In episode two of The Making of A Postcard From The Edge Of The Underside, Sound Unlimited hit the road and support everyone from Shaquille O'Neal to New Kids On The Block, and earn the respect of the world's biggest hip-hop group.
Having secured a deal with Sony Music, Sound Unlimited get on the road to tour and earn new fans, but quickly learn that being the first hip-hop group to tour across the country raises a whole series of unforeseen issues. It's their work supporting travelling acts, though, that really begins to open doors for the pioneering Australian hip-hop group.
Hosted by Steve Duck
Post Production by Posterboy Media
Classic Material is a co-production of Acclaim Magazine and Complex AU
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In episode one of Classic Material, we were transported back to the early days of Sydney's hip-hop scene, where artists, designers, punks, rockabillys and bboys congregated in the same circles, and Westside Posse travelled around the city hosting spontaneous block parties.
In this episode, Sound Unlimited hit the road with some big names, travel across Australia, and then jet out to the US.
I'm your host Steve Duck, and this is Classic Material, the making of Sound Unlimited - A Postcard From The Edge of the Underside. Presented by G-Shock
Sound Unlimited had got to work and had released two songs - Piece By Piece, and Unity. Both were produced by local crew Cat And Moose, and featured vocals from Tina, Rosano and Kode Blue.
It would be their next single, though, that would break through and take Sound Unlimited to the ARIA chart. And it all started when Rosano decided to find a sample to flip that would give Sound Unlimited a genuine Australian flavour.
cuz everyone was using samples from overseas and I want to use, what can I sample locally that we can sit into this thing, you know what I mean? Like some, it's like a local band cuz everyone else was just sampling stuff from overseas.
These were the early days of Australian hip-hop. There was no established local sound at this point.
Sound Unlimited were making American music, but it was never their intention to simply produce a carbon copy of whatever was coming out of the US. They had come from breaking and graff, two subcultures that value ingenuity, originality and staying true to yourself. They were artists. And they were out to forge their own identity within Australian music.
Rosano cued up the most Australian song he could think of - Men At Work's Land Down Under. He looped it, cut it, and created a beat around it. The song was called Kickin To The Undersound.
The next step, was to clear the sample and make it official. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be that easy.
I'd sampled that and I'd, I'd written a song. They denied me the use of the sample. So my publisher was in touch with Colin Hayes, publisher, and I said to him, tell Colin that not a problem.
I'll get a flute player in to play Kookaburra sits on an old gum tree right. Which was later brought up against them. He then, he, he knew, he gave me permission. He took a hundred percent of, the music credit. But what we did, what, what we went was, doesn't matter cuz we really liked the track and we just wanted to get out there.
Colin Hay, who wroteLand Down Under, didn't agree to Sound Unlimited's use of the song. Until Rosano called his bluff and told him he'd have someone else play the traditional song Kookaburra Sits In An Old Gum Tree.
Hay then agreed to let Sound Unlimited sample Land Down Under - on the proviso that 100% of the royalties from Kickin To The Undersound went to him.
Rosano got his way. He wasn't interested in the publishing at the time, it was more a means of getting Sound Unlimited on the radio and TV. But, many years later, the Kookaburra Sits In An Old Gum Tree sample would rear it's head again - and Men At Work were ordered to pay 5% of the royalties for Land Down Under to the owner of the old Australian song.
He ended up giving us permission and then years later I saw that.
The people who donned the copyright KBA sits on ol gum tree, sued them and they said they had no idea. And it's like, it's bullshit because as soon as I told Colin that I was gonna get a flute player to play that part, cuz I said, it's Cobara sits on an ol gum tree mate. It's like, yeah, they, he backed down and let me use it.
Cuz he knew, he knew it would open a fucking can of worms for him. You know?
Copyright lawsuits aside, Rosano was happy to be the first local rap artist to sample a local song.
As far as I know, it was the first, first, uh, Australian track that had an actual local band sample in it. So that's, that was my, that was all I wanted to do cuz everyone was just sampling James Brown and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sampling a Men At Work song was ridiculed by some of the country's hardcore hip-hop fans, but, as Paul Buchanan remembers, it was simply a means for Rosano to incorporate more Australian references and cultural touchpoints into Sound Unlimited's music.
