feedtime
The following article originally appeared in
Noise For Heroes #15 in the winter of 1989
feedtime will never
be on commercial radio in the US. There are some things just too pure for that medium, and
feedtime is one of them. What's more, most people will never hear feedtime, and of those
who do, most will never like them. That's a shame, because feedtime are one of the few
bands with a true spirit of inventiveness. At the same time, they are a band of
contradictions; they are a rock band, but they are also an art band. The members sit
around and have a few beers and some laughs like anybody else, but at the same time they
seem to feel a sense of purpose that few others do. I stumbled upon them first via the
Aberrant compilation Why March When You Can Riot, which featured two feedtime gems
among a packet of other excellent bands. Thus encouraged, I went searching for the two lps
they had out at the time, and was rewarded with some of the most innovative music I've
heard in many years.
Last June I sent off
a cassette and some questions for the band which I had hoped would result in an article in
#14. Because of Bruce's heavy schedule at Aberrant, it was impossible to bring it off in
time, and now some of the thunder has been stolen by Fred Mill's excellent feature in The
Bob #34. Still, the interview process is one in which you capture the mood of the band on
a given day, and what they say one day may be very different from what they say another,
so I expect that even those who have read the Bob feature will find what the band members
had to say to be quite interesting.
Appropriately enough
given their name, the band, consisting of Rick (guitars and vocals), Tom (drums) and Al
(bass and vocals), answered my questions following dinner. The questions were read by a
friend named Michael, who helpfully prodded the discussion along from time to time and
threw in some useful points of his own. In the background was the unrelenting din of a
record of a choir doing Gregorian chants (if I have my church music down straight). These
from time to time received some derisory backhand comments...guess the band are ready for
a new tag..."monk rock"? (groan). At any rate, the chaotic background (joined as
it was at various times by the sounds of televisions, sirens, and a sewing machine)
certainly added an interesting flavor to the proceedings, but it yielded a difficult time
in transcribing the comments with complete accuracy (and I am certain that I have
attributed some to the wrong source), so the band will have to forgive any errors I've
committed.
feedtime have been
incredibly stable over the years; with the exception of their early years from 1979 until
1983 when Tom joined, the lineup has been a model of consistency. This is best
attributable to the fact that, as Rick says: "feedtime understands itself...we're not
pushing a hype, we're not pushing a style, we're not pushing glamor, we're not pushing
twinkly dinkly bloody little star how I wonder how sweet you are sort of shit." Rick
and Al have never played in a band other than feedtime, while Tom played in What?!!,
Whorse Manure, Des & the Dingbats, the Real Fucking Idiots, Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk, and Von
Zippers.
This maturity and
their sense of what matters and what doesn't is one of the most refreshing things about
the band in my mind, because feedtime seem to be well aware that they are very good and
very different from other bands, but they aren't big headed about it by any means. They
seem almost to have not worked it out in their own minds whether they really believe that
they are an "important" band; when asked if they are surprised at the critical
acclaim they've received or if they feel they deserve it, this is the result:
Tom:
I'm surprised
Rick: So am I
Tom: I don't think we break new ground
Rick: We've broken new ground in some respects
Tom: But it's not by...that's an accident; it's the limitations that we
play under, and attitude and things like that.
Rick: I think if people think we deserve it, then we deserve it, because
it's only what people think that makes you deserve it apart from the fact that we deserve
it because we do it (is anybody still with us? - ed), but we get our own satisfaction that
has nothing to do with critical acclaim. It's a big surprise to keep getting critical
acclaim and happiness and best of this and best of that.
Tom: It's nice to read things about people that like you, but we play it
because we like it and if anyone else likes it then that's nice, if they can write about
it.
Rick: There's not many people here that say nice things about us.
Al: It'd be interesting to hear and see what's written in ten years
time...
Rick: Not much!
Michael: Do you think it'll last longer than most bands?
Al: We already have.
