What do two of Australia most promising garage/rock acts talk about when they get together? Tiny Teddies and John Butler Trio (duh).

Sydney’s Crocodylus and Rackett are two bands that have reputations for putting on wildly high energy live shows. You know, the kind where you might cop a couple of elbows, or few splashes of beer, or a splatter of sweat here or there. It’s good old fashioned rock and roll entertainment that restores your faith in live music in our overpoliced nanny state of a town.

Most recently the Crocs have slowed things down with their infectious new tune ‘My Baby,’ whilst Rackett have been playing shows up and down the East Coast seemingly nonstop off the back of their singles ‘Alive’ and ‘Space Cadet.’ It’s fair to say that the’re two bands on the precipice of becoming stalwarts of the Aussie music scene.

With both Rackett and Crocodylus about to play at Surry Hills Festival (info here) and Festival Of Doom together (info here), we thought we’d see what the two acts had to say to each other in order to get some unique insight into the way artists interact amongst themselves. Plus it’s way easier than doing the interviews ourselves.

RACKETT: We love the band name, where does the name come from and what does it mean?

Crocodylus: Thank you very much! Think it comes from the latin name of crocodile, like how all crocodile species are classified as “Crocodylus blahblahblahius”

R: Who writes the music for the band?

C: Whoever you hear singing on the track usually writes the lyrics and maybe brings a riff or an idea for the rest of us to dive in, its becoming more of a collaborative process these days which is cool, everyone has input! Some songs however are fully written already and we just go with it.

R: What were Crocodylus listening to when they started making music together as a band?

C: Well when we all started playing together we all sorta had general tastes that overlapped; The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin. General 60’s and 70’s rock and roll/garage/psyche stuff which we still love and make the basis to our sound as a band. Now we all occupy some distinct territory of rock and roll, Steven really likes British Rock both classic and more modern, Josh enjoys American Garage Rock, and Mikel’s been listening to heaps of Portuguese and Ethiopian Jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4iFtMl1Y2k

R: Seeing you live for the first time, we were instantly obsessed. You have so much energy, what is your pre show prep?

C: Hahaha well Josh goes to the toilet a lot before shows, guess that makes him real light on his feet so he can do all the jumping around he does. Steven drinks Gin and Tonics, and Mikel usually just has like a caesar salad or something

R: What’s coming up for Croc?

C: Festivals! Which we haven’t done heaps of so that’s pretty cool, really excited about that, also putting an album together at the moment, so much going on at the moment though! It doesn’t help that we all work full time so sometimes its hard to balance it all

R: What cover should we do together at Festival of Doom?

C: Dont go breaking my heart….100%

CROCODYLUS: You all bring a lot of energy to the stage when you perform, what’s your pre-show ritual to get you going?

Rackett: The day before a show, we always rehearse; get the set down. The day of the show, we’re acting cool, but secretly having internal nervous breakdowns. We huddle together and talk about our feelings while warm ups before the show.

C: Who are you most looking forward to seeing at Surry Hills fest?

R: Crocodylus, Iluka, Pirra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPCe50_9YwM&feature=youtu.be

You ever had tiny teddies and custard?

R: We don’t harm teddies or cows.

C: Most outlandish fan interaction whilst performing, go.

R: We like to ride on the shoulders of our strongest fans so maybe that’s more of our own outlandish behaviour. Someone always gets a pash too, I tend to go for the craziest people and they are, not who’d you think, they are the mid-life crisis type that I go for or the security guards. We see lots of tits too.

C: Would you rather fight a trio of John Butlers or one giant John Butler?

R: One giant John.

C: What’s coming up for the Rackett crew?

R: We’re in the running to win a competition atm called ‘Extra Support Acts’. We were chosen by The Rubens to perform a live version of an unreleased single which is up on Youtube until September 30th 2018 (see above). If we don’t win, well, we’ll just keep pushing, like we always have. We just recorded some killer ammunition with Dave Hammer and we’re releasing and touring a new single ‘tried to quit’ (the one we performed for The Rubens), in October.