We are once again focusing on up-and-coming Melburnian, live artists that deserve to be seen in their full glory on stage.
This is the latest in our fortnightly deep dives into their worlds – you might just want to grab a ticket to their next show!
Find your next favourite act. Check out the best new music from local and independent artists here.
This week get to know three members of jazzy, rockadelic band Fairtrade Narcotics: I sat down with singer-songwriter and trumpeter Brooke, their “everything guitarist” Ned and the master of keys and hip-hop vocals, Marzi. Rounded out by Georgia on drums and Matt on bass, Fairtrade Narcotics wow with a range of progressive guitar solos, funky bass lines and inspired genre-bending: “The band is called Fairtrade Narcotics and it can be anything.”
The band came about when lead singer Brooke promised her band could play at a university gig. “I said my band can play and I didn’t have a band at the time so I made the band to do the gig.” Since then the group have released S p a c e d last year, a collection of galactic fusions that can please any music listener, and play frequent gigs with one mission statement: “put on awesome shows and connect with people”.
Get to know this dynamic local band before they blow your socks off at the next live venue.
If you could travel back in time, steal one song from history and make it your own, what would it be and why?
“When I’m having the most fun with Fairtrade,” says Ned, “is when we’re going at 110%. Big climactic kind of moments.” The guitarist of the band went with ‘Painkiller’ by Judas Priest for its intensity. “That song is a good example of that all the way through.”
“‘Be Quiet and Drive’ by Deftones,” says Brooke. “They’re a huge influence on not just how I sing, but how Georgia plays the drums, how Ned likes his guitar. If we made that song our own, it would be nice to think that everything else that followed Deftones would follow us as well. I’m not just going to take their one song, I’m going to take their whole career.”
“My all time favourite cover,” says keyboardist Marzi, “is this 1972 cover that Stevie Wonder did of ‘Close to You’ by the Carpenters. I don’t think we could do it in the same way regardless of our ability, but I wish we could.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grWpHuxrh3I
Funniest thing that’s ever happened at a gig?
“There’s now a pool noodle on one of the overhead speakers at Colour Club,” Brooke reminisces. “It’s there because one of the first times we played there, Ned was bopping around on stage and he’s got a noggin made of concrete. Coming off stage he smacked his head against the speaker and he pretty much concussed himself. At the end of the show, Ned’s in the corner just nursing his massive head.”
On a less violent and self-destructive note, Marzi remembers a recent time that the band gelled so well together on stage. “We were between songs at our set at Penny’s. Not previously discussed beforehand, Ned started playing ‘Killing in the Name’, just the riff, and then Georgia pretty quickly got into it as well, and it wasn’t long before Matt was doing the bass line. I just started screaming the lyrics. I couldn’t remember the verse. Ned couldn’t remember the riffs. We butchered it, but everyone enjoyed it. It was a fun mess.”
If you could tour anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
“I think we’d get big in Japan,” says Brooke, “because we’re a weird band. We’re big geeks, we love our anime and our games. I think the fact that we are just a bunch of weebs – they would smell it on us.”
What are your most unlikely inspirations?
After agreeing that each bandmate is in fact each other’s muse, they dug deep into their musical inspirations. “There is this Bulgarian Women’s Choir from the 90s that sings a bunch of Jewish triptychs,” Marzi informs me. “I think their name is literally Bulgarian Women’s Choir. They did this song with a harmony on it which is just sick.”
Brooke’s unlikely inspirations lie in what she cools “those 90s rock dudes”. “I really like Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of Tool. So much of how I construct vocal melodies now are so influenced, not just by Maynard but Chino Moreno from Deftones. It’s all these really 90s rock dudes, I’m really into how they sing. It’s really funny because I try to emulate them when I sing and a girly voice comes out.”
“I took a jazz course,” Ned says, “to open up that side of my playing and it did wonders. It helped me be able to play what I’m hearing in my head with intention instead of just fumbling around and trying to put it together.”
What band would you be the perfect support act for?
A superb choice that I think it would be a crime not to eventuate, the band choose Hiatus Kaiyote. “The direction they’re going in with their latest project, we’re kind of moving parallel. We’re not as soul as them, but there are soul elements in our music.”
Lastly, why should people who don’t know you come and see your gig?
“If you are sick of the cool band phenomenon and you are ready to go in with an open mind,” says Brooke. “So don’t come to a Fairtrade Narcotics gig looking for a cool band, we’re an everything band. We’re a bunch of geeks. We’re the ultimate anti-cool band and we wholeheartedly embrace that.”
Check out Fairtrade Narcotics on Instagram and Facebook for upcoming gigs and follow them on Spotify to listen to their EP and future new music.
