madturks

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The following feature was written in March of 1998.

Mad Turks and

Ice Cream Hands

Stay Out In The Mid-day Sun

Somewhere I’ve got a poster that Greasy Pop Records boss Doug Thomas sent me many years ago. It advertises a show featuring four Adelaide bands; the Exploding White Mice, the Screaming Believers, the Mad Turks From Istanbul, and the Garden Path, with admission set at $5 Australian (about $3.50 US). "Four of Adelaide’s best for less than the price of one touring has been mega star" it says. And it really was a hell of a deal, since any of these bands by itself deserved to be able to play to huge crowds and command wildly inflated ticket prices. At the time I thought that if these groups could stay together that at least at the underground level, people would become aware and they would love these bands like I did, and like I still do. But it turns out to have been a wildly optimistic hope. Only the Mice made any kind of impression at all. The Screaming Believers had a US release on Big Time. But neither the Garden Path or the Turks ever made an impression outside of their hometown, and even there they were little heralded.

It’s a huge injustice, and the failure of power pop fans world wide to get turned on to the marvelous Mad Turks From Istanbul is one of the tragedies of rock music history. These guys weren’t just good; they were fabulous, and they made records with lasting quality. I decided to do my part to try to help out the situation and tracked down former Mad Turks and current Ice Cream Hands singer Charles Jenkins to get his story on both these excellent groups.

My initial contact with the Turks was through their first 45, which was in a pile of singles I bought on the 1986 trip to New Zealand that first turned me on to the mid 80s Aussie music scene. But that single wasn’t their first recording…that honor would go to the track "Yet You Wonder Why", a sub-two minute slice of the kind of melancholy power pop that would become the band’s stock in trade and which appeared on the 1985 Greasy Pop compilation An Oasis In A Desert Of Noise. The liner notes of that album tell the distant past of the members of the Turks; they formed in 1984 from the wreckage of four forgotten Adelaide groups; the Crunch Pets, Rigormortis, Faith By Force and the Dysentry Bags. The band consisted of Martyn La Merde on bass, Hank M. Turk on lead guitar, Dominic Larizza (then going by Dom Benedictine) on drums, and Charles Jenkins (calling himself Chuck Skatt) singing and playing rhythm guitar.

"Chuck Skatt was a name I’d been using in high school to offend people and it suited the silly arse punk bands we were in", says Jenkins. "Dom liked a drink back then, hence the name." Dom and Charles played together through thick and thin until just this fall, when Dom decided to hang it up.

"Dom and I decided it was best if he split the Ice Cream Hands a few months back", says Jenkins, referring to the power pop band he and Dom have led for the past several years. "He wasn’t having much fun and regardless of how much critical praise you might receive, playing in a band that never makes it financially is tough."

"The Mad Turks formed in 1984/85", he continues. "For me it was my first band that played pubs and venues and recorded. Dom had been kicking around for a few years singing and playing guitar. With the Turks he came along as a favor to our bass player and played drums (he’d just bought a kit). Originally the band played speed and beer induced twelve bar; it was all we could manage musically and socially. When Doug Thomas saw our third or fourth gig he likened us to Eddie Cochran on dangerous chemicals (though I’m sure Eddie had enough to begin with). Over time our sound changed as I learnt a few more chords and started smoking more pot."

The liner notes to the Oasis comp say that the band was due to release a mini-lp called Turkish Delight in early 1986. This record never happened for reasons that haven’t been explained. Instead, there was that first single. The A side was a politely rocking pop tune with a slight country tinge called "Lolene". The flip was a dirtier number called "Seeing Was Believing" that had a simple structure and kicked like a mother. I have a particular fondness for this track since a band I played in covered this song every gig we played for about four years. It’s a killer, and was good enough to get included on the 1985 compilation Raw Cuts – Australian Nitro, part of British series on worldwide garage bands.

Charles reflects back on that first single. "Lolene was the name given to some big car our bass player Martyn had. I had a collection of chords that sounded OK and would sing "Don’t cry Lolene" in the chorus trying to sound like Roy Orbison. Martyn wrote the rest of it lyrically and I sang it a bit too earnestly in retrospect. The throwaway nature of "Seeing Was Believing" has aged much better to my ears. I’m not sure why "Lolene" was chosen; I think that songs that are immediately catchy have to be jerked around with a bit, otherwise they’ll start to stink very quickly."

