At one point or another most of us have probably been on the dole. People assume that only drug addicts and layabouts collect, but this is not true. Some of the most successful people I know started out receiving benefits. Like two-piece Sydney super duo, The Fortnightly Forms. Lead singer Dwayne Burgess first met Darryl Lee in Darlinghurst’s Centrelink three years ago.
Darryl: We were both standing in line, pissed off and bored as. We started talking and it just snowballed from there.
VICE: How did the idea to start playing music come about?
Darryl: I’ve been playing the piano since I was 11. I got lessons for years from my aunty, until she passed away and we had to sell her piano. Then on my 15th birthday my mum bought me a keyboard and I’ve been stuck on the thing ever since. I love all different kinds of music and so does Dwayne. We started talking one night about how there’s nobody in music with rawness and truth anymore and then we started to jam.
Dwayne: Yeah, so we started busking out the front of Centrelink, trying to inspire all the people that were going in. At first everyone was like ‘who the fuck are these bogans’, but a couple of weeks later, people were really starting to listen. Pretty soon we had everyone just hanging out the front, drinking beers and cheering us on. It was fucking mad. But sure enough we got asked to move on because we were creating a disturbance.
VICE: So what did you do next?
Darryl: Well, we did the busking syndicate. Then we made a 3 track EP and one of our friends passed it on to a mate of his who owns a bar in Bondi called BB’s Wine Bar and we played our first gig there in July.
Dwayne: We just want to keep on getting out there, keep spreading the message. We’re working on a couple of new tracks, one, a ballad written by Darryl called “Lonesome in the Rain” and a kind of hard hitting drum and bass number by me called “Burning in Your Eye Hole”. Diversity mate, it’s the key to enjoying life. Salt and Pepper, Apples and Oranges you get me?
MARTIN DOYLE
