Flashing Tablet
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This interview
took place in the Flashing Tablet house, which was previously the 'Steve'
house on Hutt Street Mt. Lawley in early `96, just after the release of
their debut tape 'Everyone Has A Song To Sing.' Since this interview Chris
has left the band to start his own project called 'Rex' and has been replaced
by Wormfarm's drummer Gavin after Wormfarm dissolved. They have released
their first CD titled 'Venus Casino.'
Pig: Flashing Tablet must be very proud to be living in the legendary
Hutt Street house, where such great bands as Steve and... just Steve basically.
Do you feel proud.
Carl: We have to carry on a tradition. It feels very important.
Pig: Who is the hairiest member of Flashing Tablet?
Carl: Probably Brad, he's a hairy monster man.
Pig: Do you feel jealous of Brad's hairiness?
Carl: Not at all.
Pig: So your not striving for hairiness yourselves?
Richard: I am in my own particular way, but not to the extent that
Brads trying to do it.
Carl: Trying to be hairy on the inside.
Pig: Where do you direct your main hair influence on your body?
Carl: I've got this really long one on my arm that sprouts out
of a freckle that's been there since day one.
Richard: My nose hairs are my favourite hairs on my body, they're
the ones I pay most attention to.
Pig: What's the main aim of Flashing Tablet? If there is one.
Richard: I don't know.
Carl: I'll have to think about that one.
Pig: Don't tell me you guys are aimless in the rock and roll void?
Richard: The aimless, making aimless music to be thrown away. There's
no point in hanging onto anything we do. We just get rid of it as soon
as it's done.
Pig: So all the songs on your tape are just Flashing Tablet taking
a dump in the rock 'n' roll toilet?
Richard: You could say that. Our song writing process is an excretory
kind of process, from our minds.
Carl: I agree.
Pig: Are you going to keep playing the songs on the tape?
Carl: That's all we ever play.
Pig: Have you been very productive lately?
Richard: We did something productive once, I think. Last week we
learnt a cover song.
Carl: Supernaught.
Richard: That might have to be the last Sabbath song we do, because
they don't get any better than that one.
Pig: You also covered their song Iron Man. Why did you stop playing
that one?
Carl: Apart from the fact we forgot it, it was basically a one
off for the Jaccuzy International Gigs.
Pig: The question on everyone's lips is: What's a Flashing Tablet?
Richard: A flashing tablet is the tablet Moses brought down from
the mountain and it was flashing full of instructions, that's one theory.
Pig: Any other theories?
Carl: I thought it was a referral to the flashing lights the council
worker put around road works. When there's danger there's a flashing tablet.
Richard: The things everyone steals when they're walking home drunk
at night. Everyone's got a flashing tablet.
Pig: Who came up with the name?
Carl: A friend of ours named Vicki came up with the name and the
Moses story.
Pig: Are you guys religious?
Carl: I have my own religion. I do believe in a higher plane. There's
a spirit living in the front room named Meranda Baxter. There are other
dimensions and we're just surfing on the fringe.
Pig: If you were a beer, which beer would you be?
Richard: I'd be a grungy old festering home brew.
Carl: I'd be a Cascade pale ale.
Pig: What would Chris be?
Richard: A Duff beer.
Carl: Brad would be a Millers or some boutique beer.
Richard: One that he stole off someone else.
Pig: What's your first musical experience?
Carl: When I was three, my friends and I used to dress up as Kiss,
get the Tupperware out and sing along to Dynasty.
Richard: I used to play with Tupperware as well, it was a really
good starting percussion instrument, nice acoustics.
Carl: Better than our precent drum kit.
Pig: What about your most embarrassing musical experience?
Carl: When I was about seven. I played at the school recital in
front of about one thousand people. I played the violin and fucked it
big time. It was quite a difficult piece and I went into the solo and
fucked it. It was quite embarrassing for a seven year old. The other time
was in high school, we were at the concert hall with the school band.
We had to play Bohemian Rhapsody and I had to play the guitar solo, which
was pretty embarrassing at the time.
Richard: The first Flashing Tablet gig was pretty embarrassing.
It was at the UWA tavern with lots of pre-recorded plane crashes and car
accidents, and we didn't have a drummer.
Pig: When was that?
Richard: In `92.
Carl: We've been playing the same set since `92.
Brad arrives-
Pig: Why did you go blonde Carl?
Carl: Because I'm sick of dyeing it, you get the colour everywhere;
on the doors, on my pillows, on my sheets, in the shower, just everywhere.
