Playing Kisschasy

Sun 31st Jul, 2005 in Features

Every once in a while there is an annoyingly catchy song with a postmodern twist that hits our airwaves. Love it or hate it, whether you want to admit it or not, they’re infectiously catchy. This year’s “annoyingly-catchy-with-a-postmodern-twist” song comes from the boys from the Mornington Peninsula, Kisschasy, for their breakout single about getting their song played on radio, “Do-Do’s & Whoa-Oh’s”.

“It’s just a really fun song, and it’s really immediate and it hits you and it’s catchy. And the fact that everybody finds it really hard to announce the song title is kind of ironic in itself, because it’s kind of like this catchy radio song, yet no radio announcers can even say it! So yeah, it’s come across really well. Like taking the piss out of that whole commercial scene, but at the same time also out of ourselves” says singer/songwriter Darren Cordeux.

This self-fulfilling prophecy of a song topped at number 25 on the ARIA charts. Unlike most one-hit-wonders, their debut album, United Paper People is a lot more solid than most album debuts, let alone debuts of one-hit-wonder bands. It seems that from all their touring as a support act, the boys have learnt a lot from the headlining bands they’ve toured with. From the beginning they were thrown in the deep end with their very first touring experience as the support act for Pennywise in January 2004.
“That was before we even had anything out. We didn’t even have an EP out, like nobody knew who we were. We got onto the Surf Punk Tour. Nobody liked us, it was funny, but it was cool. And then Fletcher (Pennywise guitarist, Fletcher Dragge) was saying on stage, ‘This song goes out to… Kissing Chasey’...! We were like, -awesome?!? But we don’t care, I guess they kind of knew who we were!”

But even with the impressive support act credits (including The Ataris and Shihad) and experience on the road, the boys still face the same touring challenges any average start-up band has, more often than not, sleeping on people’s floors or sharing hotel rooms.
“A really hard part of touring is to keep the relationships within the band okay, cause you’re living in each other’s pockets…” says bassist Joel Vanderuit, “Quite often about a month at a time, 24 hours a day you’re speaking to each other and sharing the same beds and stuff… ‘The Man Barrier’ is a good tip. In hotels you can always ask for more pillows so we often get two or three pillows and stack them if we can, too high, so you can’t see their face!”

Their jocular persona is reminiscent of the attitude of one of their role model bands Blink 182, a band the boys have a mutual love for, and who have influenced them as musicians before even they formed Kisschasy.

“They’re still one of my favourite bands” Joel confesses, “Everybody loves Blink… doesn’t matter what they say, no-one can not like Blink 182!”.

Darren adds, “You always love the music you grew up listening to. A lot of people have now like, wiped away their influences. I know that we’ve changed and we listen to a lot of different music now and we’re now passed that, but you should never say that that’s not what you grew up on. And I think a lot of people now, they’re like, ‘no I’ve always loved AC/DC or Hardcore, you know I loved these bands before I was even born’!!! But Blink 182 is like, the music that every teenager goes through but now denies… we started out that way and we don’t care!”
 
Not only are the boys much more adorable in person than their video-clip makes them out to be, they are unashamedly earnest, and self-deprecating, but most impressively they’re not afraid to admit their favourite band is Blink 182. With qualities like these, what’s not to love?

Kisschasy celebrate their album release at an in-store August 6th @ JB HIFI, Bourke St, Melbourne @ 1pm and are currently opening shows for Shihad on the final leg of their regional album tour. The band have just been added to Come Together 2 at Luna Park as well as supporting Simple Plan on their tour during October. Stay tuned to FasterLouder for updates on the band’s upcoming national album tour.