Jingle Junkies

Sun-Herald (Australia)
by Rachel Browne
August 4, 2003


For a band that has spent much of its career dwelling happily on the fringe, the Dandy Warhols get a lot of airplay. But it is not radio that has embraced the pin-ups of America's alternative rock scene. Rather, it is ad land that has adopted the Portland, Oregon-based quartet, using their songs to sell everything from mobile phones to cars. The fact that their music helps to market Holden Astras and Vodafone handsets is not lost on the band, which trades in irony in a very un-American way. Their wry perspective, heard in songs such as 1997's Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth (a swipe at heroin chic) and 2000's Bohemian Like You (as heard on the Holden Astra commercial), has made them a favourite among Australian audiences if not in their homeland.

The Dandy Warhols' latest album, Welcome To The Monkey House, went top 10 here and last week the foursome - singer Courtney Taylor- Taylor, drummer Brent DeBoer, keyboardist Zia McCabe and guitarist Peter Holmstrom - played a sold-out show at the Metro Theatre. That Australia has heartily embraced them pleases them no end. Barely in the country 24 hours, Taylor-Taylor and DeBoer were showing signs of going native when Sunday Metro caught up with them at their hotel. DeBoer was nursing a hangover from the previous night's excesses, spent with the Dandy Warhols' support band, Even, at the Hopetoun Hotel in Surry Hills, while Taylor-Taylor was enjoying a Capel Vale red at lunch - a daring indulgence that would raise eyebrows on the other side of the Pacific.

Mulling over the question of why the Dandy Warhols have enjoyed gold record status (with their third album Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia) here and not in the US, Taylor-Taylor comes up with a theory. "People here are just a little smarter," he said. "They also have a sense of humour and an appreciation of warm and melodic music. In America it's hard for us to get airplay in between Kid Rock or Creed and now it's Linkin Park and Nickelback. It's difficult for us. In America we're just going to be the mayors of the underground.

"Being rejected by American radio stations led the Dandy Warhols to look at alternative avenues for their music - and that's where the suits from ad land came in. Rather than seeing the move as an immersion into the mainstream, Taylor-Taylor justifies permitting advertisers to use his music as a way of spreading it to the wider population in a way that radio never will. "American radio is unbelievably lame and we found it was an us-against-them scenario where we were losing," he said. "Advertising is a medium and it gets your stuff heard. Then it's up to the world to decide how good you are. If our stuff is played on a commercial - and every commercial has a song and most of them aren't very good - then great. It saves everyone from having to hear a bad jingle. "So when the big corporations came calling, the Dandy Warhols were listening but, of course, they have remained true to their principles. "There are certain products which we don't want our music associated with," Taylor-Taylor continued. "Things like fashion. I mean, look at us, we shop at thrift stores. "I don't care if our songs are used to sell diapers or tyres. It has to be a valid product that people need. People don't need Tommy Hilfiger. "And, DeBoer chipped in, citing the inspiration for the band's name: "Andy Warhol said you're nothing until you're on TV so being a part of popular culture is a great thing.

"The Dandy Warhols clearly have an appreciation for pop culture in general and 1980s pop culture to be specific. They sought out Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes to co-produce Welcome To The Monkey House, their fourth album. Duran Duran's singer, Simon LeBon, whose face adorned the bedroom walls of teenage girls everywhere circa 1982, does duty as a backing vocalist on the album. "We read a story where Nick had said our band was in his top 10 favourites. We thought, 'Wow how cool'," DeBoer recalled. "We thought, 'Oh man, let's get this guy to Portland and work with him. That'd be really cool if he's into it'. But that couldn't really happen because there's nowhere for Nick to sit down in our studio." Taylor-Taylor explained: "Our studio is really filthy." "And he wears expensive clothes," DeBoer added. "But we got hold of him and we went to London and Simon's band was working in the same studio but across the hall. So he jumped back and forth. We were hanging out with all those guys, eating dinner and drinking wine and checking out each other's music. It was awesome."

It sounds more like pleasure than business but then the Dandy Warhols have always been known for their love of a good time. Stories of drinking, drug taking and the much discussed on-stage nudity abound, but these days they have, for the most part, outgrown all that. "It's boring now," Taylor-Taylor said. "Plus, we have enough records out that people want to talk about our music rather than the whole crazy randy Dandys sex-crazed thing."

Perhaps they are getting closer to the mainstream than they think.