Died Pretty first got together sometime around 1983 - 16 years ago. Their most recent studio record, 1991's 'Using My Gills As A Roadmap', earned the band reviews as good as they'd pulled during their not insubstantial career (in fact, Juice magazine bestowed upon it the almost unheard of 10 out of 10 rating). Just stop and think how many other Aussie groups playing a decade and a half ago are still releasing albums today, not to mention decent ones. Well there's . . . ahh . . . umm . . .

'There's not many of 'em!', laughs Died Pretty guitarist and co-writer Brett Myers. 'Gee, there's hardly any. The only other band that I can really think of that are still sporadically sort of doing stuff are the Celibate Rifles. They were actually around for a couple of years before us, I remember 'cos I used to be in another band called The End and we used to play with them and Damien [Lovelock, Rifles vocalist] liked us. In fact, he recorded one of The End's songs for his solo album if I remember, so they've been going for a while. But they play less than we do!', Myers laughs.

And don't even mention the state of Australian music back in '83. 'It was crap.', Myers says matter-of-factly, 'Shit, basically when we started it was all just like really crappy post Cold Chisel pub rock. It was really horrible, there was almost no good bands around at all. There were basically three really good bands that I liked, The Birthday Party, The Laughing Clowns, and The Go-Betweens. And then maybe The Scientists or something like that. The Scientists were our local heroes in a way 'cos they lived in Sydney and were playing a lot in places we used to play at. They were great, I loved them. With the Rifles and the Scientists and all those sorts of bands it was getting louder and harder and we sort of reacted against that in a way, and did softer songs I guess, well at least songs with periods of silence in them. And also we did pop stuff which was unusual in those days, that was all the Big Star/Badfinger sort of stuff that we liked as well, tried to channel through the band. And that's how songs like Blue Sky Day came out.'

Myers' reminiscing has been prompted by the release of a 16-track Died Pretty 'Best Of' entitled, 'Out Of The Unknown', documenting the band's career from the release of the 'Next To Nothing' EP in 1985 up until 'Using My Gills As A Road Map' (early purchasers will also receive an extra disc with unreleased tracks the band recorded during their time with Sony in the early nineties, as well as some hard-to-find b-sides). So what is it that has kept Died Pretty going this long?

'We're too stupid to quit', Myers laughs, 'that's the simple answer, isn't it? I don't know, we still enjoy what we do, and I don't feel what we're doing is redundant. We're not just recycling old stuff, [UMGAARM] is really, really different, it's a left turn from what we usually do and it struck me as worthwhile  and something that saw us trying to extend our boundaries a bit.'

Not surprisingly, UMGAARM went completely over the heads of the greater record buying public, and Died Pretty again found their critical success offset by commercial indifference. 'I dunno. It didn't worry me, I didn't think about it.', Myers says of the bands early struggle to sell records, something they didn't overcome until '91 with the release of the ARIA nominated 'Doughboy Hollow' album. 'We never started out as a commercial proposition, we never started out to get on the charts or anything. We got reasonable crowds, enough to pay our way and give us the freedom of touring and make enough money to do records reasonably cheaply. I was just enjoying playing and writing music and being in a band, it was fun, and anything else was a bonus after that. I guess also the thing was for 90% of the bands early existence was we were going overseas every year, so if we weren't doing that great in Australia, not selling, it didn't worry me too much because we were doing OK elsewhere.'

Doing OK elsewhere they certainly were - through a series of overseas tours completely funded by themselves, Died Pretty built up a sizeable following in Europe, big enough to ensure that their second LP, 'Lost', hit number three on the Italian charts. How does Myers account for the disparity between their success here and abroad?

'I dunno. Good taste!', he laughs. 'We just seemed to strike a chord with them. We weren't complaining 'cos it just meant we had to spend a lot of time touring France, Italy, and Spain. That was fine with us. Then we'd just come home and do our trips to Wollongong and Newcastle and Geelong and Melbourne and that was alright too, but given the choice it was fun to be in Europe.'

Everything finally changed with 'Doughboy Hollow'. Propelled by the killer singles, 'DC' and 'Sweetheart', Died Pretty finally made a dent in the mainstream charts and had major labels knocking on their door. The band signed with Sony, where they released the 'Trace' and 'Sold' albums ('State Of Graceful Mourning', from 'Trace', was also marked to appear on the 'best of', but was cut when the band were told there were too many songs to fit on one CD). After 'Sold' didn't perform as well as expected, the band returned to their original Indie home, Citadel Records, for the release of UMGAARM.

'It was fine.', Myers says of the bands time at Sony now, 'I mean, major labels are pretty cut and dried. They put a lot of money into you and they expect large sales as a result, and if you don't do that they kick you out and that's what happens. Sony, above all, typifies that major label ethos, but we knew that when we signed. We just thought, 'If we're gonna go for it, let's just go with the biggest and baddest and see what happens!'.'

The band are currently sitting on an album's worth of new material which they hope to record early next year, so don't think the 'Best Of' is the end of the Died Pretty story.

'I wouldn't have any trouble saying we were splitting up if we were', Myers says. 'It's fine, it doesn't hold any huge fear for me, it's just we're not, so that's it. We definitely do plan to do an album next year. If you were saying where were we in the spectrum of the bands existence I'd have to say closer to the end than the beginning, but as for this being the last thing we'll ever do, no.'

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