"I can’t remember if we went in and specifically recorded those songs for a single or if they were lifted off the album. This guy named Kim Horne was recording most of the bands around Adelaide at that time. He was the king of networking ten years before I’d heard the term. I think Vic from the Garden Path recommended him as he had seen him at work on the first Exploding White Mice EP, and Kim came along to a rehearsal."

To fill in the gap in Jenkin’s memory, they in fact recorded the single nearly a year before their first album. The single sessions were in November 1985, about two months after they finished off "And Still You Wonder Why", which they had originally recorded in May of 1985 but completed by adding some backing vocals in September. It was during these September sessions that they first worked with Horne.

"We signed to Greasy Pop as no one else in Adelaide had any idea", recalls Jenkins. "Doug Thomas was always a proper gentleman and a great music enthusiast, and I was into his band, The Spikes. At that point in time we were going well. We’d expanded to a five piece with just me singing. Dom had moved to guitar, the gigs were going well…typically drunken or stoned, chaotic and loud. We were into it. It was a great scene in Adelaide at that time. Over any weekend you could go and see the Screaming Believers, The Garden Path, The Exploding White Mice, The Lizard Train, Dandelion Wine, The Plague – these bands were all mind-blowing, brilliant acts that radio wouldn’t play because none of it was major label."

The single was the last recorded evidence of Dom as a drummer. He plays capably, but the band definitely took a step up when they recorded their debut lp between December 1986 and January 1987. They brought in Steve Caon on drums, and he plays with a cracking sharp style. The guitars are stronger and more inventive, and the singing is also improved. The album has a stack of brilliant songs on it, especially the trio that lead off the second side: "Looking Forward To Destroy", "Under Review" and "Holding My Breath". These tracks have everything…great hooks, strong guitar with great accent work, and catchy, creative lyrics. "Holding My Breath" is my favorite in the lyric department with its climactic line "That oven hasn’t worked since the day I – put my head inside it", but there are plenty of great bits scattered throughout the rest. The guitar playing is also great…not the usual punky distortion stuff buts instead lots of clean and lightning fast leads that aren’t just pure show…unlike most technically great guitar players, Hank Turk plays complex leads that have a ton of taste.

"The recording of Café Istanbul was a continuation of what was happening live", says Jenkins. "We didn’t rearrange anything or overdub anything more than the odd acoustic guitar. It was cheap and nasty. Our guitarist at the time, Hank, was exceptional. On things like the title track he was unstoppable, and other guitar players around town were gob smacked by his ability. Some of the songs were OK, but I haven’t listened to it since the day it came out. From my memory it sounded thin and wiry, and that’s pretty much how we were back then. The record did well in Adelaide, sort of, but nothing anywhere else. It wasn’t slick enough to dominate the airwaves!"

Well Charles, you are going on memories of 12 years ago, but I’m going on having played Café Istanbul about 8 times in the past two days to get my head into this article, and I’m here to say you are wrong. Thin and wiry it ain’t. While it’s no Ramones copy, this is a power pop record that rocks, and it’s a guitar driven piece of wonder like the best power pop records all are. It’s got vocals that remind you of what Elvis Costello might sound like if he ever got over his cold, and the sound is as full and tasty as you could ever want. A couple songs have a country feel to them (a taste in "Lolene" and a pretty full-on hoedown feel in "Purdy Baby"). But it’s hard to pick favorites out of the rest, since all are strong. "Suicidal Style", "Ten Words" and "Chances Lane" are nearly as good as the tracks released as singles. And the closing "Café Istanbul" rips strongly enough to give you a clear vision of just what Jenkins was talking about when he described Hank Turk’s often brilliant guitar work.

But Charles has the common problem with lack of perspective that many people in bands have about their own work. "Personally I was just happy to have the damn thing out", he says. "We’d been together for quite a while, and we nearly didn’t get any of our original twelve bar songs recorded. I think "Café Istanbul" (the song) was the only one that made it. They were gradually overtaken by songs with more chords, which was a pity in retrospect, but at the time I was interested in moving on, always thinking my last song was my best ever (I still do), so things are bound to be lost. I can remember we chose "Holding My Breath" as an early single unanimously, realizing that the song had come out well. I can also recall sitting in a car outside rehearsal one night with Doug Thomas and the band listening to songs on the album for another single and deciding on "Looking Forward To Destroy" because it was the best sounding song."

