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One Final Hurrah With DENIZ TEK From RADIO BIRDMAN · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  Hey, I'm Dennis Tech from Radio bird Man. We're going to be on
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  tour June and July for our fiftieth anniversary celebration, so you know, come
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  and celebrate with us, beautiful Dennis, thanks for joining us today, mate,
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  Thank you. So Later this year the music world does celebrate the end
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  of a massive era when Radio Birdman set off on the Birdman five oh or
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  starting June the twenty first at the CrOx and Bannerym in Melbourne, running through
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  Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney for finishing in the Manning Bar on July the seventh,
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  Mate, is Australia ready for shows of these magnitude made? I've actually
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  got some fun stuff planned. Yeah, it'll be you know these shows.
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  The venues that we're playing were essentially the same venus we played on the last
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  tour, the last couple of tours the last time we went around Australia was
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  just before the pandemic in twenty nine teen, and basically the same venues.
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  You know, we would prefer to play two or three shows in a smaller
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  club rather than you know, one huge show at the n More or or
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  you know, or the Palace or something like that. So yeah, it's
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  it's better for us to play in smaller places. Yeah. Now it's a
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  bittersweet to all, like celebrating fifty years of Radio bird Man, but also
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  serving as a swan song for the band. So how long we've been known
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  that you are gonna put a bite together and do it to all like that?
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  Just since November? Right, We hadn't really even talked about it until
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  then, but I was I was back in Australia for my daughter's wedding and
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  and the band got together socially and we talked it over and thought it might
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  be a good idea to go ahead and do it. People talk about me
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  a lot, numbers are trying around haphazardly these days. But if you actually
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  still been think about fifty years, is a fucking good achievement, brother,
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  well done, thank you. Yeah, it's And you know, we got
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  three guys in the band that are that were original members and that when we
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  started the band in nineteen seventy four, you know, so it is a
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  pretty it's pretty good that those three are still around and that that we can
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  still go out there and play. And we wouldn't go out and play unless
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  it was going to be at full power. You know it's going to be.
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  If it wasn't true to the original intent and direction and vision of the
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  band, we wouldn't be doing it. So you know, hopefully people will
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  get the get the full thing that actually puts in perspective a little bit bright.
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  Like you started in seventy four. I was born in nineteen seventy four,
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  so I was getting my ass smashed by the doctor while you guys are
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  on stage. Could be tickets were snapped up speaper quick for this. So
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  if you were born, if you were born at Saint Vincent's Hospital and Darren
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  now I was born in Brisbane Royal Brisbane Hospital. Yeah, delivery from from
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  the Oxford which is only a couple of blocks away from there, all right,
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  Yeah, and I was I think I was the third last person to
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  be airlifted out of Brisbane in the Brisbane floods that year. Everything flooded and
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  we got taken out by by chopper from the hospital. I think I saw
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  that, and you know, I saw the footage on television and on the
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  internet that was incredible. You you were in all that, huh. Yeah,
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  I was born and all that, So I know that's got to be
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  tarma or a sign of something done it well, yeah, it's gotta yeah,
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  definitely count for something. The tickets for this tour was stepped up super
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  quick, but like the first Tea Sydney shows sold out in just a week,
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  Like it must have felt good to know that you've still got it,
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  you know, people still want to see the band. Yeah it is.
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  It's good you know that after all this time, the band is still cool.
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  That's a great way to put it. Yeah, yeah, we never
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  really I don't know, you know, we didn't, like I say,
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  it's been will have been five years since our last Australian tour. So I
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  think there's a lot of people that, you know, it's multi generational.
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  Now you get people bringing their you know, they saw us when they were
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  eighteen or nineteen years old, and now they're bringing their eighteen and nineteen year
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  old kid or nephew or niece along to the show. You know, say,
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  you know, you got to see these guys because these guys, these
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  guys rip and this is what I was listening to when I was your age,
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  and and a lot of these kids are receptive to it. They're you
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  know, they're getting into it. You've had to limit it to eight shows.
