Seattle and Portland

Hello again, people!

Let's go straight to the topic here. The band played in Seattle and Portland since we last talked (actually they played Salt Lake City last night, but that's for next week) and you can watch some videos below:

She's a Genius, Seattle (Showbox Market)


Cold Hard Bitch, Seattle (Showbox Market)


AYGBMG, Seattle (Showbox Market)


She's a Genius, Portland (Roseland Theatre)


PYMWYMI, Portland (Roseland Theatre)


Get Me Outta Here, Portland (Roseland Theatre)


Rip It Up, Portland (Roseland Theatre)


Start This Show, Portland (Roseland Theatre)


KIA, Portland (Roseland Theatre)


The good thing about US tours is the good amount of interviews that come up. Cam was interviewed by Aspen Daily and if I didn't know the band as I read it, I'd think they're a bunch of scumbags. They "diss" the band all over it:

Off stage, you might mistake the members of Jet as just another four brash, beer-drunk blokes from Melbourne killing a winter in Aspen.

When the band plays the Belly Up on Monday, March 29, you can count on the club being packed with hard-partying Australians and a round or two of the “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi” soccer chant.

Guitarist Cam Muncey said they’re always glad to see their rowdy down-under brethren come out and wave the flag, but he’s sick of the chant. “It’s getting old,” he told me after playing a show at the Winter Olympics in Whistler. “We need a new chant.”

Over the last seven years, the greasy-haired Aussie rock outfit has developed a reputation for kinetic volume-up-to-eleven shows, incessant touring and the ability to write the kind of infectious, anthemic no-frills tunes that you swear you’ve heard before. V-guitars in hand, Jet has proven there’s more to Australian rock than Men at Work.

Take the screw-you attitude of AC/DC, add the stage mastery of the Rolling Stones and the dirty pop sensibility of The Faces and there you have it: Jet.

Some have derided Jet’s music as derivitave and unoriginal, and written off the boys as some of the less creative figures in the garage rock revival led by The Strokes and The White Stripes. Muncey doesn’t mind being lumped in with those bands, and says that the lo-fi sounds are more diverse than people might think.

“We’ll always be identified with garage music and I like a lot of that music,” Muncey said. “All that ‘garage’ says to me is that it’s a bit raw. You look at the Strokes or the Stooges or what Jack White is doing and I think it’s actually a wide cross-section of music.”

Jet’s first record, “Get Born,” sold millions — fueled largely by “Are You Gonna Be My Girl,” which Apple used in one of the first ads in the now-iconic dancing silouette iPod campaign.

The quartet — Muncey, bassist Mark Wilson, and brothers Nic and Chris Cester — have played hundreds of shows a year to support that record and follow-up hits like “Rollover DJ” and “Cold Hard Bitch.” They’re currently touring in support of their third studio album, “Shaka Rock.”

They’ve done two stints touring with their heroes, The Rolling Stones. And they also seem to have taken a page from the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll book of Stones guitarist Keith Richards — developing a reputation for coke- and booze-fueled nightly bacchanals wherever their tour bus goes.

When I saw Jet at the House of Blues in New Orleans on the “Get Born” tour, they played a raucous sold-out show — oozing a shaggy, snotty charm, passing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s around the stage and then tearing up the French Quarter’s barrooms. These are the kind of guys who might puke on your shoes or screw your girlfriend if you get too close to them.

And Muncey says age and years on the road hasn’t slowed them down. “If anything we could probably drink our old selves under the table,” he laughed. “It’s mostly just from the pure excitement of being on the road. But we’ve learned to party smarter. We’re not going to come into some town on a Tuesday where nothing’s open and try to party ‘til sunrise.”

As we have the crappy interviews we also have the boring ones. I even considered not posting them but, you know, this is the only way we get to know something about them. There you are:

Indy: Your latest CD, Shaka Rock, has its share of rowdy rockers, but you also have some more multi-faceted and poppier songs, such as "Seventeen." What does that say about the musical development of Jet?

NC: What we were really proud of this album was just the uniqueness of the songs, you know. We always knew that we could write good songs, and we've got a knack for writing melodies, and we're good with structuring and layering or whatever, you know, the mechanics of it. But I think now we've reached a new level of maturity ... I just think we're a lot more comfortable in our own skin now.

Indy: So have you also grown more mature in your touring lifestyles as well?

NC: I think that the thing we're enjoying about touring most of all this time around is I guess being a little bit older and a bit wiser. In the past we've been, you know, pretty reckless when it comes to extracurricular activities. But I think this time we're all looking after ourselves a lot better than we ever have and actually going out and seeing these towns that we're touring and, you know, going to restaurants and just actually exploring America for the first time.

Indy: It sounds like you guys took a bigger role in the making of Shaka Rock, which you co-produced. So how were things different with your involvement in producing the album?

NC: I think we realized that, whatever the end result was going to be, the amount of enjoyment we got from actually doing it like that and the whole process was so much fun that we knew that we were going to be very happy and proud at the end of it anyway. We're pretty confident that whatever we're going to do, if we apply ourselves, we're going to do it really well.

Source: CSIndy.com

The US tour is over next week and the next thing we don't know. I'll be back for any news during the weekend!

Tchau.