“Once upon a time you had skateboards, and you had the skateboard fad,” he explains from Yea. “They’d be around for a year and then they’d go away, and then they’d come back some years later. Ska used to be a bit like that too.”
That said, it must be stated the genre has never actually gone away completely. “Ska is now similar to roots music, or blues music,” he states. “It is a genre, it’s not a fad; it kinda’ sticks around.”
His own band formed in the early ‘80s, had a brief but spectacular run for four to five years before going into what turned out to be a very lengthy hibernation.
“1982, the band started to get themselves to a point where they could actually play, just,” he exclaims. “They started playing, and they were pretty much unstoppable…by about ‘84, they had really stepped up, they played Earl’s Court, the venue, down in St Kilda. I think they played a late Wednesday night residency there for at least a year. That type of baptism by fire, where you just played and played and played.
“By late 1986, the typical pressures where people are starting to grow up, and wondering what to do with their lives, and all that type of stuff,” he recalls. “The band kind of exploded and didn’t play anymore. And that also coincided with the waning of the second wave of ska.”
It wasn’t until the so-called ‘third wave’ of ska came along that they emerged from that extended hiatus. “Then the third wave came along, epitomised by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones,” he continues. “That was global, and we all kind of found ourselves dancing to third wave stuff, and going, ‘Man, this is good, isn’t it?’
“It was about 2009, we’d been thinking about for some years, we got the band back together and it really rocked because by now, we were professionals, we actually knew how to make music, and arrange music and write music, and have a really good time doing it.”
Today, the ska scene in Melbourne and Australia is very much alive and well, and the band are kicking off summer this year in fine style, with an excellent ska show at The Espy this month, also featuring The Allniters and No Nonsense.
“We know [it’s] a really good cross-section of what ska is today in Melbourne,” he enthuses. “It’s going to be, frankly, a rockin’ good time. We’re going to go along with the idea that we’re going to really enjoy the night ourselves, aside from the fact that we get to play.”
There is also, finally, a brand new Loonee Tunes album on the way. It’s their first for many years, and should see the light of day sometime next year.
“We’re working on new material at the moment,” he reveals, “I’ve written a bunch of songs, Adam’s [Timms, the band’s singer] written a bunch of songs, so yeah we’ve got a whole bunch of jams coming through. I’m really just enjoying writing new stuff with these people. This has made me feel young again.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
