August 2000
Zed have hit the big time
already. Two singles went top 20 and one, the cunningly catchy ‘glorafilia’
went top 10 and was the most played New Zealand song this year. Rip it
Up went go-karting to see if Zed’s perfect guitar pop could become petrolhead
heaven. It can. Scott Kara composed himself enough after getting his arse
kicked to share a few bees and coke (the liquid kind) with the boys.
This could be the start of
a good old fashioned rock’n’roll shit fight between Zed and Wellington
rockers Breathe. The boys from Zed have some words of warning for Breathe,
who told a magazine recently: "we don’t want to go in Creme magazine, we
don’t particularly want to go on What Now? - those sorts of things aren’t
what we’re about." Cutting stuff. But Zed are on the cover of the August
issue of New Zealand’s doting teen mag, Creme. They also appear inside
the magazine with their shirts off.
"I’ don’t think you can
make yourself seem too cool," says Ben Campbell, Zed’s bass player. "As
far as we’re concerned we’ve got a good product and we want to sell it,
and we want it to work."
Ben is right - they do have
a good product. Their three singles, ‘glorafillia’, ‘oh daisy’ and ‘I’m
Cold’ spent healthy ammounts of time near the top of the charts. The three
singles have been re-recorded for the band’s debut album Silencer, which
gives a less playful and more refined sound to the poppy singles.
"It’s like a business," continues Ben. "if we ever want to make it, and so many New Zealand bands make the mistake - which is tall poppy syndrome - of going out and trying to be cool. Sure we like to be like that as well, but y’know."
Guitarist Andy lynch sums it up: "this country is too small to go pissing people off. We didn’t set out to get the girls, we set out to make music and we can’t help that it’s turned out that way. We can’t say : ‘Fuck off I’m gonna grow a mullet and fuck you’." Watch your back Breathe.
It’s hard to believe but
the latest single ‘Renegade Fighter is perhaps even more catchier than
‘glorafilia’. So how do you make a slice of catchy pop?
Ben says, with a forthright
wave of his beer bottle: "my answer to that would have to be take a little
piece from every song, a bit of chord progression and a bit of a melody,
a bit of a harmony and mix it altogether and you’re guaranteed success."
"I’m a lover, I’m a winner,
I’m a fighter, come to set your soul on fire," bellows the chorus to ‘Renegade
Fighter".
But does Ben’s explanation
sound too simple to be true? Well it gets better.
Andy the Aucklander and newest member of Zed pipes up: "(Zed’s) like mixing ice cream with curry." It might be a sarcastic mix but perhaps shows the two sides to Zed. They are fun loving boys that like a drink - not just beer either. Rumour has it they prefer the more exotic kind, like Long Island Ice Teas. But the teenage-girls-falling-over-them tag has also been poured upon them.
But as Andy says, they can’t
help it. It’s a long way from Cashmere high School in Christchurch back
in 1996 when Ben, drummer Adrian Palmer and guitarist and singer Nathan
King dreamt up Zed.
But now they’re a full-time
band. So how - apart from signing a major record deal with universal, which
is a good start - does a local band become full-timers?
Nathan says: "We had the
opportunity to record an album and we had people telling us that there’s
a chance you can make a career out of it overseas and we so want to try
it, y’know." Ben chips in: "It’s everyone’s dream since you were little
to be a rock star, but there’s a only a small chance of doing it."
And then Andy sums it up:
"I mean we’ve been taken out ot lunch twice today."
Even though Andy - who came
back from cavorting in Brazil to join the band - is an Aucklander, Zed
has no great passion to leave Christchurch. But then again the band say
they haven’t had a home for a while now because of touring and recording
in Auckland. It seems the step overseas is more important. "if thing sare
going to happen it might be better to hold fire and do the big one," says
Nathan.
For ones relatively young
(they hover around the 20-year-old mark) Zed know exactly what they’re
about. Maybe it’s something to do with their strong music pedigree an support.
The original mod rocker Ray Columbus is their manager and Andy’s mum Suzanne
Lynch was in New Zealand 60s group The Chicks, and his father played in
Cat Steven’s band in the 70s.
But Andy says from his position
of being the newest member of Zed, that thankfully Zed are not rock purists.
"It’s not like, ‘oh, y’know, I just wanna Marshall (amp) and I wanna rock
out.’ Y’know we hear something different and say, ‘hey that’s cool, what
can we do with it’. That’s one of the coolest things about this band.