Basically they were three guys who played guitar, sang crude songs and told dirty jokes. But really they were so much more. They were the perfect merge between comedy and rock 'n' roll; you'd be hard pressed to find any other musical comedy group today and from the past who fit this description so aptly. Their talent to sing well and look pretty while doing it almost always, amazingly, allowed them to get away with the wildly offensive and cutting edge material they talked about on stage. To some they were a novelty act; to others they were legendary. The Doug Anthony Allstars were the ultimate personification of great Australian humour, and their influence on the Australian comedy industry can never be disputed. After many attempts to write a biography on them, I pored over piles of books and press articles, and the best I came up with was this timeline. What's with the name? Doug Anthony Allstars... well despite whatever you have read about the group in the media, Doug Anthony is in fact a real person. According to a very nice guy at my dad's work... Doug Anthony was actually a politician; former deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Australian Country Party in fact. In university he was so devoid of personality that no-one could get a laugh out of him... 1984 Tim Ferguson met Richard Fidler busking on the streets of Canberra. Tim: "Richard was playing the guitar - something from Cat Stevens - one day and I walked up to him and we did 'Wild Thing'. I sang a few lyrics and jumped about like a mad thing. Lo and behold we made a stack of money in 10 minutes. Richard worked out that he could play Cat Stevens for four hours and make $20 or he could hang around with this joker and make $50 in 10 minutes" (Johnson & Smiedt, 1999). Paul joined soon after, replacing an original member of the group who went overseas. Paul: "We met in Canberra. Richard and Tim had been working for a while. I was in an art school group called Gigantic Fly. We were doing plays, little comedic, fifteen-minute frantic things based on the original 1940s version of Cat People, or Damn Busters... I met the Dougs and didn't like what they were doing at the time at all! They were singing and very energetic with a similar format to what we are doing now. I needed the money and they were doing a lot of shows. They were a trio at the time..." (Bramwell & Matthews, 1992). For the next few years the Doug Anthony Allstars made a living by performing busking shows in shopping malls - which obviously involves being as animated and entertaining as possible to stop your audience from going shopping! Thus their act quickly became dynamic and aggressive. One of the group's many stunts involved a song they'd play called 'Joan of Arc', where Paul would set a rubbish bin on fire and jump in and out of it. 1987 D.A.A.S. travelled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the first time. A cock-up from their manager at the time meant they didn't even have a proper venue booked for their season at the festival (similar circumstances prevented them from even getting to Edinburgh at all in 1986.) So they performed most of their shows anywhere they could - from the busking mounds to street round-a-bouts, and anywhere in between! This didn't stop the group from receiving rave reviews from the British and Scottish press, and by the end of the festival they were one of the most talked about acts and were nominated for the Perrier Pick of the Fringe award. (Bramwell & Matthews, 1992). 1988 The trio once again travelled to the UK, and even to Canada, to perform in more comedy/fringe festivals. Their popularity in the UK was rising rapidly, and they finished their time in Britain by guest appearing on the final episode of Ben Elton's successful TV show Friday Night Live along with Wendy Harmer. Despite the acclaim the Doug Anthony Allstars were receiving in the UK, they remained unknown in Australia. Paul: "It was weird for us to go from performing in the last Friday Night Live show to an audience of roughly 15 million people in one night, to then go back to Australia and have to busk in Swanston Street mall" (Bartlett, 1999). ABC TV comedy producer Ted Robinson decided to produce a television series based on Britain's Friday Night Live, which itself was based on the American Saturday Night Live. Wendy Harmer, who was herself a popular and respected stand-up comedienne in Australia and overseas (as well as one of the very few female comics at the time to enjoy such success) was chosen as the host, and the Allstars were on board as regulars. This meant the group had to cut down their busking acts - that often went on for hours - down to 10 minute segments packaged for television. Their spots on the ensuing program, The Big Gig, caused a great stir every Tuesday night, as they attacked topics such as Salman Rushdie, communism, religion, drugs, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Melbourne Cup to name a few - all in their uniquely violent and offensive style. Finally they were acknowledged in their home country as they developed a strong fan base. Later that year they released their first book, innovatively titled Book, published by Allen & Unwin Hayes. Just like their exploits on The Big Gig, the group's first literary work had a lot of people talking and a lot of reviewers seething. This didn't harm the book's rise to the top of Bulletin's best-seller list. The book was an unusual one for a group like D.A.A.S. to write - it was quite unfunny. The book was very dark, with short stories and cartoons that were quite disturbing and violent. Also bizarre is the constant references to artistic and philosophical figures - Paul: "We've met young girls who've read Nietzche because we mentioned him in Book. Others have delved into the works of Jean-Paul Sartre" (O'Grady, 1990). In the same interview as that quote, Paul cites his literary influences as Sartre, the Marquis De Sade, Jean Cocteau, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Kafka... 