Melbourne alt-rock legends The Great Emu War Casualties have just unleashed their brand new single ‘Welcome and Good Luck.’ To celebrate, the band talked us through five different top five questions. So bliss out to their new track and peek into the mind of the band with the best god damn name in Australia.
Watch: ‘Welcome and Good Luck’ – The Great Emu War Casualties
5 band names you wish you’d thought of:
- The Great Emu War Casualties (oh wait…)
- Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem
- Lazertits
- The The
- Ed Sheeran
Top 5 cities to play
- Liverpool: Played a few cities in the UK but none come close to being as enjoyable as Liverpool. Funny and chill people, rarely get dickheads on or off the stage (unlike Manchester…). The downside is it’s a tiny city so there are a limited amount of places to play.
- Melbourne: Far and away the easiest city in the world to book a gig due to the sheer amount of venues. The downside is that means there are 5000 other gigs happening at the same time as yours that are much more appealing…
- Tokyo: About five venues on every street corner and still punters to go around – everywhere has full backline, door person, lights, soundie, in-house promoter etc. just rock up with guitars and go. The downside is that there’s a fee to be paid at the end of the night if not enough people have come through the door.
- Kathmandu: Similar to Tokyo, there are bands everywhere and people go out every day so you’ll get a crowd anywhere you go. Plus the drinks are uber cheap.
- Amsterdam: The coolest city in the world it ith has some of the coolest venues in the world (OCCII and Vondelbunker being personal faves.)
5 songs you’d sit in the car to listen to in full after arriving at your destination
Saskia: Düsseldorf by Teleman: This also goes into the category of ‘Songs I Wish I’d Written’… I’m not really a massive fan of anything else they’ve done but this one track is just the perfect song to me – everything is in just exactly the right place and the chorus is a total banger.
Bibek: Hammer Smashed Face by Cannibal Corpse: It kinda jump-starts your mood. Great song to listen before awkward parties (or putting it on at awkward parties).
Joe: Telephone Call From Istanbul by Tom Waits: It’s a ridiculous song. My life is split into two halves – one in which I wish I was Tom Waits, and one in which I wish I was Marc Ribot. This song has the best of both in. Listen to that guitar and tell me you’d have made a single choice that he did there? Now I’m turning all of our own music off to listen to this song on loop. Listen to that life advice you’re given in this song – “never trust a man in a blue trenchcoat” – good advice – “Never drive a car when you’re dead” – solid guidance for the youth of today. And if you still aren’t sold then just stick the saxophone solo on repeat and re-evaluate everything that you consider to be an achievement.
Saskia: I’m Diggin’ You (Like An Old Soul Record) by Meshell Ndegeocello: It was a struggle to pick just one track of hers because everything that she does is amazing but it’s hard to beat this… LISTEN TO THAT GROOVE! LISTEN TO THE WAY SHE MAKES SWEET LOVE TO THAT BASS! OH MY GOD! IT’S TOO GOOD!! SHE’S SO FUCKING COOL!!! EVERYTHING SHE DOES IS PERFECT!!! Oh dear, I shouldn’t have picked a Meshell song…
Bibek: Can’t Get You Out Of My Head by Kylie Minogue: The synth bass and the chorus is too cool, too catchy.
Watch: Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
Top 5 on-stage stunts you wish you could pull off (Bibek declined to answer this because he can pull off anything…)
Joe: Bite the head off a bat? Wouldn’t that be weird, especially if we were playing our stupid pop music, and then I just pull a snack bat out of my pocket and unwrap it like a Kit Kat Chunky or something and go to town. Not that I endorse animal violence or anything, but a bat flew into my face once when I was a kid in the zoo and so I reckon it would probably just be evening the score in a cosmic way. I actually don’t know a whole lot about Ozzy Osborne except for the face that he ate a bat and that it was definitely by accident and he was on the telly for a bit when I was young on that terrible show with his family and then eventually his kid was a judge on a talent show or something? Or was that his wife? I wonder if he will be more remembered for Crazy Train or for pioneering the reality TV template that the Kardashians have perfected. I wonder which one best pays the bills… When you think of Ozzy Osbourne, what comes to mind?
Saskia: Scott Owen from The Living End playing the upright bass whilst standing on it… or you know, just being able to play the upright bass at all…
Joe: Teleport a clone of me to the other side of the venue while I fall through a trap door to my death like in The Prestige. I just re-watched the Prestige and I’d completely forgotten about all those tragic awful British accents. Sometimes I wonder how Christian Bale is an actor so I have to go back and watch American Psycho to remember and then I see Jared Leto and it makes me think of Dallas Buyers Club and Blade Runner 2049 and 30 Seconds to Mars all in one go and nothing makes sense anymore.
Saskia: Tina Weymouth’s crab dance (you know what I’m talking about – we’ve all seen the GIF…) I have embarrassingly tried to pull it off before… but you know… obviously, I didn’t and it was just bad for everyone involved…
Joe: Tune my guitar halfway through a solo like Jack White, or comb just one half of my head in the middle of a song like Jack White, or pull up my weird arm warmers like Jack White, or smile somehow aggressively at the audience like Jack White. I’ve only seen him on stage once, recently, in Melbourne, but it was an absolute gold mine. When I was a kid, old people would always tell me, “Yeah, Jimi Hendrix was great, but you had to see him to really understand it” and I think I finally get that a bit after seeing Jack White perform. Did everyone decide that we don’t like Jack White anymore recently because he doesn’t have a phone? Oh, yeah, I had to put my phone in one of those phone sacks didn’t I. First time I’ve looked at a venue’s roof in about 10 years. Really nice roof. Smart move Jack. If I could convince thousands of people to put their phone’s away for 90 minutes, I think I’d do that too.
Top 5 artists whose stage presence you envy
Bibek/Saskia: David Byrne: It’s probably obvious that we’re massive Talking Heads fans (or maybe it’s not…) but I mean… Stop Making Sense is the greatest concert film of all time for a reason.
Just look at those insane dance moves whilst also somehow singing (is singing the right word…) and playing guitar and sweating like he’s inside a giant kettle but he’s actually in a giant suit. Often imitated, never bettered…
Joe: Banksy: Never seen him and he’s everywhere. Take your expensive over-compensating choreography and shove it.
Saskia: Shogun (Shogun & The Sheets): I personally don’t think there’s a better frontman that’s come out of Australia in at least the past five years. I don’t see very many people with that much soul on stage anymore. Plus, he almost pulled off a whistle solo once and that takes a massive amount of balls because whistling is like insanely hard for some reason.
Bibek: Cyndi Lauper: She is too classy but still very trashy.
Saskia: All of Savages: My friends had been trying to get me into Savages for ages when their first album came out and I was just like ‘meh’. But one of them finally dragged me to one of their shows and my mind was changed forever – they had us all sucked in from note one. Absolutely epic. There was someone in the crowd near the front filming the whole thing on their phone and Jehnny Beth just stalks over, takes the phone off him, smirks, then chucks it somewhere at the back of the stage and continues on with the next verse. Brilliant.
