Bodyjar - Sitting in a tin can

Punk rock is an unforgiving and relatively thankless art form. Well that’s the impression I get from Bodyjar’s Tom Read as I interview him from his car, after he absent mindedly locked himself out of his house.

“I’m sitting inside my car, waiting for the misses to get home. What’s really shit is that I didn’t take my wallet to work. So I can’t even go up the pub,” explained the Jar’s affable bass player.

Bodyjar are undeniably a punk rock institution. Name a festival, they’ve played it. Name an international punk band who’ve graced Australia’s shores, and I’ll wager you dollars to donuts they’ve supported them. A list of bands who’ve shared a dressing room with Bodyjar reads like a veritable who’s who of 90’s punk; Blink 182, Pennywise, Rancid, Face To Face, No Fun At All, just to name a couple.

With all this, six LPs, a singles/rarities compilation and a best of album under their belt, you’d think Bodyjar would be enthusiastic to crack the larger US market. Not so explained Read, pointing to the band’s other commitments.

“We’ve had interest from a major US label, but it’s a bit hard to crack that market. I mean, you have to jump in a van for three months on end. And we’re not spring chickens anymore. I mean we’ve got families, some of us have kids at home. It’s not easy, unless someone is willing to throw some ridiculous amount of money at us,” he said.

Bodyjar’s sound is unadulterated So-Cal skater punk. The buzzsaw guitars and rollicking harmonies evoke comparisons to the Descendents, No Use For A Name with a smattering of the Ramones for good measure.

Their ascendancy of the genre has reaped rewards, with the band endearing themselves to the Offspring’s Dexter Holland to the point of being offered a place on his Nitro Records stable. This hasn’t resulted in the band opening the flood gates for some of their American contemporaries to visit out shores.

“The last band we brought out was Unwritten Law, and that was awhile ago. It’s not something we really think about, we’re not really trying to bust the American market.

“It’s a bit hard to convince international bands to come out and play. I mean, coming to Australia means spending your holidays in a van. It means they don’t get to spend time with their friends and family.

“We were planning on bringing All out for a while, but we couldn’t really justify going on after All every night, 'cause the band basically started with All and Descendents as the inspiration. We started out trying to sound like them, we just couldn’t do it,” he said.

In 2005 we find Bodyjar releasing their sixth LP, Bodyjar. We know find the skater punk boom over and a Bodyjar best-of in record stores. This in mind, one could conceive the band exploring strange new musical tangents, as so often happens under a fog of introspection that results from retrospective records. But Read explained the band were wary of their music becoming forced and contrived.

“I think it’s a fair call to call it a bit different. We didn’t want to do something too similar to what we’ve already done. I mean, there isn’t really any use doing again what we’ve done before. We didn’t want to make two albums in a row that were too similar. What’s the point of that?

“But it wasn’t a conscious decision to go in a new direction. It was just what we felt at the time. I think it’s also that we wrote one song with de-tuned guitars, so we thought, fuck we better write some more then, cause we don’t want to be constantly tuning and de-tuning our guitars when we play live,” he said.

This willingness to explore new musical avenues hasn’t resulted in an admiration of the new breed. Read’s contempt for the 'in-vogue' is blatant.

“A lot of punk bands today sound the same. It’s not really metal or hardcore. It’s more this screamo hardcore thing.

“Grant, our bass player, has this theory that it’s one guy who writes all the songs. This one guy does all the vocals. Then this guy has a brother, and the brother does all the soft vocals, just listen to them, it’s all the same,” he said.

This disdain does not extend to all the punk rock greenhorns of the world. Read explained those he harbours affection for and his enthusiasm for Bodyjar’s impending trek around the nation.
“I really like Trial Kennedy, Grand Fatal, they’re really good. I also like what Behind Crimson Eyes are doing.

“We’re playing with a lot of bands on our current tour. What I’m not telling them is that they’re all competing with each other. Whoever performs best on this tour is going to get the spot opening for us on our summer tour. But I’m not gonna tell them that,” he said.

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