BISCUIT - press
BISCUIT PRESS

This is where you can read interviews and articles about Biscuit, from various papers/magazines/etc... If you have an article or something that isn't here, please email us and tell us about it!! Thanks...

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Interviews
"BISCUIT - GOING CRACKERS" - Interview with Wesz, In Press Magazine, 5 November 1997
"BISCUIT" - Interview with Wesz (pushover 97 booklet), 22 November 1997
"BISCUIT" - Interview with Chris & Matt, Beat Magazine, 26 August 1998
"BISCUIT" - Interview with Chris (pushover 98 booklet), 21 November 1998
"INTERVIEW WITH BISCUIT" - Interview with Matt & Wesz, Approach Youth Magazine (Issue 1), 1999
"ANOTHERRACE" - Interview with Chris, Tilt Magazine, 23February 2000

BISCUIT - GOING CRACKERS - In Press Magazine 5/11/97
Glenn Peters

Biscuit are a kick out Melbourne band playing to thousands of kids all over Victoria. They have cottoned on to the thumping all ages scene and it's so cool playing to over a thousand uninhibited super kids. Everyone should give it a go! Glenn Peters spoke to front guy, Wesz Parry about the scene and his angry approach to songwriting.

What's happening?
"We do mainly all ages shows these days. We don't do many pub shows anymore. It's not like we don't enjoy doing the pub scene, it's just not as big as the all ages scene. It's massive. You are talking about gigs where you have a minimum crowd most of the time of 300 up. Sometimes 600, sometimes 1200, it's a lot more than a pub gig. Most of the dudes at the all ages gigs buy everything. It's like their mum had just given them money for show bags. It's not like they are fanatical, it's just they get into it a bit more. They don't have any inhibitions about jumping and moving around. They are not massively known bands on the all ages scene. We play a lot of these shows and we have built a pretty large crowd base. How many shows in a pub does it take to play to 1200 people? You get a band who plays one show every two months to twenty people and they are branded as the next big thing. I don't know if some bands have realized that it is a better scene. They seem to be topping away at the pub scene and I don't see why. Maybe their music will not come across to an all ages audience, I don't know. It's either that or they can't get into it. It's one of the other. We did that Push regional tour with Gravel and Area 7 recently. It went all around Victoria, as far as Portland to Colac. We do places like Sale and Wodonga all the time. It's really funny. We went for to Sale. A few saw us on Recovery a while before and earlier we did a show in Morwell. There was only a couple of hundred people there. They asked us back and next time there we are there 700 to 800 people treat us like gods! It's amazing how many people recognize you six months after being the house bands on recovery. Imagine if we were on television all the time."

How about when Crettins Puddle were models on The Price Is Right?
"I went to the show as a member of the audience. It's like a midget set. I didn't get on. The camera panned past me a couple of times but I don't think they wanted me on the show because I think they thought I was some circus freak or something."

Do you write songs about stupidity?
"I wrote about a lot of anger to be honest. It has to do with society. Lizard Head is about the idiosyncrasies of the industry itself. "H" was done a lot longer before Tool did their "H". It's not about heroin. If you read the lyrics you could say it's about a smack in the arm but it's not. It's about Harry Suburbans and suburbia. A lot of the lyrics I write are about society and how it does not accept different people like myself. I'm not trying to get too cynical but it seems like the world is a very mundane place. You look at the people society classified as normal and you find that they are really fucked up people. The weird people are the normal. Somebody said to be one time, 'Why don't you write happy songs?' I said that there wasn't much happiness to write about at this point of my life. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say I am an aggressive person. I like the stage because I can get my aggression out in a physical way. In the live situation it is more like our motto, 'In your face', it's kind of confronting."

Are Biscuit into stamp collecting?
"Not as yet but you never know. We could do the Frenzal kind of thing. Frenzal are trying to do these Pez heads. We could have Biscuit stamps. Go the way of having really obscene pictures on stamps. You could put a moon on a stamp. There's no comeback to a moon. There's nothing you can do to a moon. You can't beat it."

BISCUIT - Pushover 97 Booklet, 22/11/97

The Answering Machine
"Hi. You've reached Barney's Burger Bar. Leave your order after the beep" growls some deep-throated voice. Ooo, scarily interesting.

Wesz from Biscuit
Quite unscary and full of integrity, but he just talks a damn lot. Hardcore? Weird? Tatt-infested? Maybe, but so what, he's normal...

