Pray
TV
This article originally appeared in Noise For
Heroes #22 in the winter of 1992 under the title "Pray TV Don’t Like The
Stooges"
Melbourne's Pray TV
first caught my attention about 3 years ago when they first came out with their "In
My Street" 45. As the title of this feature suggests, the band are not on the usual
Aussie Stooges meets Birdman kick, but instead have a sound that has been compared
(accurately, in my belief) to bands like Dinosaur, Jr, Husker Du and Joy Division, the
first two because of the way they create a wall of fuzzy and powerful guitar noise and the
last because of vocal style of Aidan Halloran, which though not as deep as Ian Curtis,
maintains a similar morose quality. But one song on that first 45 gave away the fact that
despite the moodiness of the music, the band was maybe not such a depressing lot to hang
out with, and that was "Surfing Nazis", which, if you've ever been out in the
waves around a bunch of spoiled La Jolla brats, is a song that you could immediately
identify with. It cleverly segues into a Nuremberg rally bit with a wild Hitler oratory
and crazed crowd cheering and then turns back to the music again. Joy Division never
would've done something like that. Subsequently they've released a mini-lp called Sure,
another single called "Spent", another one called "Cold Dog Stew", and
a great new lp called Flux, as well as a smattering of fanzine freebie tracks and
the like. Though they've gotten progressively better with each release, the key to Pray TV
is that they play songs that have a lot of energy and rock along with power, yet they
project this depressive mood that most bands can only get by playing slow. It's a neat
trick.
In the interview
there was no trace of depression among the band members; on the whole they seem a
perfectly happy and well adjusted group and highly unlikely to commit suicide either
individually or collectively in the next few moments. Not at all what I'd expected from
the dark music of records.
I asked Pray TV the
usual question about the history of the band and was rewarded with about four minutes of
arguments about whether they started in early 1988, late 1987, or mid 1987, punctuated by
members leaving the room never to return, people moving closer and further from the
recorder (with speaking volumes shifting accordingly from inaudible to ear shattering),
more arguments about the origins of their drummer..."I replaced Pat when he went on a
holiday"..."No you didn't, he was sacked!"..."He's the guy on the
front cover of "Flux", which is the moment we told him was out of the
band"..."Actually we kicked him out because he wasn't any
good"..."Whereas the rest of us are brilliant, of course"..."And he
wanted to be our roadie after that"..."That basically shows how bad he really
was, if he got kicked out of us"..."But he's a very close friend
still"..."He's got a car and he drives us everywhere".
So that's the band's
concept of their history in a nutshell. Now, what bands have influenced them? Guitarist
Martin Kennedy: "Well, there's nothing really obvious." Much derisive laughter
emanates from Matt Scully, their other guitarist, causing Martin to confess, "Well,
me and Matt were heavily into Husker Du and Replacements and all those sorts of things. I
don't really like that English scene but the influence of that is kind of hard to
avoid." Matt: "But there's nothing that we've done that really sounds like that,
just little bits of each one." Martin: "I think probably Husker Du and Dinosaur,
Jr." Aidan: "And locally Died Pretty and Ed Kuepper." Martin:
"Personally I think Died Pretty is my greatest influence. I think they're the best
Australian band."
Pray TV started
playing in little venues. "We started playing in small pubs around Melbourne...and
we're still playing in small pubs around Melbourne!", says Aidan. "When we
started playing we were received very well", says Martin. "Has it changed",
asks Aidan, feigning hurt and shock. "Well, it's a little bit patchy, but we're still
received pretty well", replies Martin. "We've done some great gigs. The ten
people there have clapped really hard."
"We can't tell
stories about people breaking our arms at our shows, can we?", asks Aidan. "No,
better not", says Martin.
"The usual story
in Melbourne is that the first six months of a band's existence, if they've got a sound
which is slightly fashionable or contemporary sounding which people can stick a label on,
they get really good press in the free press, and after that most of the journalists get
sick of them, and unless they've gone on to being a big thing they ignore them. So we've
sort of been through that", says Aidan.
"We're not
worrying about it, it's just standard", says Martin.
