FROM THE MAD TURKS TO THE CITY GATES TO THE BLUE ATLAS... THE CHARLES JENKINS STORY

I was born in Mildura in Victoria. When I was a kid, my family moved to Adelaide. I went to good Catholic schools. Christian Brothers schools, which explains an awful lot.

I think The Who, Live At Leeds was the first album I bought. I learned how to play Substitute on the guitar. It was my standard piece for a good decade.
I also loved the first Skyhooks record, Living In The 70's. I used to re-write the lyrics for an Adelaide setting. I rewrote Balwyn Calling as, "I don't take too kindly to the people that go down Hindley ...'"

The Reels' Quasimodo's Dream was another favourite. I remember studying for my Year 10 exams at my grandparent's place. They had an old turntable and I would play that album over and over. An incredible record.

I came late to the guitar, I was probably 15. My first guitar was an Ibanez copy of a black Gibson guitar that Mick Jones from The Clash played. I paid for it with money earned from my paper round.

I formed a band with some school friends. We were called Rigor Mortis. The plan was we would call our first album "Rigor Mortis Sets In" - we didn't realise that The Who's John Entwistle had already beaten us to it. Our first - and only - gig was at the lead singer's primary school reunion. We went to Allans Music and hired an amplifier. We took it on the bus and then plugged every guitar and mic into it. I was listening to stuff like Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and Graham Parker; the singer got me into The Damned, Throbbing Gristle and The Anti-Nowhere League; a great influence.

There were a couple of bands after Rigor Mortis. At one stage, I was right into bands like The Specials and Selecter, so I tried to form a ska band. I'd take the train to Elizabeth, the place where Chisel started. It was terrifying. The reason I didn't become a Led Zeppelin fan is because that was the name emblazoned on all these kids' schoolbags - and they were the kids beating the crap out of us. The ska band never really happened; just a couple of rehearsals and scary train rides.

Then I went to uni. Adelaide University. Arts. I lasted about six months before the joys of the uni bar appeared in the form of countless pint glasses of cider.
I decided to form another band, so I put an ad up around town. A guy named Matthias Eckhardt answered the ad. He was a smooth-looking cat, wearing brothel creepers and a quiff, stove-pipe pants and cowboy shirt. He looked a million bucks and he was a hotshot guitarist. Downstairs from Matthias lived a bass player, and his sister went out with a drummer. The Mad Turks From Instanbul were born!

We signed to Greasy Pop, which was the label in Adelaide. The boss there called us "Eddie Cochran on dangerous chemicals". All I could manage were three-chord stomps - Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and Buddy Holly songs.
We moved to Melbourne to make our second album Toast, with Dom Larizza's brother, Archie, who had been in The Saints. I learned more in these three weeks than I had in the previous five years.

With my songwriting, I'd realised that I didn't have to include every chord that I'd learned - I could surround myself with great players and they could do all that stuff! Also, by this stage, my kids had arrived, and I didn't have as much time. So my songs got simpler and simpler, and better and better.

I started playing solo gigs, but I didn't have the confidence to do a solo record. Then the Icecream Hands came along. It was the second band for most of us and it was intended to be very self-indulgent.

We got a record deal with Rubber, but we didn't have any fans. So we did a residency at The Central Club in Richmond as "The Dishonest Johns". We'd play the theme to the ABC's Countrywide and the theme to the The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Randy Newman's Political Science, and The Affiliated by the Dukes of Stratosphere

We released a self-titled EP in 1992, which is now relegated to The Lost Year.
We then found Douglas Lee Robertson, an amazing bass player and singer from Adelaide. And we made our debut album, Travelling... Made Easy. It stiffed immeasurably.

Then came The Hard Years. Rubber had no money - they were waiting for Cordrazine to make 'em some bread some five years later. Doug got beaten up and couldn't sing for six months. Dom broke his foot. Smiley dislocated his knee breakdancing. And I crashed some cars. But out of it came this incredible record, Memory Lane Traffic Jam.

The next record, Sweeter Than The Radio, was really rushed, which was my fault entirely. I was overly ambitious, trying to cover too much ground stylistically. But it's a good collection of tunes. The title was a parody of The Byrds' Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, but no-one ever got it. By this stage, Rubber had hooked up with BMG and we released five singles(!)

We got to do the Big Day Outs that year, and Sweeter Than The Radio was ARIA-nominated - We thought we'd at least get a plug on the telly, but the announcer walked out and said, "Welcome to the non-televised part of the night." and then announced the winner of our category - not us.

We tried to make Broken UFO the culmination of everything we'd done. It was simply a matter of selecting the best songs. This was the first album we made with producer Shane O'Mara. And Matty Vehl, Marcus's brother-in-law, had joined the band.

I think the title Broken UFO suggests something beautiful but something prone to disaster, which probably sums up the Icecream Hands.
We scored another ARIA nomination, with Rain Hail Shine up for Best Independent Release. But when we got there and found we were seated nowhere near the stage, I knew that we'd lost again.

Two years after Broken UFO, I released my debut solo album, Bungalow. I recorded 20 songs with Shane O'Mara, putting the faster songs to one side and saving them for my second solo album. Bungalow is the "Sunday morning" record; My second solo album, The City Gates is "Saturday night" record.
The Bungalow songs took me overseas twice, to Europe and then America. I got some good reviews and had a lot of fun. Both albums kept me busy running around Australia.

Icecream Hands got together in 2007 and made out first album in 5 years, The Good China, which has done well for us, there's a few songs on that album I'm very proud of.

Throughout 2008 myself and the Zhivagos worked on The Blue Atlas, our string soaked masterpiece! people's names and place names were my songwriting parameters. Very pleased with it, and the response has been terrific.

ALBUMS THE MAD TURKS FROM INSTANBUL Cafe Instanbul, 1987 Toast, 1990
THE ICECREAM HANDS Travelling... Made Easy, 1993 Memory Lane Traffic Jam, 1997 Sweeter Than The Radio, 1999 Broken UFO, 2002 You Can Ride My Bike, The Best Of The Icecream Hands, 2004 The Good China 2007
SOLO Bungalow, 2004 The City Gates, 2005
The Blue Atlas 2008