I write about Private Function a lot, like a reeeeal lot. Maybe not as much as DZ Deathrays but it’s getting damned close. Writing about Private Function is pretty easy as they might be the greatest punk live act since the early 90’s, confidently demonstrating at every show that they are, as they always say, still on top.
You just don’t know what to expect at a Private Function show. Everyone has a ripping yarn of a Private Function gig. In fact, we recently held a competition asking Private Function Privateers: what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at a Private Function gig? We got the best responses from the winner Joey:
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Fresh off the release of their fourth album ¯_(ツ)_/¯, I caught at Private Function for a long overdue interview at the tail end of their Australian album tour. Before I got down to interviewing them, I couldn’t resist telling all these stories to the band, who had a few things to add:
Chris (regarding The Zoo show with an umbrella): I’d like to clarify that when I was hanging from The Zoo ceiling with an umbrella, I was pretending to be Mary Poppins. “I’m Mary Fuckin’ Poppins y’all!”.
Chris (on the Bigsound pyrotechnics) Oh yeah, we got in trouble for that. It wasn’t pyrotechnics, it was Mila setting herself on fire.
Aidan: Yeah, with lighter fluid.
Chris: She covered herself in lighter fluid, and set it alight. All the fire alarms went off. They were pissed off with us over that.
Aidan (referring to the Mountain Dew at Bigsound): I’m pretty sure one of the Mountain Dew bottles hit like the singer of Shihad in the face or something like that.
Chris (talking about the bushfire relief concert with Amyl and The Sniffers) Yeah, that was the night you got robbed Aidan.
Aidan: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. We had just played a show together with Amyl, and while Anthony and I were loading in to do that next show our house got robbed, on New Year’s Eve! Almost ruined 2020 for us… (scoffing) What a year that was!
Lauren: Lucky nothing else happened that year, ha-ha!
Aidan: That was the worst year of my life ha-ha!
Chris (referring to the expensive beer they tried to crowdfund): That’s right, it was like a $200 beer.
Aidan: Yeah, it was a stout. And it ended up everywhere.
But we’re not here just to tell war stories. It was in our old haunt, The Brightside beer garden, where I sat down with Private Function for a round of Five Quickfire Questions!
Private Function are:
- Aidan McDonald (Drums, vox)
- Chris Penney (Lead vox),
- Milla Holland (Bass and vox) (not interviewed)
- Anthony Biancofiore (Lead guitar and backing vox)
- Lauren Hester (Guitar)
1. What Animal would each of you be and why?
Lauren: Oh! Ha, that’s a good question.
Chris: I have said for years my spirit animal is just your common dog. Yep, a common dog.
Lauren: I don’t really know, but today we discovered pigeons are from Mongolia, so I’d like to be a Mongolian pigeon.
Aidan: I have no idea, but for some reason goanna is coming into my mind. And I think it’s because I really like that song. (singing) Solid rock! (by Goanna)
Chris: Yeah, yeah that’s good!
Lauren: It’s just your spirit animal speaking to you.
Aidan: Maybe I’m just really supportive of Annas? Go Anna! Get out there! You know?
I smell a song coming from this…
2. Echuca, Holbrook, Albury Wodonga. I have a town name for each of the band member to consider for your next regional tourism promotions:
OB: Spanker Knob.
Chris: Spanker Knob!
Lauren: I never knew Tassie could be so cool!
OB: Guys Dirty Hole.
(All laughing)
OB: Fannie Bay
Chris: Oh, did you know that the street that drives into Fannie Bay is like, Cock Street? Cock Street drives straight into Fannie Bay, I think it’s Cock Street?
Lauren: As God intended it.
(Chris is now searching Google Maps).
OB: Is the road straight, or a little bit wonky?
Chris: Ha-ha, yeah it veers to the left a bit if you know what I’m saying! (now reading from his phone) No, the street is Dick Ward Drive! And that goes straight into Fannie Bay. Also, fun fact about Darwin. It’s got the most northern Hungry Jacks in the southern hemisphere.
Lauren: Oh, I want to go there now!
OB: Humpybong.
Chris: Humpybong?
OB: Cockburn.
Lauren: Ooooo!
Chris: Oh yeah, we found out it’s pronounced Co-burn. We were like: “Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up! It’s COCKBURN!”.
OB: And then the last one which is an Indigenous name: Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill. With twenty-six letters, it’s the longest official place name in Australia (I struggle to pronounce it).
