Paul Curtis was impressed, especially after witnessing a performance at the New Farm Powerhouse.1 Cloaked in a wedding dress with an ox heart slung around her neck, Gaffney sang opera standing in a pit of putrid water, surrounded by writhing, naked dancers. The pair began dating, and Gaffney was brought into the Regurgitator fold, writing press releases that themselves became an important component in the marketing of the group.
Not that Regurgitator really needed the help. Few bands boasted a public image so perfectly in tune with their music. The artwork for the New EP urged the consumer to ‘please dispose of package thoughtfully’, even supplying a use-by date of 15 August 1995 – the same day as the CD’s release. Any accusations of gimmickry, however, were easily defended: musically, Blubber Boy and the ferocious Track One represented an enormous advance for a band little more than a year old.
But Regurgitator was not above pushing the creative control clause in their contract to the limit. Coming after Blubber Boy, the band’s next release, FSO – Fuck Shit Off – was more statement than single. Ninety-three seconds of blistering hardcore, the song was buried in the middle of 18 minutes of feedback. Edited for radio programmers, the single became the most recalled Regurgitator item ever: many fans returned or sold their copies, unsure what exactly they’d spent their money on.
Ben Ely: We enjoyed pushing people’s buttons. We weren’t really popular with the record company when we started; they didn’t really like us, except for Michael [Parisi]. So we kind of liked pissing them off. The noise bit was my idea.
Such was Regurgitator’s popularity, however, that for the time being the group held the whip hand. Following a tour of Europe and Japan, the band began 1996 as a major drawcard for the Big Day Out, playing every date from Auckland to Perth, handling their transition to the main stage with ease. When the group told Warner they wanted to record their debut album in Thailand, no one turned a hair.
Lee and Ely had scouted around for a cheap local studio while on holiday in Bangkok prior to the band’s European tour. One month after finishing the Big Day Out shows, the band reconvened in Bangkok for three weeks of recording at Centre Stage Studios.
Ben Ely: Martin always instilled this idea in us that [we should] keep the costs really low, so if the record company looked at their books and said, oh, these guys have only sold 20,000 records, but we’d only spent 1500 bucks, their profit margin was better. It was better for us, too, because we weren’t pissing all our money up against a wall. So we went looking around some studios and found this crazy one out in the suburbs, which ended up being quite dodgy. It looked professional at first, but in the end we were holding the faders up by sticking toothpicks and matchsticks in the desk to hold it together.
The resulting album was named Tu-Plang, taken from the Thai word for jukebox. The conventional guitar pop introduction is immediately shot down by Yeomans: ‘I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am / I only wanna be the best that I can.’ The sarcasm was cheap, but so indelible was the melody, it logged hours more Triple J airplay for the band, to only minor outrage, even as radio announcers were forbidden to introduce the song by its full name.
The remainder was almost perversely eclectic. The first single, Kong Foo Sing, was monstrous funk-metal, Lee’s drums miked to sound more like garbage pails. Blubber Boy and Couldn’t Do It were both reprised – the latter in reggae form – as Riding The Wave Of Fashion and Happy Shopper remixes respectively. The highlight, though, was the West Coast-style hip-hop of Music Is Sport. Yeomans was a limited singer, and his voice was more effective when deployed as an extra percussive effect, allowing the skill and wit of his wordplay to shine.
What the hell we hitting for? Record companies keeping score
Trying to get those shiny-plaqued trophies for the office wall
Pumping out the hits to feed a media blitz
Now watch the champs blow the champers on bikini-clad tits
Being mercilessly lampooned by their star act was of no concern to Warner as long as they stayed in front on the scoreboard. Breaking into the national top 10 shortly after its release in early May, Tu-Plang went on to sell over 70,000 copies. As Craig Mathieson points out in his survey of the Australian music industry’s incorporation of alternative rock, The Sell-In, it was ‘Shiny platinum album plaques for all involved.’2
Promotional duties fell mainly to Ely and Lee. Yeomans was in retreat, bewildered by his band’s runaway success. He was also hopelessly in love with Janet English, bass player with the Melbourne-based Spiderbait, with whom he had formed a relationship shortly before the recording of Tu-Plang. Already somewhat removed from his band-mates and the hard-living boys’ club he was expected to embrace as the singer and guitarist of a leading rock band (a dilemma he addressed in Tu-Plang’s Social Disaster), Yeomans found it easier to withdraw.
