Win tickets to see Electric Mary

Win tix: Electric Mary

Electric Mary are touring in November and we’ve got a pair of tickets give away for each show.

If you’re unfamiliar with Electric Mary… then shame on you. Here’s what Classic Rock‘s Henry Yates had to say about them in a Welcome Back feature, back in issue 168:

Head to Electric Mary’s website and you’ll find a homepage touting the Melbourne band as “rock’n’roll the way it used to taste”. It sounds like a glib soundbite, but it’s actually a band philosophy. Vintage grooves power their three studio albums, and the members hawked their latest, III, by driving across Europe in old-school fashion. “We did it the six of us in a nine-seater van, show to show, town to town,” recalls vocalist Rusty Brown, “and it reminded me of the good old days, when that’s the way rock’n’roll
was done.”

Any memorable experiences from the tour?
[Dirty chuckle] Nothing you can write about. There is a great story that I can’t tell because if it goes to court I’m in trouble. Put it this way, the guy who owned our van turned up at the last show and wanted it back. Other stories? When we were in Barcelona, we lost our bass player Alex [Raunjak] for three days, and our van got towed away with all our gear, passports and luggage. Then we proceeded to drive to France without checking the TomTom, so it became a 12-hour drive. It’s all part of the rock’n’roll. We still love it. We’re not gonna travel halfway across the world and have a shitty old time. I’ve still got that childlike quality of being in a band.

How did rock used to ‘taste’?
Back in the day, in Australia, people worked, they played sport, and they went to the pub to see a band. That’s how I grew up. I went to the pub and I watched a band, five nights a week. That’s the way it’s real to me. When you’re doing a band now, before you’ve even started writing songs you’re thinking about a logo, your name, how that’s gonna fit into the Facebook scenery… We do utilise the internet, but we didn’t start the band that way. We wanted to see if we could get people to come through word-of-mouth. That’s the old way. That’s the way it used to taste. I just want to play music. I’ve never made any money out of it yet.

You disapprove of modern rock, then?
For me, the great bands are Zeppelin, The Beatles, Stones, Deep Purple, Free, Queen… and you’ll notice they all come from England. I’m actually a huge Pearl Jam fan as well. That’s one band that’s never lost it, for me. But I’m never gonna be in love with Good Charlotte. I don’t really delve too much into new music. I’m sure there are people out there doing it, but I still love listening to Paul Rodgers. What is he now, 60? He still sings the shit out of things, man.

Which has been your favourite support tour?
For me, the best was with Glenn Hughes. I’d read a lot of stories that he was a lunatic, but I found him to be amazing. A great memory was in Sydney. Glenn had a night off, and we’d organised ourselves a gig, and he said: “I’ll come down.” It was a bit of a dirty little place, so I called up his manager and said: “Look, y’know, don’t worry about it. It’s a little way out of town.” And he goes: “No, Glenn wants to come.” And he did. On his night off, a Saturday night, he came out of town to our show.

Mayan predictions say the world will end in 2012. Does that worry you?
I don’t give a shit, really. I’m having the best time of my life. If I’m on the road and I’m driving to a gig and I drive into a black hole, that’s fine by me.

III is out now on Listenable Records.

Go here to enter our competition to win a pair of tickets to one of Electric Mary’s November/December shows, as seen on the flyer below.