As some readers will be aware, yesterday Fairfax journalist Sam De Brito learned the hard way that you just shouldn’t mess with our homegrown bands. Especially when they’re as hard-working and switched-on as Melbourne boys Kingswood.

For those just catching up, de Brito opened a recent profile of Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn with a diatribe about “paying your dues” as an artist, claiming that most of today’s artists rarely bother to do such a thing and instead hunt for “reality TV fame”.

“When abs or eyebrows are enough to score you a gig on Home and Away and four baristas with beards can do a note-perfect ‘copy-version’ of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ for a national ad campaign, credibility has been reduced to a Santa Cruz T-shirt bought at General Pants,” he wrote.

The four bearded baristas, who just so happened to be beloved local rockers Kingswood, took exception to de Brito comparing their years on the road and in recording studios to a soap star who got the job because he looks good in board shorts.

Kingswood guitarist Alexander Laska responded with an eloquent and scathing open letter, hipping de Brito to the realities of the modern music industry with which the band are intimately familiar and schooling him on what it really means to pay your dues.

“Kingswood has been in the industry for almost ten years now,” Laska wrote in the open letter. “From humble beginnings, we have worked tirelessly at growing as an independent musical entity and toured our country countless times.”

“Once you develop to a certain level, there is an expectation of quality, and quality is also costly. This means that when opportunities present that provide a financial boost, sometimes, you have to take them.”

Laska’s letter, which was published via Tone Deaf and shared to Twitter, eventually went viral, with many commending Laska on his comments, the band on their years of obvious hard work, and leaving some scathing words for de Brito.

Even fellow Aussie bands like Birds of Tokyo and The Preatures weighed in on the issues raised by the dispute, with the latter pointing out that a cover of ‘I Put A Spell On You’ done for a Berlei ad “helped us pay our bills at one point, so… whatever”.

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de Brito initially responded to the criticism by tweeting at Kingswood with a simple “Touché”, later adding “If it’s any consolation, I can’t get the fucking song out of my head.” But things soon got personal.

“That’s alright,” wrote fellow Fairfax journalist Peter Fitzsimmons on Twitter. “I shall find [Sam de Brito] in the office, and SIT on him, until he says sorry! I love [Kingswood]!” de Brito eventually realised he’d screwed up big time.

“OK, OK, I give up. I LOVE Kingston,” he tweeted, in an apparent attempt at being funny. Meanwhile, the boys in the band seem to be taking the whole thing like gentlemen, retweeting de Brito’s dispatches and calling the whole thing “a little bit of fun” on Facebook.

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