Steve Lane and the Autocrats: making fruit salad

Ben Cameron | Bendigo Weekly | 22-Feb-2012 2.10pm

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Steve Lane got out of his comfort zone with his latest tune.
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It was probably never in the original plan but Steve Lane and the Autocrats have broadened their musical palate to the world of children’s entertainment. Well, kind of. 

Signed to the ABC’s music label, Lane was asked to contribute The Wiggles’ hit Fruit Salad, to their tribute album ReWiggled; an offered he couldn’t refuse.

“It was something that was too good to pass up,” Lane says.

“It’s been magic... I was heading overseas just before we got the offer to do it (so) we had to cram.

“It all had to be done on one day were we could all get together to physically record it.”

Lane was surprised at the size of The Wiggles' back catalogue.

“We looked on iTunes and there’s about 700 odd Wiggles songs,” Lane laughs.

“They have a distinctive songwriting style, a recipe I suppose.

“It’s a hard one to interpret, and a lot of them had already been done.

“I said ‘they all sound pretty similar, you just tell me the one you want done’.”

The Autocrats also shot a film clip for Fruit Salad, which had its own complications.

“It’s hard to know what to do, because you can’t make a serious rock 101 clip when you sing about Fruit Salad,” he laughs.

“It’s like a fruit salad version of Wilfred.”

While Lane has three kids ranging in age from 16 to eight, the song didn’t make big waves in the Lane household.

“The Wiggles were never big in our house,” he says.

The Autocrats’ debut album The Romance of Communication was released in October, where Lane has teamed up with lyrical partner, acclaimed local writer John Holton.

Lane says a few of the songs were nutted out over a bottle of red, which touched on a variety of subjects from social impotence, office awkwardness to politics, on And So It Goes.

“It’s from a poem John wrote, for him it was about that period when K Rudd came in and he had the hope,” Lane says.

“You felt like something was going to happen... but then the reality of that hit in and you get let down.

“But if you lose that inherent hope you became really cynical, I guess.

“But you never know, there could be another one (political champion)... you never know with the Mad Monk hanging around.”



Steve Lane and The Autocrats play The Palais on March 3 and The Golden Vine March 30.


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