1. Growing Up

I’ve got vivid memories of cruising around on day trips with my brother Luke (guitar) and our dadda and mumma blasting early stuff by bands like The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Dylan and all sorts. Dad grew up in England seeing people like Pink Floyd (with Syd), Little Richard and The Zombies, which he showed us from a young age. As we grew, we got massively into skating and skate videos and turned to T-Rex, The Saints, Gang Of Four and Eno-era Roxy Music.

2. Inspirations

First love would have to be Bowie – Luke and I listened obsessively for 2 years, from Space Oddity to Scary Monsters. The constant reinvention of himself and his sound does a lot for us. Speaking for the band, we’re into everything from early country, blues, bluegrass, jazz and folk through punk, no wave, hip hop and all between.

3. Your Band

We’re from the north of Wollongong and all mostly grew up together. We were good mates before ever thinking of playing music, drawn to each other over a shared love of art, skating, surfing and music. The band happened by accident, most of us have no musical experience so we’re kind of learning as we go. There are some differences in our approaches but it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. We’ve got an old corrugated iron shed as a makeshift studio so we can work on music and record regularly, it’s a blessing and a curse as we don’t know what we’re doing. Owen Penglis from Straight Arrows mixes our stuff which really helps. 

4. The Music You Make

At the moment we’re trying to make some pretty raw rock’n’roll sort of stuff. It seems to be the baby of rockabilly, rock’n’roll, punk and garage and God only knows what else seeps in. I don’t get to watch us play live but it sounds/looks like we’re a hot mess.

5. Music, Right Here, Right Now

We don’t really feel as though we’re part of a scene as we’re from the Gong, which does have a lot of good bands but not much of a sound. We’ve got lots of mates from all over Oz and we all help each other out – we connect largely with the people in bands like Dumb Punts, Skegss, Wash, Drunk Mums, Hoon, Solid Effort, Pist Idiots, Hockey Dad, Amyl and The Sniffers, Shining Bird and more. I’m personally digging bands like Spike Fuck, Straight Arrows, Orion, Royal Headache, Rhysics, Den and Low Life at the moment.

The Pinheads hit the Chippo on Friday June 30, and University of Wollongong’s Unibar on Saturday July 8.

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