Mid-Life Crisis Rock Project One was called All Girl Band. Crafted entirely out of leftover auditionees for The Spice Girls, this feisty six-piece dedicated itself to performing cock rock classics such as Gimme Head by The Radiators and You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC. Their mission was to return tunes such as My Sharona to their rightful owners: i.e. women who’d head-banged to these tunes throughout their adolescence and then made the tragic error of listening to the lyrics.

Emma Tom brought three important elements to AGB: a vast collection of tight pants, a passion for whammy arms that bordered on the indecent and no rock musical experience whatsoever. Hired mainly because she owned a car, her main musical goal was to learn to play standing up.

All Girl Band, meanwhile, decided it was important to keep the integrity of the all-girl pop sensation genre by being as crap as they possibly could.

“But surely we can’t get any more crap than this?” bass player Deb Metal was heard to howl after a particularly gruelling rehearsal session involving three-and-half-hours of chatting about Melrose Place and 10 minutes of trying to learn the chord “A”.

“You certainly won’t get anywhere with that sort of attitude,” AGB snapped back. “Maybe if you stopped listening to what the rest of us are doing, you’d play out of key for a change.”

Happily, Deb redeemed her rock piglet status by being moved to tears during My Sharona’s second lead break.

Still, it all looked so much easier in the video clips. The lads from Voodoo Scream Porker didn’t have any trouble playing guitar licks behind their heads while simultaneously humping microphone stands. The dudes from Pestilent Gristle Massacre didn’t trip over their stomp boxes while performing windmill power chords. And when was the last time a member of Hellstinker Poison Rig felt it necessary to utilise a safety jump during a stage dive?

All Girl Band’s first gig was at a women’s motorcycling fundraising night at The Three Weeds hotel in inner city Sydney. As the band pumped out classic feminist anthems such as Hot Blooded by Foreigner and The Other Woman by Ray Parker Jnr, they made the startling discovery that the music industry was just a teensy weensy bit sexist.

“How hot are girl drummers?” one singleted chap announced to another as the gig got underway.

While one admires the sentiment, one also has to wonder how often anyone refers to “boy drummers”, “boy lead singers” or even “girl soundmen” for that matter.

It was the beginning of the end.

According to respected rock career counsellors, the logical follow-on to a novelty covers act is a deadly serious original project dripping with artistic integrity. Enter Mid-Life Crisis Rock Project Two: The Titanics.

Over the years, The Titanics put out two CDs (one of which was Triple J’s feature album of the week), completed several national tours and performed on Triple J’s Live At The Wireless. After this, they went the way of all good rock bands and separated as a result of lack-of-creativity differences.

“When the police came round the first time we misheard and thought the complaints were because we weren’t playing loudly enough,” Emma Tom recalls. “Increasing the volume at that late point was a difficult call because it was after midnight on a school night but, as a professional rock unit, we did what we could.”

16dd lead guitarist Justin Tabone says that very nearly being arrested during a first gig is the dream of all up-and-coming Australian bands.

“Obviously it’s great if you can get a record deal, huge stadium gigs and high rotation on the radio, but in many ways this was a much better introduction to the slapstick world of the music industry. Quite frankly I was stoked when the 25 figure came through. It made all those hours of rehearsal and irresponsible beer drinking seem worthwhile. In future we’re going to aim even higher: Fifty one or maybe even 72 complaints.”

Based in the throbbing heartland of Sydney’s inner west, 16dd are Emma “Misty” Tom on bass and lead vocals, Warren “Wazza” Bridges on drums and vocals and Justin “JT” Tabone on guitar, vocals and gratuitous effect pedals.

Stylistically, the band ranges from high funk to head banging rock and sound like a cross between Cake, Liz Phair, AC/DC and occasionally Kraftwerk. They like writing songs about girls and cars, and play mostly original material.

16dd sings in Spanish, French, Bosnian and English but pronounces none of these languages particularly well. They think the dumbest line that’s ever appeared in a pop song is “you know this boogie is for real” and offer a loyalty scheme to fans who throw the most undergarments during gigs.

Asked about the meaning of the group’s name, Emma Tom points to the group’s official motto: In rock and roll, size does matter.

“Of course there has been a bit of confusion over the pronunciation,” she says. “Some say ‘one six dee dee’. Others go for ‘sixteen dee dee’. Once, someone even thought there might have been a couple of nines. All I can say is that if you have to ask any of these questions, it’s about time you experienced the best bra size in the world.”

Warren Bridges – who uses a drum kit one of Emma Tom’s publishers found by the side of the road – says a band name wouldn’t be a band name if it wasn’t kinda dumb, explaining that XTC, 10CC, U2, The B-52s, AC/DC, ABC and REM put up with mispronunciations all the time.

“Once, when I was at school, I heard a music teacher pronounce ‘INXS’ as ‘INKS’,” he says. “No wonder they broke up.”

Memorable 16dd gigs in recent times have included ear-shattering performances at the 2004 Feast Festival in Adelaide, as well as on the Hyde Park stage during the 2002 Gay Games. During the latter, the band managed to keep an audience of hundreds of international gay leather men spellbound, despite playing just the one Kylie Minogue song.

16dd have also played in the jelly wrestling pit at The Oxford Tavern, at a private rubber party and at a Women’s Rock fundraising night for New Mardi Gras where Emma Tom agreed to auction off her breasts for the cause. Her womanhood was purchased by a syndicate of five female rabble rousers who paid $50 per piece.

16dd have appeared on Chaos TV and Blokesworld and have released an EP, Gimme Gimme Gimme, which is available at gigs and at the band’s official web site (www.16dd.com.au).

Dedicated to fighting homophobia, sexism and mediocrity in the music industry, the band goes to great lengths to ensure its gigs are girl-friendly, queer friendly, fetish-friendly and dress-up friendly. 16dd has also donated its services to a number of charity events, performing at the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund fundraising night at the Hard Rock café in Sydney, and staging a benefit gig to raise money for Oxfam’s Boxing Day tsunami appeal.

16dd are usually available to play any time, anywhere (except for Bar Mitzvahs which they think have always been vastly overrated as rock and roll opportunities). At the moment, however, they are taking a short break. Regular programming is expected to resume in the not-too-distant future.