MENTAL AS ANYTHING
Essential As Anything
30th Anniversary Edition
Celebrating 30 years since the release of their first EP and first national tour off their debut album, Get Wet, an
all-new 24 track collection spotlighting the band‟s pop flavoured sound that propelled their classic tracks into
the charts, along with iconic video clips never previously released on DVD, will be issued as a collector‟s
edition in 2009.
ESSENTIAL AS ANYTHING features a new ‘Best Of’ – 2 Disc Set (CD/DVD) – Released May 1, 2009
Featuring 24 classic Mentals hits.
Plus first-ever DVD of Mentals video clips.
Featuring more than 2.5 hours of video footage, including a selection of album tracks, B-sides, snippets of
interviews and documentary footage.
12 page Booklet, including liner notes written by Glenn A Baker.
iTunes deluxe exclusive includes audio CD + 5 x videos + PDF booklet.
The digital catalogue launch of Mental As Anything back catalogue as well as the new Best Of, ‘Essential As
Anything’ - Released May 1, 2009
As part of Warner‟s digitisation project, Mental As Anything will be our first iconic domestic artist to launch
its full catalogue digitally for the first time ever!
Launch includes 10 x albums, 16 x singles, 15 x video clips, plus mastertones and sms tones.
Plus, the new Essential As Anything, including a deluxe version for iTunes.
Did you know this about Mental As Anything…
21 hits in Top 40 between 1979 – 1995
6 singles reached Top 10 status
1 of which reached Number 1 - Live It Up
Live It Up also made it into the Top 20 Songs list for 1985
TRACKLISTING – Essential As Anything:
1) The Nips Are Getting Bigger 14) Apocalypso
2) Egypt 15) You‟re So Strong
3) Come Around 16) Live It Up
4) (Just Like) Romeo & Juliet 17) Date With Destiny
5) If You Leave Me Can I Come Too? 18) Let‟s Go To Paradise
6) Too Many Times 19) Concrete And Clay
7) Berserk Warriors 20) He‟s Just No Good For You
8) Let‟s Cook 21) Rock „n Roll Music
9) I Didn‟t Mean To Be Mean 22) The World Seems Difficult
10) Close Again 23) Mr Natural
11) Spirit Got Lost 24) Nigel
12) Brain Brain
13) Working For The Man
For more information please contact Kylie Martin – 0418 314 088 / kylie.martin@warnermusic.com or your local Warner Music
Representative
For up-to-the-minute news and information, please visit www.mentals.com.au and www.warnermusic.com.au
LEARNING ON THE JOB – ‘ESSENTIAL AS ANYTHING’ LINER NOTES
GLENN A. BAKER - February 2009
When The Nips Are Getting Bigger came into Martin Plaza‟s head he was chugging over the
Sydney Harbour Bridge in his ‟63 VW Beetle, toward the end of 1978. “I had to keep humming the
chords to myself until I got home, so I didn‟t lose them” he recalls. “Thankfully there were only three
of them.”
Much of rock‟s glory evolves around the three chord pop song; something that occurred early to
the endearing bunch of truly lovable lunatics who came together in an East Sydney art college,
trundled down the hill to the Unicorn Hotel on Oxford Street, perched themselves precariously atop
a pool table and, having delved deep into their record collections, began ladling out lashings of
crisp and cheerful classics (or songs soon to be).
In Australia at the back end of the 70s there was a climate conducive to creativity, to be sure –
perhaps the most intense and exciting „band scene‟ since the mid sixties. A few years on from the
punk revolution, the people making the music really had taken control of significant aspects of their
own destiny. The huge sprawling suburban „beer barn‟ pub rock environment had evolved with the
proliferation of smaller and more adventurous pub and club rooms closer to the heart of the main
cities and the employment of any halfway-decent outfit capable of drawing a consistent thirsty
crowd. Indie labels and even canny studios and record shops were signing and recording bands at
a frantic pace, while some started long careers by pressing up their own moments of
magnificence (Sports, Saints, Men At Work and, having burst the Unicorn at the seams and moved
down to the Civic Hotel, one Mental As Anything).
The stranglehold of commercial pop radio had been broken by Double/Triple J in Sydney and R in
Melbourne. Rock TV forums like Nightmoves and Rock Arena provided a balance to Countdown
and Flashez, and RAM, Juke and Roadrunner weighed in with informed but enthusiastic print
coverage. All of a sudden bands had stages to stride, audiences to command, labels to
disseminate their fertile outpourings, journals to convey their doings, and programmers who cared.
Heady days indeed.
The Mental As Anything Plays At Your Party E.P. (Extended Play for those who may have forgotten),
sold from the boots of the cars of Greedy Smith, Martin Plaza, Reg Mombassa, Peter O‟Doherty and
Wayne „Bird‟ Delisle, placed them right in the thick of this fertile, bubbling environment. But it was
their songs that kept them there, cemented in place; that place being the Top 40 (and 10 and 20
and 100). Rock scribe Clinton Walker thought they were “blessed with four songwriters producing
unashamedly commercial, classic pop that‟s utterly engaging, warm witty and charming.”
