!!!: Getting their groove on

Fri 2nd Feb, 2007 in Features

Nic Offer, vocalist for one of the most exciting (and curiously named) bands to emerge out of the US over the past 10 years, talks to Fasterlouder about how his band brings a nightclub aesthetic to their highly acclaimed (and rockin’) live performances. They just wanna make people dance.   

“We formed 10 years ago on a fall night in the interest of playing funk, and the next thing we knew we were onstage in front of 50,000 people 10 years later. We have no idea what happened in between.” This is the succinct ‘nutshell’ summary of the band’s career offered by Nic Offer, vocalist for US disco/punk act !!! (in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced ‘chk chk chk’ to make life a little easier for us all).

But of course, there’s more to it than that. “It’s been a steady climb. We started just playing in punk basements and worked our way up, literally step by step … We slowly progressed the sound but we’ve always been interested in playing strange, funky music.”

The latest example of this ‘strange, funky music’ is Myth Takes. It’s the band’s third long player but also probably the best example of their unique sound, which throws a groovy disco underbelly in together with a brash punk exterior, meaning the band definitely has its noisier side. Such a fusion of styles makes the music of !!! very hard to pin down, but Nic says at the end of the day the goals of his band are simple. They just want to make people dance, which is where their clubbing roots shine through.        

“We feel a strong affinity with the clubbing world… A lot of us go clubbing a fair amount and it’s definitely a world we all feel comfortable in. A great DJ is a great DJ and we all like to dance: we like disco and house and we like dancing all night, we like some of the drugs that go with it so we’re into it,” he says.

“We really try to bring that to our live performances. I’m the guy in the band who doesn’t want to play the ‘slow song’, and we want to create the sort of vibe where you can dance to the whole set,” Nic says. “But we feel a little bit outside of clubbing culture in certain aspects… The money, glitz and glamour side of things. We’re still punks at heart.”

Whether they be ravers or punks, playing live in front of an audience is where it’s at for !!!. While they’ve yet to tour Australia, the hype surrounding the live performances of these guys is just amazing. To give you an indication of what we can expect, when Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist John Frusciante saw them play live at a club in LA, he just had to get them on tour with the band. This led to an arena tour of the UK last year that saw !!! performing in front of crowds 50,000 strong. You’d think such a high-profile tour it would be a daunting task for any band, but Nic says it wasn’t as hard as you’d think.      

“I felt like we entertained them, and I felt like they weren’t that anxious for us to get off the stage as they usually are for an opening band.” While it sounds like he’s damning the band with faint praise, Nic says when you’re performing to an audience any bigger than 10,000 people then it basically becomes a much of a muchness. “Once there are so many people in the crowd that you can’t see the faces anymore, however many faces you add on beyond that isn’t really any big deal. It can be scary to play in front of 6,000 people, but if you add on 44,000 people on top of that then it stops making any difference.” 

“I’ll tell you what, playing support for the Chilli Peppers is less nerve-wracking than playing to your home town,” he laughs. “It’s less nerve-wracking than playing to your actual friends.”

For those wanting a taste of the punk/funk/disco fusion of !!!, Myth Takes is in the stores now and you can catch them playing following dates:

- Thu Mar 8: Sydney, The Forum

- Fri Mar 9: Brisbane, The Columbian

- Sat Mar 10: Sydney, Playgrounder Weekender

- Mon Mar 12: Melbourne, Prince of Wales