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And when they're good, they're very very good. When they're bad, they still have the charisma to overcome the lapses of self indulgence. Such is the media blitz on the DAAS that it's inevitable that they'd stale out in a very short piece of time. A weekly stint on Big Gig can ho-hum even the best comedy act.
So how do the Doug Anthonys get over this? Why, they become even more obnoxious and outrageous than before, absolutely pinning the terrified crowd to the back of the hall! Opening act Moriarty Brothers had earlier lulled the masses to a safety level with a series of campy jazzy songs. The DAAS smashed that quite briefly, their intro tape crashing through the speakers, startling some of the patrons. Onstage they whooped, they hollered, they made nasty noises, they bared their bums, they gyrated and leaped, they emptied garbage bins, they poked their tongues out. They did everything to assault every sense going.
On Big Gig, it's Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott who are the resident nasties, and Richard Fiddler the forlorn dolt forever picked on. Tonight, it was Fiddler who cast the evil eye. For instance, there's one segment of the show where the audience is divided into three, and the winner gets to slap any of the Allstars. But first she had to endure the most astounding barrage of abuse and humiliation from Fiddler first. The audience cringed for her; when she finally got the chance to slap him, the crowd bayed its approval. The Allstars then insisted the audience slap the person next to them (too bad if you were sitting next to a nasty looking biker…), getting into the spirit of things by running up and down the aisle, thumping audience members who caught their eye, howling with delight.
Why it works so well is that DAAS see themselves as being the only ones who can misbehave. When a girl had the audacity to get onstage without being invited by them, Fiddler tried to choke her. Not a pretend one, either. Of course, you can't always count on that. Later when Fiddler went on walk-about through the audience looking for a victim, he slapped the wrong person. The guy punched him back, a brawl ensued, Richard called to his two mates for backup (they stayed on the stage, instead), the audience member got involved in the fracas, which ended when Fiddle struggled back to the stage, clothes absolutely torn, screaming defiance. Yes, they're nasty, yes they're rivetting, yes they're fresh comedy; yet when you get females from the audience throwing their underwear onto the stage, then you sense they're taking their dark shadows to a totally different attraction altogether.
With their first published work, Book, in its third print run, the trio have now released a record, fittingly titled Icon. It was the ABC's Big Gig that gave DAAS the national profile that has made them household names, and they made their final appearance on the show last week after appearing in three series of the show. In September they will return to the ABC with their very own series.
They are about to enter a new realm with the release of their debut album, which is in keeping with their original intention to branch out into music and literature and leave comedy behind.
Icon takes us on a satirical jaunt through modern society, exploiting various religious myths, and firing a broadside at racism and politics en route. Musically, DAAS explore many genres, from thigh-slapping country to pop, with generous serves of guitar riffs and soaring harmonies.
Their ambition is to create a new genre of music, which surfaces in the perplexing tracks 2X and the epic RAT. At times it seems like they have actually invented a new language as the wailing in some songs is incoherent.
The record ranges musically from one end of the spectrum to the other with the impassioned vocals of Shang-a-lang to the light, acoustic ditty, Little Gospel Song. No two tracks are the same. Change The Blades has a thrashy back beat, Go To Church is immersed in a fashionable rap beat and I Want To Spill The Blood Of A Hippy falls into the oblivion of psychedelic rock.
KRSNA is a classic pop song, and there are loads more experimental techniques with shrieks, eerie effects and exerpts from newscasts in the background.
Lyrically they touch on such endearing topics as infanticide and jealousy, in My Baby's Gone To Jail, and they go on to have a dig at intellectuals, drugs and sexuality.
Uncultured
DAAS are regarded as crass and demented in some quarters, but their popularity with many Australians is obvious.
Their uncultured humour is aimed at those who are as irreverent as they are. Although sometimes bordering on inane, it is difficult to suppress a reaction to their brash humour and lunatic antics. They are, indeed, masters of black humour.
I began to wonder what I was letting myself in for when their management apologised to me for having to speak to them. After a long chat with Richard Fidler, the quiet and sensitive guitar-slinging member of the group, I discovered I had nothing to fear apart from a slightly sore eardrum.
Belying his stage persona, Richard is certainly not quiet when apart from his two partners, Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott.
"In real life, I hold the whip hand over the group," Richard said.
"They don't pick on me off stage, of course not, no, no, we're good friends. They divert their energies in other areas, they are both sexual dynamos. As Tim says, 'full balls, empty head,' and these guys are very smart!"
So are DAAS a bad joke, victims of the society we live in, and is ICON a distasteful statement of the 20th century?
"People often assume, because we are a comedy group, when we make references to certain things like Islam or Christianity, that we are slagging them off," Richard said.
"But it is more like just touching on them and drawing some iconic power from them, which admittedly a very superficial and crass way to deal with things, but that's pretty much what the 20th century is all about.
"The 20th century is very much about prevailing fashions and we draw on these in the most superficial way, as sort of post-modernistic irony.
"We are not a group with a message, we just deal with things. We consider ourselves the morass of 20th century pop culture, which is to get out of it. We write from that experience, rather than make objective points about it."
I asked Richard whether anything was sacred to them.
"Yes, but we wouldn't get involved in them too much because it would set us up to have our heads kicked in. We make a living being more smart ass than anybody else and as soon as somebody is more smart ass than us then we are gone."
The trio met in Canberra in the murky depths of the city's punk scene, playing in a band called Sluts on Heat. They claim they fell into comedy by accident and it is just a stepping stone on to politics, art, music and writing.