1990 The group's popularity continued to rise as they further diversified their work. The appearances on The Big Gig continued, they toured live shows around the country several times, and early 1990 saw the release of their first album, Icon. Just like Book, people expecting a slapstick comedy album crammed with sketches and punch lines wound up disappointed; Icon was a very serious album, with real musical songs (as opposed to their standard humorous acoustic songs) that showed off their surprisingly apt musical proficiency - Richard played guitar and drums, and Tim played piano. And of course all three sang. Icon spawned two singles, "i want to spill the blood of a Hippy" and "Bottle" - only the latter of which hit the record store shelves. Rolling Stone Australia gave Icon three stars, praising the album for its diversity and the exhuberance of its delivery, declaring that the album "leave[s] you wondering if there's a parody deeply buried or whether DAAS are simply making music", though the reviewer also picked up that "DAAS can get tedious in their lampooning - the preoccupation with religion... suggests they're still struggling with hang-ups much of their audience couldn't give a toss about". In the end, the album didn't fare too well in the charts and was eventually deleted three years later. During their visit to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, D.A.A.S. recorded their first (and only) movie, a short film called The Edinburgh Years. Over ten 18-hour days of shooting, the end result was a 70 minute film about the trio tracing Paul's ancestors in Scotland, and the weird twists that come about as they discover more of Paul's ancestoral history. Commercially the film was a flop - it was screened in selected arthouse theaters around the country in 1991 then disappeared completely, apart from the very limited run of videos that were available at the group's live shows and fan club right until their break-up in 1994. Upon returning from Edinburgh, D.A.A.S. filmed yet another video, this one slated for commercial release. Live at the National Theater was the product of two Melbourne shows in their latest Australian tour. For the first time, the Australian public could buy in shops a recording of their chaotic and legendary live shows, and this video is classic D.A.A.S. Just the three of them, just one guitar. And of course those amazing set backdrops (painted by the group themselves.) And Flacco lends a hand with an introduction at the start and a duet with the group at the end. It was published by Polygram in 1990 and remained in print for over ten years. On top of all of this work, the ABC were brave enough to give the Doug Anthony Allstars their own TV show! So in late 1990 they filmed a pilot episode for their sitcom, DAAS Kapital. In this half-hour of madness, Tim turns into a cockroach and Richard swallows Flacco... DAAS Kapital went to air this year. It starred the trio as three guardians of the world's most sacred art and literary treasures, hidden aboard a submarine (wittily called the "Titanic II") sailing around the depths of the ocean. Apart from showing off Paul's toilet-brush-head haircut, the show was a sitcom full of the usual D.A.A.S. manic comedy, with co-stars Flacco (Paul Livingston), Bob the crazed American war veteran (Michael Petroni), the Shitsu Tonka newsreader (Khym Lam), and Bob Downe the international Shitsu Tonka TV star (Mark Trevorrow). Don't hold the fact that it's a sitcom against it... DAAS Kapital was tightly scripted, innovative and of course, very funny. And many reviewers agreed (although many others didn't...) The group also half-left The Big Gig; they were no longer regulars on the show, but appeared from time to time. 1992 Despite the questionable opinions of many reviewers, ABC commissioned DAAS Kapital II, a new series to pick up where the first left off. In the final episode of the first series, Richard turned out to be a robot, and he blew up the submarine, sending it into orbit in outer space. The rest of the plotline is pretty much the same as the first series. Except for Paul's haircut. The DAAS Kapital Scriptbook was published that year by Allen & Unwin; it contained scripts and photos from the first series of the show. Also in 1992, it was Olympic year! The Doug Anthony Allstars were chosen as one of the acts to entertain audiences in the Olympic village in Barcelona. Because of the fact that only ten percent of their audiences were English-speaking, many people witnessing D.A.A.S. shows there were heard to comment on the beautiful melodies and sweet harmones of songs like "I F*ck Dogs"! Although they couldn't understand why all the English-speaking people around them were pissing themselve laughing... (I know I had a source and proper quote for this somewhere, but I can't remember where sorry.) D.A.A.S. were by this