Trash 'n' Treasure

Darren plays in the band Gerling. You can finally see them again at the Big Day Out in Jan.
The new album GERLING4 is set for release early 2006.

THRILLER JACKET

This was an absolute mistake. We recently recorded our new album with Ethan Johns in North Hollywood. It was nearly Halloween when I walked into a little thrift shop in the middle of nowhere and saw this perfectly fitting Thriller jacket. I think the Michael Jackson impersonator from Sunset Blvd must have that morning decided to leave his moon-walking days behind, along with his jacket (which he left out the front of he thrift shop), just in time for me to pick it up, grab my crotch, look to the heavens and chant “shamon”!

SCOOTER THE ROBOT

I found this at a Salvation Army store in Tempe, Sydney. I still can’t believe it either.

BLACK BART T-SHIRT 1

I remember the first time I had enough courage to go into a charity shop down the road from me when I was a wee lad. I felt dirty, confused, violated and unclean. That was until I stumbled upon some blue, imitation Chuck Taylors called Marcos. They instantly made me (in my own little mind) 1,000 times cooler than the other droids at my suburban high school. On this day began my relentless obsession with op-shopping. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this beauty on eBay. Walking around Los Angeles recently with this sucker on made me a favourite with the local Mexican kids. They understand the irony of a five foot, white man-child wearing this statement in all its glory! I love his little Nikes.

CASIO SK5 SAMPLING KEYBOARD

Man, this blew my mind when I found it. It was around the same time that Entroducing by DJ Shadow came out. I was skint and used to dream of finding an akai900 sampler in the local Op-shop. Instead, I found this very limiting machine (it only gives you either 2.2 or 4.1 seconds of sampling time at the lowest bit rate). Everything sounds like Pitfall on the old school Atari and it has no memory either which is totally challenging.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THirD KIND T-SHIRT

This is another treasure I found on eBay. It’s an original 1977 movie shirt of one of my all time favourite movies. I just typed, “close encounters teeshirt” into eBay and there she was.

BLACK BART T-SHIRT 2

My friend Presser actually found this for me at the biggest flea market in California called The Rose Bowl Flea Market. Man, those markets are MIND BLOWING. This is where vintage clothing goes to die. Everything you could ever imagine. They even had an original Star Wars Xwing helmet—probably from the original movie. Radical shit.