SALAD DAZE

Rip It Up, Issue 173, 1 December 1991, Page 14

SALAD DAZE

One of local music’s best kept secrets, Salad Daze have spent the last couple of years playing plenty of shows in Auckland and : elsewhere, even releasing a self-financed single, yet they’ve never really recieved the attention they deserve. This may be about to change though, the band’s tight, hard sound impressed both audiences and the headliners at the recent Fugazi show,and another self-released single is out. With the addition of a new drummer, Salad Daze are sounding better than ever, and vocalist Keiran, bassist Robbie and drummer Myles were even willing to be interviewed. Myles suggested a strip club, which was vetoed, although his reasoning seemed sound. ““I've always been fond of naked sweaty women, and | just figured why not get the guys together? It just felt comfortable, | like those surroundings. Its the thought of the - old men in their trench coats and the

lust and the smell. It felt comfortable to me.” Fortunately Myles was being interviewed by phone, so we could basically ignore him and talk about important stuff, like the response to - the last single. “We even sold them in Europe through friends and contacts. Simon (guitar) gets records from people over there and they were interested in taking a few and selling them. We had a really good response from them too, a guy in Sweden loved it, and we've even had Jello Biafra trying to get copies.” The whole deal of releasing and marketing your own single is a good concept, it means you've been able to retain a very strong independence. _ MYLES:“Basically we're nobodies and we don'tfit into the scene, we're not cool enough for the cool crowd and we're not bogus enough for the bogus crowd, so that’s it.” ROBBIE:"We wanted to do it ourselves, and no one seemed all that inferested in helping anyway, so

we just went ahead.” Do you see a boom happening in local independent bands¢ KEIRAN: “There’s not really all that many acts, no one really fits anywhere and not that many bands are playing, so | don't really see it.” So you don't see New Zealand becoming the new Seattle? - R: “Every band sounds completely different, there’s not really a grunge scene or whatever, so | can't see it happening.” ; Maybe it's the new 70s, you guys have a severe Kiss fixation it seems, even covering ‘Rock and Roll Al Night'. (Rob, ever mindful of credibility screams denial, but Myles, known more for stupidity than credibilty lets this gem slip.) M: “That's a horrible song, we would never have done that if | was in the band. | was once in a band that used to cover ‘Rock and Roll Doctor’ which is an incredible song. | was a Kiss fan, used to draw Kiss logos all over the walls. | was even in an Air guitar contest doing a Kiss song in the 7th Grade. We were really embarrassed because we had to use yard sticks as we'd forgotten our guitars!” Thanks Myles, that's great. Rather than end on that note, why don't you tell me about the new 7" (R)"OK., if's a four song 7", and it was recorded at Airforce studios, and it was the last thing we did with Luke." =t Your sound has changed a bit hasn't ite : R: “Yeah, now we've got Myles the fast songs don't work as we 11...” K: “Yes they do, it's just now we can do all this stuff we couldn’t do before, a new range of stuff we'd never thought about before. We've slipped into a different groove, it's not a ‘more’ or a ‘less’ thing, it's completely different. The tempo is slower, and the structure is more complicated and interesting. The emphasis is more on the feel.” You've done well to get this far and build this much of an audience, so what’s the next move? Another single? R: “l want to do another single early next year” : K: “Yeah, we want to record some stuff we wrote with Myles. | think it's the best we've written, so who knows what will happen?”

KIRK GEE