Basics usher in age of entitlement
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Back on the road … The Basics reunite with Wally De Backer (Gotye) for The Age of Entitlement album. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
IT’S payback time for Wally De Backer. His breakthrough hit Somebody That I Used To Know was one of the most covered songs in the history of karaoke with 30-plus pages of YouTube versions alone.
So when De Backer reunited with his mates Kris Schroeder and Tim Heath for a secret Basics gig in Melbourne in February under the delightful pseudonym Tinder Knight, they encouraged ardent fans to exact their revenge.
De Backer said it was one of his favourite gigs, with him swapping drums for an upright piano and about 200 fans packed cross-legged on the floor and handing the trio sheet music for their covers requests.
They weren’t thrown by the suggestions of Everly Brothers, David Bowie or Nina Simone. But Christina Aguilera and George Michael?
Legendary studio … Kris Schroeder, Tim Heath and Wally De Backer made their new record at the Abbey Road Studios in London. Picture: Jason Edwards.
Source: News Limited
“They tried to wrong-foot us with Christina’s Genie In a Bottle and someone brought Freedom 90 by George Michael, which is a great song but has a huge amount of overlapped vocals you can’t sing as one person and no-one was offering to jump in with the responses,” he says, laughing.
“That one fell in a heap. But talking about freedom, playing our music and anyone else’s music, sitting around, three mates singing songs as friends, that’s it.”
De Backer and his band mates are hoping to recapture that sense of unity with their fan community when he returns from his current New York base later this year to play in support of their new record The Age Of Entitlement.
The Basics form political party
Given that name well before the recent furore over federal politicians taking advantage of their “entitlements”, the trio’s first new studio offering in six years exemplifies the freedom they have enjoyed to be the kind of band they want.
The Basics songs are finely balanced between the songs from the head (Whatever Happened To The Working Class, Time Poor) and songs from the heart (A Coward’s Prayer, To Think Of You).
The three men again exercise their musical multi-personalities from garage rock and blues to upbeat pop and African flavours brought by Schroeder who worked with the Red Cross in Kenya.
De Backer says their fans have always welcomed their eclectic “musical soup”.
“Who listens to albums any more, right?” he says.
“I guess I have this contrast between two projects (The Basics and Gotye), and don’t want to put words in Kris’s mouth, but it’s not like if we do whatever we want that we have to worry about disappointing some massive audience.
“The fans who have loved the band for many years have always been open to what we have done.”
Gotye waves goodbye to $ 1 million he used to know
The trio returned to the legendary Abbey Road Studios — and no, they did not recreate the pedestrian crossing photo again — to make The Age Of Entitlement.
band of brothers … The Basics have been making music together since 2002. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
Ask De Backer if he immersed himself in the myths and ghosts of the world’s most famous recording studio and he goes full-tilt tech nerd.
“It can be a trap to be seduced by the myth when you are there to do hard work and focus and make good music,” he says.
“But you do have the hilarious luxury of the biggest collection of these beautiful vintage Neumann mics. They are very desirable and brought out the big nerd in me.”
Schroeder wrote the lion’s share of the record “while I was away on (Gotye) tour and Tim was doing different stuff”.
He deflects the suggestion the title has proven prescient.
“I haven’t kept up with what’s happening … but you don’t have to have your finger on the pulse to be aware the world has entered a self-interested age of materialism to the exclusion of most of the other things that have more value,” De Backer says.
Schroeder also insists the album isn’t a political manifesto.
“Yeah, we pulled the title from Joe Hockey’s infamous speech, but we’re definitely not drawing any sort of line to that. It’s a clever turn-of-phrase, though — it can mean so many different things to so many different people … Tell me, what does it really mean to a 15 year old in this so-called Age of Entitlement, as opposed to a 75 year old who’s lived through so many?
“For us, it’s a personal thing — we’re getting a bit older, and our
expectations of each other and ourselves has changed. We’re making music for ourselves
— that’s our entitlement, I reckon.”
HEAR: The Age Of Entitlement (Waterfront) out tomorrow
