ben edwards: guitar, vocals, bass, drums, keyboard, harp, melodica, red wine, drawings, paintings...
Influences
gary u.s. bonds, the clash, bo diddley, cornelius, big star, love, pizzicato five, beatles, rolling stones, gene vincent, lou reed, velvet underground, caetano veloso, the coasters, ike and tina turner, sui zhen, kim salmon, buddy holly, martha reeves, smokey robinson, os mutantes, kinks, them, john lennon, james brown, booker t and the mgs, elvis presley, little richard, chuck berry, nara leao, buffalo daughter, marvin gaye, pil, tom waits, pogues, guitar wolf, gories, eddie cochran, dion, bob dylan, jon spencer blues explosion, kahimi karie, yoko ono, beach boys, zombies, sly and the family stone, byrds, ni-hao!, otis redding, alex chilton, thai beat a go-go compilations, 5678's, serge gainsbourg, bridget bardot, francoise hardy, link wray, nat king cole, miles davis, lee perry, early james bond, sergio leone movies, seijun sezuki movies, bridget bardot, steve mcqueen, pretty girls, wine, beer, whiskey and rum.
...this is electro/acoustic musical experiments by me, ben (guitar + vocals for sydney band 'the section') now living in Bangkok. the songs are recorded roughly at home with a $2 mic from chinatown, a walkman and a computer held together with sticky tape....plastic section live could either just be me solo or with various combinations of various friends in various cities of the world.....sound is lo-fi electro/acoustic, from folky pop to noisy rock.... hope you dig it...i'm also using this page to put up some of my paintings and drawings - under my pictures / photos section..................
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After singing and playing Hendrix style guitar with my teeth etc. in a high school band in the Blue Mountains (west of Sydney) - which created the first proper 'music scene' there - I moved to Sydney and formed a band with my brother Dan, called The Web. After playing a few gigs at some Sydney dives like the Evil Star and supporting Midnight Oil at the Annadale, we called it quits.
Next I played acoustic and sang in a great folk-country-punk band called the Harridans. We did some recording and played lots of gigs in western Sydney and inner city pubs. Most of our gigs - especially a Max's Petersham Inn - were extremely drunken affairs that would end with blood, broken glass, broken strings and broken drumkits...people seemed to like it though. Anyway, that band broke down for one reason or another, and I joined some old friends who had a band - we renamed ourselves several times until we settled on Kemosabe.
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Kemosabe was a fun band - we were contemporaries bands like the Gories and early Blues Explosion and played in a similar vein, but we definitely had our own 'sound' (or noise). All the songs were written as a sponteneous group effort, which meant that most of them weren't really songs at all, but kind of noisy bits stuck together. I shared guitar and vocals with Sumu - we'd sing trade-off lines like Sam and Dave, but without bothering to consult each other about what we were singing....only when we recorded the songs and listen back did we realise that our 'lyrics' somehow matched perfectly!
Anyway we had lots of fun and very loose drunken gigs in Sydney and Melbourne (once even supporting our hero Kim Salmon in Parramatta!). Bruce Milne thought we were funny and put out a groovy 7" on his excellent giant claw label (which also had 7"'s by the Gories and 5678s). He also said that he knew nice people in the USA, so we saved up and went for a few weeks..
The US trip was fun - we played in New York city and recorded at the Crome Cranks' studio (they wondered why we were there!) - then we went to Austin Texas and stayed with the very friendly Tim Kerr, marveled at his collection of toys, records, James Brown cookies and Glen Danzig 'stuff', played a few gigs in Austin and Dallas and recorded at Sweatbox studios, high on cheap mexican beer. Most of the songs we recorded were pretty much made up on the spot, but not nearly as bad as you might expect. Some were quite good!
We had a week of kicks in San Francisco, then reluctantly went back to Australia. After playing 3 gigs in one night in Melbourne and sleeping in the park, we decided that nothing was gonna top the fun we had in the US, and called it a day. (All the kemosabe's - Luci, Richard, Sumu and me are still doing music stuff - sometimes with various combinations of each other.)
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Next I went to university for a few years and played part-time in various bands, including guitar and vocals in another folk-punk band (the Laundrymen), bad jazz guitar in a 'lounge' group, and grindcore organ/guitar for Stu 'zombie ghostrain' Arkoff Experiment. I also played some solo gigs, the most exciting of which was at the Ruby Room club in Tokyo.
