“We’ve been out there (to Australia) once before,” he recalls, “a couple of years ago. We played The Tote in Melbourne…it was a really god show man, probably too good!” he laughs. “We’ve got some definite memories of that, but the end of it is a bit sketchy. I remember some old dudes giving us some – God knows what it was – some kind of shots at the bar, and me and Tom (vocalist and guitarist Tom Hudsons) got into the future a bit that night! But yeah, it was awesome, really good.”
Aside from that, in some of the more lucid moments during their trip, Rob has some other very fond memories of their first trip Down Under, especially a trip to the beach in Sydney.
“Yeah, we got loads of great memories,” he enthuses. “It was really, really ace; it was just a good time. I remember we went swimming at Bondi Beach, but we were like the typical English tourists. We turned up, and we’d forgotten to bring any swimming trunks or anything. I had these brand new black jeans, black tight skinny jeans, so I got in the sea with them. When we got back to the apartment we were staying in, I took my jeans off, and I was just black from the waist down! We were like amateur Englishmen in Australia!” he laughs again.
In a couple of months, the band are returning to do it all over again. However, instead of doing tiny pubs and clubs and smaller, boutique festivals, this time they are on the bill of the behemoth known as Soundwave, playing in front of audiences around the 30-40,000 mark. It promises to be an entirely different experience for the band altogether, and Rob feels there are definite pros and cons of playing smaller clubs and massive festivals.
“It’s weird, we actually get more nervous playing the smaller ones,” he reveals. “It’s more intense, the people are right there in front of you, whereas with the bigger shows it’s almost not real. They’re far away from you, when there’s a huge sea of people, you kinda zone out. But at the same time, there’s nothing like when you win them over, 30,000 people, and they’re all into what you’re doing, that’s just mindblowing when that happens.
“It’s great because the crowd are in it as much as you are,” he continues, “it’s like they’re responsible for what’s happening as much as we are. To be able to get that amount of people enjoying and getting tuned in to what’s going on at that moment, it’s a pretty good feeling!”
Rob agrees that they have come a long way as a band since that first Aussie tour, from playing small venues in front of a couple of hundred people to playing a huge festival with tens of thousands in attendance.
“Yeah, definitely, we’re all just older and uglier now!” he chuckles. “Having the opportunity to do something like that, to play in Australia, or wherever, it’s like a real honour. It’s a gift that you get given. Once you’ve done that, it’s like, ‘Well we need to do this really seriously now, it’s not a game any more’. Once you’ve had the opportunity to do something like that, you’ve got to put the effort in.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
