plastic section

...this is musical experiments and demos by me, ben, now living in Bangkok. the songs are mostly recorded roughly at home...plastic section live is either just be me solo or with various combinations of various friends in various cities of the world.....sound is 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.................. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 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 drunken affairs that would end with broken equipment and sometimes broken people...people seemed to like it though. Anyway, that band broke up or broke down and I joined some old friends who had a band - we renamed ourselves several times until we settled on Kemosabe. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 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 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 - 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 one another.) :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 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 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. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Eventually the Section panned out to this - me on vocals, guitar and songwriting, Eamon on drums, Adele ..board (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 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 were always people at each gig who liked us, but overall, it was hard to get gigs in Sydney if you weren't some sort of 'theme' band. Hopefully the Section will play again next time we're all in the same town. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 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! So the tale continues, with various gigs in Bangkok both solo and with various great people - the music indie scene here is really amazing. Coming soon, something new and exciting live and recording...watch this space!