Jon Toogood - No kooky hats

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Shihad is a band that's had a very big year in Australia and is now headlining what should be the Kiwi rock tour of the year, with Weta and Fur Patrol.

The tour sold out the town hall in the bands' home town, Wellington, last night. A few days earlier, Toogood finally makes it to the phone in Melbourne.

How are we?

I've just got the worst hangover in the world. I honestly don't usually do this and I've got that throbbing thing going down. I went and saw Fur Patrol supporting the Dandy Warhols last night. It was awesome — they are really good people and they played a really amazing show. It's pretty inspiring stuff.

The ARIAs [Shihad were nominated in three categories in the Aussie music awards] — how was it?

We did what we set out to do, which was like, basically, do what we did when we played Bitter at the New Zealand Music Awards all those years ago. It was just, like, we're going to sell ourselves by what we do and get them to televise it. So it was good, having that rent-a-crowd in the Coca-Cola T-shirts getting up and stage-diving and moshing all the way through the set. I talked to the stage manager afterwards. He said: "I didn't know what to do — we've never had that at an Aria ever." It just sort of happened. Once there were, like, 10 kids on the stage at the same time as us it started to look very unprofessional. Fantastic.

What are the politics of getting to play on these things?

Vast and huge and it doesn't end. We were added eight days out from the show. We were the last band to be added. So it was like all the record companies sit round a big, round table and go, "No, I want my band and if I give you this I'll let you have two of those." I looked at the video of our performance and they managed to bleep out all the [expletives] in The General Electric so it actually makes us look even meaner than we are.

Were the awards the end of your Oz campaign or just another interesting part of your time in Australia?

It was definitely interesting turning up in a bright yellow hovercraft. We made sure our arrival was good. What could we do? How about a vehicle with no wheels? First we were thinking monster truck and maybe driving over the queue, but nah. We went with the no-wheels option. It's the end of a pretty good year in Australia for us. It's still solid, it's like a compacted version of what we did in New Zealand. We played loads of shows over and over again, toured non-stop. General is a good record which is really great to play live, too, which is good for us because if you are doing lots and lots of shows which don't end, it's really nice to be able to walk out on stage eight months later and go, "That bit in that song, I love it." It's all been word of mouth but that's how it's always been for us anyway

Do the Aussie kids know you're from New Zealand or do they care?

I think it's pretty clear that we're from New Zealand. A couple of radio disc jockeys over here on Triple J, who are pretty much like Havoc and Newsboy, instantly just took the mickey out of us the whole time but really liked us and played all our music. So whenever kids will talk to us afterwards it's always like: "Go on, say 'choice' bro." It's weird we didn't have to give up our Kiwi-ness to get along with them.

It's quite a triple bill you've got there for this tour.

It's an awesome bill, dude. Fur Patrol just get better and better and Weta, when they are on a good night, they are pretty hard to beat. It's nice that we are all from the same area of Cuba St, but it's like the three New Zealand bands that a lot of New Zealanders like, not just Wellingtonians. It's nice. It will be like a big touring family pretty much and it will be a really nice example of the state of New Zealand music at the moment.

You haven't thought of a daggy tour name then?

No. The kooky hat brigade — I went out with Chris Knox one night and he said, "You know the stereotype for Wellington bands. It's kooky hats." We're here to smash that right out of the water.