Whilst lyrically
expressing the process of slowly dying inside, Bart Denaro (guitar, singer,
song writer) independently record the album with his six-piece band within
their bedrooms and lounge rooms after finishing up their ‘Day Job’.
On first impression
a song about indignantly prosaic points garbled with petty internal argument
sounds as though it would offer no possible insight to us fluorescent
adolescents, but I promise you that once you hit play, it’ll be impossible to
resist the temptation of tapping your pens’ along to Briscoe’s infectious beats
during your many hours of procrastination.
Check out the interview below
Check out the interview below
How would you describe your sound in ‘Day Job’
to someone that has never heard you play before?
I always try to make the sound relate to the
subject matter in a consistent kind of way, so I would like to think the sound
of Day Job is a little bit angry, a little bit desperate, a little bit tense
and delirious. I guess it’s trying to evoke the sorts of emotions that come
with feeling trapped by your own decisions, like choosing technical drawing as
an elective at the end of year 10, then half way through year 11 thinking THIS
IS THE MOST BORING THING EVER WHY DID I PICK IT?! when it’s kinda too late to
change (this happened to me, it was terrible. No offence tech drawing
students/teachers).
In a sixman band how did you all agree upon
naming yourself after the great Lennie Briscoe?
Ha! Lennie Briscoe was my childhood obsession
and luckily I named the band before I asked anyone else to join, so they just
had to live with it. But let’s be honest, Lennie Briscoe is a genius, who was
ever going to argue with that?
If Briscoe were a country, which would it be?
Maybe Cuba – an ageing dictatorship, a high
literacy rate, a questionable human rights record and a beautiful coastline,
that’s about right.
What’s your earliest memory of music?
I think it was a Dean Martin tape my parents
had in the car. Dean Martin was an Italian-American film star in the 50s and
60s. I used to sing along to Mambo Italiano and That’s Amore, and feel a little
more Italian than usual (youtube “dean martin that’s amore” and you’ll get the
idea). My parents said he had a terrible accent when he sang the Italian lyrics
though. Poser.
What was the last song you listened to?
It was my phone’s ringtone – I Can Change by
LCD Soundsystem.
How do you think music has evolved between the
two?
Wowzers. Tracing kitsch 50s cine-pop all the
way to a dancerock ringtone from 2010. That’s a big job. Between the two of
these eras, music has split into millions of genres, billions of sub-genres,
each with thousands of documentaries about what why they exist. Talking about
my own personal taste though, I’ve gone through so many phases in my life where
I will get obsessed with a band or a genre and write off everything else – I
watched a 10-part documentary on Jazz by Ken Burns and for about 6 months after
that I thought pop music was the devil. I haven’t really evolved, just jumped
from species to species like a parasite.
So then where do you think Briscoe sits within
the Australian music industry?
We are perfectly average I think. We all work
for a living to give us enough money to travel and play shows and make records
outside of work hours, which is a very real and common struggle among bands I
know. We send our music to radio stations, gig bookers and music journalists
and hope for the best but don’t expect anything. In my early days as a muso, I
used to get angry when radio programmers wouldn’t play our songs and record
industry people wouldn’t reply to emails, but now I realise that nobody owes us
anything and there are SO many people trying to make it... why should we get
special treatment? All we can do is all anyone can do - be true to ourselves
and our work and hope people like it.
Theoretically, would you say there is a
defining sound of Briscoe or is it all about the sheer spontaneity of
self-production and home recording?
My musical heroes are ones that refused to be
locked in to a sound – David Bowie, the Beatles, Beck, Wilco, Led Zeppelin. The
defining feature of these guys is the lack of a defining feature. This is what
we are striving for with Briscoe but it is very hard to do. Once you release
music in a certain style it sets up an expectation for people, and when you try
to do something different next time around, people can think you’re being fake
or dishonest. All the bands I listed above had the courage to explode these
expectations early in their careers which freed them up to make what they
wanted to make. I love this.
And lastly if you were given the opportunity
to have a superhuman power but had to give up your musical ability, would you
do it?
Yes! Because no matter how bad I was I would
still get enjoyment from playing music. Also, picture this: Superman rescues a
trainload of passengers from a carriage teetering on a cliff-edge. There are
hugs and applause and solemn, moist-eyed handshakes all round. Then Superman
pulls out his piano-accordion and says “here’s a little number you may have
heard, “That’s Amore!” And no matter how horrible the performance is, no matter
how much those people wished that their carriage had actually tipped over the
edge, they stand there and they listen, and they cheer, and then they go and
buy it from iTunes afterwards because IT’S SUPERMAN and he saved their frickin’
lives! That’s what they call “direct marketing” kids :)
Pretty sweet tunes!
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