Making The Old New Again

Released onto the European market was a new Icehouse single. "Hey Little Girl ’97" has done very well throughout Europe, with reports of it being played in the dance clubs and selling very well in the shops. It was featured as "single of the week" in a Melbourne music mag. The single was even heard within the vicinity of the United States (gasp!) and found in local record stores. Released by Edel/Control Company (Edel 0042405CON), it features five different versions of "Hey Little Girl."

The versions are titled as follows:

Radio Edit
Future House Single
X/tended Edit
DJ Darling vs. DJ Sören
Original Version

The picture sleeve of this single is from a photo session held back in 1994. Those with sharp eyes will note that the lovely model on the right of the photo is none other than Tonia Davies! The picture below is also from that same photo shoot.

Another release for Icehouse fans to get their hands on is a new compilation from Massive Records. Dubbed No Promises, this new collection was created for the European market as well. The success of its predecessor, Love In Motion, had the executives in Europe clamoring for another batch of songs from Icehouse’s stellar past!

The tracks featured are:

Taking The Town
No Promises
This Time
Dusty Pages
On My Mind
The Mountain
Paradise
Angel Street
Spanish Gold
Lucky Me
Fatman
Nothing To Do

Avid dissectors of Icehouse will notice subtle differences in most of the tracks in this collection - we’ll let you find them for yourselves.

Great Southern Land is a re-release that Massive has just made available. Surprisingly, many fans out there wanted this to be made available again despite the various other compilations. Massive does not have any plans at this moment to re-release the Great Southern Land video compilation. The CD has been released for a limited time and most likely will be made unavailable again in June 1998.

We are keeping a phone line open to Massive concerning any further details pertaining to a Best Of... video compilation. We have also learned that there is an idea floating around to create an Icehouse boxed set. We will post that news here as more details come to light.

Another Icehouse related project that finally found its way into Iva’s hands was the Real Wild Child CD-ROM. It was officially released before Christmas in a limited quantity.

There Is Love Inside The Icehouse

Icehouse memorabilia was recently featured at a charity auction, with the proceeds from the bids going to the Pathfinder Organization. Iva was pleased to help out and to hear that his contributions raised a nice piece of change for the event! Contributed to the auction were a poster from Berlin, coupled with the hat worn in the picture! The lucky person taking this haberdashing prize home bid almost AUS$1,000 for the pair! Another lucky bidder forked over pretty close to AUS$500 and took home the entire Icehouse CD catalogue! Congratulations to all who were involved with this worthy cause!

From The Offices Of...

The Icehouse has a new inmate... er... guest! Big Bite Management is pleased to announce a new member of the team! Veronica Ozolins will be the person in charge of promotion and marketing for Iva Davies. Veronica’s past experience includes working for two Australian record companies, The Massive Recording Company and Shock Records. Welcome inside, Veronica! Oh, and bring a heater...

EMI are no longer the distributors for Massive Records. The new company chosen for the task of flinging Massive CDs to the world is Warner Bros.

Just For Fun

Iva attended the Radiohead concert in Sydney. He enjoyed the show and was impressed that they didn’t "do the full Bon Jovi." The staging and lighting were minimal and Iva felt that made the concert-goer focus on listening to the music.

Iva was one of the persons attending the recent Turramurra anniversary ball! He was there with Tonia, Paul Wheeler, David Chapman, and Glenn Krawczyk! Tim Farris of INXS was also there and gave Iva a big hug as they passed by each other! Looking back on how all of these fellows met at this music shop led Iva to reminisce about his early days in rock. He mentioned being in a band called Tamasha for a short time. He said the guitarist of the band, Damien, was brilliant. Michael Hoste was also part of this band and went with Iva when he departed the band. The band was a "prog-rock" band filled with skillful musicians. Iva said Damien was then and still is a guitar teacher. There were no official releases for this band.

Iva has lent his oboe playing talents to David Chapman and Steve Bull (occasional bass player for Icehouse). Steve might be gearing up to put out his own solo album.

Through The Walls

Many of us still have Big Wheel and The Berlin Tapes echoing in our ears. The question arises, what will Iva take from these previous works to use as components for the next? He says, "It’s all there. It’s not The Berlin Tapes. It won’t be a coffee table album. So far, it’s pretty meaty. They are fairly confronting songs." He has several in the works, which have been heard by some of the people in the inner circle of Iva’s realm. The reports are that the songs are good... very good. Iva describes the songs as "rock songs with a hint of modern programming in them."

Iva isn’t quite sure who will be producing the new album at this point in time. As for who will be in the "band" he says he doesn’t really know. It all depends on what the music demands and he stated that it had always been like that.

When asked about the songs he had written so far, he said he’s "happy with some of it. I would just like four times the amount and twice as good." He has also caused a few groans (including some from us with this next statement... we can hear you all doing the same thing as you read this...) while working on the new songs. He said, "Problem is I’ve thrown out about 30 things. Everybody keeps going, ‘Oh, bring the 30 things over.’ I’m going, ‘Nope. They’re thrown out. I don’t like them. We won’t be listening to those.’"

We also asked if he would be seeking a record deal or would be content with exporting under the DIVA name. He explained that they could do this in many different ways, from getting a record deal in the traditional sense to shipping Icehouse CDs out to warehouses where they wait for orders to come in. The pros and cons of these various formulas will have to be weighed by Iva and his management team to come up with the best one that will bring them into a "new chapter" in the band’s history.