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ELLIOT EASTON
THE ELLIOT EASTON FIREBIRD Elliot Easton of The Cars has always been a fan of Gibson electric guitars and Gibson recently unveiled a new signature guitar created hand-in-hand with Easton – The Elliot Easton Firebird. Available in both left- and right-handed models, the guitar sports an exclusive new gold mist poly finish in highgloss nitrocellulose lacquer in the classic and ever-radical “reverse body” Firebird design, along with Steinberger gearless tuners. The guitar is powered by a pair of Gibson’s most popular humbucking pickups with versatile coil splitting and phase-reverse wiring for unprecedented sonic variety. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece with Vibramate Spoiler for easy string loading gives you “emotive dips and tremulous wobbles”, while a new TonePros locking Tuneo-matic bridge with nylon saddles offers excellent returnto-pitch during vibrato use.
MEET THE VOX AC15C1X First introduced in 1958, the Vox AC15 combo has been the amp of choice for countless guitar players in the intervening years, from The Beatles to contemporary surf guitarist Martin Cilia. Drawing on more than 50 years of amp-building expertise, the AC15C1 Custom Series offers maximum tonal dexterity, while Alnico Blue speakers made by the Celestion Company are an especially great match. Now, a model featuring these Alnico Blue speakers is available in the 15W series. It’s called, naturally, the AC15C1X.
66 • THE MUSIC • 23RD OCTOBER 2013
ANOTHER HIT Armed with a pair of drumsticks, his drum kit and a camera, Newcastle-drummergone-internet-star Kye Smith has the international punk scene and his idols in awe. Daniel Cribb gets some time with the mastermind.
“F
ucking AMAZING!” tweeted NOFX frontman and Fat Wreck Chords label owner Fat Mike after watching and sharing Newcastle drummer Kye Smith’s Fat Wreck medley at the end of May. Coming from a man who seems to have a problem with almost everything, that’s saying something. The video exploded on Twitter and Facebook with Lagwagon, Anti-Flag, Propagandhi and more sharing it, leading it to go viral, and prompting a follow-up even more ambitious. Epitaph’s catalogue came next, and Smith somehow managed to cram 279 songs into an 18-minute medley. It blew up like his first effort, and even Chris Lilley gave it a share. “It went online and within half an hour I got a call straight from one of the dudes at the label who then sent me a bunch of merch and it was all over music news websites, which was kind of cool because I didn’t really think the label would see it, let alone within half an hour,” Smith tells, in the car from Newcastle to Sydney to fill in on drums for a band supporting Me First & The Gimme Gimmes. Smith’s passion for drumming picked up after school where he went from playing in the school band to learning Green Day tunes – his latest YouTube effort is a five-minute, 40-song Green Day medley. Unsurprisingly, his interests drifted and evolved from pop punk covers as he joined Local Resident Failure. When the touring cycle for the band’s latest record began winding down at the start of this year, he began filming drum covers in his
bedroom as a way to kill time, but he wasn’t expecting anyone to take notice, especially not the bands whose songs he was playing. “It happened with Frenzal Rhomb when we played with them; I was talking to Jay [Whalley, vocals] for ages and at the end of the night he was like, ‘Aww, you’re that guy who does all the drum videos, right?’, which was cool.” Having toured Australia with Local Resident Failure, supporting a slew of big name acts, and more recently being flown around the country to play with other bands and record on their albums, he has a fairly wide scope of what state the Australian punk scene is in. “It’s kind of annoying, you know, you go and see a band that you love and it’s
“YOU DO IT BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT, NOT BECAUSE IT’S POPULAR.” awesome that there’s so many people there, but then you play a local show with very similar stuff and there’s not that many people there, which kind of bums you out a bit. Then you realise that these bands have been doing this for 20 or 30 years, so it takes a long time to build that up.” Frenzal Rhomb and Gimme Gimmes are both Fat Wreck bands. Formed around the same time, Fat Wreck and Epitaph have drifted apart quite a lot since their inception; Epitaph evolving with the times and Fat staying true to its punk rock roots. As Smith headed down the homestretch on the Epitaph catalogue, he realised just how irrelevant punk is becoming. “A lot of labels kind of stick with what they know and eventually fizzle out because people move onto something else. It’s kind of cool that Epitaph have gone and done what they’ve done… I guess the whole time I’ve been into punk and playing it, it’s never really been that popular. It’s not like I’m getting bummed out because it’s going downhill, you know; you do it because you love it, not because it’s popular, because it’s obviously not.” It’s hard to argue that Fat Wreck haven’t fallen behind over the years as they refuse to branch out and engage with what the current trends are, so how does Smith feel about being one of the best drummers in a genre that’s not as prominent as it used to be? “I’ve never really had a goal doing it, it’s always just been something fun and it’s gone beyond expectation, so I might as well keep doing it and see what happens.” You can check out Kye Smith’s videos at youtube.com/ SomethingAboutDrums