{"id":787864,"date":"2026-07-08T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787864\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:14:10","slug":"fun-frittes-en-riot-cricket-indoors-and-you-am-i-strung-up-on-the-hourly-daily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787864\/","title":{"rendered":"FUN! FRITTES EN RIOT, CRICKET INDOORS AND YOU AM I STRUNG UP ON THE HOURLY. DAILY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gentlemen<\/p>\n

Gentlemen checking the football score, or their Belgian fries order. L-R: Andy Kent, Russell Hopkinson, Davey Lane and Tim Rogers. Photo by Deb Pelser<\/p>\n

IT HAS TO BE SAID, the timing was hardly ideal Mr Russell Hopkinson, on the other end of the phone this cloudy Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Not the upcoming You Am I shows marking the 30th\u00a0anniversary of their career reframing third album of superior guitar pop and melodic rock, Hourly Daily; nah, they\u2019re good, in October, plenty of warning for those upmarket venues (like the Sydney Opera House). And did I mention they\u2019re stringing up? As in adding orchestrations for a string section? And a reissue of the album with disc of bonus tracks? Well that too.<\/p>\n

My timidly advanced little whine is down to the fact this call with yon Hopkinson, drummer of said You Am I, was scheduled about 45 minutes into the Belgium v USA World Cup match. Mate! Come on.<\/p>\n

Hopkinson, not just polite but empathetic, gets it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI, myself have been pulled away from the football as well,\u201d he says. \u201cI believe Belgium are leading 2-1 so I think we can be happy about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given I\u2019m not much of a fan of the old hacking the hands off the Congolese\/raping the continent\/thank you King Leopold Belgians \u2013 though Bruge and Ghent are dead gorgeous \u2013 it is a bit weird. But given the alternative is a rampant Trump The Corrupt, needs must.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, as my French friend once said, as we were driving into [Belgium] \u2018it is a sad place\u2019,\u201d Hopkinson chuckles, before explaining that the band does have some \u2013 mostly positive, if also a bit weird \u2013 history there after quite a lot of gigs over the years, from the Hourly, Daily\u00a0lineup of singer\/songwriter Tim Rogers, bassplayer\/now manager too Andy Kent, and Hopkinson, to the long-lasting final lineup of those three and Davey Lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gig in Brussels is really weird because it was this Turkish sort of community centre and the local Turkish kids didn\u2019t like the fact they had rock bands in there. So [promoters] would bus the audience and the band in, lock you in the venue basically, and then when you leave you have to run the gauntlet of riot police fighting Turkish kids throwing bottles at the buses leaving. It seems like the stupidest place to have a venue but that\u2019s where every band played.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this (head)cracking start to an interview whose time is so short it might be a speed-dating exercise, it makes sense to dig into the past some more and ask ol\u2019 Rusty H for five \u2013 though hey, if we work super efficiently and get to 10 I won\u2019t complain \u2013 people, places, events, things that fed into the creation of Hourly, Daily\u00a0and the people they were 30 years ago. Sir, your time starts \u2026 now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pretty Things,\u201d he says immediately, throwing in the UK\u2019s alternative Stones\/R&B guttersnipes\/concept album-conceiving band of the \u201860s, under-appreciated by many but not by this record collecting aficionado of tough but melodic \u201860s and \u201870s music.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The Pretty\u2019s 1968 album] SF Sorrow\u00a0definitely. That was a big record for us because it showed you could expand beyond being a little four-piece rock band and still retain a certain level of rock and roll integrity, as it were. I think [Hourly, Daily\u00a0producer\/engineers] Wayne Connolly and Paul McKercher were very important just in letting us be us and capturing that. It was good to have people who were not necessarily going in as producers but as collaborators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having had their debut, Sound As Ever, produced in Cannon Falls, Minnesota by Sonic Youth\u2019s Lee Renaldo, and the second record, Hi Fi Way\u00a0(the first to feature Hopkinson), made in Renaldo\u2019s hometown of New York with American money behind them, being at home in Sydney was pivotal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the main difference is that people [before] were more concerned with song structures and \u2018hey, it doesn\u2019t get to the chorus quick enough\u2019 stuff that people tend to throw at you when they\u2019re \u2018producers\u2019,\u201d Hopkinson says. \u201cSomeone like George Drakoulias [who would produce #4<\/a> Album\u00a0a couple of years later] would critique everything about the song structure and we\u2019d have to either counter it with our argument or try something different. Which is fine, which is actually good if you want to make records for the radio, [but] which is not something we ever did.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo Hourly, Daily\u00a0was a bit of a free hand for us to make the record we wanted to make. At least two songs were like first take: we\u2019d rehearse them and then record them and that was the base track. If We Can\u2019t Get It Together, for example, probably came together as a band in like 15 minutes. And that\u2019s what you hear on the tape.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing about SF Sorrow\u00a0was the ambition in trying to tell stories beyond what and where the songs and the band might be; one thing about You Am I is that they\u2019ve always told stories from right where the songs, the band, the audience were, but they were filled with ambition to tell us something more than we could see. And on this third album they began to nail exactly that in songs like the title track, Heavy Comfort, Soldiers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Hourly, Daily\u00a0is probably Tim\u2019s most complete set of songs that are \u2018Tim Rogers songs\u2019. Without anybody second-guessing him or trying to push him in any direction, that record is where he was left on his own, and as someone working with him it was kinda astounding all these songs that came out and how they all fitted together,\u201d says Rogers\u2019 biggest fan. \u201cLyrically, even though he hadn\u2019t finished writing the lyrics \u2013 he was still writing lyrics as we were doing vocals \u2013 that was Tim\u2019s vision almost completely emerging unscathed, as it were. Which I think is very unusual in modern rock history, especially if you\u2019re on a major label.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the assets of that album, that it\u2019s very purely a band and songwriter\u2019s vision, as opposed to a band, a songwriter, a producer and a record company\u2019s vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Place has always mattered in Rogers\u2019 lyrics, locating the listener often in the familiar, always in the recognisable, even if you\u2019d never been there. For You Am I as Hourly, Daily formed, that place was clear, micro and macro.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe former Rhinoceros Studios, which had become part of the Australian Institute of Music, where we made the record, was the place. Because it was empty, we bought in our own gear, rented it for a month or so, set up a cricket pitch in the common room to play indoor cricket, and just basically hung out there like a clubhouse,\u201d explains Hopkinson. \u201cIt was definitely a Sydney album and it was the first You Am I album made wholly in Australia, our own situation completely, and that comes through. Tim would be writing songs and catch the bus in to the studio writing in his head. You can definitely hear Sydney on that album a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for the drummer, was there an impact?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are in a studio with heavy hitter kinda people, you\u2019re not Jim Keltner so you\u2019ve got to try and be Jim Keltner as best you can, which is not very easy,\u201d Hopkinson says with a laugh. \u201cSo in this situation it really showed why I joined You Am I because when I joined and learnt those songs off Sound As Ever, I could play them exactly like Mark [Tunaley, original drummer] and they said, no that sounds too much like Mark, just play like your play. <\/p>\n

