To be Old Mates with someone is to have a friendship that has withstood the passage of time. In a world where everything is moving so quickly and has become so artificial, it’s the time that we spend with each other and the memories that we make along the way that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
I’ve been at this for close to ten years now and in that time, a lot of people in this industry have come and gone. And when I think about them sometimes, I often wonder where they are now and what they’re doing. Do they miss it? Or have they well and truly moved on? Our guests this time however have been around for what feels like forever and it’s my hope that they will be. They’ve been the one band that has kept bringing me back to all of this with nothing more than three chords and the truth, time and time again. They are my very Old Mates and Brisbane’s favourite trio of punk rock pied pipers, Dune Rats.
I’ve been wondering when I’d get the chance to do an interview with these boys, because it’s like herding cats sometimes to get the three of them to sit down in one place. So there was really no better occasion than the Old Mates tour to kick back on the Crowbar Brisbane steps and put the Dune Rats through their paces with the speed of our Five Quickfire Questions!
Dune Rats are:
- “Danny Beus”: Vocals and guitar
- Brett Jansch: Bass
- “BC Michaels”(not interviewed because he had to go move his car): Drums
Before the interview even began, we somehow ended up on the topic of pizza:
Brett: Imagine if a pizza was cut only into three slices. They’d be good slices.
Danny: I’d just eat two. You’d get half and half. Imagine getting three, fuck that’d be problematic.
Brett: It’s just sections of vegan cheese.
Danny: You have to roll it up as well. It’d be like a cannoli!
OB: Anyways…
1. This is the Old Mates tour and we’ve seen quite a few of ours come and go over the years. If you could revive one band that you know that has broken up or gone on hiatus to tour with, which band would it be?
Brett: This might be a bit hot off the presses, but Bad Dreems.
OB: Oh yeah, definitely! I was gutted this morning when they announced it.
Danny: It’s an indefinite hiatus alright, so that still gives us hope. (Still thinking of his own answer) Probably… Gung Ho?
Brett: I was gonna say Gung Ho! Yeah, let’s go Gung Ho.
Danny: Gung Ho, Gung Ho!
Brett: Actually, the house music tonight is just going to be fucking all Gung Ho. So you might hear the same song, what, eighteen times?
Danny: Maybe BC’s first band, The Cairos, so that he leaves our band and we don’t have to deal with him anymore.
Brett: That’d be a real… shaaaame! (laughter)
2. Going for the low hanging fruit next, let’s have a round of Red Light Green Light. What’s something that you think that we should give the green light to and start doing more of in Australia and what’s something you think we should be giving the red light to and stop?
Danny: I think we should start sunbaking naked more.
Brett: With peace and love.
Danny: Yeah.
Brett: And we can put the kibosh on all the other like negative crap. Fuck that shit.
Danny: And stop ridiculing people for sunbaking naked.
Brett: Yeah you couldn’t get a tan on small anythings… small extremities (before), but they’re sweet now.
Danny: How are you supposed to get a tan on your pecker if you can’t do it?
OB: Yeah, exactly, it’s ridiculous.
3. Can you describe a time to me in your life where you were stressing about how something’s gonna go and when it finally happened, you were like “Fuck It!” and decided to just wing it?
Danny: Um, one time we didn’t have any weed, and so we were wondering how we were gonna get high and then we found some in the carpet. And thought, is this enough to get high off? And then we put it in the bong and it was just enough to get high off. So that was… does that answer the question?
OB (laughing): Yes it does…
Danny (also laughing): That’s a good question and a good answer.
4. Out of the three of you, who would win a hundred metre Pogo stick race?
Danny: Probably… probably Brett. Because he loves Pogo sticks. Actually, people don’t know that about him, but he’s quite competitive in the Pogo world.
Brett: Yeah I feel like Mick’s (BC’s) steez would be like to try and just do one big Pogo whereas I’d be like a little rabid dog. Like eeeh-eeeh-eeeh (imitating the sound of a creaking spring).
Danny: Mick’s definitely the sort of dude to do one Pogo then run and say he didn’t have it in the rules that he couldn’t run.
(Everybody laughs)
OB: Is that how he wins Connect Four?
Danny: Yeah, that is how he wins Connect Four. He has an extra piece.
5. If you were trapped in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean surrounded by Sharks, and you could call only one person to help rescue you, who would you call?
Brett: That guy that’s in the Life of Pi where he’s on the boat with the fucking tiger.
Danny: Ohhh yeahh!
Brett: Dude he can navigate some shit.
Brett: I was gonna say David Hasselhoff because he’s just king of rescuing people in the water.
OB: Well he rescues Spongebob in his movie.
Danny: I reckon Life of Pi guy. That’s a different film I think Life of Pi guy. But yeah, the Pi guy.
To describe a Dune Rats show as “chaotic” is to undersell the command that band have over their crowd and their ability to whip their fans into an absolute frenzy. Punters fling themselves with reckless abandon off the stage and at one another while belting out every word. The Old Mates tour was a chance to bust off some of the old songs that they haven’t played in over a decade and god damn was it good to hear some of these tracks again.
They’re even doing Ratbags!, this time with some slightly more intelligible lyrics to match the re-recorded version, which was a dream to hear because it might be my favourite song of theirs. They’ve been doing this for sixteen years now and despite or rather because of all the bedlam and general intoxication, every show I’ve seen has left me fiending for more. Here’s to another sixteen years!
You can listen to Old Mates and give Dune Rats a follow below:
