LINDSEY CUTHBERTSON speaks to VERY UNIQUE EXISTENCE guitarist/vocalist RICH LATIMER, bass player MICHAEL HARRIS and keyboard player WES SEEWALD about what GREENFEST means to them.

 Greenfest is a free, environmentally aware festival that takes place in South Bank on October 10-12. Music, film photography and food festivals are all rolled into one to create a wide smorgasbord of entertainment. A band championing the cause, as well as being the music behind Greenfest’s media campaign is Byron Bay’s Very Unique Existence. I caught three of the members quickly before they performed the theme track Looking Down at the festival’s media launch in South Bank.

LINDSEY CUTHBERTSON: Would you care to give me a brief outline of the band’s history?

MICHAEL HARRIS: The band’s been going for three years now. We started off as a two-piece with Rich and Chris and I joined about twelve months afterwards and not long after that Wes came in. We’ve got an EP out at the moment and are looking to begin recording an album in the near future.

LC: How did you land the honour of contributing the theme song for Greenfest?

RICH LATIMER: We’ve put together a little label lately which is just dedicated friends and family helping out and one of those people scored it for us. When I heard we had it, and I heard it was a free festival, I was stoked. This festival is about social change and climate change, not pretending to be a really cool thing. I feel like it’s the real deal. The theme song Looking Down is a reference to those issues, and the guy who runs Greenfest really identified with it.

LC: You don’t really have much of a profile in Brisbane yet, but you’re starting to make a name for yourself in your home state of New South Wales aren’t you?

RL: We have high rotation commercial airplay on regional radio in New South Wales all the way down to Newcastle. We’re well known in the places that our songs are played on the radio, where with Brisbane we’re really only known for touring. We’ve found that with touring you get known really slowly, but with radio it’s a more rapid process. Hopefully, it looks like landing the theme song for Greenfest will get us some airplay on Brisbane radio too.

LC: Seeing as you identify with the concept, you must be excited to play Greenfest.

RL: Yeah man! I’m a hippy kid at heart, raised in the bush I really think our society has to change its ways, at least a little bit. I mean, if anyone disagrees with that they’ve probably been living with their head in the sand for a while. I think what Coleman is trying to do with the festival is something that hasn’t been done in a long time.

WES SEEWALD: We love music; it’s the basis of everything we do. I think coming to a festival like this is a great opportunity to connect with an audience of similarly-minded people - we have the chance to spread a good message about the environment and social change.

For information on GREENFEST, visit www.greenfest.com.au for more details. While you’re there surfing the web, why not check out Very Unique Existence’s MySpace page as well, at www.myspace.com/thevuerock

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