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Jet.
There's no mistaking that Melbourne's Jet had a very rapid ascent
to stardom with their single Are You Gonna Be My Girl?,
but according to the drummer, Chris Cester, they've got a whole
lot more to give. When we spoke he was in Denver, Colorado,
in the middle of the Aussie Invasion Tour with The Living End
and The Vines. "It's a strong tour, it's really good," he enthuses.
"Everyone is having a great time. We haven't toured with an
Australian band like this since the Big Day Out Tour.
"American reporters are really factual, they'll write their bit on the Living End then they'll write their bit on Jet then they'll write their bit on The Vines. Everybody's getting their own little report. And the crowds have been great, every show has sold out and they're going mad. A lot of these kids haven't heard this kind of rock and roll before."
He's quick to note that the only thing Australian about the tour are the bands: "Its not like the tour posters have any Australian flags, but sometimes we get cheesy disc jockeys doing interviews and giving us a Crocodile Hunter gag and all that sort of shit."
Given the fact that Jet seemed to be unheard of one minute and the biggest Aussie rock band the next, I was curious to know just how things panned out for them.
"Are You Gonna Be My Girl? tore down a lot of doors for
us because it just kind of jumps out of the radio and it works
on all formats I guess," Cester shrugs. "Every radio station
can play it and although it's really influenced by older bands
it definitely doesn't sound like a record that was made in 1972.
It just feels like a hit single."
That's not to say that things have been exactly easy: "The only
thing that ever fell in to our lap was Are You Gonna Be My
Girl? - everything else we've worked for. The songs just
come out of nowhere and that's the hardest thing to explain,
where your songs come from. We toured America four times this
year and we have a really big presence because we're always
here, we live here and that's why we're selling records here.
We've been working pretty hard this year and a lot of great
things have happened really quickly for us, quicker than they
have for a lot of other bands."
Part of that success may have been brought about by giving their audience exactly what they want: "There is a little bit of variation," Cester says of the set. "If we feel like it's a crowd that takes warming up and then we have a ballad in the middle we might skip over the ballad and go straight in to the more party-orientated tunes. We pretty much play the same set because when you've been on tour for this long you find a set list that works and stick to it - you don't want to fuck with it too much."
If Cester sounds less-than-romantic about things, it's because he knows how much further the band have yet to go. "Signing an international deal is a pretty big step up in the very first place like really early on, but that doesn't guarantee you any kind of success. But there were a number of things that happened really early on - like playing with the Rolling Stones. We were pretty young and not really road-tested at that time. We'd been a band for a long time but we hadn't really gone on any tours in Australia; we'd only just played in Melbourne for ages."
Touring with the Stones made Jet realize their place in the scene: "I would never hope to even be in the same bracket as the Rolling Stones; I wouldn't ever want to shoot for anything like that because the second you start thinking about it is the second it's all going to fall down and you're never going to get there. As you say you want to be in the rock and roll hall of fame, that means you lose because if you don't do it naturally it's not going to happen. So I guess it wasn't a case of 'we could be this big' but a case of 'wow, how big are these guys?!'"
Jet have been touring non-stop for over a year and are looking forward stepping on home turf again: "It's gonna be awesome," Cester says of the 'Get Thee Gone Revue.' "We've got some really good friends of ours coming along on the tour. We've got The Pictures coming with us from Melbourne, The Stands from Liverpool [who are doing the eastern states leg] who have become probably our best friends. They're the band we have the most in common with anyway. They're fucking amazing!"
The band are well aware of the pressure to follow up 'Get Born''s enormous worldwide success. "There's no greater pressure than the pressure that's coming from within ourselves. We'd hate to think we could only achieve something like that once. Having such a successful first album has actually removed some of the pressure because we can take our time with making the second: we need four months off now to do it again and we will probably be afforded that sort of luxury," Cester explains. "We're not going to be rushed in to doing anything and I have huge faith in everybody in the band because there's three songwriters too which helps alleviate a lot of the pressure."
Jet were especially chuffed about Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
taking out the top spot in the Triple J Hottest 100: "That was
amazing," he gushes. "None of us expected it. We thought it
might be in the top 10 but to win it? We thought OutKast was
going to win. We had a huge party that night!" Would it be cheeky
to think that maybe Iggy Pop was feeling a little proud too?
"Hey, I'm sure Iggy Pop has heard all the countless Motown beats
that he ripped off himself!"
Kelly Parish
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dB Magazine proudly present Jet at Thebarton Theatre on Thurs 20 May with The Pictures and Bit By Bats. The show is completely sold out... but we still have one double pass up for grabs. See Prize Frenzy(tm) for details.
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