Pop classics covered

Warrnambool Standard 13th May 2004 - ©Copyright Warrnambool Standard  2004.  All rights reserved

WARRNAMBOOL-BORN musician Ian Edwards will return to his former home town this weekend, but he may hard to recognise under all the stage make-up. Edwards will bring his tribute band Crowded Enz to the Warrnambool Football Club for one performance only Sunday at 3pm. The six-piece group will faithfully reproduce the music and image of Crowded House and Split Enz — a far cry from Edwards’ work as musician in Warrnambool in the ’80s. Edwards said he cut his musical teeth in the south-west playing in bands such as Mod Squad, Nevada and Nightshift and alongside the likes of Garry Price and now-famous opera singer Peter Brocklehurst in the imaginatively named Edwards, Price and Brocklehurst. After jetting over to Perth for new beginning, the drummer set up funk covers band Maximum Groove and toured overseas, before finally coming rest in Crowded Enz. The whole (Split Enz tribute) thing has never been done before and the reason is that Split Enz stuff is so complex. It’s not easy to do,” he said. “It’s a cross-section of pop and rock, to ballads and punk rock and everything in between. “It’s quite adventurous to play as a musician. “No one’s tried to do it like Babba or Bjorn Again or those Beatles shows and that’s because it’s so hard.” The show will comprise 55 minutes of Crowded House music, a half hour change-over then 55 minutes of Split Enz songs, complete with crazy costumes and make-up. “We take it right back to the original look of Split Enz,” Edwards said. “I remember when I first saw them on Countdown in ’76 playing My Mistake and I thought ‘what planet are these guys from?’. “They were so bizarre, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off them. “Anyone who grew up in that time will remember how they stood apart from other bands at the time.”