Waterfront Records by Steve Gardner

Waterfront has gone through a number of changes over the years, with the types of bands being released reflecting the tastes of whoever happens to be most active at the time. These days if you pop into Waterfront's store it seems likely that the fellow who'll be most ready to talk to you is Chris Dunn, a likable and gregarious guy who's been in the Sydney music scene in one way or another since around 1977. Back in February Chris sat down with me over lunch on George Street in Sydney and spent an hour answering questions about his involvement in Waterfront. He told me that his first musical involvement (other than listening to records and going to shows) was as a roadie and doorman for the Hoodoo Gurus, making sure that the right percentage of the receipts ended up in the Gurus pocket, and he gradually evolved into their tour manager.

Meantime, Waterfront Records was being founded by Steve Stavrakis.

"The first record came out at the end of 1982", says Chris, "which was JFK and the Cuban Crisis' "Careless Talk Costs Lives". That was the first ep. Basically he was working at Phantom at the time. Phantom had their label going with the Passengers and all that stuff. It was a pretty prominent label, so obviously lots of bands brought tapes there, and Phantom didn't want to do it, or they wanted to do two songs instead of four, so Steve said, "Well, I like it, I'll do the four on a label." So it started that way.

"And he continued on that way by himself till about 1984, I suppose, when a guy called Frank Vilante got involved, and that's when bands like Skyscrapers, Decline Of The Reptiles, and Eastern Dark, that sort of morbid oriented sort of stuff came onto Waterfront, whereas Steve was never any part of that. He was more Anglicized...Elvis Costello really influenced him in new music. There was JFK, the Lonely Hearts, who were a sort of power pop band, Particles, a really weird sort of band, Sekret Sekret, who were an original Sydney sort of psych/punk band that merged into more singer-songwritery sort of stuff...they're pretty classic records if you can get a hold of them."

"Oh, yeah", he says, "and David Virgin, who was from Sekret Sekret. Yeah, the David Virgin side is sort of like Sekret Sekret without the electricity, acoustic sort of stuff. He sort of lost it, but he was a real talent. He spent about five or six years being in really good bands."

"And then Valenti left the label for some reason about the time of the Eastern Dark single, Damp 20. That was about the middle of 1985, and that was also when Steve left Phantom, and him and Frank formed Waterfront the shop. He struggled on by himself putting out a couple of John Kennedy solo singles, the Eastern Dark single, the Itchy Rat single, the Happy Hate Me Nots second single, "You're An Angel". So about five or six singles came out in that period."

"I'd started working at Phantom in early 1985, like at the beginning of the year. I knew Frank really well before I worked there, but Steve was sort of ...he used to not like me because I was a friend of Jules. So he sort of discouraged me from getting the job, but when I started actually working at Waterfront we found out that we got on quite well for being two completely different people."

"During that time at Phantom I got to know the guys from the Ups and Downs when they first came to Sydney and the guys from the Hard-Ons always used to come and shop there. At the beginning of 1986 I came to Waterfront to Steve with a proposal to put out an Ups and Downs single. I'd help pay for it and we'd work together on it and see how it came out, and if it worked well, we'd carry on from there. And then the Hard-Ons wanted to do a single, and I talked him into doing that, though he wasn't really too crash on on the Hard-Ons at the time even though he was really good friends with them 'cos they were kids who shopped there. But he'd seen one of their earlier shows and he just thought that they were sort of a thrash punk sort of band and not anything really super special. But I said, well I think they'll be really good and we should do them. And he liked them, so he said OK, we'll do it. So that's how it began with my involvement...that's from about Damp 26 onward. There's just been millions of records."

"Yeah", Chris replied, "I think there are two reasons; for one, there's two people working for the label, and the other is that mine and Steve's tastes are so diverse. We're not narrow minded about music. We like music for the sake of it being music. If it's good for what it is and we like it, that's the basis for what we do. I've got jazz records and classical records and folk records and hardcore records at home. That's my taste. In some areas that obviously doesn't work, because it's very Sydney music or very Australian sort of music, and in other areas it works really well because it's sort of international music."

"I don't want to be part of a narrow minded label. I don't want that. I think that the label is a reflection of your own personality; I think Waterfront is a reflection of Steve's and my personalities and the sort of music that we like."

