"D3 was a blow job & D4 was all the way!!"-Dion from the D4.

I caught up with Dion Palmer from The D4 the other day and had a bit of a yarn about the D4's recent overseas excursion. It was so successful in fact that by the time you read this Dion, Vaughan, Jimmy and Beaver will be back in England cueing up for another slice of that rock and roll pie. Dion may claim to be a 'rock & roll mother fucker' but I have actually met some in-bred lunatics from the west coast who did actually fuck their mother (often) and fortunately Dion was nothing like them. He is in fact quite an agreeable fellow indeed, so read on to find out all about the D4's tour of the states and England as well as where they got their name and some other stuff too.

GONE: Dion we'll start with an easy one for $100. You are Dion Palmer from The D4 and you've just returned from a pretty amazing tour of the States and England.

DION: Correct.

GONE: You went to the South by South West music festival in Texas, did you start there or in California?

DION: Nah, nah we started in Texas at Austin. We got Steve Baker who was in the Devil Dogs to organise other shows through the south.

GONE: That's the Devil Dogs that used to be on Crypt (records)?

DION: Yep. He lives in Virginia and he organised shows for us on the way up to Virginia. Through the South. Through Memphis, through Carolina and Tennessee and up to Virginia.

GONE: What was the actual SxSW festival like?

DION: It was cool. Umm pretty well organised.

GONE: Was it like one big party or . . .

DION: Nah there's like about 100 venues.

GONE: How spread out are they?

DION: Austin's not a huge fucking city. It's all pretty much within the city centre. You can walk everywhere.

GONE: Is there a real festival atmosphere?

DION: Yeah definitely. Like where we were playing, which was on 6th Ave there was like a little rock & roll section you know. Like 10 venues real close.

GONE: All serving piss?

DION: Yeah from midday till 5 in the morning.

GONE: What was your reception like?

DION: It was really good, really fucking good.

GONE: Who all did you meet over there?

DION: We met up with a guy called Mike Maraconda who's got a little studio down there and he used to be in the Devil Dogs too. He's in a couple of other bands as well that we went and saw and hung out with.

GONE: What sort of bands were you playing with?

DION: We played with some crazy, crazy fucken bands! Like one called the Candy Snatchers who were umm, there like 4 little GG Allins!! It was a mental mental show. Packed out. Quite dangerous. It was good, you would have loved it.

GONE: Good shit. What was the music like?

DION: Really good actually, they can all play really well. They're just psychos though.

GONE: What were they like off stage?

DION: Well one of them was going to beat me up after the show. Apparently because I asked him for his leather jacket cause he ended up smashing up Jimmy's guitar like mid-set and things like that.

GONE: Oh he borrowed . . . ?

DION: Yep! That was a bad fucking deal, fucking lending him his guitar. But apparently it ended up being a crowd member that smashed it. So I asked this guy for his leather jacket and he didn't take to kindly to that! It all sorted itself out though. They came to our other shows and we got on well and it was cool.

GONE: What about England?

DION: Well England was a lot different. We started by playing three shows with Fu Man Chu. Totally different than playing in America where we were playing in small clubs. Scungey little clubs. But it was good. Like a big stage and that, playing to two and a half thousand people. They (Fu Man Chu) were boring though, the crowd were only dancing to a couple of songs. : Then we kind of did our own club shows around London and Birmingham. It got better and better you know. We got more and more people to each show. Sold fucking tons of merch' and met heaps of people.

GONE: I know the Datsuns played with a few of the current other 'next big thing' bands, what about you guys?

DION: We played one show with the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's and they're from New York. That was sold out a couple of weeks before. That was good. Then we played a couple of shows with the Datsun's and some other shows with horrible bands but they were packed out. We did our thing and it went down well. Real well. They fucking enjoyed us.

GONE: What about in light of how things have panned out for the Datsun's do you have any regrets about going over there already signed to Flying Nun/Festival?

DION: Possibly we could have done it ourselves without Flying Nun but at the same time we've got a record out, we've got a couple of 45's. You know we even had financial help to get over there. I wouldn't really have been prepared to take that gamble of borrowing heaps of money off heaps of different people and like ending up in heaps of debt. At the same time, we don't really have any money but we don't really owe any money. Ohh a little bit but you know you could just go over there and find yourself a record company to pay off your debts, but your really just shifting the debt around. Before we went over we already had a hook up with that label infectious through Festival. They are releasing our 1st record over there and that helped us get media and stuff like that. So yeah it's cool being on Flying Nun.

