Elemeno P ride again
Finds out why Elemeno P – a band always ahead of the curve – has decided to reunite.
Alan Perrott
When timing is everything, Elemeno P proved the best moment for success may be before anyone knows you’re even in the game.
First, the band scored a record deal without having played a single gig, then its first appearance was before about 1000 people in support of American act Sum 41.
So it goes without saying that 2003 was a heady year for the power pop quartet, which didn’t go down too well with some, especially when the debut album, Love & Disrespect, duly went to No 1 and eventually reached triple platinum status.
The standard line has always aligned even modest levels of fame with years of due-paying, lump-earning and asskissing, so that, well, it just wasn’t fair.
Of course, the truth was a bit different.
All four members had done their time playing in other bands, and they’d already spent two years quietly honing a swag of songs before hitting the labels. And, again, the timing was perfect. Universal was flush with Hayley Westenra money and the Elemeno P signature style – bright, three-minute, poptastic blasts with sing-along choruses – matched the zeitgeist of the time.
‘‘I think what we did then is similar to how things work now,’’ says vocalist and co-founder Dave Gibson, ‘‘because most bands doing things the old way, it didn’t work for them. We had a single out (Fast Times in Tahoe) before we’d even played. Like now with streaming – get your stuff out to people and get things rolling.’’
Drummer Scotty Pearson had an inkling they were on to something when he heard their single played twice in a row as he drove to that very first gig at the Powerstation.
So no-one should begrudge them a comeback, even if you struggle with the idea of a band that’s only existed this side of 2000 needing a reunion – maybe, once again, they’re ahead of the pack? Still, Elemeno P remains one of the country’s biggest selling rock acts of all time, have played pretty much every venue in the country at least twice, and then had the wisdom to fade to grey when the band began running out of steam.
You just know things will get a little raucous when Elemeno P takes the stage at the sold-out gig at Auckland’s Kings Arm on March 10, and Blue Smoke in Christchurch the following night.
Yet the question remains, why? After all, Gibson has a good thing going in New York with folk-inflected, family group, Streets of Laredo while, over in Los Angeles, Justyn Pilbrow has gained traction in the highly competitive music production field through his association with Californian rock band The Neighbourhood (aka The NBHD).
Basically, the timing, as ever, felt right. First and maybe most, the members missed each other and, second, they reckon they’ve been away long enough to ease into the nostalgia section.
But it took Pearson to get things moving (when not driving his construction business he does sound work