I think Sound Unlimited, from where they were, there was definitely no Australian hip hop to even model themselves on. So their influence was very American. But Rosanna was very much about throwing in Australian, especially in these lyrics, Australian lines.
You know, find the flag red, black and yellow and using Australian samples and stuff too. So that, they were trying to forge an Australian hip hop identity, that's for sure.
It wasn't just the lyrics. Rosano also rocked head to toe Sydney Kings merch - on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, no less - in the Kickin To The Undersound video.
Absolutely. Wrapping Sydney. Well, at the time the baseball, uh, basketball gear was, was something that was sort of hot, you know, LA Raiders, et cetera, football, all, all the, uh, US apparel stuff, you know what I mean? And I thought, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do something that's Australian that nobody else will be wearing in another video.
So I'm really proud of having done that early on then, because nobody else here was doing it. Everyone was, you know, repping us stuff. So, and it was the same, the same decision basically as, as I've done with the, with the Men at Work thing.
I was trying to find a, a point of differentiation, you know?
Rosano and Sound Unlimited were criticised at first for incorporating different genres, having a woman jump in and sing hooks, and overall not keeping it real enough. But, when they sampled an Australian song to make a straight up Australian hip-hop single, they were criticised again.
But, these are the struggles Sound Unlimited faced as the first group to break out of the underground and try to take the small Australian hip-hop scene to the next level.
There were obstacles everywhere. Paul Buchanan remembers that even when it came to touring around Australia, Sound Unlimited hit the first issues very early.
I think there was talent there, but then there was a, so what do you do with it in Australia?
Because there's no, circuit and these are the things that we hit really quickly.
There were no venues with a history of hosting live hip-hop. And even picking a city was difficult - who knew what the hip-hop scene looked like in Newcastle or Rockhampton at the time? Sony and Sound Unlimited were in unchartered territory.
And they were again, they were already playing live when I saw them, there was no, certainly no hip hop circuit, you know, and you couldn't really go and put sound unlimited posse on it at the Hopeton or, uh, Adderdale hotel.
It just wasn't, wasn't right. So it was like, God, we've got to work out. where to put these guys on, you know? And so it was, let's do nightclubs, um, the freezer. We'd have residencies here and there at certain nights that, or places that we knew were sympathetic and open minded enough to have, uh, hip hop music or live music.
And, um, yeah, it was really tricky cause, and even once they started to get some popularity, uh, the frontier touring. Companies of the world that do, do, do tour bands around Australia. They were quite interested and supportive, but again, typically it's, well, okay, we'll book you in these, these venues cause you're at this level, but there was no, there was no path trodden.
And that's where I think Sound Unlimited need to be kind of congratulated to do it without. anyone before them in Australia. Guys like Hilltop Hood say they, they, they built a circuit themselves and they need to be congratulated for conquering it. Um, and well done to them. Um, and Triple J certainly helped them get there.
Sound Unlimited were those few years earlier when it was really tricky to work out. Okay, we're going to go to Melbourne. We think we can do a few clubs in Melbourne and um It was sort of a hard grind just to sort of work out how to do it.
When the group would find cities, towns and venues to rock - the next question was, what does a live hip-hop show look like in Australia? Were local audiences ready for two MCs and a DJ?
The live thing was, we play, experimented with DAT tapes for a while and putting the beats on tape, which is good and bad, and it makes it easy for a production perspective in one way, but not great from a live view in another. And then the band committed to a full band, and suddenly they went from a four piece to an eight piece with guitars and drums and the bass and the whole show fitting into a bus and the whole thing.
Now it became a new beast, because then it naturally became a bit more funkier then too, I think, because it became live, as opposed to the rigid, program beats of hip hop.
It was a time of experimentation, trial and error. But, through it all, it's a time Kode Blue remembers fondly
we were touring. We was, we were Torago busing it up and down the East Coast doing clubs.
It was a whole new scene for music in Australia as such, like we didn't have to just do pubs, you know. We were doing clubs, nightclubs, wherever people wanted to dance and then all the big stuff we were doing. So we tended to tour heaps. We toured a lot and if we weren't flying we were in the Tarago doing the Tarago thing.
