Still Screaming

"I was saying to someone just before, The Angels and the Jets – it sounds like something out of West Side Story,” jokes singer Dave Gleeson, who’s been fronting The Angels the past three years as well as fronting The Screaming Jets – which he started with the only other remaining original member, bass player Paul Woseen – for 25 years. And it’s the fact that it’s been 25 years since the Jets formed in the port city of Newcastle that sees Gleeson talking to The Music not only about the Jets’ Atomic 47 tour and Jets’ history but also Jets’ future.

“We’ve ended up recording four tracks,” he explains the release of a new EP, Razor, “because I haven’t had time to do the whole album, but we’re stoked – they’re kind of up and punchy and got plenty of attitude and they sound like Screaming Jets songs of old to us, so we’re really excited about people hearing ‘em and we’ve actually been able to include a couple in the set already.

“Releasing an EP was kind of what we did with [1992’s] Tear Of Thought album. We just wanted to get something out there and didn’t want to rush an album, so if we can get four great tracks out there, we can whet people’s appetite with that. Paul has an absolute plethora of songs that we’re looking at basing the whole [new] album around, ‘cause he’s written some of my favourite and the band’s favourite songs over the years, so I just thought it’d be nice to let him write the bare bones of it, and if he needs any help, he can get us to come in, whether it be lyrical or musical, and we can kind of work around that.”

Newcastle was still very much a blue-collar, working-class town back in 1989 when The Screaming Jets took a punt on stepping out of the obligatory four-sets-a-night covers scene as an original band, a punt that paid off as they signed their first record contract with INXS manager Chris Murphy’s long-since gone label, rooArt, in a Lear jet flying down to Sydney from Newcastle. Twenty-five years and a dizzying roster of record labels later, there are six studio albums, two live albums, four EPs and more than a handful of hit singles from which to draw a celebratory setlist.  

Alongside Gleeson and Woseen, The Screaming Jets 2014 includes Jimi Hocking, back in the band six years after an initial stint ’93 to ’97, guitarist Scott Kingman, who joined in 2007, and drummer Mick Sayers, who joined in 2005.

“I’m proud that we can still get out there and pull crowds and do a national tour and stuff. But I guess we were very lucky from the start to get the opportunity to tour, go on national supports with bands like The Angels, Radiators, Choirboys, and get their work ethic, which was play anywhere that you possibly could as may times as you could.”