The Models
Melbourne 80’s art-rock wizards The Models embark on first national tour this century. The Models are one of those iconic Australian bands that had some many hits from the likes I Hear Motion, Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight, Barbados, Let’s Kiss and Hold On. This tour will see Models play shows in all major capital cities where the band will perform hits from classic albums Alphabravocharliedeltaechofoxtrotgolf , Cut Lunch, Local and/or General, The Pleasure of Your Company, and Out Of Mind Out Of Sight (1985). Andrew Duffield from the band talks to Across The Ocean about this tour and plans for next year.
Wow! The Models are back on the road…
Yeah, a promoter approached us with this whirlwind idea of getting around the country in five days, well six days as it turns out. That’s what’s happening! We’ve played some winery shows around the country in the last few years but this will be our first full show we will be doing in ages.
If it wasn’t a whirlwind tour do you think it still would of happened?
Probably, the band doesn’t work with management anymore. We don’t have any of those structural things in place any more. It’s us trying to work it out and when this promoter approached and said look what about we just do it. That’s the basis of how we’re undertaking it.
Do you start getting nostalgic when you start playing all The Models classics or is means to end to some degree?
It’s both of those things for us, we’re still recording, I have a recording space and we have released a couple of EP’s over the last couple of years. This is very old school, very punk rock, where we would just release them at gigs. We’ll bring them to Adelaide with us, GTK like the old ABC TV show, you might be too young to remember that but stood for get to know. It was a ten minute show on the ABC in the early seventies and you would see bands like Daddy Cool for the first time, Carson or The Dingoes and it was in black and white. So it seemed appropriate after all these years to release something called GTK because it was a case of getting the band to know each other again after a considerable break.
The second one was just called Memo which is the name of the gig in Melbourne we played and put this CD together for. We’re still working together and the aim is to get an album completed and we have a lot of material that I need to sort through and mix. Really, what the show is about and what the promoter wants is to come and play the songs people know and the iconic ones, which isn’t to say that we don’t mess with them a bit. The technology has changed a little bit and they are interpretations, there is no brass section, I’ll be doing all that on keyboards. It is a compact four piece band the way started, which grew in the eighties with backing singers and brass players but now we’re back to that creative core with bass, drums, guitars and keyboards.
Depending on how the tour goes do you think the band will revisit things on a much bigger scale?
I don’t know, I would love that to happen and in a sense I think The Models are worthy of doing some bigger scale shows again. I’m hoping that will continue.
There is still a huge call for bands from the eighties and nineties, that must be encouraging?
I know we will be good and I’m not trying to blow our own trumpet but when we play it is great fun. Everyone is more comfortable in their own skin in a lot of ways and musically it comes together beautifully. Plus, we have all this great material to fall back on.
Does it make it harder when you want to be creative and play new stuff when promoters have requested you stick to the back catalogue or come up with another Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight?
Of course James died in 2010 and we’ll play a couple of James’s songs and there will be a nod to James in that fashion. Otherwise we’re always known slyly as ball breaking shall we say and we reinvent the songs to a certain degree any way. There will be some new songs in there, we cannot resist breaking in to that. When we look at writing a set list every night and it changes from night to night it’s just what seems to stick together the best. There’s a lot of material to draw from including the new stuff but we’ll include those big ones because different people will have different expectations of who the band were. Some people think the band were just Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight or Barbados or go back to I Hear Motion. Some people go much further back than that to. The band started in 1978 and Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight was 1985 and that was like seven years in between which we were doing stuff.
Do you find the current climate in the music industry quite frustrating?
It’s not what it used to be but also there are less places to play in many ways from our point of view. It is a different way of working and getting your head across social media which is stuff the band isn’t terribly interested in. A lot of bands in Melbourne work on an exclusivity and would rather not play all the time whereas back in our time we could play every night of the week. It was just the way the scene was and we would come over to three or four gigs in a row before going home again. It definitely is a different environment out there and that bubble got burst.
What is the plan for The Models beyond this tour?
We’re all existing as musicians and hanging in there. I’m teaching music and sound design in Melbourne and Sean will do those shows like the Absolute 80s to pay the bills and stuff. We get together as The Models at least a couple of times a year with some showcase gigs even if they are just in Melbourne. The idea is to just keep recording and more interested in trying to get back some of our material that was never mastered to CD. Merchandising has become a bigger deal and if we bring CD’s along to the show that can augment the fact we can’t do many shows and that has become part of the mix as well.
Would the band ever go back and revisit the classic albums and give them a touch up?
That’s what we’re trying to do at the moment with Warners and get some of that old material back. They’ve moved on and it is up to us to reclaim it and make some noise about it. In the archives there are all these missing b-sides of twelve inch singles or bits that haven’t seen the light of day. In Melbourne we will playing one night The Pleasure Of Your Own Company and then the next night Local &/Or General then we’re coming over to Adelaide and that will contain a mix of everything. I think people will be surprised we’re still doing it and doing it well. It’s not the James Freud band, the band went through a bunch of stages and there’s always discussions about which version of the band was best or whatever. We hope people enjoy it, it will be eclectic and have a bit of everything.
Do you have any vivid memories of playing in Adelaide in your hey day?
The song Two Cabs To The Toucan was written about Adelaide after supporting The Police at Memorial Drive. We wanted to go clubbing after and the club at the time was The Toucan hence the song. We played with David Bowie at Adelaide Oval and hanging out with bands such as No Fixed Address and Bart Willoughby. The originally drummer Johnny Crash and keyboard player came from Adelaide so there’s a connection there with half the band coming from Adelaide.
MODELS TOUR DATES
11th December – (Local &/or General) – Flying Saucer, Melbourne VIC
12th December – (Pleasure Of Your Company) – Flying Saucer, Melbourne VIC
15th December – The Gov, Adelaide SA
16th December – Astor, Perth WA
18th December – Factory, Sydney NSW
19th December – Coolangatta Hotel,Gold Coast QLD
20th December– Eatons Hill, Brisbane QLD
Whether it is rummaging through vinyl at record stores such as Clarity and Title finding hidden gems to scouring the internet to find that album by the next big thing or chasing bands to get that elusive autograph and photo his passion is music all the way.
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- Sick Of It All - January 19, 2017
- Refused - January 11, 2017
