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The D4/6 TWENTY - INFECTIOUS RELEASE NEW ALBUM IN THE US

THE D4

They're noisy, they don't fancy Karen O, they bit parted in Xena Warriour Princess,and one of them is called Jimmy Christmas. With just a pinch then of salt, Kim Hollingdale tells the unlikely story of New Zealand's The D4.

05/04/2002

Margarine sculpting is quite clearly an incredibly frustrating art form, every time you get the angle just right and your artwork begins to take on the life and movement of your study and it slips away, quite literally. The temporal nature of the medium appeals to Jimmy Christmas one fourth of New Zealand’s latest rock and roll export, The D4. Well, either that or he’s winding me up and to be embarrassingly honest I can’t be sure either way.

Having met Jimmy and Vaughn backstage at the very noisy K-fest tour, my confusion arises from my opening question just how did they make their money before their music made it for them? Vaughn, not that you’d know it from his shy demeanour, tells me he was an actor doing walk-ons in Shortland Street and Xena Warrior Princess and bit parts in, and I quote, ‘shitty drama shows’. Just as well then that Jimmy teamed up with guitar playing Dion back in 1998, recruiting drummer Beaver from god knows where and saving Vaughn from the acting wilderness:

‘We started out in this kind of musician’s collective’ Jimmy explains ‘Everybody was just borrowing each others gear, borrowing their band mates, just getting together and bashing out some music. That was the cool side’.

The place he’s talking about is North Shore, The D4’S hometown, several thousand miles away in Auckland, New Zealand. But in the same breath, Jimmy is drawing a picture of the place that’ll be familiar to those of us a little closer to home:

‘It’s a real fucking suburb, very middle class, benign, safe, there was just nothing to do. The sound of fucking lawnmowers used to do my head in every Sunday. So all there was, was music, playing it, listening to it, that was the only escape’.

So what kind of music was saving these wannabe rock stars from getting lawn mowers of their own? Jimmy and Vaughn seem to agree that Guitar Wolf rocks, that The Rolling Stones were Gods and that The Stooges will live forever but it is at the mention of The Sonics that Jimmy begins to foam at the mouth:

‘Yeah The Sonics were fucking wicked, you know they used to get sounds by punching holes in speakers with screwdrivers and stuff, they were doing that whilst The Beatles were off making pop music. Its amazing.’

Having recently been listening to the D4’s X Fm championed ‘Get Loose’, a decent, rock-a-long, call to party but by no means a Sonics classic, I’m curious as to how The D4 see themselves. Do they wield the same kind of musical aggression as their heroes?

‘Well on stage, its not aggression its just energy’ Jimmy tells me ‘Cos of the nature of our show we don’t take to much care of each other, its kinda every man for himself but the music is all about fun’.

‘Fun’ I can tell you in hindsight, it definitely is, but judging from Vaughn’s tales of on stage injuries, ‘painful’ comes a close second.

‘We hit each other in the face with our guitars quite often, with three of us up front in can get quite messy when we all get really in to the music and often the stages are narrow’.

The Mean Fiddler stage, the venue for this evenings gig, being less than panoramic, I am now expecting some serious bloodshed but what else should I be expecting? I know the D4’s sound is guitar heavy, AC/DC, jump up and down, forget about cool, rock n roll but the lads aren’t keen to define it, analyse it or even talk about it apparently. Their first European album ‘6Twenty’ came out on Infectious Records in June featuring one or two smash and grab tunes of absolute teenage hedonistic brilliance such as 'Rock ‘n’ Roll Mother Fucker' (it truly is music for the kids) but when asked to expand on the record Jimmy and Vaughn’s responses are minimal - to say the least:

“It’s a record” er yeah?? ‘Its just rock and roll’ adds Vaughn helpfully.

They sound bored so I decide to liven things up a little. Vaughn is grinning knowingly at me as I question The D4’s decision to gig at a Virgin Megastore (8th July, Oxford St). Jimmy is less amused.

‘I read two reviews of it; one said it was great and one saying it was absolute shit. To me its not about the show being in Virgin Megastore or wherever, its about the people writing the article and whether they enjoyed it and enjoy music’.

I tell him that the negative reviews I had seen were based more around the disappointment that a rock band with half decent influences would make that move in to blatantly corporate marketing. Jimmy sighs, staring at the table. ‘I don’t give a fuck what people think of this band, I really love it’. He sounds like he most certainly does give a fuck but perhaps now isn’t the time for amateur counselling. I move on.

The band is due to follow Mika Bomb, The Briefs and Brighton’s obscenely good, British Sea Power on the K-fest stage in about an hour. The line up is representative of what has been described as a ‘new rock revolution’ but the press seem undecided so perhaps The D4 could clear this up for us. Are we in the most musically exciting times since Grunge or is all this garage rock a bandwagon, a marketing trick with an endless production line of sell out bands?

‘It’s a tricky one’ Jimmy decides ‘a lot of the bands that are around now will continue to be around for a long time but as with everything, people will follow trends’. Vaughn can’t be swayed either way, as far as he’s concerned its brought about some really good music so who cares about the rest.

But just what is this good music amongst the bad (Of course here I refer to ‘Busted’, long may they burn for their sins against music). Having gigged with the best of them from ‘The Datsuns’ to New York’s ‘Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ (and just for the record they didn’t fancy Karen O so that’s 2 out of….) I decide to again ask for The D4’s guidance. Vaughn says he loved supporting The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion whilst Jimmy, concerned to not mention any names, makes a very valid point:

‘I get more fun out of a band that plays 3 chords badly but are themselves and really enthusiastic than a band that’s practiced to perfection but plays without a drop of passion.’

For The D4 this isn’t just empty rhetoric – whilst their actual material is still slightly limited, even shallow on occasions, their stage show could never be accused of lacking in full-tilt g-force adrenalin, passion, blood, sweat and tears (both those of the audience in the mosh pit and Dion’s as he’s crushed in a crowd surf!).

But The D4 have been doing what they do best all over Europe and to oddly mixed reviews, since March. Tiredness is taking its toll so despite being an unashamedly live band the boys are looking forward to some much needed studio time and I’d imagine getting some sunshine back in New Zealand.

But thankfully that’s all one hour of The D4’s stage diving, riffing, wailing, windmilling, crowdsurfing performance away and I for one am glad of the time.



Kim Hollingdale for Crud Magazine© 2002


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