Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), Thursday 23 December 1993, page 28


Backstage

Yuletide cheer from hard-rocking band

By ARA JANSEN

DIVINYLS will bring their

own version of Christ mas/New Year cheer to Canberra with a show at Raid-ers, Queanbeyan on Wednesday night.

It has been a long time be-

tween tours but the band has managed to keep its name in the spotlight.

Singer Christina Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee have worked on projects includ-ing covering the classic Wild Thing for Yahoo Serious's Reckless Kelly movie and a song for the Super Mario Bros movie.

Divinyls was also one of the bands farewelling the Boggo Road Jail in a July concert be-fore its closure,

"It's hard to tour all the time because there's a lot of ground to cover and we can't keep going back to the same places," says

McEntee of the time it has taken to get back to Canberra.

"It also takes a lot of time to get around the place and we don't go out on the road all the time. When we go out on the road we want to do something new and be a little bit different. So unless we are different there's no point in going back."

This tour McEntee says to ex-pect everything you have come to love about the Divinyls with some new material thrown in to be road tested.

Joining the volatile pairing of Amphlett and McEntee will be

guitarist Charlie Owen (fresh from his collaboration with Tex Perkins and Don Walker), key-boardist Lee Borkman (who has just finished as musical director for Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) and New York musos Charley Dray-ton and Jerome Smith.

Drayton is taking time out

The Divinyls play at Raiders Queanbeyan on Wednesday night.

from Keith Richards' Expens-ive Winos to hit the skins while Smith, a former bass player with Mick Jagger, has rearranged his session work to fit in with the tour. Both Americans have done other tours with Divinyls.

On the recording front the band has released its version of Bryan Ferry's Love Is The Drug as a new single. The song is lifted from The Collection, a best of Divinyls album with a

twist.

Recorded mainly in the Unit-ed States, the album brings lis-teners up to date with what the band have been up to since their last album, Divinyls.

"It's some of the stuff we have done on soundtracks like Wild

Thing, a few different versions of songs you already know, old songs and a couple of covers. There's some stuff people have never heard us do," McEntee

says.

"We thought we should let people hear what we have been doing for a while instead of waiting to put out a new record. We thought this was a good chance because there was stuff there and it was an excuse to get back on the road."

McEntee says the pair have been spending more time in Los Angeles recording of late be-cause it has been more practical with the city's abundance of stu-

dios.

The band's new original al-

bum is already written but is still waiting to be recorded. Plans are under way for a re-lease in the first half of next

year,

"At the moment, it's a bit of a mixture of stuff," McEntee says. "We have done some different things and sometimes we do more rock stuff and sometimes there's more quiet stuff.

"It's a lot more groove orient-ed and goes right back to a cou-ple of acoustic numbers. We have worked writing with a cou-ple of outside people to get a bit of a different blend. It helps you with our own ideas and to get to your objective; but the stuff I like the most is the stuff Chrissie and I do."