So now that we know that the future is uncertain, but certainly slight, let’s deal with the present (that’s a tenuous link – ed.).  Peabody’s new single, Black Narcissus has received a couple of spins on Triple J’s Home & Hosed program, so why not contact those lovely people at Triple J and tell them how much you miss Peabody being played on the radio.

Request it on Home & Hosed

Request it from the King himself

Rosie’s Super Request

If you don’t know what you’re requesting… clicky clack on the play button below and watch the whole world disappear.

Una gira por los estados del este se realizara en Octubre y Noviembre. Luego despues de eso, supongo que nos estaremos bañando en oro puro, y secandonos con billetes de cien dolares.

Hasta la proxima ves, fanaticos del castigo y la tortura!

1. the song I refer to in the heading, is awesome.

2. we are playing a gig at a lawn bowls club, which completes our duology of bowling gigs, having achieved the first leg of this miraculous feat back in 2002 when we played The Alley, which is a ten-pin bowling alley in Brisbane.

We went into the studio again on yesterday to listen to the genius and record some keyboard. The footage below will show you that being in a rock band is not all sticky drumsticks dipped in shoeboxes of cocaine…. it’s mostly sticky drumsticks dipped in shoeboxes of cocaine, but there is a deadly serious side to this caper.

The piano man I ain’t
Tim also had a go on the keys and let me tell you, if Ray Charles was white, from Canberra and wore a flanny, his name would be Tim Kevin.

Until next time, oh slimy net-surfers and wasters of time and youth.

The final day of recording can be incredibly tedious, as there is a lot of faffing about and poncing around. Things to shake, stuff to hit, ‘oohs’ to ahhh and la-di-da. Check out the link below this little diatribe to see Ben, Jared & Trix sing back-ups for I’ve Been Waiting. They sang in tune and their bananas were sliced into some ice-cream, which they scoffed down primitively.

Tim Kevin, by this stage looking like Dan Akroyd in Trading Places, did some beaut harmonies in It Can’t Be Done, while Trix banged his Fender Twin amp around to get that God-awesome spring-reverb that is akin to the sound of someone breaking their brain at the bottom of a cave. As a result This Empty Road is sounding creepy, like your uncle. For this same song, Jared made a mallett made of a drumstick, gaffer tape and a toilet paper roll (with toilet paper still on it). He is the McGyver of indie rock.

This last account of our slap-stick adventures shall be dedicated to possibly the finest moment of the four days. Jared was doing some percussion, when the time came to do some tambourine work on Choking. At this point, Chamie stepped up to the mark, like a batsman walks out to the pitch, needing to hit a 6 off the final delivery of the day for an improbable win. And just like most Australian cricketers, he’d been drinking. Tim – hands steady at the helm – had never heard this part before and sat there expectantly, a lunatic’s smile reaching his face like that of someone who has accepted their fate and lot in life. What followed was possibly the worst, most offensive performance in front of a microphone since anything Van She has ever done. To keep with the cricket analogy, Chamie proceeded to bat like this guy.

Tim’s little smile turned to horror, then disgust, then back to horror as he realised Ben was totally serious in what he was doing.

Thankfully Jared stepped in, accosting Chamie by force and removing him and the offensive tambourine from the premises. Unfortunately, our one-take policy on these things means that his noble actions in the name of taste and decency came too late. Ben’s retarded tambo work shall be forever immortalised in the final 20 seconds of Choking. Buy the album for this, and this alone. It will be worth it.

And that, my furry friends, is how you make a punk rock album.

Ben, Jared & Trix have been waiting, apparently

Anyway, regardless of the fact that I had to do a lot of singing the following day, I thought I’d have a bit of fun… y’know… warm up the old tonsils a bit.