Pig: I thought I saw a bit of it around town.
Brad: It's where Carl passes out on the pavement.
Pig: I think I saw it in the urinal as well.
Carl: Along with the flushing tablets.
Pig: Have you considered changing your name to that?
Carl: We were called that in the X-Press gig guide, as well as
Flashing Tables, Flushing Tables, and other things.
Pig: Do you suffer from navel lint, and if so, have you considered
weaving it into a rope to escape from this crazy place?
Carl: We were discussing it at the pub last night, and had a big
argument about it.
Richard: Is that lint you get from the navy?
-we go on to discuss our own navel lint theories-
Pig: Are you thinking of releasing another tape or CD?
Carl: We are actually looking for interesting sponsors to help
Flashing Tablet record, any philanthropists out there who just want to
off load some of their cash to us are welcome.
Pig: Will it be a CD?
Carl: It depends on how much money we get. Hopefully we'll pull
in about ten grand, just some guy we meet somewhere at some point.
Pig: Give him a head job?
Carl: If it's necessary. He'll say "Here's ten grand. Record
a CD. I love you guys."
Richard: It almost happened. A guy named Dwight Greebley promised
us thousands and thousands of dollars.
Carl: He was at the Beaconsfield one night and we were playing
with Beaverloop. He liked us, pulled out a cheque book and was going to
write a cheque for twenty grand.
Brad: And these guys missed it! They didn't even capitalise on
it. Can you believe that?
Carl: He was pretty pissed and so were we.
Richard: He wasn't too pissed to sign a cheque though.
Pig: You got the cheque?
Carl: No we didn't, we just got the fuck out of there.
Brad: Obviously I had no idea this was going on, or I would have
got the cheque.
Pig: Are you the band accountant?
Brad: Yeah. They always try to hide the band money from me, because
I always put it in the bank.
Pig: Who did the tape artwork? (everyone reckons it's ace.)
Brad: Carl did it because no one else could.
Pig: How long did it take?
Carl: About twenty minutes. I was in my morning tea break at work.
It was black on white, but we got the fancy people at Snap to do the crazy
colours for us.
Pig: Did the Snap people like it?
Richard: I think that bald dude was kind of fond of it, he liked
it. He was shaking it around a bit, getting the day-glow thing happening.
He knew where it was at, he'd been there before.
Pig: What do you like on toast?
Brad: I like a little bit of French mustard and Vegimite. It sounds
strange, but try it, it's really nice. Or grain mustard is nice. It really
works, it does.
Pig: Could you throw us a recipe?
Brad:
- Toast your bread.
- Apply a layer of butter.
- Apply a layer of French or grain mustard.
- Apply a layer of Vegimite.
- Insert into mouth cavity.
- Enjoy.
Carl: I like tomato sauce.
Richard: I hate cold tomatoes.
Pig: If you were to invite Richard Court over for a bit of a snack,
what would you feed him?
Richard: Something lethal.
Carl: One of my infamous beef curries.
Brad: I would fry up rat intestines and a half rat head that my
cat left on my carpet this morning after he had a midnight snack.
Pig: On toast?
Brad: Yeah that could be nice, on some little toastlets, and they
could be little auderves.
Pig: Sarah Spears, where is she?
Richard: On our fridge.
Brad: Three km off the continental shelf in two thousand meters
of water, with crustaceans in her eyes.
Carl: Under our fridge.
Pig: Scully and Mulder, will they get it off?
Brad: It depends when they get around to calling each other by
their first names.
Carl: I want to get it off with Scully.
Pig: Who writes most of the music.
All: Ummm, errrrr...
Brad: We can not be sure, we don't know who's actually written
anything.
Richard: Divine intervention.
Carl: My higher self.
Pig: What is the Flashing Tablet sound?
Carl: According to the WAM database we are crazy-punk-acid-rock.
Richard: That's the local authority on local music, the WAM data
base.
Brad: I tend to say we're more of a cross genre family show.
Richard: We're definitely aimed at the post nuclear family.
Brad: We like to think there's a little bit of everything in there
for everyone.
Richard: Something to keep the kids happy, something for the mums,
the dads, the gran-folks, fast, slow, light, and heavy.
Brad: Maybe you can say we're a musical smorgasbord.
Carl: Any kind of music so long as it relies on loud fuzzy big
muff sounds.
Pig: Any final comment?
Richard: You Suck.
Brad: No comments at all.
Carl: Greed is good.