Looking back on four decades in the Australian musical landscape, Brisbane rock band Ups and Downs are bringing their northeast cool to metropolitan Melbourne on March 22.
Performing at the iconic Naarm live music venue, Brunswick Ballroom, the band are releasing a new retrospective album with hits from every era of their musical journey, appropriately titled Stained Glass Memories.
For drummer and vocalist Darren Atkinson, calling in from sunny Queensland, it wasn’t long after Ups and Downs formed that he realised they had something special together. After a few months of low-key gigs, the band entered Brisbane radio’s 4ZZZ Band Bazaar competition and emerged as runners-up.
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Darren tells me, “We were then able to fund the recording of our first cassette release, called Darling! It’s Wonderful. Within a short space of time, we were getting major support from 4ZZZ in what they call their Joint Efforts, their big music events they put on… So that all happened in the space of a couple of months, from early 1985.”
In short order the band were sharing poster space with much larger musical acts, with crowds of five or six-hundred people. Remembering that whirlwind period, Darren recalls thinking, “Wow, we’ve only been doing this a few months! It all, initially, happened pretty quickly.”
Beyond the new album release, the band’s 40th anniversary tour is marked by another special occasion: they’ll be sharing the stage with iconic Aussie band The Crystal Set.
Since their split in 1991, the band has remained largely absent from the live music circuit, but it was the kinship shared between the two groups that made amazing return a reality.
Darren had stayed in the orbit of The Crystal Set for many years prior, with scheduling conflicts representing a major barrier, “but this time around, it all clicked. We were big fans of theirs,” Darren admits, “and there was, I think, a shared admiration – though not long before those competitive juices of course kick in,” he adds warmly, reflecting on the first occasion they saw The Crystal Set perform in Sydney, following their own move to NSW in early 1986.
Remembering these early periods of his musical career, Darren is thrilled by the release of Stained Glass Memories under the steady hands at Zen Arcade Music. The challenge in any release like this, however, lies in selecting just a handful of songs to encompass their entire 40-year history, an undertaking that provided particularly difficult.
“You wouldn’t be surprised, for heritage groups like us, if you wanna call them that,” he says, “people come along and they want to hear the old songs. They’re not always as receptive to the newer ones, but we’ve been lucky that with our crowd, some of the newer stuff we’ve been doing has resonated with them as well.”
The desire to balance newer tracks with classic hits stems from the artistic decision to keep things light for the new release, playing into what Darren admits is the album’s jokey title. Taken from a lyric of one of the band’s best-known songs, The Living Kind, the inherently trippy imagery inspired by the phrase is ultimately what led to its being used as the title.
“We plucked that out as a nice symbol,” he says. “This is a retrospective collection with great memories for people, but also we don’t take all this stuff too seriously, either.”
Darren’s time in Ups and Downs has been a core part of his life not just for the creative development he has undergone as a performer, but because his brother Greg has been a fellow band member since the very beginning.
It’s a working relationship that Darren recognises as one of his favourite things in the world, and something that came about naturally given the siblings’ shared passions for music.
The two balance one another out by talent as well as temperament, he feels. “Our voices blend really nicely together, so when we hit harmonies, it feels pretty special to us. I love playing the drums when he plays the bass, because we really lock in,” he says of their unique artistic connection.
As a way to cap four decades of performing together, Darren’s upcoming 40th anniversary tour is sure to stand as a career highlight for the legendary Aussie music-maker.
Ups and Downs will be playing in venues across Australia from March 8-22. Head here for more info on how to get your tickets.
