'The Funkoars want to be Vincent D’Onofrio'

BY GEMMA BOASE ON MARCH 9, 2012
LUNA MAGAZINE

As Australian hip hop booms with new talent and fresh style, industry veterans, The Funkoars, are causing just as much havoc and excitement as the young’ns. Nine years on from their first album release, these Adelaide-bred boys are still battling the tour circuit and having some laughs along the way.

LUNA joined in on the laughter when we chatted with the typical Aussie jokester, Sesta. He told us, since coming off their latest tour the foursome had been trying to avoid each other as much as possible.

“Yeah, no we hate each other. We only speak when we’re on tour and in the hotel room,” he kidded. “No, we like each other most of the time – most of the time.”

After an extensive tour of the nation to launch the release of their fourth album, The Quickening, last year, the boys are now preparing to hit the road again. The boys are continuing to release material from the record with the newest single, Vamoose, dropping earlier this week – giving the ‘Oars a brand new reason to round the country another time.

“It’s at that sweet spot of the album now, where it’s been out for around six months and it’s really nice to do a series of live shows once the album’s been out for that long and everyone’s had enough time to digest it. A lot of people know the songs a lot better. Whereas, thus far, it’s been good and people know the singles, but the album hasn’t really had time to sink in, which I think now it will.”

Although the tour has been spurred on by Vamoose, it has been inspired and named after someone The Funkoars look up to and worship - Vincent D’Onofrio. The world-renowned actor has starred in an array of roles over his illustrious two-decade-long career, but is most famous for playing the character Detective Robert Goren on the popular US television show, Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Now, our Aussie rappers are attempting to incorporate some of the actor’s greatness into their show by Being Vincent D’Onofrio.

“Well it’s always hard to say you’re own name. Everyone has trouble pronouncing his name. But we wanted to name our tour and songs after him just ’cause we’ll never compare to such a human. We’ll never be as good as him. We can put his face on our bodies, which is what we’ve done for the tour poster, but that’s probably the closest we’re going to get.

“We were going to do what everyone else always does, and that’s when they’ve got a new single coming out they name the tour after that. But we thought that was boring and what is the point of the that? There’s just a multitude of people who just seem do that and have very boring tour names. So we just thought it sounded good so we called it that, and then we came up with the poster to put his face on our face, and it made us laugh.”

With such a cool name for the tour, Sesta said he wishes he could turn back time and recreate his own stage name which he now describes as “cringe-worthy”. Just the same as the other three ‘Oars, he says his teenage-self was not the best decision maker.

“No I hate it, if I could change it, it’d be something cool like Vincent D’Onofrio. I think all of us don’t like our rap names now, because we started so long ago, we were 15 or 16 – and of course what we like when we’re 15 or 16 we not only going to hate a year later, we’re going to hate after 10 years with even more of passion. But they have spun off into other nicknames and we will address each other as these other little spin-off names that have come from that name.”

Hand-in-hand with their new nicknames, the boys are also known for creating their own style of language. Regularly speaking in a vernacular others couldn’t understand, The Funkoars had to physically create a guide to their slang for their friends and fans – ‘The Quickipedia‘.

“We didn’t really think it was obvious, but whenever we’d get together and we’re just sort of talking amongst ourselves, we’d hear back from someone sitting near us, ‘I have no idea what you guys are talking about, you sound like you’re talking another language,’ – with all our mumbles and stutter and our own bits of lingo. Many times even friends of ours are like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Because a lot of times we’ll have a word that evolves into another meaning, and that word will spin-off and evolve into another meaning, and that word will spin-off and evolve to another word, which has it’s own meaning. So it’s broadened up a bit, our larger circle of friends now all speak the lingo but it has always been an issue for a long time just ’cause we have so many stupid personal jokes and stuff. When you get around us and hear us talking about bullshit it usually makes sense.”