The D4 Play C2 On Sat 8th March
Published 26th Feb 2003 by Concorde 2

The D4. Tight, hard, fast, high octane rock 'n' roll/garage band from New Zealand. Their new single "Ladies Man" out is out on 17th March, taken from the debut album 6TWENTY on Infectious Records + OK GO + Caesars. 7pm - 10pm. ?7.

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"Why do anything half arsed? You might as well go all the way, I reckon."
Dion, The D4

If there's one band on the planet currently in possession of a route map directing the fun way to sweet rock'n'roll oblivion, it is The D4. Not only do the four New Zealand disciples of high velocity guitar catharis know the exact location of weekday troubles erasing sweet oblivion, they also know that to make it there you have to let the music get to your hips.

There are thousands of good, loud garage bands. There is only one equipped with the secret knowledge that if you want to get to rock'n'roll nirvana, you have to make the good times roll as well as rock.

The D4 are the precise type of hip shakin', pain barrier shredding, hyper-committed, sonic zealots that they are for a reason. Jimmy (vocals/guitar) Dion(vocals/ guitar), Vaughan (bass) and Beaver (drums) formed and perfected the art of streamlined, liberating, projectile fun in an environment that leant itself to insane fervour.

In the late 90s New Zealand's guitar community was a small, tight, unfashionable sub-culture centred in Auckland. If you cared about the music, and you wanted to live it, and get through to people, there was, as Jimmy points out, no option but to push it to the limit.

"I think one reason why bands that come from strange places at the moment are doing well is that coming from those places you can't afford to be complacent about anything," he says. "There's a real desperation and a real urgency about what you do."

No-one who has witnessed the religious blitz of the D4 live, now that they've broken out of New Zealand and gone into world tour overdrive, is likely to dispute that the band are one of the supreme extant examples of live-for-the-moment, die of happiness rocking.

When Beaver's piledriving drumming, Vaughan's supercool precision bass pulse and kamikaze guitarist Dion's filthy riffs pause for a nanosecond and Jimmy points out to a by now delirious crowd that this could be their last night watching a band, that they could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and that they'd therefore better dance like motherfuckers, it is not just rhetoric. He's merely extending the mentality of the band into the crowd. How do The D4 know they've played a good show? Dion will tell you.

"There's blood. Mainly mine actually. We've played shows when there's been pools of blood on stage this big. Thats good."

"We're like The Gurkhas of Rock'n'Roll," adds Jimmy."I don't think we can really actually play a show without there being blood."

It's not just matter of extremity and velocity with The D4. In as much as they have connections with and affinity for punk and metal, there's a lot in their showmanship, their determination to add danceable twist to their frenzy, and in the good time, drink-slamming songs that plugs them into a heritage going directly back to the early rock'n'rollers. Shark-finned, incendiary jump jive burn up punk isn't quite a genre, but if it was The D4 would be the leading exponents

"I was virtually the only kid into punk rock when I was 13 or 14," recalls Dion. "Everyone else was into rugby and I used to get picked on all the time and people would punch me in the face just walking down the street. Girls were not interested because they were into jocks and all that shit, but I didn't give a fuck because I didn't want to be like those chumps anyway. And here I am now, having a good time."

The history of The D4?s now looks beautifully romantic but it was probably tough to live through. Jimmy and Dion grew up in the Auckland suburb of North Shore. Jimmy wanted to be a fisherman until vintage UK punks The Buzzcocks came to town. Dion didn't give much of a shit about anything, and found a way of expressing that via his first band Nothing At All. After a few years of brat punk touring around NZ, the desire to get to the next musical stage took over and Nothing At All split up, leaving Dion temporarily adrift.

Bored at a little rich girls party and drunk on stolen bottles of wine, Dion found himself sitting on a sofa next to local acquaintance Jimmy, and the talk turned to how they might form a band. This was 1997. By 1998 the plans had bounced off the sofa and developed into the exisiting D4 line up. Vaughan had come up from the west coast of South Island with a saxophone and no purpose. Jimmy and Dion found him on the street and gave him a place to stay and a purpose shaped like a bass. Beaver was working in a sawmill, drumming with whoever asked and hoping to find a great raucous band that would keep him out of prison. One day out hitch hiking, he got a lift from The D4. Where was he trying to get to?

"Oblivion," says Beaver.
"We thought we'd help him find it," says Dion. "We knew where oblivion was."

There was not much need for discussions about the band's direction. The four of them came together, bonded by an almost unspoken agreement that this was going to be special. In addition, the small Auckland (and Christchurch) underground rock scene nurtured the music. From the age of 15 Dion had been wagging school to hang out with the local coalition of bands centred on the Frisbee studio. The D4 would eventually record their first EP there in 1999, but before that it was an inspiring meeting place,with perfect punk credentials, located in a bank vault and for a while in a bacon factory.

Perhaps inevitably for a punk-ish band from NZ, The D4 have often had Radio Birdman and Australia's The Saints cited as influences, but in reality the proximity to un-sung friends in the Auckland scene was far more important.

"When I first picked up a guitar and decided to be in a band, I met a bunch of people and I was playing with those people until now, and they would be my main influence," says Dion "They were the type of bands that early on everybody hated actually, cause they did things their own way, and they didn't give a fuck about the music machine, the industry."

