Floyd Vincent - A life of monkeying around
The spotlight first shone brightly on Floyd Vincent in late 1988, after winning the Triple J / Sony sponsored Australian Musical Video Festival Award for the best music video for his song "Child Thing" – the song was in 3/4 time, featured nylon string guitars and sounded like nothing else on the radio at the time.
After this win, with Floyd in his twenties, his fascination of the surrealist movement of the 1920's, which included the work and stunts of Dali, inspired him to travel to Dali's birthplace of Spain.
“I wanted to see what it looked like where Dali lived and worked. His museum is one of the most amazing buildings I have ever been in. It contains many of his inventions like shoes with springs in them to make walking more pleasurable as well as paintings,” he says.
After travelling around Europe, Floyd eventually ended up in Los Angeles where he met Frank Zappa. “I had a mutual friend who organized for us all to go out for dinner in LA. Frank was quite a celebrity in LA at the time so we were greeted with hushed tones of people whispering “that’s Frank Zappa” as we walked in to the restaurant. Luckily we ate in a private room,” he says.
“We mostly talked about Australia and Los Angeles, the music business and chemical warfare.”
When Floyd began he was a solo artist, but on his return to Australia, and at the urging of booking agents, he formed his band The Childbrides.
“The record that I put out at the time sounded like a band even though I composed all of the parts myself. I needed a lot of musicians to recreate that sound and I prefer the camaraderie of a regular band. Once you have a reliable band it becomes greater than the sum of its parts if it’s working well,” he says.
“I’m a guy with a band like Bill Haley and the Comets, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Neil Young and Crazy Horse... It’s a long-standing tradition.”
Floyd's early live shows in the nineties, resembled more of a carnival event than your average pub gig, featuring snake chalmers and belly dancers as support acts, touring semi-regularly around the country when the Childbrides were available.
“We certainly provided value for money. This was largely possible because we had a small bunch of volunteers who were prepared to dress the stages up. We had a huge back drop of paper mache fish in a net. We had parachutes .We had giant hands made of paper and wire smashing through painted fake brick walls. Luckily I lived in a warehouse at the time and had the space to store all this stuff. The punters loved it ,” he says.
In the beginning, The Childbrides saw Floyd “borrowing” members from other bands. The early line-ups of the band featured members from The Church, The Crystal Set, The Milky Bar Kids and Ed Keupper's band The Yard Goes On Forever. Eventually, Floyd searched for “like minded musical souls” who could form a permanent line-up.
“There are a few compromises at times but as long as you have like-minded people (as I do) it is well worth it. Changing members all the time is time consuming and means a lot of rehearsal teaching new people old ideas,” he says.
“A lot of my music requires musicians who can improvise at a high standard and the kind of players who can do this are usually employed elsewhere and are not available to fill in.Even if they did the results would not be a s good as the way it is now.”
From the mid-nineties to today the lineup of the band, Floyd - guitar vocals; Lindsay Page - keyboards, trombone, piano accordion; Bill Jacobi - Bass has been a constant with the relatively recent addition of Dave Marsalis – drums, being the only change.
Floyd was then signed to Universal Music in the late ninties and released the critically acclaimed album 'Last Exit Motel', which received strong airplay across Europe and the UK with three singles on high rotation on Swiss radio.
“...You also get a bit of Kudos being on a major label internationally. It helped take me to places in the world that I probably wouldn’t have ever been otherwise,” he says.
In late 2001, Floyd moved out of Sydney, renovating a house near the beach South of the city. The new home houses his new studio Blushing Pig Sonic Exploration Facility, where most of the new album 'Monkey Puzzle' was recorded, with the album released on his own label Godsplay (and distributed nationally in Australia by MGM) in January this year.
“There is not much better a day for a guy like me than wake up – have a swim – grab a coffee - play guitar - sing for while – record some takes for the album - have another swim... doesn’t get much better than that,” he says.
“...It's (Monkey Puzzle) selling well at the gigs... and it has enabled us to score some great gigs like the support to Los Lobos... at the Metro in Sydney and a show with Adrian Blew in Byron Bay soon. We also played to a lot of folk at the Easter show (in Sydney). Its getting airplay around the nation from various stations like ABC, Regional Fm’s, Communities.”
The future looks even brighter for this well travalled man with a band – with tours planned both solo and with The Childbrides.
So what's next? “My partner and I are having a baby in July so impending fatherhood, which I’m really excited about! I’d like to record some instrumental guitar music sometime soon as well as get around the country promoting this current cd “Monkey Puzzle”. I’d like to go to Europe again next year.”