On The Simpsons
I love The Simpsons. There's a couple of episodes... well all of them are good. It's like The Thunderbirds, it's not really a kid's show. It has all these underlying messages.

His musical delights
I enjoy all facets of music. Some of the stuff I listen to you would never picture. The guys in the band think I'm a weirdo. I just bought Tori Amos' CD today. She's got a beautiful voice. She just seems to have a lot of passion in what she does and that's what I really appreciate in a musician.

What scares him the most
Sometimes myself. Sometimes society, oh actually nah, I know what they're like. Basically myself, because I don't know who I am. You look in the mirror, and sometimes you can see right through yourself and see different things.

Plans for New Year's Eve, 2000
They're all the same to me. All it is is an opportunity for the "normal" in society to allow themselves an excuse to fuck up. It comes around and they seem to think they can be who they're not, doing anything they want. They just seem to fuck up really badly. All this confidence, picking fights, random kissing, groping... If you did that in a pub, someone would turn around an whack you one. But it will be pretty scary and also exciting. What comes with the good comes with the bad.

BISCUIT – Beat Magazine 26/8/98
Andrew Tijs

Biscuit circa ’98 has been known as quite the live animal, fostering a huge appreciation within the underage crowds, cementing a regular spot on just about any festival you’d care to mention and serving up their most solid slab of recorded material yet, in the form of A Manga Movement. Chris and Matt, spare some time in between rehearsing to ponder the Biscuit experience.

When did Biscuit form together as a cohesive unit?
Chris: I’d say, November ’95 when I joined, is when Biscuit as it is now, started. These other three guys were playing with another guitarist and the only thing that’s been the same from then to now is the name really.
Matt: When I joined the other guitarist was in the band and for that year I just had a heap of songs to learn so I just didn’t really do anything until Chris joined. It was kinda cool when Chris joined because he was closer to my age than the other guitarist. The band as it is now, and mostly over the past six or seven months, have really shaken the cobwebs off from the old band and we’re just as one. When we play live we all know what each other is doing and it’s just so comfortable.

I noticed your music appeals to younger crowds, I see you doing a lot of all ages shows.
Matt: I think the heavier music is coming back, with Korn and the like. It’s not just the all ages though, the last two over age shows and the Tote and the Public Bar we had two full houses. The over 18’s is much better as well.

Talking about Korn, I noticed you were using samples with your new stuff.
Matt: I’ve always been into sampling from Living Color, Will Calhoun was always triggering heaps of stuff even back in the 80’s. I was influenced by them, I don’t really listen to Korn. It didn’t come from them, it was something that I’d always planned to do. We’re more interested in instrument samples, not so much the bits and pieces from TV that we’ve used in the past.
Chris: With the guitar, I’ve only just started to use more effects on the guitars. About the sampler, we wanted to use it more as an instrument rather than a fill-in; instead of having a cut from a movie.
Matt: In our live set we use that because we tune up and down in between songs so we thought that it was a good idea; so there’s something going over (the tuning) to keep the crowd interested. We use the sampler in a new song, Monkey Boy, where we sampled Wesz screaming and I trigger that in the song instead of having him scream live. It seems to work well.

You’ve been doing a few festivals, do you prefer those to pub gigs?
Chris: We love doing festivals because everyone is there for the same thing, or at least I hope they’re not there to get pissed from three days, so it’s fun. We get to meet other bands and more people and get to see how a festival runs. It’s been really exciting.
Matt: I think for a band of our size, playing on a big festival, you couldn’t look at it as a bad thing. A lot of bigger bands always talk about how they prefer the pubs because you’re a lot closer to the audience, you can see what they mean. At Push Over we played to about 7,000 people and the stage was just huge. You’re so far away from each other that you have to rely totally on monitors to hear each other. And the crowd is so far away from you that when you get back to a pub with a full room the vibe is a lot better.
Chris: Exactly, so it’s a bit rewarding to see that the crowd is there to see you and not just watching you in between other bands.
Matt: Then again Push Over was a good gig for us because we were the third band on the main stage and while we were setting up the crowd really filled out. It was like there were a lot of people interested in specifically seeing us. It was a bit of a buzz.
Chris: Word of mouth spreads too. I’m guessing that word of mouth spreads more through the all ages scene because the kids are more enthusiastic about new talent. It’s like the way Spiderbait did it. They sold 15,000 copies of their EP and when they became big, they already had a big underground following. It made sure that they weren’t a flash in the pan.