Those were two great singles. Like the lp, they were distributed by the Australian major label Festival under a licensing deal with Greasy Pop. "Holding My Breath" has a cool black and white photo of a diver just hitting the water. On the flip are two non-lp tracks. The first, called "All Those Words" was an average song for the Turks, but "Prostitute My Brain" is good enough to be an A-side; another great and dirty rocker that’s a worthy successor to "Seeing Was Believing". The single "Looking Forward To Destroy" is as good an A-side, but the sleeve looks like it was hastily put together by the record company with little thought or care. The flip "Given My Number" is also non-lp and is one of their softer ones.

"We signed to Festival under instructions from management at the time", says Jenkins. "Maybe we thought we could have a crack at commercial success (jolly joke) and we had no one around us at the time who could slap us over the head and knock some sense into us. We were an ugly rock band trying to make a buck in the pre-Nirvana days. Fat chance with that one, I’m afraid."

Lyrics are one of several factors that push Mad Turks songs to a high level. I was disappointed to find that Jenkins no longer is very concerned about maintaining the level that he used to strive for. "I can recall sweating over the lyrics a lot more then than I could be bothered with now", he says. "I eventually gave up on writing anything topical as the songs would always take forever to be released. Also, I gave up on writing any sweeping statements on broad subjects as you sound like more of a cliché merchant than you would normally. So these days my field of vision gets less an less. I’m much more interested in writing about a piece of cheese or whatever (onions!); anywhere the water’s less crowded."

It was to be nearly two years before they would release another album, and it would be their last. But when Toast came out it seemed impossible to me that the Turks would not break through. The songs were as strong and maybe stronger than on the first lp, and the production, while still punchy, was even more radio friendly. The record bristled with potential hit A sides. Three tracks actually made it as singles: "Walking Disaster", "Tempers Fire" and "The Last Time". Of these, the first and last are a little softer and more jangly than what the band had been doing in 1986, but "Tempers Fire" cuts right to the heart of the matter with a hook huge enough to reel in Moby Dick. Without a doubt, this song is the Turks finest moment ever, and a power pop song as good as any ever made; it evokes a feel similar to the Plimsoul’s "Million Miles Away", only it has better lyrics. The other two singles are no slouches, but "Tempers Fire" is incredible.

Hank Turk had left the band by the time Toast was made, and Jenkins had picked up his guitar to replace him. The occasional hint of country that Hank added is gone, and the sound is pure pop. Dom’s lead playing is more economical but often equally tasty to Hank’s. With Hank, some rawness also left, but the production, by Arch Larizza, is incredibly sharp and doesn’t sacrifice in the punch department.

"I learnt more about music, be it playing, recording, mixing, writing...everything…in the three weeks (18 days to be precise) that it took to make Toast than I had learnt in the previous five years", says Jenkins. "Dom’s brother Arch is a genius, and he kicked our backsides and knocked the songs into shape. To some archivist it might sound like there’s an album missing in between our two records because we made a big leap and I still think that Toast suffers on the whole from us not being equipped for the jump."

I can’t get over how self critical Jenkins is…here he’s walking out of the studio with a bonafide classic lp in his hands, and he says that they weren’t equipped for the job! But there’s more, too; I told him how much I liked the lyrics to the song "Not So Long Ago", which conveys a huge sense of relief over Gorbachev’s dismantling of the Soviet Union in a unique style (No more five year plans / No more Afghanistans / There’s nothing greater than a powerful man / With the power to understand). But Jenkins dismisses this tune out of hand, saying "the song was funny for about five minutes".

And as for the rest of the album, well, "Bloodmoney" is a song that would be the gem on almost any record that didn’t have "Tempers Fire" on it; could’ve been a knock out single but never made it. Jenkins spits out words in a torrent like This Year’s Model era Elvis Costello. Right after it is another great one in "1,001", which features some of the record’s strongest guitar crunch. And the closing "Left The Right" is a strong finishing rocker. But there are no duds on this lp…it goes from strength to strength whether the songs are loud or quiet like the melancholy "Goodnight". Just a wonderful record.

The three singles all have non-lp B-sides. The flip of "The Last Time" is called "Elusive Dream", and I’d have to assume that it’s Dom singing on it; there’s no credit, but it certainly isn’t Charles. The song is only OK. Same for "American Heartthrob", the flip of "Tempers Fire". And on the back of "Walking Disaster" is an interesting re-make of "Holding My Breath" which is much more understated than the original.

