Wagga Wagga - Restaurants, Hotels, Pubs, Business Directory, Visitors, Shops, What\'s on, Events, Conference

Blue Juice

With the relentless hollers of two skinny MCs, a funk-driven rhythm section and a Booker T-era throwback on keys, Sydney's Bluejuice are a hard act to pin down. They are too straight for funk, too groovy for indie rock and too sweaty for pop.

Frontman Jake Stone doesn't mind what box you choose. Just not hip-hop.

"We always get tagged with the hip-hop thing," Stone says, "but we've never been accepted in the Aussie hip-hop scene."

Bluejuice are a thoroughly danceable live band that are a bit too much fun for the culturally dislocated rants of Aussie hip-hop.

"We're a little bit gay, a little bit weird, a little bit funny," Stone says.

Being fun is a blessing and a curse for Bluejuice. It's a curse, Stone says, because even when their new album, Problems, is getting four-star reviews in Rolling Stone, it's a struggle to take them seriously.

It's a blessing when antics captured in a new music video for their single Vitriol attract so many eyeballs on YouTube.

Shot guerilla-style in just 20 minutes, it features the band dressed in flowing white robes, performing to an unsuspecting public in Chinatown.

"We went to places where we knew people would be congregating," Stone says. "In Chinatown we knew they wouldn't necessarily understand the language or what we're trying to do. It's also a small and contained area where people can't escape."

The show, complete with evangelical dancers, stunned passers-by, especially when Stone crashtackled a member of the crowd.

Stone's rugby skills have come in handy of late. He also appears as an MC on a new music video by funk and hip-hop project Baggsmen in which he was asked to stumble down the dark alleys of a street party, "[falling into] people and getting punched in the head and thrown into a drum kit".

This role, Stone says, proved far more damaging for his health than his work with Bluejuice. His hosts from the Baggsmen insisted he prepare for the role by downing a bottle of tequila.