Probably my favorite
Pray TV song is their most recent single, lifted from the Flux album. It's an odd
song called "Cold Dog Stew" which has a dense, driving melody and some really
cool words:
Just like Bruce in
a darkness on the edge of town, brute market forced on me
Times are tough and I'm not made of sterner stuff, I blame society
It's cordon blue, the taste of what it's like to lose, eating cold dog stew
Sad but true, best friend on the menu, eating cold dog stew
I warm my hands on the words of the also rans who run this garbage heap
And pay the price of taking everyone's advice, and end up obsolete
This all sounds very
cryptic beyond the general feel that it's an ace loser song, so I asked what the story was
behind it. Aidan puts on his best documentary narrative voice: "Well, it all started
back in 1975 when my sister brought back the Bruce Springsteen album "Darkness On The
Edge Of Town"...I had a lot of shit hung on me for that one". "I never even
knew!", says Martin, incriminatingly. "Yeah, well, basically I saw a film poster
for a film called "Cold Dog Soup", which is also a book, and I liked the title,
so it stuck in my head. I was writing the words for this, but "soup" doesn't
rhyme with anything, so I changed it to "stew"." (Temporary interruption
while abuse is heaped on Aidan for not being able to make things rhyme with
"soup") "Well, it has to rhyme!", he continues, somewhat defensively.
"And the rest of it is about imagining being so down and out that you have to eat
your own dog...cold, because you can't afford the matches, I suppose. It's just a story,
although it goes "I've paid the price of taking everyone's advice, you end up
obsolete", and that's based on me being unemployed for quite a long period of time
after doing the right thing and going to the university and getting my degree, and it
didn't get me anywhere. I've had a lot of shit for it from people I don't even know who
come up to me and go "what, do you think you're being fucking clever?" They say
I'm being pretentious. And I go, well, isn't being in a band pretentious? Isn't wearing
that leather jacket you've got on being pretentious? I mean, what's the difference?
Singing "Ooo I love you baby", well, it's not pretentious, it's just
boring."
I figured Pray TV for
a band to whom lyrics would be quite important, but Aidan's response was that though the
lyrics meant a lot to him, he doubted they meant much to anybody else. This prompted a
fairly long discussion in which they ended up agreeing that a good tune was much more
important and that if the tune was great, the lyrics had to be really objectionable to
make the song bad. Regardless, if you like a band with good words to go with some strong
tunes, Pray TV do a good job of it whether they think it's important or not.
What other records
are there other than Flux, Sure and the "Spent" and "In My
Street" singles? "Well, there's a single called "Cold Dog Stew"...on
the flip side there's a song called "A Lone Stiff".", says Martin. Aidan
continues: "This was named from the review (in Noise For Heroes), it said
about the ep: it was good, dodgy production, which is all true, it was a very fair review
and quite generous, but at the end it says there was one little bonus track which is a
little ambient noise thing that Martin and Matt did together, and I really like it, but in
the magazine it said: six good tracks and one lone stiff".
Martin: "And we
thought that was really funny and we named a song after it."
Aidan: "So
thanks, Steve, if you reviewed it, you named one of our songs."
Gee, immortality, and
so cheaply bought, too.
Martin: "And
also there's the song called "Ring Road" on the Lemon single, which got a good
review in your magazine, which we couldn't believe because we thought it was the biggest
load of shit we've ever done, so we're very appreciative of that. Apart of that we've had
a split single with the band Clowns Smiling Backwards, a hard working band that don't seem
to get anywhere, like all of us."
Flux is by far
the best thing Pray TV have done yet. Their past records have shown promise but none have
been particularly well produced or record. Sure was recorded on an 8 track recorder
and by the band's own admission sounds a bit thin. I asked how happy they were with the Flux
lp, and they had mixed feelings; they're happy that it's out but they think that it too
sounds a little thin...they wanted a sound closer to the "Spent" single, which
has a thicker guitar feel, and didn't think they got that on the lp. They also weren't too
keen on the drum sound, but generally they are happy to have gotten an lp out at all. It's
getting good reviews but not selling particularly well. As has been the case for all their
records it's selling about ten times as well overseas as in Australia. It's even being
licensed to Japan, to Barn Homes Records, the outfit that did the Devil Dogs CD. It's been
remastered and has six songs added, and is purported to sound a whole lot better for it.
