Louise, 199-?, 'Brother Brick - Electric Magicians', Lemon Fanzine, Issue 16
The most important thing you need to know about Brother Brick is they don't play by the rules, yet still achieve a lot due to hard work and determination. No bullshit, no hype, no-frills punk rock. These are the kind of guys who will drive to Melbourne in an unregistered car to do a tour (they're either very silly or fucking committed!). They have a song ('Hot Shot') on the Shagpile / Shock compilation LP 'Take Your Vitamins, Say your Prayers' which will also appear on their debut 6 track EP (if the person releasing it even pulls their finger out).
    On the night of this interview Brother Brick were playing at Victoria On the Park in the heart of industrial Enmore. Between airplanes roaring overhead and drum checks - this is how it went.
Louise: Okay, how about we start with the general history of the band.
Stewart: We had a singer in the band when we started and he sort of brought us together. We knew each other cuz these guys played in the Horny Toads and I played in the Proton Energy Pills and we played together. So we knew what each other was playing. Both of these bands split up and a mutual friend sort of started this band. He knew these guys and had a jam and he started singing. But then, down the track we kicked him out.
Louise: Why did you kick him out?
Stewart: There's heaps of reasons. Like he (laughs)... no one was too happy with what he was doing. He just didn't put in the effort. He used to drink everybody's beers!
Mikey: Bludge your smokes.
Kurt: He just didn't fit the bond (band?) you know.
Mikey: The main thing was and we'd all experienced it in bands with front persons - it's wonderful having a front person who's going to be the focus for everything, but in the end it's hard for them to get musically involved with putting the songs together. So they're left on the outside trying to come up with something to say. And then trying to sing it and they nearly always react to being left out of the songwriting.
Kurt: It's sad to say but he didn't cut it you know. After a few shows it was pretty obvious that something had to be done. So Paul went to the wayside.
Mikey: And we thought we'd all have a shot at trying to sing. And so the playing suffered but then you had to work on, to comprimise between singing and playing and it ended up being something quite dynamic.
Kurt: Basically we'd done a lot of vocals in the past, as far as backing/harmony type thing in 5 piece bands. I think everybody else had a basic experience, it was just a hurdle, to get a bit of projection and control. It's not easy to do when you're belting it out on a furious sort of riff or whatever you've chosen to do. In a three piece there's only so much you can get away with.
Stewart: About half the set is songs where we're trying to sing songs that a singer sung. The last five songs we've written are the best songs the band has done, partly because we've had to do the vocals ourselves and we've arranged it ourselves.
Mikey: That's what we found as soon as we started practising as a three piece, thinking - Oh Fuck - but it came together and the songs got a lot more interesting.
Kurt: I've been in experiences where we've had bands going places and we're going really great, but it was like a committment thing fell down and I s'pose it's a bit of a cliche, but it breeds like a disease. If you don't stomp on it, it's just inevitable it destroys a band. So we sort of entered an agreement like nobody's going to be that indulgent that they're going to bum out and give everybody a shit of a time. It's hard to say. Cuz you're only human aren't you, you can't be 100% everytime the Sydney promoters call you out of the dungeon to do a show. You just gotta y'know, be a man and do it. (laughs) It mightn't be the show of your life, but just sort of struggling hard to make a mark on Sydney. Like we're not just dicking around. While we waste our time doing it we'd like to try and maybe get one step ahead further y'know.
Louise: Figuring that a lot of people reading this haven't heard Brother Brick - fill them in on what you sound like.
Kurt: The live show is definitely loud, but as far as the stereo is concerned I s'pose it's how heavy handed you are. We try to be reasonably contemporary, without being...
Stewart: Keeping a rock'n'roll bent on it and keep it fast and full on, still without going metal. That's my goal I've always had.
Kurt: It's not really metal of any sorts. Some of metal I can grasp y'know, but I prefer the creative feel rock'n'roll tends to open up a bit more. It's not so contrived. It's not like we're trying to be radio friendly or nothing.
Stewart: We're not. That's the last thing. Our whole management thing is called Unpopular Productions. We don't want to crack it or nothing, we just want want to keep cruising along and do our own thing y'know.
Kurt: It's good wholesome home grown shit. We don't use no magic tricks, everything you hear is coming from our hearts. Straight from our fingers. But occasionally we've been known to pull the odd feat of electric magic (all laugh) and get some really wild things going, and I s'pose they're the moments you cherish.
Stewart: Be warned, we'll be fucked some nights.
Louise: So why isn't your record out yet?
All: Grrrrrrrrrr...
Stewart: It's a real hassle isn't it. We're really disappointed.
Kurt: The only thing standing in the way at the moment seems to be the label is just taking their sweet time getting their shit together.
