The band came together from the remnants of gritty punk-rock act, The Sophisticants, a couple of guys met through gigging, a friendship formed at high school, and an amazing journeyman drummer. Connolly, lead male vocals, and Zoe Rinkel, female vocals, caught up with your Beat Magazine correspondent at Richmond pub The All Nations to trace the formation of this formidable music act that is set to become a regular fixture at Melbourne live music venues.
“On drums we were lucky enough to pick up a guy called Ben Thompson who’s from Mallacoota originally and has made his way in bands around Australia and we were lucky enough that he ended up with us. On bass is Chris Yates who was in The Sophisticants, on lead guitar we’ve got Mr Timothy Mitchell who along with Alex Warner, keyboard and vocals, was in a band called The Daily Waters who we played with years and years ago when we were The Sophisticants, so we recruited them to the this band. Plus there’s Zoe’s sister Miki on vocals and Lachlan McDougal on rhythm,” sets out Connolly on the rolls of The Eighty 88s.
The Eighty 88s are heavily inspired by the ‘50s and the origins of rock’n’roll so much so that in tribute to their sonic muse the band closes each set with Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally.
“That early rock’n’roll forms the backbone of our sound but we quite regularly head down the soul path as well. We’re not there yet but we would like to get to vaguely resembling the greats like Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, the main priority for us is to make people dance,” tells Connolly.
“I was reading James Brown’s biography and he talks about ‘the secret of the one’ and the secret of the one is that funk happens on the one and not on the four and Ben, our drummer, just picked it up straight away,” concludes Connolly on the band’s direction as he clicks his fingers on the one.
Since a couple of false starts, The Eighty 88s had what they consider this lineup’s debut in February last year at Got Milk, a private music festival that takes place outside Rochester in Northern Victoria. The band’s 2013 set was such a huge success that the band was asked back to this year’s festival to play on the Saturday night, January 27. However, on the Sunday the band awoke to get the tragic news that a 35-year-old woman, Katie Louise Broadbent, had been killed when a motorist ran over her tent. Connolly and Rinkel discuss witnessing the aftermath of such tragedy.
“It’s not a big campsite, maybe 300 people, and they weren’t in the immediate vicinity to where we were camped. I woke up looked over and saw cops and thought maybe it was a noise complaint and then I saw police tape…” Rinkel now explains, “We didn’t really know until we got back to Melbourne and it was just so sad.”
Finally at this pub catch-up we focus on the positive present and future for The Eighty 88s by discussing their upcoming Saturday night show at Yah Yah’s. This is the band’s second show at Yah Yah’s that supports a drinkin’ swashbuckling vibe perfect for The Eighty 88s and even after only one show Connolly admits with a laugh that it has “become somewhat of home base for the band.”
Also the band’s live shows are incredible to watch as Connolly, a former professional actor, becomes a man possessed. So committed to the dynamics of compelling rock’n’roll performance in the early days of the band that Connolly wrote loose scripts and bios for each band member.
“One thing I did early on when I was putting this crazy thing together I saw this act as a collection of characters rather than a band so I wrote a character breakdown for everyone and it kinda helped to get everyone on the same page.”
BY DAN WATT
