Mosman Puppies Learn New Tricks in LA
WITH ITS sylvan streets and Macquarie Bank mansions, Mosman seems an unlikely nursery for metal heads and speed punks. But for Shimon Moore and Emma Anzai, schoolmates and founders of nu-metal outfit Sick Puppies, it's been a short, bumpy trip from backyard gigs on the lower north shore to stardom in the US and sell-out shows at Acer Arena.
"It's weird," Moore, 25, says. "At Mosman High we were playing to five people and now we're playing to thousands of these rabid fans who have our lyrics tattooed on their arms. The level of enthusiasm is, um, somewhat different."
Virtual unknowns in Australia and now in Los Angeles, Sick Puppies have struck it big with their latest single, You're Going Down, currently No. 1 on the US rock charts. Next week, they return to Australia for a national tour and will play two nights at Acer Arena in support of mega-selling Canadians Nickelback.
Moore, a self-taught guitarist and Silverchair fanatic, met Anzai in the band room of Mosman High School one afternoon in 1997. Each had reserved the room for the same time. As they argued about who should get it, they discovered they shared musical tastes - Silverchair, naturally, but also Limp Bizkit and Green Day - and so decided to rehearse together. After finding a drummer (the son of a taxi driver Moore met one night), they took their name from the Carl Hiaasen book. In 2000, the year Moore and Anzai left school, the band won Triple J's Unearthed competition as well as their first recording contract.
But real fame came courtesy of the mysterious Free Hugs Campaign. One afternoon in 2004, while Moore was working in Pitt Street mall as a sandwich board man for half-price shoes, he noticed a tall, lanky character carrying a sign that read "FREE HUGS". Moore filmed a video of the man, called Juan Mann, coaxing hugs from passersby - old men, schoolgirls, grandmothers - and posted it on YouTube, overlaying the unexpectedly poignant film with the first Sick Puppies single, All the Same. The clip attracted 43 million views and became a worldwide phenomenon.
In 2005, Moore and Anzai packed up their guitars, headed to America and found new drummer Chris Mileski. "We were getting gigs here, the plan being to build enough momentum to be able to tour internationally. But we just realised that it was going to be huge amount of work, and that we might as well do that work in the biggest market in the world, which is America."
Moore says the coming tour will be an opportunity for the band to re-establish itself at home. "We have been that busy that we haven't had that many chances to tour Australia. It's a shame because unless you power through and consistently hit the same market then people will forget about you. We'll change that this time, though."
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