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Duncan James.
 Even
following five exhausting months of promotion for his album
‘The Speed Of Life,’ Duncan James projects an aura of calmness
and that belies his demanding schedule. Furthermore, he’s a
generous artist; he let me sneak three potato wedges from his
plate without complaint.
When I note that his schedule has obviously been quite hectic since the release of his debut album, ‘The Speed Of Life,’ he’s quick to agree. "I haven’t stopped for the last five months. I joined a frequent flyer’s program in July ‘cause I figured I’d probably be doing a lot of flying and I earned a silver membership five months later! It’s been huge. Getting all that radio play for The Speed Of Life, and now the support for the new single [She’s A Satellite], and coming out and starting to do a few gigs...
"It’s hard to get perspective on, sort of being at the centre of the storm, you know? The record company’ll send me e-mails saying this song has gone to this position on the charts, or this song’s getting this much radio play... I got recognised in a restaurant the other night, and it makes you think about ‘what is it that Guy Sebastian’s going through right now? What is fame, what does it mean, what’s it worth?’ It’s a strange trip."
It’s a strange trip that’s set him on the same path as such renowned artists as Alex Lloyd, and James has a story or two to tell about his fellow singer-songwriter.
"Alex and I were cris-crossing in the studios, making our records at the same time: I’d be in one studio in Sydney, and he’d be in the other room doing stuff, then I’d go off to another studio to mix and Alex was upstairs: I'd be like ‘whaddya doing, following me around?’" he laughs. "He actually stole a six-pack of beer, so every time I see him it’s like, ‘mate, you still owe me for the Crownies!’ There’s like a communal fridge in the studio, and I came down at the end of one night to have a beer and go home..."
And he plans to collect, too. "Absolutely. Put that in your article. Lloydy, fess up: I know it was you!"
James asks me what I think of ‘Australian Idol’ mere seconds before I was going to ask him the very same question. "It seems to me like it’s ‘you’ve gotta have an angle, it’s all about the angle’, and their’s is that it’s so manufactured that they’re letting everyone in on it. It’s strange, isn’t it? But truth be told, it’s probably paying for my next video since it’s with the same record company I’m signed to [BMG]. I think there’s a place for it, you know? I think that the people who are into ‘...Idol’ aren’t really gonna be into the Duncan James experience anyway: it’s obviously mostly aimed at pre-pubescent girls, and I don’t think they’re really gonna be terribly interested in hearing me sing about the speed of life," he chuckles.
"I think Guy’s a great singer, too. There’s no denying that guy can really, really sing. If only he’d used his powers for good instead of evil!" he laughs. "And it’s not his fault, he only entered a contest."
Ten years is a long time to work at getting into the music industry. "I used to shelve books at Dymocks, and this sure beats doing that for a living. There were lots of other shitty jobs: I worked at a deli in King’s Cross and got held up twice, that was pretty full on. Worked in video shops... actually, video shops used to be great, we had all these girls’ numbers in the database, and..."
Stopping James’ anecdote there for fear of some sort of career-damaging, privacy-related lawsuit, I steer the conversation to what influenced him musically.
"Radio. When I was a kid, growing up in the suburbs, doing my homework, I listened to so much radio. I sometimes used to go to sleep with the radio under my pillow, ‘cause I grew up in very boring suburbs of Brisbane, and it was like the radio was this portal to a magical, mythical, groovy outside world. Of course, then when I got into the industry and found out how songs really get airplay and how they’re all pre-recorded and everything... well, there were a lot of myths debunked there!"
Justin Blatchford
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Duncan James’ new single She’s A Satellite is out now through BMG. See Prize Frenzy"! for giveaways.
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