Ep 14: Frente - show notes

Show notes, links, music and other stuff for Ep 14: Frente.

The title of this episode is taken from Frente’s very first single. It also sums up their story. Love songs and hard work. That’s what they should be known for. Not quirkiness.

As usual, Craig Mathieson does a great job covering Frente’s label troubles in his book The Sell In. Sadly there’s very little else. No books, no docos. They deserve, at least, one of those one hour type BBC docos about bands or labels.

I started with a longish rant about Melbourne and the Punter’s Club, where Simon and Angie met.

Later, The Lucksmiths would put a painting the pub on their album cover for Cartography for Beginners.

Is there an “!” in the name Frente? There wasn’t one before the released the EP Whirled (see below) which features a large exclamation mark in the design. They dropped it by the time of Shape and their 2005 EP Try To Think Less. Although on Apple Music, as an artist, they are listed with the “!”. My vote is no – it was basically an affectation used for an album campaign.

Here’s the line up at the time of Marvin The Album.

l-r: Simon Austin, Mark Picton, Angie Hart, Tim O’Connor. A shot from this same photoshoot was used in their debut album.

It’s really part of the Frente story now, the Late Show parody of Accidently Kelly St called Accidentally Was Released. It was indicative of the backlash they got.

The reaction from the band was to get a bit more serious. This included the cover to Juice magazine where Angie appeared nude.

There was kind of two sides of the Marvin years. The quick rise in Australia, and then the release of Marvin with Bizarre Love Triangle internationally. Frente toured the world and the internet has lots of fun clips of them appearing on foreign TV shows.

The other thing that the internet is full of is apparent covers of Frente’s version of Bizarre Love Triangle. Here’s two with over 3 million views each. Neither sound like the Frente version to me.

Shape and beyond

There’s a lot less stuff for the Shape era around. They didn’t even go on Recovery at this time, instead sending in a clip.

Angie Hart on Buffy. Her music was used on the show a couple of times, and she also appeared in Joss Whedon’s later show Firefly.

Ange’s second band was with her then husband Jesse Tobias, called Splendid.

The album never got its chance, but it possibly didn’t help that the second single Come Clean uses the ‘c’ word in the chorus and the ‘f’ word elsewhere. That didn’t help radio airplay. They performed it on the short lived 10:30 Slot TV show.

There is one Frente book. It’s a kid’s book adapted by Briony Stewart, using the lyrics of Accidently Kelly St (but using the proper spelling of ‘accidentally’). It’s very sweet and you can get a copy from the publisher Affirm Press.