Throwing things at public figures as a way of expressing praise has a long and illustrious history that dates all the way back to Ancient Greece and Rome.
After all, ol’ mate Draco, he of the Draconian laws, was so popular he suffocated to death after being smothered in apparel thrown during a coliseum appearance.
So when Gareth Liddiard of The Drones had a beer can chucked at his head earlier this year while playing a show at the Metro Theatre, one could only assume the act was designed as a compliment. Does that kind of praise get hurled Liddiard’s way often? “Not a huge amount – not as much as you’d think,” the frontman says. “But we’ve pegged stuff at the audience too. I remember Dan [Luscombe, guitar] pegging something at someone in the front row who was talking. I actually caught a bottle that someone hoiked at me once and just sent it straight back.
“As a musician onstage, you’re really in a high level of concentration. You’re doing things that involve a high level of dexterity. So like, if you wanna hit someone when they’ve thrown something at you, you can fuckin’ hit them. It’s revved up physically. If somebody’s rude to you during your workday, compare that to running ten times around the block and then have someone be rude to you. If they were rude after a jog, you’d clock ’em.”
2016 has seen Liddiard and The Drones take to the stage numerous times, playing cuts from their stunning, snarky new record, Feelin Kinda Free. But such an intense on-and-off-again touring cycle has had its own side effects.
“When you’re on tour, it normalises you,” says Liddiard. “You get this huge cathartic release. But then you get home and you’re confronted with the dishes or whatever. It’s alright for a few weeks. But then you really need to have what is essentially at the root of it a kind of tantrum. [Gigs] are huge existential tantrums. It’s not weird to have a bunch of people watching another bunch of people going through these ritualistic motions, working through these taboo emotions. It’s not very different from a corroboree or something.”
‘Taboo’ being the key word. The Drones’ back catalogue is peppered with a myriad of blackly comic jokes, false confessions and bad trips. “We rarely laughed and she often cried”, goes a line in ‘She Had An Abortion That She Made Me Pay For’, and that kind of half-funny, mostly fucked proclamation is both Liddiard’s speciality and his release.
“In normal conversation, you can’t really bring up grief, you can’t bring up bereavement,” he says. “Even global warming – you can’t really get to the bottom of it during a dinner conversation because your friends will hate you. So everyone steers clear of that shit, usually.”
Death is the other unmentionable that binds The Drones’ work together – the stark reality behind most great art. “Humans are the only animals that know they’re gonna cark it,” Liddiard says. “Humans have that every day. They know it. That is the root of art. That is the pure, defining thing – no matter all our differences, we’re all fucked. We’re all gonna get it. So [art] is cathartic, but it won’t fix the problem.
“I mean, you look at someone like Bob Marley and he does something different in order to get to the same place. Whether it’s a The Drones show or something like a Rollins Band show from the early ’80s, when it’s just that excoriatingly depressing, bad vibes kind of thing – that’s just the route we take to get everyone to feel like they’re together in the same room. It’s like this huge fucking communal grieving process. So it’s not pleasant, but in the end everyone feels like they’re together.”
That said, Liddiard is at pains to avoid the stereotype of the artist as bleeding heart, and he never over-quantifies his band’s music. “It’s not always high art,” he stresses. “I mean, Beethoven is better than The Beatles. But you don’t always want the best. It’s like, would you want to pop a fuckin’ bottle of Christau champagne at your mum’s funeral? It’s inappropriate. And, like, you don’t always wanna have Beethoven at 11pm on a Saturday night. You want something that’s kinda shit. But ultimately, you still have those same elements that make Beethoven great. It’s kind of a lust for life. It’s all the same, when it’s good. It’s all the same.”
Ultimately, for Liddiard, it all comes down to shared experience – to the wasted, wrecked feeling you get when you realise we’re all equally screwed. “That’s what a gig is for,” he says. “That’s why everyone is gathered in the room – to get to that point. Otherwise it’s just some shitty gig.
“I mean, music is so mysterious. Scientists are trying to figure it out, and they get close, but it’s impossible. Truly great photography does the same thing. Opposed to literature, which feels sort of quantifiable – music is just…” He goes quiet for the briefest of moments. “I mean, what is it? It’s magic. Why does it make you feel that way? Why do the hairs on your arm stand up? It’s mad. It’s just something that we will never get to the bottom of.”
The Drones appear at Fairgrounds Festival 2016,Berry Showgrounds, runningFriday December 2 – Saturday December 3.Feelin Kinda Free is out now through Tropical Fuck Storm/MGM.
