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The
Vines’ story is now a well-documented whirlwind of a musical
history that saw them go from being four unknown Sydney music
fans writing songs and recording them on old cassettes, to being
one of the most talked about and listened-to bands of the year.
In February 2002, The Vines left Sydney and spent the next 18
months playing clubs, theatres and festivals in front of
thousands of fans in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia,
appearing on the covers of countless magazines, from Rolling
Stone to NME, and selling more than 1.5 million
copies of their debut album, Highly Evolved, worldwide.
Legendary television appearances like that on The Late Show
with David Letterman found a band who genuinely behaved and
played exactly as the moment took them – to put it mildly. Their
glorious performance of “Get Free” at that years’ MTV Video
Music Awards put them in front of a worldwide television
audience of over one billion people. Within so many
extraordinary highlights, there were times when the real reason
for The Vines’ success -– the songs – became somewhat obscured.
From the first incredible raw demos recorded on a temperamental
4-track machine to the fully realized perfection of Highly
Evolved, central to The Vines’ appeal is the fact that Craig
Nicholls is a songwriter of rare talent, and that Patrick
Matthews (Bass), Hamish Rosser (Drums) and Ryan Griffiths
(Guitar), are the three people who can make the songs sound on
record and on stage as they sound in Craig’s head.
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