Brian Canham and his much-loved band Pseudo Echo have always loved an adventure.
And, after four decades, that quest is continuing just as strongly today.
Not only is the gifted frontman still touring – alongside Matty Ray, James Mudd, Sammy Paul, Tony Featherstone and Abigail Lula, he’s celebrating the 40th anniversary of the group’s biggest album.
Love An Adventure, which spent more than six months on the US Billboard charts, spawned the hit singles Don’t Go, Love An Adventure, Living In A Dream and the blockbuster Funky Town.
The latter track enjoyed No. 1 status in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and embedded itself in the Top 10 in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and South Africa.
Rolling Stone magazine in America also declared the record “proved this young quartet has mastered the principles of lively electronic rock”, comparing the offering to Oingo Boingo and Giorgio Moroder.
“It’s terrific, however I don’t know if I ever thought that far ahead [40 years],” Canham said.
“I used to see some of the older, heritage musos back in the day and think ‘oh yeah, they’re still going’.
“So, wow, here I am.
“With Love An Adventure, it was a pretty new adventure for the boys… no pun intended.
“Firstly, I changed keyboard players.
“I had a good writing combination with Tony Lugton, an original member, but things change.
“You’re in your early 20s and you travel along different paths.
“That’s when I recruited James Leigh.
“He was only 16 and had lots of fantastic little hooks and bits and pieces.
“He played me demos and I recall telling him “It’s great, it’s exactly what I need to draw from”.
“So, we put bits of his songs, with bits of mine, and we started creating.
“We really hit it off.
“And, from Pseudo Echo’s perspective, it was a fabulous move.
“Even though I predominantly wrote the singles myself, sometimes you just need that little injection to push you back into gear.
“Technology had also changed by that stage.
“Our debut (Autumnal Park comprising Listening, A Beat For You, Dancing Until Midnight, Stranger In Me) was all performed in the studio, even though we were using electronic instruments.
“It was still kind of like a rock album, but with synthesizers.
“By the time we began recording Love An Adventure, there was a lot of sequencing where you would program the parts and they’d be very precise… you could layer things more.
“So, we took full advantage of that.”
It was the release of Funky Town, the Lipps Inc cover which originally sold eight million copies, that catapulted Pseudo Echo into another stratosphere.
Even though disco had died in the 1970s, Canham supercharged the track to give it a new lease of life in the mid-80s and beyond.
“It’s not my song, but it’s one that I really loved growing up,” he told the Newcastle Weekly.
“It was played in all the clubs and huge at the time.
“However, in a strange twist of fate, when we initially released Love An Adventure, Funky Town wasn’t on it.
“We were touring to support the record… and I caught up with an old friend, who used to be a DJ.
“While having coffee at his pad, he put on the original; he just did it out of nostalgia, no other reason.
“He said to me: ‘Remember this?’
“It was so cool.
“After that, a few days later during a sound check, I started noodling around with it.
“I then sort of found where the key would be right for my voice.
“That led me to experiment with a few different guitar sounds.
“By then, the other guys joined in… and we tried this and that.
“We had so much fun with it.
“That night, we threw Funky Town into our encore and it surprised us all how well it went over with the audience.
“We kept it there for the rest of the tour.
“By the end, there was so much talk about it and people were saying ‘you’ve got to get in and record that song. It’s fantastic, we love what you’re doing with it’.
“The late, great Glenn Wheatley was our manager at the time.
“He wasn’t sure about it and when he mentioned it to the record company overseas, they thought we were nuts.
“They kept saying ‘disco’s gone, forget about it’.
“I think it was Lee Simon (Triple M), whom we shared an office with, who bumped into me in the hallway one day and said ‘you’ve got to release that song’.
“To be honest, I had no idea what he was talking about.
“I’m like ‘which one?’.
“He replied: ‘Funky Town, of course. I received a pirate tape of it and it’s a killer, go for it’.
“So, that was the big push, which helped us immensely.
“It got Glenn over the line and, even though the record company was still a bit unsure, I took the helm and produced what I wanted to do with it.
“Fortunately for me, and the guys, it exploded as soon as we released it.
“Funky Town just went mental.
“Ironically, the record company overseas instantly changed its mind and got on board.
“The rest, they say, is history.”
But, the band’s fortunes could have been so different.
Pseudo Echo’s maiden TV appearance was a landmark performance on Countdown on 26 June 193.
They were the first “unrecorded” group to appear on the show.
“We’re about to present a local act who hasn’t got a record contract,” then host Molly Meldrum announced.
“We saw them at a gig.
“I think they have loads of potential, so all you record companies out there, have a look at them, and the public, you judge for yourselves.
“We believe they’re pretty good.
“A young group, they go under the name of Pseudo Echo.
“Here they are with Listening. Go boys.”
Soon after, they signed a major deal with EMI.
And, by the end of that year, Listening had soared into the Australian Top 5.
“We were lucky to be at the forefront of the synthwave period,” Canham said.
“That’s because we were heavily influenced by band from overseas, rather than local.
“Don’t get me wrong, we loved Icehouse (they were Flowers back in the day), INXS and Mi-Sex.
“They were pushing the envelope a bit, too, off the post-punk new wave era.
“I discovered, or had been introduced to, a lot of groups like the Tubeway Army, The Human League, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, just to mention a handful.
“They were starting to really influence me.
“And, I could hear there wasn’t a big thing happening like that in Australia.
“So, it appealed to me.
“It was different… and it meant we wouldn’t be competing directly with another rock group or pub band.”
Canham and the current line-up will take to the stage at the Belmont 16s on Friday 31 October.
He guarantees a fun time for all.
“It’s nostalgic, it’s modern,” he said.
“We play all the hits.
“It’s a totally professional show… the band I have these days is amazing.
“And, the songs are performed with gusto, conviction and very authentic with a boost of steroids.
“It’s funny, back in the day, you had to go out there and prove yourself.
“Win the audience over.
“So, there was a lot of effort put in to validate yourself.
“Nowadays, it doesn’t happen.
“People turn up because they love us, they are our best friends.
“They’re coming to reminisce with their past… and, it’s a very positive experience.
“As for the newcomers, well, they’re converts, too.
“They are the original fans’ kids or their younger friends.
“Or, it’s a new generation who’s found us via streaming services, for example.
“So, it’s a very broad audience.
“It literally starts at 18 years and goes way up to 60.
“We love it.”
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