Radio won’t touch us!
A cure for the meek and a curse for the hangover.
Formed from the swells of the Great Southern Ocean, The Trip is an unlikely band if ever there was one.
Apollo Bay. Imagine yourself coming down the Great Ocean Road, turning off at Torquay, blasting through Lorne, the ocean to your left, the gasping beauty of headland after headland disappearing in the distance, the hair raising danger of the road hand hewn by soldiers after WW1, cut straight into the cliffs,
Cruising over the Westgate
Heading down the highway.
Heading down the surf coast (from ‘Apollo Bay’)
The Trip. Debuting at the Apollo Bay music festival March 2003. Completely unrehearsed, with no songs written, the brief was simple. Play something that connects, but also something completely improvised. Treading the edge. In the moment, music created in the same way as Sydney/Berlin band The Necks. Except louder. The agenda is, there is no agenda. Except to go off.
Sinkin’ tinnies
Smoking TNT
Surfing Life for me (from ‘Surfing Life’)
As the set continued, more and more people gathered and egged the band on. No slick patter or precious folkie platitudes. It sounded like a giant fishhook to the back of the head. Part Oz rock, part psychedelic experience, jamming and strong ensemble performance. In the tradition of local bands Salmon Guts, Cosmic Psychos, Preshrunk, The Trip have that wild industrial grittiness that is unique to the Geelong/ Surfcoast region.
Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie, in town to play a couple of sets with long time associate Neil Murray hopped up to play that peculiar brand of psychedelic guitar he’s known for, with local flute maestro Howlin’ Wind coaxing unearthly melody from his instrument, blues belter/chanteuse Trish Richardson singing inspired call and response across the tidal wave of sound, also on guitar, and Apollo Bay cray fisherman Johnnie Brew on drums and local carpenter Dave Merry on bass, a rythym section as cast iron as an industrial smelter, as relentless as a southerly swell pounding the cliffs below the Great Ocean Road.
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And the riffing guitars
Riding on static from Mars
No cyclone impending
Must be the pipeline from heaven
(from ‘Bag Limits’)
The audience demanded an encore and the band couldn’t keep the smile off their faces.
The next day, the musicians regrouped at Magnetic Heaven to commit the music to tape. This wooden floored studio has old vintage recording equipment, and no computer bullshit. This would be the acid test. Crammed into one room, shoulder to shoulder, with Howlin’ manning the engineering duties, the band kicked into jams that would peel paint off a Korean trawler. As the tape rolled the playing erupted like lava. No holds barred. An album written, arranged and recorded in one day. All first takes. Fresh as today’s catch. You can hear the songs being forged, raw, the very act of creation inextricably linked to the performance. Wet paint. Over this, Howlin’s flute and wild analogue synth plus Trish’s vocals were applied the next week, one take out of respect for the template, and to keep the freshness……and mixed in Sydney by Jim and Howlin’ the week after that. In this process, Jim added a vocal to “Bag Limits’ and the elements were amped up even more. The bulk of the mixes were live performances in themselves, no tricking up or polishing.
This is not music whittled down to the common man denominator, or music that inhabits the compromised world between radio friendliness and the ‘difficult’. Radio won’t touch us! Would MMM play hypnotic jams that mutate? Go directly to the end of the dial. The Trip, comprising a fruity brew of local fishermen, eccentrics and veterans. Smoking, bonging, no performance ever the same, no safety net, a cure for the meek and a curse for the hangover. Go back to the time when music wasn’t premeditated for chart penetration but was simply expression. Except this is not a noodling band. The Trip is as purposeful as a salmon nosing upstream, as powerful as the donk of a V8 Holden. Music so perfect for the landscape: majestic, wild as the shipwreck coast where it was spawned, unpredictable but strong. And as rough as the smell of a load of salmon going off in the sun.
The band has done a handful of gigs, including the Melbourne Blues and Roots Festival, Apollo Bay Music festival 2003 ans 2004, and the Apollo Bay Top Pub. |