By then it was about time to get another band going, so I formed the Ben Edwards Section with my old friends Eamon (from Laundrymen) on drums and Richard on bass (soon replaced by Tim). We played mostly originals and a few choice old soul covers, done in power-pop mod style. After playing as a 3-piece around Sydney, we became just the Section and added a small horn section and keyboards, doing the same thing musically but bigger and better.
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Eventually the Section panned out to this - me on vocals, guitar and songwriting, Eamon on drums, Adele on Keyboard (playing mainly brilliant and crazy electric harpsichord sounds) and Rosie on sax (not playing solos, but rather cool lines and stabs). We played all originals, except for the odd mean version of Heatwave and My Little Red Book. We had great original sound and our shows were very high energy mod-pop explosions...well we were drunk and having fun anyway! (Also around this time I played drums for Amaya Laucirica and occasionally for The Men From UNCLE - both great bands!)
The Section were one of the best bands in town and there was always a few people at each gig who 'got' what we did and liked it, but overall, few noticed and it was hard to get gigs in Sydney if you weren't obviously some sort of 'theme' band. Hopefully the Section will play again next time we're all in the same town.
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So I moved to Thailand to be with my girlfriend and change the scene.....and to continue this funny little tale, coz as crazy rocker Larry Williams once said:
"rock n roll has no beginning or end, for it is the very pulse of life itself..."
Right On!
NOSPACE GALLERY
presents
JAMES JOHNSON-PERKINS
FIRST-TIME IN THAILAND
OPENING NIGHT
15 MAY 2008, 7-10PM
@ NOSPACE GALLERY
Nospace Gallery
ภูมิใจเสนอ
James Johnson-Perkins
ครั้งแรกในเมืองไทยกับศิลปินชาวอังกฤษเจ้าของฉายา 'The Lego Man'
พบกับ VDO ใหม่ล่าสุดจากงานชุด Robot Animations
ที่ยังไม่เคยแสดงที่ไหนมาก่อน (How does it feel? / Don't you want me? /
When will I famous?) www. johnson-perkins. co. uk
15 พฤษภาคม 2008
เวลาหนึ่งทุ่มถึงสี่ทุ่ม
ที่ Nospace Gallery www. nospacebkk. com
LET'S CELEBRATE RAINY SEASON COMING EARLY WITH 4 MIND BLOWING BANDS THIS SATURDAY! JOINING US AT NORIEGAS ON SILOM SOI 4 WILL BE ELECTRO PUNK VIXEN MOMOKOMOTION, GLAM PUNK ROCKERS REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN , GRUNGE GODS BROWN FLYING AND POP INDIE PRAYING MANTI HONEYMOON.
ON THE DECKS AND LAPTOP DJ MAMA KOOL & THE PAI PREACHER WILL BE HITTING YOU WITH A WALL OF PUNK/INDIE/ROCK N ROLL CLASSICS FROM THEIR LEGENDARY ROCK N ROLL DISCO PARTIES IN PAI, MAE HONG SON.
Opening Night: 1 May 2008 (Labour Day) 7-10pm
Pisitakun Live Show: Wooden Craft
(Making Traditional Musical Instruments)
And performed by Desktop Error, an Indie band
Free: Kao-Kang, Ya-Dong and M150 MORE INFO
WE'RE HEADING OFF TO SINGAPORE AND MALAYSIA TO SHOW THEM WHAT THAI ROCK N ROLL IS MADE OF BUT BEFORE WE GO THERE'S TIME FOR ONE LAST GIG. GET YOURSELVES DOWN TO BAYON ROCK CLUB (ABOVE IMMORTAL) THIS FRIDAY 11TH APRIL FOR A NIGHT OF MAYHEM. BANDS PLAYING ON THIS SPECIAL MTG NIGHT WILL BE:
Loopadelic! Just been working with an MC from Jakarta over for Gang Nova Having a major Tropicalia revival goes down a cocktail treat with a twist of Afro Futurism! ;-) You ever get any of that Thai bus pop? My antennae are out!
Ben Jamin' what is going on with you!? Been back in planet Tropicalia, so I thought I'd check in with the Crown Prince of Tropical....You got a band up yet or doing Plastic Solo?
"How to use your professor" by Stylish Nonsense
March 19 - April 12, 2008
Opening Night: Wed 19 March 2008, 7-10pm
Live Performance: Sat 12 April 2008, 10-12pm
www.nospacebkk.com
