With their last album released in 1981 prior to the passing of lead singer Steve Gilpin, many fans had given up on hearing new music from 70s band Mi-Sex again.
But 35 years later, Mi-Sex returned in 2016 with the album ‘Not From Here’.
Keyboardist Murray Burns said it was the arrival of former Noiseworks bass guitarist Steve Balbi that brought the band out of their hiatus.
“As soon as we lost Gilpin we said ‘well, that’s the end of the band, we’re not going to play again, we can’t’,” Murray said.
“We had no intention of playing again until Steve Balbi met Don Martin and they just got chatting and then suddenly we were on stage again.”
Now, seven years after joining, Murray says the band were grateful to Gilpin for giving them the opportunity to play again.
“For us this is more than a thrill because we stopped for that long and really had no thought of playing again at all,” he said.
“I can’t tell you how special it is for us to be on stage playing these songs.
“Balbi is so full of enthusiasm for us to do well and to be creative, so we are sort of just like teenagers again.”
While most rock bands back in the 70s were singing about love, sex and rock and roll, it was their new-wave, electronic sound that made Mi-Sex stand out.
“I realised that we only have the word love once in our songs when I was going through them,” Murray laughed.
“And I said ‘wow, we’re heartless buggers aren’t we?’.”
One song that was far from love was their hit single ‘Computer Games’, a song way ahead of its time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiOi-KSiGM0
“Computers weren’t really around in ‘79 when Kevin Stanton wrote the lyrics for that,” he said.
“People thought it was about ‘Space Invaders’, but it was a really clever observation of the world we live in.”
And thankfully for fans, more new music could be on the way in the near future.
“We’ve just spent 10 days at my house writing songs and piecing together different ideas that we have for another record,” he said.
Mi-Sex will be joining the Choirboys at the Evan Theatre on Saturday, March 24 from 8pm. Tickets are $47.65 and can be purchased by calling 1300 PANTHERS.
Lauren Suttie is the Weekender’s General & Community News journalist.