Aidan: Oh mate, you are on your own with this. I think because it’s Indigenous we wouldn’t want to mispronounce it out of respect. I wish I could read it out, but I just can’t do it. Give it a go Lauren.
(Lauren attempts pronouncing the place name)
OB: That’s not bad! We are getting better.
Lauren: Yeah, I really want to visit there now, and go and explore it.
OB: Sorry, it wasn’t really a question, more just I thought these place names could be fun to learn and sing in new material.
Lauren: No, that was fun!
Aidan: Just havin’ a yarn hey! Ha-ha.
Chris: No, I think I could get that last one, what was it again?
Lauren: Can you sing it to the tune of Albury Wodonga Chris?
Chris: (Singing) Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya…
OB: Ho! Nailed it in the first attempt! (Chris is breaking into a tune with it now)
Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill means “Where the devil urinates” in the regional Pitjantjatjara language. Which just adds extra wonderment and respect to the place name and hopefully it will be in a future song.
3. Fuck Me Dead you folk have had some injuries over the years. Can we have an injury record? Because at a Private Function show the band seem to have a Safety Last philosophy for themselves. (The punters are safe though)
Editor’s note: The punters are mostly safe.
Chris: Of course. Yeah!
OB: You sustained a particularly nasty one the other day in Perth, Chris…
Chris: Yeah, it turns out the skin on the top of your head is very fine. Fine, like my hair. And it split open. I got a huge cut on top of my head, it bled out. It bled more than I’ve ever bled out on stage before.
(I love the way Chris is totally nonchalant about how it bled out more than any other cuts on stage before, like it’s all a regular part of the show. To be fair he did bleed a bit straight after the opening track at The Brightside).
Chris: Aidan have you ever sustained a drumming injury?
Aidan: Hm, not an injury but I accidently yet repeatedly hit the floor tom in between my knuckles. And one of my knuckles has kind of vanished a little bit because of it. But aside from that not really. (Showing all of us present his mutilated percussionist’s mitt) See how that one is different?
Chris: Oh my God, that’s translucent! Ha-ha-ha, where has it gone?!
Aidan: Ah my poor finger! But Mila sustained a pretty decent one the other week while playing with Green Day. She tore her ACL on the first note of the very first song of the set! She tore it jumping off the drum kit onto the stage. So that was pretty hectically brutal.
OB: First song in? Oh no. What about yourself Lauren?
Lauren: I don’t know, sometimes my tummy hurts.
Aidan: Because we are all eating too many “chocolates” before the show.
Lauren: Yeah, we have too many soosies. I don’t have any cool injuries, but my fingers are permanently cut open from strumming, I just strum really badly against the strings. I did have a pretty bad wrist for a while, and had to strap it up and go to physio, but it just fixed itself.
Aidan: And that was your fretting hand not your strumming hand though, right?
Lauren: Yeah, and the physios couldn’t work out why…
Aidan: Did the physio say “Don’t fret”?
Lauren: Ha-ha, actually they told me that, and I said I won’t, and it just worked out fine.
Aidan: Yeah exactly! That was good advice. And now you fret every day!
Lauren: Ah, yes. But nothing cool though.
OB: This is awesome, you’re all just writing the jokes as we go.
4. These next questions are on behalf of all Aus punk punters. Where the hell does that Magical Prawn Door go?
Aidan: We… don’t… know!
OB: This is keeping me awake at night!
Chris: We need a ladder to find out.
Aidan: Yeah, we do.
Chris: Have you been to the Giant Prawn at Ballina? There’s a giant door smack bang in the middle of it. And we want to know where the fuck that door goes!
OB: I feel like his door is going to become… corrupted or violated?
Chris: The next time we are going past Ballina, it’s in a carpark, at a Bunnings. So, we are going to get a ladder, and I’ll climb up there and find out, what the fuck is behind that door!
Lauren: It’s probably set in the best location to get a ladder from. When we saw it, we were looking around going: “There is simply no ladder around here, we are never going to find out.”
Aidan: I feel it’s like how you need a rain song and now we’ve got a prawn song to open that door. We might need to take Elouise “Queenie” with us though you know, to really summon that door to open for us with magical powers.
OB: What about if you take those two guys from Melbourne that did all the Pam the Bird pieces? They could really help you out.
(The group agrees excitedly)
Aidan: Yeah, he could get up there.
Chris: Yeah, they know how to fly!
Lauren: Wait, what if there’s someone living in there, that’d be really cool.
