One listen to their debut record will confirm this. Recorded on two tracks for your depleted listening pleasure, the "way out" songs exemplify the Cheater's lust for the archaic sounds of their masters - surf instrumental maestros The Atlantics, garage punk archetypes The Sonics and Australia's wildest 60's band The Missing Links (along with The Easybeats).
The Cheater Five have another passion - they all surf! Kent tells me that they are not into just any kind of surfing but favour boards with a single fin - whatever that means! He says the older, longer boardspromote the thrilling glide lost on the newer boards, as well as offering scope to perform outlandish maneuvers like the Kamikazi, Headstand, and of course the Cheater Five itself (crouching down while stretching out a leg and hanging five toes over the board's nose).
One eyefull of the Cheater's "flipped out" show and you'll really understand. Rehearsing night after night in a dank shack overlooking Western Australia's windswept Leighton Beach, the band emerged from these barren lands with a set of insane surf instrumentals, forgotten 60's classics and raunchy reverberating originals, and have already established a reputation of having the wildest stage act in the state. Comprising fatter, balding members of notorious Perth bands - butt rockers Wormfarm, camp punksters The Feends, garage knowns The Frantics, Bunbury punks The Calhoons and amphetamine surfers The Neptunes - The Cheater Five know how to put on a show - your show!
Dewey Knoll
Rare Bird Records
