silverchair
And in this corner weighing in at...Bah, why do I even bother?

Daniel Johns, Ben Gillies, and Chris Joannou were rock stars before they were old enough to drive automobiles. And this band who was once ridiculed and scoffed at as just another trend has recently proven themselves by inviting us into their Neon Ballroom.

It all started down under, in the outback, Australia. But forget about dingos and kangaroos, we're talking Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin here. In 1992 Daniel Johns, Ben Gillies, and Chris Joannou formed silverchair (originally called Innocent Criminals), starting out in their native Newcastle city, often meeting in Gillies' garage and banging out Zeppelin and Sabbath tunes. When a neighbor of Johns told him about an amateur music contest which was being sponsored by a local television show, Johns submitted a four song demo, including a six minute version of Tomorrow, which won the band first place. From there a re-recorded version of Tomorrow was released as an EP and went on to become the fifth most successful Australian single of all time. silverchair followed up with the Pure Massacre EP (which also went gold in Australia). After making waves by touring extensively through Europe the trio could no longer be ignored, and the imminent release of their debut album, Frogstomp, insured silverchair their first fifteen minutes of fame in the global spotlight.

Frogstomp was released in April of 1995, and became the first debut album by an Australian artist to enter the national charts at number one. The record was released in America by Epic on June 20, 1995, and the following day silverchair played their first American concert at the Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, GA.

For a long while it seemed that every teenager in America was going nuts for the album's first single, Tomorrow, and with relentless MTV airplay of the Mark Pellington directed video for the first single, Frogstomp went gold in the U.S. after only two months. The second single and video off of Frogstomp was for Pure Massacre, and by this time, silverchair had received so much exposure through their extensive touring and the phenomenal amount of airplay and media coverage that the band had warranted that their fan-base grew exponentially, and their debut album Frogstomp soon went double platinum (That's over two million records sold!!!) in the U.S. and Canada, and went triple platinum in silverchair's native Australia. For the most part, it seemed that silverchair was enjoying the ride, but being in the public eye is not without it's own set of headaches...

While silverchair was not abused by the media as badly as the Insane Clown Posse has been, silverchair also took their fair share of crap, dealing with constant ridicule over their ages (they were only in high school when their debut album was released, and didn't graduate until well after their second record), and sarcastic comparisons to a junior Nirvana. At times they were flat out accused of riding the grunge trend, producing nothing more than an unworthy imitation of Kurt Cobain's style of song-writing.

Through it all silverchair stuck it out, wrapping up the tour and returning to the studio for a rushed three weeks of recording sessions which would eventually be manufactured into CDs and titled Freak Show.

Although Johns has always maintained that he feels privilaged to be in the spotlight and appreciative of his stardom, the effects of his fame were painfully obvious throughout the lyrics of Freak Show. The album also marked what many thought to be the demise of the band's popularity, and for all intensive purposes it seemed that silverchair's fifteen minutes of fame were up. Freak Show went gold, and sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide...But when you've had an album like Frogstomp which goes double platinum in the U.S. and Canada, and triple platinum in Australia, and have a follow-up album which only goes gold it's a defeat rather than a triumph. People started to treat silverchair like a trio of has-beens (which really sucks when you haven't even graduated from high school yet).

silverchair tried to maintain their focus, February of 1997 the trio kicked off an American tour which they headlined in support of Freak Show. As they had done with Frogstomp, silverchair released four videos off of Freak Show (for Abuse Me, Cemetery, The Door, and Freak, the latter having been directed by Devo's founding member Gerald Casale!), and continued touring. But eventually silverchair seemed to disappear off of the face of the earth completely. The media attention and airplay that silverchair had always had on their side went from alot, to a little, to silver-who? Their true fans stuck with them, listening to their albums and wondering if there would ever be a third one.

Johns, Gillies and Joannou graduated high school in 1997, and for the first time, they could focus on making music full time, unlike the first two silverchair albums which had been written and recorded during the short breaks that the band had between touring and schooling.

Daniel Johns moved out of his parent's place, bought his own house, and spent six months before anyone heard anything new about silverchair. For the most part Johns spent his time alone writing, watching TV, and thinking about new songs. He also spent a lot of time with his family. Ben and Chris spent a lot of time just partying on the beach, which Daniel Johns admits he tried to do but just couldn't get into. Instead Johns felt the need to work, and he put his creative energies to work thinking about the direction he wanted to go in with silverchair's next album.

In the past, Johns had written riffs and added lyrics later, but now he was just writing words, poems, lyrics, and he wasn't too concerned about setting them to music for the time being. Johns gelt as if silverchair had taken the three-piece rock thing as far as it could go, and wanted to try something a little more original. "I think our first two albums were OK, they were kinda solid, well done hard rock, not really original but solid," Johns told Circus Magazine, "I always knew that I wanted to do more with the new album, that I wanted a different angle...." Johns began pondering something a bit more experimental, combining sounds and instruments which you don't usually hear being played together. With his aspirations to create something unique, came the maturation of silverchair. The album which would eventually be titled Neon Ballroom may be many things to many people, but one statement is clear...silverchair is to be taken seriously, as a group of musicians, artists, and most importantly adults.

And the winner is......

silverchair, the much scrawmier youngsters from Aussie managed to dance right around the two big bully clowns from Detroit, pounding their Dark Carnival right back up where it came from.