The Tarago trips up and down the east coast soon became nationwide tours, as Sound Unlimited connected with hip-hop fans right across the country.
back then it was a really good community, it felt very different to, you know, all the other outside tribes, you know, the little hip hop community we had at the time.
So yeah, you make connections with people in other cities, do gigs in Newcastle and Wollongong, and you know, like, guys from Albany coming all the way to Perth to watch Sound Unlimited and meeting you and be like, man, and like, what are you?
We're fucking fishermen from Albany. It's like the people you would meet, man, the mad Aussies that love hip hop and shit. It's just the best. It's like, crazy music, how it brought everyone together that
but yeah, we had, those years were awesome.
All the touring, the experimenting with a live band, and working on their performance, their timing, and routines, had prepared them for what was about to come.
One of the biggest acts in hip-hop was about to touch down on the east coast of Australia. And someone had to get out there and warm up the crowd first.
I was at Sony at the time and there was this, I remember, I'll never forget it actually, oh, there's this band called, Public Enemy that wants to come to Australia, Michael Koppel is interested in bringing him over.
They run the numbers, yeah, we think they could probably get 20, 000 album sales off the back of the new album. And I'm like, yes, please bring him to Australia. And in the end, it went platinum, that album, which is 70, 000. And it was because at that moment, hip hop was starting to really go, you know, it's conquering the world a bit.
Public Enemy's 1990 Australian Tour was only two shows - one in Sydney, another in Melbourne. But that was all it took for Sound Unlimited and one of the greatest rap groups of all time to develop a strong connection.
Paul Buchanan remembers that Sound Unlimited's steadfast belief in representing who they are, and being their true selves may have been what earned the respect of PE.
The whole bitches and hoes thing that was starting to bubble up out of America at the time was, talked about that a lot as a band, like, you know, in the bus and all that kind of stuff. Should you be saying that stuff? And, where does Australia fit within some of the vernacular of, hip hop?
Some of it doesn't work at all. Some of it's fine. How can you bring a new flavor to it? Those guys were conscious of, They just didn't want to be pure imitators. They wanted to make it Aussie homegrown stuff. And actually I think that's what, peaked, Public Enemy's interest in it was that they could see the genuine hip hop, foundations of what Sound Unlimited were doing, but they were building it into their own Frankenstein, along the way, you know.
It was the 90s. The Keep It Real Era. And that attitude was built into anyone who took hip hop seriously. From the performers to the writers and the fans, that you had to represent yourself, who you are, and where you came from. There was no faking the funk. And Sound Unlimited were no different. Rosano remembers the time.
Well, I would never mention any names, but there was a lot of people in Sydney sort of coming, starting to come from a bit of a gangster perspective.
And I thought, man, I grew up in Hazo. And it's like these kids are all middle and upper class act, talking and acting like gangsters. I've come up, I've come up from Hauser and I'm talking about uplifting and actually speaking well, and trying to be articulate with the things I wanna say but I also believe that, that the original sort of hip hop, um, ethos, back in days in breaking was that it was sort of like the peace, unity, love, and having fun, you know what I mean? So,
The decisions the group had made earlier, to wear their Australian identity on their sleeve and produce a truly local brand of hip-hop, had worked out. Public Enemy were now an ally.
And the close relationship with Public Enemy paid off in a big way. The touring rap act had exceeded expectations for Sony, which cracked the door open just a little more for Sound Unlimited. But that wasn't all.
At that point, Sound Unlimited were signed, but just for a handful of singles. Beyond that, nothing was confirmed. But, with Chuck and Flav in their corner, an album deal became a possibility.
the first deal that Sound Unlimited was offered was like a couple of singles, so there was no album on the table. And they released, piece by piece in unity. And around about that time was when Public Enemy were touring.
And Sound Unlimited were, I think the obvious choice is the Support Act. And as I say, Public Enemy were on a, on a rise in Australia. The goal was to reach from a record company perspective was let's tour this band and we reckon we can get 20, 000 sales out of it. That ticks all the financial boxes to justify the money that Sony was going to spend to bring them over.
