Press Escape to Return
Drum Media, Issue 511, 29th August 2000
By Mark Neilsen

Although he's got the physique akin to a skinny computer guy, you wouldn't pick Shihad's vocalist/guitarist Jon Toogood as the type. But while the band's been on a little bit of a hiatus, he's been sitting in front of his brand new Macintosh G4 computer with music program Pro-Tools and messing around with that.

         "I've been going, 'I don't want to play a show, I don't want to play a show, let me suss this Pro-Tools shit out' and I've been writing. When you get into the computer world you start not worrying about the way you look, so I took a look at myself in the mirror the day before we cruised up for a gig on the Gold Coast and found my hair was all over the place and I was getting a beer gut [laughs]. No, I could never do that. I was going, 'I've got to see the rest of humanity,'" Toogood recalls.

          The reason the group took a break was because since the release of their album "The General Electric" towards the end of last year, they've practically been constantly touring, from their own shows to playing the Big Day Out and supporting Filter. "We hadn't stopped since before last Christmas last year and I started to go a bit mental basically, as I think everyone was," Toogood says. "We were all living in the same house together, and when we first arrived here from New Zealand we were going, 'Yes we'll be able to do it. We get on really well,' and everyone was going, 'You're fucking mad.' And we finished that last Australian tour and just went right, I can't stand the sight of you, I'm moving out [laughs]. So everyone moved into their own places.
          "That's good because when played up at the Gold Coast, we hadn't seen each other for a while, and we absolutely tore it up. That's all we needed, we just needed a little bit of a break. We'd had eight months solid, and the shows were actually getting better and better but it was getting a bit more dangerous, it was like the only way to keep from punching each other up was destroy the gear or jump off high things..."

...and end up breaking your foot...
"Which is good for the audience, but not so good if you're a skinny motherfucker like me who snaps pretty easily."

          The Gold Coast gig was at the theme park Dreamworld for the last day of the Xtreme sports event, and also featured Jebediah, Motorace and Weta. This occured just before their recent Unearthed Sydney gig at the end of July. "Dreamworld is based on the whole American idea of a theme park with rollercoasters and towers of terror and mascots, you know, humans in big fuzzy animal suits," Toogood remembers. "We actually had a great show, about 5 minutes before we went on stage the manager of the parkcame up and said, can we get some footage of Kenny the Koala playing some guitar at the end of your set?
          "It's like sweet, no problem. What we didn't tell him was, okay as long as I get to copulate Kenny the Koala and try to rip his head off and almost push him off the stage. And then end the whole show by going, "Smash Blinky, smash it", because I thought it was Blinky Bill. So I totally fucked that up, but it was really good because he actually smashed this thing and came afterwards and goes, "it was great, but the name's Kenny." 'oh dude, sorry.'"
          This experience has reminded them they love to play live, which will next manifest itself in their Pacifier tour, to support the single of the same name. "That little taste of playing up on the Gold Coast got us oh shit, that's right, that's the bit we like, playing live. You can forget quickly after a month and a half off of going, "I like this sitting in front of a computer making music', and then all of a sudden it's like, "Fuck, that energy!" Right now I feel like doing something with my life again. It will be awesome, and we're taking Motorace on tour and I really like that band."

What have you got planned for the Pacifier tour?
"I think we're going to check out the songs that we haven't played off the album. There's 'The Metal Song', which I really want to play, which is a bit scary because it's such and involved piece of music. But that's what we thought about 'The General Electric', and that's probably one of my favourite songs live. 'Life in Cars'...we've been listening to heaps of T-Rex so we want to pull that one out because it's closest thing we've written to T-Rex for me. I think they're going to be exciting gigs because they're probably going to be the last shows we play this year in Australia and New Zealand probably. I just want to get on to writing a new record."

With Motorace, that will be like a double hit of rock action.
"Totally. I reckon those guys have got a ton of potential. I like the songwriting and live they definitely rock."

Will you up the ante on each other?
"I can imagine there'll be a bit of friendly competition. I just like tourinf with a band that I can watch and enjoy."

Is it hard to keep the energy level up night after night?
"I'm kind of lucky because I've got a super fast metabolism and if I'm tired all I really need is a can of Coke. It sounds ridiculous, but I process sugar and caffeine at such a rate, if it's like day six of a six day run, it's like bring on the Coca-Cola and I'm fine. It's good because it's cheaper than a cocaine habit, and it's slightly less detrimental. I think we got this name as a band that really does rock it live and so the crowd, when they come to see a Shihad show are usually amped anyway, so if I'm fucked, as long as I can push through the first song with the amount of energy they expect, the energy comes back throughout. It's like tennis. It's true that the crowd can pull you through."

So that metabolism explains your eight and a half stone frame?
"Oh no, I just shit a lot, three times a day [laughs]. I just burn it. I don't stop moving."

Shihad play Wednesday 6 Septemeber at the UNSW Roundhouse, Thursday 7 at Newcastle Uni, Friday 8 at Planet Rock, Penrith, Saturday 9 at Blacktown RSL and Sunday 10 at Manly Fisho's. Pacifier is out through WEA/Warner.