Rock Day Jobs: The Mark Of Cain
The Mark Of Cain are a hard rock band from Adelaide, South Australia. Featuring brothers Kim and John Scott on bass and guitar respectively, the trio were prolific throughout the 1990s and attracted JJJ airplay and a dedicated following. Their last album, This Is This, was released in 2001. Ex-Helmet and TMOC drummer John Stanier went on to greater success with Tomahawk and Battles, and the band laid dormant until earlier in 2008.
The band started a blog in April; it was seldom-updated until I received an RSS notification yesterday. John posted a new article regarding his frustration at being unable to find the time to lay down the vocal tracks for their sixth album.
It’s an interesting read even if you have no interest in the band, and for that I don’t blame you. They play a very aggressive style of hard rock that’s decidedly masculine and notoriously cathartic in its delivery. Check out their MySpace to sample their work.
Here is the link to John’s entry. He discusses day jobs, the government tender process, the Australian Defence Force and their professional doublespeak. It’s not often that I read uncensored diatribes published directly by well-known bands, so I thought I’d share it with you.
I’ve included some quotes below.
Kim is now responsible for the day to day running of a business that has around 900 people in it, and the role he has taken on is still in its infancy as far as his learning the way the company works and so he has been very quiet of late.
As for me, I’ve been involved in a couple of what we call “bids” at work, where long hours are put in (more often than not), to estimate how long a job will take and what it’s cost would be and then issue it out as a response to a customer’s needs. In this case the customer is usually the Australian Defence Force, and they often release a request to companies to quote on how much it will cost to provide a particular requirement to meet their operational needs, and that is where the bid process comes in.
Hey, planes drop bombs you know so what are you going do? May as well help get better accuracy and help decrease collateral damage, (my apologies for using doublespeak, what I meant to say was help stop blowing defenceless woman and children and other innocent non-combatants into vapour – the pink mist….).
How great it would have been to have had some success with music that would allow a life that revolved around recording and writing full time rather than trying to fit two disparate careers together which don’t even have the slightest overlap with each other.
Full article here.