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  Otherwise you probably just put it kept going on forever, mate, like
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  you've had to leave out Hobart and Perth. But it's shows. But it's
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  not personal, is that. It's just the fact that you're trying to keep
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  it compact. Yeah, and and you know it's the last time we went
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  to Perth. It it really wasn't that great. We we didn't get a
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  big crowd and we looked into going to Perth on this tour, but weren't
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  getting good vibes from the you know, from the venues and things like that,
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  and it's a long way to go with a big crew. You know,
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  we had we had six guys in the band and and we have a
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  crew and that's a lot of people and a lot of equipment to take a
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  lot of miles. And you know the same thing in Hobart. We love
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  playing in Tasmania, but it's just just wasn't practical to be able to do
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  it on this tour and totally understandable. So all all said and done,
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  bright Light, what can fans expect from the Shylight? Were you doing anything
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  special? Is it going to be pis it's going to be dances. What's
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  happening, Yeah, exotic dancers. Right, We're it's just going to be
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  Radio bird Man, you know. It's it's going to be what we always
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  do, which is to play hard and and we'll play the songs people want
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  to hear from our from our past, you know, and we're not going
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  to be hitting people with a whole bunch of new material. It's it's gonna
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  it's just going to be paying tribute to the you know, to the things
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  that people have loved in the past, and and we're going to try to
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  do it with full power and and without pulling any punches, so that people
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  will have one more chance to get the you know, full blown Radio Birdman
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  concert under their belt. You allowed yourself to sort of think forward to July
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  the seventh on that final showmate. Is it going to be emotional? That's
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  a really good question. I don't know. Could be I'll be exhausted,
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  you know, whether I'm going to be too tired to be emotional or not,
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  as another question, But I'm sure it'll Yeah, I'm sure we'll feel
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  something pretty deep and pretty profound about that. You know. It's we've all
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  been together with each other longer than we've been with any of our wives.
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  You know, it's like, this is deep, I'll break up with my
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  wife on our wedding daymtes So he had got a lot of ears on me.
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  I wonder what she would have to say about that. Oh, we
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  still get on fine, we're way better apartment, but we have a way
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  together. Understand. We've got a couple of young girls to which which helped
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  so and then they ended nicely. And you're definitely not going to be doing
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  a John Farnon on us like this is it You're out, stay it out.
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  Uh, you know, I'm not going to say one hundred percent guaranteed
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  that it's going to be the last show. I guess there's always a slim
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  possibility we could do a festival or something like that. But but as far
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  as the tour, yeah, I think this is the last one. Taking
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  the heart Ones with you as company too, mate, Like, I honestly
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  don't think you could have picked a better, a better band to be there
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  with you. Yeah, well we've we've we've shared the stage with them before
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  a couple of times, and and uh and they go way back too,
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  and then you know they've they've been a band that has had a similar attitude
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  and uh, kind of a similar ethos to what we what we have and
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  and we know those guys, you know, we're we're friends and so so
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  it's good now, it's it's it's it's I think it's quite fitting that they
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  should be there mm hm. And how much of a lease of life have
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  they taken on since him joined the band? Like it's just just rejuvenated everything,
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  isn't it. Yeah, yeah, it's just given them a new chapter.
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  Good on them. The Radio bird Man a being called a legendary outsideers
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  of Australian rock like so much say that it's actually on the poster matelight What
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  why do you think that is? Like? What what do think you guys
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  are the primal outsiders? Well, when we started, we were doing something
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  that nobody was doing and it was kind of aggressive and and and maybe some
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  people in the music establishment thought it was a bit rude and and you know,
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  and we didn't go along with it. We didn't follow the rules.