Chris: Yeah, we open the door and they are like “AHHHHH!” screaming at us to get out.
Lauren: Some half prawn-half man creature hahaha!
5. I wanna be Brainwashed. When will we ever get a Private Function reality show? Like most bands make content almost to appease their labels etc., whereas PF is a 25/7 fun machine. It would win an Emmy, a Grammy, Academy Award, a Nobel Peace Prize, hell even the highly esteemed rusty Logie! Are you Ready to be Rich from it?
Lauren: The rusty Logie… This is so my dream.
Chris: Nice. Hoo, we have legitimately talked about this so many times.
Aidan: Get me the Big Brother producers now!
Chris: I would love a reality show; I think it would be really funny.
Aidan: I’ve always wanted to do like a Gordon Ramsay style, or Louis Theroux style show you know, multi-camera, following us around. Whoever is reading this and has money, come at us! Come at us now!
Lauren: We’ve always talked about how we want to do, like a Private Function travel show, because we always get up to so many hijinks on tour, and everyone likes to do their own thing. We’ve got a food person and a theme park person, so that is our dream one day.
Chris: See we should start our own channel up. I’ve got an idea for our own TV station… Are you ready for this?
Aidan: Uh oh…
Chris: CHANNEL EIGHT!
Aidan: Oh, wow! The long-awaited Channel Eight! Ha-ha-ha!
Chris: Well, think about it. Where the fuck is Channel Eight? We’ve got Channel Seven, Nine, and Ten? But where the fuck is Channel Eight?
Aidan: Is there anyone on Channel Eight?
Chris: Nope. It’s a gap in the market… for us.
Aidan: What about Channel Thirteen? The opposite of thirty-one. “Channel Thirteen, where it’s really great quality” is the slogan!
OB: Channel Eight, I’m going to hold Private Function to this one or Channel Thirteen. I’ll let you vote on that one.
Lauren: Eight is better than nine, apart from thirteen in October, it’s more spooky.
Aidan: Oh yeah, Rocktober on Channel Thirteen.
(A well timed Ramones song comes over the PA)
Chris: This is my favourite Ramones song, a cover but one of the greats (starts singing “Baby, I love you”)
Aidan: With Phil Spector.
From that interview, I knew this had all the makings of a good night and I was right! Head on over and read my review of the gig for my other magazine, Good Call Live if you want a play by play of all the chaos.
Cheers to Carly Grace (@sublimesydrome) for all the freakishly great shots in this article! You can checkout more of her work here.
How exactly do you say it? Well it’s really up to anyone’s guess. The band sure as hell don’t have any idea either. Listen to ¯_(ツ)_/¯ below:
6. Bonus question: I detest ABBA. In fact, the only thing that makes my stomach turn more than that is Country music. But I absolutely love SOS! Therefore, on that logic, is there a Country song that could be Private-Functioned to change my perspective?
Chris: Oh absolutely! We were going to do one of the first covers we actually first played almost ten years ago, (which) was Joe Diffie’s Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox (If I Die) (singing the chorus).
Aidan: Is there a shot in Dial Before You Dig where you are up against the jukebox, and we were going to do something?
Chris: Yeah, we ripped it off. There’s a video clip for Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox, where it goes (singing) “Fill my boots up with sand, put a stiff drink in my hand”, with a corpse up against a jukebox, and in the Dial Before You Dig music video, we filled the skeletons boots up with sand to hold it up right against the jukebox at The Tote.
OB: That’s cool as.
Chris: Did you come with us Aidan to the ABBA Museum in Sweden?
Lauren: I think it was us and Mila, I think.
Aidan: I think that was the day I just met up with Laura afterwards, and I think I was incredibly hungover from her birthday the night before.
OB: You should have a look at the Bee Gees Laneway in Redcliffe, it has a gallery and plays Bee Gees on a PA through this laneway with their timeline.
Chris: We’d love to. We’ve got time for any musical museum, we are there!
Lauren: That sounds sick.
Chris: Have you been to the ABBA Museum in Stockholm?
Lauren: It was crazy. We went in and came out and went: “Is ABBA just the greatest band in history or what?” We got like full Stockholm Syndrome. Ha-ha!
Chris: Literally! Hahaha ABBA Stockholm Syndrome in Stockholm.
Lauren: They are great, we love ABBA.
Chris: Yeah, ABBA rules.
Editor’s note: Funnily enough SOS and Take A Chance On Me are the only ABBA songs that I don‘t detest either.