Music journalists, let it be admitted, rather enjoyed chronicling the Mentals, I know I did. I just dug
up the words I penned about them for a book on the 1986/87 Australian Made tour, which saw
them traverse the country with INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls, Saints, Models and Triffids, and these
are they: “Throughout the month-long jaunt, the Mentals warmed hearts as the joke that never
grows stale, and as an irresistible, irrepressible yet reliable ensemble of decent sorts of blokes who
have transcended fads, trends and normal popularity lifespans while managing to appeal to all the
people all the time. These five bright, charming, artistic and witty lads who know all about a good
time and how to have it gave Australian Made much of its character and left all concerned in firm
agreement with an observation by British rock paper Sounds: 'It is frankly inconceivable that a band
of this class can fail to connect worldwide.' For, with all due credit to Andrew Loog Oldham, who
said it first about the Rolling Stones, Mental As Anything are more than a band, they're a way of
life!‟”
Dave Graney once claimed that he was "grateful to be part of an Australian music scene that has
people like Mental As Anything who aren't afraid to be intelligent and funny, have a lot of pizazz
and exist because they want to.” Throughout the 80s their intricate yet instantly accessible pop
gems, and their disheveled non-image image (when not bedecked in Mambo outfits, as they were
on Australian Made, provided a sort of antidote to rotating crops of pompous, trend-tagged
formula bands. By never taking themselves too seriously they stumbled upon a tonic for
timelessness. Of course, having parallel careers as some of the country's leading visual artists
assisted longevity considerably. They've long entertained richly with their irreverent approach. As
legendary rock filmmaker Peter Clifton once said: "If you have a lead singer called Greedy Smith
you're not the Vienna Boys Choir."
In the formative years they weren‟t really anything much. “We were pretty naive musicians to begin
with,” offers Martin, while Greedy insists, “We didn‟t have a clue what we were doing, we just did it.
We were very unfocused but so many things came together at the same time. I remember Martin
saying that I couldn‟t keep blowing a harmonica, I had to do something with myself on stage so he
saw an ad in the Herald for a wedding reception organ going cheap and went and bought it. I
played it on stage that night and I‟ve been playing it ever since.
“There was a lot of kismet about it. It‟s maybe not possible today, it might not work like that any
more. We were in Los Angeles once, in a car park, and this new band came up and told us how
much they liked us but what they really wanted to know was, who designed our look? We just
laughed but it made us realise how easy we‟d had it, in a way. These bands were all trying to get a
record company to notice them and it was very hard for them.”
The record company that had noticed the Mentals was an indie imprint called Regular, formed by
Cameron Allen and Martin Fabinyi, while Martin‟s brother Jeremy came on board as the band‟s
manager (echoes of the Copelands in the Police saga perchance?). Allen was their first producer
and Martin cites his “interesting way of EQ‟ing” as a vital ingredient in the attention that arrived at
the feet of the top twenty The Nips and Come Around singles and Get Wet album. Admirer Elvis
Costello handled production on I Didn‟t Mean To Be Mean and the American pop-meister Richard
Gottehrer gave them the international gloss that assisted the substantial U.K., European and
Canadian ascention of Live It Up and the Fundamental As Anything album “he was sensational”
opines Plaza). But both Greedy and Martin now go out of their way to highlight the role played by
the production team of Bruce Brown and Russell Dunlop in their audio evolution. “They really pulled
our sound together,” says Martin. “From the Cats & Dogs and Creatures of Leisure albums came so
many of the songs that work so well live now – Too Many Times, If You Leave Me Can I Come Too?,
Berserk Warriors, Spirit Got Lost, Let‟s Cook. I think that period really made us as a band.”
Though there was a wide song contribution from the band and a hit spread (one thinks of Queen
for a comparison, well I do anyway) the creative core, both for composition and lead vocals, was
Martin and Greedy, and what was essential to the remarkable longevity and hit flow (25 in 15 years,
placing them in an echelon with Sherbet, J. O‟K, Jimmy Barnes, John Farnham) was their
camaraderie, and their aligned taste in punchy pop. (A band serving up covers of Roy Orbison, the
Reflections, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley chestnuts within their canon can really only do such with a
mutual assent). “Greedy and I are very close,” says Martin now. “I was relieved when he started
writing songs because there was less pressure .... and they were really good.
