Biography
The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band originated in Melbourne, Australia, during 1969 when brothers Mic Conway and Jim Conway assembled the lineup. Although their father worked as a wool merchant, the Conways were raised amid professional connections to vaudeville, theater, and opera. Their parents’ archive of 78-rpm discs, featuring Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, together with the brothers’ attraction to the rowdier side of classic blues, prompted them to launch the Jelly Bean Jug Band while still students at Camberwell High School; after graduation they enlarged the group into the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band. Late-1960s and early-1970s Australia hosted numerous irreverent neo-traditional ensembles bearing names such as the Starving Wild Dogs, the Stovepipe Spasm Band, the Gutbucket Blues Band, the Moonshine Jug and String Band, and the Original Battersea Heroes; the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band soon joined this circuit, appearing at Sandringham Beach, the Much More Ballroom, the Thumpin’ Tum pub—renowned for its ham-and-cheese sandwiches—and Sydney’s Yellow House gallery and performance space. In 1971 the ensemble took part in Tim Burstall’s film Stork. The following year they accompanied U.S. folk singer Phil Ochs on an Australian tour, secured a contract with Image Records, and issued their debut single, “My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes,” a revival of an earlier music-hall novelty that reached the Australian Top 40. Their follow-up single, “I Can’t Dance (Got Ants in My Pants)” backed with “Jungle Dance,” appeared in April 1973.
Two months afterward the band delivered its first album, Smoke Dreams, which also surfaced in a quadrophonic U.S. pressing (ESP 3009) filled with vintage jazz, blues, and jug-band material reshaped for the drug-influenced youth culture of the early 1970s. Core personnel besides the Conways on washboard and harmonica comprised string players David Hubbard, Peter Inglis, and Mick Fleming, fiddler Eric Gradman, pianist Jim Niven, and Peter Scott on jug and tea-chest bass. Throughout the rest of the decade the roster shifted constantly, at various times encompassing Tony Burkys, Stephen Cooney, Chris Coyne, Dave Flett, Geoff Hales, Graeme Isaac, Rick Ludbrook, Peter Martin, Eric McCusker, Gordon McLean, Louis McManus, Peter Mulheisen, Fred Olbrei, Manny Paterakis, Robert Ross, Jack Sara, Jon Snyder, Colin Stevens, and Chris Worral. Additional singles emerged in 1974, among them a reading of Fats Waller’s “Your Feets Too Big,” the Spike Jones tango homage “Hernando’s Hideaway,” and originals such as “Down Undergroundsville,” “Wait for Me Juanita,” and “Wangaratta Wahine,” the last of which also titled the band’s next long-player. That album, the group’s strongest commercial seller, climbed to fourth position on the national charts in August 1975. By then the musicians were already unveiling their subsequent release, the provocatively titled Australia, which included “Cocaine Habit” and “Masochism Tango,” a composition drawn from longtime Conway touchstone Tom Lehrer.
In autumn 1976 the Matchbox band joined the Soapbox Circus, a multimedia venture that incorporated the politically outspoken experimental theater collective known as the Australian Performing Group (APG). Developed at Melbourne’s progressive Pram Factory and La Mama theaters, the undertaking yielded the live album The Great Stumble Forward. By 1978 the Soapbox Circus had evolved into Circus Oz, while the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band—now augmented by electric bass guitar and a rock drummer—was shortened to Matchbox. Their concluding album, Slightly Troppo, appeared that year. Final singles comprised “Sleep” (June 1978), “Love Is Like a Rainbow” (January 1979), and “Juggling Time” backed with “Dirty Money” (1980). Matchbox disbanded under that name in September 1980. Over the ensuing decade the Conways also directed the Hotsie Totsie Band (1981), Carnival (1983), and the Conway Brothers Hiccups Orchestra (1984–1988). In 1989 the siblings went separate ways; Jim joined the Backsliders while Mic returned to his earliest stylistic roots with Mic Conway’s Whoopee Band.
Two months afterward the band delivered its first album, Smoke Dreams, which also surfaced in a quadrophonic U.S. pressing (ESP 3009) filled with vintage jazz, blues, and jug-band material reshaped for the drug-influenced youth culture of the early 1970s. Core personnel besides the Conways on washboard and harmonica comprised string players David Hubbard, Peter Inglis, and Mick Fleming, fiddler Eric Gradman, pianist Jim Niven, and Peter Scott on jug and tea-chest bass. Throughout the rest of the decade the roster shifted constantly, at various times encompassing Tony Burkys, Stephen Cooney, Chris Coyne, Dave Flett, Geoff Hales, Graeme Isaac, Rick Ludbrook, Peter Martin, Eric McCusker, Gordon McLean, Louis McManus, Peter Mulheisen, Fred Olbrei, Manny Paterakis, Robert Ross, Jack Sara, Jon Snyder, Colin Stevens, and Chris Worral. Additional singles emerged in 1974, among them a reading of Fats Waller’s “Your Feets Too Big,” the Spike Jones tango homage “Hernando’s Hideaway,” and originals such as “Down Undergroundsville,” “Wait for Me Juanita,” and “Wangaratta Wahine,” the last of which also titled the band’s next long-player. That album, the group’s strongest commercial seller, climbed to fourth position on the national charts in August 1975. By then the musicians were already unveiling their subsequent release, the provocatively titled Australia, which included “Cocaine Habit” and “Masochism Tango,” a composition drawn from longtime Conway touchstone Tom Lehrer.
In autumn 1976 the Matchbox band joined the Soapbox Circus, a multimedia venture that incorporated the politically outspoken experimental theater collective known as the Australian Performing Group (APG). Developed at Melbourne’s progressive Pram Factory and La Mama theaters, the undertaking yielded the live album The Great Stumble Forward. By 1978 the Soapbox Circus had evolved into Circus Oz, while the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band—now augmented by electric bass guitar and a rock drummer—was shortened to Matchbox. Their concluding album, Slightly Troppo, appeared that year. Final singles comprised “Sleep” (June 1978), “Love Is Like a Rainbow” (January 1979), and “Juggling Time” backed with “Dirty Money” (1980). Matchbox disbanded under that name in September 1980. Over the ensuing decade the Conways also directed the Hotsie Totsie Band (1981), Carnival (1983), and the Conway Brothers Hiccups Orchestra (1984–1988). In 1989 the siblings went separate ways; Jim joined the Backsliders while Mic returned to his earliest stylistic roots with Mic Conway’s Whoopee Band.
Albums
