The Harbour Agency Presents

Models + Boom Crash Opera

Double A Side Tour 2024/25

Due to popular demand, MODELS and Boom Crash Opera are teaming up for the first time in years to play a very special tour.

In addition to the Double A Side Tour, the bands will also join James Reyne for two of his final Crawl Files ENCORE shows.

Links to each show are listed below, or on the Gigs & Tours page.

 

About MODELS –

When they formed, Models were hailed as one of the most innovative and imaginative Australian bands. Four decades later, nothing has changed.

Well, that’s not quite right – a lot of things have changed, but not the band’s approach to making music.

Models have always done things their own way.

As the authors of The 100 Best Australian Albums (which featured Models’ The Pleasure Of Your Company) stated: “Melbourne electronic outfit Models followed a distinctly perverse and disjointed course from the outset.”

The band actually had a “no singles” policy when they started – which annoyed Molly Meldrum. In 1980, Molly stopped his car on busy Chapel Street in Melbourne when he spotted a couple of Models. “He blocked traffic for several minutes to berate us,” singer Sean Kelly chuckles, “telling us that we were doing no one any favours and that our song ‘Happy Birthday IBM’ could’ve been a hit!”

(Molly didn’t hold a grudge, later calling Models “one of my favourite bands from the Countdown era”.)

Models rescinded their “no singles” policy with their second album, Local &/or General, and their chart-topping run of hits includes I Hear Motion, Big On Love, Barbados and Out Of Mind Out Of Sight.

Models are that rare breed of bands – one that has successfully straddled critical acclaim, cult appeal and commercial success.

“Alongside The Boys Next Door/The Birthday Party, Models were one of the first Melbourne bands to rise out of the ashes of that city’s hothouse punk/new wave explosion of the late 1970s with a clear vision and wider appeal,” says Ian McFarlane, author of The Encyclopedia Of Australian Rock And Pop.

Models were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2010.

“We might go into hibernation occasionally – actually, quite a lot,” Sean Kelly says, “but we have never broken up.”

Models have continued to record, recently releasing two EPs, GTK and MEMO. And live, the band pays tribute to the pop genius of James Freud, who died in 2010.

The songs still sound fresh. “We don’t think of them as being old,” Andrew Duffield says.

Models never go out of style

 

About Boom Crash Opera –

These here are crazy times. But Boom Crash Opera are one band you can rely upon.

The producer of their debut album told them: “The most important thing a group can do is stay together. Keep it together and you can do anything you want.

Boom Crash Opera took those words to heart, proudly becoming one of Australia’s most-loved bands, with 13 Top 50 singles and five Top 50 albums.

As founding member Peter Farnan says, “We sounded like our name.” It’s an intoxicating mix of indie pop and stadium rock, with unforgettable hits such as

‘Great Wall’, ‘Hands Up In The Air’, ‘City Flat’, ‘Onion Skin’ ‘Get Out Of The House’, ‘The Best Thing’ and ‘Dancing In The Storm’.

Nearly four decades after the band began, the start of ‘Onion Skin’ remains an irresistible rallying cry:

Keep it in! Cut it out! Kick it out!

 

About James Reyne – (8 & 16 November 2024)

“I said, hey, do you remember?”

James Reyne is dipping back into the Crawl File, hitting the road to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Australian Crawl’s first greatest hits collection.

To coincide with the tour, Crawl File is being reissued on vinyl by Universal Music.

Crawl File plays like a classic gig, opening with the band’s debut single, ‘Beautiful People’, and closing with their most popular live song, ‘The Boys Light Up’. In between are some of the most-loved Australian songs of all time, including ‘Reckless’, ‘Errol’, ‘Oh No Not You Again’, ‘Lakeside’, ‘Downhearted’ and ‘Things Don’t Seem’.

As one fan noted, “I can put on this album and almost feel the sea spray and the late summer nights.”

Just a snippet of any song is enough to take you back: “The garden’s full of furniture, the house is full of plants … Had an experience bizarre … I would give everything just to be like him … Let me tell you ’bout two young lovers that lived on the coast … All them summer rubbernecks kept coming to panel-van the street … Broken dreams that never really started … Things justa don’t seema to be going right … She don’t like that kind of behaviour … Hopes are up for trousers down … The garden it is dorsetted, that lady she’s so corseted.”

The wordplay is magical; the songs are unforgettable. What a sing-song dance, what a performance. Rah-rah, hey!

Fun fact: Crawl File’s distinctive artwork was co-designed by Buster Stiggs, who had been the drummer in The Swingers and Models.

Crawl File was the biggest Australian best-of of 1984, hitting #2 on the charts (kept out of top spot by the year’s biggest compilation, Choose 1985, which spent nine weeks at #1).

The best-of capped a bittersweet year for James Reyne and Australian Crawl. The band sponsored 1984’s Bells Beach Surf Classic, James won a Logie for Most Popular New Talent following his starring role in the hit mini-series Return To Eden, Australian Crawl won Most Popular Group at the Countdown Rock Awards, but then the band was rocked by the death of Guy McDonough and a planned US tour was cancelled.

James Reyne is an artist who doesn’t live in the past. But occasionally he pays it a visit.

“It was all a long time ago,” James reflects, “and sometimes I feel like it was another person who lived that life.

“But I’m still making music and I’m still on the road. Australian Crawl was a great apprenticeship.”