Well Ballarat-cum-Melbourne act Bad News Toilet is not only slamming the beats into your subconscious by mashing up well know songs but the act also ads a visual element by dressing the audience up in theme with the track. The man behind the Toilet is Bryce Spratling and he talks us through the evolution of Bad News Toilet from bedroom project to renowned party starters.
“I had always wanted to do something up on stage at Karova, after attending the venue every weekend for many years. So I started playing around with Traktor and Ableton mixing songs.”
Karova Lounge is in Victorian regional town-centre Ballarat and buoyed by a university campus this venue has become the easily the most successful venue outside of Melbourne. Karova Lounge is also famous for housing the very first shows of Gold Fields, Yacht Club DJs, Hunting Grounds and Twinsy.
Many years ago this correspondent commented in a piece on the band Hunting Grounds (known as Howl back then) that Ballarat was Victoria’s ‘Manchester’ circa the 1980s – a medium sized rural city with a burgeoning music scene. With this analogy mind, imagine Bad News Toilet as the Happy Mondays of the scene – an act that creates a full on party atmosphere for the entirety of their set. As well as mashing certified bangers the visual element – costume changes – of a Bad News Toilet show are a huge part of the set.
“I had an idea to add costumes to the whole set, once I was ready, I asked Willow [Gray Wilson], the owner of Karova, if I could have a night.” As Spratling completes the retelling of this ‘origins’ tale he confirms the notion that when in a costume people go crazy,”I got everyone I knew down there for a really fun and crazy night. The girl in the strawberry got a nose bleed and a panda pretended to take a poo in a toilet on stage.”
Also, the chaos of organising the costumes and giving them out in a timely manner resulted in Bad News Toilet gaining a second member during this performance. The aptly titled Stagehand Sam (Sam Morely) – who wears a blue onesy and a red-hand mask – is side of stage facilitating punters to get involved in the show by costuming up.
From this night, the demand for Bad News Toilet has snowballed because of the full on party atmosphere that the act imbues. Spratling explains how a performance plays out, “Okay, so we try to have a costume change every three songs.” He then cheekily justifies, “it gives Stagehand Sam a chance to get some drunk girls in costume.”
So what are the costumes that make into a standard Bad News Toilet set? “Okay, we have Strawberry costumes which are for Pnau’s Wild Strawberries Vs Black Bettie Spiderbait version. We have recently added the Beastie Boys’ dress ups and the intergalactic Robot for Intergalactic Vs We Used To Be Friends,” explains Spratling. Within a set there are three or four other costume changes, one of which includes a blow-up doll in an aboriginal t-shirt for a mash of Regurgiator’s The Song Formally Known As and Xavier Rudd’s Energy Song.
The last of the said mash-up costume changes caused Spratling the ire or Nina Las Vegas at one of her shows that Bad News Toilet where supporting. Spratling lets on how he offended the newest princess of the indie-disco, “Yeah, so normally we put Matt Corby’s face on the blow-up doll but we thought it would be funny to put her picture on the blow-up doll. Turns out, she didn’t think it was funny at all,” states Spratling wryly.
Bad News Toilet have two very special shows coming up with a headline performance at Revolver this Saturday June 28 and they are pulling out all stops for the Watt’s On party at The Toff In Town on Wednesday July 10. Finally Spratling discloses a very intellectual mash-up that will be debuted to celebrate the intellectual nature of Watt’s On: “Have done a mash up of LCD Soundsystem Dance Yourself Clean and Chris Franklin’s Bloke to close that show.”
BY DENVER MAXX