“The songs are enduring and people do respond to them; that‟s why we‟re still out there I guess. It
never ceases to amaze me how well they‟re known and how much they‟re liked. We have our
audience bringing their kids to hear them and to sing them. You don‟t get bored with the big ones,
in fact after playing them for a long time you come to understand why they were hits in the first
place. There‟s no real regrets about those early naive recordings though I‟d love to have released
Come Around the way we do it now. We use Nips as a bit of a litmus test. We change it around
subtley, try some different things with it, and it‟s always the highpoint of the show. So yes, I am
proud of it.”
“We‟re quite fussy about how we perform now,” adds Greedy, “We take it quite seriously.“ Then
perhaps they always did, while perfecting a means of making it look almost accidental. There‟s
been an enduring excellence, let here be no doubt about that. And a ceaseless quirkiness. When
Beetroot Stains came across my desk in 2001 I found myself enthusing “With songs about Narelle,
stretchmarks, crybabies, the GST and Charles Manson's audition for the Monkees, and a cameo by
Sparkie the Wonderdog, this could only be a Mentals album. Having once perfected a brittle
powerpop style based around a tinny organ sound, the Mentals now seem more at home with an
anchor-riff that arrived with the 1995 hit Mr Natural. There is still a songwriting wealth, with Martin
Plaza and Greedy Smith coming to the same point from entirely different directions. Chock full of
imagination, musical flair and a stated aim to improve the quality of music that strippers dance to.
Irresistible.”
In a Sydney Magazine cover story a few years back I quote Martin telling me : “It was a strange
surreal sort of thing. “I was just being kind of silly and singing my favourite songs and suddenly we
were on Countdown and everyone was singing The Nips Are Getting Bigger. “We fluked it. I had no
serious aspirations at all for a career in music but at the same time I wasn‟t looking forward to the
bitchy art scene either. It was more fun to be a pop star with everything done for us and it was all
so easy up until the end of the 80s when our songs weren‟t automatically played on the radio any
more. There‟s only so much time on the airwaves and we had a damn good turn.”
The Mentals were able to taste the feeling of global domination, albeit for five minutes, but Martin
insists “I don‟t regret that we didn‟t have huge success out of Australia because touring endlessly
kills you – you can go mad in hotel rooms. We did it for a while overseas, early on, and I know it was
really hard for Reg, who was the first one of us with a family. He is a generous, thoughtful man with
great artistic talent and it came as no real surprise when he decided that a touring rock band took
much of his time away. We did have fun in Europe, on the back of Live It Up and Crocodile
Dundee. It was well organised and we were treated well and it‟s good that we all got to
experience that before there were changes.
“I think we‟ve made a mark. I can hear us in other bands. “But I‟m still a pop sponge and I enjoy
playing live music and making Mental records, though I‟ve also been able to continue painting
and have regular showings.” The pop monger in him was responsible for a 1986 solo album, Plaza
Suite, which gave him a national number one hit with a slick cover if Unit 4+2‟s Concrete & Clay,
included herein.
So dig deep, for it is all here, all that we loved about an irreplaceable band that perpetually
brought a smile to our collective face, who painted a Melbourne tram, enshrined the Victa
lawnmower in the national consciousness well before a postage stamp got around to it, and
created a virtual cinematic sub-genre with some of the cleverest and entertaining film and video
clips ever made in this country (future Tropfest entrants do note). They‟ve never left us but if they
did we‟d certainly insist on coming too.
...a history of...
MENTAL AS ANYTHING
A popular urban myth concerns a group of art students who passed themselves off as a band in
order to con the local publican into giving them a gig in exchange for free beer. The deception
worked better than intended, and the group came to be known as Mental as Anything. Nearly
three decades later, they are still irritating the public with their highly listenable, idiosyncratic brand
of garage pop.
A self-explanatory single to reflect their success, The Nips Are Getting Bigger, rose through the
charts as did their fundamental understanding of the old adage that 'for every action there is a
reaction'. Ahead lay a very lengthy pub crawl which only the accomplished could survive.
1977 - 16th August (the night Elvis died) - MENTAL AS ANYTHING (Reg Mombassa, Greedy Smith,
Martin Plaza, Wayne 'Bird' Delisle and Peter O'Doherty) perform together for the first time at
the Cellblock Theatre, East Sydney Tech. Start a year long residency at the Unicorn Hotel,
Sydney (using the pool table as their stage).
1978 - Move to the Civic Hotel, Sydney, for another year long residency on a larger stage.
1979 - The Nips Are Getting Bigger and the album Get Wet hit Top 20 in Australia. Nips released in
UK, reaches indie Top 40.
1980 - Come Around off the album Espresso Bongo hits Top 20. Release another hit single (Just
Like) Romeo and Juliet Dec '80
1981 - If You Leave Me Can I Come Too? & Too Many Times, two of the year's biggest singles off
the Platinum Album Cats And Dogs. Too Many Times goes to number 19 in Canada.
1982 - Tour USA. Release single I Didn't Mean To Be Mean (produced by Elvis Costello). First single,
Close Again, from the album Creatures Of Leisure. Band tours U.S and Canada.
