Active Decade: '00s Genre: Rock Styles: Alternative Pop/Rock, Post-Grunge, Punk-Pop, Garage Rock Revival, Garage Punk
Members : Craig Nicholls ( Lead Guitar Lead Singer ) Hammish Rosser ( Drum ) Ryan Griffith ( Backing Vocal Backing Guitar ) Brad Heald ( Bass )
Past Member : David Oliffe ( Drum 1991-2001 ) Pattrick Matthews ( Bass 1991-2004 )
Early days The original version of the Vines met in suburban Sydney in 1991 where Craig Nicholls and Patrick Matthews met whilst working at their local McDonald's. They began playing together, with Nicholls on guitar and vocals and Matthews on bass. They were soon joined by Matthews' school friend David Oliffe on drums. The band was originally named by Nicholls as 'Rishikesh', pertaining to a place in India where his favourite band The Beatles had visited. The local newspapers always misprinted the name as 'Rishi Chasms', so he decided to name the band as The Vines. This was a mention to Nicholls' dad's frontman lead in a local Elvis cover-band called The Vynes. They started performing together Nirvana covers at backyard parties whilst working on developing a sound of their own on Nicholls' four-track recorder.
[edit] Highly Evolved In July 2001 the band flew to Los Angeles to start recording their debut album, Highly Evolved, with Rob Schnapf who had worked with the Foo Fighters, Beck and Elliott Smith. Recording was put on hold soon after, as funds ran low. David Oliffe decided to leave Los Angeles and return to Australia, due to the fast pace of events and pressure of recording. Recording continued a few months later as a result of increasing record company interest, and band had session drummers fill in including Joey Waronker of R.E.M.. Once The Vines were back in Australia they started advertising for a new drummer in late 2001. Soon after, the recruited Hamish Rosser on drums and Nicholls' best friend Ryan Griffiths on acoustic guitar.
Their first single "Factory", released in November 2001, attracted little interest in Australia. It got a good response in the United Kingdom, but record companies were still only considering the release of an EP. Nicholls, however, was adamant about making a full-length album, and went seeking record companies overseas. The Vines were eventually signed to Heavenly Records in the UK in December 2001 and EMI in Australia in April 2002. The single "Highly Evolved" earned them more critical hype as NME made it a single of the week in March 2002. That single also charted in the UK at #32 on the singles chart and also in Australia's ARIAnet top 100 singles chart.
The release of the album saw more critical success with the band appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone and NME. The album debuted at #3 in the UK's albums chart, #5 in Australia's ARIAnet albums chart and #11 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 albums chart. The band played high-profile slots on The Late Show with David Letterman and the MTV Video Music Awards. A few more singles were released from the album, including "Get Free" and "Outtathaway!". a fourth single, "Homesick", was released in Australia. Highly Evolved then went on to sell 1.5 million copies throughout the world with distribution through Capitol Records.
In May 2003, the band went into a studio in Woodstock, New York with Rob Schnapf again on production. While Craig Nicholls had talked of having a highly produced album, he told the Australian edition of Rolling Stone in March 2004 that they decided to stick to a less-is-more philosophy. "I wanted it to be - in my head - something grand, with big ideas and that vision sort of thing. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that something can't be special if it's just simple. Because I think that the songs are the main thing".
[edit] Winning Days Their second album, Winning Days, was released on March 29, 2004 and debuted at #7 in Australia, #23 in the US and #29 in the UK. The Vines had recently finished their "Australian Invasion" tour with Jet and The Living End, which started on March 11, 2004 in Houston, Texas. "Ride" was the first single off the album, and a second single off the album, the title track "Winning Days" was released in Australia (where it did not chart) and the UK. There was speculation that "Animal Machine" would have been the next American single, and early American promotional flats for the album note this. However, there was no American follow-up to "Ride". "Ride" was featured on a Nissan Cars commercial and an iPod commercial in the US in 2005. It was also featured in The WB television network's image campaign for the 2004-2005 ratings season.
After the conclusion of the Winning Days tour, the band found itself in harder times. Winning Days had not lived up to the success of Highly Evolved, and had gotten a lukewarm reception from both critics and audiences outside their diehard group of fans. Lead singer Craig Nicholls was becoming increasingly erratic, and had to be barred from doing media interviews after several bad experiences on the American tour.
This came to a head in late May 2004, when bassist Patrick Matthews walked off stage, after Craig shouted at the crowd, calling them sheep, in frustration after repeatedly asking the crowd to stop talking during the first song of a radio promotion performance for national station Triple M at the Annandale Hotel in Sydney. In the aftermath, Nicholls assaulted a photographer, and charges were pressed. Triple M also permanently banned The Vines from airplay on their network (ironically they hardly ever played music by The Vines and the following week the song "Ride" appeared on the Planet Rock countdown aired through the Triple M network). After the incident the band's management stated that the Vines would cease touring in support of Winning Days, but would record another album.
[edit] Vision Valley In mid 2005, the group announced they were working on their third album with producer Wayne Connolly. Andy Kent of fellow Australians You Am I filled in on bass playing duties. In November, the band's management announced they had finished recording all the songs that will appear on the album. Mixing and mastering of the tracks commenced January 2006. In mid December 2005, it was discovered that one of the songs from the album had been leaked. Although the song was as-of-yet untitled and unfinished, it contained guide vocals and instruments. The band's manager asked for the song to be taken down from the blog it was found on, and drummer Hamish Rosser also issued a statement on the band's fan club forum asking fans not to post or distribute the song on the internet.
"Don't Listen to the Radio" was released as the album's first single and was made available for digital download on March 7th on iTunes. "Gross out" was made available for digital download on March 18th, and was the first song leaked from the album. Vision Valley was released on April 1, 2006 in Australia, April 3 in Europe and April 4 in the United States.
Vision Valley was packed full of short, immediate songs; the album running little over 30 minutes in length. "Anysound" was the second official single from the album, and an animated music video was released exclusively through YouTube. "Dope Train" was released as a third single, with a music video composed of candid and live footage of the band from Big Day Out in 2007.
The Vines are currently trying to release a new album in the end of 2007
Source: http://artists.letssingit.com/vines-the-58grm/biography
