quite acceptable. But it's not acceptable to think alternatively. But you know, I don't run the world. Yeah, there's a lot of thought put into the lyrics.

"God Squad" was one set of lyrics I actually wrote, because I used to be down on Christianity, but now I try to allow everything it's place, but I used to have the view that there was a guy called Jesus Christ and he cruised around, but he wasn't there to say "Oh you've gotta worship me and do this", he was there saying, well this is what I can do, and we can all do this, and it's just been totally misinterpreted. I was young; I was 16 or 17 when I wrote that song, and I was just figuring at the time that he wouldn't want people groveling and pleading and changing everything they think for him. He just sounded like a really cool dude who'd got it pretty sussed was my view, and it used to really piss me off, people laying this trip on you about it...the "God Squadders" at school was where I got a lot of the stuff, and just off television with the evangelists. It's everybody's business what they do. But I don't believe that it was Christianity; it was a human interpretation of many hundreds of years of misrepresentation of what was really a pretty cool idea. I believe everybody's god; there's not just one. They're both based on that kind of stuff. It's getting so much like that; it's just a marketable thing, it's totally a capitalist, marketed thing, religion. People can say what they like and take all your money off you in the name of every various religion. When I was young the only one I could see any sense in was Buddhism because it was all about being at peace with yourself. So that's how I view it all anyway. It didn't need to be pushed; you either got into or you didn't. It was your business and it's fine if people are into it, but I don't think it was part of the original idea that you push it on people; you just share it by example. If you have an ability to do something, you don't say oh you've gotta do this and give me this power, it's like you have this power and that's all there is to it.

I used to passionately hate Christianity and all religions. Now I don't; my views have changed. I believe every one has god and the Christ spirit within us; it's just a case of finding it and remembering everything we used to know, which is the hard thing.

Singles in today's world...I love singles, I still love 7 inch records, but (adopts American accent) hey man, they're a commodity that doesn't sell. The record companies reckon they can't make money on them, so it's really hard to go and just make a one-off single. I used to love going and doing a single and it didn't necessarily have to be on the album. If we knew a single was going to be on the album we always tried to put a different b-side on it so if people wanted to buy it they weren't getting ripped off in a sense, so that at least they got an extra song. Which I supposed could backfire on us; people would buy the single who might not, but we took the view that if someone was going to buy a single and maybe it was going to end up on an album, we'd put a different song on the other side and they get a little bit more value.

Some of the singles were like that; the first ep was just the first record. "Pretty Pictures" was to try something different. "Out In The West Again" was just a bit of a dumb joke. Then there was the Christmas carole and "Summer Holiday Blues"; that was just a full-on thrash to do; it was just supposed to be a limited edition song. That's some thoughts about Christmas, you know, how like religion has become totally commercialized, and it's supposed to be a religious holiday, but it's just a day that was chosen, and it's not actually Christ's day of birth or anything like that, 'cos no one knows when in the hell that was. But it's just something that society's picked up. But it's also a nice thing Christmas because people get together and there's gifts and love and sharing, but in Australia for quite a number of years you could tell Christmas was coming because the phone company would go on strike, and there'd be no beer 'cos the beer companies would go on strike, and the ferries and trains and busses and everything would go on strike. All the essential services that were necessary for people to do what they gotta do to spend heaps and heaps of money would go on strike 'cos they knew they could earn more, so that was pretty cool, so that was what that song was about. "Summer Holidays" was just another easy going piss-take of us and everyone else. "Sometimes" was probably after that; that was what we thought was a good song, so we recorded that, and yeah, the b-side was just dumb. "Six Days On The Road" and "Groupie Girl"; we were in sort of limbo so we decided we were going to do a six track covers ep to bide some time, plus at the time in Australia ('cos we hadn't been overseas) we were quite well known for our covers, which we probably are overseas now, so there was that to consider. It was supposed to be a six track but only two of them really worked, so that's how that came about. That was a pretty bad year for us. What's after that; it's only been giveaways and stuff. So I love singles, but they're harder and harder to do, because it's just seen as a promotional device now, but there's still a lot of great independent singles. The independent labels have trouble making money on them, but I love them for doing it, 'cos singles are a great thing.

"No keyboards used" (this was printed on the jacket of Roman Beach Party) was just a fucking joke...we just felt like making a record that didn't have any, or I did; the other guys probably would've happily put 'em on. We felt like making a record that was just back to basics, us playing our instruments that we were playing at the time of the writing of those songs and using those to create the other effects and the fun bits. I consider that we do make organic music, 'cos we use technology but not a lot of other technology, in the context of the Rifles. I like to see the Rifles as an organic band. Outside of that anyone can do whatever they feel like. But we're sort of committed as natural; try to make things as natural, or I suppose as natural as you can playing dead trees and using electricity. Keyboards can be used well; I like harpsichords, and I've enjoyed the way we've used keyboards on other records. Our first record has some great piano playing on it. And the second one as well, and we've used organ from time to time. And I do like to use other instruments and I think keyboards can be wonderfully used. It's just like anything, it's like samplers, it's like any piece of technology in the wrong hands can be a piece of shit, but if you use with an honest power, this is just personally speaking, but anything can be used well to make a good sound. It depends on how much feel the person is putting into it.

