4. Laughing ClownsMr Uddich-Schmuddich Goes To Town
I saw them. I was at university, and they came in and they played at lunchtime; it was so fucking exciting. And then I realised that it was Ed Kuepper and Jeffrey Wegener from The Saints. And I loved it. I didn’t know drums could be like that – so explosive and beautiful at the same time; so fluid. This was the tension and release of the rolls – he’s a master of the rolls.
They just became my band and I found them so inspiring. I actually dropped out of university at the end of that year and just decided to try to learn to play the drums more. And weirdly enough, when I was in lockdown and stuck in Australia, Ed Kuepper rang me up and asked me to do a duo with him and we did a lot of shows. And Jeffrey became a really good friend of mine. I met him on the Laughing Clowns’ first tour. I lived in a shared house and I was having a coffee in the kitchen and he came down the stairs and punched the fridge door. And I’m thinking, ‘He’s the drummer from the night before!’ I said, ‘Great show’ and he says, ‘Fucking shit, I want to go back to Sydney to practice.’ What a maniac, but he showed me how to use the double stroke and some stuff like that. No matter how much I get to know them personally, nothing gets in the way of how that music feels. I’m so inspired by them.