Well, it sold over three times out of sold 70, 000, maybe 90, 000 plus. Album, so everyone's going boy. This is great making money. That's again. That's how it's a record business It's the business to sell records. So they take a punt. It comes back triple fold. Everyone feels pretty good and flavor flav in particular Really love sound and liberty love their ethos and the people and that so I guess the the chatters were hey, we really want to get an album out We haven't, you know, had huge chart success, we've had some kind of impact, which feels great, , it's going, it's in a positive direction, and so, once Flav caught whiff of that, he was just like, Dennis Hanlon, who was the CEO, of, Sony, you gotta give these guys an album, these guys are gonna, let's go, and, uh, He, so he just basically, typical Flav, blah, blah, blah, just sort of spoke out of place as he does, and just sort of helped grease the wheels in, in just that, you know, hey these people are good, we can, we can help them out in America, all that kind of stuff,
The momentum was building for Sound Unlimited. A little deal with Sony had expanded to an album deal. They were touring the country. Public Enemy were considered friends. But, despite all their inroads as a pioneering hip-hop group in the rock-centric Australian music industry, they still had their detractors.
The hardcore hip-hop fans in Australia's major cities looked at Sound Unlimited - the music videos, the singles, the musicality, the melodic hooks, and had decided the group was too mainstream. But, instead of conceding to the keep it real crowd, Sound Unlimited kept moving forward. And what happened next, set the group on an entirely new trajectory.
Now, I'd rather not make this about myself but I have to just interject with a little anecdote here. In the early 90s, I was a young primary school kid, and I loved New Kids On The Block.
In 1992, I experienced my first ever concert. New Kids On The Block, at the Sydney Entertainment Center. And the support act, was Sound Unlimited. Little did I know, the New Kids tour was about to change everything for the Sydney crew.
Sound Unlimited were in a really good spot because All these interesting bands that were touring, they would often get the support slot. Like, we did the Beastie Boys tour at Salinas with Shaquille O'Neal was the, uh, the middle act. And, uh, so it was Sound Unlimited, Shaquille O'Neal, Beastie Boys, you know.
It was like, I couldn't believe my luck as well. I felt lucky because I was just standing backstage at this stuff. It was awesome, you know. And New Kids were another one that... Kind of didn't make sense, but, uh, you know, they're kind of American funky, uh, good exposure for the band. Uh, and they got, they got the supports, uh, gig for it.
And those gigs were. They certainly, they didn't make any money. It was all about getting in front of crowds and things.
Sound Unlimited had performed right across the country. Kode Blue and Rosano had been performing in one way or another since they were teenagers. It didn't matter who they were opening for, they would jump up on stage, rock the crowd and earn a few new fans.
While the New Kids tour didn't earn them any money, and certainly didn't help their image with the hardcore hip-hop fans in Sydney and Melbourne, it had more than one unexpected outcome.
New Kids On The Block toured with a live band, which included brothers Derek and Kevin Antunes. When the Antunes met Sound Unlimited, everything changed.
So these are kids that grew up crazy musicians. You know, their old man is a famous jazz musician. I mean, blues musician. And yeah, they were amazing kids, you know, mad, just awesome. But we had that background. So we gravitated towards them. It was just that meeting. It was just perfect.
We got on so well with those guys.
The Antunes and Sound Unlimited connected instantly. Derek and Tina in particular
Tina and Derek met and fell instantly in love and it was all kind of a bit weird and bizarre because Derek was declaring his love for Tina publicly within days and things. It was quite strange.
Sometimes when you know, you know. It wasn't just a romantic connection though. Derek and Kevin liked what Sound Unlimited were doing, and offered to produce more songs
Um, but yeah, so Sound Unlimited did the tour. Um, and again, that was a classic. And where that led them was to meet two guys, cause it was Derek and his brother, the Antunes Brothers, um, that offered to do the production.
Sony could see the group had aspirations to take this to bigger and better places. They were creative, ambitious and driven. And that, along with the persuasion of Chuck D and Flava Flav, had convinced the label to continue this experiment into Australian hip hop.
As Paul Buchanan remembers, the addition of the Antunes brothers into the mix came at exactly the right time to put the label's mind at ease.
Sony agreed to do the album, going to put some money into it, but... Where's it going to be recorded? Who's going to record it? It had to be the right kind of producers for the obvious reasons.
