Frenzal Rhomb are celebrating a quarter of a century.
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The Sydney punk band has kept on keeping on through line-up changes, brushes with the law, and run-ins with semi-celebrities.
To mark the auspicious occasion, they’re off on a tour of the country, playing set lists decided through the requests of their fans.
Guitarist Lindsay “The Doctor” McDougall joined the band 20 years ago, after answering an ad on the radio.
“I was already aware of Frenzal Rhomb,” McDougall said.
“(I heard) on this weird radio station that (they) were having auditions for a guitarist and to call this number. I called the number and made a really dodgy demo cassette and turned up to the audition.”
And what if he hadn’t?
“It scares me to the bone,” McDougall said.
“There are so many things you look back on and you just go ‘Whoa, what if I hadn’t done that?’.
“I imagine I probably would have continued working in Coles’ fruit ‘n’ veg, would have completed my arts degree - I was doing music, political science and math with no direct career out of it - would have finished that and probably done something else.
“And I imagine like everyone in the Sutherland Shire, I’d be still living in the Sutherland Shire, with possibly with..What do you do? You just have a wife and some kids don’t you? That’s what you’re meant to do.
“It’s probably better for that part of the world that I did join Frenzal Rhomb and I did get removed from that area in a polite way.”
Fast forward 25 years and the decision to dial into that “weird radio station” has changed McDougall’s life in its entirety.
The band now has eight albums behind them – plus the recently released “best of” and a forthcoming new album – and a rap sheet longer than their back catalogue of 170-odd songs.
“It’s nice that we’ve kind of stuck together still as a band in some form and we sort of like each other still,” McDougall said.
“We’ve got this great little rhythm going of playing just long enough that we just kind of don’t end up hating each other
“We get excited about playing with each other and playing these songs and relearning these songs. Or learning these songs in the first place depending on how voting goes.”
Frenzal flew to the US last month to record their latest album.
They spent three weeks in Colorado with producer Bill Stevenson, who worked with them on 2011’s Smoko At The Pet Food Factory.
McDougall said the band was due to fly out at the same time this year, but drummer Gordy Forman had broken his arm at a show and was out of action.
As a result, a lot of the songs they’d written for the recording have since been scrapped, and a bunch of new material was created.
“(Bill Stevenson) is a good guy, he’s good fun,” McDougall said.
“We’re hopefully getting him in a good space. Last time we recorded with him he’d just had a tumour pulled out of his brain that was f*****g with his ethics.
“It was leaning on the ethical side of his brain. We got him just after that was gone. So he’d stopped doing bad s**t. So hopefully now we’ve got him in a similar upswing, with the Descendents album out [Stevenson is the drummer for the US band].”
Frenzal Rhomb’s We Lived Like Kings (We Did Anything We Wanted) tour comes to Tasmania this month, playing at Launceston’s Club 54 on November 18, and Hobart’s Brisbane Hotel the following night.
Looking back on the past 25 years has brought up a lot of memories. And, McDougall said, clarified a lot of things.
“Talking about the songs, you find out so many memories that you thought you had that are totally incorrect,” he said.
McDougall shared the story of the horse Frenzal Rhomb, who is referenced on Go Frenzal Go, from 1999’s A Man’s Not A Camel.
“In my mind, it used to win - like it never won heaps but it won a few races - in my mind, (tour promotor) Michael Chugg won thousands and thousands.
“(There was) one race that happened to be on while we were playing at Homebake and we broadcast it live, and (horse Frenzal) won and then there was another race that he won that we put on our (album).
“Now I was talking about this to Jason (Whalley, lead singer) and he goes ‘No you idiot, there was only one race. He only won one race. We recorded it, we broadcast it at Homebake. It was not a live race. The chances of us going on stage at the exact time Frenzal Rhomb the horse raced is completely impossible. He won once. We recorded it. That was the one that Michael Chugg won money on’.
“So mostly it’s just invented memories that are coming to light now.”
Despite all that they have done, McDougall said the one thing the band would not be doing is breaking up.
“The idea of bands breaking up is so pointless these days, as long as you don’t hate each other,” he said,
“We just play the gigs at the rate that we want to.
“If a band is breaking up and they’re doing their final tour, you’ve already seen them at their best.
“What else is there to see? A bunch of guys who don’t really like each other standing awkwardly on stage playing songs that they stopped giving a f**k about years ago?
“We just play when we want to play.”