“The Stems embraced a garage R&B sound,” he says. “[We had] influences like The Yardbirds, The Easybeats and the Nuggetssounds. Early on, we fused the ‘60s garage sound with influences from early ‘80s power-pop, but then we morphed into more of a garage image and sound, going for more of the fuzz tones. Then towards the end of that, we started to go back into that late-‘70s/ early-‘80s power pop thing. I was writing in that style; I was a big fan of The Raspberries and Badfinger and then lesser-known bands like The Plimsouls and The dB’s.”
The Stems split up in 1987 and Mariani immediately transitioned into The Someloves, which also featured Darryl Mather of Lime Spiders. With The Someloves, Mariani fully embraced the jangly power-pop sound hinted at in The Stems.
“[Mather and I] shared a house in Petersham,” he says, “and we were playing all these records and we had this shared appreciation for those bands and that kind of music – Big Star and all that.”
The Someloves weren’t fated to last and by 1992 Mariani had conceived DM3. Over the next seven years, DM3 released three records; One Time Two Times Three Red Light (1993), Road to Rome (1996) and Rippled Soul (1999). The band’s tight power-pop sound sat perfectly next to such contemporaneous groups such as R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub and The Breeders. But again, there was no commercial explosion to go with the critical praise.
From an artistic point of view, Mariani had a clear idea of what distinguished this band from his previous projects: “The Someloves was a lot janglier than DM3,” he says. “DM3 was bringing that pop and jangle in with a more muscular guitar sound. I did make a point of trying to make it a little bit tougher and more rock’n’roll in DM3.”
Despite the noted differences between the three bands, they all revolved around Mariani’s ultra-melodic songwriting and his preference for jangly guitar tones. It’s a sound he’s been attracted to since childhood.
“I remember clearly hearing Go All the Way by The Raspberries on the radio and automatically loving that song,” he says. “It was the same with a song like [Badfinger’s] Day After Day, which was number one here, and I Saw The Light by Todd Rundgren. Those songs really stick in my memory. When I started to get to know about music, The Beatles had been broken up for a couple of years, but I do remember very well The Beatles and other bands that were releasing great singles, like the Bee Gees and The Kinks and T-Rex.
“For me, melodies and well-written pop songs have always been something I’ve loved,” he adds, “so when I came around to forming a band it was always going to be in that style because that’s the stuff I like and the stuff that I could write.”
This weekend Mariani brings DM3 to town for a couple of rare Melbourne shows. His name mightn’t feature in most discussions about Oz rock legends, but his work continues to reach new listeners.
“The genre of what they deem as ‘power pop’ has a cult-like following,” he says. “When new fans of that music come along they start to look for other bands and discover beyond Cheap Trick and Big Star and the obvious ones. There are other bands, and people will suggest bands to people and you get new fans that way.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