You couldn't just put a rock producer into this because it would kill it. And Derek and Kevin and Tunes, they just ticked all those boxes, they had rhythmic knowledge, they had harmonic knowledge, how to record in a studio knowledge, all the things you need, and they were reasonably cheap, which is also important because there wasn't a big budget to play with, , and it wasn't like they were flown to live in a, an apartment in some big city. It was like, just outside of Boston, they were staying in Holiday Inns, Ace Holiday Inn, cheap as chips kind of thing.
But that, that certainly didn't matter, because It was so exciting, you know, um, for, for the band to go over to the States, do all this over there, meet the friends of the Entunes brothers as well, play basketball, shoot hoops, live it a bit. It was, it was really, really fun, you know, and creatively I think worthwhile as well.
They live down in New Bedford. They live just outside of Boston. So that was, that was a decision between sort of us and Sony really, I mean, Tina and Dirk made a good relationship and Rossano, we all made a relationship, but um, we kept in contact musically and then it just panned out that we had the money, we wanted to do an album, they were really keen and interested. And it, was possible to do it. Sony would pay. So, um, and we said, yeah, sure, we'll go. We'll definitely go and make the album in the States if we can. That'd be awesome. And we got, you know, went into the Black Rock building.
We met all the Sony execs in, in New York and stuff and went to Boston. So yeah, that was an awesome experience, went to New Bedford, got into recording or laying the vocals really a lot of that the musical stuff.
They were so, you know Pro expert at what they did, and we kind of were pro slightly professional as well. You know, we had our heads screwed on. We like, you know, we knew what we were doing. We directed all our own videos. We, we were so fucking into it, you know, like creatively and on top of everything that, um, it was kind of an easy process for them and us really.
We all got on and. It was just laying vocals mostly,
and I let them just do the music.
While the group was in Boston, something was happening back home in Australia.
Sound Unlimited had been grinding it out for a few years, releasing two singles, hitting the road, and doing what they could to break into a reluctant music industry with no road map. While they found radio tough to crack, and some venues wouldn't have them, one outlet that did support them was music video shows.
we had a, a sort of a, a good, a good level of success considering we were unable to, there was no other way to reach our market apart from shows like video hits.
It was really hard getting on those, on those things back then. They just wouldn't play Australian music. That wasn't, you know, either straight up, straight up, I guess, rock music to a degree or tried and tested pop stuff, you know? So there wasn't those avenues for us.
Rosano acknowledges that, in those early days, Rage may have been supportive more out of an official requirement than anything else. But Sound Unlimited would take anything they got.
our only other, other sort of area that we were slightly getting a bit of action on was places like rage. Because it was owned by the ABC and they were trying to do that whole thing with using, they had, they used to have rules about having to use specific chunks of Australian content.
So it wasn't about them choosing us or liking us. They had to use us. So we, you know, it was one avenue that we could actually, the exploit and utilize was that visual video, sort of video hits type, type shows. And, and Rage was the one where we knew we'd be able to get videos on. So we. Produced those videos and made sure they got on them.
Kickin To The Undersound, with that infamous Men At Work sample, was starting to break through. The song's music video, with Rosano in Sydney Kings gear on the Harbour Bridge, was getting support on Rage and Video Hits and, slowly, was being accepted into mainstream radio. The Australian mainstream was getting its first ever taste of local hip-hop - and people liked it.
This was the breakthrough the group was waiting for. And it represented the opportunity for that all-important return on investment that Sony was waiting for. With a song making inroads on FM radio and moving up the charts, it was a chance to introduce the group to Australia via media. Radio interviews, magazine and newspaper features, and so on.
The only problem? The group was in Boston, recording their album.
the irony is that we were actually in Boston writing while, uh, while, while it was doing well here, which means we couldn't, we couldn't promote it, we couldn't do anything, you know, um, but we were getting, you know, we had. People wanting us all over the place to promote 'em. And we couldn't, we couldn't be here to do it.
Kickin To The Undersound spent 11 weeks on the ARIA Charts, peaking at an unbelievable number 20 in May 1992. This could have been the beginning of a period of growth and success for Australian hip-hop. But instead, it would be almost 10 years before another local hip-hop song even touched the top 40.
In our next episode, we'll try to find out why that is.