“I think [Hourly, Daily] especially was where I could just go in and say \u2018I\u2019m going to do this, I\u2019m going to do that\u2019 and there was a lot of freedom and I really felt part of the process as we were letting our little freak flag fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as there was a run of number one albums, and a swag of ARIAs at one point too, this isn\u2019t a band whose sales ever really rattled bean counters or Tina Arena, John Farnham, Silverchair or Powderfinger. However, those first three You Am I albums do have some of that Big Star #1<\/a> Album\u00a0or Radio City\u00a0feel in terms of how important they were to a generation of musicians (like Silverchair and Powderfinger) and music fans of a certain age and a certain disposition. Is that something Hopkinson and the others recognise?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, yeah. Any time we do anything with You Am I now I really just try and take the viewpoint that this is not necessarily for me. I think you have to recognise that there is a greater purpose than just trying to please yourself,\u201d he says. \u201cInitially that\u2019s what we tried to do, but now I understand that these records are really important to people and you\u2019ve got to respect that, and treasure that because not many people get to ever experience that feeling of having people that really love your work. Respect the legacy, that\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as a fan as well as a band member, a man who respects the legacy and the work, if he had to pick a song on Hourly, Daily\u00a0to listen to for the rest of his life, what would it be?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt changes every day,\u201d he says, buying time. \u201cTuesday\u00a0I really like as an ensemble performance; lyrically, Hourly, Daily\u00a0is probably one of Tim\u2019s best written songs \u2013 I think it takes a really sensitive subject and turns it on its head in a sensitive way. I think of all the records I\u2019ve ever made in my life, that\u2019s one where probably there is a couple of tracks I could happily listen to for the rest of my life. <\/p>\n

“But if I had to, I\u2019d say Tuesday: it\u2019s such a fun song to play, I\u2019d play that every gig if we could. But it is one for the special occasions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hmm. There may be a few of those coming up soon-ish. After the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Sydney Opera House, October 18<\/p>\n

The Tivoli, Brisbane, October 22-23<\/p>\n

Melbourne Recital Centre, November 5-6<\/p>\n

Hourly, Daily vinyl reissue, and bonus set, Dailies, Seconds, will be released on October 9<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gentlemen checking the football score, or their Belgian fries order. L-R: Andy Kent, Russell Hopkinson, Davey Lane and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-787864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}