Michael: I mean the acclaim, or whatever
Al: It probably already has in a lot of ways, but it doesn't really
matter. That's after the fact. The important thing as far as feedtime is concerned is we
get together and we play music that we all relate to and we enjoy playing, and that's the
beginning and the end of it and anything else that happens, we're quite happy for that to
happen, but what's happening after is not the prime mover in what we do in the first
place. What we do in the first place is do what we do, enjoy the music, write songs, play,
have fun doing what we do, express ourselves in the way we want to express ourselves, and
what happens after doesn't really matter. It's good if it has an affect on people and
people like it and they want to hear it and they get enlightened, maybe in a certain era
in their life than they wouldn't have been otherwise. That's great.
Michael: Have you ever read a review that you've agreed with?
Tom: What about the one in Gig Guide?
Rick: Oh, that was years ago. Yeah, that was a great review. This guy
said off the first record that we were compiled on through Aberrant, our first feedtime
outtake sort of stuff, and he got down through all these other bands and he said
"feedtime just sound awful". I met the guy later and I said "Thanks alot,
and next time spell feedtime with a small 'f'", and that was really nice because he
came back and said he would never write anything again except if it's good. He wrote what
he thought, which is what reviewers are here for.
Live feedtime are
often joined by friends who play seemingly spurious instruments like harmonicas and
horns...these people just jump out of the crowd when their number comes along, and melt
back in when it's over. In 1987 I had the pleasant experience of catching a feedtime show
at the Palace Hotel, which I described as follows in NFH#13:
Next night, a total
change of pace. feedtime is playing at the Palace Hotel. Still tired from the previous
night, I called the club to be sure when feedtime were to go on so that I wouldn't wear
out what little energy I had left watching another band first. Nine o'clock, I was told. I
responded in disbelief as I couldn't imagine the headliners starting that early. Who else
is playing with them? Nobody. Unwilling to miss anything, I leave the hotel at 8:45 to
walk nine blocks to the club. I get there spot on nine, and feedtime's distinctive sound
wafts from the hotel down the sidewalk.
This place is like no
other club I've ever seen. It’s situated at an intersection where Flinders and
Dowling intersect at about a 30 degree angle. The three members of feedtime are crammed
into the apex of the sharp angle formed by the two outer walls, and the triangle shaped
bar in the center of the room takes up all the prime space. It's probably the smallest
place I've ever seen a band in. Fortunately not many people had arrived and I got a good
spot hanging on the jukebox along one side wall. (This jukebox, by the way, had the
greatest selection of music of any jukebox I've ever seen with selections ranging from
Ruts, to Siouxie, to the Eastern Dark, and both feedtime singles.)
On the wall behind
the band is taped their set list. It's FIVE pages long! The band played 4 sets of about 40
minutes each, each set a great show in itself. As far as I can recall they played every
song off their two great lps as well as a few covers (including X favorites "I Don't
Wanna Go Out" and "Coat of Green"). Their sound is a grinding blend of
guitar, bass and drums with growling vocals that spiritually is akin to Pink Flag era Wire
but sounds like no other band I can think of. Songs are all short, simple, and very
rhythmic, with a heavy bass end. The band is minimalist to the core; the drummer has a
snare, floor tom, kick drum, high hat and one cymbal. Lyrics consist of fragmented images
and incomplete thoughts. The band thrives on innovation; several times the guitar player
broke strings, and as he restrung the bassist and drummer improvised a song on the spot.
feedtime is a band
that people will discover in about 5 years and rave about as an influence for years after.
They are one of the only bands in the 80s to really come up with a new style of playing
rock that actually works and sounds good. Anyone with a taste for adventure in music
should own every feedtime record in existence.
I walked home at
midnight bone tired but delighted at having had the highest possible expectations met and
exceeded. The cost? Free!
The band's influences
have been discussed other places, but are worth recounting here. Every article mentions
Australia's X, and feedtime acknowledges the debt that their bass and rhythm approach owes
to X, but as they have said elsewhere, feedtime were playing before they saw X. They saw X
and they continued to play. But X were apparently a confirmation that their ideas could be
made to work.
