By the late 1980's, with 2 of the original members' having moved-on, the two remaining members (Alex MacDonald and David Welch) refocused the bands' image and direction, adding drummer Allan Dowthwaite in 1986(?), and shortening the name to "The Surprise". By 1988, The Surprise consisted of Alex, Dave, Allan, Charlie Lee on bass, Catherine Ryan and ??????? on vocals, while they gigged in various halls, pubs, clubs and festivals around NSW. Never quite loosing their 'psychedelic' roots, they turned more into near-gothic pop-rock as they continued developing their own unique individualistic style.
The main emphasis of the band was always on having "fun" - it was fun to be in this band, we had fun playing and being together, and we allowed the audience to participate and have fun too.
Mal joined on bass in March 1989, and Lisa Parsons appeared the week recording started on "Fish!" in July 1989.
My (Mal's) first gig with The Surprise was on
28th April 1989 at the "Argyle Theatre" in Ryde (Sydney), with
mime-artist
Dennis Claire supporting. 500 people came and danced and caused a
near-riot
as we sweated thru 2 x 45' sets.
Mal
- Blackstump, Appin NSW, October
1990 (click thumbnail
to see larger pic)"Fish!"
Refuge Records CD 7900602836
Recorded July 1989, Windwood Studios, Lawson NSW Australia
Produced by The Surprise and David Simpfendorfer
Mixed by Jeff Todd
All songs written by Alexander MacDonald (apart from Maljam±)
All music performed by The Surprise
The Surprise were:
Alexander MacDonald - vocals, guitar, teaspoon
David Welch - keyboards, sequencing, noises, backing vox
Allan Dowthwaite - drums, percussion, sequencing, backing vox
Maljam - bass, sequencing, backing vox
Lisa Parsons - vocals
Catherine Ryan - vocals
`Cover - "Fish!" (click
thumbnail to see larger pic)
12 tracks @ 36' 45"
Waits For Me 3:47
Captains of Industry 3:36
Take This Hand 2:56
Wastin' Time 3:33
Do You Believe? 2:59
Omo Bob 3:09
This Generation 2:55
Head in the Clouds 2:11
Better Days± 3:58
Ignorance 2:57
Freedom 3:10
Think About That 1:34
Alexander MacDonald - vocals, guitar
David Welch - keyboards, sequencing, noises, backing vox
Allan Dowthwaite - drums, percussion, sequencing, sampling, backing vox
Maljam - bass, sequencing, backing vox
Lisa Parsons - vocals
Cover - "Reformation" (click thumbnail to see larger pic)
A-Z (Alpha and Omega) 2:33
Living is Easy 3:30
Madder Than Me 4:03
Destroy All Monsters / Carnival Freak-Out / Onward 3:39
Into the Light 2:35
Jack the Ripper? 2:32
Slash 'n' Burn 2:42
Voice Inside 3:19
Victim of Love 1:50
Look Inside Your Heart 3:19
The Sixty-Six 2:16
Come Back Today 3:06
I Believe 3:03 (Bonus track not listed in credits)
*Photo session - at Allan's workplace, a video-production place; Brad Sutcliffe took the photos; we tried all sorts of different things - the large shadows on the front was just one of those experiments we liked when we saw the proofs; the 'extra shadow' in the front-centre was ??? - we said it was the Holy Spirit putting in an appearance!; note also that there's Kathy and Lisa in the shots - Kathy didn't actually have too much to do with "Fish!" (sure, with rehearsals & stuff), but she never got to do much more after she got sick - for a few months; Someone once said I looked like John Bonham from Led Zeppelin with that horrible moustache! Alex hated it! (And fair enough too!)
*"Waits For Me" - originally "SHE Still Waits for Me"; rewritten drunkenly during "Fish"; "Threw a brick in the clouds.."; some nice picked acoustic; just had to use the 'wah' pedal over the end!
*"Captains of Industry" - a swipe at the big-buisnessmen who thought they owned it all, but they are desperately unhappy. A good 'metal' number live - I enjoyed singing the duet with Alex live & 'hamming-it-up' for the solos - heavy-metal posturing & posing! The smashing sounds at start and end came from some whiz-bang sound module we'd borrowed - again, we found the sounds much by accident. We had all four of us standing around this keyboard, and each one had one or two keys to play - each key with a different sound - a bit of live fun in the studio!; two guitars recorded live; Alex's vocal very 'whispy' & breathy, compared to metal backing; Alex doing his own harmonies; Dave' main bit is the rock-organ break in the 'middle-8'; I always thought the organ was too far back in the mix on this album;
*"Take This Hand" - from March 1989 rehearsals; deliberate
mistakes
recorded (eg. acoustic guitar at beginning); using black semi-acoustic;
"ignorance" themes comes out again; "need a messiah" - a rare overtly
Christian
reference by Surprise; Dave featuring his DX7!; nice twangy strat for
the
verses; Lisa dual backing vocal 'aahs'; end of middle-8 = 'this heart
of
mine', originally Alex yells out "1-2-3-fish!" to end the line; Mal's
bass
harmonics over 3rd verse, & Dave with some 'ethereal' sounds!;
Mal - Blackstump,
Appin NSW, October 1990 (click thumbnail to see larger pic)
*"Wasting Time" - "A song to your TV set"; an album filler, featuring Dave's Moog; the keyboards 'aahs' during the 2nd verse happened by accident - some midi-mix-up along the way, it sounded good, so we kept it; Lisa & Alex singing alternate lines; I like the way it just seemingly goes on and on and on - just like wasting time in front of your TV sometimes, the same things over & over again, like the fade at the end, seeming like it's never going to end - we probably recorded about a minute for the fade! Alex screams about 10 seconds after the actual fade-out!
