WHENEVER Melbourne contemporary music audiences grow tired of the state of popular music, they invariably turn to Oz rock's foremost parody artists TISM to hold an often unflattering mirror to society.
In Newcastle, audiences have THE PR TEAM, playing this Saturday night at the Northern Star Hotel, with FAVOURS FOR EACH OTHER. The bullshit detectors of the PR Team are finely honed and, according to bass player, keyboard player and vocalist JOHN E. NORMAL, the proof can be found in the title track to the band's latest album SOFT CORE. 'The more you think about the white middle-class boys pretending to be hard core, it's really amusing,' he said.
One assumes Normal is referring to the LIMP BIZKITS and the RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES and the armies of clones, all ironically whining about how they've been hard done by in the western world.
'There's nothing hard core about them at all. We just wrote our alternative (Soft Core) to celebrate being soft, celebrating being a middle-class, high school nerd.'
The PR Team has been described variously as 'half-arsed electronic funk, dodgy hip-hop and elevator muzak' but the group itself prefers the description 'electro-nerdadelic'.
Humorous lyrics include such pearlers as: 'I go to bed when Big Dog does/I wrap myself up in his fuzz/ I'm soft core, I'm giggly and queasy/ I love my mum, and my mummy loves me.'
It's not just the practitioners of the most popular styles of contemporary music that The PR Team have targeted for ridicule.
The PR Team is itself a parody of the whole music industry.
'When you step back and look at the music industry, you realise that most bands are just PR teams for corporations - mechanisms to extract money from teenagers,' Normal says.
The PR Team and its members - including guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist THOMAS L. ROCK and 'beatz and grooves' man PETER D. FACTO - are self-styled industry 'puppets'.
With his tongue planted firmly in cheek, Normal suggests that the band's ultimate goal is to extend The PR Team to every capital city in Australia through a franchise set-up.
'Go to any capital city in Australia and you'll find a PR Team there,' he said.
TE has two copies of SOFT CORE to give away.
To go in the draw, mail an envelope, with your name, address and telephone number on the back, to PR TEAM GIVEAWAY, PO Box 615, Newcastle, 2300.
Or enter on-line at www.nnp.com.au TE
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