The Long Now with Children Collide

Children Collide’s Heath must be tired. For the moment he is relaxing in Melbourne bar Prudence, but the young rock band have been fervent in their touring schedule; supporting rock heavyweights The Living End and beginning a national tour for their latest record, The Long Now, this week. Phew!

What was it like touring with The Living End dudes? “Those shows were great, the response has been really positive. Those guys are awesome and so professional. It’s been nice having bigger crowds, having real stage sound guys and all that kinda thing, The Living End boys are just really cool guys”

So how have you been preparing for the massive Long Now tour?

“Lot of live practise, it’s all happening, the motion of the whole thing. We’ve got great a management team behind us, luckily for us too, we’ve got good marketing guys and media guys, including Channel V and Triple J supporting us, all of these things make it so much easier to pull a crowd, and I guess we’ll just keep doing what we do (laughs)”

The band are playing a number of festival in the Almighty Australian Festival Season (Homebake, Sounds in the Grounds, Pyramid Rock) but how do the shows differ?

“Festival vs. pub shows- there’s the big shows we play with bigger bands who are very professional but places like Pony (Melbourne) are more chaotic and frantic, people come for drinks as well, and we can drink too (laughs) it’s a different mood altogether, festivals are more ‘professional meets chaos’. It’s a good chance to meet people who maybe don’t go to clubs or pubs, but you just do your thing and it’s always exciting playing to fresh faces”

Do you still get to many gigs, as a muso by trade?

“I was a band photographer before I was in the band, at that point up until a few years ago, I’d get to gigs all the time, it was a major part of my life, these days the gigs are our work, but we have friends in bands so it’s our life really. I’m quite a fan of Pets with Pets, they’re absolute chaos, they maintain that live energy I really love; noise and almost improvisational. The bands I like are the ones that set a real mood that I can relate to in one way or another, anything I really like tends to defy genre”

So, the sixty-five thousand dollar question; why do you do what you do? Money? Babes? Drugs?

“It’s just something we do, it’s who we are. Basically it’s doing it and being able to let it take up all of our time, if we can get paid and eat something besides yeast for a couple of weeks (laughs). There’s a satisfaction in getting your art form appreciated by other people. It’s kind of not really worth doing unless you’re doing something different”

CHILDREN COLLIDE PLAY:
18 Oct- SOUNDS IN THE GROUNDS FESTIVAL- Manning Bar, Sydney
14 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Revolver, Melbourne
15 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Producers Bar, Adelaide
20 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Alhambra Bar, Brisbane
21 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Annandale Hotel, Sydney
27 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Prince of Wales, Bunbury
28 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Mojo’s Bar, Fremantle
29 Nov- THE LONG NOW TOUR: Amplifier Bar, Perth

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