I like them (meaning the records they've made); they're all bits of what we did at the time. I can listen back now and think yeah, that could've been done, but they're not. It's all as it was, that's the emotion that was done at the time. Various people played with various things...we've been going about 8 years. It doesn't matter; we are now, the past is, you listen to the records. I have a different attitude to the way I live my life now as I did then. So things are different, but I liked being how I was then; I like being how I am now, you know. I suppose you get together to make music because you like it; to make a racket. So in your early days you're obviously a lot more idealistic, or I was very very idealistic, and now I've just learned how to build a fine line, and just to sit with my ideals and keep them as I like them and keep yourself happy within them and realize that it's not a sellout to turn your amp down two notches. To just be how you feel at a particular time is not a sellout. But I don't give a fuck about all that kind of stuff. People can say what they want; they get caught up in their trips; that's all right. You make music for yourself, I believe. It's a very self indulgent thing. You try and communicate, but I think you'd be kidding yourself if you said you made music for other people and not yourself first. It's a team effort in a band, but you want to make your bit as good as you can so you're happy.

We've got a major label in Australia now, we've just made a record and basically finished it, it was quite good fun in a big studio with 32 track digital and all that kind of stuff. I think we've been writing some good songs. I have been personally content to just let it happen, but the other guys wanted to go for a bit more and that is fine by me, because I'm part of the band and I'd like to go on the journey too. So yeah, there are plans to make the Rifles music more widely heard. I think we've made a good record that didn't compromise; it still sounds like us you know. We didn't really compromise anything, we just did it how we were going to do anyway. People might think that it's...they can accuse us of selling out or whatever they want to do, but it's still a top record. I don't mind what people think. We just made it because we've always made our records how we feel at the time, you know. If we'd have on our second album felt like trying to do a really clean song to make lots of money, we would have done it at the time. But how we felt is what we do.

At what level will I feel successful? I don't know; from personally speaking I feel successful when I walk off stage and feel good from playing a good gig; that's success for me. Success, I suppose, if you want to put it in material terms, it would be nice to earn a living, like we get by, we have no real troubles. If I wanted to do something like buy a house or pay a rental or buy a car, I can't really afford to do a lot of that stuff. I mean, pay rent, yeah you do that, but extras and stuff, like if I get any extra money I either hang out in the bush and go on holiday, or I buy updated musical equipment or find new things to get new sounds or whatever. I suppose it would be nice to be set up out of music so you can get somewhere to live. You know I'd love to get somewhere to live out in the trees. Get a piece of land so that when we're not playing I can go and hang there and be in my own space and be at one with the planet.

But on a closer to home level I do feel successful when we make a record we're happy with, or if I do a guitar solo on a particular night and it comes out how I was feeling at the time, and I just go "Yeah, that's great", and that's as successful as you need to be; to look out and see people enjoying what you're doing, and you're communicating a powerful thing and just having a good time. 'Cos I suppose I've referred to it a lot, but it is very important to enjoy life and enjoy what you're doing. Communication of that is strong as well as an understanding that there are darker things in the world and things that people are pissed off with. But I think that can be gained from our concerts as well as the humor, because of the force and the power of the band; you know you can get lost in that and just scream your head off, because we're usually quite loud. You could be in the audience and scream your head off and it'd be fine. Sometimes I do when a band's getting to me like that; you just scream and yell and shout and it's just a great thing.

There's a lot of good music everywhere around the world. Rock and roll is a good thing. I like seeing bands and I like doing all that kind of stuff...and I like drinking red wine. It's a grand thing. Its sad that we can't play Third World countries. I'm sure there'd be a lot of people in Mexico and Central America that would like to come see us and I'd like to play in Communist countries as well. But unfortunately you need a certain amount of money. Unless we do get very very popular and earn that, then we can afford to do that kind of stuff for fun...go and play in some Third World countries and just go and set up and play, and have a few laughs. And learn! Because you can learn so much off other cultures and their music, like the aboriginals. They have great music. I've been learning to play didgeridoo. I went down to Mexico for a couple of months one time and jammed with a couple of people and listened to the music there; just the street music. It's great! Music's a great thing, it's wonderful, be it for political messages, like a lot of the Central Americans have to do or just a release and just for fun and getting together.

Do let your government know to get the fuck out of Central America, and we've gotta get the French fucking government out of the Pacific, and the Australian government from being bloody wimps. But there's always talk about Communism and no freedom, but you look at your country and there's total freedom except if you say something that they don't like, then you're not allowed to say it. You know, how democratic is that? Whereas the way the Sandinistas operate; they're pretty successful. They've done what they said they'd do; they admit they fucked up. They're prepared to do it...but they want a revolution; so did you people if you remember back...and they had some elections, and you know that's democracy, having elections to vote for a government. But the big multinationals were in there and they got kicked out and they want their money and there's a lot that kind of stuff. They might realize there's ten or 20 years of Marxism and then people basically come back to democracy anyway in a lot of respects. If an economy's been fucked up and totally dictated and there's no profit or money in the country, that's one way to get it there. The government runs everything for a while and then smoothes it out and you get a little private enterprise in there. Politics is a silly game. I like humanism, I like anarchy. Because I think people get paranoid about anarchy, that there'd be total violence all the time. But I believe that if there wasn't any authority people wouldn't have anything to rebel against, so there wouldn't be violence. People would work it out themselves and they'd be basically trying to get along. You'd try to work things out a little clearer.

So there you go...goodbye for now. Dennis Tek doesn't even live in San Diego anymore. But maybe there's something good there apart from the Naval Base and all the rest of it and the nuclear reactors and stuff. Happy days to you, take care of your bit of your planet and I'll take care of mine.