When the two met at the Neighbours 2000th episode party, where Michael was a scriptwriter, it didn¹t take long for talk to turn to music (the Velvet
Underground and the Stooges) and film (Clint Eastwood westerns and Sam Peckinpah).

And thus began the Sand Pebbles, a band embracing contradictions.

"You can love Peckinpah and you can love football. That's the beauty of it," Michael says. "It¹s not so obvious these days but back then you were either into footy and a meat head, or you were into films. And if you were into films it was all tosser, arty farty."

Sand Pebbles are proud to love both footy and film but the music they play comes mostly from the underground, influenced heavily by psychedelia,
post-punk, and early 80s Australian underground rock (The Birthday Party, The Moodists).

"I think sometimes people think psychedelia is just long meandering, which is kind of self-indulgent but the thing with us is we love that 60¹s freak
out stuff but then we want that punk if-it¹s-wanky-you-don¹t-do-it," Michael explains.

"We¹ve never shied away from trying to write pop songs," Hollow adds. "Even with our longer songs we¹ve always tried to put enough hooks in there to keep it interesting. Even an eight minute song, you can still structure like a pop song."

But, Michael says, as long as it pushes the boundaries. "I listen to a lot of the three minute rock songs that are around and think a lot of them are pretty dull and I think there¹s ways you can do three minute rock songs that have a lot of weirder bits in them."

Originally a trio with Piet Collins on drums, the band is now settled as a five-piece with Andrew Tanner doing the singing and Murray Ono adding keys. With interest in the band coming from all over the world (the band has gotten coverage in the NY Times, the Guardian, and Italian Rolling Stone
(Rockerilla), what started out as a hobby, over the course of three albums (the latest being Ghost Transmissions), has become a serious endeavour.

"We haven¹t got anyone behind us. It¹s a guerilla operation. You throw all this stuff out there and you get a great reception. So it actually does make
you think maybe we should take it to another level," Hollow says.

And as well as an impressive collection of newspaper clippings for the scrapbook, the band count amongst their fans a diverse range of music
listeners, from Dave Graney to Scottish underground BMX identity Sandy Carson, who stumbled across the band in an unusual way.

"One of the joys of writing scripts on Neighbours is you can put in stupid in-jokes,"Michael laughs, "and one of my in-jokes is that for a year on
the program almost all the characters were named after underground BMX stars so one of the new people on the street was Sandy Carson,¹¹

"And I get an email from Sandy Carson, going, 'Hey, you cheeky git. What are you doing with that?'. Because he¹s Scottish he grew up on the program."

Carson is now part of the Pebbles community (the Scot took the photos that make up the cover and sleeve art on new album Ghost Transmissions) and in
return the Pebbles have been embraced by the worldwide underground BMX community.

"I think BMX and music there¹s a connection because when you¹re riding your bike and you¹re going for a jump or whatever the faster you go the less
chance you have of hurting yourself," Michael says.

"It¹s when you pull back it doesn¹t work. I think music¹s the same thing. You¹ve got to go flat out."