stage doing very well on the comedy circuit overseas, as they still held tours in several countries and performed shows at international arts festivals (including the massive Reading music festival in Britain that year.) Although none of the rumours can be certain, D.A.A.S. recorded the follow-up to Icon this year - a collection of ballads and folk songs called Blue. 1993 For the first time in their careers, the Doug Anthony Allstars no longer call Australia home! This year they moved to Britain and based themselves there. While in Britain they were constantly touring through until 1994, and these tours brought two albums. Dead & Alive was a recording of a show in London's famous Ambassador's Theater. Once again it displayed the Allstars' unique style of humour. Dead & Alive was published by Warner Music in 1993 and was also released on video. Around the same time as Dead & Alive was recorded, D.A.A.S. recorded another album, Bootleg: Live in Edinburgh. Though this album was only a fanclub exclusive release. Bootleg: Live in Edinburgh is a different show to Dead & Alive, but it's in much the same style. Compared to Live at the National Theater from three years before, Dead & Alive and Bootleg: Live in Edinburgh had lost a lot of the exhuberance and aggressiveness - but in turn the material was more offensive and nasty! 1994 The Allstars returned to Australia to promote the Dead & Alive tour. There they also told reporters that an album "for the mums" was in the pipeline, the music album Blue. It never saw the light of day, for reasons we may never know. The group were still based in Britain, and remained there for most of the year. By this time they had done some television work there; their own BBC2 special DAAS Love and regular guest stars on Channel Four's Viva Cabaret (along with Tom Jones, Julian Clary and... Bob Downe!) I've never seen either of these shows so I cannot really comment on them, but from what I've heard Viva Cabaret is somewhat similar to The Big Gig. While the Allstars were in the UK they also recorded a series of "special reports" for Channel Nine to broadcast in Australia on The Today Show. Again I have not seen these myself, but I presume they'd have had to be a bit more serious and well-behaved so as not to upset the mainstream Today Show audience. And of course, finally, the biggest event of all... late in 1994 the Doug Anthony Allstars split up! They held one last farewell tour of Australia, concluding on December 17 in Perth's Subiaco Regal Theater. The DAAS Songbook was printed as a tour souvenir for people who went to these shows. Four of the concerts in Sydney were recorded and broadcast on ABC Radio National's "Box Seat" show. 1995 Two of the four Radio National broadcasts were edited and packaged together to form The Last Concert album. The Doug Anthony Allstars' shows involved the mocking of just about every sacred cow under the sun, and in the very early days of the group the performances had a more political agenda, sympathetic to the left wing (they even have the hammer & sickle, the archetypal symbol for Communism, in their logo.) So it's a surprise to learn that the Allstars' merchandising arm was actually pretty large and lucrative for them. They made all sorts of rubbish, including a dozen or so different designs of t-shirts and posters, stickers, comic books and badges, and after the shows fans would rush to the merchandising stand (often operated by Richard's wife and the newsreader on DAAS Kapital, Khym Lam) to buy all this stuff. It was only after the shows, and through the group's fan club "Hateline", that fans could buy the group's unique merchandise; it was never available in retail stores. Hence just about every piece of DAAS paraphernalia is thin on the ground nowadays; my guess is that most fans who bought a lot of merchandise at DAAS concerts would be reluctant to let it go - just like the woman who approached me at a swapmeet one day noticing me reading the DAAS book I'd bought 10 minutes earlier, just to inform me that she has a child's toy box full of Allstars stuff that she is never going to sell!! Well to each their own... Many people are unaware as to how accomplished they are as visual artists as well. Paul and Richard in particular are talented painters, with Paul designing the group's merchandise, set back drops, and cover artwork for several of their records (examples of Paul's unique paintings can be seen on the 'Dead & Alive' and 'Icon' albums.) The photo above is a standard publicity photo of the group from 1990, that Paul manipulated for a magazine interview - the design "is based on the style of the 1917-1919 Italian art movement". Click it to see an enlarged version. The best places to see all three group members' artwork is within their published books and comics. Because of their level of popularity generally being regarded as "alternative" or "cult", combined with the fact that the group have been split up for years, just about everything they ever made was put out in very limited quantities and is now out of print. Hence DAAS records, videos, books and merchandise being highly sought after by their fans and Australian music collectors (and dreadfully overpriced in record stores.) This Bio has been cut & pasted from, http://www.geocities.com/speedracer_114/allstars/index.html_ ______________________________________________________
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