Photo by Danny Dare
Interview with ‘Green’ aka Mel from The Greenmatics
By Debbie Stevens
You won’t hear this music anywhere, not unless you have your ears glued to the radio! The Greenmatics, already known around the music circuit, currently making their presence known on a much broader scale with songs like “Wait No More”, “Talk” and the ever popular track, “She Fell So Well”. Up beat and excited, The Greenmatics take their blend of New wave, mix it up with today’s synthesized sound and set it loose! Thank God for modern technology!
FSM: How would you describe your sound for new listeners?
MEL: Really, really fun live electro/pop/new wave, it’s extremely catchy and it gets stuck in your head, but not in an annoying way.
FSM: When did you form your band, and where do you all hail from?
MEL: Back in 2003, in a small City called Christchurch (New Zealand)
I had the crazy idea of starting my own band instead of having to rely on joining other bands that always fall to pieces. I had to come up with the whole concept myself and all I knew was that I wanted people to dance to the music and I wanted to have lots of fun and see the world. So I made a few lo-fi electro tunes on my laptop (which I bought with some money I had made from a very safe clinical drug trial), to my surprise they got played on the radio in NZ, then after moving up to Auckland to find band members we got nominated for ‘Most Promising New Act’ in The 2005 bNet Music Awards. We finished a huge NZ tour, got videos on Nationwide TV, with one song even making it to #27 in the New Zealand Top 100 Alternative Charts, for the whole of 2005- the song was the highest self release! Then I got bored of NZ and moved over to Australia to start again with a new line up. Ant (plays the very awesome 80′s Roland electronic drum kit) is Lithuanian and Tippa (bass) is Greek, and Gordo, (our previous bassist) is English and is now our ‘sound guy’- we’ve all made lovely Melbourne our home.
FSM: What is your music background and how did you all meet?
MEL: Thankfully my mum forced me to take classical piano lessons from a very young age for many, many years which I didn’t really like all that much at the time. But now I’m incredibly grateful that she had done that because the knowledge helps with the song writing process and I can also understand what Ant is talking about most of the time – he has a degree in music technology, so does Gordo actually. Oh and I can’t leave out my beloved musicals-I was exposed to loads of musicals as a child and grew up singing along to Christine in Phantom of the Opera and Florence in Chess, I always try to go and see musicals when they’re playing in Melbourne.
The story about how I found Ant for the band is the most amusing. When I eventually moved over here from New Zealand, I had put an ad up around the streets in the Fitzroy area of Melbourne which said ‘Electro pop backing band wanted’, the only person to reply to the ad was Ant and it took him about a month to email me about it because he had lost the little pull off email address from the ad. I made them too tiny, bad mistake…. probably why only 1 person replied but at least it was the right person! I found Tippa on melband.com.au and had found Gordo through an ad in Beat Magazine.
FSM: Is there any story behind the name “The Greenmatics”?
MEL: Yes there is, it’s a rather long one, but long story short is that I used to work as a photographer and band co-ordinator for some music publications back in NZ. I had decided to leave and just concentrate on music full time, so they did an interview with me and I needed a band name ASAP. Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with a very ‘electro’ sounding name and chose ‘Emerald Green’. The name never fitted the music, so I spent a good year writing down about 1000 or so words that could be used in the new name. Eventually I settled on ‘The’ to make it sound more like a band name, then kept ‘Green’ so people may realise that we used to be ‘Emerald Green’ and lastly I added ‘Matics’ because it had an electro feel to it. After all that effort I’m pleased to say that I LOVE the band name so much 
FSM: Please share with our FSM readers any previous music connections or bands.
MEL: There’s a band from Christchurch called Shocking Pinks, I was the first vocalist in that band and they’re now signed to DFA. Ant has been in a few bands, one was an old Melbourne electro/new wave band called ‘Zah Zah Zah’ and Tippa sometimes plays in Melbourne band, ‘Jeff Marni’.
FSM: Where have you travelled to promote your music and has it opened other doors?
MEL: The band in various forms has toured all around NZ and the East Coast of Australia. On the Australian Tour, we met with the head of Silver Sneaker Records and they now release some of our remixes, plus they’ve done some of the remixes themselves. We met with the girls from mysongcast.com in Sydney and they helped out with support bands for our tour. Pretty much every gig we play has opened doors or enabled us to network with people who do various things in the music industry.
FSM: Share some of your musical influences/inspirations?
MEL: We love the ‘dancey synth pop sound’ of the 80′s, from bands like Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, Human League, Joy Division/New Order etc. We also like what The Presets, Justice, Ladytron, Cut Copy, Crystal Castles and Minuit (to name just a few) are doing. So we basically took the 80′s sound that we love but took a more modern approach, gave it a more ‘doof doof’ kind of a feel and voila, that’s The Greenmatics. Our live show is way more ‘doof doof’ than the tracks you can hear on myspace.com/thegreenmatics, you’d have to come along sometime so you can see what I mean.
FSM: Do you collaborate on lyrics? Who is more likely to do the composing?
MEL: Ahhh people beware! I get my lyrics from conversations I have with random people, or from things I see or read. Everything has possible lyrical content and it doesn’t have to make sense. Drunk people say amusing things, so I try to hangout with drunken people as much as possible (haha). Reading the dictionary gives me a lot of ideas too. I always write lyrics on the back of receipts and they all end up in a big bag, then I stick my hand in and pull out a few random pieces of paper and make a song out of them. Probably about 99.9% of the lyrics are by me.