In some ways, Yeomans’ relationship with English can be seen as an extension of his friendship with Kiley Gaffney: evidently the singer’s loathing for the trappings of rock culture went hand-in-glove with an attraction to women tough enough to exist within that culture on their own terms. Both Gaffney and English had no problem identifying themselves as feminists, and their influence was felt on a string of anti-sexist Yeomans songs, from FSO to Pop Porn. A talented graphic artist, English’s bold, colourful 2D designs also had an obvious impact on a string of Regurgitator CD covers and videos.
But the biggest impact the relationship had on the band was commercial: the besotted Yeomans just wanted to stay home. The band was attracting notice overseas – I Sucked A Lot Of Cock To Get Where I Am had already been released as a limited seven-inch single by the prestigious Sub Pop label – and American label Reprise were courting the band so heavily they were prepared to set up house for them in Los Angeles. The label released Tu-Plang for the American market in April 1997, but lost interest when Yeomans refused to tour overseas for more than three weeks at a time.
Quan Yeomans: When you’re signed to a big American label, of course they want you to move over there for a year and crack it for them. And none of us were really into that. Maybe Martin was, and maybe Ben was more than I was, but I certainly held us back in that regard.
Paul Curtis: I actually think they made the right decision not going there. It’s such a long shot whether those things are going to work, and we thought we shouldn’t go away from Australia for too long anyway, because if we did that we might have sabotaged our market here.
While Regurgitator struggled to ride their own wave of fashion, similarly inspired acts floundered in their wake. Ely found enough time to return to Pangaea, recording an EP, Smile, and single, Boys, before the release of the band’s only album Freibentos in August 1997. It lacked something – most obviously Jim Sinclair, who was ejected from the band halfway through the recording. When Sinclair’s jazz-fusion combination Elevation also folded, the gifted guitarist disappeared from view.
Dave Atkins, though, was inexhaustible. Once, the drummer played five gigs in one night, with Pangaea, Elevation, Toothfaeries, folk singer Paddy Dempsey and heavy industrialists Soundsurgery. He also formed what became his most successful band, the hip-hop/dance crew Resin Dogs. While the interaction between musicians was incestuous, the activity kept the home fires burning while Regurgitator, Custard and Powderfinger focused their energies elsewhere.
Dave Atkins: It felt really important that I played with all those bands at the time, just to keep that whole scene going – if you played in five different bands, you were helping venues keep going, if you did all the sessions you could, you were keeping studios like Red Zeds alive.
Not everyone was getting along, though. The signing of Kiley Gaffney to Warner immediately led to unfair gossip that, as Curtis’ partner and Yeomans’ friend, she was storming the castle on Regurgitator’s coat tails. While it is true the label was fascinated by her contribution to Blubber Boy – ‘I think they were waiting for me to whip some great hit out of my arse that never came,’
she quips – the accusations were not borne out by commercial reality.
Kiley Gaffney: There was a backlash at the time that I got signed, with people saying I got signed because of Paul. I actually took it up with Warner, and they said that’s just ridiculous, that they would invest as much money in me as they did because of him.
In fact, Gaffney’s projects ran on tiny budgets – and for good reason. Billed as the soundtrack to a non-existent film, Bitter Fluff, Gaffney’s debut single Punk Rok Chik went over most listeners’ heads upon its release in August 1996. The high-concept album was subsequently held over for a year. While Yeomans could swear to his heart’s content without endangering Regurgitator’s chances of airplay, Gaffney was not granted the same latitude, although she defends the chance the label gave her.
Kiley Gaffney: It proved to be relatively fruitless, but it was good. The Warner folk were always really supportive. I don’t think they understood a lot of what I was trying to do, but they were pretty good.