"Yeah", he responded, "In some ways that's definitely right, but I think when you get to Melbourne you'll find that Melbourne's become a lot more rock and roll than it was. If a band called the Meanies are playing you should check them out and try to get their single at Augogo; they're fantastic...probably the first really great Melbourne rock and roll band, I think. Obviously Birthday Party were an incredible band, but out of this sort of new area of music I'd say that the Meanies are probably THE incredible sort of band. They've put out some great singles."

"And there's a whole bunch of other bands. There's all the God spin off bands, and the Seminal Rats crowd and the Nursery Crimes, all that sort of bunch of guys. Where Sydney seems to have lost a lot of that. Like the early Hard-Ons bands and the mateship between the Hard-Ons and the Hellmenn and Massappeal and the Spunkbubbles all seems to have gone down to Melbourne now, where a lot of these other bands have improved. I suppose the best band to have come out of Sydney recently is the Proton Energy Pills, and they've split up now and renamed themselves Tumbleweed, where one guitarist, they fired him, and because he wrote most of the songs they sort of thought they should change their name. Three of them were brothers, and they played and recorded as Tumbleweed with that format, and now they've just sacked Dave the singer because Lenny just didn't want to work with him anymore..."

"Yeah, I know...especially your older brother!", said Chris. "But there's a single recorded with Mark Arm that he's mixing over in the states at the moment. From then on it will be whatever the new Tumbleweed will be all about. For me they're the most hopeful young rock and roll band around. They're still young all those guys; Lenny just turned 20 and his younger brother Jason is like 17 or 18 and Richard the drummer is 20, and the new guitarist is only about 21 or 22, so they're still really young."

"Well, it's probably the same as you", he replies after a little thought. " "Out" (the brilliant Happy Hate Me Nots lp)...it's pretty equal between "Out" and "Long Live The New Flesh" (the Eastern Dark mini-lp), but as an album you have to say "Out", but the two best records would have to be "Out" and "Long Live The New Flesh", followed by...I always forget the name of this Hard-Ons single, but it's the best single they did, Damp 94... (he remembers the catalog number but not the title!)... Yeah, funny, that. "Just Being With You". It's like the prima donna of all Hard-Ons singles. It's the best sound, slower than any of their other stuff when it first came out, but it's just the Hard-Ons best. The new single is really good but it's not recorded as well as the other stuff is. But that's probably equal."

""Less Than I Spend" by the Protons is a really great one, and the Jackson Code album and the Chad's Tree album. Chad's Tree were a personal favorite band of mine. Mark Snarsky is one of the most talented people in music in Australia and never got the support that he needed and basically the guy lives in Spain now and is not doing anything. But that Chad's Tree album was a real personal thing for me to put out and I still love it."

"It was a very successful record", says Chris. "That was sort of Mark's offshoot band, sort of based on German cabaret; cabaret with the idea of mixing songs with acting and that sort of stuff. If we had it on CD it would have done even better."

But Chris puts that idea to rest:

"No, not at all. It's totally diverse. I think there was a stage where I knew one person who came in and bought all the different Waterfront stuff, but I hardly know anybody who does. Before I started working at Phantom I thought everybody was like that. I thought everybody liked music and bought all sorts of different records, but only after I worked there for a while did I realize that that's not true and that most people are very narrow in their tastes. I mean, that's fine, but I can't be like that, I just like so much."

"I think it's something to do with culture", he replied. "You don't hear all the black music on white radio in the states, do you? Triple J plays a lot of black music as well. The closest thing I can relate Triple J to is like a commercial college radio station in the states. Because they very rarely put on stuff like the Amphetamine Reptile stuff, like Helmet and all that sort of stuff, unless it's really late at night by a certain dj. They're very systematized about what they'll play. But if it's alternative and it's by a major record company, they'll play it."

"Well", says Chris, "From what I gather, for a band that didn't tour and really didn't get any airplay or any top reviews, it sold about 3,000 altogether. That's probably just a drop in the ocean for the states, but for over here it sounds pretty good. When you consider that feedtime's "Cooper S" album which was released at the same time and got every cool reviewer in America behind it and every college radio station played the hell out of it and it really didn't sell much more with all that extra press. So to me that sort of says it doesn't matter how cool a record is by standards of what the press wants, it's always up to the public to make up their mind about how good the record is as well."

