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Latest News! Offcutts - The Lake
The Lake, the third single from the Offcutts Single Society is an intimate and stripped back acoustic track with an intensely personal lyric of boyhood wonder: “I remember going with mumma’s boyfriend late at night to a golf course,” confesses Tommy. “We’d climb through a hole in the fence and walk down to this big, old artificial lake. I was on lookout while he’d put on scuba gear and with a bright torch slide into the black water. I’d be holding a piece of string that was attached to him and I had to pull it twice if a security guard came. Then he’d collect all the golf balls that had been hit into the artificial lake and sell them the next day. He made a living off this for a while.” The Singles Society is designed to invite fans into Offcutts’ wonderfully creative world and illustrate the full breadth of this prolific band’s writing and recording output. With a spot on the converted Falls Festival bill this new years in Victoria and Tassie and an album set for release in the new year, Offcutts continue to go from strength to. The Singles Society Collection Hubcap out now! THE OFFCUTTS TOUR DIARY - READ IT. IT'S FUNNY! OFFCUTTS TASTE THE BIG APPLE - Tour diary from the USA -Part 1 "Well Howdy all! Yes, I'm in the land of Milk and Honey or rather Vitamin D Ultra light Creamer and Sweet and light sweetener. It's been two day's since screeching down through the filthy air at LAX and it has, literally, been an eye opener. Both times I've been here before I was holidaying. So I sat outside the vibrating bubble of commerce and productivity here. But, now sitting on the couch at Scream studios (www.screamstudios.com) hearing our music blaring through a huge system and a desk literally as long as my car to mix the tracks on, the bubble is firmly attached to my head! We venture out to see some of the sights and first stop is our friend Les’s work a famous animation studio in Sony called "Image works". Sony pictures should have a tram. And a monorail. In fact it's so big it took about an hour to walk through only one section. Along the way we spotted the car from ghoststbusters in the hard waste area and stopped to take and a peek. I noticed some one had thrown a rock though the front window, maybe it was a ghost. We were led through the tight security into a huge office floor. It was dimly lit, for all the pale and intelligent animators sensitive jelly fish eyes, and was the equivalent of a battery chicken farm. Row after row of tiny cubicles each with a humanoid sitting in front of a massive monitor networked onto the main frame working on scenes from the new Superman film. It had the atmosphere of a library mixed with the productivity of a battery farm. In absolute complete disregard of our circadian rhythms we then drove up into the Hollywood hills to see sunset from Griffith Park Observatory. A winding road I clung to. The screech of brakes I heard through my soul. In a city built upon the shiny back of the automobile I stuck my middle finger up, and honked and swerved and u turned. The car is still all right, I am now going grey. Upon the top of the lookout we looked out onto a steamy haze of atmosphere, vaguely across the next mountain range the wonky letters stood high and tall and if "L" and "Wood' were to be removed "holy" would be left like some precursor to the word "SHIT!!". Yes, being a tourist is increases ones anti-oxidant's. Now today, we bring our little white box with 80 gig of our music of over two years of work and hand it over to a young Asian guy who connects it to his computer and suddenly we are here. We have purpose. We are in the bubble. And here we remain for the next 5 days, 15 hours a day. - to be continued... OFFCUTTS TASTE THE BIG APPLE - Tour diary from the USA - Part 2 Scream studios was everything it should of been . Located a block down from" Intercontinental Absurdities" Frank Zappa's studio and house, it was a relatively unassuming building. Inside however, was covered with platinum and gold records from albums that had been mixed there ranging form Nirvana's Nevermind, Janet Jackson, Motley Crue , Allanis Morisste, Tracey Chapman, etc.tnThe staff were polite, the donuts were fresh, the speakers were loud, the jet lag was minor. We got down to business. At the end of the night having finished 2 songs we were so pleased with ourselves and the mixer that we headed out into the burbs for a "drive" and maybe a "beer". It was an innocent enough premise. I was looking forward to driving into Hollywood and listening to the mixes on the cars stereo and most importantly we were jet lagged and thought we should be having scrambled eggs. "yeah the guy said it was just up this road then left".................... ha....... An hour later, after driving past an Airport, miles of car parks and basically nothingish shops we ended up down town , A place where streets were lined with cocoon like homeless encased in plastic bags and shopping trolleys. Every light we pulled up at hyena people would glance at us like zombie soldiers. Car jacking happens a lot down town at night. We got out of there only to end up on a gay night club strip. I wasn't wearing leather chaps and az had forgotten his make up so we weren't allowed in. No bother. We