Interview by Bec Harbour
When does an interview become a monologue? When you interview Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab from Machine Gun Fellatio (MGF). I had 10 questions prepared, I got to ask one, thankfully most of the things I wanted to ask, came out in the wash.
Fresh off their not-so-secret show held in Chit Chat’s home town of Newcastle over the weekend, he was buzzing with the readiness that MGF have for the shows they are doing with fellow avant gard shit-stirrers, TISM. “It was great, it felt natural and we haven’t been in the same room for so many years, but it all fell together.”
Touring with TISM, how will that go? As you can imagine, MGF are full of glee with this tour to give TISM some solid stick (I’m expecting side of stage heckling to be honest) and cannot wait for the tour hijinks to start.
What about the crazy antics on stage? “Well yeah, I was feeling it the next day but when we were rehearsing [at Liberty Hall], I thought why not? I started jumping around and found I could still do that stuff, and the Widow [Jones], you know is well known for getting her clothes off and she went and did it, then Pooh Bear came out ….”
Are they going to keep going after this run of shows? “It kinda liberates you, we’re not doing any more shows past this, this is just these shows and we are going to throw everything at it, there’s something wonderfully desperate about that, you can give it everything and go, this is now the memory…and they’ll sit alongside of those previous shows you mentioned.”
I mentioned that while researching for the interview, a Newcastle Reddit subreddit had sprung up about the not-so-secret show and Chit Chat was intrigued. “What was going on with the Reddit post then?” I offer to look it up again and read through the posts. “I try hard not to trawl but you know you have to wonder what people think…” It was mostly about who knew and who was going with the single person trying to sell tickets because they couldn’t go in the lead up to the show. Chit Chat had a wry laugh at the use of “yesty” in the post, “Yep they’re from Newcastle.” There is a bit of a snort of laughter when a contributor says TISM is shit , there is a response that they are lucky it’s not a TISM show and the resulting comments of “must not be a TISM fan” and “Greg You’ve Missed the Stop Sign”.
Chit Chat relays that Pinky [Beecroft]’s girl was in the crowd and passed on that the person next to them was weeping, there was a bit of bewildered awe in this statement. If you go back to the earlier part of this interview, they are not going to do this again after these 3 shows. Chit Chat seems in awe of the fact that people love them and have been campaigning for them to come back. When the person was checked on, they were actually overcome with happiness and thought they’d never see MGF play again.
I say that is really sweet and Chit Chat agrees, “There’s so much joy surrounding it, we go to Brisbane this week, and play Riverstage, we have never played Riverstage, then The Hordern and Sidney Myer Music Bowl, we haven’t played them either…” At this point I warn Chit Chat to bring the Aeroguard as Riverstage is a beautiful location but at this time of year the midgies are out – especially if you are getting naked.
I then jump in and ask the one question that hasn’t been answered in some way during the previous conversation – younger generations have found TISM, what do you think they’ll think of MGF?
“The wonderful thing, well we expected the audience to be full of middle aged people BUT, there were a heap of kids there, and they were singing along to every word. And I went, that is weird…”
“I wasn’t expecting that, they were in their 20’s you know. I had an email from a guy the other day telling me that his son was too young to come to shows back then, the son is 30 now and it was his birthday and the son had gone out and bought him a ticket and the two were going to go together. I have 2 teenage daughters, one’s 13 one’s 16, and this generation is the most inclusive, but the least tolerant…”
“We’ve looked at it and realised, the world has turned, for the better in ways I agree [with]. We’re going into the show, it’s provocative, nothing to un-PC for a modern environment.”
We talk about one of the songs that they don’t play ‘Blacklamb’ and how the lyrics morphed at one point to something even us in the independent press would hesitate to publish (if you know, you know what I am talking about here). They had to have a conversation that only MGF would need to have about the morals of the lyric in question.
We then discuss unsolicited show post-mortems, how there is always someone who comes up after a show and gives their critique of what you did or didn’t do, “You fucked this bit up, or you didn’t do that bit…” Every show has a critic, right? “Yeah, I don’t know what they think they are doing, helping maybe? I’m very conscious that I don’t do that at other people’s shows…” It can be a bit soul crushing when you come off stage and there’s some person telling you it wasn’t good right?
“Four minutes after is never a good time right, you want to revel in it…just don’t tell me, tell me in a week!” With the recent show, there was nothing but positivity, wall to wall MGF fans.
We then go on to chat a bit about what they all had been doing in the meantime, KK Juggy joined the circus, LoveShark and 3k Short continued with music, Pinky Beecroft formed The White Russians and Chit Chat has been making films, notably about his hometown Newcastle and been a TV presenter among other things.
It’s easy to see that MGF did not anticipate the outpouring of love and that the fandom was still going strong. I got a sense of awe that anyone gave a shit still and how much it was appreciated that they did.
What can we expect from the show? From our conversation, even though they are older and don’t bounce back like they used to (there was some relief expressed that there was some time between the shows), they are not going to disappoint, there will be nudity, there will be Winnie the Pooh, there will be stage acrobatics as much as they can. In short, they are going to put everything into the shows and hope we all love it.