"Because we're going to go for it this time, no holding back. Big, long sixty day tours of America. You can take a month off and be tour manager! (laughs)"

"That came about since the accident", said Chris. "It was just loss of tapes, Bill deciding what he wanted, covers, time, just everything. Finally he got the tape he wanted, went into the studio, put it together, got the cover together, which was a chore in itself, and it finally came out after a long, long time, and it was quite a good recording from a cassette. Dutch East did it on a CD in the States. But they didn't send any promo copies of it out, which I thought was really weird, because I'm sure radio would have played it and more people would have bought it if they did that. It wouldn't have really cost them much."

"If the band tours it's likely to triple your sales", said Chris. "Like Chris Milne from Augogo was lucky enough to have Sonic Youth stuff and Dinosaur Jr. stuff, and when they toured he sold over 2,000 of all of them, which is really great for Australia. We've got Nirvana, Bullet LaVolta, the last two Rollins records, the new Tad album; we're trying to get them to tour. A bit different from stuff like Dave Laing does; we're wanting to sell things within Australia, rather than selling 50 in Australia and exporting 950. Though we did a Bitch Magnet single which we sold about half here and half overseas, and we're doing a Blood Babies single as well, which we're going to do about the same with. I think the demise of local bands, whether it's because we're getting old, or local bands really are just bad, I'm not quite sure, but perhaps in some ways we might be getting old and that spark isn't there any more. Because when you go see a band you assess them a lot more than you would when you were younger, because there's like a whole lot of young new bands coming in and I go see them and I think "Well, they're alright and within a couple of years and with a bit of playing they could be really good", but I don't think they're amazing when I first see them or anything like that. So consequently our local roster is basically Hard-Ons, Hate Me Nots, Tumbleweed, Hellmenn, Benedicts, Nunbait, and Mr. Floppy from Melbourne. So that's seven bands. Oh, and the Splatterheads, if they ever do anything ever again."

"Well there's so much more coming out now than what came out then", he replied. "Multitudes of records are coming out. Maximum Rock and Roll has stopped reviewing tapes because they say they receive too many records to review tapes. Especially in the States putting out a single is really easy and more and more people are doing it. When I hear records from overseas I think "Wow, they're fantastic!". Like Monster Magnet are the band that has just blown me away...this incredible Stooges noise that's wilder than Mudhoney or something. That sort of came out of the blue. I've liked a lot of singles, like the latest Nirvana single I think's really good, and various other singles, but the Monster Magnet single is from a sort of newish band, and I just went "Wow, that's amazing!". I know that I haven't lost it, but just going to see local bands...I don't think Australians put as much into their music as a lot of Americans do. I think they're a much lazier people and they're really slack about getting up and doing things. It seems like these bands have been around for ages and ages and they keep on plodding along putting out records. They go "Oh, I can go to the beach, what do I need to do this for. We'll do it tomorrow.""

"There's big venues", he says, "But the hardest thing is to get more people hearing your music. There's like a wall that you just can't go any further where you can perhaps sell ten or fifteen thousand albums if you've got distribution through a major without getting mass airplay, but there's like this wall, where your next step is not 20 or 30 thousand, it's like 50 thousand."

"I don't know if you've heard of Spy Vs. Spy...they came out of the independent inner city Sydney scene and got picked up by Gary Morris who was Midnight Oil's manager and who paid for all their recordings, and they slowly worked their way up to where they weren't so much an inner city band any more but were playing to the suburbs. And they can sell about 30 or 40 thousand albums, but they can't seem to break through the pop single market and to get to that extra few more. Because they don't really have this personality on them, they've just got this really good live reputation, so whenever they can play a pub they pack it out, but if they tried to play the Hordern Pavilion it just wouldn't work. So they're an interesting side of things."

