All That Mini Skirt Know
Photos by Dougal Gorman.
‘Such Is Life’ is the unofficial three-word motto of bogan Australia.
Ingrained in modern Australian folklore as the alleged final words of the iron-masked Australian anti-hero, Ned Kelly, as he was led to his execution in 1880. While newspapers reported that those infamous three words were the last of the three-time cop killer, factual accounts suggest he instead said ‘Ah, well, I suppose’. Either way, those three words have become synonymous with an anti-authority sentiment within the nation, making their way to the bumper stickers of basically every car in regional Australia and tattooed on to the bodies of many, most famously, the stomach of controversial 2000s AFL superstar Ben Cousins.
“Ned Kelly Letter Box” is the second last song on All That We Know, the new album by Byron Bay Pub-Punk outfit Mini Skirt. Ned Kelly, who the band's frontman, Jacob Boylan, calls ‘Australia’s Personal Jesus’, isn’t the only quintessentially Australian theme within the album's eleven songs, with salad rolls and lyrics that paint perfect pictures of country towns taking up prominent lyrical positioning.
Coming five years after the band's first album, All That We Know was finally released in mid-November, with the band describing the process as ‘The pinnacle of procrastination’. I called up Jacob to talk about the album, why it took so long to finish, the importance of political lyrics, Australian punk history and of course, Ned Kelly.
In an Instagram post, you called the album 'the pinnacle of procrastination'. Why did you guys procrastinate over it so much?
Well, we were pretty good at getting into the studio in terms of once the album was ready to be recorded. But that was over two years ago, and we got the first mixes back pretty quickly after that. It was just a thing of where our mate Cam wanted to be involved in the mixing process with Owen [Penglis], and we thought it would be good to have them both involved, but with Owen living in Sydney, there was a lot of emails going back and forth and trying to line up phone calls to explain sound stuff which didn’t work. So, we didn’t just do anything for a year and a half, and I think part of that was that we were pretty burnt out. We'd been doing shows consistently for the better part of eight years, and we were all happy to chill for a bit longer. Eventually, we were like, we have all this music that we want to play and put out, so we should do something with it. We sent it to Mikey Young [Eddy Current Suppression Ring & Total Control], who’s mixed and mastered all our other stuff, and he nailed it first shot as he always does.
Were you only playing songs from Casino at shows until recently?
Our old setlist had a couple of the new songs on there, but that was a part of the kick up the bum to get it going again. We didn’t want to keep feeding people the same stuff. It’s not that the setlist seemed stale, but we felt like we weren’t doing justice for people who were coming to see us, not having any new music out for five years and being like: are we just washed-up old guys doing reunion shows every gig [laughs].
Listening to the album now that it’s out is nice because anytime we’d talk about it or listen to it, it had that workload we knew was coming up attached to it. It was painful to listen to because we knew how much we had to do before it could come out.
I wanted to ask about the song “Ned Kelly Letter Box”, was it about a real letter box, and where was it?
Yeah. Have you ever seen one?
No, I live in Melbourne [laughs]. If I went out a bit further from the city, I’d definitely see them.
There are a few around here. If you went to Glenrowan or Beechworth, you’d definitely see them. The one the song is about is at this house I was working on in Lennox Heads. We were there for a few weeks, the owner was such a hassle to deal with and was building this big fuck off house in this part of town where all the houses are made out of telegraph poles.
I think about Ned Kelly and the mythology about him a lot, he’s sort of like Australia’s Personal Jesus; he is whoever you want him to be to you.
I always think it’s really funny too, because if someone did what he did now, those same people would not like him at all. Like a lot of the Ned Kelly worshipers are more likely than not people who are pro-police.
Yeah, totally, he would be on 60 Minutes and people would be blowing up about it. And at the same time, it isn’t everyone; there are definitely people who hate cops but love Ned Kelly, it’s a full Personal Jesus scenario.
The Personal Jesus sentiment is so true. You know, apparently, he never even said, ‘Such is life’, but instead, ‘Ah, well, I suppose.’
That’s even better, I’d rather get that tattooed [Laughs].
I wanted to talk a bit more about your lyrics. They’re political in a way that is quite observant, being your own perspective on what is happening in the world. What drew you to writing lyrics along those lines?
Part of it is because the only thing I do in the band is write the words, so I may as well put some effort in when the boys are putting effort in doing all the music parts. I also feel like writing a song like “Pottsville River”, which is about when I first started seeing my wife, seems a bit corny to me, even though the political songs are personal in the way that I am putting myself in the firing line, and it is from my perspective, but it feels more interesting and important. Music is an easy way to get people to think about things or be engaged, especially with politics. People have so much to do; they have kids to take care of, work to do, they’re not going to have time to read an essay or listen to political radio when they’re just trying to get through their day, and forever music has been somewhat innately political. I’m lucky enough to have the privilege, time, and curiosity to put into learning about stuff. I grew up in Cronulla, and the majority of my friends from home aren’t at all interested in any of that stuff, but if I can give them a bite-sized chunk of what I’ve digested, they have that little bit of ammunition.
Totally. That also brings up an interesting point, because yeah, globally punk has been innately politicised, but here in Australia, it hasn’t had that same political emphasis.
Yeah, less so in the last twenty years. A lot of that punk music we would’ve grown up listening to of the era of the late 90s and early 2000s, except for maybe The Living End, had gone to the skate punk side of things and was about fucking shit up and getting maggot.
Yeah, exactly, and it feels like that has stuck, so I think it’s nice you’re able to bridge that gap of having that same pub-punk sound with politics.
I always think that if you have something to say, you may as well make it worthwhile.
It’s a nice outlook.
I like learning about stuff and what’s going on in a bigger picture way, and how it affects people other than me, which is usually who political decisions affect.
To wrap this up, what's the strangest venue you’ve played a show at?
Basically, Jacob agreed to play at this concreter’s Christmas party in exchange for a driveway for his house. It was in the Pocket, which is straight north-west of Mullumbimby, where some special people live. We rock up to the house, and there are cars parked everywhere, so we think it’s going to be crazy. We walk in, and there is a full stage set up with a really good Norwegian death metal band playing, but only six people are watching them. We were like where is everyone, so we asked this dude we kind of know, and he was like, ‘They’re all in the shed over there, they’re all on the hammer.’ We were just like, ‘What is going on?’ Then we started playing, and during the first song, I felt something on my leg. I looked down, and there was a dog fully attached to my leg, biting me. Someone gets the dog off me, we keep playing, then some guy comes up on stage mid song and says to us, ‘Can you move the lights, they’re shining in my mate's eyes.’ I was so confused, it was so wack [laughs].
What the fuck. How did that even end?
We called the set early, and I think we just left.
Did Jacob get the driveway done?
I think he might’ve got it done, but it was over a year later.
That story is actually fucked.
I nearly got rabies! We’ve played more awkward ones, but that was the craziest. The funny thing was that it was the week after we had just come back from our first European tour, so we’re all thinking we’re legends. Then you roll back home, and you’re playing at the concreters Christmas party [laughs]. It was such a humbling experience.