“We’re super pumped,” Famularo enthuses. “We did a Christmas EP last year, and we’re keen to launch those songs. We do Christmas songs all year round, but this time we’re going to play it in full, and we’ve encouraged the other bands (on the bill) to also do some Christmas tracks, in a rock‘n’roll fashion, in a punk kind of vibe.”
He goes on to further explain why he and the band have decided to do a Christmas show so far away from the actual date. “Well I mean, people do ‘Christmas in July’, don’t they?” he queries. “When I did this Christmas EP, I did it myself, and I did it on Christmas Eve, so it was a little bit late to try and do some gigs and play it. No one was interested in listening to it, because they were over Christmas by that stage.
“So we’ve never really been able to do anything with it, so we decided to put on a Christmas gig in July. People might see the flyer, and we might get some random punters, because they might think it’s a little bit of fun. That’s why it’s free.”
Famularo is actually wanting to make this the first in a possible series of Christmas shows, with the next one, strangely enough, intended to be put on around the actual date of Christmas.
“I’ve written some new Christmas songs,” he says, “and I want to do another Christmas thing at the real Christmas time this year. So this is also like a proof of concept, to see if I can actually take it bigger, make it bigger and better, you know? Hopefully it could become a thing where bands could write their own Christmas songs, and not take themselves so seriously all the time.”
To get punters rocking up to the gig, the band have some pretty big things planned for the first show on July 24. “I’m trying to put a bit of effort into it,” he confirms, “I’m doing some visuals and animations, and I’m getting some people to help me out with that.
“I’ve been talking to one of the other bands, King Puppy and the Carnivore, they’re a blues rock‘n’roll band, they’re keen to do some Christmas songs. They’re going to jump up onstage with us and do a Christmas track, which I’ve yet to have written,” he laughs, “but I’ll get onto it soon. But we’ve got a couple of other guests going to jump up and do some songs. We’ve got a male/female Christmas duet as well. So it should be fun.”
Beyond the ‘Christmas in July’ show, the band have plans to do a full blown band recording in the not too distant future. “I’ve got a bunch of demos ready to bring to the band,” he reveals. “Hopefully we’re going to do a bit more of a proper recording soon… We just want to do some more recording and gigging stuff, play with some more like-minded, high-energy bands. There’s a lot of softies around Melbourne that we end up on the bill with, we want to get away from that.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
