FIRST 11: HOW ICECREAM HANDS CATCH EVERYTHING ON MATCH DAY part 1
- Bernard Zuel
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
SHALL WE BLOW OUT the candle together? Who booked the stripper?
In a relatively bare-walled room in his Melbourne home, or at least the part of the room visible from his desk, Charles Jenkins has a gig poster from a favourite Melbourne venue on one side and a Beatles one from Help on another. Core principles you might say for a member of a very very fine pop band.
Above and to his right are stored some of his CDs and records and it is there he looks when I congratulate him on the release of the latest album from his band Iceceam Hands, out this very day.
“I think it’s album 25,” he says scanning the shelves. “But who’s counting?”
Well, we are, actually. That’s 25 albums from him in groups going back to his Adelaide alma mater Mad Turks From Istanbul, through his expanding solo collection, to Giant Fox Pineapple Tree, the seventh from Icecream Hands since 1993.
In the absence of Hands bandmates, drummer Derek Smiley, bassist Douglas Lee Roberton, guitarist Marcus Goodwin and newly installed officially as fifth member, keyboard player David Milne - all of whom will be on hand for December shows in Sydney and Melbourne - what does one do after 25 album release days? Are there presents under the tree? Nutmeg sprinkled over his breakfast?
“I might have some cinnamon on my cereal later on. Just for an extra treat,” Jenkins chuckles. “No, today, fortunately, I’ve got to listen to the second-year students from Box Hill and there are 36 songs to listen to and mark. I’m putting it off, so I’ll probably clean the house, probably go to the op shop and look for old Reader’s Digests. That’s what I’m doing to celebrate.”
With a quarter of a century of albums behind him as principle songwriter or singer, and a decade or so as a songwriting teacher, what wisdom is there that the once-was-a-mad-anatolian can share with the world? Tell us oh wise one.
“I don’t know if it’s wisdom but there is still just immense joy in the writing of them, and mostly in the making of them,” he says. “There are complications that arise in each and every one, but I suppose the wisdom is that you realise you’ll get it done. You’ll finish the song, just stick with it; you’ll finish the record, stick with it. The other thing to keep in mind is you are not making a movie: there’s only like 10 people involved, from band to engineer to publicist to graphic artist to manufacturer, not a movie with thousands of different parts. So rejoice in that fact, the simplicity of it all.”
Sounds do-able, even for lesser talents like, well, most of us, but is that simplicity of it all hard to remember in the middle of it?
“Yeah. Yep, yep, yeah. The complication with this one, and it’s an interesting one that hadn’t been thrown at us before …”
Jenkins interrupts this answer to remind me that the last time we spoke we diverted into a long discussion of the West Indian batting line-up of the mid-70s, and cricket analogies dot our conversations, as happens when you’re Australian men of a certain type, “so, let’s continue on from that …
“When you’re going into an album it’s always nice thing to have about 15 songs in the squad, so that when you get to Perth or wherever you are going to – in this case we were going to Jumbunna, which is in Gippsland. Beef Wellington country - those 15 at the end of it all will become the crack 11, the team,” captain Jenkins says, blissfully unaware that in fact this story will run on the first day of the cricket in, yes, Perth.
“So sometimes what happens is your favourite song just doesn’t live up to expectations and gets put to one side, and a song that you thought was okay, all of a sudden at mix time just flies, just soars out the gate. The complication with this one is at some point during the mixing process, which was taking quite a while, [engineer and mixer Greg Walker] had done about seven songs and sent us a message saying ‘I’m really sorry, I’m really really sorry, but I’m running out of time’.”
Walker had other already promised commitments including some film work, and would only have time to mix ten songs. Oh dear.
“I thought … fuckin’ hell. We weren’t sending them on a best to worst agenda, we were just sending the songs as we had finished them. And now all of a sudden five of our – and I almost sound like Prince here – five of our precious little babies are being discarded into the wilderness. I pleaded and said could we have 11? 11 feels like a team. 11 feels like it belongs on a record.”
So the band had to decide which four of their precious little babies would be cast aside and which four would be given life. Of the discarded, “one of them was a stunning expose upon the work of Shakespeare,” says Jenkins. “We need more songs about Shakespeare, right? Hmm, maybe that’s why it was abandoned.”
Not this has put him off, as he casts his eyes up to that shelf again.
“I’m really keen to do another one. Perhaps it is the advancing years, the loss of certain friends, what have you, that makes you think, come on I’ve only done 25 records, there is more to be had.”
NEXT WEEK: In part two of this interview, Charles Jenkins breaks down the new songs and the old hands making them, looks for a mission statement for this musical enterprise, and reveals a threat to one musical theatre giant thanks to “a non-essential organ”.
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Icecream Hands play Petersham Bowling Club, December 13; Northcote Social Club, December 20