Yet X was clearly a
rock and roll band first and foremost; despite their unusual approach that pushed the bass
almost to lead instrument status, their songs had pop structures and hooks. But feedtime
songs are stripped down to the most basic riffs and then pulverized with bass and drums
laced with guitar heavy with distortion and played in a unique style that only adds to the
bottom end of the sound. X songs could be smoothed out and made to sound like acceptable
pop, but feedtime songs never could.
Pressed for other
influences, the band will cite Rose Tattoo, an Australian heavy rock band with blues
influences. Rick says of them: "they were cool, but they're dead now and they lost it
long before they died." The band also go heavily for old blues, and they rattled off
a bunch of names that I couldn't make out over the monks. They also like "bits and
pieces of the Stones, late 60's early 70s", as evidenced by the presence of three
Stones covers on Cooper S. But at the end of recanting these sources of
inspiration, Tom declares: "No one influential is going to influence us", a
statement that would be just boasting from any other band, but in feedtime's case can be
accepted as the truth.
With such a short
list of influences, what then are the qualities that feedtime think are most important in
music? This question brings a long pause, which Rick finally breaks with the two words
"good feel".
Good feel. It seems
like an easy concept, but has proved elusive to so many bands. And feedtime's standards
for what has good feel are especially rigid. To hear them talk, you would think that there
is no rock and roll worth listening to in Australia right now. In one of my questions I
stated that the current scene in Sydney struck me as reminiscent of London in the late
70s, and asked the band if they felt that way, or if I was dreaming it all up. Their
response:
Tom: I
think you're dreaming it all up!
Rick: You tell us what you're taking to dream it up!
Tom: But if there was one (a scene), I don't think we'd know about it.
Al: It's a glorified idea, but I don't think it's happening in reality in
Australia, or anywhere else in the world. And I don't think it happened in the end of the
70s, either.
Tom: The bands he likes in there (referring to NFH#13), they're all going
at the moment, but it's not any particular scene, not as far as I can see, anyhow.
Al: Part of the problem with questions like that is that you can't really
tell. People now can discuss what happened in the late 70s, and they've got points of
reference to look at and refer to and see it as a whole, and you can never do that with
the current thing. You always need time to be able to look back on it. Us now in 87 or 88,
we can't look at what's happening in the current two or three year spectrum and sort of
look at it the same way that people can look at 76, 77 and 78, because its 10 years ago;
you just can't do a straight swap and look at what's happening now and what happened then,
or what happened in the late 60's or in the late 50's or late 40’s. To be able to
look at it in the same way we'd need to be able to answer the question in 10 years time.
Michael: You seem to pick the stuff you like out of any era anyway.
Al: Yeah, and there's always good stuff, no matter what's happening
anyway, there's always good stuff. And the majority of stuff is always crap. And you look
at any era, and it's never had a monopoly on good stuff.
Rick: You hit it on the head...no era has had a monopoly on good stuff.
Al: What it comes about to is integrity in the people that are making the
music and the care involved in it.
Rick: It's not the fucking scene they're in.
Al: No, it's got nothing to do with it; that's a side affect. The most
important thing in dealing with bands and looking at what bands are trying to do is
looking at...they get together for some reason, and usually I'd like to think that it's
because they've got something to say, or something to do, or something to express, they do
that, and that's the way it is. They do it to the best of their ability, they do it with
integrity and honesty...alot don't, but that's the thing you hope happens, and sometimes
it does happen.
So what bands around
these days are doing stuff with good feel?
Tom: I
don't like nothing about no one...there's nothing around.
Al: Oh, there probably is, but we don't know because we're ignorant
cunts.
Rick: Actually, the Pixies, I've heard some of the
Pixies..."Gigantic"
Tom: That's a good song...really really good song
Al: I'll try to hear it one day.
Rick: That's it.
Tom: Yeah, I can't think of anything that I like. Oh, I've heard stuff
that I like, but I'm not going to buy a new record. I haven't bought a new record for
ages.
Rick: We don't really attend to what's going on.
Tom: Cos we're pretty ignorant
Rick: We just sort of float in our own little continuum.
