Crumb coming together

By GRAHAM REID

Good-humoured Carter Nixon, frontman for the Wellington rock band Crumb, says he can't believe how dumb they can be sometimes. They scored a gig playing the wrap party after Peter Jackson's WingNut Films had finished doing pick-up shots for Lord of the Rings but ...

"It was great. It was in one of the studios and they had some of the props around. So it was like being in a big cave with rocks and caverns, just like Iron Maiden in the 80s. But we always forget to get photos and to film stuff. That would have been good to have film of. Oh well, next time. We want to play that Rings world premiere, we'll aim for that."

Crumb, a rock'n'roll four-piece, aren't aiming quite that high yet, but are working their way carefully to an album launch early next year after a drip-feed of singles and cracking it on the live circuit.

By day Carter Nixon - named after the movie Get Carter but who says, yes, he's a Democrat and a Republican, always arguing with himself - is a runner for WingNut, but admits he doesn't do much running. "I walk quickly to places and photocopy things, I am the heart and soul of the operation. Put down I'm a document reproduction technician."

Because of what he sees by day in Jackson's studios, he's also keen to have a crack at making a video for the band he's had off and on for the past nine years, although he says his record company, Antenna, doesn't know that yet.

With drummer John Davidson, he was in a high school band ("playing Metallica covers, the usual metal") and the present Crumb line-up has been together for the past three years.

"It actually started in about '96 but stopped in '98 when our bassist Peter left to go overseas. To be honest we weren't very good, but then one day I ran into John and hadn't seen him for a while, and we were talking about how much we missed playing. Peter was back, so we gave it another crack but thought we'd try and write some real songs.

"Songs used to be an excuse to get on stage and be stupid, but we said, 'Let's concentrate on writing songs,' and we started taking it a bit more seriously."

Three years ago bassist Vinnie Menon joined Nixon, Davidson and guitarist Aaron Passmore and they upped the stakes even further when they got in touch with Antenna's Trevor Reekie.

"We'd worked with Tadpole, and Dino [Tadpole drummer Dean Lawson] was always saying, 'You should send some stuff to Trevor.' So we saw him - and he said we were about two years away from being ready. And it was pretty much two years to the day when he signed us.

"We'd kept in touch and he'd come to some gigs and we wound up being signed in October last year."

The band have already finished their debut album, So Dirty Everyday, but it is on hold until they have built a name for themselves.

"We all discussed it and thought we could put it out now and our mums would buy it, or we could put it out later when we've released a few more singles. Our profile seems to be getting a bit bigger. We're not superstars - in the band rooms we are - but we are getting the profile up, so when it's released a shop in Dunedin will know us.

"The main goal this year was to concentrate on Auckland because we were pretty lazy and didn't get up enough. We've gone to Palmerston North a lot and places like Napier, but we thought we needed to get to Auckland because it's the big city and where a lot of other bands are. It's also easier to get there than down south.

"The response has been good actually. Everyone talks about how Auckland crowds don't give you much response when you play. People say they never dance and are well known for standing at the back. But we seem to get people being really nice and saying it's really, really good. That's better than them saying it's really, really bad. So we like playing there."

The band have already established themselves in the capital through regular playing - especially when they scored the Audioslave support slot in April - and rock radio has latched on to their single, Nice to See You. It wasn't released commercially ("the record company said rock singles don't really sell") but acted as a calling card for record shops and radio. The video got a good airing also. The gameplan now is more gigs, a new single, Stay Hard, soon, and a video shoot for it at the end of next month.

Oddly enough, Crumb first came to attention with a pop song Never Gonna Change, which was not a reflection of what they do - and you won't hear it from them.

"It got us our first recording grant though. We'd sent in songs galore [to the New Recording Grant scheme] and never got it, so we thought, 'They want commercial songs, so let's write the most cheerfully poppy song we can to see if can get the money.' So we wrote it and got the money - then rang up straight away and asked if we could record something else.

"But they said we couldn't, so we did it and The Rock played it a lot. But we don't play it live and it's not on the album, we just don't like it at all.

"But it was the first song that got picked up on radio - and I guess it was a turning point for Trevor when he heard what we could do with some money."

Performance

* Who: Crumb, with Stood

* Where: Kings Arms

* When: Tonight