Crawlspace, yet another of Perth's fine original rock bands. They have been around the circuit for a few years notching up some amazing portfolio performances along the way.

I have to admit that seeing Crawlspace and then hearing their music was not what I expected, spiky hair, blue tipped hair, and attire too match I expected Crawlspace to offer something totally different than what they did.

Commercial rock is Crawlspace's style and they do it extremely well. With plenty of movement and band interaction gave a superb visual whilst listening to the voice of the lead singer.

Crawlspace are ARIA material and should be an act not to miss, next time you're planning a night our on the town to soak up some of Perth's finest live entertainment, do yourself a favour and check our Crawlspace, a band that will leave an impression in your mind and a smile on your face, you'll be glad you did.

To find out more about Crawlspace, visit their website at www.crawlspace.com.au

(Darryl Westrup)

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Tell us about crawlspace

We're a band, a commercial rock band I guess you could us, we're a simple rock band. We've got Matt on drums, Joe on guitar, Trav on base and me (Russell) singing and playing guitar.

Where does your inspiration come from?

Girls in tight dresses (heaps of laughter). No really, we love music full stop. When we're writing, we just jam along and do it, play along and it happens, when they leave I rewrite it and change it (more laughter). We've got a few things out, we've got an EP out that was out in '99, we had an away single after that, then we had an album called Motion, we had a single Lesson and another single Motion. Off that away we were nominated for an ARIA, we were in Sydney for a while there, we did Hey, Hey It's Saturday and few other little things. Toured around with Grinspoon and Cold Chisel, did a whole tour around the east coast with Grinspoon, played with bands like Matchbox 20, Deadstar and quite a few bands.

We had a bit immediate success, the band was only together for about 2 or 3 months, we were getting high rotation at Triple J, Triple J hottest 500, we did away singles at 200 odd radio stations and then just after that and the ARIA nomination came through we disintegrated and broke up for a year and it all came to a climax and all fell on a heap.

Over the last two years we've just been getting together and trying to get everything back together again, writing some good music, we didn't want to come out until we were ready to go, we didn't want to come out until we had an album recorded and in that time we just worked our butts off playing everywhere we can, in the country, all around the state, just trying to get our act together so when this album comes out, which we are finishing right now, after this gig we have to fly back to the studio to mix off the 2nd last song and it should be out hopefully the end of August we've just signed to Warner Music - Warner Chapel and that'll give us time to listen and in hopefully 8 weeks we'll have an album out and then we can go to REAL work.

What's in store for Crawlspace for the rest of 2004?

This our year! Lots of gigs, lots of promotion. We've been recording for the last year and we're actually going to go out and be passionate about it, we've been working on it for so long. All this energy builds up ready to just go. After checking the diary we did over 200 gigs last year all over the state, we've kind of realised only last month that we have to meet every fan face to face, we've decided to play everywhere, if there's five people there we're going to get at least one of them walking away happy.

You guys are in a lot of SLAM gigs, what has SLAM done for you?

I think SLAM without a doubt is the best original music line-up to be on, best support guys to by far, best value to what you get 8 bands for 8 bucks or 5 bucks or something, it's unbelievable.

Definitely the best original live acts you can see in Perth. I think Steve summed in up in a previous interview when he said "I don't think there's too many bands that haven't played on a SLAM gig". There's a different ethos and protocol between agents and booking people in Perth, they sway to their style of music and personal tastes right, with Steve I really believe and not because he's a mate, he puts on a bill and if you don't do it and don't cut it, you don't get another gig. If you're a descent kind of style, any style, and that's the good thing about it too he mixes up the styles, you play in front of audiences that you wouldn't normally associate with.

A standard rock band like us could be playing sometimes in front of metal crowds or punk crowds and stuff like that. People are pretty open minded these days about what they listen to, and that's what's changed over the last 5 years. It's a great opportunity for bands who are doing something a bit different, which I kind of feel we are, especially in Perth, I feel we are a simple rock band, nothing else we play rock music that makes us happy and we want to make the people happy who come to see us and that's what we really want.

The reason why we play music is just because the feeling we get is good time! That's what we want to do for everyone, people who watch us, people who buy our CDs and watch out show, we just want to them to have a good time and go away knowing they had a good night.

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© 2004 - WA Gig Guide April