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78 Saab.
 "It's one of those annoying things. I just wasn't thinking and I ran a scalpel off the chopping board and onto my finger. It's on my right-hand index finger, but I'm a left-handed guitarist so I should be okay [to play] by next week."
Ouch. 78 Saab's Ben Nash is remarkably chipper for a working musician with six stitches in a primary digit. And while he's quick to suggest that there's little point being anything other than philosophical about a situation he has no choice but to wait out, maybe he's seeing a silver lining here, too.
"We were meant to be going to Brisbane to do the Queensland leg of the Sarah Blasko tour, and I realised, 'Fuck, that's going to need stitches and I'm not going to be playing guitar'. We got through it though. Robert Cranny from Sarah's band used to play keyboards with us so he knew a lot of the songs and we sort of whipped him into shape with the rest and I just went out front and sang.
"The first show was a bit weird. It was at Coolangatta and I stood there on stage thinking, 'What am I meant to do here?' I took more of a Bernard Fanning approach, as opposed to a Mick Jagger: I've never been much of a dancer, so I thought I wouldn't start doing any spastic moves across the stage. And I was well-oiled as well, so maybe that's what you need - some Dutch courage. The real benefit was that I didn't have to pack up my guitars or amps or anything afterwards. I was just standing in a corner drinking beer, watching everyone else pack up and thinking, 'Maybe there's a future in this...'"
Nash clearly isn't entirely serious and readily admits to feeling out of sorts in not being able to just pick up a guitar and play at will. And while obviously positive about the recent Blasko supports, he's also keen to get the band back on the road in the normal configuration as headliners. "Some of the best shows you play are the ones when you've been driving for nine hours to somewhere out of the way and you're completely rattled and you go into a vortex and just play an awesome gig. And then it works the other way with some of the really big sold-out gigs, where maybe the pressure gets to you a bit. I think we are able to maintain a certain level now though, but there are some nights when we come off stage and look at each other and it's like, 'How was that for you?' And having an audience who really knows the songs is great, too. Now we've been playing [most recent album] 'Crossed Lines' for a while - come October it'll have been out for a year - we know there'll be people there who know all the songs. That's great because you don't have the problem of people going, 'I don't know this one. Maybe I'll grab a beer.'"
The live arena, according to Nash, is a site of constant learning, to the extent that he finds himself mentally noting useful ideas and approaches even just watching friends' bands at his local. One lesson learned the hard way, though, is the importance of organising things properly beforehand.
"When we first started out, [touring] was more of a Kerouac-ian adventure with all the pitfalls. We were rocking up to some universities and they were saying, 'No, we haven't got you listed as playing today.' We'd won the national uni band competition and one of the deals was that pretty much every university in Australia had to pitch in and have us come on board, and some were more excited than others about the prospect of an unknown band from Sydney rocking up on their doorstep. I remember we played a lunchtime gig at Adelaide Uni and they'd set us up in the bar, but the problem was Pat Rafter was playing in the US Open final at the same time. So they had the big screen down and we had to play just to the side of it. I think it was the fourth set or something so it didn't have long to go, but we were told that there were noise restrictions so we had to play between 1 and 2pm. We ended up alienating everyone in the room. Plus we all wanted to watch the game."
It seems 78 Saab (well, most of them anyway) are deeply enamoured of sport and the sporting arts. "A few of us are sporting tragics, so at times we manage to switch off rock'n'roll and get completely engrossed in the Ashes or whatever. Though I know Jake [Andrews, guitarist] is quite dismissive when the rest of us are saying we can't rehearse because the All-Blacks are playing Australia."
Jeremy Reglar
 | 78 Saab play Jive on Sat 3 Sept. |
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