Hostile Entertainment

Great Live Music

Mental as Anything are playing at your Party (again)!

Posted by on Sep 28, 2019

Now available. Once upon a time, a group of art students passed themselves off as a band in order to con the local publican into giving them a gig in exchange for free beer.   The deception worked better than intended with the group receiving beer in return for music and came to be known as Mental as Anything.

Four decades later, they are still irritating the public with their highly listenable, idiosyncratic brand of garage pop and to celebrate the anniversary of their first release, Mental as Anything Play at Your Party, the Mentals have released the 7-track EP on vinyl available exclusively at mentals.com.au, as well as releasing a brand new 40 minute, hi-definition, multi camera film to celebrate the milestone.

Mental as Anything Live was recorded in front of a live audience at Surfersaurus in Hillsdale, in October 2018, by Moshcam and is a multi-camera production capturing the Mentals trademark fat sound mixed by long-time collaborator producer/engineer Steve James (RocknRoll Music, Cyclone Raymond, 5 Track EP).

From The Nips Are Getting Bigger, Come Around, If You Leave Me Can I Come Too and Too Many Times, through to Live It Up, You’re So Strong and Let’s Cook, Mental as Anything supplied the soundtrack to suburban Australia – brilliantly crafted pop hits that evoke wonderful memories. Their 25 Top 40 charting songs were, for a long time, a record for an Australian band and are a wonderful illustration of the depth of their catalogue and their song-writing ability. 

Founding member, Greedy Smith, said “Since 1977 the longest break I’ve had from playing with Mentals is 6 weeks in 1989/90 when I fell off a horse. Martin Plaza has been off the road for over two years now and I feel so proud of the players I have around me and the way the songs have been sounding I felt we had to properly record our live show and film it. We rounded up some pals to play to and just let rip.”

“We recorded through (our guitarist) Martin Cilia’s old Sonic Workshop mixing desk that Harry Vanda and George Young used to write on and then Steve James took it up to Brisbane to mix at Red Engine Studio” Greedy added.  “Now, if punters can’t get to our shows, for the life of me I don’t know why, we’ve been playing everywhere forever, if they can’t make it to the shows this recording shows ’em what they’ve been missing.”

Mental As Anything_Hillsdale Studio 1st Oct 2018

Mental as Anything is led by Greedy Smith, together with ex-Atlantics guitarist Martin Cilia, drummer Jacob Cook, guitarist/vocalist Craig Gordon and bassist/ vocalist Peter Gray.

Mental as Anything Plays at Your Party on vinyl is available now from mentals.com.au

The soundtrack to Mental as Anything Live, aka Mental as Anything at Play, is available to stream on Apple Music, Google and Spotify now.

To stream and/or download Mental as Anything Live, go to mentals.com.au.

Mental As Anything are playing a gig on Sunday 27 October 2019 at The Tewantin Noosa RSL on the Sunshine Coast.

Tickets are on sale now for this gig and they are $30 for members and $35 for non-members of this Club.  Don’t miss out on seeing this great live band as this show/Club will sell out. Solo support act, Shane Kells will open this show and warm up the crowd from 1:30 pm.  

Doors open for this 18+ show at 1:00 pm and Mental As Anything will hit the stage around 3:00 pm.  Tickets can be purchased by either calling the Club on (07) 5447 1766 or from the RSL Reception Desk at 1 Memorial Avenue Tewantin.