Warner had thrown Gaffney against the wall – and she hadn’t stuck. But she was never, ever just a bit of fluff, and that almost certainly counted against her.
It’s that whole, ‘She’s pretty, she’s confronting, she’s ballsy.’ But if she’s not pretty and she’s confronting, she’s a fucking ballbreaker. You know what I mean?3
By 1997 Fortitude Valley was a long way from the near-deserted dive of five years before. An inner-city urban renewal campaign was in full swing. New cafes and restaurants had flowered from the Brunswick Street Mall towards New Farm. Outdoor tables crowded the footpath. The mall itself was under extensive redevelopment, with the old Target building transformed into a split-level arcade of expensive specialty stores. By night, thousands of revellers began flocking to the once-feared precinct on the corner of Brunswick and Ann Streets.
Three blocks away, Regurgitator gathered to begin recording their second album in a condemned, crumbling warehouse they dubbed the Dirty Room. This time, there was no suggestion of relocating to a cheap studio in Bangkok, or an expensive one in Sydney. It made more sense for everyone to stay home: Yeomans and English had just bought a house in the suburbs, and were recording an album of their own under the working name the Shits.
After spending most of Warner’s advance money on recording equipment – drum machines, old synthesisers, sampling gear – the group still had little clue what kind of album they wanted to make. The clues came in the early ’80s pop records the band members were listening to: the Cars’ Candy-O, Prince’s Controversy, even the British new romantics Ultravox and Duran Duran. Two new pieces, Everyday Formula and Black Bugs (a breakthrough song for Ely) retained a punk edge, but were demonstrably lighter, almost airy in tone.
Anticipating a backlash against Regurgitator’s early success, Ely came up with the perfect pre-emptive strike: I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff. The song was originally recorded as a straight rock tune – fast-paced, guitar-driven and ready for the mosh pit.4 But the treatment only obscured Ely’s pungent lyric: musically, the song wasn’t all that different from the old stuff.
Lachlan Goold: The intention wasn’t clear enough; it sounded a bit like a cover band. So that’s when Martin said, ‘Let’s go fully Ultravox!’ I think someone brought in the song Vienna, and we started going, let’s record the drums without any cymbals, let’s have the keyboards play the bass lines, let’s put the vocals through the Vocoder.
But for once the reliance on technology – albeit old technology – did not equate to a lack of musical warmth. The songs breathed with life, humour and wholly unexpected poignancy, with Goold’s retro-futurist production giving the vocals added depth and texture. Yeomans’ Beatlesque epic Just Another Beautiful Story wrapped a truly sweet love song in an existential lament – ‘There ain’t no God, there’s just me and you’ – while the thick groove of I Will Lick Your Arsehole again showcased his facility as a rapper:
Evidence irrefutable I’m squarer than a cubicle
I hug the straight and narrow like a Julie Andrews musical
I never liked it loud, and crowded places scare me
I dig the rock & roll as much as Peter, Paul and Mary
While the lyrics were more razor-edged than ever (especially on The World Of Sleaze and the barbed tribute to trophy wives, Polyester Girl), this time they came complete with disarming falsetto harmonies. The final song recorded, bearing only an exclamation point for a title, was built around a belching keyboard fill and another Yeomans paean to playing live – in his lounge room. With its uncanny resemblance to early Prince, it was subtitled The Song Formerly Known As.
Kiley Gaffney: Quan’s basically a plodder. He can write a song quickly, but then he’ll sit there and work at it until it’s perfect. He’ll do four vocals in perfect harmony and build these beautiful three-dimensional songs. Like the Prince song, the layering on there, that’s so fucking great.
With recording complete and their lease on the premises up, the band finally abandoned the Dirty Room. The warehouse was immediately demolished to make way for an extension to BMW’s luxury caryard next door. It neatly symbolised the changing face of Fortitude Valley.
Ben Ely: I drove past two days later and the whole building was gone except for this Coke machine that was left downstairs. They tore away the whole building around it, so all that was left was a vacant lot with a concrete slab and this Coke machine in the middle.