With all this gigging you must have had some strange live experiences.
Matt: Actually we played a gig at the St. Kilda Inn when they were trying to turn it into a live venue. It was going pretty well, there was a few people there when a guy walks in off the street in full cycling gear with the helmet and the bum bag. Half way through a song he whips out his dick and starts smacking it on the foldback speaker.
Chris: We were just thinking "What the hell is this guy doing". And he did it through the whole set, just stretching it out and flashing it at us and we were trying to look elsewhere.
Matt: At the end of the set some chick with no front teeth jumped on stage and was flashing her tits at the crowd, and asked them that if they wanted to see her ass to throw money on the stage. Then she walked through the crowd with our mailing list and getting people to sign up.
Chris: Wasn’t she trying to sell ecstasy too? That was a strange period in our development as a band.

BISCUIT – Pushover 98 Booklet, 21/11/98
Nichole Borrow

Being my first time interviewing somebody of any importance, I was naturally nervous.
After introducing myself to Chris (the guitarist) and talking for a few minutes I found him to be a really nice guy and easy to talk to; happy to talk about any subject that came up in our conversation.

To get the ball rolling I asked Chris if he was looking forward to PUSHOVER? 'Absolutely, hanging foir it. We had a ball last year, it was great fun. We were very surprised, we didn't expect that sort of response. We're gonna have a ball this year'. Chris went on to tell me that one of his main goals at the moment is 'to play music for as long as I can, and for it to remain fun'. And in keeping with the PUSH's ongoing sponsorship slogan, I couldn't resist asking Chris what he thought it meant to 'be your best?' Not wanting to mince words, Chris simply replied: 'not to be your worst!'

So what's the best thing he's ever scammed? 'Before I was in Biscuit I was in another band, we played night-clubs and they decided to not pay us at the end of the night so we stole a set of bongos'. (Heh heh)

What would Chris most like to push over? Pauline Hanson of course. 'Off a very high cliff'.

After my questions, we talked about the up coming Big Day Out and past festivals. We ended the conversation with Chris promising to say hello to me at PUSHOVER, so I'm holding him to it.

INTERVIEW WITH BISCUIT – Approach Magazine (Issue 1), 1999
Interview by Matt Peckham & Adam King
Article by Adam King

Over the past three and a half years, local band Biscuit have been hard at work, gigging relentlessly and playing their unique style of hard-edged rock and self-described 'In your face heavy grooves'. For Biscuit, their hard work is beginning to pay off with people starting to pay attention and take notice. Playing to packed crowds at recent gigs are receiving prestigious sports on festival line-ups such as Vans Warped and Pushover are testament to how big they are becoming. With a reputation as one of the wildest local live bands, their energetic stage performances have led to a huge all-ages following and a rapidly increasing reputation on the pub circuit.

The four piece heavy-rock band consists of Wesz Parry, 27, on lead vocals, Matt Darcy, 22, playing drums, Chris Cary, 22, on guitar and Jake Nicolaisen, 28, playing bass. Biscuit write all their own material with Wesz taking care of the lyrics and the rest of the band collaborating on the music. As Matt puts it, "It's pretty much a full collaboration around the board. It just kind of works itself; it's a good mix, everyone inputting on a different angle."

We meet up with Wesz and Matt in Ivanhoe. 'Fresh' from a wild performance with the Testeagles at the Metro the night before, they are quite content to sit down on the footpath for an informal interview. Wesz and Matt with their bright red and orange hair, numerous body piercings and tattoos are the focus of many stares and sideward glances from people passing by. Wesz will later tell me, "It's basically their ignorance towards image, it's like they've never seen the colour red before. I mean, you could be wearing a tacky orange tracksuit and you're looking at me like I'm a freak! It blows me away because they're so judgmental."

We begin the interview with an obvious and often asked question, "What does the name Biscuit mean?" Sick of constantly answering this question, Wesz is determined to keep his answer brief. "Years ago before the band even formed, there was a song that was written, called 'Golden Paste'. Basically pretentious people: Golden on the outside, bullshit underneath, they're fake. It never got sung or performed, it was just a song that was written. There is a line in the song that talks about 'something that you call your friends but I call them biscuit heads'. That's why I called it Biscuit."