FSM: “She Fell So Well”, “Wait no More”, “Talk”-Do these songs represent anything in particular? Perhaps sharing a common theme?
MEL: Actually no, they’re just lyrics from random conversations (see answer to previous question). I never set out to write about a particular topic like ‘relationships’ for example, In fact, I try not to write about that because so many songs are all about love and I just want to do something different, more light hearted and fun. The line ‘She Fell So Well’ came about when we saw a woman carrying a glass of red wine and she tripped up but managed to catch herself, so we said that ‘she fell so well‘. “She fell so well, didn’t break the red (wine), falling so well just to get ahead, she fell so well”, that’s the chorus in the latest single. Actually I should admit that a couple of songs were influenced by certain people, but I do usually tell them about it.
FSM: “The Greenmatics” are not new to stage performance, is there any event that stands out from the rest?
MEL: We played at Revolver in Melbourne where Brian from Pseudo Echo saw us play, and before we knew it, we were supporting them a couple of months later! Our drummer Ant, was especially excited about playing with them and was able to cross it off his list of things to do in his lifetime. We’re now working with Brian, the vocalist from Pseudo Echo. He’s producing our tracks and they’re sounding very big. Because of the work with Brian, we’ve had more radio play and don’t get me wrong, we were extremely happy with the amount of radio play we had before, but now there’s even more and it’s pretty much exceeded all our expectations. We’re not in the band to make money or get well known, we just love playing gigs and are happy with the success we’ve had, but our main goal is to be happy, have fun and play lots of gigs around the world, but we do also treat it like a business so that maybe one day, we can make a living off it and not have to keep up the day jobs.
FSM: Is there any preferred venue when it comes to performing ‘live’?
MEL: Revolver in Melbourne is terrific. The Sydney Myer Music Bowl is also great because the engineers we had were so professional and got us a great sound for outdoors. Roxanne Parlour in Melbourne, and the East Brunswick Club,-they won awards because the venue is so amazing! I also loved playing at Sol Bar in Coollum (QLD) and Step Inn (QLD), plus Lansdowne Hotel in Sydney had a great vibe because 100′s and 100′s of students from the Uni across the road came to watch on the night we played and they were all in costumes. A couple of drunken students got up on stage and tried to join in but they were pulled off very quickly by security! Ahhh… tour memories.
FSM: How would you define the word “success”? Are there any downsides?
MEL:I guess it depends on what a person’s goals are? Some may have unreachable goals and others may have more realistic goals that are achievable and when they reach their goal, they’re successful to themselves but maybe not to others. Having goals in life is so important because it gives you something to concentrate on and to work towards…. otherwise you can go slightly mental!
FSM: In your own opinion, judging the amount of attention certain high profiled celebrities receive, when is enough, enough?
MEL: In Australia we’re lucky, we can see famous ‘Aussies’ doing their groceries, walking the dog and just doing normal things and they can do that here. But overseas, things seem to have been blown way out of proportion. I can’t see how people would strive to be famous when they see how people like Brittany Spears can’t even leave the house without an army of paparazzi following her! I mean what kind of life would that be?? People taking photo’s of you every time you go to the shop because you had a craving for pizza, then the next day there’ll be photos plastered all over the gossip magazines saying that you’re ‘pigging out‘.
FSM: You have a new album coming soon, what can we expect to hear and is this under the same label? Any other exciting projects lined up?
MEL: Hmmm, the album will be out this year but I don’t know when. Unfortunately I usually work at night, Tippa works during the day and Ant can work either day or night…. so it’s pretty hard to get together and actually spend quality time recording. If we didn’t have to pay rent, bills and buy food then we’d be able to record it in no time at all…. but we do pay rent and do have to eat… ughhhhh
The album will be more like our live sound, more ‘doof doof’ than the recordings that are on the websites. We’re aiming for a stomping electro album that people can dance too and thoroughly enjoy.
FSM: Please list the websites our readers can locate you, along with your music details.
MEL: Here you go-
www.myspace.com/thegreenmatics
www.youtube.com/thegreenmatics
www.facebook.com/pages/The-Greenmatics/11805971185
www.mysongcast.com/artist/the_greenmatics
www.triplejunearthed.com/thegreenmatics
www.ilike.com/artist/The%2BGreenmatics
www.reverbnation.com/thegreenmatics
www.friendster.com/thegreenmatics
www.amplifier.co.nz/artist/23036/the_greenmatics.html
www.ourstage.com/fanclub/thegreenmatics
http://www.showcaseyourmusic.com/thegreenmatics
www.thegreenmatics.hi5.com/friend/profile/displayProfile.do?userid=27865411
www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSgY1GwZWs
FSM: Any final words for FSM readers?
MEL: 1. My plan is going to plan.2.It’s normal for most and a luxury for others – that line is about insomnia and how sleep is a normal thing that most people can do, but for others it’s a luxury. For all the fellow insomniacs out there, don’t give up, we will sleep one day!!
Be sure to check out The Greenmatic’s music at our Broadcasting Studio at:
http://www.mogulus.com/flipsidetomusic
Flip Side To Music © 2009
Tracy Lewis ©2009
Interview by: Tracy Lewis
