No. 9 With a Bullet

Rip It Up, Issue 121, 1 August 1987, Page 2

No. 9 With a Bullet

Shona Laing’s home again, relaxing and writing songs after a hectic month in Australia promoting ‘(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy’ and recording songs for a new album. With 'Not a Kennedy’ entering the Australian Top 10, it was time for Laing to lift her profile there by appearing on the local rock shows, something she actually enjoyed, to her surprise. "It was a bit of education,’’ she says of the Australian music industry. “That they were all quite confident, even before Kennedy’ was released, that it was going to be successful, was quite an eye-opener. That sort of confidence, like they'd set it all in motion before it was even out. “The song sparked a bit of interest, I think, because it sounded a bit different. Which is interesting, because here that would be an excuse not to play it, whereas in Australia that’s a reason to programme it.” While in Sydney Laing did some recording with Peter Wilson, the English producer (the Jam, Style Council) who had re-mixed ‘Not a Kennedy.’An album is about to be released in Australia, with four tracks off Genre, plus six new ones;

here, the Genre tracks may be replaced by more new material. The recordings in Sydney included sessions with a 22-piece orchestra.“ Genre was pretty sparse, but a couple of tracks on the new album are enormous, almost audacious,” says Laing. A factor in the success of ‘Not a Kennedy’ was the video by Aucklander Kerry Brown, with its charming colour footage of JFK with his family. “Kerry rang the Boston library, told them what he wanted, and they sent it to him. It’s different sort of footage to see of an American president. I think people expected the assassination, but we’d made a determined decision to steer clear of the ugly bits and make him look like a human being.” Laing’s song ‘Drive Baby Drive’ is about to be released in Australia, but it’s been held up because the “pay to play” video war has just broken out there. “I think a video war in Australia will do everybody a lot of good,” says Laing. “There was something like 40 hours of music a week on — that’s ridiculous, I couldn’t watch half of it. They won’t play as much now, so those they do play will actually start to be influential and start selling records again, which I don’t think they were any longer. They are just ads after all.”

Chris Bourke