Mikey: The other thing is the person's who's representing us lost their job and had to get another job and resettle from Sydney to Adelaide. It's coming together.
Louise: How long ago were the songs recorded?
Stewart: Four of the songs were recorded in July last year and the other two were recorded in August last year. So that's a big bummer about it not being out, because it's like the band is somewhere else. The longer it takes to come out the more removed from it we're becoming. That's the disappointing thing about it for us. When it comes out it's just not going to mean as much as it would have.
Kurt: I s'pose in the meantime we're in the studio tomorrow so we're doing things. Hopefully we'll get this release out and possibly something going pretty quickly. It's like where we stand for the point of the argument, it hasn't really held us back as far as getting our thing going. It's just a burden on us that it's not out I s'pose. It'll come.
Louise: Is the recording tomorrow for Alan's compilation?
Kurt: Yeah, for the Zen record. He's just knockin' it together. Let's face it everyone's an entrepreneur these days. And why not exploit bands, cuz it's a great thing to do.
Stewart: No I think Zen's got a good scene. Al's probably going to make money out of it, but it's also good.
Louise: Which song are you doing?
Kurt: 'For Yourself' - it's been a mainstay in the set, but we didn't want to give our best song away on a compilation. (laughs)
Stewart: This will be the first time we actually get Brother Brick the way we want it.
Kurt: We're goint to try and attempt to pull the meanest, biggest, mothering fucking sound out of the room and hopefully get that down on tape and it'll be there on the CD.
Mikey: And there's talk of circus truck tours to Melbourne and Adelaide and all sorts of shit. Al's like that, once he sets his mind to something he actually does it. You've just to look at Zen to see that.
Louise: You've just to look at this place (Vic On The Park) to see what he can do.
Kurt: The first time I honestly came here was a karaoke night, I won a t-shirt too.
Stewart: What were you singing?
Kurt: I did a Little Richard number. But well I think we can all sing you know. Stew's got the charms of Neil Young or something reminiscent of that. Mikey's got the Great Frustrated Young Dude down. And I try to do a bit of warbling.
Stewart: He's got the Sinatra sound. Sinatra Sinatra that's my mantra.
Mikey: Cranky Franky, he was alright. If it wasn't for Cranky Franky I don't think things like Iggy Pop would have emerged.
Louise: So you guys manage yourselves and all the shit work?
Stewart: Yeah, Brother Brick is self-managed. We've done it the hard way and we've been shafted a lot. It's been character building.
Kurt: We plan to manage our business a bit better so we do get a beer rider.
Stewart: I like to think that we're not part of the Waterfront mafia with Steve Pav thing. I think we have got a Sydney thing - we're doing it by ourselves. We want to. It's an advertising thing - they're making people think that what they've got is what they need.
Kurt: The saddest thing is that in the long run the people who are hooked on it are really settling for second best. Half the time it is just a manufactured preconceived idea of what contemporary fuzz/grunge/rock'n'roll or whatever you call it... It's like the whole Oz rock thing of the past two decades has been the fact that things like AC/DC probably did push out of the western suburbs of Sydney, put them self in America and are still doing it their way. And I mean good luck to them, it's their scene, they've done it their way y'know. Not that we aspire to get that big, but we've certainly got targets and we're always trying to that next point. But as long as it's up, it's probably the main priority to do the right thing. Our management decisions are pretty tough. It puts you in that situation where what do you do when you're offered a show and you...
Mikey: Go for the money!
Kurt: Yeah. Or do you just cop it sweet, or do you push hard, I mean...
Mikey: If we do a shithouse show we've got no one but ourselves to blame, that's the beautiful thing.


Ben, 1995, 'Brother Brick - Chokito Bar 7"', Punter's Club Form Guide, Issue 22, August 95, p 34
Brother Brick are a Sydney three piece who've been playing around for a while; this what you'd expect - rock, rock and more rock. How can you argue with that?


Gray, Col, 199-?, 'Asteroid B.612 / Brother Brick - Crashlanding / Rock Action 7"', Vicious Kitten Magazine, Issue 2
Two of the coolest guitar bands on the scene at the moment, and its taken the foresight from the very hip vinyl-only label Brain Salad Surgery, to package them both together in the form of a split single.
    Brother Brick and Asteroid B-612 are two of the finest exponents of Detroit inspired rock n roll going around. Yet its not stale - they play with a groovy nineties feel, that allows both bands to invariably stand on their own merits.
    Brother Brick hit us with Rock Action and this tune really burns. Fast and furious rock n roll, with a distorted cross between The Stooges and Bored, Brother Brick really deliver. You want satisfaction...get Rock Action. Yeah-hup !