However, Matt and Wesz are quick to point out, "The name doesn't matter. It is essentially just a label to associate the band with. The bad thing is though is that Biscuit may get associated with ecstasy or something like that with people asking 'What do the band represent?' But like art, people will determine what they want from it."

This is also true when it comes to the band's song titles and lyrics. For example, 'H' off the 1996 EP 'Lizard Head' is often thought to be a song about a smack addict, with 'H' being a street name for heroin. The truth is however that the song title is an abbreviation for 'Harry Suburban' and the song is about typical yobbo/assholes who think they are great. Likewise, '6.9' from 1998's 'A Manga Movement' EP is often interpreted as a sex-oriented, 69er based song. The truth is that the song was written when the band wasn't going through a particularly great time, hence the anger contained. Basically 6.9 is a rating out of 10 on how they thought their lives were. Not that these different interpretations bother the band. As Wesz puts it, "It's bizarre and I love it. Everyone gets their different impressions and it's great when they do."

As a live band, Biscuit take on all comers. On stages, the band is in their element, whipping the crowd up into a wild frenzy with Wesz's frenzied persona coming to light. All-ages gigs, music festivals, nightclubs and pubs; Biscuit have played them all.

Wesz compares the different venues for us: "We like all of them. The Metro is different to even a pub; it's so different. It's funny because it's not the same; it's like a cabaret show. It's interesting you know, I can jump around on the tables and not get kicked out because I'm performing. But then pubs are different because people are a little bit more inhibited I find. And then all-ages, well fuck, they just go mental. It's great, but then again the all-ages, everyone thinks that they just go after heavy music. But I'll tell you what, they are very, very selective with some of the shit they listen to. Everyone thinks that they are actually stupid but if they don't like something, you watch them cane it! That's the beauty of the all-ages scene.

"Festivals, they're wild though. You jump on the stage and even if you're not playing you can stand behind the band playing and just go off. A lot of people, which is unfortunate, may not ever get to see that. You stand there on the back of the stage, and there might be five thousand or ten thousand people out there, it might not even be a band you like playing. But it doesn't matter; if they sound alright there is a whole vibe that makes the hairs on your arms stand up. Nothing compares to that, not even sex.

Although, when you're actually performing it's a totally different feeling again. There is nothing better in the world than when I'm singing and I see some dude that's just going off, singing every fucking word for word. There could be a thousand people in that room, ten thousand or even a hundred, it doesn't matter. And there's security, noise and everyone going off but there is nothing between me and that dude apart from the purity of the moment, the energy of the music, the bit that he's excited about and the bit that I'm excited about!"

A powerful live band, Biscuit comment on the necessity of being able to play to a crowd: "A lot of the radio bands that are getting paid heaps of money, get a couple of grand to do an all-ages bill. And then nobody watches it because…they suck! Their song may sound good on radio, but not when they're playing it live. People just want to go off; have fun! A lot of record companies are dropping bands at the moment because they're not making money. They've been having those bands for two or three years but they just didn't have what it took on a live scene. Obviously they couldn't capitalize on the position they were given. We've [Biscuit] never been given a position like that; I'd like to see what we could do with it. We'd just have fun because we don't have this ulterior motive behind what we're doing, we just enjoy playing." Wesz explains.

When questioned on the whole rock lifestyle Matt comments, "The whole thing, it's not a rock lifestyle at all. The whole thing is just hanging out with your friends, going to play and just having fun. When we go up to Sydney and stay in hotels, I just do what I would do if I was there with my mates; muck around and have a good time."

"It's the best job in the world," adds Wesz. "It would be good if you actually got a salary for it, but that's where media and advertising come into it. If you could jump around and sing on stage and get paid to do it, I guarantee everyone would do it"

After doing it live for three and a half years, Biscuit have played with many different bands: Testeagles, silverchair, Tool and Def FX just to name a few. So whom do they admire or hang out with? "The Testeagles, they're mates of ours, really nice guys. I mean they'll drive to Sydney just to do two shows," Wesz explains.

When questioned on their musical influences, Matt recalls, "It was a band called The Living Colour, I was very much into them."

Wesz agrees, "They were pretty much ahead of their time I thought. Once again they were a band that was never really pushed by the media, but they fucking rocked live!"

Other bands that influenced Wesz? "I grew up with Queen and KISS. Freddie Mercury was a legend, tell me a performer that performed like him. He just had an aura about him when he walked out on stage."