And finally, on this
note, much later in the discussion, as they are leafing through the copy of NFH I sent
them, Rick states flatly: "I've gotta tell you, I've not seen an exciting band in
Sydney for fucking years. That's the truth. That's my personal truth. Oh, except for the
Backsliders, who I liked because they played blues."
As you can tell,
feedtime have very high standards for good feel. Much higher than mine, I'll grant; I'm
generally happy if the drummer shouts "1-2-3-4" before the song starts. But
since feedtime are so hard to please, they basically don't feel a part of any scene that's
going on. There's probably other justification for that as well. While bands like the
Celibate Rifles or Screaming Tribesmen have a sound that's commercial enough to get a fair
amount of local airplay despite their independent status, feedtime feel basically ignored
by the industry types and the larger rock magazines in Australia. In an average week, they
guess they get six minutes of airplay on Sydney radio stations, and Rick says: "See,
you've gotta understand, we're not really in the scene. We stand separate from it. Partly
by choice and partly by accident. But we just don't follow what's going on."
feedtime's own brand
of good feel has been bedeviling reviewers since they started. As it turns out, the band
have the same problem when they are asked how they would describe their music to someone
who hadn't heard them:
Tom:
(ever practical) I'd give him a record
Rick: He's got some good questions (sarcasm...)
Tom: You can't really, I mean, how would you describe anything as
anything anyhow?
Rick: (to their friend) You're an outsider to the band, how would you
describe it?
Michael: Racket!
Tom: Right, a racket, that sounds good.
Michael: Good racket!
Rick: Live it's a good racket, without any returns.
Now that we have
captured the essence of how feedtime are able to translate "racket" into
"good feel", the next question is, how successful have they been at doing this?
Which songs of theirs best achieves what they are trying to accomplish as a band?
Tom: Well,
what have we accomplished as a band?
Rick: There's no one song.
Tom: Well, what's your favorite song?
Rick: I've got 50 favorite songs.
Tom: (Sullen deadpan voice) Name one. Or two. Or three.
Rick: "Dead Crazy", "Shovel", "Fractured"
Al: "Don't Tell Me", "Small Talk", "Paint It
Black", "Street Fightin' Man", "Southside Johnny"
Tom: They can all be equally bad or equally good at any given moment
depending on the amount of beer consumed and other variables.
Al: There's three things I've got to say on this question; that's feedtime,
Shovel, Cooper S.
Tom: Yeah
The first feedtime
recordings were the songs "Don't Tell Me" and "Small Talk" on the
Aberrant compilation Why March When You Can Riot? released in November 1985 and now
very difficult to find. Right from the opening chords of "Don't Tell Me" it was
clear that this band was something different...although there are few compilations where
feedtime would fit as well as on Riot, they still are radically different from all
the other punk rants captured on that record. Rick slides from chord to chord in a short
riff that is repeated over and over while the drums and bass hammer away underneath. Both
these tracks were re-recorded for a single released in September, 1987 (also on Aberrant),
and the recordings are somewhat unusual from other feedtime material in that the bass
isn't mixed as loud as the guitar.
The compilation
tracks were quickly followed by the lp feedtime, released on the band's own
feedtime label in December 1985 and later reissued on Aberrant "and exported
worldwide following six months to Sweden, Japan, Melbourne, and the Antarctic", says
Rick. This lp is my personal favorite, beginning with the rumbling "Ha Ha" and
with other classics like "f#" (named for the note that carries it,
"Clowns" and the epic "I Wanna Ride". But all the songs on this record
are great; stunningly simple in construction, yet incredibly effective. feedtime is
scheduled for release in the US soon through Aberrant's licensing agreement with Rough
Trade (the other two lps are already available here). It has also been licensed in Holland
through Mega-Disc.
The next feedtime
release wasn't until August of 1986, when "Plymouth Car Is A Limousine" appeared
on a 7" compilation ep that came free with Bruce Griffith’s fanzine Trousers In
Action. This one struck me as one of their more hastily contrived efforts, and doesn't get
the airplay around my house the other records do. But in September of 1987 they made up
for that with the solid "Fractured" single on Aberrant, which was followed
shortly by the Shovel lp in January, 1987. Shovel features a slightly
brighter sound than feedtime did, but has material that maintains the high standard of the
first effort.