headed in the rough direction of our cheery ,old El Patio , however we noticed a bar that was on the brink of the sobering 2am cut of time in LA, and found ourselves a couple of drunk loud mouths siting out the front who instantly bought us expensive tequila. One was a brash producer from NYC and the other a Director. Both were well on the way to crazed alcoholic stupor and had in their onslaught worn their waiter down to a slumped wreck, still clutching the bill in one hand and snoring loudly on a table. They related stories of Kings cross and Steve Erwin etc the usual.... They bought us another round of drinks and the Producer went on in a bitter, and muscular vernacular about how his bitch of an ex girlfriend had left him and how he wanted to super-glue her front door shut. He brought her $600 dollar Ug boots and $1000 sunglasses only to have her blow him off at an exclusive cocaine party in the hills. Surprise surprise, He was pissed. The next minute we were following the two jack asses though a lackadaisical soiree of the holly wood hills to her house with 6 cans of whipped cream and another bottle of tequila. You see, he needed a couple of "diggers" for a bit of moral support and we needed a couple of LA boys to show us the town. We were all drunk now and standing on her corner we were abused for waking people with our loud debating over the battle plan. After a long time the producer backed down his original idea and decide instead to write in huge, creamy, fat free letters " I LOVE YOU ROBBIE" on La Brea BLVD below her apartment window. How romantic! How totally creamy! Whatever it meant to him or her it was a lot of fun watching these two fatty corporate guys trying to clearly spell with whipped cream. He bribed us all after our good nights work back to his place in the valley for more beers. It turned out when we walked into his place that he was the Exec Producer of the Jerry Springer show. He was proud of 'his' episode with the man who legally married his horse and, in full permission of the court and all its officials, engages in intercourse with his..,, well,,his wife (ride?). From there the conversation took another left hand turn through the barn yard and the Director who had just finished the new Velvet revolver Video told us a little holly wood tale. Apparently a colleague on a film had invited him to his buddy ,George Clooney's , for a huge bash. He was walking around the party getting drunk and, working if not the room then something out, when he stumbled across Clooney's pet Pot bellied Pig. A 200 kilo prized pet called sally or something un piggy like that. The pig appeared to be in the same state as the guests and was lying on its side in the kitchen enjoying the keen attention of some guy who was writing in the pigs fur. Some pigs have a thick "nap" on there coats that can be written on like velour suede and in it this man was kneeling down drawing the Van Halen logo. Our friend the director had noted the poor reproduction of his favorite bands logo and said "Hey buddy, that doesn't even look like the proper logo. if you're gonna do it ,at least do it right.!" "FUCK OFF" he replied, "Its my band and i can do it how i like" it was none other than Eddie Van Halen Himself. I didn't care if he was lying. He was funny. I guess in our time in LA that's what seems the most bizarre. Rock Stars and movie stars are just people too , who need somewhere to take yoga, or eat or get wasted. It just seems like they all chose this weird place in the desert called Los Angeles. After more tales and tequila and plans to fly us to play Wembley for the new a Jerry Springer show, and a 30 minute call to some Australian guy who wrote the cheques we left. I drove us home in a drunken blaze, and all the way we argued for no other reason than the sheer fire of tequila and big talk. We argued and talked until the light came up and guests had complained about the noise. The next morning the alarm clock with its insistent little yell pulled us out of a churning angry sea of alcohol were we flopped upon the heaving deck of 10 AM. I was rotten. Luckily az was still drunk and ran off to the studio. I however descended into hell and for the next 7 hours fought to keep water down. My body does not like tequila, extra specially not now. Fun. xxx Tommy Offcutts - The Singles Society - Overview
The Singles Society is a place where music is taken beyond the constraints of traditional pop culture, left to emerge and develop in its own natural state, free from the world of gimmicks and marketing madness. The tracks are exciting, raw and will once again excite you. This new 4 track single is set to be released on August 15th to stores around Australia, but you will have to be fast to secure a copy of this very limited release. There will only be a single pressing of 500 limited edition copies, and it will never be re-released. This is set to become a collectible for new and old fans alike, so make sure you do not miss out. Soon you will be able to pre-order your copy of the new single from the Rubber Records site, so stay tuned for more information very soon! The Offcutts 'Singles Society' has begun... The first of 4 singles 'Hubcap' is out now, with the second installment 'Pole 2 Pole' out September 12th.
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