JOE FROM AUSTRALIA 9/01

RAMBLINGS FROM THE LAND DOWN UNDER by Joe Matera

Well, as we head into Spring down here and things warm up, the touring acts coming to Oz are getting hotter!…… For the first time in their entire 30 year career, metal legends Judas Priest are finally about to hit these shores of ours in late November.…..A few weeks ago, I had the good pleasure of seeing Slayer play to a packed out crowd at Festival Hall here in Melbourne. And what a show it was. Playing for almost 90 minutes, the band played selections from their entire career as well as performing new songs from their latest "God Hates Us All" release. After receiving an advance copy of the album about a week beforehand, hearing them performed fresh, live and reproduced perfectly onstage totally blew me away. The band was supported by Machine Head who were on their third visit here. The band's new disc "Supercharger" is set to be released here in early October………U.S. rockers Stabbing Westward (well, two of them) also were in town and played a fantastic acoustic set of selections from their new album.

Following up on my piece last month RE: the Backyard Babies. This is a transcript of my interview with frontman Nicke Borg.

Joe Matera: Welcome to Australia. This is your first trip down under?

Nicke Borg: Yes it is, it's the first time for everybody in the band and we're really excited. We just arrived last night and went out for good food in the St. Kilda area and it's fantastic. I already love this town. (Melbourne)

JM: You guy's epitomise the sex, drugs and rock and roll cliché, cause you don't just sing about it, you actually live it.

NB: Well we're not dead yet! (laughs) It depends on how you look at it. I think you can't do what we do if you don't really believe in it or are what you are. Before, we might have sung about stuff that we really didn't know what we were talking about…..I can can say it this way…I know what I'm talking about these days. I'm not sleeping with leather pants on and doing a line of cocaine the first thing in the morning and then drink Jack Daniels for breakfast. But if you do that, I think you'll die anyway, really. I never found anything glorious in a rock and roll death, but I definitely don't like people singing about shit like that and who don't know what they're talking about. There's lots of bands around that are thinking they can sell records by singing about cocaine and they've only smoked a joint when they were 16! So you have to be really soild and honest because I think a kid today can actually look through that and we try to be very non-political and take no responsibilty for anything. We're just a rock band the way it should be, a bit scary, a bit dangerous and outrageous.

JM: Dregen (Backyard Babies' lead guitarist) is quoted as saying, "We're probably the last true rock'n'roll band in the world".

NB: What he really means is that hopefully we're NOT the last rock and roll band. I think that we're one of the few around right now. Record companies are trying to put rock bands together the way they put boy bands together, especially in America, and I think that'll never work. I think what makes Backyard Babies unique and interesting and fresh today, is the fact that we're 4 guys that formed a band 12 years ago and constantly been playing together because we love it and we're having so much fun, and all of a sudden we're selling more records, and that takes us further and it has taken us to Australia here in 2001. I don't think there's too many bands that actually have done it or do it that way today. Also in general its been a lack of bands, 'cause its more like the producers now write some songs and get a face to be on the cover or someone to sing them, which is not really cool.

JM: Your current album "Making Enemies Is Good" shot straight to number one in your homeland of Sweden.

NB: That was a cool thing. The good thing about it is that the album actually went to No.1, not like a single or anything, cause there,s also a trend today that record company people want two good singles and the rest is just album filler tracks. We actually wanted to make that every song is a single and a great song like a classic album. And the album went to No.1, which proves that a lot of people bought our record and liked it, which was really cool. That's so much cooler than winning a Grammy, or whatever, 'cause that's also record company bullshit!

JM: You have just come from Japan. Where are you going next?

NB: We going to go and do 10 more festival gigs in Europe and then we're starting a full length European tour all over, and hopefully, be back in Australia and Japan again at the end of this year. We are going to go back to America at the beginning of next year when "Making Enemies Is Good" will be released there.

JM: So what has been the highlight of your entire time with the band?

NB: I think there's a lot more things to come, but so far it has been the AC/DC tour.

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