Bad//Dreems Choose Bongs And Music Over Playing Footy

Bad//Dreems

Half of Bad//Dreems — frontman Ben Marwe and guitarist Alex Cameron — are seated at a beer garden table with three empty beer jugs between them. They look snappy, have bothered to don collared shirts today and you can immediately tell they adore music as well as talking about music (their own or just music in general). After proudly handing this scribe a copy of their excellent debut album, Dogs At Bay, the duo are chatty and amiable.

"I just sort of got blown away by the whole bong and weed scene, and then I put footy on the back burner."

A knee injury sustained at "the start of 2013" prevented Marwe from seriously pursuing football as a career and Cameron praises, "Ben's a fantastic footballer. I used to love watching him. He's a real smooth mover; really skillful." Aside from the injury, it was when Marwe moved in with Bad//Dreems' touring guitarist that he kinda lost his footy mojo: "I just sort of got blown away by the whole bong and weed scene, and then I put footy on the back burner. I put on a lot of weight and I started eating Subway and Macca's for dinner."

"You've gotta stay on strict cocaine for football," Cameron adds cheekily. "Or the odd bit of ice doesn't go astray — Benny Cousins, you know?" In retrospect, Marwe allows, "It was a blessing in disguise that I did my knee, really, because it gave me more time and less guilt — no guilt of not being able to play football and being able to tour and do whatever I want with music... As long as I can kick the footy with my children when I'm older, I'll be happy."

Cameron confirms he "finished medicine in 2006" and is now a doctor, specialising in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Have any patients recognised him? "A couple, actually, but they've been usually people that are in bands or something. I was gonna be a doctor, but I didn't have the patience." Laughter all 'round. Marwe encourages, "Chuck that one in."

 "I was gonna be a doctor, but I didn't have the patience."

"The two worlds are very separate," Cameron continues, "Like, you know, I get back to work and they're like, 'Oh, what did you do on the weekend?' And I'm like, 'Oh, I had a gig in Melbourne.' They're like, 'Oh, covers, is it?' I'm like, 'Nah, nah, just originals'." Marwe interjects from the perspective of one of Cameron's colleagues, "Do you know a band called Chunky Custard?" Cameron chuckles, "Chunky Custard's a renowned cover act over in Adelaide." Just in case you're wondering, playing music in the operating theatre has "actually been shown to prove efficiency if it's played at a low level". "Recently I put on, like, the Tame Impala album and everyone's like, '[puts on straight-laced voice] Ooh, this is not bad. Quite a nice beat to it!'"

Cameron confirms that Adelaide's sporadic live music scene is the reason they started the band in the first place: "if you can't go and watch music — we just did it ourselves." And the state of Bad//Dreems' origin is something they can't deny. "If we were pretending that we were hipsters from Brooklyn, but we actually lived in Adelaide, people can see through that a mile away," Cameron observes. "And the fact is, like, we met at a football club and, I mean, I love music and love being creative, but we're not sort of, you know, trendy young male models... We try and be honest and then people relate to that."