Unit crowned Regurgitator’s commercial ascent. ‘Unit, with its bleeps and blips, is going to confuse people, at least initially,’ predicted Andrew Humphreys in Rolling Stone. ‘But its daring and vitality will win them over in the end because Unit is a brilliant pop album.’5
He couldn’t have been more correct. After a solid but unremarkable start on its release in November 1997, Unit followed Tu-Plang to platinum status – three times over. Championed by the dedicated Michael Parisi, both Polyester Girl and The Song Formerly Known As crossed over from Triple J to commercial radio; in a supreme irony, the buoyant but loaded Polyester Girl even dented the teen market, climbing to 14 on the charts.
On the road, however, Regurgitator was travelling worse than ever. Less than a week after the album’s release, Martin Lee went MIA for an all-ages gig in Perth; the mystery was solved the next day when he was found unconscious and seriously injured, not far from the nightclub where he had last been seen after a show at the University of Western Australia the day before. No one knows exactly what happened: comatose for more than a week, Lee was unable to shed any light on what had happened when he came to. There were no witnesses.
The band was shaken, and the incident widened the cracks opening between the members. Lee was already deeply disenchanted. Yeomans, understandably, had decided to claim sole songwriting credit for his songs, forcing Ely (whose smart, hooky confections had become an inextricable part of Regurgitator’s identity) to do the same. While the creative tension and competition spurred the pair on, Lee felt cut out, and not only of publishing royalties.
Quan Yeomans: We all seemed like aliens to each other, me especially. Ben and Martin were closer at the beginning of the band, and I certainly formed my relationship with Martin through Ben. I think if I had been closer to Martin I would have supported him a lot more than I did [after the accident] as a friend, but I don’t think I was close enough to him to do that.
But the runaway success of Unit made it almost impossible for Regurgitator to step off the live treadmill. The band spent almost all of 1998 on tour – three times around Australia, twice through Japan, a prestigious date at the UK Reading Festival. Even Yeomans found himself being sucked into the vortex. When the Shits’ home recordings were released by Polydor under the friendlier handle of Happyland, he found himself circumnavigating the continent all over again.
Quan Yeomans: The bigger the audience is, the more people you feel like you have to answer to. And you do get swept up in it. Once you’re successf
ul, it’s something you want to maintain – in the world of economics, things grow, you don’t want it to go backwards.
Martin Lee had rebuilt the Dirty Room in new premises in Fortitude Valley, with the assumption that the studio would be used to record Unit’s follow-up. Already feeling undervalued, he was taken aback when a clearly uncomfortable Yeomans made it clear he required a change of working environment. For Lee, it was the last straw: when Ely and Yeomans relocated to Byron Bay for five weeks, Lee refused to join them, venturing south only to record his parts – and sometimes only half of them.
Lachlan Goold: We’d just got Pro-Tools then, which meant we could edit everything up, and Martin wouldn’t even finish a song – he’d play the first verse, chorus, he’d be halfway through the second verse and say, ‘Oh, I’m just going to be repeating myself,’ and stop. The house we were in, the drums were downstairs, so I’d go downstairs and say, ‘Martin, what’s wrong, is your headphone mix not right or something?’, and he’d already be out of there, wouldn’t even be around!
Lee’s absence, however, was only a symptom of the band’s internal divisions. Certainly no one blames him for the end result. Despite a bright, almost fastidious production from Magoo, . . . Art (the canary-yellow sleeve of which bore the warning ‘actual product may not match expectations’) was a strangely lifeless set. Where Unit’s stylistic mish-mash had been united by sounds and themes and Tu-Plang was energised chaos, . . . Art was merely diffuse. Not even Ely’s terrific Surfin’ Bird-style rave-up, I Wanna Be A Nudist, could get it over the line. The band was simply spent.
Quan Yeomans: I don’t think my heart was in it, I don’t think any of our hearts were in it . . . I really wonder what would have happened if we’d spent a bit more time in the wilderness and not put out a record for two or three years after Unit, just see what would have happened, but of course we can’t tell.
Lee left the band shortly after . . . Art’s release in August 1999.
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