Shops refuse to stock record. Buffalo Album "Too Lurid"
TV Week, Jan 11, 1975

FEBRUARY 1975

RANDWICK RACECOURSE, SUNDAY 16TH FEBRUARY. ENTRANCE FREE. LIVE ENTERTAINMENT - BUFFALO, BOA DICEA & POP ARTISTS. COMMENCES 12.30 P.M. HEAR LIBERAL LEADER BILL SNEDDEN AND N.S.W. PREMIER TOM LEWIS 2.30 P.M. REFRESHMENTS AVAILABLE. AMPLE PARKING. BUSES FROM EDDY AVENUE. $1 RETURN 50c SINGLE FROM 12.30 P.M. BRING A CUSHION AND A LITTER BAG.

Army goes pop for new recruits
SUNDAY MIRROR, March 23, 1975

A Sydney-based rock group has been hired to help win recruits to the Australian Army. The pop group, Buffalo, will be performing at the army's Moore Park barracks tomorrow, next Wednesday and again on Friday. Their appearances will be part of a recruitment drive by the army timed to coincide with the Royal Easter Show. Last month, the group performed at the Liberal Party Rally at Randwick Racecourse. Last year it played at a Labor Party rally at Orange. According to Dave Tice, the group's vocalist: "Anyone can hire us for the right fee." Pictured, Buffalo: Norm Roue, Dave Tice, Jimmy Economou, Karl Taylor and Peter Wells.

Just in case you're wondering about Buffalo
RAM, May 17, 1975

Buffalo (l-r) Karl Taylor, Norm Roue, Peter Wells, Jimmy Economou & Dave Tice. Would you trust your little sister in the same playground?

