RegurgitatorFor over 20 years Brisbane-bred rockers Regurgitator have proudly positioned their frenetic live show as a cornerstone of their outfit's franchise, an element of the band far removed from their relatively slick studio incarnation and one reliant as much on blood, sweat and a seemingly boundless supply of expendable energy as it is their ever-expanding cache of catchy, oft-irreverent tunes.
Now after eight studio albums and a waft of EPs and compilations the Gurge have finally deigned to drop a live album to capture this force of nature in full flight; Nothing Less Than Cheap Imitations was taped over two nights at Melbourne's The Hi-Fi in late-2012, and the warts-and-all recording manages to capture their epic and unrelenting stage show in all its indubitable pomp and glory. It's an experience unlike any other, and 100% Regurgitator.
"We didn't go out of our way to pretty it up like a lot of bands might."
"It's a balls-and-all thing," chuckles frontman Quan Yeomans. "We did basically nothing to it - no overdubs or anything like that — so it's pretty raw, and when you hear yourself without too much going on in terms of mixing and production it's kinda scary, I think.
"I don't think Ben [Ely - bass/vocals] even listened to the mixes, he was just, like, 'Nuh, I can't do it!' I had to go through them and go, 'That one's probably not acceptable. That one's okay, we can let that pass', so we were a little bit tender about it I guess — or perhaps a little bit frightened and tentative maybe — but I think it's a good thing that it's pretty much how we sound. I wanted a sticker put on the front saying, 'Only listen if you've had four or five drinks or a lot of drugs' just to make it sound a little better! But I think it's good that we didn't go out of our way to pretty it up like a lot of bands might."
Furthermore Yeomans is acutely aware that the live realm is an inherently important element of the Regurgitator experience.
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"Yeah, I think it definitely is," he concedes. "I think we still put a lot of energy into it, even though we're old bastards, and I think that people really appreciate the energy that we give out. We're not the most slick live band out there, but we've been doing it for a long time and I think we know our material pretty well — it's fairly simple and not particularly complex, but we try and put a lot of energy into it and I think the crowds really appreciate it. In some ways it's kinda a '90s aesthetic as well — you see a lot of people who just stare at the ground and that's fine for whatever genres that's appropriate for — but our music is fun and 'up' kinda music so we try and put a lot of energy into it. Hopefully the bodies will hold out enough for us to be able to keep doing it for a while."
The two Melbourne shows that led to Nothing Less Than Cheap Imitations seem perfect in terms of both sonics and setlists, but Yeomans explains that recording the gigs for posterity was never their intention beforehand.
"No, not at all — they just happened to be recorded," he tells. "Maybe someone told us that there were desks taping or being recorded — I don't even remember — but it certainly wasn't a matter of, 'Okay, we better play well and be better rehearsed for these ones!' I don't think it was anything like that at all — they happened to be recorded from the desk by our mixer guy Greg. He may not have even had a hand in recording them — I'm not even sure about that — but he definitely mixed them and tried to pretty them up as much as he possibly could. But no, we weren't really preparing ourselves for it or anything like that so it was as much a surprise to us as anyone out there!"
With so many songs at their disposal these days has it become hard picking setlists? One would assume that certain songs are expected or even demanded at pretty much every gig they play?
"It was really weird, we did play one show recently up in Toowoomba for a graphic arts festival — like a graffiti festival — and it was the first show we'd played in about 18 months or something, and it was really fun but it was a new venue that had already had noise restrictions placed on it even though this was the first show there," The singer recounts. "So we were asked to end and it was the first time in forever that we didn't play ! (The Song Formerly Known As) — I don't think we've ever not played that one, so that was kind of odd. So that's one of the songs that we do really like playing but it's an upbeat, fun kinda song and everyone seems to enjoy it — some songs are definitely demanded more than others, but we normally play the songs that are fun for us to play and people like so it's a balance between those two things. There are some songs that we never play, and there are some songs that are demanded that we just don't remember how to play so we can never play it!"
According to Yeomans even during the songwriting process how a track is potentially going to translate live is a consideration that they have to take into account.
"I think when we first started out we were a band that got together a lot and we were well-rehearsed in an actual rehearsal room and that's where songs got their arrangement done a lot of the times, often the first riffs might come out of them as well — obviously they translate a lot better live in that case," he muses. "Then we started using electronic instruments and getting a bit more fancy in the studio with ProTools and all that sort of stuff, so it became a little bit trickier to translate live. I think we've probably gone a bit too far in some cases with that stuff, which makes it very difficult to do them without backing tracks, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't because you lose the vibe or whatever. But I think it is an important thing to think about, and maybe that's something we could have thought about a little bit more on a couple of the tunes, but generally we just try and wing it."
