but had put on their own show at the Old Playground in Nelson St.
"It was the only time I ever did that," he says. "But I did enjoy it. I'm a big fan of Boom Crash Opera and love the music they play."
That tour took place in February last year, and since then everything has been quiet on the Icehouse front. But as Davies explains, the band has been far from inactive.
"We continued that tour until September last year, spending five months in America. Then, after a couple of months' break, we started writing again and did a long tour of Australia.
"We recorded a couple of the concerts and for the last three or four months myself and Bob [Kreschner] have been locked in the studio. We were literally living there, because there are sleeping facilities, and we would work intensely for three or four days and
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and ends from their more distant past putting it together and getting it exactly right was a real labour of love, says Davies.
"Digging out the songs was difficult in itself. The tapes for some of the songs seemed to be scattered all over the world. Some were unplayable and had to be rescued.
"The last thing we wanted was to put out a typical 'greatest hits' or selected 'best of..' I wanted a collection of our classic songs, some of which weren't available anywhere else.
"There are two new songs there, and there's the original single version of Can't Help Myself which appeared in a different format on album.
"Love In Motion had never been on an album, so some of it is key material. I'd love to do an album of songs that didn't make it on to this album, a sort of reverse compilation.
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"Originally it was going to be just 10 songs on a single album but the record company decided they wanted 14 on it. "That would have affected the quality and 1 wouldn't allow it, so we compromised and did a double album at the price of a single one."
GREAT Southern Land has an unexpected
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spin-off in promotional terms with the imminent arrival here of the Young Einstein movie.
The title track is used in one of the film's bestmade sequences, and will get the same support as if it had a strong video. Davies laughs when he remembers how the song's inclusion came about.
"Yahoo Serious inserted it into the film
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"Certainly our last album was our most successful, but America still remains a bit of a mystery to me. I won't be busting a gut to break on a huge scale there because I feel it is very much in the lap of the gods.
"But I still feel Australia is leading the rest of the world, even though 1 have to qualify that statement. I am disappointed about a lot of the new bands. In the post-punk period there were bands coming through like INXS, Midnight Oil, The Eurogliders, The Divinyls.
"But as a result of the scaling down of the live circuit there don't seem to be so many good bands coming through; that, and greed on the part of the promoters.
"Overall though, I'm optimistic about music from this part of the world."
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