Record Store Day: A rare red 7" of The Herd's 77%

Photo by Jen Ng

You gotta get your hands on this! To mark the exclusive release of The Herd's 77% on 7 " red vinyl for Record Store Day (Saturday April 22nd!), we caught up with some of the key players involved with the record and its release...

Shannon Kennedy (Ozi Batla), the songwriter behind 77%, takes us back 15 years to learn more about what inspired the song. Dale Harrison (Rok Poshtya), bass in The Herd and the champion behind the vinyl release and its design, shares his thoughts into why this track had to be revived for 2017. Jayteehazard gives us an insight into how he tackled the classic for the B side remix. 

RECORD STORE DAY LAUNCH

We'll be officially launching the 7" at The Record Store, Darlinghurst, where our resident DJ and Herd member DGGZ will be playing a set of local vinyl from 12-1pm. More details of the event here.

You can also pick up this rare beauty in: 

Melbourne - Union Heights and Northside Records

Brisbane - Jet Black Cat Music

Adelaide - clinic116

*Keep an eye out at our online store next week - there may be some available there ;)

Shannon Kennedy... 

What was happening in Australia at the time that inspired 77%?

I wrote 77% in response to the Howard government's Tampa Affair. There was growing division about Australia's response to the arrival of asylum seekers by boat, growing xenophobia as a result of the rise of Pauline Hanson and the federal government's hardline stance on refugees. It made me ashamed to call myself Australian.

Due to the politically changed nature of the song, did you have any concerns for its release ? 

I had no concerns about how the song would be received, I didn't write it to be popular. It was a cry of anguish from the heart. I wanted to make it a gut-punch of a song, I wanted to make listeners uncomfortable. I think we were all surprised when triple j picked up the song, and even more surprised when they chose to play the uncensored album cut. People were more politically engaged back then, and triple j was much more adventurous than it is now.

How do you feel the relationship between politics and music has changed over the past 15 years? 

Political music has taken a backseat over the past 15 years, for a couple of reasons. People have gradually disengaged from political awareness, even though they are probably getting screwed more than ever. The other thing that has happened, it is much harder to make money from music, so putting out a political song becomes a luxury musicians don't think they can afford. There have been some notable exceptions (A.B. Original). The other thing that deters people from expressing political opinion - not just in music, but overall - is the instant backlash they can expect online. If you don't really know what you're talking about aside from a couple of slogans, you're gonna get slammed.

15 years later, how does this song make you feel given the current refugee crisis today? 

We are on the brink of another war based on false pretences. We continue to deny that we owe the refugees of the world anything, despite blindly following the US into each and every act of aggression that destabilises the world and creates more refugees. We are still a selfish, cruel and mediocre country that tries to act tough and important on the world stage but then refuses to accept our responsibility for dealing with the fallout from fucking up the world.

Dale Harrison...

Why was 77% chosen for Record Store Day and why 7"?

I've been trying to get more 7"'s out as I really love the format. It's relatively inexpensive, fairly quick to produce and are great for something like this where you just want to commemorate a particular point in time. It's now 16 years since the lyrics were written - it was originally an Ozi Batla solo track that he self-produced immediately after the Tampa incident in August 2001. It eventually became a Herd song and we wrote the track around a cheeky rip of the Eric B. & Rakim track Paid In Full in 2002, and the song eventually came out in 2003.

It was also never released on vinyl so it made sense to do it as a Record Store Day release but minus the cynical reissue-everything-that-was-ever-released mentality that has characterised the last few years of RSD releases. Apart from that it's just so depressing that it's a song that is even more relevant than ever before - it should really have been consigned to the deep dark shameful past of the Howard era, but the effects of the Tampa are still felt today, both in terms of policy and the effect it has on people's lives.

Tell us about the Jayteehazard collab for the B side? 

We just love Jayteehazard, and his remix game is so strong we thought he would do a great job of bringing the song into a more modern palette. In the end he opted for a bit of a throwback golden era-type sound—so he pretty much did the opposite of what we expected. But it's still dope. We also got Dan Elleson (Koolism) to mix the track again from the original stems, so the original is a lot thicker and creamier than the version that was released on the CD.

How did you approach the vinyl art design? 

