Great Expectations

Rip It Up, Issue 111, 1 October 1986, Page 4

Great Expectations

The Dance Exponents' Amplifier

The Dance Exponents are five years old this month. Quite an achievement in a country where two years together will get a band a long service medal. But then we know it’s a lousy job. Pay’s the pits, perks few and far between, no long-term prospects, no wonder the fall-off rate’s so high. At best making music in New Zealand is a pretty good hobby, a serious pastime no doubt, but like most hobbies, a temporary distraction from the real world. Which brings us back to the five year old Dance Exponents and the question what keeps them going?

At the end of last year Mike Chunn wrote that one of the highlights of 1985 was that the Exponents stayed together. Certainly the end seemed nigh. The commercial failure of the group’s second album Expectations was closely followed by the final split from Mushroom, the Australian label that had been happy with the success of Prayers Be Answered but proved unable or unwilling to do anything with the followup. For sure, it was a very different beast to the smooth but thin AM radio-aimed pop sound of the first album. The 35,000 or so teenagers who bought that and wanted more of the same on Expectations heard instead wildly diverse songs in a “heavy” production mix, while the rock audience, who could have been expected to embrace the LP, clung to the view that the Exponents were pop wimps to be avoided at all cost. So the record fell between markets, the band fell from

favour and the split-up rumours gained momentum.

After five months without a record label, during which time the band talked about releasing a single on Flying Nun and another label made a pitch for Jordan Luck and Chris Sheehan, the group as a whole signed with Zulu Records. The label, set up through Auckland's Harlequin Studios, incorporates a special partnership created to record and market product from the Exponents, Hello Sailor and ex-Peddler Roy Phillips. In return for lending their name to a project designed essentially to allow the special partners to write off their investment against their income tax, the Exponents settled for S2OO a week each plus the prospect of work with an international producer. The possiblity of an overseas record release, marketing and tours, they were told, would be looked at later. More important for the band in the short-term, they had found a way to survive intact and could look forward to new musical and business opportunities. So far Zulu product has been short on the ground. A Roy Phillips project was shelved, the Hello Sailor LP is months late, but the Exponents have released a single and now have an album ready to go. It’s the result of two months in Harlequin with American producer John Jansen, best known here for his work on Lou Reed’s jaunty New Sensations.

There are seven new songs plus re-recordings of ‘Victoria,’ ‘Sex and Agriculture,’ ‘Christchurch’ and ‘Only I Could Die (and Love You Still),’ all done with overseas release in mind. The record was mixed in New York, but Jordan Luck says that fact, plus the input from the experienced overseas producer, really had nothing to do with how the music’s turned out. He says the record reflects the band as it is and what it wanted to achieve this time out:

‘‘lt’s strange that the album’s now going to be called Amplifier because that was essentially what we wanted to do. We wanted to enhance the sound, make it sharper, get an even wider range of frequencies in the studio, the tops, the mid-

dles and the bottoms, and have it all nicely layered and filled. From a lyrical point of view we wanted to focus on the topics that I’ve written about before. So there’s ‘As I Love You,’ a romantic-type song that echoes back to Prayers Be Answered while tracks like 'Halcyon Rain’ and ‘Time x Space’ hark back to Expectations. \Ne were also conscious of doing something other people would enjoy. I don’t think it’s egotistical or indulgent to make records for yourself, I mean if you can’t please yourself you can’t presume to try to please others, but we did make this album more for other people.” The swept-up old tracks are designed to please overseas people, first and foremost the people who run record companies. The new, cleaner, quieter version of ‘Sex and Agriculture’ is included on the local release, as is an ear-bleeding version of the Exponents' best-ever song, ‘Only I Could Die,’ which is also the next single. While a song that strong deserves better treatment than it got on Expectations, is it really desirable to tinker with the past? Jordan has no worries about going back over old ground. “I found it refreshing, it was a nice feeling, a feeling of pride really. It was fresh in the sense that we weren’t playing those songs live and once we got into the studio we found working in a sterile environment helped the songs grow by themselves, without any old memories cluttering things up.” The recording session also helped forge a feeling of empathy between band members. Jordan says it stemmed directly from the legacy of their time together and proves the value of sticking to the job.

en’t to know Prayers would go through the roof but creatively I thought, wow this is a good start and I think we’re going to do a lot better. As long as I’m always thinking that I’m sure we’ll keep going. Sure it’s great to sell heaps of records because success gives you so much more that just scraping away... but you’ve got to go down to get up. I enjoyed 1985 a lot because it was a pretty tough time. It’s nice to go down and survive, that’s the true worth of a group.” So the Dance Exponents go into their sixth year still together on the New Zealand music carousel with their finest recorded work to date out and about looking for a market. Australian release of Amplifier is apparently assured and the band’s management is suggesting a move to LA in the new year if a record release there goes through. The possibility of recording another album and playing live in the States will also be looked at.

Storybook stuff for any New Zealand band, and in reality one with little chance of a happy ending. Quality is no guarantee of success in a business increasingly becoming one of the most corrupt in the world. Maybe the Exponents are fooling themselves, but for now they stay together, linked by great hopes and great expectations. The story does not end here.

“By staying together you build a chemistry that you can’t actually label, but it’s something that people create on stage or in the studio when they start to play music without any verbal references, or even eye contact. There’s a feel, because of all the things you’ve done together, that instinctively happens. “Even though I’m always aware of commercial viabilities and aspects, I always think firstly that the group creatively is the main thing. We wer-

Mark Everton