From
AUT student mag Debate, Issue 12 Oct ‘02
By
Reuben Keeling
Rumours. Since that whole thing
with Ozzy Osbourne and the bat, and even before then, rumours have played a big
part in making the music industry such a mythical fairyland. And if
you believed the recent rumours about Zed, you'd think they, a) have just
returned from recording their album in America, b) are about to starta
world tour with Smashmouth and Weezer, or c) are about to change their name to
Jihad. I just made that last one up, but you can see how these things get
started.
The truth is, the boys have been in Auckland
for the past few months, just hanging out.
Unglamorous I know, and not very rock-star.
“Yeah, there’s been all this rumour and speculation that we’ve been
overseas,” says bassist Ben Campbell. “Everyone
goes: hey when did you get back? I’m
like: we haven’t even left. We’ve
sort of moved up to Auckland, just trying to get used to Auckland”.
“We’re also trying to make friends, apart
from each other,” chips in drummer Adrian Palmer.
Ben laughs, “Yeah, if anyone wants to be friends with us…”
“We’ve recorded about half of it,” Ben
adds. “But we’re still writing, trying to get all the perfect
bits and pieces together. It’s
really hard to do the second album, like, notoriously hard”.
“But we’re getting there,” finishes
Adrian. “We’re well on the way.”
So what ‘difficulties’ are Zed coming up
against? “Primarily, getting the
right songs,” says Adrian. “But
we’ve had those for two months now and we’re getting into some studio time
and taking them to another level, the next level as such – private joke,
sorry.”
“Cause we didn’t really want our second
album to be the same as the first,” says Ben.
“We wanted to move on, and we were pretty young when we put that
together, and now three or four years after writing those songs off the first
record, we’re feeling a lot happier with where we are musically.
We’re in the studio again as of next week, putting down another four
tracks, so then we’ll be two-thirds complete.”
So what should we expect from the new album? Will there be a different sound?
“It’s better,” says guitarist and lead singer Nathan King.
“Yeah,” says Adrian. “It
just goes back to being a band, a car-based, young band.”
“Since our last album we’ve gone through a
few different stages of styles and trying different things,” says Ben.
“Going real rock or going real light, doing different pieces, and I
think we’ve sort of found a happy medium, where we are all happy, because
we’re four people with distinctly different musical tastes, and you’ve gotta
find something everyone is happy with.”
“We want to get a single out this year,”
says Adrian, and Ben butts in with: “We’ve got a few options for the one”.
“Yeah,” finishes Adrian.
“It’s hard to know, but early next year, we could easily have the
album ready by then.”
In the meantime though, the band have been
getting increasingly frustrated by the fact that they are still waiting for
Universal to release their debut album, Silencer, in American.
“We hope it gets put out over there soon, fingers crossed,” says
Nathan. “Every time we say that,
it gets set back. The release
strategy in America is still being worked through, and I mean that takes
priority, just because, hey, New Zealand have already had an album, all those
250 million people haven’t heard us yet.”
“When people ask,” says Adrian.
“We say we’re going in two weeks”.
So what’s the big hold-up? “Oh,
we’ve been greatly affected by September 11,” jokes Nathan.
“There’s been a lot of crap in the record company, financially and
stuff,” says Adrian. “And
that’s taking months to sort out. I
think ask any Kiwi band that’s had American interest in the last five years
and they’ll all say it’s flippin hard to get released over there.”
“And then apparently only 2% of overseas
acts released over there do anything at all,” adds Ben.
“The odds are stacked against us,” cries Nathan.
“Yet we battle on!” Lead
guitarist Andy Lynch eggs him on: “Do
the voice!” Nathan adopts a
serious look. “Four young
men…on a quest…of courage…and danger!”
The guys get a bit more serious when the topic
of CD burning comes up. “It does
affect us,” says Adrian. “It
affects us in the fact that, our record company sells less records and so they
are prepared to put less money up.”
“The cost of making an album stays the same
or goes up slightly,” adds Nathan. “But
the return you get from it goes down, a lot, so the record companies are
thinking way harder about what they are releasing and when they’re releasing
it.”
“There’s the argument that the artist gets
hardly any money from the record anyway,” finishes Adrian.
“That they [the label] get it all, and yes that is true (laughs), but
there is that whole trickle down effect.”
But the group can’t wait to get back on the
touring circuit. “Recording and
playing, they’re two completely different beats, they’re both as fun as each
other,” says Ben. “We spent
about four months touring Australia last year, with Coldplay and Robbie Williams
and the Superjesus. That was
awesome. The arena shows were quite hard, cause we’re chucked in
front of 12,000 people and they don’t know who you are.”
“It makes you work hard, but it’s fun,”
says Adrian. “I love playing to
little pubs, where there are just two or three hundred drunk people getting into
it and you can rock out, you know? And
I like coming back to universities.”
“There are so many girls here,” smiles
Andy. “I never went to university, I missed out.”
Ben gets us back on track: “We’re putting a little summer tour
together. To do all the beaches,
from Boxing Day ‘til the 6th, all over the North Island.”
“We’re doing it with Tadpole and the
Wiggles,” jokes Andy. “Uh…we’re
not being sarcastic about Tadpole,” adds Nathan.
The conversation turns to the new Pacifier
album, and the boys say they would have no problems with changing their name. “Yeah,” says Nathan.
“I’d quite like to change our name.
But we’re kind of stuck with it now.”
“I think if you could seriously put
yourselves in their shoes,” says Adrian.
“And go: what would you do? I
mean, what choice would you make?”
“What annoys me,” says Andy.
“Is what the hell has a band name got to do with the music?
People are so uptight about it.”
“I’ve been a big fan of Shihad for years
and years and years,” adds Nathan. “And
I think a lot of the flak that they’re getting from the press is just so not
on, because they’re getting it together, and they’ve worked hard and
they’re still a great band.”
The guys say they would love to share in that
overseas success, but at the moment it’s one step at a time.
“We’re off the dole,” says Nathan proudly. “We’d like to go back on, though (laughs).”
“But you never know how long it’s going to last,” says Adrian. “It’s motivation to work harder. Cause we’re just in it for the money.”
Another
night aerial of Las Vegas, this time by the Mandalay Bay, a hotel I cannot
recommend enough due to its fantastic multilingual cable package and gigantic
bathroom with both a shower and a tub.
It's pure heaven being able to loll in
the tub and listen to the Chinese cartoons