moore's code: dappled do demos
Adventures in the life of a Rock Band.
ARIA nominated band Dappled Cities decided to hit the studio last week to record some demos. Once this has been done, the songs will be recorded again and then put onto a CD or sold ?digitally'. The songs will then be downloaded illegally via the Internet, by a whole bunch of 17-year-olds that enjoy the smooth sounds of indie rock in between sessions of ?surfing the web'.
The scene of the crime was a little studio in Coogee where another local band, Dappled Cities Fly, recorded their first album A Smile. This was a seminal record. Four young Christian boys, pulled together by their love of Celine Dion and the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Surry Hills, making sweet ballads about everything from broccoli to a little sick mouse they found that was brought back to health through positive thinking and the drum tracks to the aforementioned album. Once it got better, the mouse was sacrificed to Jesus at God's request. As I wrote back then:
This is a great record. A perfect, wonderful, dangerous collaboration of sound and vision. A touching tribute to everything that Australia has produced in the past as well as a frightening look in to the future of everything that can, and inevitably will, occur. This shapes the past, the present and the future. This is Bowie's Ziggy Stardust mixed with Led Zeppelin's IV with a touch of every single music genius that the world has ever created. This is the ghost of Hendrix. This is ?The' record.
I was of course talking about Guy Sebastian's first album As I Am, featuring the hit single ?Angels Brought Me Here'. But you get the general drift about what a powerful year 2004 actually was. Yet so much has changed between then and now. In 2004, Harry Potter still hadn't defeated Voldemort. Or kissed a girl. Or a horse. Rugby league players kept their racist views hidden, and having a dog lick their genitals was something they could only dream of. Over in the USA, Lindsay Lohan thought coke was a delightful beverage purchased from a vending machine, and that stripping would never be a career that she would have to consider.
In 2010, however, the world is a dark, fearsome place somewhere between The Road and the Teletubbies. Huge monsters roam the streets, and Mel Gibson is still alive. Television can be viewed in 3D, and Powderfinger's breakup has meant that there is no decent music in Australia ? and there never will be ever again ? because they have broken up and they never answered my letters and someone stole my Bernard Fanning solo record, which is bullshit because I listened to it about 40 times a day. Guy Sebastian is gainfully employed and has ruined sleeve tattoos for at least three generations. The Hopetoun shut down.
However, in good news, Dappled Cities Finger (a new name to inform people that half our set will now be Powderfinger covers) have somehow weathered a storm of breakups, and venue closures, and jobs, and hernia operations, and explosive tummy ailments, and are still making some sweet indie rock. Because without indie rock, there would only be hip-hop. And I fucking love hip-hop.
Words: Alexander Moore
Oystermag
