Issue 505

20th Century Graduates Joining the Coopers Alive showcase at Jive on October 22nd with The Salvadors, Jimmy And The Mirrors and Lyla is Adelaide's favourite upbeat indie-popsters, the six-piece party known as the 20th Century Graduates. After recently winning Nova's SA Heaps Good Bands competition and a sold out launch at Jive for their debut EP, 'Parking Inspectors Are People Too', the Graduates are earning a nice reputation for themselves. The band sprang from members of The Keepsakes looking for a new project, finding their direction early on, as vocalist/drummer, Jeremy Lake explains. "We pretty quickly realised we wanted to do some fun, happy music... happy pop tunes." "Fun, non-serious music..." bass player and fellow founding member, Jon Wignall, agrees. "People can just dance and have a good time." Amidst a sea of serious, tortured artists it's an approach for a guitar band that's become quite a rarity. I have to wonder if there's some kind of stigma attached to being in a happy band. "We were talking about that the other night!" Wignall laughs, before Lake goes on to explain, "Our guitarist, Alex, cos he's from the Lumonics and they're a really heavy, brooding band, it's starting to wear thin on him that we might be just sort of a fad, almost a joke..." "Look at those cute kids, playing pop music... that sort of thing." Wignall cuts in. "Someone called us cute as buttons" he laughs, "that's the first down-step to being like 'yeah, ok. Maybe we are a little bit too much...'" Though they're happy to make fun of themselves, there is substance to these pop songs. "It's music too, isn't it?" Lake asks, "It's not like it's just Play School songs. Although, I mean, we could be on Play School quite easily..." "You're not singing about anything kiddie," Wignall adds "like taking your dog for a walk, it's about girls and terrible things you do... that sort of stuff." "It's not just about girls and terrible things you do," Lake quickly counters with mock defensiveness, "that's your life, Jon, not what I write about." Laughing, Wignall concedes the point. "That's the only thing I can write about. I only write when I'm horny or drunk, that's it." "Let's edit that out." Lake deadpans with perfect comic timing, "That's gonna be the big quotation marks they put in between all the text 'I only write when I'm horny or drunk.'" It occurs to me that every time I've heard the virtues of 20th Century Graduates extolled it has been from a young woman, something which makes the guys laugh in recognition. "I think our demographic is mainly females." Lake admits. "And old people." Wignall adds. "And young people, kids. We're right on the opposite ends of the scale. The oldies have got the money man, they'll buy our CD's, but they're too old to download music, they don't know how to do it." He laughs. The title of the band's EP, 'Parking Inspectors Are People Too', sounds like there might be a story behind it (or at least some new evidence to disprove common opinion), but it seems as though the stories have all occurred after the fact. "I've had good karma," Wignall tells me, "the last two times I've had two friends getting parking tickets, I've walked up and been friendly and they've taken them away. And that was, what, about a week after the EP was released." The wheel of karma doesn't seem to be rolling in everyone's favour though, as Lake explains. "Actually, on the night of our EP launch, Larissa and Al in our band, they both got a parking ticket outside Jive where we were playing and Al was trying to explain how it was sort of funny or ironic because we were launching a CD called 'Parking Inspectors Are People Too'... and the guy thought we were having a dig at him. He was really stand off-ish and really annoyed that Al had even said anything. He didn't really understand and was sort of 'yeah, okay' and lays the ticket on and walks off. So yeah, it's got no real relevance to anything on the CD, we have a song called 'Parking Inspectors Are People Too', but it's not on the EP at all. Figure that out." 20th Century Graduates will be at Jive (once again) on Fri 22 Oct. By Aaron Farrant