Sauce

With a name as improbable as their musical style, nine-piece Latin hip-hip outfit LABJACD are determined to give you a good time, despite being one member short of the required ten members for big band status. However, it only takes one man to play a double bass. And when that double bass is in the capable hands of Julian Langdon, it may be that LABJACD are much more than the sum of their parts.

Thanks for calling back, mate. How are you?
I’m well, how are you?

I’m good. I’m enjoying the sunshine today, how about you?
I’m in Melbourne and it’s been raining for weeks. Not that it’s a problem!

No, it’s good to have the rain, isn’t it…
Yeah, it’s good for the world, good for the soul, I reckon. I love staying home, plugging in my guitar, you know, listening to the rain on my roof…

It always freaks me out a bit when we get to the wintertime and we’ve had no rain and it’s not cold…
Mate, yeah doesn’t it! It freaks me out too! (Laughs).

Don’t ‘spose you saw that stuff on the ABC last night about the global warming scandal versus the global warming proponents?
I caught bits and pieces of it. I listen to Radio National a lot and that discussion, that discourse, seems to be ever-present. Periodically it’s very present on Radio National. And I find it so distorting. I’m not saying that global warming is or isn’t a conspiracy, but the fact of the matter is that the peripheral issues around global warming are just as serious; like, the energy crisis, the petroleum industry’s rape of the Earth… you know, all those other things are just as much of a problem, and people are crying wolf about whether this global warming is a conspiracy or not! You just think, god, you know? There’s still shit happening, regardless of whether the weather’s due to global warming or not… there’s still so many serious issues affecting our globe you can’t just, you know, push it back into its box and say, “Look, there’s nothing to worry about,” because there’s still so much to worry about!

How do you feel about using the music you guys produce to bring attention to this kind of stuff?
Well that’s such a complicated line to take nowadays. I don’t mean that, by any means, people in the music industry have to hide their politics, but I’m not sure that “the song” is always the best means to put politics across. And, you know, I don’t mean to sound non-committal about issues but sometimes music can really… with music there’re two things going on. One it’s the message and one it’s the business of it, you know, trying to maintain a career in the industry… and I don’t know if audiences these days appreciate politics right in the forefront of music, especially in a party band. We play in, essentially, a dance band. The tradition of dance bands moves from, whatever… salsa bands from New York in the fifties, big bands… that tradition moves all the way up to, kind of, funk bands from the Seventies into what we are today. So I don’t think that we’re in the traditional line of Bob Dylan. We’re in the traditional line of, you know, Frank Sinatra or the Latino equivalent. So, it’s very difficult. You’d never find Frank, just for an example, Frank, in one way, was involved in left politics, he was involved in the underworld stuff… he was also involved in all that stuff about artists supporting Afro-American rights, but at no point in his music or on the bandstand in Las Vegas did he say, “Hey all you white folks out there, I just wanna sing a song about African-American rights and their ability to be equal with all of us,” you know what I mean? So, you’ve always got to be careful with that stuff.

I guess, in that case, it was the music that gave him the credibility to be listened to outside his actual performances where he was dealing with these kinds of issues…
Yeah, you would think so, or you’d hope so. And I think that’s what we have. There’s a few bands around that have managed to be able to weave it into their music, like Blue King Brown, I think they’re wonderful and they’ve succeeded in bringing their issues into their lyrics without coming across like they’re trying to use that as a label or selling point because I would hate to labelled as a band that just picked up some kind of issue and ran with it as some kind of popularity cause. That’s always been a bit sticky for me. I just don’t want to go there.

http://www.labjacd.com/

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