POOR

THE POOR

Blast From The Past

Hallowed Australian hard rockers The Poor bring the noise to Fremantle’s Newport Hotel on Sunday, May 20, with support from Rogue Sharks and Emerald City. TRAVIS JOHNSON has a chat with singer Anthony “Skenie” Skene.

When you ask Anthony “Skenie” Skene what prompted The Poor to get back in the saddle in 2008 following an eight year fallow period, you get a refreshingly honest answer.

Sure, the love of music and the fellowship of the band played a part, but not so much as a heaping helping of cash... “We got an offer from a promoter to do the W.A.S.P. tour.” Skenei recalls. “W.A.S.P. had never been to Australia before. We had an offer to do this, but the money wasn’t there. At first I said no to the promoter, and then he came back a week later and offered a shitload of money! So I rang the boys back and said ‘come on, let’s just do it and have a bit of fun’. And then as soon as we started rehearsing it was like, ‘what the fuck have we been doing?’ I mean, me and Gav [Hansen - drummer] were in a heavy band called Lump for eight years, but as soon as we started rehearsing with The Poor it was like, ‘why haven’t we been doing this?’.”

They’ve been hard at it ever since, peddling a brand of classic, hard and heavy rock that sets them well apart from the callus-free mope rock and high-sheen reality show fodder that characterises so much of modern music. “I feel that a lot of these bands are missing out on getting road tough,” Skenie opines. “But it’s just the natural progression, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to record these days, and there’s that many bands out there - that’s what makes it a lot harder for everyone. There’s millions of bands out there! And there’s not as many venues out there that want bands. It’s a sad thing. It’s crazy, not wanting to go and see bands, because it’s so much better than sitting around and doing nothing.”

He is adamant that there is still an audience for good, old-fashioned rock, though, saying, “People love seeing that energy. I mean, we love doing what we’re doing - we just can’t stop. And it’s such a mixed crowd now; we’ve had people coming up to us with their sons who grew up with us because their dads listened to us. Kids coming up who are 18 now, and they’re saying ‘Oh yeah, I remember Dad playing that all the time, and we used to love it around the lounge room’.”

Hopefully that audience will be eager to hear The Poor’s upcoming album, which is currently being recorded. For his part, Skenie promises a dearth of middle-aged introspection. “When we first started writing for this album there was a lot of self-indulgent stuff that we all brought to the table,” he says. “And we kept on trying to get these songs together but nothing was gelling. And we just came to the conclusion that we just have to go back to what we’re good at doing, and that’s just balls-out rock’n’roll. The Poor’s just a rock’n’roll band, and we just want to have a good time, and that’s what we write about.”