*"Do You Believe?" - much better demo recorded at Balmain just before I joined, this one seems to miss the atmosphere & just the plain-old-groove of that version; the original chorus was the line repeated twice, like the last time, but each chorus; once again, a 'poem' is used for a Surprise middle-8 (like 'Lord's Prayer'); Dave added more string-pad sounds live - much fuller than this version; the guitar 'solo' over poem is just Alex having fun.
*"Omo Bob" - "A Musical Western";"No matter your background,
you
can still find new life in Christ"; a show stopper; [thanx Hudoo Gurus
& Lailani!]; tea spoon & box of percussion instruments - Dave's
exploring thru closed cupboards & found a box full of things!;
Guitar
solo from heck!; "Pleeeease, daddy!" Rebbecca Smallbone alias Rebecca
St
James!; concept from the comix of Rick Griffin, from this bizarre
character
'Omo Bob' - Alex could always write whole themes out of one idea;
again,
I feel the keys are too far back in the mix - classic 'rock' organ in
there
somewhere!; ALL Surprise singing 'ooh, ooh Omo Bob' using a
pitch-shifter
to get our voices down that low!;
Alex, 1989 (click thumbnail to see larger pic)
*"This Generation" again, from March 1989 rehearsals; Lisa sang it live; twangy rock thingy of Alex's, a bit of politically-correctness maybe? or just tongue in cheek?; classic Surprise song - what, four chords?!, but lots of 'chopping' along the way; Dave's big "Hunters & Collectors" brass section in the middle;
*"Head in the Clouds" - as above; written for Kathy [blonde]; Alex's hand always got sore during this one; a-la' the Cure's 'In Between days" I think that's the original concept musically; "Judgement Day" theme come sthru again; Alex once commented he was never very pleased with the concept of "Judgement day". I guess he always wondered about his salvation, somehow...; Lisa's twin backing vocals (I think probably one of the first things she did with Surprise - it was one of the first things she did with us was recording 'Fish!") Cathy Ryan was sick and couldn't sing, so Lisa arrived (we'd only met her shortly before the sessions started!)
*"Better Days" - written in 5 minutes; a gentle track to appeal to non-Surprise listeners (& it worked too!); TR 707 drum box, two acoustic guitars (Mal), bass (Mal), Lisa's vocal - sang it after hearing ot only once!; Casio tiny keyboard - "Only Dave would have the courage to play that line!" (Dave Simp.); Alex lower harmony in middle-8 - "I suppose he'd better appear in it somewhere, i mean, it's a Surprise song, aint it?" Mal would usually sit-in the corner of the room when Alex recorded his vocals tracks. During the fade-out, Mal 'may' be heard to whisper "Lancelot's Pram" - a bit of spontaneous whimsy. It's clear as a bell on the vocal track alone, but dissapears in the final mix!;
*"Ignorance" - "Indecision is no decision"; early March 1989; another acoustic track (there were a few during this period, early '89); was that really Allan playing those bongoes?; Alex trying to sound English in the chorus!;
*"Freedom" - Alex experimenting with sequenced bass, after I
couldn't
play it during Fish sessions, I don't think we ever played it at a gig.
The guitar mess at the beggining was like, "Hey, we haven't made any
serious
noise yet, let's do it then." Just one take of a bit of fun, edited
onto
the start. A prelude to the "M.A.D." project, in one sense, with
sequencing
etc. Sure, all the keyboards (except organ) were sequenced, as were the
drums, but we still considered them "live" instruments, unlike the
sequenced
bass & later sampling, which we used deliberately for different
effect.
Another "Hunters and Collectors" middle-8 from Dave!
Surprise 1989: Alex; Dave, Cathy, Mal,
Lisa & Allan (click thumbnail to see larger pic)
*"Think About That" - a very early Surprise Surprise song,
written
by both Alex and Amanda; lyrics changed during Fish sessions (to make
them
more 'Christian!'); originally "hey all you hippies out there, loose
your
mind and grow your hair"; "One-two....three.four" a joke from an old
bassplayer
who loved to count-in with crazy timing! Influences from country to
80's
pop to rock to ??? all in 90 seconds of pure Surprise! This was the
song
we ended most of our gigs with.
