User:Chyel/Split Enz

Split Enz
Origins	"New Zealand!" "Australia!" "New Zealand!" "Australia!" "You @#&!" "OW!"
Year(s) active	1972-1984
Genre(s)	Uh...
Label(s)
Members	Tim Finn, Neil Finn, Phil Judd (whenever he felt like it), Noel Crombie, Eddie Rayner, Paul "The Dead Guy" Hester, Nigel Griggs, Mike Chunn, Rob Gillies, Wally Wilkinson...just how many fucking people were in this band, anyway?

Split Enz were a new wave band that came into spontaneous being on the first day of MTV and winked out of existence at midnight exactly two years later. They were from Great Britain or Australia or somewhere like that. They had a cute lead singer who wore black leotards and stood around in front of....

Uh, no. Let's back up and start over.

1972-1974: I Was a Prog Star Once

The LSD Springs of Mount Wellsdale, man.

Split Enz were created in New Zealand in 1972 by best friends Tim Finn and Phil Judd at the fabled LSD Springs of Mount Wellsdale. They were sitting cross-legged on the ground near the spring, strumming guitars in an effort to stay grounded or save the world or keep their sisters from turning into pretzels or something like that, when a man in a cape and a pink-and-white checked suit stumbled and fell on them.

"Hey, you got your clothes into my music!" "Hey, you got your music into my clothes!" "I'm Noel Crombie. Who are you?" "What are you?"

"Bored. Let's start a band."

So, they did. Needing band members, they searched around for anyone who played an instrument and didn't run away screaming when they were told that they'd have to appear in public in white face paint and lipstick. They brought in Tim's friend Mike Chunn on bass and added a violinist and a flute player just to fuck with the heads of anyone who would be reading about the band in ten years time. Noel took on the roles of costume designer, percussionist, and, most importantly, the guy standing to one side with a tambourine and a dazed expression in every video the band ever made. Their first gig was at an Auckland laundromat. Fifteen minutes after they started, they were offered a management contract and shot with tranquilizer darts at about the same time.

Left to right: 1: What the... 2: Oh, my Lord. 3: Isn't that the guy who did "Don't Dream It's Over"? 4: Oh, good, someone somewhat normal-looking for a change. 5: What's wrong with that guy's head? 6: What's wrong with that guy's neck? 7: What's wrong with...that guy?

The band played universities and rock festivals and soon released a single, Hey, I Thought These Guys Were A New Wave Band!. It sold three copies: One to Tim's sister's dog, one to Phil's dentist's pet cockroach, and one to a German professor of abnormal psychology. Crushed, the band put their violinist on a leaky raft to England, took their flute player back to the store for a refund, brought in Rob Gillies on marmitophone, and hired Wally "Much Cooler Than His Name Would Suggest" Wilkinson to play guitar. Their intensely theatrical performances and complex yet melodic music soon landed them on television, mostly so that the news department could get some good footage of them in case they ever ran amok and ate people. Then, the band brought in keyboardist Eddie Rayner and lost Rob Gillies and Phil stopped performing with them for the first time and I think I forgot a few people along the way--

(I give up. These guys changed band members almost as many times as they changed their underwear, OK? I'm not going to mention lineup changes any more unless I can get a good joke out of it. Go read Stranger than Fiction if you want the full details.)

Anyway, their reputation grew to the point where Australia wanted to bring them in on tour, so their manager sprayed them down with shark repellent, pinned notes onto their jackets, and threw them into the sea.

1975-1976: "Don't you know the laws of salvage? We found them, so we're going to keep them."

The caption to this picture of Phil Judd will be erased within days and replaced with a joke about kiddie-fiddling. There will also be a picture of a sheep somewhere on this page.

The band arrived in Sydney no worse for wear, their heavy coating of greasepaint and Dippity-Doo turning out to be adequate protection against the rigors of the long Pacific swim. Needing money, they signed up for the Adelaide-to-Melbourne Dead Dog and Police Car Dodging Rally and won. They put the prize money into the recording of their first album, Mental Notes. The recording of Mental Notes was a jittery and tense affair marked by Eddie hungrily devouring the tapes out of his Mellotron, Wally going into the back room for long makeout sessions with his guitar, and Phil insisting on recording all of his vocals while sitting on a paint mixer. But it turned out well, with the resulting work praised by some as an enjoyable mixture of (mumble, mumble, will listen to Mental Notes on the way to work today so I can think up a good description) and derided as the fussy and overwrought product of a group of overgrown schoolboys who needed to get laid once or twice. (Tim's reaction to the last one: "That's not fair. Some of us already have gotten laid once or twice.") It sold almost twice what their first single did--the cockroach refused to buy

You've got to respect someone who's in his late fifties and is still willing to appear in public looking like he shot, skinned, and is wearing the pelt of his great aunt's favorite couch.