Steriogram

Steriogram formed in Auckland, New Zealand in June 1999, brought together by friendship rather than a scene. Steriogram was formed in June 1999 by Brad Carter and Jake Adams, two friends from Whangārei, who joined with Tyson Kennedy and Tim Youngson, two friends from Auckland. They started performing as a melodic rock four-piece band with a manic live show. They released the EP Soccerstar in December that year, with only three tracks and just 500 copies made. The band's sound shifted after a happy accident: a video for "White Trash" featured drummer Kennedy rapping, and it got so much exposure they decided he should stop drumming and move to the front of the stage to rap, after which they started writing more songs with a hip hop influence. Grinding it out with little support, Steriogram toured New Zealand in a friend's van without any support crew, and in 2002, still unsigned, joined the inaugural Boost Mobile School's Tour, playing for free during high school lunch hours to get exposure. The band's breakthrough came after being discovered from home-recorded material. They were contacted out of the blue by a U.S.-based freelance A&R scout, who managed to get substantial label interest with a handful of demos and a home-edited video of a live show, and the band signed with Capitol Records in November 2002. Their debut album, Schmack!, was recorded in Los Angeles and released in 2004, and its lead single became a global phenomenon. "Walkie Talkie Man" is widely recognised as bringing Steriogram the majority of their popularity, especially after it was used as the background music to an advert by Apple for the iPod. The song reached number 14 in New Zealand and peaked at number 19 on the UK Singles Chart. The song's striking music video, directed by Michel Gondry, features scenes of children working as studio staff and knitting instruments and equipment, and the band is terrorized by a giant hand made of wool which grabs singer Tyson Kennedy and tears him in half , and it earned the band serious industry recognition, as it garnered four VMA nominations as well as a Grammy nomination for Best Short Form Music Video . The classic lineup consisted of frontman Tyson Kennedy (lead vocals and drums), Brad Carter (vocals, lead guitar and lead vocals), Tim Youngson (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), Jake Adams (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Jared Wrennall (drums and backing vocals) .

Following their breakout, Steriogram continued to tour and record steadily through the 2000s. The band recorded their second album, This Is Not the Target Market, at York Street Studio in Auckland and released it in New Zealand in October 2006, this time independently after their connections at Capitol had left since the release of Schmack! Rock Ridge Music released the album in the United States in October 2007, and in support of it the band toured extensively through the year with acts such as Rise Against and the German band Die Ärzte. The band went on to release a third studio album, Taping the Radio, in 2010. Wikipedia lists years active 1999–2010 for the group, reflecting their run before quieting down as members pursued other projects, including drummer Jared Wrennall later fronting the Auckland group Dead Favours.

Steriogram never fully reformed as an active touring act in the years since, but "Walkie Talkie Man" endures as a cultural touchstone of mid-2000s pop-punk, kept alive through its ongoing use in films and video games including Elite Beat Agents and MVP Baseball 2004 , as well as continued streaming and playlist life on modern platforms. The band's legacy rests largely on that single burst of global visibility, an unlikely story of four friends from Whangārei and Auckland whose homemade demos and DIY touring turned into a Grammy-nominated video and an iPod ad that millions saw, even as the group itself remained, in the words of one retrospective, something of a one-hit wonder to casual listeners while retaining a devoted following of New Zealand music fans.

This history is part of why Steriogram has a modest but meaningful footprint in the waynedennon.com archive. Wayne Dennon photographed the band at a single show back in 2004, right around the height of "Walkie Talkie Man" mania, and the 24 photographs from that night remain preserved here as a snapshot of the band at their commercial peak. In the years since, visitors to the archive have viewed those images 18,281 times, a quiet testament to how far Steriogram's brief but bright run still resonates with fans revisiting the era through Wayne's lens.