In September 1987,
the band released the re-recorded versions of the Riot tracks as one single, which
is in my opinion their best. February 1988 saw the release of "Buffalo Bob", a
cover of a King Snake Roost song on a 45 shared with KSR, in which the latter covered
feedtime's "More Than Love". In April 1988, Aberrant released Cooper S,
named after the tiny car depicted on its cover. Cooper is an lp of covers that have been
twisted almost beyond recognition. Finally, there is a 7" single that came with Away
From The Pulsebeat with "Take The Buick", and the cut on the Bob flexi reviewed
herein.
Most people who have
written about feedtime are knocked out by their recorded output to date. But feedtime
themselves are not that impressed by what they've managed to get on record; part of this
is the result of the limited money they have to spend on studio time, and part of it is
due to what they consider to be a severe shortage of quality recording engineers and
mastering facilities. They have high praise for Bruce Griffiths, the sole force behind
Aberrant, but Aberrant is a label, not a mastering studio and pressing plant, and so alot
of how the records turn out is beyond the control of either band or label. I had mentioned
that I thought that the Australian independent labels put out quality productions, but the
band would have little of that:
Al: Quality
productions? That's something we in Australia have difficulty in finding, not so much as
record labels, independent labels are concerned, but in actually getting the noise you
make onto a recording and from recording onto record, there seems to be massive troubles
for us to get that happening as it should happen. Which should seem to me that with the
technology we've got...
Tom: That's because it's beyond the control of the independents; that's
because it's in the control of industry people.
Al: I think basically in Australia the independent scene or the music
scene in general is working with incompetent technicians and engineers.
Michael: What would you do if you got in an enormous studio with 24
tracks and all that shit, would you come out with the same noise?
Tom: Well the trouble with that is the people who are running it.
Al: Well, we always come out with the same noise. What people record is
another thing.
Tom: The independent music scene stops at the band. It doesn't go any
further, to our experience, anyhow. It doesn't go to engineers. It might be, but we don't
know about it.
Al: Basically, in Sydney it seems that there's only one place to cut a
record. And that has got to be a problem, because if you only have one place where you can
supposedly get a good cut, then that's a problem.
Tom: Because you don't! (Laughs)
Al: But you've got nowhere else to go, you know?
Playing live appeals
to feedtime more than going into the studio. The records seem to be a source of some
frustration to them because of the difficulties in first of all, playing a song the way
they want it to be played, and secondly, getting the sound they make to come out on the
record. About playing live versus recording they have this to say:
Tom: They're
both the same but they're both different. Well, in one you're playing a song, but there's
so much fucking around involved; I mean you go in there for eight hours and you spend six
hours fucking around, an hour playing and the other hour getting drunk.
Rick: I think playing live is more important. Playing live is really the
thing that captures the soul and the spirit of the actual performance, which is what we're
about. Nothing that we've performed has come out as performed on the records.
Tom: No, all the records, you listen to them and we say "We can play
it better" and we do.
Michael: So you might say recording is the best you were at the time?
Al: You can never do any better than you can do at any particular time.
And it's just a matter of choosing the particular time that you let be recorded and let it
go out.
Tom: And if you really fuck up you do it again.
Al: Yeah, but there comes a point where you don't have much choice,
really. Otherwise you don't end up making a million dollars and being able to retire to
the south of France.
Tom: Yeah, like we're about to do.
Al: After we release this next album of epic covers (laughs).
Oh, yeah, the covers.
Putting out an lp like Cooper S, consisting of nothing but covers, seems like an
unusual move for a band as original as feedtime. And their live set leaves you with
memories of seven or eight songs that you thought were familiar that got the feedtime
treatment. Why would a band like feedtime bother with covers? And since there's apparently
alot of effort exerted in arranging the covers, why not write a totally new song?
Al:
Well actually that's the fourth feedtime album. Cooper S with new lyrics.
Rick: It's not true that we go to that degree of effort in presenting a
cover.
