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Life on Earth
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TASTE release epic new album LIFE ON EARTH
“The explosive vocals, stark guitar harmonies and head-banging solos are all informed by the band’s combined experience in the hard rock and jazz worlds.” (Music Injection, 6/4/16)
On iTunes May 27. CD available from the GoSet Music Store June 17.
A clock ticks. A car alarm splits the night. A distant belltower tolls as a gun is ominously cocked in your ear. The curtain rises in a grand cinematic flourish of muscular, orchestrated rock. Drums roll and crash as the synth riff soars and the first exhilarating guitar solo tears a hole in the sky. Who makes records like this anymore? The story of TASTE is a legend from the lost back pages of Australian rock’n’roll: the meteoric rise and fall of a mid ’70s glam-rock quartet with a fiery reputation among such lofty peers as AC/DC, Queen, Suzi Quatro and the Sweet. But history can wait. Fast forward 40 years and LIFE ON EARTH is a document of rare craft and experience from a band split by circumstance all those years ago, now reunited with newfound passion and decades of combined expertise from the realms of hard, progressive rock to the frontiers of jazz.
“I put a couple of songs down in my home studio,” explains singer and keyboard player Ken Murdoch, “and one sounded very TASTE-like: very heavy and theatrical so I sent it to Joey and Michael and said ‘What do you think?'”
The answer was unanimous. A sign of the creative explosion that ensued, that track never made the final cut. “The songs poured out of me,” says Ken. “It took a few months to write but I knew where it was going. A few of the tracks I got from short stories that I wrote. Every song seemed to link to the last. “It certainly has a theme. It deals with a lot of history and it deals with what a turbulent world we live in,” he says. “Even with the ballads, there’s not really a love song connotation. It keeps falling back on history as an example. It’s a big album.”
That’s a fair call for an epic suite that spans the melodic metal thunder of “I Am God” to a tender ballad of mortality titled “Is It Just a Dream”. The rage of “Fatal Shore” was inspired by horrific events in modern Australian society, while “Blood” brings it closer to home with a glam-tinted celebration of the ties that secure friendship against the odds of time. Ken, Joey, Michael and drummer Virgil Donati were teenaged rock idols back in the Countdown dreamtime of the mid 1970s. Tickle Your Fancy and Knights of Love were two classic albums (recently remastered for iTunes) that spawned a run of hits including Tickle Your Fancy, A Little Romance and their signature tune, Boys Will Be Boys.
The latter was famously adopted by Queen as the pre-gig fanfare on their A Night At the Opera tour of 1976. TASTE was preparing to tour America with Freddie Mercury and Co. on the back of an imminent deal with Sire Records in the USA when the wheels fell off in 1977. It was a tragic tale of mismanagement and parental control that any member of the band will philosophically recall—along with other classic yarns about kidnapping Malcolm Young, touring with Skyhooks and Sherbet and any amount of affiliated youthful hi-jinx.
What matters, though, is what remains. “As teenagers, we took ourselves very seriously as musicians,” says Michael, best known in recent times as a jazz bassist, owner of Bennetts Lane Jazz Club and artistic director of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival. “When I listen to [the ’70s] albums now my mind boggles at how we actually wrote those songs at that age, with that quality of musicianship. There’s a lot of virtuosic playing. It’s of the time but it’s progressive. It was real. It was organic and full of integrity.”
Speaking of virtuosity, new TASTE drummer Damian Corniola boasts a fortuitous connection with the roots of the band. He studied under original drummer Virgil Donati, these days based in LA and widely considered one of the best in the world (ask anyone from Southern Sons to Dream Theater). “To find somebody who has his capabilities, so young, is incredible for us,” says Ken. “Plus he’s a TASTE fan. That’s really the thing that got us. He knows all the songs because I guess Virgil played them for him “The first thing I said to him was ‘Why would you want to join us?’ And he said ‘Because this is like a dream’.”
The feeling is sort of mutual. LIFE ON EARTH is an album for our times but steeped in the wide-screen colours of a more progressive era. Real strings. Layers of percussion. Walls of harmony. Crafted segues, dramatic timing shifts and a vast, unified vision that befits the grandeur of its title.
“We didn’t do anything by halves this time,” Ken says with a laugh. “It’s going to be interesting to play live.”
LIFE ON EARTH is out on iTunes May 27. The CD album is available here at the GoSet Music Store from June 17.
TASTE – I Am God new single & Video out now
Directed by Clayton Jacobson & Produced by Rohan Timlock for Bison Films
TASTE – the Remasters: at last, relive the incredible lost story of ’70s rock
Ken Murdoch * Joey Amenta * Michael Tortoni * Virgil Donati
Listen. There may have been girls. There may have been contraband. This was rock’n’roll in the 1970s. But these four boys were young. And when their parents broke down the door of their manager’s South Yarra apartment, all hell broke loose.
The year was 1977 and TASTE was over. After two Top 20 albums in two years and four hit singles including Tickle Your Fancy and their unapologetic signature tune, Boys Will Be Boys. Really. You can’t make this stuff up.
“We were just about to sign with Sire Records in the USA,” bassist Michael Tortoni recalls. “We had a tour lined up opening for Queen.” Freddie Mercury and the boys were vocal fans of Taste. They blasted Boys Will Be Boys each night before they took the stage of their A Night at the Opera tour.
“TASTE had the makings of a long-term global success in my opinion,” the bassist reflects. “Because 40 years later, we’re all still playing. None of us ever stopped. We learnt our craft in the shit-holes of Melbourne. Audiences would spit at you if you couldn’t do it. Until you got it right. And we did.”
The evidence is here. Tickle Your Fancy and Knights of Love are two classic albums that cut a glam- rock swathe through the Countdown years that nurtured AC/DC, Suzi Quatro, Skyhooks, Sweet and other household names that knew TASTE as serious contenders on stage and record.
“As teenagers, we took ourselves very seriously as musicians,” Michael says. “When I listen to these albums now my mind boggles at how we actually wrote those songs at that age, with that quality of musicianship. There’s a lot of virtuosic playing. It’s of the time but it’s progressive. It was real. It was organic and full of integrity.”
TASTE’s implosion sent ripples through Australian rock and beyond for decades, with members going on to Uncanny X-Men, Southern Sons and the highest echelons of jazz and rock from Melbourne to Los Angeles.
Their story will continue in 2016 with a stunning new album, Life On Earth. But first, remastered by Angus Davidson and released to iTunes through GoSet Music, there’s just time to revisit one of the great lost stories of Australian rock’n’roll.
Saturday 28th November 2015
The Bridge Hotel, Rozelle – Sydney NSW with guests Dellacoma Rio & The Dark Horses Tix: Oztix Ticketek Moshtix
Wednesday 2nd December 2015
Ding Dong Lounge – Melbourne VIC with guests Robot Child Tix: Ding Dong
http://www.taste-music.com www.facebook.com/TASTEROCKBAND https://twitter.com/TASTE_ROCKBAND
Mari Jean – How it Feels video release
Mari Jean
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