A Red-Hot Go

Amidst a crowded Great Northern Hotel on Anzac Day stands Flap! trumpeter and vocalist Eamon McNelis. He used to be a fervent Collingwood supporter, but now he “hardly knows any of the player's names”. Having acknowledged this, he launches into the history, hilarity and future of the Melbourne five-piece.

“I started playing trumpet when I was a kid. I was eight years old. I really wanted to play the fiddle, but they didn't have fiddles because it was a very proletariat school and I think they thought the kids would smash fiddles. So we were only allowed robust instruments. From there I went to the VCA where I was a pretentious little shit. We used to think we were so good! I suppose I am still pretty arrogant, but maybe not as badly as I used to be.”

As for the band, it was years of being only drinking buddies before singer Jess Guille revealed that she could in fact sing. “She'd kind of kept that under wraps. She's got a lovely voice and she writes great songs… and she plays the ukulele.” Having previously played with The Band Who Knew Too Much and The Hoodangers, McNelis says both these bands are “pretty important in terms of the sound that Flap! ended up with”.

The band's name – like their lyrics – observes life's absurdity and seeming futility, but embraces the fact that a shitload of fun can be had on the way. However, this is not an answer you can yield from a Google search. Rather, searching “Flap!” reveals a video that is both crass and comical, and has nothing to do with the band. McNelis sheds more light on the origins of the chosen moniker. “Have you ever seen a bird flying into the wind? And they're sort of getting nowhere? That's what it's about. Despite the fact that we all probably get nowhere, it's still worth giving this a good fucking red-hot go. It's a great existential statement. It's instruction on how to live.”

Asked where he would be without the trumpet, or what career he might have pursued, McNelis is momentarily stumped.

“I've been doing it for so long… That's a really hard question. My dad's in social housing research, but seeing how much that hurt them I probably wouldn't do that. That's a terrible answer! Wait – a hot air balloon driver! How does that sound?”

After wrestling with the logistics of navigating a giant balloon, McNelis adds, “but there was never any conscious choice. It just happened.”

Their second album, A Great Day For The Race – featuring wobble board – was released in April, and is being toured around Australia and Europe in coming months. It seems fitting then, given the band first played together at Copenhagen's Freetown Christiania, to recall truly memorable performances.

“We did a gig at Bar Open, and our bass player's [Mark Elton] parents were down from the country, it was the first time they'd ever seen the band. We played after this circus group, and they'd just finished their performance – they were pretty out-there guys. And the vibe in the room was incredible; it was only a small crowd but suddenly there was this great amount of trust in the room, and some of the guys from the circus group started getting naked. After they got naked, a few other people got naked too, then they started undressing us while we were playing. Halfway through the set, everyone in the room was completely naked… except for Mark's parents. As everyone's trying to find their underpants after the gig, I spoke to Mark's dad, who had forgotten his glasses, and he went on at great lengths about how annoyed he was that he hadn't brought his glasses! His mother just used this tone of voice I have never heard from her and said, 'One of those men was so muscular'. It was dead straight. There have been a lot of good ones though.”