Sometime after Toast came out, the band decided to move their base of action away from their hometown of Adelaide. Says Jenkins: "We moved to Melbourne because there was some management available over here and none in Adelaide. Unfortunately, it turned out to be mismanagement and led to the demise of the band, aided and abetted by a major label and its labyrinth of corridors to get lost in both physically and metaphorically. Personally we all enjoyed the move over. I certainly did at least; it was fun not knowing what’s around the next corner. Eventually we as a band got a bit tired of it all and needed a break. We were never going to make any recording royalty. Festival spent a lot of money on recording and film clips but not a cent on promoting the record when it came out. That’s how I remember it anyway."

I had the very good fortune to see the Mad Turks in Melbourne when I was on a vacation in Australia in 1991. What I wrote at the time follows: "The only show on for Saturday night was the Mad Turks in the middle of a bill with two other bands at the Corner Hotel, which is about a mile east of downtown. This place has the atmosphere of a stoneage cave dwelling, a feeling that was heightened when a punter came out of the club as I approached and blew chow all over the sidewalk. All I can say about the opening band is that they closed with a cover of "Whole Lotta Love"...the things I'll suffer to see a band I like! The Turks were just superb live, though...their set list included all their power pop greats and they played them with real inspiration even though the crowd was only twenty or thirty people. Starting with their brilliant "Tempers Fire" and ending with "Holding My Breath", they also found space for a few cool covers, best of which were the Replacements "A Little Mascara" and another one called "The Executioner" that I can't recall the source of. Somebody told me they thought the Turks sound like Elvis Costello used to sound, and I guess there is a trace of that in Chuck Scatt's vocals and in the way the wordplay goes on in the songs, but the Turks' two guitar, no keyboards sound musically isn't much like the Attractions were. The Turks level of playing was frighteningly good...every harmony spot on, everything tight as can be but still with that extra punch that good live shows deliver above and beyond recorded music."

But when I caught them things were near the end. Playing shows that good to nobody is discouraging, and when management and record company don’t seem to be helping, it’s easier to quit the struggle.

"After the Turks wound up I spent a year playing solo shows and kept on writing and four tracking", says Charles. "The solo gigs were relatively lucrative, but eventually I felt like filling in the gaps by getting some friends to help out. I toyed with the idea of getting different instruments in but I felt more natural I suppose with the guitar bass’n’drums deal. I had a regular gig on a Wednesday night and over time the first line up came together. We called ourselves the "Dishonest Johns" and played things like Randy Newman’s "Political Science", XTC’s "Grass" and the Soft Boys’ "Lend Me A Spanner, Ralph". We would sit down, crack jokes and entertain; it was all very fruity! At some point in time, we stood up. Got our electric guitars back out and decided to ROCK. Well, sort of."

Still located in Melbourne, the band that was to become the Ice Cream Hands at that time consisted of Charles (still calling himself Chuck Skatt), Dom from the Turks, (now going by his real last name), Derek Smiley on drums and finally fellow Adelaide ex-patriot Doug Robertson on bass.

"The group became whole when Doug joined", says Charles. "I’d seen him play in various bands around Adelaide and somehow we met up in Melbourne and he joined. That’s when it felt like a band. He and Smiley clicked straight away rhythmically, vocally and personally, and also because Doug could write songs and improve the songs I had, it really felt like there were a few other oars in the water, which is what I wanted. I certainly wasn’t ready for solo projects."

The other thing the band would need is a record label. That problem was solved by good chance when they struck up a friendship with David Vodicka, a fellow who heads a fine Melbourne based label called Rubber Records.

"I had met David Vodicka at some point in time when the Turks played at Monash Uni and David interviewed us for the Uni paper", says Charles. "He lived near Steve, the Turks drummer, and we bumped into him once in the neighborhood and kept in touch. He helped me get out of the publishing deal that I had with Festival and said that he’d put out the first ep that the Hands had done with Archie Larizza."

The first Ice Cream Hands lp was recorded over the end of 1992 and the beginning of 1993. It’s a lot more mellow than any of the Turks material, opening with the piano driven "Let’s Take A Look Inside" and working its way through 13 other mid-tempo rock tunes and ballads. Says Charles: "Travelling Made Easy was recorded soon after Doug joined. The quietness of some of the record is due to the "Dishonest Johns" period of the band. We weren’t playing live all that much and therefore I didn’t feel compelled to write "rockin’ good time crowd pleasers". They were the first fourteen songs the band learnt and in retrospect I reckon about half that record is great. The songs didn’t suit radio at all at that time, and we didn’t have any big live following, so the record stiffed. Vodicka stopped paying for recordings after that."

