Well, after a year in the studio, multiple overseas tours including last month’s Music Matters conference, Vaudeville Smash have just released what many consider their breakthrough album, Dancing With The Girl. The band’s lead vocalist and woodwind player Marc Lucchesi spoke to Beat this week about wooing Singaporeans with a saxophone, how singing some of their songs makes him feel like a 21-year-old stud, that hip hop has killed romance and finally the band’s explosive launch on Friday June 14 at the Corner Hotel.
The intensely passionate but warmly voiced Lucchesi opens the interview account by recounting what the he and the rest of the band – that consists of his brothers Dan and Luc as well as long time mate Nic Lam – thought of Asia’s equivalent of South By South West, called Music Matters.
“It was brilliant and exceeded expectations. We have done South by Southwest a couple of times and this was like the Asian SXSW but it is way smaller so all the bands got to play to all the delegates because it wasn’t overrun with every band in the world,” exaggerates Lucchesi with a quick chuckle.
He now talks about the 90 per cent Singaporean crowd’s response to Vaudeville Smash’s music. “We have never been to place like that essentially cold, having never played there before, yet been treated to such a reception. I would pick up the sax and there would literally be a scream of ‘yeahhhhh’ from the audience, so it became too hard to play because I was smiling so much from the response.
“I had a feeling that saxophone was big in Asia because every time I had been there Kenny G ruled the airwaves, so every time!” laughs Lucchesi.
But it wasn’t just the saxophone that endeared Vaudeville smash to the locals – the songs from the band’s new record seemed to have an impact as well, explains Lucchesi.
“We had four shows and the crowds built, I think, because we had CDs at each show that we were handing out, so by the end of it the kids were singing our songs so it was great!”
The fact that the new songs had such a profound impact on a foreign crowd will come as no surprise to anyone that has heard the songs from Dancing For The Girl including the title track itself. The song Dancing For The Girl would be at home in the final scene of an ‘80s teen romance such as Sixteen Candles with its dulcet tones and impassioned vocals. Lucchesi explains that the song’s music inspired him to write lyrics that harked back to a time when he was killing the dance floor, Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing style, as when he was 21.
“I heard this chord progression that I wanted to write a in, so I went to the piano,” explains Lucchesi. “Fleetwood Mac use it a lot, it’s from the 4th to the 5th, sort of sounds like this pedal. I was fluffing around with it and I ended up doing this thing that was the 5th to the 4th and I really liked the sound of it – strangely enough the chord progression brought up these memories of me going out with my friends from high school and just being invincible and dancing like there is no tomorrow and doing that for the attention of girls.”
Lucchesi offers an insight into the way he constructs songs. “I don’t know how it happened, when write a song I will just make sounds with my mouth in tune with the melody [Marc mimics the song’s melody with his voice, adding in a raw ‘dancing with the boy’]. The chorus came pretty quickly and it really is reflecting on me on as a young guy feeling invincible.”
Even though it wasn’t the ‘80s when Lucchesi was slaying the dancefloor – more like 2002 – he concludes that his kind of romantic reminiscence may not be able to be conjured by the current new generation that is being brought up on bangin’ hip hop and internet porn. “I think hip hop has killed a lot of things. Don’t get me wrong, I love hip hop, but a lot of it is absolute rubbish. I don’t think with the world the way it is you just won’t get movies like 16 Candles and Breakfast Club again. Kids are just subjected to too much shit, they’ll never be as naïve as we were in the ‘80s.”
Finally Lucchesi seeks to entreat music fans to come to his band’s album launch at the Corner. “We have played so much together in the last two or three months we are a lot tighter and we have evolved into a really exciting live act.” He now moves on to what will be unique about this performance at the Corner Hotel.
“As far as one-offs or tricks, if you will, to get the crowd going, we have this band playing before us called Sex On Toast and we are going get them on stage for one of our songs called Sailor Moon that has a massive choir section so we are going to get all ten of Sex On Toast up to sing along!”
Invariably there will be maximum crowd participation so if you want to truly blow your mind head along to Vaudeville Smash’s launch and grab a copy of Dancing With The Girl.
BY DENVER MAXX
