Rick Dangerous and the Silkie Bantams

Local "thrustcore" enthusiasts Rick Dangerous and the Silkie Bantams are more than just a hard name to list correctly. Entertaining and hard-working, the New South Wales four-piece come to Melbourne this Saturday night for Night Of the Living Shred Fest. Killyourstereo.com caught up with the band recently.

Hi, Kane from KYS. Thanks for the interview.

It’s our pleasure, Kane.

How has 2015 been for the band so far?

It’s a clichéd thing to say, but considering we did our first show in April 2014, we couldn’t be happier with how 2015 has gone so far. Looking back at some of the places we’ve played at and bands who we’ve shared the stage with it’s been an awesome time for us. We kicked off the year supporting Truckfighters, and have since shared the stage with awesome Aussie heavyweights like Clowns, Gay Paris, The Hard-ons, Helm, Drawcard, and Super Best Friends to name a few.

We’re pumped to be coming back to Melbourne and have some exciting shows coming up later in the year back home too.

As you said, you're coming back to Melbourne with Night of the Living Shred this Saturday. It’s a good local line-up. What can we expect from Rick Dangerous… on the live front?

The stage is Rick’s home. It’s where he transacts his business. And business is good.

We can’t wait to check out Captives and Born Lion, but when it comes to firing up a crowd with well placed pelvic gyrations and questionable lyrical content, Rick is the man. Simple as that. We strongly recommend everyone gets down early to see what thrustcore is all about.

So, what exactly is “thrustcore”?

Well, Kane, Thrustcore is what happens when punk rock gets sexy. Think Screamin’ Jay Hawkins meets The Darkness meets The Dillinger Escape Plan.

Rick is the pioneer of this revolutionary genre and we’re looking forward to an onslaught of new bands popping up in 2016 to cash in on Rick’s boundary-pushing success.

I see, based on photos on your Facebook page, that your name commonly gets misspelled, mislabelled etc. What have been some of the more entertaining oversights along the way?

Rick’s sign-writer is waiting on his first Centrelink cheque as we speak, Kane.

But seriously, jealousy is an unattractive quality and some of our friends (Dividers and Verticoli, we’re looking at you here) feel the need to undermine Rick’s utter dominance with juvenile pranks in order to alleviate their feelings of inferiority when sharing a line-up with Rick, which is quite unfortunate.

Seriously, Rick Dangerfield and the Slippery Batmans? That’s not even grammatically correct. Come on guys.

What would you like to see improved in the domestic scene to help up and coming bands?

Coming from Sydney, it’s embarrassing to see so many venues closing down, and always a pleasure to come to places like Melbourne and Brisbane to see what a healthy music scene looks like.

To us it’s really events like Night of the Living Shred that give us hope that local bands without major label support, commercial radio airplay and lucrative licensing deals can really make something of themselves. We played the opening slot of Helm’s last show at the Espy back in March and it was reassuring to see how many people showed up to give them such a massive send-off in such a cool venue. We’d love to see more local festivals at established venues to give local bands a leg up.

I know you had a show cancelled in April due to local council zoning bylaws. What are some of the main challenges that face a working musician?

We’ve had Rick’s team of highly paid attorneys look into that matter and as it happens, the evidence is pointing more towards the fact it was probably an illegal warehouse party and the council was well within their rights to strongly suggest it not go ahead. That’s all we can say given the seriousness that Rick takes his lawyer client privilege.

Otherwise, the fact that three of the four of us have children and all of us have fairly demanding day jobs means simply getting out of the house is joy enough.

Favourite album of 2015 so far?

We’re pretty sure it’s going to be Gay Paris’ next album, if the boys manage to drag themselves away from their ivory back-stratchers and expensive beard-maintenance regimes and actually release it. Mostly because Rick D and the Silkie Bs did some backing vocals on it and those royalty cheques just can’t come soon enough.

What bands do you think are pushing the local scene forward with their unique style of music?

Any bands that are putting themselves out there and doing their thing on their terms are fine by us. We’ve had the pleasure of playing alongside bands like Dividers who write fantastic rock songs, have a great sound and are carving out their own niche in Sydney. We just wish there were more venues around for them to play and room on radio to give their material a spin to showcase the quality of unsigned bands that is currently available, instead of the cookie cutter shit like 5 Seconds of Summer that dominates the airwaves and leaves everybody dumber for having heard it.

Thanks for the interview. Appreciate your time.

No worries, Kane.

Catch Rick Dangerous and the Silkie Bantams performing at Night of the Living Shred this Saturday: