Bluejuice interview at Big Day Out
- By Ryan Diefenbach -
- Jan 30, 2012
Bluejuice are no strangers to the Big Day Out festival and the alt-pop pranksters re-awakened their outlandish stage antics for the Sydney leg of the 2012 tour.
On a dreary Australia Day, playing in the undercover arena seemed preferable to the main stage but as the rain cleared, the boiler room began to live up to its name, overflowing with a sweaty mass of hysterical people.
Nevertheless, frontmen Jake and Stav were all grins because sweaty and hysterical is just their style…
When we spoke to Jake, he had a chance to rationalise the band’s wild attitude and reputation:
“I think the idea’s to get to a place where everyone’s comfortable. The overall motto of the band, live, is to loosen you up in a way that sort of allows you to feel like you can do anything.”
From the moment the band charged onto the dark stage of the boiler room (A.k.a “the rape tent” as Jake so eloquently dubbed it) the crowd lost it, all in awe of their light-laden suits and fluoro taped instruments.
Although most bands would be accused of over-promoting their latest album if they opened with a series of new songs, it’s hard not to get reeled in by the poppy hooks of songs like ‘Can’t Keep Up’ and ‘The Recession’, especially when they’re executed perfectly.
Despite the obvious effort put into the outfits, it took all of one song for clothes to start coming off, Jake frighteningly keen to get right down to his underwear. He was even kind enough to send fans a cheeky moon while he was at it.
“We really want to break down the barrier between audience and performer a lot and make it very immersive and comedy’s a good way of doing that,” he said.
Amidst the stripping and dangerous climbing of speaker stacks, they managed to spare some time for music. The band answered crowd demands for the old favourite, ‘Vitriol’, which yielded a deafening response as the keyboard riff punched through the air.
Noticing the crowd’s commitment to flags, bucket hats and other Australia Day paraphernalia they asked how the annual ‘Triple J’s Hottest 100’ countdown was going, unaware that very afternoon their hit single ‘Act Yr Age’ would claim #20 (co-written with Alex Burnett, whose own band, Sparkadia, made it into the charts for the third time this year).
Another song on the bill, ‘Medication’, continued to prove that Bluejuice are in with some big names, that particular track written alongside The Presets’ frontman Julian Hamilton.
A huge video projection of painted faces mouthing the lyrics accompanied the song and Jake told us they had been planning this for a while:
“When we did Splendour (in the Grass) last year we paid and worked with the video production company to make a really big video projection show. With our festival we try to do something different, both in terms of costume and also staging.”
Despite the casual drug references which the song splashed over the crowd and the jester attitude, Jake showed that Bluejuice is more than just a reckless party band, showing a real passion for the industry and respect for other artists on tour.
“I think the Jezabels are a great band and they’ve done some amazing things in the last year and we did a tour in 2009 with them as a support. Battles are a really great band and I’ve been keen to see them every show. Then you’re getting into the realm of big, big bands like Kanye West and we’re obviously excited to be doing a show with him because, well, it’s Kanye West!”
Bluejuice toured itself just before the Big Day Out hit capital cities, which is a huge expedition in itself. But just in case that’s not enough of a workout, they’re lining up another tour to celebrate their album ‘Company’.
Upon questioning Jake if they run out of energy with the countless shows they’re doing, he burst into Luke Million’s song ‘Arnold’:
“UP. DOWN. MORE ENERGY!”
Looking at that answer alone, it’s fairly easy to say that this is one band that will never ‘run out of juice’.
Image by Michael_Spencer on Flickr
By Ryan Diefenbach. Tweets at @RyanDiefenbach
This guest blog complies to Virgin.com terms & conditions.
