By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
It was the kind of avant-garde bravery that has long since been lost to the music industry but the Models’ memory lives on strong in founding bassist Mark Ferrie.
“There was a bond between us forged through an intense creative period,” Ferrie reflected to the Geelong Indy.
“It still holds, it’s something that we’ve got that didn’t come easy and you don’t let it go.”
Ferrie, along with Sean Kelly (guitar/lead vocals), Andrew Duffield (keyboard/vocals) and drummer Ashley Davies, will revisit 1980s drives down the Princes Highway to play Geelong’s rock pubs.
Models will play the final show of a national tour at the Wool Exchange on 30 January.
“It was a relatively short time compared to other things I’ve done but we did a real lot of stuff in those few years,” Ferrie said modestly.
Emanating from the creative maelstrom of Melbourne’s post punk art-rock scene, Models released a succession of acclaimed albums culminating in number-one smash Out of Mind, Out of Sight.
The band was inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame in 2010.
Ferrie himself was a member of two or three repertoires that were never recorded before that breakthrough album in 1980, Alphabravocharliedeltaechofoxtrotgolf.
“There were so many different phases of it but I’m feeling as though this one is the one that embraces the complete history of the band more than others,” Ferrie said.
“There were different versions trying to get away from what happened but we feel as though we are pulling the whole story together.”
Models went through many line-up changes but the revolving door of musos had more to do with the creative intent rather than typical band fallouts.
“We were doing something that was out of the mainstream,” Ferrie recalled.
“Recording engineers didn’t know what to make of it but we always were a popular band live.
“The electronic component of it has always been more random and chaotic even though live drums and bass was the pulse of the sound.
“I hear what contemporary bands are doing and I can hear a direct relationship to what we were doing then.”
The post-Models influence is so definitive that 30 years on many of today’s pop, rock and electronic outfits owe a debt of gratitude for paving the way.
The tour will kick off this month with a couple of shows in which Models perform the albums Local and/or General and Pleasure of Your Company in their entirety.
“Some of those songs never been performed live,” Ferrie said.
“It means we have a reservoir of songs we can draw from so we can decide what we would like to do tonight.
“By the time we get to Geelong we’ll be peaking,” he said.
