Q&A with TOWELS

My name is: Toggle Crosshair aka Tom Zimmer

I play in: TOWELS

*you're a towel - Nancy

We sound like: At our last gig someone described us as the soundtrack to Sixteen
Candles mixed with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We pretentiously claim to fall under the banner of sandalgaze/andrewgaze, but really we're just sort of 80's inspired poppy shoegazey stuff.

Inspired by: We've all had close encounters with praying mantis cyborg dudes who creep around on full-mooned nights in North Melbourne. A lot of our music comes some sort of hivemind collective consciousness reservoir. Zayd (our guitarist) was abducted by creatures that he claimed looked like "little asian midgets" when he was a kid. Otherwise we're inspired by the usual stuff: girls, beer, TV, deep sea creatures, etc.

We reside in: We mostly live in North Melbourne, our guitarist lives in Collingwood. Each band member has a hand-carved 7-foot pyramid, and sometimes we try to use them to communicate with each other via ESP (to save on SMS charges).

Our local music scene is: Pretty good, definitely the best scene in Australia. Lots of people are giving it a go. We've been very impressed with Parading, Bum Creek, Footy, Pageants, Franco Cozzo, Sports Lodge & Sons, to name a few.

The most annoying thing about our scene is: Some people complain that everyone in Melbourne does the "The Fitzroy Shuffle". The moves are simple: when the band is playing, you stand quietly, looking grumpy and sipping your beer, until the last song where everyone launches into very subtle head bobbing. I don't mind though, but there's definitely not enough delay pedal utilised in Melbourne music.

Our best gig to date was: Our last gig went really well, it's the only gig where nothing went

terribly wrong. Usually someone leaves the cowbell or whatever at home.

The song that gets me dancing is: You really can't go past Metal Machine Music part 4 to get my boots scootin'. All jokes aside, "Eyes Without A Face" by Billy Idol is probably one song that we can all agree on.

First album I bought: Aqua - Aquarium. The next album I bought was the Men in Black
soundtrack, and then the Macarena single. My music roots are pretty disturbing, hopefully it doesn't shine through..

My musical youth involved: I grew up on Earth Wind & Fire, my folks would play them constantly throughout my childhood, you can probably hear some faint echoes of these incredible afro disco champions buried inside our music.

Pop music is: I always associate pop music with the supermarket. I only ever hear the latest Lady Gaga or whatever when I'm wandering around the fluorescent lit halls in search of canned beetroot, green cordial and two minute noodles. In some ways I'd consider Towels to be a pop
group, underneath the noisy guitar vomiting our songs are really just simple 3 chord verse-chorus-verse concoctions.

If I could have written any song it would have to be: 4'33" by John Cage. I thought I heard it on the radio once, but then I realised I don't own a radio.

Do you play Fifa? We're more of a MarioKart64 band. I am Wario, Zayd (guitarist) plays
Yoshi, and James (synth) is Peach.

Favourite Restaurant: We all used to live together in Collingwood and we went to the Smith
st. McDonalds so regularly that the staff knew us on a first name basis and we could order "the usual". McDonalds is gross, and so is Mee Goreng, but really these two fuels are the driving power source behind Towels.

The thing I hate most about bloggers is: Bad poetry. And macro photography of food. If you strip back all the porn, the internet is just a massive interlinked network of bad macro

food photography and horrifying poetry.

My Musical Guilty Pleasure is: When no one is around I get naked, drizzle myself in nutella, get out my Zumba toning sticks and shake it to Nickelback at full volume.

The sporting team I follow is: We were watching the chess pretty closely during the recent

championship, we were batting for Topalov the Bulgarian. He lost. :-(

If I weren't a musician I would be: When I was growing up I spent most of my time doing magic tricks, I really wanted to be a magician, I can still do loads of tricks. I spent a handful of years studying physics and came close to becoming a practising astrophysicist. Now I'm doing my masters so who can guess. James is a graphic designer, he'll probably end up a billionaire from inventing new toothpaste packaging or something. Zayd's a shaman of sorts. He might spend his waking hours eating sponge cake and beer, but when the horsemen of the apocalypse come riding over the horizon, he'll be a very important ally.

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