GONE: How many songs have you guys got? Matt Stroobont reckoned to me you've probably got about 30.

DION: Probably about thirty, yeah something like that.

GONE: So are we going to see another album out of you guys soon?

DION: We've got a 7" that's just come out, off the album and that's on a French label called STZ. We've got another 45 coming out soon, that's off the album too but it's got some earlier tracks that aren't on the album. And we've already started recording some new songs.

GONE: What about recording overseas?

DION: Yep, we did some overseas. Recorded at Toe-rag and with Steve from the Devil Dogs who's got his own studio. We'll have another album before the end of the year.

GONE: Cool. I saw you got a real good review in the NME. The guy sounded like an idiot though, should have been writing for Loaded maybe. A band would go far in England if there drummers name was gutted hedgehog I suspect. What other media stuff did you do.

DION: We did lots of interviews and shit, but I guess they'll come out soon.

GONE: Okay moving away from the D4 now. You started out in the legendary Nothing at All. You must have been pretty young when that kicked off.

DION: I was about 15 or sixteen. There was about eight people in the band then it trimmed down to three! People didn't turn up you know and one dude couldn't sing.

GONE: I missed you guys when you were doing your shit. I only heard you guys for the first time about 6 months ago. It's fucking great, though it definitely fit's a time slot ('95-'95). I can fully feel the power that people talk about when they recall your shows. They are truly legendary. I can hear more of a Nothing at All influence on the Datsun's sound than the D4's though. They even cover a Nothing at All song. Especially to me when you've heard the Datsun's first. Anyhow can you tell us more about those days?

DION: Yeah. Well it was a fucking good band. One of thee bands where you get three people or four people or whatever that just connect. We were like brothers in that band. We hung out together. We did everything together and there was just some sort of fucking magic happening!! It was such an amazing feeling. It was great, it was good times.

GONE: Is that '95 album the complete recordings?

DION: Nah there's like an EP before that of four songs we did at various Frisbee's as it was moving around. Especially the version of a song called journey off that first recording.

GONE: How did Bob Frisbee handle those wild arsed drunken teenage shows?

DION: He helped the band along heaps. He partly formed it you know? He moulded it.

GONE: How the fuck did Bob hook up with you young cunts?

DION: We met him through John Baker.

GONE: How did you know him?

DION: We knew John through our drummers sister. He was at a party and we met him and he said 'oh yeah fucking come to this place Frisbee on Saturday we're having a barbecue'. So we went round there and started practicing there and then Bob offered to record a song. Then John said we should have a gig with like Smack and Gestalt. And the Pschodaisies. We did a gig on the shore, that was our first gig and then we pretty much started from there.

GONE: Nice. Back to the D4 now Dion. Where did you get the name from. I thought maybe it was either bulldozers or battleships!

DION: Bulldozers, battleships ! Laughs. No it doesn't come from either actually. It comes from when I was walking downtown one day, down past the brothels, you know massage parlours?

GONE: We call them 'blowie parlours' in Christchurch mate.

DION: Blowie parlours! Laughs. Well there was this sign on the street and it said come in for whatever you want and like D1 was a massage. D2 was a hand job, D3 was a blow job and D4 was all the way!!

GONE: Laughs excellent, that's way more rock & roll than bulldozers or battleships!! Well I better wrap this up, since it's NZ music month could you give me your all time five favourite New Zealand bands.

DION: I'd start with the Scavengers, umm Gestalt, Smack, the Pschodaisies and the Chants R'n'B.

GONE: What about your covers Dion, I know your proud of your covers, can we expect some on the new album?

DION: We've got a couple on the next album. I see nothing wrong with recording covers you know? Especially if you can do them well and make them a bit different. I mean most of the bands that I listen to on record have covers anyway.

GONE: Dead Moon have about one an album.

DION: Yeah, well there you go.

GONE: Hey Dion thanks for the yarn and good luck to you guys overseas.