Red Wiggle hits the decks for uni set
One of Australia’s most revered children’s entertainers is returning to Adelaide; this time to ring out the university year with students.
Murray Cook might be most famous for his time as the original red Wiggle, but now he is making his way back to Adelaide with a different audience in mind across two shows at the start of November.
Cook headlines a DJ party at the UniBar to celebrate the end of the academic year for university students, before his band Murray and the Movers takes the stage the following day.
The band’s only performance in Adelaide came “a few years ago” and according to Cook, they feel they’ve “neglected it a bit”.
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“Even though we’re older, we do get a young audience, and same with the DJing,” he says.
“Often it’s young people who’ve grown up with The Wiggles and that’s really fun; it’s exciting to see people having a good time and getting into the music.
“I love performing. When I was in The Wiggles, that was the thing I loved the most, getting in front of audiences, and it’s no different with the band or the DJing.”
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Murray and the Movers is an “eclectic” band founded by vocalist Lizzie Mack and Deniz Tek as The Soul Movers in the late 2000s, before Cook joined in 2015, with music spanning across soul, rock, blues, RnB and other genres Mack and Cook listened to while growing up.
The band changed its name last year after performing together for a decade, with Cook stepping up to become frontman. The name change was made to reflect the music the band was making, rather than trying to pigeonhole themselves.
“We just found we were writing songs and didn’t want to be liberated by trying to say ‘is this a soul song or is this a rock and roll song?’,” Cook says.
“Putting my name there wasn’t really an ego thing for me, in fact I was a little reluctant.
“If we’re playing a festival or something, it’s really obvious who the band is; [when] the name Murray’s in there, it’s pretty instantaneous.”
While he is best known for his 21-year stint with the Wiggles, Cook has spent the past fifteen years making music across a range of genres, primarily with Murray and the Movers, but with some experimentation in dance music.
By his own admission, the move to DJing wasn’t his idea, after being approached to give it a try by an agent.
“I’m usually open to different ideas and I wondered ‘oh that’s kooky, I wonder how it will go,’ and it went really well,” he admits.
“I had a young guy who performs as DJ Chumpion and he helped me put the set together, he had all the ideas.
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“I bought a sort of semi-professional deck that I could use at home, and I got lessons from him.
“Every now and then you make a pretty glaring mistake and there’s suddenly silence, but everyone’s pretty forgiving.”
Despite the dalliance with dance music, the band remains Cook’s main musical priority, with Murray and the Movers spending time in Abbey Road’s famous Studio Two next year before recording their latest album.
The band are still looking for a support act to open their show at the UniBar. When asked about what they were looking for in an opener, the answer was broad – anything short of metal.
“We always get fairly eclectic support acts,” Cook explains.
“Probably guitar-based; we’re just looking for someone with a bit of a following themselves and can bring a few people along.
“We particularly like it if there’s one or more women in the band. We really like to encourage that, and I think things are changing.
“There’s some great female fronted and bands where there’s two or three girls in them, and that’s something I’m really heartened by.”
Although both musical endeavours remain distinct, there are some similarities between each project.
Central to both is the desire to interact and involve audiences in the show, with Cook drawing on twenty years of getting kids – and their parents – excited while performing with The Wiggles.
“We get them up singing, clapping, dancing, stuff like that – it’s not that much different except everyone’s older,” he says.
“I like the continuity that The Wiggles meant something to them and so now they’ve come along to see me now and support what I’m doing.
“We tend to reward that a bit, sometimes we throw in ‘Toot Toot Chugga Chugga’ or something like that and they tend to enjoy it, it’s just a bit of fun.
“I love it when people come along and they loved The Wiggles when they were young, and generally they come away and say, ‘we love your band too.’
“Lizzie’s a great performer, too. We get a lot of young women who come up and say that they find her really inspiring because she’s an older woman and she’s getting up there and doing it.”
Cook will perform his DJ set on November 6 at the UniBar, before Murray and the Movers play the same venue on November 7.
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