I just worked on the whole concept of info-graphically representing 77%. The song itself is so much more than a blasé statistic but when you put it down on paper it becomes so much more real. The front cover has the actual breakdown of 100 people - 77 of whom, when surveyed, agreed with the Howard Government's actions on board the MV Tampa. I also used only a few colours (red, black and white) to represent the deeply divisive aspect of this whole affair. Plus I didn't want to make it too linked to a historical moment in time - the song has resonated along the years and is still as relevant now as ever before. 

Jayteehazard...

How did you approach this remix ? 

I usually start off a remix feeling super excited about having all these awesome different parts to work with, and also with a rough idea of how I think I’m going to approach it. However that nearly always all goes out the window pretty quick and I feel that dread of having that (totally made up) pressure of a remix compared to the original. In most cases I like to focus in on whatever element about the original song I like the most and build around that - the chorus of 77% is an all time classic so I started building around that. 

I then started thinking it just makes much more sense to keep the entire song intact lyrically and just flip the tone/vibe of the song to something a little more dark. The original has such a strong message over such a funky positive vibes beat - I gave the remix an ominous vibe just so it would be something completely different to the original. Also the fact that it is quite sad that the message from 77% is still relevant today, I think the vibe of this remix reflects that.

Why did you decide to keep all the original lyrics ?

I was given all the stems from the original session and composed a new beat under Batla’s acapella. It can be a little daunting to be asked to remix such a classic song so long after it has been released and already left a significant mark on the scene. I wanted to make sure I did it justice and figured it best not to attempt to skew the song too much or try and force it into another genre or anything. I also think context is everything. For example if I had just used the chorus it would have totally changed the intent of the entire song and I wouldn't have felt right about that.

Back to where it began...

From the Vault: Revisiting The Herd - An Elefant Never Forgets

YEAR: 2003
WHERE WAS IT MADE: Twin Tower Studios, Von Sponeck Studios, Crash Palace, $nap's Playroom, Studio 547 (Epping), Goose Studios (Leichhardt)
MASTERED BY: Willie Bowden

Urthboy: An Elefant Never Forgets was one of the most important albums for Elefant Traks, whose success bankrolled the label and all our releases for years. AENF came two years after the minor success of our self-titled debut (it felt major to us!), and was a much bolder, more politically outspoken record that surprised a lot of people who'd only heard our song 'Scallops'. It was a weird time with a nastier, crueler side of the Australian psyche coming to the fore - the first flare-ups of anti-asylum seeker sentiment were now being reliably exploited by both major political parties. The strange and amazing group of individuals in the band collectively shared a vision to counter all this bullshit.

We started selling out legit venues and generally transitioned from an improvised outfit wearing different coloured overalls to something resembling a band! We attracted the attention of a young booking agent named Tom Taafe who signed us up to Trading Post Agency under the helm of Owen Orford. We sold a lot of albums that never dented any charts, but our successes gave us confidence in our message and our music. Can't forget that hip-hop was still very underground in Australia, and though it was changing quickly, it was still very much considered by the broader industry to be a passing fad.

Which tracks from An Elefant Never Forgets stands out to you and why?

Traksewt ...
One standout musically for me was 'Ray of Sun', produced by my old friend Damien Johns (Snapsuit) and MC'ed by Shannon Kennedy (Ozi Batla). Damien first got me into electronic music out of my band habits in the mid 90s, and we started writing tracks at the same time. I loved what he did on the drums giving it a lethargic yet rolling feel. Shannon is at his poetic best here, describing a duel personality argument between an optimist and a pessimist.  I also loved 'Burn Down the Parliament'. I was inspired from going to these great dancehall gigs in Sydney at the time by Firehouse Sound System. I wanted to try writing something with the classic dancehall beat, and to mix it up I wanted to try flamenco guitar. The song title was a little dig about what respect we had for our leaders.

Urthboy ...

The recording of some songs took me way out of my comfort zone. I recall the painstaking vocal takes in Kenny's Redfern bedroom for 'Burn Down the Parliament' - we broke it down line to line and butted heads learning how to understand what each of us wanted in the song. In retrospect it was a significant learning curve and I got a lot out of it. The other one was 'When You Thought Nothing Was Happening' - we had a lot of fun cutting up my vocals and piecing them back together. I still think that song is interesting, and there was nothing else like it in the hip-hop scene at the time.

Ozi Batla ...

'Urban Lady Saloon' reminds me how free we were back then, just mucking around and trying new things. Heaps naive as well I suppose, we would make a song in some bizarre time signature or that changed styles three times in a minute or was just completely left field and then put it on an album! That's probably a reflection of the Sydney electronic scene at the time, it was very experimental and exciting, everyone was pushing each other - not in a competitive way, more in that you would hear the weird shit someone else was doing on a Sunday night at Frigid and go home and try to make something even more out there. 