No-one in The D4 is going to argue about the greatness of any of The Stooges, The Heartbreakers, Ramones, AC/DC, Sex Pistols, Black Flag, Motorhead, Sonics, Mudhoney or New York Dolls. But their love of inspirational sensory experiences extends way beyond classic 70s carburettor dung rock, to 60s bands, 50s proto-surf, 90s Japanese hardcore, spaghetti westerns, car chases, smog, girls, and erm, pizza.

"A good pizza is fucking inspiring I reckon," affirms Dion.

By 1999 the band that emerged for this nexus of tastes was beginning to hit form. They'd toured the pubs, venues, strip clubs and parties of their home country in 98, and set up a firm foundation for the 99 release of their first EP, through legendary NZ label Flying Nun.

The fuel injected riffs of 'Come On' and 'Girl' got them on the radio at home and in Australia. By 2000 they'd moved up from playing with local bands like The Datsuns (who the band knew since their teen days - Dion sold Dolph his old amp) to gigs with like minded names from abroad, from Jon Spencer to the Hellacopters and Guitar Wolf.
Self financing their own tours, they roughed it through Australia and made it to Japan prior to the release of their second EP 'Ladies Man' in early 2001. In Tokyo they witnessed the off the scale energy and enthusiasm with which the local Japanese bands played, resulting in a life changing epiphany for The D4.

"That really just altered the whole way that I think we looked at what we were going to do," says Jimmy. "The Beatles had Hamburg and I guess we had Tokyo in some respects."

Revved up to new levels of rockin fever, they set about recording their debut album in 2001, with Andrew Buckton engineering and 'the Don' of Frisbee studios - Bob Frisbee - co-producing. Later described by the NME as a "milestone" of the garage rock rennaisance and cited as "essential" by Kerrang, '6TWENTY' turned out to be one of the most explosive and focussed party rock'n'roll records heard anywhere for years.

The opening 'Rock'n'Roll Motherfucker' was a rubber burning declaration of intent that slammed both new converts and leather jacketed old rockers up against the back wall. Twelve songs later, having tattooed the stripped down full throttle brilliance of 'Party', ?Come On!', 'Running On Empty' and 'Exit To The City' on the heart of anyone in earshot, The D4 exited the building still raging gloriously with the wild imprecation of 'Get Loose'.
In case anyone didn't get where they were coming from, and as a tribute to the original artists, they also lovingly covered three songs on the record: 'Mysterex' by Auckland punk pioneers Scavengers, 'Invader Ace' by Japanese band Guitar Wolf and 'Pirate Love' by punk legend Johnny Thunders.

If anyone was uncertain about the precise nature of The D4's aethetics, '6TWENTY' cleared the matter up. This was classic blow-out blues craftsmanship, making no apologies for its desire to celebrate the greatness of cars, guitars,parties and ladies.

"We like girls and cars and parties," says Beaver.

"But also everything doesn't have to be over intellectualised," adds Jimmy. "I think a lot of times when people make an effort to do clever lyrics it comes over as just teenage poetry and I don't want to sound like teenage poetry. If you know what I mean."

6TWENTY' was clearly too great a record to remain an antipodean secret and in the UK, the Infectious label added it to their release schedule. As the band continued with a punishing tour itinerary across Europe, Japan, Australia and the US, they began to find themselves not only hailed as one of the great live experiences, but put forward as a band in synch with alleged zeitgeist shift towards primal rock'n'roll.

With the album released in the UK in June 2002 and subsequent singles 'Get Loose' and 'Come On!' joining 'Rock'n'Roll Motherfucker' as anthems for the loud and proud, they found themselves celebrated as the real deal in magazines and playing sold out NY shows with Pelle from The Hives waching from the wings. If ever there was an example of acheiving success by just doing what you love, The D4 are it.

"There?s a mixed bag of feelings about this rock renaissance or whatever, because most of these bands that have become really popular have been around for a while because rock'n'roll has always been around and they've always been doing it," says Jimmy. "Its just now that the attention is upon them, which I find funny and gratifying at the same time. But it's not a renaissance, its just the mainstream taking more attention of something that?s been continuously there since the 50s."

"Rock'n'roll is not a fashion for us," emphasises Beaver. "It's always going to be with us and we're always going to do it."

Anyone encountering the D4 up close, either on record, or live, will probably have little energy left for reflection, once the rolling, rocking, dancing, hip-dipping and drink slamming has been done with, but there is something to bear in mind about the four good guy rockers from Auckland. The detonation that blasted them from squat parties to international notoriety came in the form of one record, recorded fast, and including songs that date back to their first rehearsal. Since then, they've rocketed the learning curve, spilling blood and toning sinew in the process. Just imagine how awesome the next record's going to be.

"I think were' starting to peak,? says Jimmy. "I think the next record is going to be a better record for sure."
"It's gonna be groovier. We want to get hips shaking," adds Dion.

"We want people to have a good time and we want to have a good time, and part of that involves dancing," concludes Jimmy. "A lot of new rock music doesn't push my buttons because its all about rock and there's absolutely no roll. We're going to make a record with a lot more roll than rock."

Venues the world over had better reinforce their roofs. Home stereo owners had better screw down their speakers. The D4 are gearing up for phase II. Those good times are going to roll like a motherfucker.

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