"The Hate Me Nots are probably the closest band to Spy Vs. Spy, and we always think if Spy Vs. Spy can do it, so can the Hate Me Nots, because they both have this non-image, except that we know that the Hate Me Nots have the music and the songs to get over that so they can get some more extra people. So the hard part for us is to try to give them an image that people are going to react to. And it's all about salability; it's a sad, sad fact about music, but it is. If a musician wants to go on and make a living out of what he does, he's got to sell it himself to people. It's not just down to how great music is anymore."

"Well in Australia it's even more", says Chris, "Because for an American band, like on the east coast, you can fly to London for like 200 bucks, and then on to Europe. Australians are like a thousand or 1500 dollars before they even get out of the country. So that's an incredible hurdle. Here it's the first thing they think about is "when am I going to go overseas?" That's the band's first thought. Because Australia has a population of only 17 million people, and so many people from overseas forget that. Especially when you're trying to license a record. In America there's 250 million people and Australia has 17 million people. It's like selling records in Switzerland, or Norway might be the closest country to our size. But because it's such a vast land mass and it's so far away a lot of people have the idea that Europe is Europe and the US is the US and Australia is another market altogether. But it's such a small market. And so it's very difficult to make a living out of music here. You can do it in the States and Europe, but if you're just going to do it in Australia it's just impossible. The guys from Died Pretty can make a living because they've got American and British things, but you wouldn't call them a big band by any means. But Brett and Ron can live off their songwriting royalties. But it is a very hard thing to do to go over that mountain."

"Before they recorded for anyone else?", he replied. "Because obviously there's bands like Ratcat who we lost and things like that; I mean that's just the way of doing it, but we had Ratcat first. But there isn't a band that I wished we'd got that another label got. Recently, maybe? Not really. Chad's Tree was the biggest one I wished we had when we didn't have them and then we finally did get their second album. But we've always been very lucky and we got most of the bands we wanted to. Especially because we took on so many to begin with. I suppose you could say, yes, I wish Died Pretty was on Waterfront, but they did their first record before I was part of Waterfront, so that doesn't really count. So I think I've been pretty happy. I think we've had a pretty good share of the Australian music that's come out since I've been involved in it. Considering that that's since 1986 which is more the start of the demise of Australian music rather than the beginning, I'd have to say, no, not really."

"But that's one of my big hassles about Australia is that I don't think there's the studios, or not so much the studios, but the engineers, to make records that are of quality anymore", says Chris. "Back in 85 to 87 those records with Rob and Alan were really great records, but Rob really is the only independent producer in Australia and he can't do everything. That's one of the reasons I asked J. Mascis to do the second Protons single, because I wanted this record to be better than their first one and there was no one here who could do it except Rob, and I wanted someone different. I think J did an incredible job, considering the equipment he was using and the engineer and that the band was so young. Since the Hard-Ons single that's one of our biggest selling singles overseas. Because I think it's such a great sounding record. And Mark Arm did the new one for Tumbleweed for the same reason. 'Cos Kid Stephens did the mini album, and that's alright, but it's not as good as what it could have been. Again, to me it was a lack of Australian incentive to push the band. There were a lot of squabbles in the studio so they sort of broke up. We try to push them and say "do your best and make a record that's really really great" and so forth, but sometimes I think it's a lack of everything going on. That's why I think this experiment of getting Mark Arm to record the Tumbleweed thing here and then taking it over to the states to mix, we'll see if it comes out sounding as good as what a new young American band does then it really proves my point, and if it doesn't I don't know what the fuck's wrong."

Chris replied, "Well, that might be because we only get the better sounding records here. We don't have to go through all the crap to come to the best American records. We only get ones that are reviewed really great. But you have people like Steve Albini and all the SubPop stuff that sounds so good, and the last Fluid record. That last Fluid record is INSANE! Hopefully he's going to do the new Hard Ons. Because the last Hard Ons albums is a crock of shit. Because there's no engineer in this country who could work with the band. There was no engineer who they could sit down with and say "we want to sound like this" and have him understand what they meant. And that's a big, big problem. Per head of population I suppose there's probably only one good engineer for 17 million people in America, too, but because their scattered all over every different area, you've got people like Kramer in New York, Albini in Chicago and Butch Vig down there, you've got the guy who's doing the Husker Du stuff in Minneapolis, Jack Endino in Seattle; they're the more name guys who can get really good sounds. Rob and Alan are really the only people here. But getting Alan Thorne as a producer is no good because he's such a wimp. You gotta get Rob in there to sort of get the guy going. Rob really is the only good producer around. You can hear that with "Out", where before "Out" he'd only done Detroit records, then he gets a band that's totally non-Detroit and he still makes one of the most incredible records you've ever heard. I played that the other day, and it's still just an incredible record."