So did it affect me? Only in the sense that I was awesome. Actually, first things first. I had a bit of a sleep-in to recover from said karaoke (have you been to this Dong Dong Dang or whatever the fuck it’s called? It’s like a detention centre for drunk people) and got to the studio to find the wonderful Nadene Pita laying down some totally sick viola over the top of The Empty Road, It Don’t Matter and The Black Narcissus. I will refrain from any obvious Rome-burning comments here. You know, apparently when Rome was burning, Nero was 56kms away and upon hearing of Rome’s ashy-demise, returned to join the fire-fighting efforts. He also liked ladies’ clothing, but who doesn’t? Well, WHO DOESN’T? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So then it was onto the aforementioned vocals. Knowing we had to be out of there by about 7pm made us work harder and all 13 songs were sung and dusted in a cool 6 hours. This included Chamie’s famous megaphone-diatribe on Loose Manifesto. To work up the voice into a healthy lather, I staggered the songs from the tamest (It Can’t Be Done), to the most fucked up (Choking), which I sang after eating my famous vegan wrap of razor blades wrapped in sandpaper.

A short, but very productive day 3. Now, onto the night where our charity work feeding the homeless knows no bounds.

Once that was all sorted out, however, we got down to the business of blowing minds and changing lives. The six remaining songs were knocked off with relative ease. My favourite so far is It Don’t Matter. The chaotic feedback-guitars in the outro sound like a cat being hit with a violin, while Rome burns, burns, fucking BURNS!

Tim Kevin is starting to show signs of mental degradation as he deals with our petty, petty squabbles over what the best take of a song is and whether to have cashew nuts or tofu with our Thai chilli-basil. I give him another day or so before he starts muttering something about all work and no play making Timmy a dull boy.

The end result for the day is that we’re pretty happy with how quickly we got the main parts of the songs down. Tomorrow I start on vocals. Tim’s lovely wife got him tickets for Wilco, which means we’ll have to finish up early tomorrow. His pay will be docked.

Songs finished today:

Mirror Mirror
Loose Manifesto
Already Won
I’ve Been Waiting (we don’t like this name, so email us for other suggestions)
It Can’t Be Done
The Empty Road

Well, we’ve just finished day 1 of recording, and after a bit of a slow start, we managed to get cracking and get all the guitar, bass and drums done for 7 songs.

There is no kitchen so I had to hook up the toaster and kettle to the power board which I had my pedals plugged into. A bit of tea with some reverb and some distorted toast goes down a treat. We even waited till the sun went down before wrapping our laughing gear around a bottle of neck oil. Chamie of course, was foaming at the mouth by the time the lid came off the first one, but he quickly retreated into his Bad Boy Bubby corner with his little bass and his disturbing thoughts.

Tim Kevin, our trusty engineer, was a model of sobriety, good taste and humour. His autism is well under control and only swears if sworn to.

Jared and Trix… well… let’s face it… they’re lucky to be in this awesome band so it’s a good thing they were on the money today or I’d be on the phone to the producers of Australian Idol’s Got X-Factor Talent quicker than you could say “you’ll never work in this town again” to get me a couple of replacement saps.

We’ve got 6 songs to go and then it’s on to vocals.

Songs done so far:

Choking
The Black Narcissus
When the Government Comes Calling
Take it From Me
Deadhead
No New Riffs
It Don’t Matter

Keep it real, motherfuckers.

Do you think when Mental as Anything sang that, what they really meant was, “hey there you with the sad face, come up to my place and I’ll slip you a rohy, slice you open and steal one of your kidneys, which I’ll sell on the black market – the same black market you’ll find yourself on when you turn to prostitution to support the drug habit you’ll inherit after the whole ‘kidney’ ordeal gets too much to cope with”…. or is that just me? And don’t even get me started on what I think “boom boom boom let’s go back to my room” really means.

Now, if there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now, it’s either:
a) just a spring clean for the may queen;
b) a bad case of ebola;
c) a sense of excitement at the thought of Peabody recording A NEW ALBUM!!

If you picked (c), then you’re on your way to winning the food processor and leopard-print lounge set! If you picked (a) you’re a smartarse and if you picked (b) you should move to Adelaide or Canberra.

That’s right music fans and other assorted biscuits, we is going into the studio to record our fourth album, which we will name Loose Manifesto. When I say ‘studio’, what I mean is a tiny shack in Waverton with our good friend and engineer Tim Kevin of La Huva to record 13 songs onto an 8-track tape machine…. in fact, the same tape machine that Nirvana used to record Bleach.

We’ll be posting updates via farcebook/fuckwitter/smoke signal.

Finally, check out the view from the studio. If only we had any windows.