IN: Mental As Anything are an Australian new wave/pop rock band that formed in Sydney in 1976. Its most popular line-up (which lasted from 1977-1999) was Martin Plaza (birth name Martin Murphy) on vocals and guitar; Reg Mombassa (birth name Chris O'Doherty) on lead guitar and vocals; his brother Peter "Yoga Dog" O'Doherty on bass guitar and vocals; Wayne de Lisle (birth name David Twohill) on drums; and Andrew "Greedy" Smith on vocals, keyboards and harmonica.

Mombassa and O'Doherty formed the duo Reg & Peter/Peter & Reg (they alternated names whenever interviewed) and released a single, "Jean" in March 1991, before adopting the band name Dog Trumpet and releasing the album Two Heads One Brain. Studio musicians were Mike Gubb on keyboards (ex-Dynamic Hepnotics, Mental as Anything), John Bliss on drums (ex-The Reels) and Mark Honeybrook on bass guitar. Further releases followed with the EPs Kiss a Gun Down in October 1992 and Strange Brew in October 1993. After returning to Mental As Anything, they continued with their Dog Trumpet side project and provided three further album releases. Mombassa also designed innumerable T-shirts, posters, videos and record covers for Mental As Anything and other bands. His most recent album cover is for Public Image Limited's "Greatest Hits So Far". Johnny Lydon spied Reg's work on Mambo clothing and sought him out to do their album cover. Reg's talents extend to illustrations and writings for, among others, Rolling Stone, Stiletto, RAM, Dolly and FMG. In 1986 Plaza released a solo single, a cover of the 1960s Unit 4 + 2 song "Concrete and Clay", which was a No. 2 hit; the subsequent solo album, Plaza Suite, also charted. In 1991, during his sabbatical from Mental As Anything, Plaza collaborated with former member of Models, James Freud. As Beatfish, they released the self-titled album, Beatfish, which was one of the first Australian dance or house flavoured albums. Plaza's 1994 album Andy's Chest was composed almost entirely of Lou Reed covers. Another collaboration with Freud occurred in 1996 and resulted in the Hawaiian inspired Moondog project, with Plaza appearing on some tracks of the album Postcard from Hawaii. Smith performed with his band, Greedy's on the Loose, during 1992 but there was no recorded output, while Twohill returned to art college and finished his degree. In 1996, Smith released his solo album, Love Harmonica, and toured with his band, Greedy's People, which re-recorded his solo album and released it as Greedy's People in 1997. In 2006 Smith appeared on television gameshow You May be Right, hosted by Todd McKenney. The program pitches two teams of celebrities against each other as their knowledge of movies, music and television is put to the test in a series of fun trivia games.
QUESTION: Did they have other side projects?
IN: "Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song for 1967 (the other two were #2 "The Letter" by the Box Tops and #1 "To Sir With Love" by Lulu). The song is ranked #412 on Rolling Stone's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and at #144 in Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1960s.

The song is a first-person narrative to "sparse" musical accompaniment. It reveals a tale, mostly in the form of brief dialog extracts by the narrator's family at dinnertime, on the day that a local boy - and apparently friend of the narrator - jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. Throughout the song, the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted against the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation. The final verse conveys the quick passage of events and other deaths in a year's time. The song begins with the narrator, her brother and her father returning, after agricultural morning chores, to the family house for dinner (on June 3). After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, "Mama" says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge". At the dinner table, the narrator's father appears unmoved and almost dismissive; he comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick o' [meaning, any] sense", and asks for the biscuits to be passed to him, and comments that he has "five more acres in the lower forty" to plow. Her brother seems somewhat taken aback ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday ... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), but follows the comment by asking for a second slice of pie. He recalls a prank that he and his friends played on the narrator, and that he saw her and Billie Joe talking after church a few days previously. The only person who seems genuinely upset is the narrator. Her mother - who eventually notices the narrator's abrupt and complete change of mood at the news - seems unable to realize she is affected by the news ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite"). She shares other news instead, that a local preacher visited earlier in the day, and almost as an aside, that the preacher had mentioned seeing Billie Joe and a girl who looked very much like the narrator herself "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge" - the object they were throwing is not identified. But again, the narrator's mother fails to connect this in any way to her daughter's emotional distress. In the song's final verse, a year has passed, and brought more harm and pain. The narrator's brother has married Becky Thompson, but they have moved away to another town ("bought a store in Tupelo"). Their father died from an unspecified viral infection, and their mother has been depressed and despondent, and "doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything". The narrator is also affected by the malaise; the main change she describes in her own life, is that she often visits Choctaw Ridge and picks flowers there to drop from the Tallahatchie Bridge into the murky waters of the river where Billy Joe jumped to his death.
QUESTION:
Who are other characters in the song?