Lissa and I began performing and recording together in Los Angeles in 1980. Our first band was called ‘Live Nude Girl’ formed during the post-punk era. Angular, with arcane drum-machines, synths, guitars, and theatrical graphic visuals. I am an American-born Australian, who grew up in Sydney, went to design school in Melbourne, then after starting my career in visual communication design, relocated to the USA to freelance in design and get serious about song writing. To find collaborators, starting bands, and doing solo singer-songwriter spots around LA, while designing in the daytime.
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Lissa (Mendelsohn) was born in Mexico City to American parents of European descent. She was a film and theatre major at UCLA and a High School speech champion in Northern California. After my new wave band ‘Decades’ folded, I first saw Lissa at a ‘Go-Gos’ gig in downtown LA, where she was part of an indie documentary film crew. A romance slowly bloomed, and after she revealed she could sing, a band was formed. ‘Live Nude Girl was performing on the LA new-wave scene, and we recorded a 4 track EP in a Hollywood demo studio. Both sets of A&L’s parents first met at a Live Nude Girl gig at Madame Wong’s East.
Live Nude Girl’s demo cassette found its way to a Sydney producer, Mark Moffat, through a Sydney design mentor visiting LA. We were married in 1981 in LA and followed our demo tape to Sydney for a family reunion/honeymoon. Both music and design opportunities were on the cards, so we relocated to Sydney in 1982. Work soon began on the first single for Festival Records; the Live Nude Girl staple ‘Tough Guy’ was released in 1983 under the new name ‘Vitabeats‘, which was hatched on a ferry trip to Manly. We were also signed to Warner Music Publishing worldwide through John Bromell and Neva Yakich.
The songs were about identity, futurism, and using old- and new-school technologies—an alternative electropop hybrid. After extracting ourselves from Festival Records with manager Brian Peacock, we found our new independent home with Hot Records in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Martin Jennings, Graeme Regan, and Christopher Read got behind us.
Vitabeats as a live electro-pop project began with keyboardist Sam McNally’s multi-keyboard rig in his front room in Rose Bay. He had answered our ad in an Eastern suburbs music shop. We then created a live set to perform around Sydney as a trio, with Malcolm Fogg and pre-recorded sequences on cassette tape, me on guitar, and mighty Lissa’s lead vocals. As the Vitabeats studio sessions approached at Studios 301 with producer/engineer John Bee, Paul Dengate created digital sequences for key tracks, while Ken Francis also arranged and programmed tracks.
The first tracks recorded and released became the ‘Cake Mix’ 12” EP (1984). Hot Records took ‘Boom Box’ to CBS to release as a 7’’ single. Lissa storyboarded the Boom Box video, which we produced with director Paul Nichola. It was a 3-person production team. The single went from ABC TripleJ to SAFM in Adelaide and on to mainstream national airplay. Then we were invited onto Molly Meldrum’s ‘Countdown,’ and that’s when we entered the charts. Hot Records then approached EMI regarding an album; they also released a 7’’ single for ‘Boom Box.’ We completed ‘Audrey’ as the 2nd single and video and returned to 301 to finish six more tracks. ‘Build it Right’ was produced by Cameron Allen for the soundtrack of the film ‘Emoh Ruo’s. The album ‘Spot the Spanner‘ was completed and released by EMI in 1985 as a 12” vinyl and cassette. Even though the album was primarily digital, no CD was ever produced. The independent planets had aligned. No one was entirely sure where we had hailed from, but that was a blessing in Australia.
Vitabeats as a live band had grown to a five-piece. We played a Christmas season residency at Kinsellas, had grown the repertoire, and were demoing new tracks at Damien Gerard Studio with Marshall Cullen. We played live on SBS-TV and started a musical shift away from electro-pop. Vitabeats stopped performing on New Year’s Eve in 1988.
The final Vitabeats recordings post-EMI, were produced by legendary American producer Joe Wissert and engineer David Hemmings. Recorded at Studios 301 and Trackdown, the songs were One World Rhythm, Nothing more than this, and Two little people. Released to streaming in 2013.
Now, we enter the 1989-2023 chapter of the story. We had remained as freelance graphic designers and had established a solid business. By chance, we met our next collaborator, Boris Hunt, when we backed into the label owner’s car while he was working in North Sydney. This began a string of ‘salvaged’ 4 track recordings, which became independent releases through Marshall Cullen’s Foghorn Records and MGM Distribution. These releases went out under ‘Andrew Barnum,’ where Lissa and daughter Cayenne, who arrived in 1994, added vocals on all the albums.
Both Lissa and I started teaching design at UTS and Billy Blue College in 2000. I became Head of College at Billy Blue from 2006 to 2012. Lissa and I took on Masters study, Lissa an MBA at Uni of Adelaide and myself at UTS. During this time, I continued to write and demo songs, and in 2015, I started a Doctoral study at UTS on Australian song in the digital age. We relocated from our ‘Old Church Hall’ in Erskineville, Sydney, to a small farm in Meroo Meadow near Nowra on the South Coast of NSW.
My study meant interviewing 30+ Australian songwriters to gain perspectives on a diverse range of songsmiths working hard to maintain their songwriting, recording, and performing practices during the first two decades of the 21st century. My study reached an Academic impasse in 2021, with a panel stalemate. Hopefully, all my research will surface as an independent book. What else would it be?
The silver lining during the pandemic was meeting a local independent producer, Neil Foley (Old Haunts Project), who I interviewed soon after our move south. I had spent time making new demos to a quality where I could exchange stems. This led to the rebirth of Vitabeats in 2023. I had sent Neil a batch of songs on Soundcloud, and we three agreed on which songs we’d focus on and complete. We were now a fully independent label (Lifedrum) with an aggregator. So far, we’ve released ‘Rise Up’ to coincide with ‘The Voice’ Referendum in October 2023, then ‘Red Electrics,’ a song we’d played since the 80s, that was re-imagined. Both songs have videos on YouTube.
The conviction of the Vitabeats story is that writing songs and releasing independent masters in Australia is for the love of country and staying true to the cultural defiance required to tell our stories to ourselves – in our own ‘grain of voice.’ Stories, languages, experiences, and a sense of place. 2024 will see the release of more Vitabeats singles, videos, and an album artifact — happy listening from Andrew, Lissa, Cayenne, and Neil, South Coast NSW, Australia.
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