INXS Live at the Cleveland Agora June 1984 (CD)

INXS, the rock'n'roll sextet from Sydney, say they are Australia's • answer to Duran Duran - and have the female fans to prove it. Frenzied young female fans had to be dragged of the stage by the • dozen throughout a recent INXS • concert here, and flamboyant lead • singer Michael Hutchence dodged lingerie thrown from the front rows all evening long. The new Tom Jones. • Yeah, that's me," said the pony-tailed Hutchence in an interview. "We draw a very young audience, like Duran Duran does - very hip, young people. They're a totally different brand of teenybopper. I call them 'the new TV hopper.' They climb up on stage and we threaten each other with rt death. It's all very harmless," added Hutchence. "But we, as a group, we were st who penn out a tour "It's abou "I saw a neighbou seemed t I realized th up, they g prejudice. cultivated society.

Th Still, the 24- haven't fallen into the great abyss of being a bunch of little pop stars. Let's just say we've upset all the right people so far." INXS. which derived its name from the street idiom in excess,' is on its second American tour and hyping its fourth LP, The Swing. Though their single, Original Sin, was No. 1 in Australia and Japan, sales have been slow so far in the United States. With Americans, it's tough to catch their attention sometimes," said Kirk Pengilly, who plays guitar and saxophone for INXS. "Lots of radio stations here are going back to heavy metal. Americans didn't even know we existed until our third album two years ago (Shabooh Shoobah). We had two big hits off it (The One Thing and Don't Change) and The Swing is so different from those type of songs." The new album was recorded in five different studios, mixed in four others, and "all the material was written when we were still on tour," said Hutchence, who penned Original Sin while looking out a tour bus window in Buffalo, NY. "It's about racial equality," he said.

"I saw a white kid playing in a black neighbourhood, and everybody seemed to be getting along fine. I realized that every day these kids wake up, they grow up around a little more prejudice. Kids are fine until they get cultivated and indoctrinated into our society. The song is a parallel of that." Still, the 24-year-old Hutchence said he would prefer that INXS stay away from issue-related songs "because we're not arrogant enough to think that we're so important that we can change the world." INXS was formed in late 1978 by the Farriss brothers - Andrew (keyboards, guitar), Jon (drums, percussion) and Tim (guitars, bass). After adding Hutchence, Pengilly and bassist Garry Gary Beers, the group cut two albums for RCA - INXS in 1980 and Underneath The Colours in 1981. They have since been re-released in the United States by Atlantic Records - the band's current label. "People just weren't into us then," said Hutchence, whose gyrating stage style has been compared to a cross between Mick Jagger and Queen's Freddie Mercury. "I hate to be thought of as an imitator, it's so disgusting," Hutchence said. "I have no idea of who I look like.

I don't even know what the hell I'm doing up there. I just know that I enjoy it." Hutchence said INXS has "four major shows left in California" before winding up its US tour. "And then we go on a sold-out tour of Japan, including three nights in Tokyo," he said. "Then we're going to take some time off - four months or so -and get some more material together for our next album. We have no plans of breaking up. We're a very young band. We've never changed members, and for a couple of us this is our first time in a band. We want to stay together." - Associated Press September 1984