1983 - Spirit Got Lost & Brain, Brain released off Top 10 album Creatures Of Leisure. Also release
cover of Roy Orbison's Working For The Man. Too Many Times hits Top 20 in Canada as the
band tours Canada and USA
- First Group Art Exhibition, with works by each of the band members, held at Watters
Gallery, Darlinghurst (Sydney). Buyers included Patrick White and Elton John. (White later
bequeathed one of Reg's works to The Art Gallery of NSW)
1984 - Apocalypso (Wiping The Smile Off Santa's Face) the band's only Christmas single
1985 - Fundamental As Anything – Platinum Best Selling Australian Album
- Live It Up - Best Selling Australian Single
- Singles You're So Strong( No. 8) / Date With Destiny(No. 18)
- multi platinum Greatest Hits Vol I goes to No. 2 on the charts
- Live It Up received Apra award for most performed work and Countdown award for best
single and song writer.
1986 - Live It Up –no.1 in Scandinavia No.2 in Germany and No.3 in the U.K
- Band tours UK, Holland, Spain and Italy (Band wins coveted Telegatto award on Italian TV)
1987 - Release Top 20 album Mouth To Mouth. Singles Let's Go To Paradise & He's Just No Good
For You also enter Top 20.
- Also release a Top 40 cover of Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender
- Band tours UK again and then N.E. USA and Canada with Robert Palmer.
1988 - Rock & Roll Music from the film soundtrack YOUNG EINSTEIN reaches No. 6 on the charts
1989 - Another Top 40 Album - Cyclone Raymond with the No.15World Seems Difficult and top 5
hit Rock n Roll music.
1990 - Then deputy Prime Minister, Paul Keating, opens second Mental As Anything Art Exhibition
with works by all five Mentals attracting huge critical acclaim. It tours Tamworth at the
Country Music Festival, travelling on to Melbourne, Lismore, Campbelltown and back to
Sydney.
1993 - Release B Sides and rarities album Chemical Travel
1994 - Bicycle EP Tour - limited copies of the EP given away to loyal fans around the country
- Radio picks up Mr Natural off the Bicycle EP CD sampler
1995 - The album Liar, Liar Pants on Fire enters the top 40, to glowing reviews, and the single Mr
Natural hits Top 30. Two other singles are released - Nigel, which instantly becomes a radio
hit, and Whole Wide World, a cover originally written and recorded by Reckless Eric.
1996 - Marianne, the final single from Liar, Liar..., is released and the band retreat into the studio
to work extensively on their new album., An appearance at the Mountain Rock Festival in
New Zealand, followed by the Australian Tour with Chris Isaak and a tour of New Zealand
with The Exponents.
1997 - Release Garage LP. Mentals III art exhibition opened in Sydney by ex-PM Gough Whitlam.
This exhibition then tours Australia continuously till late 2002.
- Tour UK
- Bass Player Peter O'Doherty leaves the band after 22 years to concentrate on his painting.
He is replaced by the Exponents‟ Dave the “Duck” Barraclough.
2000 - Band plays in Vietnam. Reg Mombassa leaves the band after 24 years to concentrate on
his painting and his artwork for Mambo surf wear. While touring heavily around Australia.
Mentals find the time to record Beetroot Stains.
2000 - “Fine line” single is given high rotation on Triple J. Album Beetroot Stains released
followed by the Borscht EP. Band plays London, Glasgow and Dublin.
2001 - Kiwi Guitarist Mike Caen (Credits include Dragon, Margaret Urlich and Jenny Morris) joins to
replace Murray Cook. Late in the year the Roadcase album is released.
2002 - Roadcase tour of Australia.
2003 - On August 16th 2003, the Mentals filmed their 26th Anniversary Party at The Basement in
Circular Quay. The resulting live DVD,”Basemental”, was released on the 28 th of May.
2004 - Drummer Dave “Bird” Twohill leaves and is replaced by Robbie Souter (ex Dynamic
Hepnotics and Slim Dusty). Commencement of acoustic project “Plucked” for Liberation
Music – mainly acoustic versions of some of Mentals better-known songs. The year also
includes a heavy Australian touring schedule.
2005 - January - Tasmanian tour February - WA March - Bangkok and Victoria. Completion of
“Plucked” for a mid year release. Preproduction begins for an album of new original
material. June - Martin Plaza painting exhibition.
“Plucked” released in November and debuts at number 15 on the AIR (Australian
Independent Album) chart.
2006 - Touring Australia interspersed with recording for the new album. The band line-up feels
rock-solid and sounds better than ever before.
2009 - Band continue to tour Australia and release Best Of, „Essential As Anything‟ in May 2009.
- Entire Mental As Anything back catalogue as well as „Essential As Anything‟ is made
available digitally for the first time in May 2009.