Finally Biscuit are keen to offer some words of advice for young, up and coming bands. Matt offers this advice, "Young bands, just get your head screwed on the right way, go out there and play hard!"

Wesz contributes, "There are a lot of dudes (managers, record companies) who will come to you offering 'I can push you here, I can push you there'; but be skeptical. What ever you borrow from the record company, ten grand/twenty grand, whatever, you've got to pay that back. If you can't pay that back in sales and they drop you off the label, you still owe them that twenty grand. And how are you going to pay that back if you can't sell any albums? So be careful. There are so many people who want to push you and think they can. You're going to make mistakes, but importantly, do not sign yourself to anything until you have consulted someone who is a little bit more professional."

"But ultimately, play well, enjoy yourself, and you can't go wrong."

INTERVIEW WITH ANOTHERRACE – Tilt Magazine
(February 23rd), 2000
Interview by Andrew Jones

Melbourne's very own heavy-groove-funksters and all-ages festival freaks, Biscuit, are suffering an identity crisis. TILT caught up with, um, Anotherrace's guitarist Chris Carty in the eastern suburbs conservative heartland of Balwyn to discover why little old ladies cross the street to avoid him and what is it with the name.

Andrew Jones: You guys have released three self-funded EP's to date with the most recent being A Manga Movement, when should we expect that long awaited major label debut album?
Chris Carty: We don't want to disappoint anyone. Initially we were going to do it independently but it gets to a point where you could almost waste it. It really needs to get into peoples faces which you can't really do without a record company.

AJ: Has it been frustrating?
CC: It hasn't until recently. We've been doing this now for 4 or 5 years and seeing how the whole industry works but that's the way it goes. You've just gotta keep doing your own thing. We're really confident. We feel we're happy with ourselves and happy with what we're pulling out of ourselves at the moment.

AJ: Speaking of frustrating, how's life in the burbs?
CC: (laughs) I've had old ladies move to the other side of the footpath when I walk past them and I feel like saying 'Look, if you dropped your shopping I'd pick it up for you, you know, I'm not gonna bash ya.' Looks are deceiving as they say. But as long as they don't come up and start pulling on my hair or poking me and calling me names in the street I'll let them do their own thing.

AJ: So, without any further ado, are you Biscuit or TBFNAB or what?
CC: For many different reasons we've changed it. It's Anotherrace now. We've been trying to tell people at gigs but it's been a slow process. We're still billed alot as Biscuit whereas we'd like to start getting billed as Anotherrace. It's a large step but we didn't realise that everyone would cling to the old name that we didn't really have an emotional attachment to.

AJ: Are Anotherrace looking forward to playing the Be Your Best Push On 2000 show?
CC: The Push Over's have always tended to be top notch with a good crowd and a good vibe. We're hanging for it, absolutely hanging. We've been playing other festivals a bit lower down the bill where people are just starting to get into the idea of the festival and we've been able to say 'Hey, let's go!', get a few bums off seats and lead them in.

AJ: So what's going to happen this time?
CC: I don't know. We're just looking forward to it and like I say we just hang out for these gigs, they're great.

AJ: You've established quite a reputation for live chaos and total energy overload.
CC: Yeah. It's not a contrived thing. The music we're pulling out of ourselves is making us want to jump around like that on stage. To be honest, we're not much different in rehearsal. I mean, people would probably piss themselves if they saw us rehearsing. We just have fun. We really love it and enjoy what we're doing.

AJ: So what's your idea of a hot show?
CC: Not having things thrown at you I suppose. (laughs) I don't know, just looking out and seeing people and knowing they're enjoying it. Singing words back to you always make the hairs on your neck stand up, especially from not having much radio play.

AJ: Wesz has described a live show as better than sex.
CC: He might not be doing it right I dunno. (laughs) Don't tell him I said that. (last laugh...AJ) It can be. I've had adrenalin from some shows that I've never been able to recapture in any other element of my life. There can just be one burst when everybody locks in and it's just pure energy. Everyone's just feeding off each other, it goes out to the crowd and comes back to you. They're just magic moments.

AJ: Any advice for up and coming bands?
CC: It is a better time than ever to get your music heard and to get gigs. It's such a healthy, thriving scene at the moment. I would suggest that anyone who's considering it, don't fear the competition, be a part of the competition and give it your best. (laughs) 'Be your best' as they say.