It's funny contemplating how many times they must have played early songs like Kong Foo Sing, Black Bugs and Polyester Girl (to name but a handful) over the years, but Yeomans attests that his relationship with that early material hasn't changed too drastically over time.
"We're there to jump around and shout and spit at people and scream in people's faces."
"Nah, it's strange because you'd expect to be pretty bored after playing some songs live over 600 or 700 times but it's a different feeling [in the live realm]," he smiles. "I can't listen to the records ever, or very rarely — the only time I'll re-listen to the records is when I have to relearn them because I've forgotten how to play something. I'll sit down then with a record or google the lyrics or whatever and actually have to listen to them, but that's normally too painful and cringeworthy for me to do. But when it comes to playing the songs actually live, you're so in the moment and into the crowd's feeling and the response you're getting from them — but the music itself is like riding a bike, you enjoy the energy that's coming between you and the audience more than anything else."
As an ardent music fan Yeomans has a soft spot for a good live album, even if his favourite isn't a proper live album in the strictest sense of the term.
"One of my favourite albums of all time is [Prince's 1984 movie soundtrack] Purple Rain and that's essentially a live album — there's like four or five tracks on it that are completely live, although that guy's phenomenal and you can't really tell until you hear the crowd noises come up at the end," he chuckles. "But there have definitely been a few great live albums. I think some bands don't sound anything like their recorded records, and when you go to see them live you're either really disappointed or you're completely surprised because you just had no idea that they would sound that way. I've had a lot of people say that about knowing our recorded music and then going to see the band live — it's a really different experience. I think it's nice to have both."
It would be boring eventually going to gigs anyway if all bands sounded exactly the same as they did on album.
"I think a lot of people are accused of that as well, although we're certainly not ever, ever going to be accused of that!" Yeomans rails. "Even with a live album out there now, there's no guarantee that we could ever play it the same way that we played it on the live record anyway — it's pure chaos. Especially in the early days, there was that element of chaos that we just let happen. But a lot of bands are a lot more finicky about stuff like that live, and they do want to replicate the sounds and maybe make it more of a rich tapestry onstage and be truer to their records. We're just, like, 'whatever' — we're there to jump around and shout and spit at people and scream in people's faces, that's kinda more important to us."
The Regurgitator members always look like they're having a blast while performing live, and Yeomans attests that this image is far from being an affectation.
"Oh, definitely," he says without pause. "I mean touring itself can be a little bit tiring after a while — 'the long tired' is often what I call it by the end of a tour, after seven weeks or whatever you're just completely destroyed by it. Not to mention your shoes being completely destroyed by it as well, which is something that people don't think about. But 90% of the time it's a real blast. The other 10% of the time it can be a real downer because things aren't working onstage or you've got a particularly low turnout or something terrible goes wrong, but generally we smile and roll with the punches. We'll get on each other's nerves occasionally onstage, but it happens less and less now. We run pretty efficiently I think, which allows us to focus on the fun. And the simplistic nature of the music also helps as well — if you have complicated music to produce then you do have to focus a little bit more than we generally do, so I think it would make it a little bit harder to maybe enjoy it in the same way. What I'm trying to say is that it's a fairly visceral experience, so it's kinda enjoyable for us up there."
And once the impending tour to launch Nothing Less Than Cheap Imitations has finished, the next plan of attack for the Gurge is something a little less ordinary.
"We've been working on something that's not really music-related — there are musical elements to it, but it's more of a visual thing," Yeomans reveals. "That will be the next six months, sourcing a lot of creatives and just sticking it together. But that's a bigger kind of project — it's basically going to be a show of sorts, although we haven't pitched it to anyone yet. We're sticking together a pilot at this point, and it's a mixed-media type thing with all sort of different things like puppets — it's going to be kids-based, because we're all fathers now so it's close to our heart. It's just something a little bit different, and something that takes from our background — that chaotic aesthetic and that crude aesthetic as well — but it's something a little bit more unusual than what may be out there in the Australian landscape currently. It's a big project and it's going to take a while to get off the ground, but we're working towards it now. I'd like to do some more music, but time is a major factor. My kid just started childcare today and it's such a weird feeling, because I have two days of the week now which are actually mine which is completely strange. But we'd like to work on an EP of new music too at some stage soon."