    Onto the flip side - More motor city rock with Asteroid B-612 offering Crash Landing. This is such a cool song from Sydney's BEST live band. Choppy rhythm, catchy chorus, slide guitar - I'm thinking Alice Cooper's Under My Wheels. Same driving guitars, same ferocious groove, this should be top ten !
    This is without doubt the coolest, most rockin single of the year ! If you don't already own a copy - you should !

Tauschke, Steve, 1999, 'Brother Brick', Beat Magazine
On line from homebase in Sydney, guitarist Stewy Cunningham says fans abroad have given him the impetus to further the Brother Brick crusade..
"We recorded a record about two years ago and we've just been playing around waiting for it to come out," begins Stewy, by way of an update. "The label up here who were going to do it pulled the pin... and that was a bit of a body blew and I just thought "fuck it". I just sort of went underground and got a really shitty job and got some money together. In the meantime, we got heaps of interest from overseas with people over there wanting to put "A Portable Altamont". We've ended up getting four releases out overseas. There's an album on a French label Hellfire Club (Chevelles, DM3), we've got a record out on Estrus in America, which is a really cool label as you probably know and it was a real boost for me personally. The labels we sent stuff to up here never (got?) back to me which was pretty disappointing... that kind of stank a bit and I got a bit disillusioned so I pursued the overseas thing. In the meantime, I was playing in the Yes-Men and Challenger 7 and both those bands got pretty good deals overseas (White Jazz in Europe and 1+2 in Japan, respectively) as well. It was all really encouraging, like reading the reviews it was a lot more realisticin terms of the way I viewed the songs, that people liked it and were taking it on face value. We've got another record record out in Spain of totally new stuff that'll be out before Christmas and there's another one already on a label from Philadelphia called Rockin' House... we also did that Replacements tribute as well."
What made you choose the track "Color Me Impressed" on the tribute?
"We were doing it live and I just liked the song for years and we were the only band to do a song off that particular album. I like the riff and the lyrics and we're a three piece so I thought we could pull it off."
Is the album's "Altamont" title a little nod to the Stones?
"In a way, but also cos the record was such a hell experience to get out. I mean in the time it took to get that record out I lost friendships, I hit the skids, friends died, everything went down really bad. I just thought this record is jinxed. I won't tell you where I got the actual phrase from but I just thought it suited the record. The songs are full of diversity of emotion: nastiness and hate and love and violence, there's a lot going on. Different extremes, I gave Tim Rogers a copy and he said it was the best title for an album he'd ever heard so I think he got what it meant."
You mentioned it's two or three years old now.
"Yeah, I remember trying to flog it to people back then and to be honest I probably would have just buried it except a lot of friends who had tapes of it kept saying, 'What are you doing with that album? When is it coming out?'... and that motivated me a bit and so far it's got some good reviews."
Is it only available on import in Australia at the moment?
"No, I've gotten it in the shops here as well, I've sort of done my own distribution, haphazardly, but it's in the main shops... my goal is to get a local release for some of this stuff. There's incentive for us to pursue it here now. To be honest, I wouldn't have been bothered playing unless we had the records out. That's why the band stopped playing a couple of years ago. We had nothing out and I was sick of banging my head against the wall."
I heard you were sick of touring with the Asteroids in the US a few years back as well.
"That was part of it. I was fucking broke. I put everything into it and took a few risks and it didn't work out. I always get easily distracted too, Steve, like if a mate of mine is in a band and they're half-decent and they ask me to help them out and play on their record, I'll do it. I get easily distracted from my own thing and my own songwriting and my own thing is what I do best. But I enjoy playing with other people."
You do have your finger in a few pies.
"And I think it working cos I get a lot of correspondence from people overseas wanting to know what the Yes-Men and Challenger 7 are doing and it feeds off each other. The reviews say this guy is also in this band so check them out, blah, blah..."
Have Hellfire in France whispered anything about touring Brother Brick?
"It's definitely on the cards. There's been a lot of interest in Europe for the band... and we're looking at April/May next year. But also Estrus want to do a new album as well. To me it's really encouraging, Estrus and Crypt and labels like that, that's the kind of music I'm into."
You've always had an admiration for the unheralded bands, Moving Targets, etc., etc.
"I was just listening to the Moving Targets. They're an incredible band . As well as the Australian stuff I grew up on like the Rifles and X and all that, I just found all these obscure records and they suited my style. I liked the melody of it as well... There are songs on "A Portable Altamont" that are pretty original as well, hard for anyone to pinpoint anything. It's very Australian, it does sound like some Australian bloke with a drawl singing it, I don't think I put on the faux American accent."
The material on the record, was written during your stint in Asteroids or well before then?
"It was sort of concurrent. Some of the songs just wouldn't have fitted into that band. But there's a bit of Asteroids flavour in there, it's definitely rock'n'roll but there are more dimensions to it than that, I like to think so anyway."