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| June.07 Cover - Radio Birdman |
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| Written by Jud Cost | |
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Page 1 of 4  We've Come So Far To Be Here TodayAgainst All Probability, Radio Birdman Reappears Thirty years is an eternity to wait for a great rock ‘n' roll band to play its debut American gig. Babies born in Jimmy Carter's first year in office have grown up in the interim and are now marching resolutely towards middle-age. Of course, this isn't just any rock band. It's one of the most paint-blistering, twin-lead-guitar outfits to ever fry an amplifier. And although Radios Appear, the Australia combo's first album, was released in 1977 they'd never played the United States until last summer. Ladies and gentlemen, the other act you've known for all these years: This is Radio Birdman. It's late August, 2006 and Birdman lead guitarist Deniz Tek is stressing out. The Great American Music Hall is sold out tonight, the rented amps are missing in action and it's time for soundcheck. The Ann Arbor, Mich. native who, along with singer Rob Younger, assembled Radio Birdman in Sydney in 1974, already looks sleep-deprived, and the blitzkrieg, 10-date American tour has only just begun. A year later, on the cusp of Birdman's second U.S. tour, Tek can laugh now about the problems the band encountered with rental equipment. "We constantly blew up amps on that tour," he says. "The company gives you stuff with hard mileage on it. One employee even commented, ‘These guys change amps more often than guitar strings.' And we smoked a bunch of 'em." Although random equipment adds a wild card to the touring equation, says Tek, Radio Birdman takes it all in stride. "We did just like we always do: Put your head down, play as hard as possible and let the chips fall." Tek first fell in love with Australia at age 14 when his dad, a professor at the University of Michigan, took his family there for a year's sabbatical in 1967. Back in Michigan, Tek began venturing down to Detroit's storied Grande Ballroom to catch the birth of the MC5 and the Stooges, then known as the Psychedelic Stooges. "My parents didn't want me to go," says Tek. "After the riots of 1967 Detroit was full of burned-out buildings and snipers. It was very dangerous in some parts." But the lure of high-voltage rock ‘n' roll proved irresistible. "I saw the Stooges before they were signed, when they didn't really have any songs," says Tek. "Iggy would just do performance art, what they called ‘energy freak-out,' Ron Asheton would play feedback and Scott Asheton would bang on oil drums." The high-energy sound of these Detroit legends, even in their early days, lodged comfortably in Tek's brain. |
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