the pelicans

Rip It Up, Issue 78, 1 January 1984, Page 16

the pelicans

Duncan Campbell

A wondrous bird is the pelican Its beak can hold more than its belly can.. And with eight hungry mouths to feed, in these wage-frozen times, playing music on a scale as large as Wellington's Pelicans do is, in the words of guitarist, vocalist and frontman Bill Lake, "a financial disaster."

One or two Pelicans are on the dole. Some, like Bill, are posties and the rest have other 9 to 5 jobs, allowing them to play their favourite music as an art form, rather than just another form of bread and scrape. "1 quite often write words to songs when I'm walking around on my postie run," says Bill. "It seems to come very easily, I get whole verses that way."

So did another writer, one James K. Baxter, who could well have trodden the same streets. But Bill is far too modest a man to ever consider himself a poet. He's just playing the music he loves with friends of similar tastes, ie, soultinged R&B with a saucy dash of funk. The Pelicans can bend down low and still strut on the same street. Tight, but loose, if you get my drift.

The Pelicans were born in September 1982, as a four-piece with a couple of horn players. Bill's experience dates back to Mammal, the seminal electric funk band that included such luminaries as Rick Bryant (no need for a list) and Robert Taylor (Dragon), and a jug band called the Windy City Strugglers. After Mammal, Bill dropped out for a while, "learning to play the guitar" as he puts it,

then reformed the Strugglers as a semi-electric band ("pretty dire"). This led eventually to the forerunners of the Pelicans, known as the Ducks.

The Pelicans came together following the breakup of the nearlegendary Hulamen. From that band came horn players David Armstrong and Peter Formularo, guitarist Stephen Jessup and bass player Nick Bollinger.

Formularo is credited with some of the excellent horn arrangements that characterise Pelican songs. He left last year to cross the Tasman, but the horn section was strengthened by saxists Brian BrownSharp and Tim Nees and trumpeter Simon Lewis. Another important addition to the lineup was ex Hulamen drummer Andrew Cross. Bill describes him as "very special", a man of modern influences, who injects the funk into the sound. This is the lineup which secured a regular weekly gig at Wellington's infamous Cricketers Arms pub, and also recorded the Pelicans' debut album 8 Duck Treasure.

"We didn't pay ourselves for six months, in order to make that record," says Bill. "But it was worth it. Basically, we went very well, considering the sort of constraints we were under, what with money and time, and the fact that six out of the eight of us had daytime jobs. We had to do very late nights."

The album was recorded in a couple of weeks between last September and October, in the Broadcasting Corporation's studios. Some may sneer, but these studios, mundane though some of their tasks may be, produce a remarkably good sound, especially for drums. The album was produced by Tony Burns, who had previously worked with the Hulamen and Pelicans soundman Nigel Stone. "We didn't have the problems which the Hulamen had," recalls Bill. 'They recorded in different places and, as a result, they got a lot of different sounds on the record. We got a very unified sound."

Making a record is always an education and, of course, Bill is keen to try making another one "sometime", typifying his very easy-going approach to music and life in general. The three Auckland gigs played over the second weekend of 1984 were the biggest the Pelicans had played outside the capital, not counting last year's Brown Trout festival. Plans for the future centre on a major university campus tour next month. Bil was pleased by the Auckland reaction, but is wary of taking things too far, too fast. The pressures of touring, without breaking space to reflect, do not appeal. 'Touring can't really be on the agenda, as long as we've all got these jobs. I don't really like touring, and I think we do as well, musically, by staying where we are, and getting out just once in a while. That's really good, but I wouldn't iike to be doing it all the time.

"As far as I'm concerned, and I think, as far as Nick and Stephen are concerned, they've done it before, they know the pitfalls of touring, and they're still reasonably keen, but they know it's probably not a good idea to do it all the time. I don't think it's good for the music. You do become very tight, but you also become stale unless you've got time to sit down and write new songs, arrange them, think, freshen up your ideas. "But still, it really feels good to be singing with this band. I never knew some of these songs could sound so good." Pelicans can fly, but only when they really want to.