And ICON is the first step in the musical direction. I Want To Spill The Blood Of A Hippy was chosen as a single for radio because they felt it stood out musically.
Mystery
Surprisingly, the songs' lyrics are not printed on the album's sleeve.
"It would be giving too much away about each song. I think it's up to people to decide for themselves what they are about. The best form of art has a mystery about it."
Richard said that ICON was motivated purely by fun.
"It was never intended to make money for us," he said. "We paid for it all ourselves and we're actually deeply in debt at the moment because we own everything we do.
"If it sells that would be great, but if it doesn't… I don't really care either way, as long as we don't spend too much time in debt."
Dates have just been announced for DAAS to visit Perth. They will be doing five shows in three days at His Majesty's Theatre from July 19-21. Tickets go on sale next week.
In those forgotten days of the mid-1970s, a little British outfit called The Rolling Stones tried to cut it in the big time. A lavish tour was planned with the five lads' goal being domination of the US of A.
The focus was to conquer the very conservative deep South of the aforementioned US but the hood-wearing populace had not forgotten the reputation the boys had gained a decade earlier.
With plans of having a 20-foot inflatable phallus popping out of the stage and a song list including the sedate "Starf**ker" made public, the authorities - whose only goal was to uphold the common decency of their God-fearing townsfolk - kept a close eye on these disciples of Satin for the entire tour. On several dates, the phallus didn't erect at all.
Let's jump forward in time a little now. It is some 15 years later. Three young lads - a guitarist, a gorgeous one and a mean one - are back in their own country. They have conquered the world in their own right and on their own terms but have themselves, in turn, gained something of a reputation of being mind-polluting bastards whose only aim is to rape children below the age of five and do big poos on your freshly trimmed lawns.
This underlying goal was misinterpreted as art by the rest of the world but didn't go by unnoticed by the authorities in that state of Queensland - the authorities whose only goal is to uphold the common decency of their God-fearing townsfolk, blah-blah-blah.
"The Queensland cops tend to follow us all around wherever we go," says Tim Ferguson, one of the Doug Anthony Allstars (the threesome in question). "They were following us again on this tour. They never approach us - they just sort of follow us and kept an eye open.
"We don't take drugs - we believe that young people should use their imaginations and their genitals to have fun. But perhaps they believe that we're drug smugglers or that we're terrorists or something.
"We certainly don't change our show when we go to Queensland. People were saying, 'You better watch out about the swearing,' and stuff but the first couple of nights we knew we had cops in there we got 2000 people to scream 'F**k-f**k-f**k-f**k-f**k,' for the first five minutes and that tended to allay any fears the police had that we'd ever break the law.
"But they still follow us around - you can hear their knuckles scraping along, you can hear the snuffling through their noses. Queensland police breathe heavily through their noses."
But DAAS hold no grudges against those Queenslanders who misconstrue their work. "Queensland is just full of geeks and animals," points out the forever diplomatic Tim. "The only times I have been threatened with physical violence have all been in Queensland. I was threatened the other night with violence."
"Fortunately Tim is a Duntroon graduate so it's not a problem," adds Richard Fidler.
"They were four boys sitting around in a drunken stupor and I said, 'Would anyone like to try and hit me'," continues Tim. And I think it's because I used the word 'try' that they didn't actually make any attempt."
The unfortunate incident occurred when he referred to the girlfriends of a couple of Queenslanders as 'silly moles'. "Because they were," points out Richard.
Tim: "Because one of them came up and kicked me in the shins without introducing herself and said, 'How do you make so much money out of being wankers,' and I said, 'You're a silly mole'. And then their men came scraping up to defend her honour."
Richard: "The honour she did have was only 'this' big but it was all she had."
Tim: "I was quite amazed. She must have run from the venue pretty quickly because I'm sure I saw them grazing outside before."
So, with comparisons drawn, the question which begs to be asked: Are the Doug Anthony Allstars the 'Rolling Stones' of the 1990s?
Richard: "Arrrgh… God! I hate the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones are so f**ked. They're so f**ked, you can't imagine."
Tim: "We're all in our early 20s."
Richard: "Someone should do those syphilitic f**king dinosaurs a favour and put bullets through their heads. Put them to sleep. The Rolling Stones, my God, the most boring, boring band in the world. Mick Jagger once said, 'To make good rock 'n' roll, all you need is three chords and a lot of energy'. He missed one thing. Talent. Talent. And energy as well, let's face it.
"We did a gig them - well not with them. But we did a benefit in the UK - we were one of the comedy acts - and the headliners were U2. And they came out on stage - turgid bloody tripe they do; whinging, Christian rubbish - doing 'All Along the Watchtower'. And who should come out and do a guest guitar bit but Keith pumped-up-to-the-eyeballs-with-heroin Richards. Not-using-much-energy Richards.
"Keith staggered out on stage and… You know, he's got a guitar-strap roadie because he can't figure out how to put on his guitar strap properly. And a guy comes out and goes 'Just plug it here, Keith, and over the shoulder, mate'. The he goes, 'Oh yeah'. So that's the Rolling Stones for you. Apparently they were exciting in the 60s. I can't remember - I would have been two."
Tim: "Nothing exciting happened in the 60s anyway. No - we're certainly not the Rolling Stones of the 90s. I think what we'd like to be is perhaps more the Mary-Tyler-Moores of the 90s. She's much better looking and she's a lot younger."