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The Tremors.
When Brisbane rockers The Tremors released their debut album
late last year - the sweat and booze soaked 'Cash Up Front,
No Kissing' - music legend Spencer P. Jones described it as
being "like the idea of Teen Wolf Michael J Fox being tortured
with burning cigarettes by Tura Satana before being thrown off
Brisbane's Story Bridge." And, according to keyboard player
Eleanor Logan, that sums it up pretty accurately. But what does
that actually mean anyways?
"You know, you get something about the world that's just so picture-perfect and then you just want to fuck it up," Logan explains emphatically. "We could write a pop record and it would be all like, 'yummy, yummy, yummy I've got love in my tummy,' but it's like we just wanna crank our amps to distortion. I wanna play the bass of my organ 'til it's like the brown note and makes everyone poo their pants, Geoff [Corbett, vocals] just wants to gyrate and swing his sweat all over the audience and unsuspecting women, Cec [Condon, drums], well he can just pound the drums 'til he breaks himself in half. We just wanna throw everything into it, and we don't want it to end up sounding all sweet and nice."
That aesthetic was probably helped by recording the album just metres from a brothel. "Well, you know, the guys, they kept going for lunch breaks; I'm not sure what they were doing," Logan laughs. "But we had a very sleazy kind of vibe in some of the songs, lyrically: prostitution, drug use, alcoholism, trying to get laid late at night in bars. I think that the setting put us in the right vibe to record the album."
Our conversation continues on in this energetic fashion and eventually - and inevitably - gets around to Logan's favourite part of being in a band: the booze. Would she still be playing in The Tremors if it weren't for the rider? "Of course I would be!" she retorts quickly. "I'd just be sneaking drinks in the back door! There's nothing I love more then getting pretty drunk and getting on stage with The Tremors. Because, face it, I've been playing the piano for almost 20 years. Playing my keyboard parts isn't really that challenging live, you know? I just like to lose it and then put more into the stage show because I can still play inebriated. And it's the best night out, I can tell ya."
It seems a Tremors tour is just a continuous serious of best-night-outs; but sometimes the party goes too far. "Oh man it always goes too far," Logan corrects me. "One time Cec vomited on stage. He was swallowing it, and he had to stop the song in the middle and went out the back. We're all waiting, going, 'where the fuck'd our drummer go?' Then he comes back, counts in the song and we start playing where we dropped off," Logan proudly explains. "He used to vomit every show because of nerves, and then he started drinking a lot to overcome the nerves, and then he started vomiting from the alcohol. These days we've whipped him into shape."
The Tremors story is filled with similar tales. Last year's Homebake festival saw Logan get on stage after being awake (and drunk) for three days straight after some massive inner city pub-crawling. "I didn't sleep and then we had to get up, fly to Sydney, play Homebake. By that point I was having heart palpitations so I had to start drinking just to not have a heart attack before we played. Oh my god, I think it was the best show The Tremors ever had."
So fans can pretty much expect anything at the C&A, although Logan has some predictions: "They can expect to probably get laid after the show. Not with us, but with some other people. Apparently people get a bit horny when they watch The Tremors. It's always nice for people to think that there's some kind of sexual incentive for paying ten dollars to come to a show, though I don't know how much that Cranker show is," she muses. "Dollar off if you take your top off at the door!"
Matt Vesely
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The Tremors play at the Crown & Anchor on Sat 21 May with Manic Distortion and Firewitch.
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