Reefs' great ideas!

Rip It Up, Issue 44, 1 March 1981, Page 6

Reefs' great ideas!

Annlouise Martin

The Reels’ chief lyricist, and lead vocalist is Dave Mason, who comes from Dubbo. Drummer John Bliss, and guitarist, synthesist Craig Hooper also come from Dubbo. Polly Newham comes from Orange, another town in New South Wales, bassist Paul Abrahams comes from Bankstown in Sydney’s western suburbs, and Karen Anseli comes from Melbourne. The band was over here for Sweetwaters, and a February tour. Now the Reels are back in Australia for a brief tour and rest, while they sort out a new drummer to replace Bliss, who is leaving. Those who spotted them here can look forward to a return sometime around June.

They started off 2 years ago with 2 singers, guitar, bass, and saxophone, and were doing lots of jazz numbers when Sydney’s FM station 2JJ rescued them from Dubbo. They were taken to the big city, where the station put them live on air; a few demos were done; and a few jobs resulted. About a month later the band was approached by Polygram. 1979 saw the release of ‘Love Will Find A Way', which became a local hit in Melbourne and Brisbane. The single ‘Prefab Heart’ followed, and the EP Five Great Christmas Ideas (all covers), off which the song 'According To My Heart’ has had great success, was on the market late last year. Dave explains the EP’s popularity. “The EP is middle of the road. In Sydney it’s being played on all the radio stations. 2CH is the ultimate in MOR, and we're on their high rotation list. They play sick people like Des O’Connor and Val Doonican. Plus we’ve reached every FM station, including MOR, right through to the more adventurous FM like 2JJ. We’ve broken all barriers because the song is so accessible. Grandmothers love it, and so do kids. We’ll probably never repeat it unless we do something like it again.” The bulk of Reels’ material is original. Although Dave writes most of the lyrics, he doesn’t place too much emphasis on their importance, stressing the "throw away' character of pop. “It’s totally disposable. Every pop song we do usually is, but the melodies should be strong. We’re trying to get away from pop now. Our first album (The Reels ) was very pop inclined.

While here, the band took time Out to record at Mandrill studios, before returning to Australia with the tapes for mixing. They’re full of praise for the set up, and the engineering talents of Graham Myre. The session went smoothly, with tracks being laid down for a “heavy metal” EP, A Change Is As Good As A Holiday. Guitars were used instead of synthesisers, and a rhythm machine instead of drummer John, with overdubs on real drums later.

Dave puts recording as the band’s priority, video clips run second. "This is purely because you don’t have to play live in Australia that much, or here, for that matter, you can get just as far on the recorded product, and video clips, but it depends. If only we had lots of money to spend on live presentation. It bugs us because the live presentation level is very important. We’re totally unsatisfied with what we’re doing we'd like to use video and film more.”

The Reels go for a clean looking stage setup. Karen makes the contrasting stage costume, while headsets do away with microphones. They were hoping to pick up a computer mix down desk and a computer lighting rig when they went home. Dave feels the headsets enable him to move more freely, but demand more voice control than the normal microphone because you can’t move the headset to regulate voice level, and you can’t shout too much.

He agrees with the “over 50's" consensus of loud music hurting your ears. “We have speakers in all four corners. You don’t get so many dead spots in a room that way, and people in the back can hear better. It’s not loud, it’s more present. You don’t go home with a headache after that big rock and roll bass boom. We're trying to leave that behind because we don’t want to be deaf when we’re 30.”

Looking for inspiration in the pop area, the Reels all have the Beach Boys in common as a favourite pop vocal group. (“Seventies Beachboys, Beachboys Love You is our favourite.”) "As far as pop songs go, they’re all cliches, because they’ve all been done before. It's virtually a . joke. We’re also influenced by jazz, country music, and classical. first we tried to put all that stuff in, but people couldn’t accept it, so we went back i to playing l flat "out rock and roll, and slowly developed, back to what we were, and audiences understand it better now.”

Commenting on differences between playing here and in Australia, Dave points out our telephones are back to front.- We are given credit for being more polite, however there is a similarity with Queensland in the numbers of police hanging around at gigs. (The Reels were particularly dismayed when the paddy wagons were loaded up at the end of one Gluepot night.) “It’s just like playing another state of Australia.”