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Beat Magazine 18/7/2001
ICE CREAM HANDS
Charles Jenkins and his pop practitioners just keep getting better, writes Steve Tauschke.
The single "Rain Hail Shine" sounds sparser than your earlier stuff. "It's probably to do with the fact that song is really simple. I don't know if it's a criticism I'd take on board, I don't even know if it's a criticism but people in the past, and I don't know whether they're musicians or whether tbey're the postman, but they've mentioned the amount of chords that I use. With this one I had my guitar in a different tuning so I didn't really know my way around the fretboard. I kind of couldn't go to familiar shapes with my fingers and it just seemed to take a while for me to be able to work out a sequence of chords that suited the melody that I had. So once I had that I just couldn't be stuffed I suppose looking for too much. It just sounded like it suited being a straight ahead kind of song . I did a demo of it really early on, at the point where I didn't even have an ending and I really liked the demo. It actually seemed to capture something so I tried to emulate that, especially in the vocal delivery. It's kind of hushed."
And the title came off a ticket stub?
'Yeah, just from working here (Gaslight Records) I just saw it. It's something everyone has seen a million times but it just stuck in my head . The melody was there, it was just a matter of me working out something underneath that suited a sequence of chords that I could sing the melody over and get it across. There's a couple of ways to take that; I baulked at having a whole song lyrically being about love and devotion , for want of a better term, because you know, Celine Dion might want to do it one day and as much as my bank manager would appreciate that, no-one else would. So at that stage in the verse, it was like 'do I write about the blue sky that shines forever across your soul or some dross?' I had to think of what will be with us all the time and I thought well it seems as though starvation and war and whatnot will be there just as much as crap songs written about love. So I chose the former. It seemed easier to do that lyrically as opposed to sitting there trying to think up different rhymes for moon and June."
How do you rate yourself as a songwriter now compared to ten years ago when you were with the Mad Turks?
"I think I was really still learning in the Mad Turks days. Not that I've heard it for a long time but if memory serves, I like the first Mad Turks record because I don't think I was trying to be a songwriter on most of that. It was a band playing 12 bar, even though maybe that record doesn't sound like it, that was the kind of band we were. And I think I was just trying to write songs to impress as opposed to just writing them. I was just learning the craft. The only criticism I have of the Mad Turks are the songs; I think some of them are just amateurish in their execution.
"Early on in the Ice Cream Hands it became apparent that the level of musicianship was a couple of steps up, in small part by myself but mostly by the other people around. I found that instead of coming up with three chords to go from a verse to a chorus, I could just stay on that same chord and the bass player would do something or the guitar player would do something or we'd put in a harmony as another option to enhance the song. Whereas, before, that didn't occur to me. It just seemed as though the guitar and the chords had to carry it all. So I do believe I'm a better otherwise I don't think I'd be bothering. But I look back fondly on those days. I saw Dom (Larizza - Mad Turks guitarist) a couple of weeks ago and I overheard him explaining the Mad Turks to someone as a just a boys' drinking club really."
"I remember in the Mad Turks I had weeks on end to kill so I'd constantly revisit songs and fiddle about with them whereas these days that option doesn't really occur. Most of the song ideas are thought of away from the guitar and you take a lyric and sometimes a melody idea to the guitar and work from there. In the old days I'd just sit on the couch forever with a guitar trying to get fancy."
What are you playing in your solo sets at the Rosstown?
"Depends on who's with me. Sometimes I get a cello player and play mostly Ice Cream Hands songs. We kind of only know about eight tunes but we get the songs out of the way in the first two and a half minutes and in the next five minutes I just listen to her improvise. I really enjoy that part of it. On other occasions I get other members of the Ice Cream Hands to come and play and plough through whatever comes to mind. So it's not entirely different to what the band does, even though it's just not as good really - it's just me. I do the take the opportunity to play as many new songs as I can. But no fireworks or dancing girls as yet at the Rosstown. At the Standard, I'm playing the next couple of weeks with Davey Lane from You Am I. W e got together last night and it was matter of 'Oh, what songs do you know? Lets go through the alphabet in the CD collection, oh let's do that, let's do a Kinks' song!' I just try to vary those little gigs as much as I can from the Ice Cream Hands gigs but having said that, people do sing out for their favourite Ice Cream Hands song so do they do get played as well."
Speaking of You Am I, I'd say you're on a par with Tim Rogers as a songwriter except without all the attention.
"For the Ice Cream Hands, I think we hit our straps by about the second record and I still think 'Supermarket Scene' is the best kind of pop-rock song we've done. I can't really fault that so it does seem a little bit annoying, well not really annoying but it seems as though I'm constantly having to think 'Oh, well I've got plenty of songs here but are any of them going to work on the radio?'
I don't think I'm of that ability as a songwriter to go 'Well here's one that will zoom up the charts'. It's more a matter of 'Thank Christ, this one sounds as though it can be stomached by a few people outside the band'. With the Rogers thing, I think Tim's got it down in spades. He's a great songwriter and obviously live he's probably the best Australian performer I think - ever! The best I've ever seen get up on stage by a country mile."
What came out of the SxSW thing in Austin for the band in 1999? 'A nice holiday! Look, I had no preconceptions. I figured I'd worked hard on this band for a few years and someone's giving us some money to go over there - we spent a week in Los Angeles and four or five days in Austin and then a week in new York. In Los Angeles, we did some recording in amongst the sight seeing, at Ward Dotson's house, from the Liquor Giants. He's got a studio upstairs so we recorded some b-sides there. And then Austin for 'high profile' gigs, I dunno those things are just something you don't even want to think about. You just play the gig and try not to break a string and hope you're amp doesn't blow up. But what did we get out of it from a musical/ record company point of view, well fuck all probably!"
"It's hard trying shop things around overseas. I mean David (Vodicka-Rubber Records boss) is a one man operation trying to do the work of a 25 person company. Locally, I thought Rubber and BMG did a great job on our last record, we got played on the radio and we'd never be played on the radio before, except in Melbourne."
I saw you guys on the tele too.
"We were on the tele, there you go. But I would have been nice to sell more than 6000. It's kind of odd when you read how Lloyd-y sells 100,000, so you know why he can afford to put on a little bit of weight."
As it says in your bio: 'You can't eat good reviews'.
"Well, true, and Steve I'm just trying to get another record out. I've got these songs and you promote these things so that you can sell enough copies to make another record. I just think well I've got enough songs here and I really don't want them to sit on my shelf or in my computer. We enjoy playing the songs and the feedback. To get stopped on the tram or at work and have people say those things. I mean it's like someone making a table or drawing a picture, it's nice to have someone say, 'Hey, you did a really did a good job there, I really appreciated it."
How were the sessions at Shane O'Mara at Yikesville's?
"That was great studio and a great experience. Shane's a damn fine handsome man and has a guitar collection to envy, only surpassed envy his pedal collection. He has an old Martin acoustic which is nice. You can hear Marcus playing it on the instrumental version of the single. Shane was good for us and he's not overly expensive so we could afford to be a little indulgent - throw more things into the songs. Hopefully we can achieve that with the next album, achieve what we've been trying to after at all these years, you know, where every song on there will be great, where everything comes to fruition and nothing is lost in the gaps."
"Rail Hail Shine" is out on Rubber through BMG.
The Icecream Hand’s new single Rain Hail Shine is out now on Rubber Records through BMG. The Icecream Hands play on Friday July 27 at the Armadale Hotel and on Saturday July 28 at the Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy.
