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Rip It Up, Issue 86, 1 September 1984, Page 8

Russell Brown

Jordan Luck may have joked that the Dance Exponents would crack Australia in two weeks but when they left this country five months ago they all knew they'd have to work harder as a band than they ever had here.

And they did playing a string

of support gigs (with the occasional headliner to 100 or more people) and paying themselves only SSO a week each. The experience seems to have left them a lot less naive and considerably more professional. They think, however, that starting from the bottom and working up was the right approach. "Starting off from the bottom you get a respect from other

bands," . vr ' , ,ins guitarist Brian Jones. "The bands who have gone over with the hype usually end up crapping out because they’re resented by the Australian bands and you cannot do that. You’ve got to go through the music industry thing before you can get to the people and if you’re not accepted in the music industry there’s no way the people are going to accept you because they won’t even know who you are.” However, on returning from their New Zealand tour, it will be time for a different approach. "We’ve worked out the market, we’ve hopefully built up some credibility there by playing live. We’ve got the single (‘Sex and Agriculture’) now and we want to push that as much as we can. We’ve got something to work for,” Brian explains. They’re also looking to appearing on some of Australia’s numerous TV music shows, having already clocked up a couple of songs on a Saturday night show that goes out to four million viewers. ‘Sex and Agriculture’ is undeniably more assertive sounding than any previous Exponents record and they’re full of praise for the producer and engineer Jim Barton. They will do their next single with Barton producing and, if that works out, he will produce the second album. But why was the sound so much better? "You’re able to get sounds you just couldn’t in New Zealand,” explains guitarist Chris Sheehan. “You say to the guys ‘we want it to sound like this’ and they get it and it sounds like that. They don’t say ‘oh, can’t do that,’ they try anything.” "Everybody’s safe here, they don’t want to blow up their monitors or anything,” Brian continues. "They’ve spent a lot of money on these big, fancy setups but they don’t want to pump them and get them happening because they’re scared that they might blow them up and have to send to England to get new parts.” NZ’s top-flight studios are, however, very similar to those across the Tasman and there is a

strong possibility that the next o ,rT i will be recorded here with an J,, cer. The main reason is cost, especially si&. f icant as the Exponents are consider «funding the recording themselvi. leasing the album back to iv._ . room Records subsidiary White Label, as Hunters and Collectors have done. "That gives you total freedom of choice over everything songs, sounds, cover, everything,” Brian explains. Tales of mistreatment of support bands by Australian road crews are legion but the Exponents claim the stories are highly exaggerated. "As far as that Oz rock sort of attitude that people seem to think these roadies have bands having to set up to one side and that sort of thing, it’s all bullshit really. We never found any problem. From whatl can tell support bands in this country get a harder time from certain crews here,” says Brian. “We were usually allowed just about all the light show but you had to help put it up of course. So long as you did your share you were treated well,” adds Dave, who actually did some outside crew work for extra money. The New Zealand tour has meant a sizeable wage increase for the band but much of that will go into repaying loans, both to friends and relatives and to Jordan Luck, who has earned several thousand dollars in songwriting royalties from Prayers Be Answered. It’s the next album that Dance Exponents are pinning their hopes on. They’re keen to succeed not only in Australia but outside it. In fact, if things began to happen elsewhere they rather like the idea of basing themselves in New Zealand. They like it a lot better than Sydney and, of course, overseas money buys lots of SNZ these days. And it’ll stop the ockers claiming them as a “new Australian band” if they do succeed. Any last words? Sure. Altogether now: “We’d like to see the Labour government remove the sales tax on New Zealand records!”