Revealing The Origin Of Rico

By Ash London on May 15, 2013 in Arts

Any band that names their latest album after a Latino popstar gets my vote. In fact, I shouldn’t even have to write an intro to this interview. I should just be able to tell you that Perth band Sons of Rico have named their new album ‘In Rico Glaciers’ – and that should be enough to make you drop everything and buy tickets to see them live this month. I chatted with frontman Alex MacRae ahead of their upcoming May date at Goodgod Small Club…

The band name comes from… Ever since Napoleon Dynamite spawned ‘Vote for Pedro’ t-shirts and had every kid saying ‘iiiidiot’ I’ve been a bit hesitant to reveal the origin of Rico. He is, of course, Napoleon’s uncle in the movie; a man who we truly believe is our collective long-lost father.

Our hometown… Is Perth, on the Westsiiide!

The most exciting thing about the local music scene is… Sons of Rico, duh. That and the myriad of super great bands and songwriters. No one can quite work out why there have been so many great bands out of Perth over the years – there’s even a documentary called ‘Something In The Water’ that tries to answer that!

Our latest music video, ‘I’m Not Thinkin’ About You’… Was created by a friend of ours, Tara Fox, who made an animation for one of our previous singles (This Madness) and we loved it so much that we asked her to do another for our new single. That previous one took the poor lass six months to complete, so it was understandable that she wanted to explore another extreme: a one-shot video done in one day! It features a man sobbing uncontrollably as a group of people try to cheer him up. The best thing about this clip is that my ugly mug isn’t in it.

I’d like to think that our music is… The perfect Christmas gift for young and old.

My earliest music memory is… Well, this might not be my first memory, but it was an early one. A Scottish relative gifted me a tape of Scottish classics performed with bagpipes for a birthday one year and I bloody loved it! I took it in for show and tell and everyone hated it. Kids are stupid.

One song that makes me really nostalgic is… OMC – ‘How Bizarre’. A Perth radio station did a parody retitled ‘Stole My Car’ and to this day I don’t believe mankind has come up with anything else to better either of these things.

If I could have written any song, it would be… Any song from Les Miserables. If I so much as think of one of those song titles, the song will be stuck in my head for days. That to me is one indication of a great song.

If you come and see us play, you can expect… LED lights; so many LED lights! I bought a bunch of these LED tube lights that are controllable via a foot pedal and a Max MSP patch that Brett and I programmed to handle scene changes. This is the second nerdiest thing I’ve ever done – second only to having played the ‘Magic, The Gathering’ card game as a kid. Oh yeah, you can also expect us to play songs with guitar solos.

My dream gig… Is one lived by Dave Grohl already – pretty much playing in Led Zeppelin. What a jerk.

I never want to get to the point where… My songs cease to have guitar solos.

I’ll know we’ve really made it when… We all have gold houses and a rocket car.

Catch Sons of Rico on their In Rico Glaciers Album Launch tour at Goodgod Small Club on Thursday, May 2. For more information visit www.facebook.com/sonsofrico.