Almost any record with Jenkins singing on it is worth listening to, but Travelling Made Easy is the most quiet experience you’ll have with him. It has some solid rocking numbers like the knockout "The Way She Drives" or "You Can Smile Now", but much of it is more laid back. Overall it is a very pleasant listening experience, but to me it sounded like the work of a musician who was heading towards a graceful exit from the scene. Which is why the subsequent series of CDEPs culminating in the recent Memory Lane Traffic Jam was such a pleasant surprise.

"Due to the fact that our first record didn’t fare too well out there in retail land, we had to save up to record our next album ourselves", says Charles. "To cut a long story short, it took a long, long time to do so. We recorded the album in bits and pieces, starting with "Supermarket Scene" and "Winters Tune", then "Go When You Want To", then "Olive" and "Shake and See The Reason", then the b-sides for the "Olive" ep (which included "Early Morning Frost". There were six months periods in between each of these recordings where we would try to play some gigs to get the money for more time in the studio. Eventually Doug was able to kick in a bit of bread somehow and we finished off the last half of the record in August of 1996. Somehow the distributors thought the earliest possible release date would be too close to Christmas, so they put it aside until early 1997, and by then Rubber was about to change distribution in Australia to BMG, so we had to wait until August 1997 for that to occur and for the record to finally be released."

"Because we had been playing a bit more, the songs were naturally punchier than the first record. Also half the songs on the album, (the ones I mentioned earlier) were recorded initially as possible singles so therefore they tended to be more upbeat. It wasn’t until the August 1996 sessions that we realized that we would get to complete the record, so songs like "Iron Shoes" and "Embarrassment Head" were introduced to add a bit more of flavor to the album. Personally I think my favorite is "Is It Already Too Late?". We had such grandiose plans for brass and strings in the middle and at the end of that song. However, we were running out of money and just about to race off to play a gig and Doug, Smiley and I had had a few drinks so we thought, fuck it, and got around a microphone and did all the "oohs" and "aahs" that still work in the sober light of day."

There certainly are a passel of fine tracks on this lp. Overall it is still a lot more introspective than the Turks were, but Jenkins has the knack of writing an interesting mid-tempo cut or ballad down pat. The approach is far more of a pure pop sort of thing than the Turks as well; "Here We Go Now" for example sounds like Rubber Soul era Beatles. Whether something slower like "Supermarket Scene" and "Early Morning Frost" or more rocking songs like "Shake And See The Reason" and the monstrous "Is It Your Electric Chair" with its series of incessant key changes, everything seems to click on this one.

Says Jenkins: ""Is It Your Electric Chair" was an attempt at producing an annoying rock’n’roll beast. I think we tried a few ideas for the bridge but then hit on that instrumental riff-a-rama thing. Lyrically the chorus made it easy to throw in any vague recollections to the verse and to poke fun at the music".

The original release for this album was on Rubber Records in Australia, but it subsequently has been picked up for US release on Not Lame, who released it with new artwork and added some bonus tracks from the CDEPs. So after all these years, Jenkins finally has a US release.

As for what’s coming next, Jenkins tells me: "The band are trying to get another single off the record at the moment to assault radio with. The print media has been ecstatic regarding the record but the few people who control the airwaves in this country have been glacier like in their movements to play it on the radio. We’re currently getting songs together for the next record and playing acoustic gigs around town while we look for another guitarist to fill the very big shoes of our old friend Dom Larizza. Generally things are very busy both privately and music wise, which is obviously good. The songs are coming along, there’s more and more people aware of the band, the money’s up to about ten miles below the poverty line, so yeah, things are improving."

Jenkins’ optimism notwithstanding, losing Dom seems like a medium scale disaster from my perspective; when two people have maintained an association for that long it’s hard to see how their split can’t create major upheaval. But perhaps the change will spur a new sense of determination and the Ice Cream Hands will end up hitting even higher levels. It remains to be seen, but even if it all ends tomorrow, the Ice Cream Hands and the Mad Turks together will have left a legacy of music that would be tragic for the world to ignore.