With New Years Eve edging closer and closer every day, it’s high time you started securing your plans. Are you getting out of town, or is your best mate insisting his house party will be a ripper?
Then of course, there’s festivals aplenty. This NYE, thousands will be hiking to Beyond The Valley to catch some of the best bands in Australia, and two of the acts on the setlist are thrashin’ duo DZ Deathrays and Unearthed champion Alex Lahey.
Every festival journey starts with a solid road trip, so we thought we’d get these legends better acquainted by imagining what an idyllic Aussie burner in the back of a van would be like with everybody on board.
Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall as DZ Deathrays and Alex Lahey toured together? We find out what shenanigans the three musos would get up to.
HAPPY: You get two records to play on repeat the entire trip. What do you bring?
ALEX: Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits and my 2-CD 80’s Movie Hits compilation I picked up in some bargain bin years ago. Some say trash, I say treasure.
DZ: Oh snap! 80’s Movie Hits compilation is a game changer. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but I don’t think I would need any Bruce Springsteen.
HAPPY: Simon and Shane start bickering constantly between themselves in the backseat of the van – how do you diffuse the situation?
ALEX: Turn up Unchained Melody from the 80’s compilation and make them stare each other in the eyes until all their troubles are no more.
DZ: Coincidentally the standard DZ solution to a lot of things.
HAPPY: DZ refuse to eat fast food – what do you make them eat instead?
ALEX: We could totally do a bakery tour of wherever we’re traveling. Regional bakeries are a huge vibe mainly because their fridges are like a time capsule – Nippy’s, Oasis, Portello, the list goes on.
DZ: PIE TOUR! …wouldn’t be the first time to be honest.
HAPPY: DZ insists on drinking beers in the back while you drive. What do you do?
ALEX: Continue to sip jealously on my Portello…
DZ: Portello is also pretty enviable.
HAPPY: The CD player/radio breaks – what song do you bust out to entertain everyone in the car?
DZ: Start singing Tiny Dancer but replace all the lyrics with ‘Alex Lahey’.
ALEX: I’d rather sing the Old School version of Total Eclipse of the Heart – “I FUCKIN’ NEED YOU MORRRRRE THAN EVAHHH”.
HAPPY: You see a hitchhiker walking down the road, there aren’t many other cars around – what do you do?
DZ: Depends on how ‘stabby’ the hitchiker is. If there’s room and the trip has been real boring it could be fun to pick someone up and mix it up. Also if they do try to stab you, you’d probably get a good story out of it assuming you didn’t die…
ALEX: How ‘stabby’ is ‘too stabby’? The subjectiveness of that term irks me…
HAPPY: You get one book to read aloud to help Alex get to sleep – what do you read to her?
DZ: The screenplay to the movie Speed.
ALEX: I prefer the screenplay to The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.
HAPPY: You break down on a lonely strip of road in the middle of the night – what do you do?
DZ: Hope there is some beers in the van while you wait for help.
ALEX: This is also prime time for the ‘stabby’ hitchhiker to turn on us… Drink up, boys.