"So for the Hate Me Nots it's alright because you can do that, but the next Hard Ons album has to be done overseas. I might want to give a band to Rob now and then, but you can't use him too much. I'm going to start encouraging bands to record basic tracks over here and sending them over there to mix. You just get more interesting sounds."

Says Chris, "It is, but the chances of it being about 30 times better than if it was done here is the better way of doing it. All these bands want to go overseas and make it overseas. If they don't have a record that's going to impress people overseas, they're not going to get there. You've gotta have a record that somebody in some record company is going to listen to and go "Fuck, that's incredible, I want this band and I want them now!" And if you don't have that, what have you got? Nothing!"

"Sometimes I think our aspirations are too much...sometimes I just think that no one gives a fuck about Australian bands. There's no medium big independent Australian bands. The closest would be Died Pretty and the Rifles, Died Pretty even more because they're still with Beggar's Banquet and Beggars are going to put even more money into their next record."

"And then even if you've got that, you've then gotta tour. And if you want to be big in the States then you've got to tour the States. And so it's a big prospect to do. It's alright if you're a US band because at least you know that's your home territory, but if you've gotta tour the US, Europe and Australia all the time, it's like yech!"

"But I'm confident in the Hard Ons, and I'm confident in the Hate Me Nots, and I'm confident in Tumbleweed. In some ways I'm even confident in Nunbait, because I think that musically they've got something that's going to become very original in what they do. Sort of a big cross sound from Oz-rock, Detroit 60s through Birthday Party sort of noise stuff. But the new EP's not that crash hot, but hopefully they'll make the record soon that will do that. But as people they might not come up to scratch, I don't know. They might indulge in that great Australian thing of sitting back in their chair and not worrying about things. But hopefully with better luck they'll get off their bums and start working."

"Well, they've toured twice", says Chris. "Both abortive tours, but those two tours have certainly made it. When I was at Tampa in my aunties place I went down to the local record store and they had Hard Ons records and Australian singles and they sold them all the time. In some ways what's hard for the Hard-Ons is that they have the same following in the States as they've got here, which is a kids market. Fifteen year olds think the Hard-Ons are this great sort of punk pop tough wild sound, and with the cartoons and all that and the different races of the members, it all rolls into a thing that's totally original. We have this Japanese guy lined up to try to do the new album, and he loves it. The same thing crosses over into places like Japan. That's what I think makes great bands; something that's totally original. In a lot of ways in Australia sometimes, that's gone, that originality of something special that makes them different from overseas bands. Now there's a lot of the young people wanting to be like the Pixies or the Wonder Stuff, or like Caligula, who are like the biggest thing in Sydney at the moment, but all they are is a cheap version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Faith No More. And if you don't have local people supporting local bands they're not going to get off the ground and become bigger locally to get overseas. The Kryptonics are a perfect example of that. I mean, they are a mean, mean live band. They are incredible. But no one goes to see them, no one. I mean, I think they are a bit dated as well and they need to come into the 90s, but they are a mean rock and roll band. They pump. Live I've never seen such a wild live band. God, they're incredible. And then you get a band like Ratcat who can't string two things together and their bloody huge. But that's sexuality as well; the same thing with the Hummingbirds, because of the girls. The Falling Joys are another band who are very Australian and they've got a girl in front. In one way that's what's happening in Sydney as well; if you've got a girl in your band you're going to be twice as big as a band with a guy in it."

"It's not like a dumb sexual type thing, either. In Sydney especially most of the bands with girls in them are wimpy bands so they draw the intellectual type of fans. I'm dumbfounded, I don't know. Maybe it's because the girls can drag their boys along because there's a girl in the band and the boys can't drag their girls along because it's too loud or something. I don't know, it's weird. But I'm always looking out for all girl bands!"