*"Reformation" Both Alex and Allan had been doing some Bible studies on Martin Luther & the Reformation era for some Church History thingy, & that's where the basic theme/concept came from; Surprise needed to 'reform' who it was spiritually, but for most of our audience, it was too much too late. The cover photos are of that old burnt-out church just off the freeway near Blacktown - I later found-out that the Satanists used that place for their Black masses & stuff! The black-and-white photo Brad took at nite - he said it was a really spooky place, he took a few shots, and then got the heck outta there! The inside video-pics are taken directly off the tele, by Brad Sutcliffe, from a video from our "Fish" album launch concert at Castle Hill High School. The studded wrist-strap I'm wearing - Dave found in a cupboard dumped by the side of the road on the way to record "Fish!" & I just added to my collection!
*"A-Z" (Alpha & Omega) - originally meant to be a 'Scottish Anthem' with droning pipes, but this is how it came out anyway.
*"Living is Easy" "I've been doing it for years"; influenced by some of "The Church"'s stuff, I guess. We laffed as the moving bassline over the intro is the only melodic thing that happens for quite a while in this song!
*"Madder Than Me" - living by faith - some people think you're crazy, as mad as Adolf & Eva! The bezerk heaviness of the end is how the song was originally concieved - as a full-on rocker. But, in the studios, we gave it heaps more space & variations - from screaming distortion to snap-clean twangs!
*"Ken" - the Rock Opera The Who didn't want to write! Alex
would
often break into bursts of "Ken the Postman" a-la 'Tommy' in the middle
of practises - good for a laff.
Alex aka. "Postman Ken"
1990 (click
thumbnail to see larger pic)
*Destroy all Monsters - oh yeah! & Mal's 'high A' in the spotlight - first take (they tried three in all, but I couldn't repeat the first one!) Just a bit of a giggle, & demonstrating Surprise finally able to relax enough to record those silly moments we did like ALL the time!
*"Carnival Freakout" - Dave had been warming-up playing this little clarinet exercise thingy, so we couldn't use that to record unfortunately.
*"Onward" (Christian Soldiers) with thanx to Sabine Gould(??) - John Dickson from "In the Silence" came up by train to do the vocal especially; people had thought there was agro between the two bands, but there never was; this was like a public declaration 'peace trteaty' for people to see that we were Ok with each others' bands. The middle 8 happened when Dave & Alex locked themselves into the control room with all the effects pedals they could find, & just waited to see what would happen! There was just like 16 bars (or something) of empty space in the backing track, and they came up with this!
*"Into The Light" - no, it's not Elvis, but Alex is trying his
best! Complete with tape slap-echo on the black Rickenbacker guitar
(ex.
Midnight Oil); Lisa's 'oohs' came after hearing a tone coming from the
guitar during playback - things just happened like that during
recording!
Allan could never play the drum-snare-shuffle properly live! Guitar
solo
as simple as possible, so "come on!"
Pics from Reformation CD inside cover
(click
thumbnail to see larger pic)
*"Jack the Ripper!" - things are not always as they seem! Alex had recorded this at home as a demo, and he brought it in for us to hear at rehersal, complete with the words (but only read one verse at a time, he told us!) We loved it - but Allan said, "Oh no, we can't do that!" Whenever Allen said, "Oh no you cant", it was always a good indicator that we were onto a good thing! Poor Allan!; In the studio, Alex spent like 10 minutes perfectly tuning his guitar, and then recorded all the background divebombs & feedback, jumping around the booth & doing unnatural things to his white Strat! with his Marshall on 11.
*"Slah and Burn" - 'Scream and Pout" what were you singing? Why, Slah and Burn, of course! A follow-up to "This Generation"
*"Voice Inside" - nice bassline, lotsa space; One of Alex's more blatant Christian songs, which some people couldn't understand why?
*"Victim of Love" - featuring Lisa (we always did it too fast live for her tho!) just a fast loud rocker a-la Surprise; Lisa's vox on two seperate tracks, one line at a time. The divebomb at the end of the solo had to end sometime, unfortunately!
*"Look Inside Your Heart" - things to come! Prob. Alex's best lyric, rapped-out to a dance-beat, complete with sequenced everything. Again, the chorus was Alex and Dave locked away in the control room with lotsa different effecxts pedals - it was nothing like that when we rehearsed it!
*"The Sixty-Six" "Be still and know I am God" A nice duet between Alex & Lisa
*"Come Back Today" Alex explores the ramifications of his Church History study; one of the more complex songs Surprise attempted.
*"This is Frank speaking, boss..." We'd been watching 'The God's Must Be Crazy" of an evening during the sessions; Dave Slappendoddle showed us how to basically work an Akai Sampler, so we sampled Allan doing a quote from the movie, speeding it up and slowing it down for fun, and used it as a link for the 'free bonus track' - we thought it might be a nice thought / link for the last song "I Believe"
*" I Believe" A quick llittle ditty a-la "The Jam" (well,
that's
how it started out sounding like, anyway!) Another duet with Alex and
Lisa.
It's not listed on the cover or liner notes at all, but a complete
'surprise'
for the listeners!
To contact me: Email mal@maljam.cjb.net
Homepage maljam.cjb.net
Message Board malboard.cjb.net
Home Site Map
This page lasted updated on 14th July 2004
