Stinky Fire Engine | en

Very little was ever conventional about Stinky Fire Engine. The "band" was conceived in 1988 by Wayne Davidson for the Toytown compilation Fingernails. At that stage the SFE sound was basically audio collage using nicked bits of records (mainly kids albums) - each song formed a sort of story from the assembled bits and pieces.

Originally SFE was going to be a magazine, and the sound collage tracks were an extension of that plan. Apart from the audio collage tracks a lounge-pop casio track called Theme From Stinky Fire Engine was recorded and included on the Jiving In Ljubljana compilation cassette.

In 1989 SFE were asked to perform live. An interesting prospect given that there was very little by the way of music, or indeed of band. Wayne had no desire to take to the stage by himself for this event - so Dianne Currier, Kate Dermody and Glenn O'Neil were recruited for the purpose of the live performance. Glenn was the only new SFE member who was technically a musician. Glenn only lasted in the band for this one performance (but not because of the reason that he was a musician...).

After the show Wayne, Kate and Dianne continued on as SFE, although unconventionally all songwriting, recording and SFE product was made only by Wayne. Kate and Dianne were however an integral ingredient of the band, not only to help create the illusion that there actually WAS a band but with the enormous amount Kate & Dianne brought to live performance with visual concepts, themes, percussion and theatricality.

Live performances were dotted over the years, usually in support of The Cannanes when they visited town. SFE never organised a gig on their own behalf, they were always asked to play - this in itself must be some sort of achievement. Every show was given a theme; Summer Fun, 1960's Secret Agents, Glamour, Tiki, Halloween etc… Robina Sharp also joined the live line-up from 1994-1996.

SFE's main recorded output was in the form of cassette LPs on Wayne's label Toytown. Two full length cassettes were released - Picnic and If It's Tuesday This Must Be Melbourne. There was also a different version of Picnic (called Picnic USA) released in America on the Slabco label.

Apart from the various contributions to compilations (cassette, LP and CD) two proper SFE 7" records were released - Giant (Up Records 1997) and Disco City Holiday (Library 1998). SFE also contributed Flebus to the Australian Pop Series on USA label Spit And A Half and Penthouse Club (incorretly titled Penthouse Suite to Melbourne Holiday on Japanese label Clover.

Due to health reasons Stinky Fire Engine ceased all recording in 2000. However future product by way or retrospective compilations, previously unreleased material and maybe even new songs is a possibility. Most recently SFE had two tracks on a Library records CD compilation in 2003.

MEMBERS:

Wayne Davidson (all music/instruments, lead vocals, humour, concept & design)

Dianne Currier (live shows - percussion, keyboard effects, glamour, pop culture attitude)

Kate Dermody (live shows - percussion, recorder, effects, melodica, back-up vocals, glamour, shimmy)

SHORT-TERM MEMBERS:

Glenn O'Neil (one live show - guitar, merriment)

Robina Sharpe (live shows - percussion, shimmy, performance pieces)

For more information about Stinky Fire Engine please see http://toytownmusic.wordpress.com/ .