Now we only do two or three numbers from the first three albums. Audiences have been pretty cool about it. 'Only Want You For Your Body' was in the same vein as the other two albums - but it was as far as we thought we could take it. There wasn't much point in carrying on with it." Another argument for change was that the music on those first three albums was invariably compared to Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep. "Yeah, that was pretty upsetting," quoths Tice. "In some ways I could see why. It didn't really hurt us, cuse those bands were big news....still are, to a point. So it helped us, if anything. But Uriah Heep for instance are pretty much into harmonies and we never were - we were always a lot more basic than either Black Sabbath or Uriah Heep. Sabbath were always into smart-arse little time changes and things like that. We were a lot looser. "Our sort of music, even now we've changed is for people who live in the country towns and suburbs. The people who live in the city...well, the majority of them are..." "Trendies" puts in Jimmy Economou. "Yeah," says Dave Tice with some emphasis. "Trendies. Supercool people. We've never been a supercool band. Real scruffy, that's us. "Working class" adds bass player Peter Wells. "John Baxter bought an E-type Jagu-ah." Dave Tice again. "Super-capitalist. Dunno how he got the bread together. Must have been a very frugal lad." Hardly your working class status symbol to be sure. Yer actual working class y'see is not the purr of E-type twin exhausts - according to the creed of Buffalo, it's volume. "Your gotta play loud," says Dave Tice, stating the screed. "The louder the better" says Jimmy Econcomou in a rapid fire burst of rhetoric. "If you can hear yourself, don't matter if no one else can hear you. The louder the better. If I was building amps....I'd make 'em 1,000 watts with just one knob. On and off. It's all y'need. Turn 'er on and go." Dave Tice is chuckling at Jimmy's enthusiasm. He agrees. "Rock and Roll" he weighs in, "Is your body music. It's not in your mind, not the way we play it anyway. It communicates physically..." "Da kids they don't wanna go to dance." Jimmy again. "And bloody sit there, listen to slow music. They wanna fight, dance, con a chick. Our kind of music goes with all that, y'know." One wonders how you get a chick to hear you above the volume. "But that's the whole point!" exclaims Jimmy Ec. "Da bloody kids they don wanna talk to each other . They wanna shout to each other. Fight with each other. Dance with each other. When the music stops, then they start talking. Who these days...except Trendies...want to con a chick real nicely. The kids these days who go to a dance, they ask straight out "You wanna fuck". And she say "Yeah". And that's it. Except...well...if you're a Trendy, well...you have to buy her flowers, take 'er out, say nice things. But these days the kids, they real kids, just say it straight out. Jimmy has a fine disdain for Trendies. Himself, Dave Tice blames TV. "Over the past few years, it's just about killed conversation anyway. How many people do you know, you can have an intelligent conversation with? When the music's really loud, most kids actually find it easier to communicate...through body language." When the wind is blowing in the right direction, by the way, Buffalo can be heard 3/4 of a mile away. They've applied the same language of the physical to their first three album covers, as well. The first album "Dead Forever" featured corpses and gore. The second, "Volcanic Rock" was a graphic vaginas and penises somehow included into an exploding mountain motif. The third "Only Want You For Your Body" has aroused the most censure. It's a lady being tortured. Some stores are sealing it into brown paper bags before selling it. "Some places in Queensland banned the first one" says Peter Wells. "I reckon the third one is the mildes of the lot actually." "A lot of people didn't even see what was in the second one. The third one's got the most publicity but it's nothing really. I could have understood it if it had been the second, that was sexiest at least." "You gotta laugh at it," says Dave. "It's just bullshit really. So overstated it's jokey. "All the covers have been watered down actually. We have ideas about what we want, and most of the covers have been compromises of what we originally planned. Like the last one we had some incredible ideas for, but Phonogram (Buffalo's record company) wouldn't wear them. Like the general manager was overseas when the second album came out. And when he saw it, he wanted to recall every record in the stores. "One thing we wanted to do was have the Hordern Pavilion all full of naked kids," said Jimmy. "Phonogram wouldn't wear that," said Peter sadly. "We've never gone out and said 'Let's do this cause it's going to be controversial' - Dave Tice - "Most of the things just come off the top of the head. We feel like doing it, so we do it. Then someone jumps onto it and makes something out of it. We try a lot of things. Like someone tells us about a little ballerina that can dance Swan Lake very nicely. So we asked her parents if she'd open a few shows for us. It doesn't mean she's going to join the group or anything. Madam Lashonce wanted to gig with us, and we said 'OK'." Just in case you were wondering, Buffalo plan to call their fourth album "Songs For The Frustrated Housewife". It will come with a 10" vibrator. The cover will show their manager's Mother being ravaged bythegroup. But the album will be a new musical direction at least. Previouslyu Buffalo have never gone out of their way to look for hit single status. They're thinking about one now, though. The music the band is now playing features quite a few Chuck Berry numbers - an interim stage while the new line-up settles down and developes it's own mucis. "We're playing pretty well together," explains Dave Tice. "But were still finding out each other's styles and limitations. What we can and can't do. We're starting to write new stuff. But in the meantime we're doing a few old rock numbers to fill in." So, though the band, since we're doing the golden oldie stuff, why not have a go at a hit single. "Little Queenie" is the number they've ventured a chance on. "In some ways it's going back to what we were originally into," says Mr T. "Like the band Peter and I were first in was very bluesy, very Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry amongst others. That's one of the reasons Norm Roue joined us from Band of Light, his roots are blues too. We're all a lot happier with how the band is sounding now." Are Buffalo's regular fans as happy not to hear their old fave rave-ups? "We do notice, when we go to a place we haven't played in since the old line-up, at the start there's maybe a dozen, a dozen and a half people, calling out for songs from the albums, songs they've heard the old line-up play. "And they'll say, 'Jeez, what's happened to Buffalo, where's John Baxter?...things like that. But after about half of the set, they're usually intowhat we're doing now. By the end of the set, we don't hear people yelling out for old songs." We've put down fivesongs of a new album so far" says Peter Wells. "And they sound so much better than anything on the old albums. Better drums , better bass, better everything." "I probably won't like it in about three or four weeks" says Dave T. gloomily. "It happens everytime, you get so close to it...after you've put it down, you never want to hear it again. I can't bear to listen to any of our albums. It's an over-reaction against working so close to a song in the studio. We all really like the sound we're gettin' right now, like we know it's the best sound we've ever got. Bt I'm sure as soon as we're finished, we'll turn against it." "Yeah, sure," says Jimmy. Doesn't that make it hard playing material from albums in concert? "Nah." says Dave. "Playing on stage is a different sort of thing altogether. It's a real energy thing. That's what I don't like about records actually...they lose so much energy. So much seems to get lost between what you put out in the studio and what you get back on record. It happens to us more than other bands I suppose, because live energy's our thing. But we couldn't really do a live album cause the volume distorts the machines when they try to record it." Buffalo albums though, are listened to. Everything they've put out has reached the realms of gold. "We were down in Parkes one time," says Peter Wells. "And these guys came up after the concert. I mean most people go to the concert then they go home. But these guys didn't seem to have no home to go to. Really, they were 14-15 maybe and they were really involved in the band. Tattoos and things like that. They don't work, they don't go to school. They had the band's albums, but they didn't have a record player for them. "There was this amazing chick" says Jimmy. "She was fifteen. She'd tried to commit suicide twice. She'd just come. She had this sharpie haircut ontop and really long hair at the side. She had a heart on one shoulder with 'Mick' in it. Except she'd cut out the skin y'see, so you could hardly see it. She said, "That was an old boyfriend, I didn't dig him anymore". She had J.B. on the other arm...Jerry Somebody...John Somebody..." "John Baxter?" suggestsDave Tice. "They wanna know what we do. "Anyway, she didn't dig him anymore either, so she'd cut the skin out there too..." "You won't find any university graduates in the band, that's for sure," says Dave Tice. "And you don't find many in our audiences either." "We get a few Trendies now and then,"concludes Jimmy E. 'How come you do all that screwing around? How come you play so loud? What are you guys all about?' We don' tell 'em of course, let 'em find out for themselves." Trendies may enroll in the Buffalo School of Body Language next time the group is in town.
A.O'G.