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  You know, there was fairly established set of this is what you have to
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  do if you want to make it in music in Australia in nineteen seventy four,
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  you had to do this, this, this, and this, well,
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  we didn't we didn't do any of those things. We wanted to do
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  it our own way and play our own music. And we were We came
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  out with something that was not being done by you know, by others at
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  that time. And it gets you. What it gets you is it gets
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  you kicked out of places and rejected and you spend you spend time in the
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  back of police cars. And after you do that for a while, you
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  begin to feel like an outsider. And if and our feeling was, well,
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  if we're gonna if that's what we're going to be, you know,
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  if they're not going to let us in, we'll just do it. We'll
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  do our own thing anyway, and we will be outsiders. And and it's
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  been that like that ever since. Really, although it's hard to say that
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  you're an outsider when the Prime Minister wears your T shirt, Hey don I
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  want to make it that day. Maybe he's maybe he's a bit of an
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  outsider too, but you know, so it's you know, that's uh,
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  we're happy to be thought of that way. Although it's got probably got a
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  very different meaning now than it did fifty years ago. Fifty years is a
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  long time to be alive, mate, litt alone making music in the band.
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  So have you accomplished everything you want musically? Or is it still unfinished
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  business in a sense, No, there's always an unfinished business. There's you
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  know, music is uh, there's no end to it. It's there's I've
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  always got new songs coming into my head. Every time I pick up the
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  guitar, I get new ideas. And my medium for transmitting that now is
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  my solo career. You know, I've got I released albums regularly, and
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  and I work with a whole bunch of other people and uh, and I
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  don't see an end to that. I want to bring up your band lega
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  now like adopt a half a century's origins still remain mystery, and I don't
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  expected to spill the beans now. But it's got to be both funny and
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  awesome for you to see people wearing this on this shirts having a tattoo,
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  don't I'm having no stick is when they've got no idea what it actually is
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  like, it's gotta be cool. Yeah, that's right. And you know,
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  I mean, how many kids these days do you see wearing like the
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  Ramones logo on their t shirt, and they've never heard the Ramones and you
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  know, because they're too young. And how many people wear a New York
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  Yankees baseball cap with ann Y on the front. Probably half of them don't
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  even know what that stands for, kind of spell it, but it looks
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  cool. It looks cool, that's the important thing. And it's probably the
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  same thing with our logo, you know, it kind of looks cool.
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  And yeah, there's a bit of mystery to it, you know. And
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  I actually came up with that logo before the band, as in my previous
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  band, TV Jones and and but we never used it in TV Jones.
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  And then when when when Birdman started, we were listening a lot to the
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  early Blue Oyster Cult records and they had a symbol, you know, they
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  had a logo and they had it on flags, on their amplifiers and get
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  it on their on their stage, and it looked really cool. So I
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  said, well, you know, I got a logo we could use for
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  that. You do the same thing. That's how it started. All right.
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  Now I'm decided I'm not going to as what it does mean but doesn't
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  mean something to you or is it just something that you've scribbled down one day
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  and it's just taken off from there, like does it actually have a meaning
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  in your head? Well, it started off as bird wings sort of you
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  know, coming up like that, and and then and it became stylized later
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  to you know, to simplified into these blocks. But yeah, it was
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  it was wings. Oh yeah, Well, I laver this one question matter.
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  I don't answer to many people, but if anyone's in a position to
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  give me an answer, it to you, bro, Like, what would
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  you list is your top three commandments of rock and roll? That's a really
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  great question. Uh top three commandments of rock and roll would be, uh,
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  play hard, don't compromise or back down, and uh get a day
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  jobs so you don't have to rely on somebody's ideas marketing plan. I get
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  to pay them. Very good on Dennis, Well, thanks very much for
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  your time, mate, It's been a pleasure. Congratulations on a great career
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  mate, Like you guys deserve every accolade that comes your way. And I'll
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  get along to the Brisbane show and and say l A, thanks Chris,
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  good talking to you. I get the surfboard out, brother, and get
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  the s right around, all right, take care. So yeah,