Having an lp doesn't
seem to translate to more or better gigs...apparently having an lp out is no longer the
novelty that it used to be and there are so many Melbourne bands with a record out that it
no longer sets the band above the rest by any big amount. The problem as Martin sees it is
that there aren't enough people...the scene's not big enough to carry bands anywhere,
though it is easy up to that point, starting a band and getting it going; there's not the
sort of open discouragement of bands that goes in other countries where there are no
venues, no places to practice, and everybody calls the police if you make a little noise.
But getting beyond the stage of playing those small pub gigs is next to impossible. Most
of Pray TV's gigs are small shows where they headline, and they say it is really hard to
get good support spots, though they've developed a sort of reputation as the band to book
as openers for whatever New Zealand band comes to town...they've opened for Straitjacket
Fits, Bailter Space, Jean Paul Sarte Experience.
In Melbourne these
days the way to get a good crowd seems to be to play some variant of Detroit metal, and
that's the first thing a lot of people overseas expect from an Australian band. But Pray
TV don't fit that mold; there's no trace of the Stooges in them. "I've never been
into that", says Martin. "Do you ever listen to them?", asks Aidan.
"Do you like them?" "No", says Martin, "I don't like them.
Sorry!" (he laughs at his unfashionableness) "But everybody likes the
Stooges", says Aidan. "No, no, I don't", says Martin. "I never liked
them". "Well", says Aidan, "That's probably the difference. Most
Australian bands are right into the Stooges, Radio Birdman and Celibate Rifles, and even
if they vary it a little and listen to Mudhoney, they're still basically coming from that
grunt rock sort of stuff, whereas we've never had that, which is why we get that Joy
Division tag. It's rootless music". "Rootless music?", asks Martin,
incredulous (the root being a certain part of the male anatomy in Aussie parlance).
"Well, rootless in the sense that it hasn't got any roots", says Aidan, digging
a deeper hole out of which to climb.
"The problem
with us is that in Melbourne is that you're either in a heavy hard rock band like
Bored", he continues, nimbly switching the subject, "Or you're in a cute pop
band, or an English sounding band like Swill. And we don't quite fit in to any of them,
and never have and never will. I think we sound more like the old school of Died Pretty,
Laughing Clowns. They didn't fit into any category; they were just on their own."
"We're not ever
going to be huge in Melbourne, so it's not worth worrying about", says Martin.
They're doing a tour
with Bored and a split single with them in which they cover Bored's "Detroit Rock
City". "I'm sure we'll make it sound incredibly wimpy", says Martin.
Talk somehow diverges
off to recollections of past record launches the band have done. Their first single was
their best selling record in Australia, reaching #11 on the indie charts there. They did a
launch gig for it and everything went fine up until the moment that they were going to do
"In My Street", which as the featured song was supposed to be the highlight of
the show. But straight away the guitar dropped out, and then when they got it going,
everybody went into different parts of the song, playing the chorus, verse and bridge all
at the same time. Then they did an ep launch for Sure with a huge appreciative
crowd and the PA died in the middle of it. The members agree that record launches are all
disastrous without fail.
They're working on
songs for a new album, which everybody thinks is far better than the last one, with much
more variety. They're going back to the same studio and they think they can build off the
mistakes they made last time. Since John Peel is enthusiasticly playing their stuff on his
show, they may go to England in June with half of the costs paid for by their label,
Shock, in Australia. Quite a step since they haven't played out of Melbourne yet. They are
planning to go to Geelong, a concept that brings heaps of laughter from everyone, as it's
only an hour away, but they haven't even done Sydney yet.
I asked if they had
anything else to say about anything at all. Martin jumped right in: "Well, I want to
say that it's outrageous the way that George Bush is ripping off the Australian farmer.
American farmers are getting subsidies up to their eyeballs, and he comes over here and
starts talking about a free market. A level playing field! It's a lie! And one thing I can
say about Melbourne is that there were demonstrations and they shoved it up his ass."
"We hope you're
not a Republican voter", says Matt.
"Even
Republicans hate him now", says Martin.
Noise For Heroes
employs no Republicans of any kind.
