Furnace And The Fundamentals
Are you ready for The Ultimate Fringe Party?! After sold out shows in Sydney, Melbourne and the UK, Furnace and the Fundamentals are bringing FURNAPALOOZA to the Adelaide Fringe for the first time – for one night only.
The six Sydney showmen with a penchant for over the top antics are taking their incredible party-starting energy around Australia in 2020 with an exhilarating, non-stop party set of the greatest songs of all time, accompanied by a mind-boggling matrix of music footage on the big screen, light up suits, inflatables and more dance-floor anthems than you can count. Don’t miss this audio-visual extravaganza, with non-stop dance-floor anthems from Beyonce and Eminem to Queen, The Beatles and The Lion King! Hi Fi Way spoke to Mike Solo from the band about the show.
Adelaide sounds like it will be an absolute blast…
We’ll be throwing one massive party with all the production, visuals, extra special guests and that kind of thing as well only get to do this a few times a year in Australia. It starts out as a lot of stress trying to put on the best show possible but as we get closer it is a big buzz where we get to enjoy all the fun of bouncing around on stage and the kind words people give us afterwards. It is really great to be able to come and do this in Adelaide, we haven’t been that often, we love the city and it has such a great live music scene. I think it is great to be kicking off our tour in Adelaide and will set a really good tone for the rest of the shows. It is really wonderful to be a part of the Fringe this time and go back to all our favourite food joints as well.
Have you found that word of mouth is really strong in getting the word out about Furnace and the Fundamentals?
Definitely, word of mouth is the number one thing for this band and the show. Even all the YouTube videos help giving people the sense of the ridiculous that goes on at the shows with people having a good time and we’re having a good time with them. We’re not a band that is on Triple J or commercial radio and people don’t immediately recognise the name. It takes the word of mouth for people to bring their friends along or say things like “hey, this is going to be a great night out” and “you’ll know all these songs already”. Once they get there, hopefully they’ll have fun we do see people coming back with their friends. For us, that is the best thing. As great as it would be to just put up a poster and sell ten thousand tickets it is really nice that people are going out of their way to recommend us to their friends and come back every year.
Do you think that is something that is missing from a lot of shows these days, the element of fun?
Definitely, I think it is one of those things that people can get self-conscious or go out trying to be a bit cool. We are doing absolutely ridiculous things on stage, so it doesn’t matter how silly you look dancing in the crowd, you’ll never look as silly as we do!
That was something that we were concerned about earlier doing the shows and once we realised that doesn’t matter whether people have fun or not we’ll just let loose and get creative with the show production, the show design and the way we present the songs. Since that point five or six years ago it’s really gone to another level in that we’re able to do this around Australia and overseas. It is totally about having a good time and nothing more complicated about that.
What do you look for in a song before giving it the Furnace and the Fundamentals touch up?
It has to be awesome! Hopefully it is a big hit, the six of us in the band all have diverse musical interests but usually we’ll acknowledge, even if someone doesn’t particularly love a certain song, if it is one of the biggest songs of all time where it is always on the radio or sold ten million copies when it came out then we’re going to try and put it in to the show. Then it is a matter of figuring out where it goes, is it something we use as a pick me up after a ballad or something we need to use to get the dance floor started at the start of the show. We’ll play shows and throw these new songs in and see what the reaction is like.
Every song has to meet the audience test. If people singing along, dancing, clapping, cheering and clapping along, recognising that riff or lyric line we know it is a keeper. Sometimes some of our personal favourite songs don’t quite hit the mark they way that we had hoped, maybe the production on the original track is to unique to recreate or maybe it is something about where we placed in the set list so we’ll need to move it around a bit. Does the audience love it? We want to keep that feeling of fun and enjoyment, nostalgia and recognisability going through the entire set. That way there is no down moments where people are going what is this or I’ve never heard this before. You’re not taking people out of the moment much, the audience is the decider for us.
What can you reveal about the Adelaide show?
Just the greatest songs of all time all night! We’re going to put all of our energy in to making it the most ridiculously exciting night out that we can. You just have to be there, it will be awesome.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Tickets for the Adelaide show from FringeTix.
