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Operator Please (CH only)

Brille Records

Five kids who met in high school after a reconnaissance mission by vocalist / guitarist Amandah Wilkinson (to fill numbers for a band competition), collated their collective musical quirks and somehow made the incongruous concoction work. “We rehearsed at lunch times in the practice room,” explains Wilkinson. “I picked people at random who I knew played an instrument, and they just said yes.”
Those people were Tim Commandeur on drums, Sarah Gardiner on keyboards, Ashley McConnell on bass and Stephanie Joske on violin – who has since been replaced by the classically trained Taylor Henderson. “After ten years classical training gets super boring,” she asserts. “I was on the verge of quitting when I got the call. To tell you the truth, violin in a band – I originally thought it would be yokel, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Like all good fairy tales Operator Please won the band comp first prize – a box of doughnuts that were donated to the school which they never even collected. “Someone stole our frickin’ card that we needed to pick them up!” quips Amandah, but rather than waiting until studies and exams were out of the way, Operator Please saw a golden opportunity for good times and made the most of it. An independent EP was recorded on their own, and after a run of shows and some hardcore DIY promotion (not to mention a quick jaunt to New York to prove that they didn’t just bring their school friends to shows), people started taking notice. Not only the cool kids on MySpace either, but the stuffy suits of my generation who generally need to be clubbed like the aforementioned seals before noticing fresh talent.

End result? A quick signing to Virgin/EMI for Australia and New Zealand, and a deal with the influential Brille label in the UK.

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