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28 Days.
Whilst on hold waiting to talk to 28 Days' frontman Jay Dunne I overhear another conversation in the corner of the room I'm in. A couple of seemingly normal people were talking about 'Australian Idol'. I throw out my list of carefully-prepared questions and ask Dunne about his thoughts on the phenomenon that has swept the country once again.
"I think it's great," he begins, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I think it gives an opportunity to a lot of artists who make some great music and can really add something to the Australian scene. The songwriting abilities alone are just mind boggling, really." Joking over, he sighs. "I think what every other artist thinks: I mean, at least my band is original. 'Australian Idol' is evil and it's dumb."
When I ask Dunne about the band's new album 'Extremist Makeover' he fires a question straight back at me, asking whether I had listened to it and what I thought. I told him that although all of the tracks have the signature 28 Days sound, the album still dabbles in a variety of musical genres. Dunne pauses.
"I'm on the inside looking out so I suppose it's a bit different for meā" he muses. "Our albums are always like that. I think if we stuck to the one style for a whole record, we'd end up getting bored with it - I think we've all got a bit of ADD. One day we want to write a hip-hop song and the next day we want to write an emo song," he laughs.
"I guess we dick our fans around a bit like that - not intentionally, but for a fan that just likes punk music, we're probably a pain in the ass. In the end we play whatever we feel like. If you listened to our whole collection from start to finish you'd realise that we just can't settle on one sound and that's cool with me because I don't really want to anyway."
As the conversation turns to the band's upcoming national tour, Dunne regales me with anecdotes about 28 Days' experiences playing shows in the snowfields.
"The first time we ever went up there it was a really shit show, we expected a bit more of it, but every show since then has been really good. The first one though..." he laughs, already on a roll. "Our old sound guy Tony used to drive like a real asshole but he's a really good bloke. So we were all in the Tarago going like the clappers down [the venue's] private road. This bouncer saw us doing it, then five minutes later he burst into the room and screamed 'Who was driving like a fucking idiot?' We were all like 'I don't know, did you see his face, because we don't know, sorry man.' Any way, he just cracked it and took our dope and said he was confiscating it. We told the hotel that we didn't want him working the show that night... and he ended up turning up at the show.
"That night as luck would have it, I just completely lost my voice about one song into the show and they were spewing - so basically they got the shittest show ever. We weren't happy either because the bouncer was working there. Then just when we thought it was over, at the end of the night they pissed our tour manager off when he went to get the money. When he went backstage the same fuckwit of a bouncer basically told him he wasn't allowed anywhere near the office. Our tour manager said to him 'You're that dickhead from last night, aren't you? You're not even meant to be working here are you, you dickhead?' So the bouncer grabbed him and threw him through a plate glass window. The bouncer ended up getting surrounded by dudes who were going to smash him and he ended up vomiting, it was just crazy," Dunne laughs. "The cops turned up and we told them that the bouncer had just thrown our tour manager through a window and that he was actually there working, but the copper said he couldn't do anything about it. That was one of our first shows in the snow so we were pretty scarred from it. Every show after that has been ace compared to that."
He pauses. "Plus you get to snowboard for free. Which I absolutely fucking love."
Sam Vinall
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'Extremist Makeover' is out now through FMR and 28 Days will be in Adelaide in November.
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