In this morphed and mutated contemporary capitalist culture – where punk has long been promed-up and hip hop became a ‘trend’ instead of a ‘movement’ – all dominant streams of alternative or counterculture have become one, big, indefinable channel of profit corporatism.
We are sitting at a point in time where money talks louder than most world leaders – one could even argue that money, in fact, speaks for them. The authenticity and attitude that bands like Nirvana and The Pixies conveyed in their music doesn’t exist anymore; it doesn’t sell records. Unless of course it’s Nirvana or The Pixies rebranded as ‘Band X’ and then sold back to us through the dominant corporate channel.
Today, success is measured by retweets and Facebook likes; a fully-loaded digital platform with potential for unlimited exposure and sales; a manufactured brand accessible to everyone through the dominant marketing channel. Though, every now again — every once in a generation – a band comes along, not unlike Nirvana or The Pixies, without a care for the traditional conventions of big business and music marketing.
For us, the misguided punks of the ‘90s and the wandering thinkers of the digital age, that band is Violent Soho. Coming head-first out of Mansfield – about halfway between Brisbane and Logan – in 2004, Violent Soho have since become Australia’s fundamental-grunge outfit with their honest and old-fashioned brand of ‘I-don’t-give-a-shit’ rock and roll. “I was on my way to a job interview at McDonalds, the one at Mt Gravatt on Logan Road,” the group's guitarist, James Tidswell says about the time Violent Soho were in-between labels in 2012, “and I got a text from my mate saying 'Congratulations'.
"I wrote back and said, 'congratulations on what?' He finally got back to me with: 'finally cutting your hair' and all I thought was, 'fuck that was weird'. Then I went into McDonalds, went through the interview and walked through the store. This kid saw me and said something like, ‘hey, I saw you at Splendour and stuff’, which was pretty funny to happen during a McDonalds interview.”
By this point in Tidswell’s career, Violent Soho had taken him to New York where they lived, toured and recorded for over a year, and got him signed to Ecstatic Peace! — label of Thurston Moore, guitarist of Sonic Youth, a band prominent in the seminal grunge movement.
Now the poor bloke is close to flipping burgers at Maccas. “I hoped into my car put on the radio and listened to Triple J and the Doctor announce the ARIA nominees, and I heard our band announced and just went: ‘HOLY FUCK!!’. It was so far from my mind that that could even be a possibility after coming out of an interview at McDonalds. I just had no idea what to do; it's crazy to me ‘cause it's a world that we don’t actually know anything about. It seemed like something that my parents might even think is good.
“I ended up getting the job and on my first day, I pulled over and called them up and said, ‘hey I'm really sorry but I can't come in’. I was going in to pick up my uniform and do my first shift when I called them up; I said ‘I'm sorry man, I just can’t do this job’.”
It was their 2010 self-titled album that grabbed the ARIA nomination, but before that was when the real magic happened. The Mansfield locals debuted with their EP ‘Pigs And TV’ in 2006, which was funded solely by the sale of James’ car. “I had just written off my car and bought this Nissan Micra, so this tiny little white thing,” James recalls. “I sold it and got 6.5k for it, that's how we ended up with the EP sounding so good, because we had a bit of money and got to take our time.”
Having morphed and mutated like the culture they exist in, the underlying truth to Violent Soho’s success is not where they’ve been, or where they’re going but rather where they come from and how the Mansfield ‘4122’ has translated into the roots of Violent Soho’s sound, attitude and personality. “Mansfield is important to us because it shaped who we are as people, and our band would like to represent what it’s like to just be yourself and not try to be more than that; it gave us the perspective of what things to do now to be ourselves and that brings a lot of people to shows.”
James talks about growing up in Mansfield with the rest of band and how it all started for home. “My grandma bought me an MXPX CD,” he says. “She wouldn't buy me a Greenday CD because they sung about masturbating and smoking bongs… I opened the cover and it had listed all these bands like The Descendants and Blink and that's how I got into music.”
Growing up together the band forged ties and made bonds that no amount of corporate branding or rock and roll ego could break. “We were growing up in the Fat Wreckords era when Blink was the equivalent of Nirvana and that sort of stuff,” James says. “Then it turned into My Chemical Romance stuff and the local scene kind of turned shit, people were getting big on bands like Amity Affliction and Mourning Tide and we just didn't really connect with what was going in that scene.”
The rest, as they say, is history. In the years to come the second wave of emo bands – led by Amity Affliction – would take over the alternative world and Violent Soho would quit their day jobs, get signed (twice) and piss off to New York. “It was just a huge culture shock [going to New York], completely different. It was Crown Heights of Prospect Heights; right on the border, which I believe is the Jamaican district. They were all legends to us though because we were from Australia, they didn't see it coming when an Australian band moved into the neighbourhood but they were always cool to us; they hooked us up with weed and stuff, so it was all good.”
James doesn’t hide the fact the band don’t mind their fair share of the mean green. “We like to smoke weed, I'm smoking weed right now,” James says. “We're not trying to be 'pro-weed' but I guess we are, it's not an issue, it shouldn't be an issue. If we're not the ones who understand and say that certain things are stupid than who's going to?
“In America we just put it out there from the beginning. Literally I walked down the street, I'd been there for three days, which had been the longest I'd gone without smoking weed, and I just started walking up to people asking and they would start shaking their heads saying ‘no’. Then I saw a bunch of dudes sitting together on stools – it looked like a scene out of a movie – and I thought, 'those guys will definitely know where to get weed', so I walked up to them and said, 'hey I'm from Australia, I've been here four days, we smoke weed every day there, do you guys know where we could get it?'
“One of them goes: 'You a cop?’ Straight up. He asked me to show him my driver's license, so I get it out and he starts asking me all these questions; what street do you live on? Why did you move here? I told him I play in a band and I point at an apartment down the street and say, 'this one' and he just stopped and said, 'oh damn, we're neighbours'; he starts shaking my hand and introducing me to everyone and then he pulls out this huge blunt, looks at me and says, 'you wanna get high?' and gives it to me.
"So I start smoking it and this big black dude leans over me and slowly booms, 'inhale'. And I'm like, 'dude, I know how to smoke weed,' so I just hit it and the dude watched me and then ran across the street, came back with weed and that's how we started getting on.”
