So found Ben Ely, singer and bassist of Regurgitator, when they toured performing their lauded albums, Tu-Plang and Unit, in 2012. “I had at least six-to-eight couples coming up and going, ‘We had sex for the first time’, or ‘I met my partner and then we got married listening to you’,” he laughs. “And then you get people that go, ‘I used to listen to you when I was three and now I’m old enough to come and see you play’.”
Unknown to the band at the time, their longtime manager Paul Curtis conspired to record the Melbourne dates of that tour, which are about to be issued as Nothing Less Than Cheap Imitations – the band’s first live album in a career spanning 22 years.
“It’s pretty warts and all,” says Ely. “It’s not like a live album like Kiss would do where they go back in the studio and make it all neat and clean. It’s pretty rough and live. I think a lot of people are keen for that.”
Having emerged from the early-‘90s Brisbane scene, and rising to national prominence in a cluster of bleached hair, tattoos and attitude with the release of Tu-Plang in 1996, Regurgitator are something of a national treasure, and an anomaly in the narrative of Australian pop. As demonstrated on the live album, time hasn’t diminished the power and intensity of the ’Gurg – something audiences will be reminded of when they return for a nine-date tour through August and September.
“We haven’t played for almost two years now so we’re all excited about doing it again,” says Ely. “We want to treat it like a party and throw in a couple of older songs that we haven’t played for a while. Maybe grow some handlebar moustaches, get some leather hotpants, I’m not entirely sure. We’re still in preparation for that.”
Despite the immense amount of time the pair have spent together since their early 20s, Ely is genuinely excited about returning to the stage with his co-frontman, Quan Yeomans.
“Quan and I are best friends,” he says. “I’m getting married for the first time in September and he’s my best man and our manager’s my best man too. We probably fought quite a lot for the first ten years and now we’ve gotten to a point where we know how to be together without fighting. It’s like the most perfect family scenario you could possibly imagine.
“I think the big trick in being in a band is working with someone that you really relate to on a musical level,” he continues. “I appreciate my relationship with Quan because outside of Regurgitator I’ve played in lots of bands, and I’ve never had a relationship that is as naïve and juvenile and fun. It just seems when we get together it works.”
Yeomans and Ely’s latest project may surprise those who’ll forever associate them with songs like I Sucked A Lot of Cock To Get Where I Am. “We’re in the process of working on a kids TV show, which is really bizarre,” says Ely. “We just laugh our arses off all day coming up with these retarded ideas that are so juvenile, designing puppets and making really stupid songs. It feels really genuine, like we should have been doing this 20 years ago.”
It’s refreshing to hear the same sort of wide-eyed enthusiasm that typified their early work is still in effect. Though, it’s being applied with a little less aggression. “We used to distort everything – the drum kit, bass and guitar – and Quan would scream kind of incessantly,” says Ely. “We used to swear a lot more, and that kind of worked to our benefit at the start. I remember when Quan wrote the song Blubber Boy; that definite shift from being angry young men to trying to toy with some sort of pop sensibilities and play with melody as well.”
Regurgitator were among the last wave of Australian bands to be assisted by the massive budgets of major labels at the end of the 20th century. “It was great, they just let us do what we wanted, we toured American and Europe quite a lot. It’s a very different industry now, you’d have to be mental to do it as a career. You just have to really love the process of making music and the enjoyment of putting the puzzle of the song together.”
The band now produce their music in their respective home studios, with their albums available for pay-as-you-please via Bandcamp. “You can just have it if you want, we don’t care. That’s why we feel so fortunate that we’ve got those people that go to our shows. It blows me away every time we do a show and sell it out, or get a large crowd. I personally have a lot of gratitude for the band that exists as it is today and look back fondly on what we’ve been through in the past.”
BY ALEX WATTS