Toe-Fu ...

I had the knee jerk response of '77%' and then went and had another look at the track listing and ….it’s still '77%'. The track is Ozi Batla gold and captures the angst, frustration, anger and disappointment surrounding the Tampa affair and racism in Australia. As we’ve said many times on stage and in interviews, we wish the song was relegated to the history books after it was released, but sadly it remains relevant. I love this song because it’s like being hit over the head with a hammer – you can’t listen to it without being aware of the message.

Rok Poshtya ...

An Elefant Never Forgets was the last of the non-band albums. It wasn't until after this that the band lineup settled (Jane Tyrrell joined for The Sun Never Sets) and we had far less of the random element of divergently different songwriters and styles on there. So in many ways we were still finding our feet as an outfit. I think that leads to some real gems and some more funny moments. I find it amusing that some people who may have come late to the band would potentially be totally confused that it's not a hip-hop album, rather an album of electronic music with some hip -hop elements. It was an interesting time for the band - the successes of songs like '77%' and 'Burn Down the Parliament' meant that we suddenly, within a year or two, formed ourselves into a proper touring band, which lead to the lineup solidifying and made us into what we were in the albums to follow.

What was your mindset as a hip hop artist back when the album was released? What else were you up to in 2003?

Traksewt ...
Thinking back on who we were on that album reminds me of the thousand lives we have lived. That being our second album, we wanted to show the full range of The Herd. We had lots of musical ideas that we needed to experiment with and develop, that we felt were not fully engaged on in the first album. We also know that while the first album was thematically diverse, the song 'Scallops' was the sticking point on what The Herd was. So we wanted to show some variety to people who had only heard that one song.  I did a few solo gigs in Canada with some contacts from the label Ninja Tune. It was a big change for myself, from running the label day to day for 5 years, to handing over to Tim and getting random email updates on the other side of the world. I would be chatting with the rest of the band over the internet as the album was getting prepared.

Urthboy ...

We had a quiet confidence of knowing that our previous album surpassed all of our expectations, so that was carried into this album. There was a strong desire to be more overtly political and it felt pretty satisfying when we'd finished it - I was excited to talk to radio and media and let them know what we stood for. The album was more cohesive than the first one, and though it was still a bit of a dog's breakfast, it had this beautiful spirit about it - curious, ambitious, loose, angry - I can understand how it cut through.

Ozi Batla ...

I was predominantly known as a drum n bass MC and was trying to establish my hip-hop credentials, entering and winning a bunch of freestyle battles. Living down the coast, working just as much as I needed to, writing beats on the audio software Fruity Loops and Reason, writing rhymes like '77%', touring and playing heaps of club gigs still. Living the dream! I'd just met Chasm and was writing for his debut EP which would lead to us forming Astronomy Class with Robbo.

Toe-Fu ...

In 2003 I was living in Darwin and facilitating music workshops on Indigenous communities throughout Arnhem Land. The ‘Darwin years’ for me were extremely formative in relation to music, politics and the first people of this country. It was important to expand and dissolve that ‘south eastern perspective’ which was the only perspective I had before that. I’d spent a couple of weeks out bush and then a couple of weeks in town and maybe a gig down south. It was a very fortunate existence. I met and played with some amazing musicians from all cultures during those years. Me and some mates put on a Darwin Hip Hop Festival which saw Hau and Danielsan from Koolism playing under tiny umbrellas as a massive storm rolled through – it was a real DIY vibe up there (not so much OH&S!)

Rok Poshtya ...
Apart from playing bass on a couple of tracks, I was also responsible for the artwork on the album. At the time I was messing with a technique where I would randomly select points on vector artwork and 'pull' them to make shapes. It was in a program called Freehand which was a little less rigid than Illustrator which I use now. That's how I got the combination of shapes on the cover. There's a little visual joke in there as well—the fierce looking elephant on the front cover turns out to be a piece of kids play equipment, as revealed on the inside cover. Another fun fact is that each of The Herd albums have had a distinct colour palette on the front and inside covers (except Summerland where the disc and lyric book are a different colour). In this case we used warm colours for the cover and cooler blues for the inside. 

Grab your copy of An Elefant Never Forgets...

Physicals at elefanttraks.com