The Porkers
Soundwave 2014 is almost here and despite all the headlines at the minute one Aussie band that punters can look forward to seeing giving it a red hot go are The Porkers. Hard to believe they’ve clocked up an impressive twenty seven years and are still going strong. Front man Pete Cooper is the heart and soul and the driving force behind The Porkers who talks to Across The Ocean about their inclusion on the bill.
Are you psyched for Soundwave 2014?
All pumped and getting ready…
Was there much to the headlines between your management and AJ Maddah?
Awww, ahhh, there was a bit to it that we need not go in to it. There was some miscommunication and it could have been really bad but it is all good now.
How far back does your relationship go with AJ?
It goes way back to the nineties and I met him around the traps so it has been fifteen or sixteen years I’ve known him.
Being one of a handful of bands representing Australia must be a huge buzz?
The whole thing is mind blowing and to think that it is 2014 and The Porkers are playing a festival as big as this and Rocket From The Crypt are on the same bill as well is like woooaaah! Just the fact that there are so many good Australian acts going round and we’re one of the few that made it is great.
Do you put any expectations about what may flow on beyond the Soundwave tour?
Well, you never know but at the moment we’re just doing Soundwave and a warm up show in Newcastle beforehand. Hopefully there will be another New South Wales show later but that’s all I’ve got the current line up of guys to commit to at the moment. It’s like lets go and do some fucking good shows and we’ll all see how we feel and survive it at the end.
Do you do anything special to prepare for this tour?
In the spirit of The Porkers we should be doing plenty of beer drinking but that’s not the case. I’ve been trying to get match fit for the last couple of months so I’m working towards that so that I can put on a Porkers show that is better than it ever was so that we’re just a bunch of old Porkers standing around on stage.
Is working out the set list going to be a tough task?
I don’t know if it is a good challenge or not as we don’t even know how long we’re playing for yet. So to work out an exact set is a bit tricky but we are definitely doing a selection of the full catalogue. We’ve been working out sets for if we play for this long the set will have this many songs or that long the set will have that many songs. Then it’s like, ok, we need to take a couple out but which ones? If we take this one out why are we taking that one out? It’s all a bit of a juggle as to what will be best and taking in to consideration which songs are the shortest songs that we can do so we can play more songs than if we did playing the longer songs.
Are there any other bands on the bill that get you excited about being a part of it?
Always good to catch up with our mates from Less Than Jake again, Stiff Little Fingers but it is a total mind fuck about which bands we’ll be able to see and hang out with. We’re hoping to do as much as possible.
Is there any secret to longevity of The Porkers?
Its twenty seven years this year and twenty years since the release of our debut Grunt. The only secret is my sheer determination and stupidity. I’ve always been the driving force and I think it is my want and need to perform so that’s what’s kept things rolling.
30th anniversary coming up, any plans?
Too early to tell at this stage although three years isn’t that far away. I remember the time we were up to our eighteenth year then the goal was that we were close enough to twenty that we kept going to the twenty. I dare say the thirtieth will be celebrated somehow.
What do you do in between gigs?
We all have day jobs and I run my own screen printing business in Newcastle called Hard Core logo and I specialise in doing band merchandise such as t-shirts and other band stuff. I also do a lot of prints for Roller Derby and we’ve just released our own line of rockabilly punk, custom culture, roller derby merchandise.
Are there any plans beyond Soundwave?
No plans beyond Soundwave at this stage apart from one show pencilled in for after Soundwave. I didn’t want the new guys in the line up to feel that they had to commit to The Porkers forever and keep flogging things. So it’s this bunch of shows and we’ll see how we feel at the end of it. New material is a possibility as we’ve written a couple of new songs but we won’t be performing them on this run but may be recording them and get them out in some way without committing to any sort of playing. We’ll see how it goes…
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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