Tom: We try to play them and they turn out that way. Our level of playing
it and what we decide to leave in and leave out. It's not a great deal of effort, it's
real easy. We don't sit down and think about the covers; they come out like that.
Al: We basically play them the way we like playing them
Tom: The way we hear them
Al: Well, we hear them, and we like the song, and we try playing it, and
we play it the way we play it, and...
Tom: And
it eventually becomes the way we play it.
Al: We become happy with the way we play it and it becomes a song and
regular, and some of them have actually ended up on Cooper. And the fact of the matter is
that it's around about 20% of our material is actually covers, so that's not actually alot
I wouldn't think given what we play. When you consider that we generally play anything
from 40 to 50 songs in a given night which are longer than 30 seconds each. We're doing
three sets on an average night; we're doing between 40 and 50 songs and only 20 to 25
percent at the most are covers. I wouldn't consider that alot of covers.
Tom: And we do the covers because we like them too. You've gotta take
influences from other people; the way they did it, the way they made it sound, and you
think, "wow, we can do that" so you go and do it.
Michael: What other Stones stuff would you like to do that you haven't
already done?
Al: I don't have any inclination of doing any more Stones than we already
do. I mean Stones have been, because we're all so old (laughs), they have been an
inspiration over the years because they've always had a certain "good feel" in
the way they do stuff. There's not many bands that over a number of years maintain a good
feel. So often a band will hit the scene and they'll have a hit with something and it'll
be really good, but invariably you get disappointed when you follow it up and you hear
more of the stuff, either more of their first album or more of something other than their
hit single, or you hear second recordings, blah, blah, blah, and it becomes just like
everyone else.
Tom: Still I wouldn't rush out and buy the latest Rolling Stones record,
would you?
Al: No, no, I haven't bought a Rolling Stones record in years. Stones for
me in a large way are like...
Tom: Ten years ago
Al: Yeah, it's their way; they've done it their way and it's over.
For feedtime, success
in traditional terms is not a major issue. If it happens, it'll happen, if it doesn't
happen, they have already attained success on their level:
Rick: We're
totally successful because we got to play despite the fact that no one ever came to
listen, or virtually no one, I mean you could count 'em if you got ten fingers on your
hands and chopped four off, that's how many used to come and listen. But we kept playing
and kept playing and kept playing because we loved it and we wanted to do it. There's not
many people that do that.
Tom: I feel successful after you've played somewhere and it's been a good
night. That's successful to me. Of course, I'd like to be able to have a holiday. I
suppose that's successful, too. If it comes off next year.
Al: It's pretty successful if you can go out for the night, play the
music that you most like listening to and playing, and you get your drinks paid for, your
food paid for, and your taxi fare home and that's quite a bit of success...
Tom: and breakfast the next day...
Al: That's pretty good.
Plans for feedtime's
future? In April of 1989 they plan to come to the US for a combination holiday and tour,
so don't miss them. Before that they plan to release another lp...
Rick: It's
going to be absolutely fucking fantastic.
Tom: Which is good because we have no idea what's going to be on it as
yet.
Rick: But it's shaping up to be something real good.
Tom: Yeah, so we're going to go for a holiday, see. And we go to
Melbourne before the end of the year.
Al: Melbourne's in Australia, it's just down the foyer.
Tom: Downhill...
(the monks have
stopped)
Rick: Pissed
the monks off...
Al: Turn the monks over.
So as the monks press
on with their own brand of racket and good feel, we have to take our leave of feedtime.
Music is a medium that can only be described by comparison to existing forms, and one of
the most certain indications of creativity and inventiveness in music is the inability of
critics to describe the result. feedtime fits that yardstick. In fact they hardly seem
able to put a hand on what it is that they are themselves...
Rick:
Tell him what feedtime is
Tom: What's feedtime, Rick?
Rick: I don't know , Tom, I was going to ask you.
Tom: Well, I beat you.
Rick: feedtime is art. It's living, breathing art.
Tom: It's not art to me. It's about living.
Rick: Oh, well, whatever.
(Thanks to Bruce
Griffiths of Aberrant for his help in organizing this interview and to feedtime for taking
the time to do it).
