La Mascara reviews Live in Hell!

This is about as good a representation/review of Live in Hell as you could get...
"The few fortunate enough to see one of Dave Graney's "Live in Hell" shows at the Butterfly club came away both entertained and enlightened.[I certainly overcame an ennui caused by the sea of banality that we currently swim in.] Neither just a pop hits package nor a lecture from a lectern, the performances were carried by Graney's eloquence and humour, not to mention the considerable contributions by his musical comrades :- the two Stu's (Perera and Thomas) on guitar strings, and the multitalented Moore on glockenspiel,cymbals,snare,melodica,and road case!
A continuation of his earlier cabaret "Point Blank" wherein Graney delved into the nature of performing, "Live in Hell" is purgatory from a performer's perspective. Graney begins by clearing up delusions about deities with a track from his recent album "We Wuz Curious" . "Let's Kill God Again" is not so much an irreligious rant as an appeal to reason. And though the Blues, Rock'n'Roll, and even Jazz have long been labelled "the Devil's music", Graney rejects the very notion of Satan. He chooses Roxy Music's "Bogus Man" to denounce the Devil as just another God-Man construct to frighten us. Later he brings Hell back to the surface with another cover -this time the Fall's "New Face in Hell". The point being that our Hell is here and now not some fanciful fire and brimstone netherworld. He goes on to argue the Devil we fear is other people -using a twisted cover of the Presley hit "One Night with You" which becomes "One Night of sin".
Finally Graney draws on one of his confessed favourite performers- Jim Morrison - reading the Lizard King's "Lament". Though I'm not a fan of this pseudo shaman, Graney uses him to perfectly illustrate a point.ie. By name and nature Rock'n'Roll is about fucking, so Morrison's paean to his penis and the death thereof, expresses the performer's Hell. even Morrison's detractors like his former manager Danny Fields who denounce his poetry as "sophomoric bullshit babble" recognized that pound for pound Jimbo had more cockmeat than most. "He was sexier than his poetry" conceding "he had a big dick". And Morrison's penchant for flopping it out onstage left nothing to the imagination. But to be effective it requires more
than just a willingness to wave your wiener. As evidenced by the success of some eg. Iggy and Lux, and the failure of others eg. GG and Fred - the latter just look pathetic. Morrison combined his cock with a look copped from whip-dancing Warhol/VU sidekick Gerard Malanga to create a wet dream for his hippie fans. So maybe in a flash of peyote-induced clarity, Morrison imagined his own impotence [performance anxiety?] and saw his own Hell ? When it became a reality for the fat and flaccid Door-man, it wasn't long before his corpulent corpse was found bobbing in the bathtub. For a Rock'n'Roll performer onanism isn't an option - though many succumb. Pop music is a veritable magnet for masturbators. Dave Graney knows this and paints his Hell as a sea of wasted "guz" [which we're told is a combination of jiz and diz]. But he needn't worry - his potent performance tonight proves it! "

La Mascara

we wuz curious- curiosities- things you could know

“We Wuz Curious” is credited to the Lurid yellow Mist who are the musicians we have been playing with for many years. However, on the lyrical side, it is the most autobiographical set of songs 'I' has ever put together with five out of 12 songs starting with the word “I”.
Influences on the lyrical side of writng would be Yankee crime writers of the 40s from whom I got my hardboiled delivery and cadence and the French writers and artists of the late 18th and early 19th century . I have been obsessed and entranced with them for the last four years or so.
Musically ,
The impetus was to make an upbeat r&b record. We love contemporary r&b and pop music as well as jazz and Brazilian / latin music. We are also often to be seen out in the live music scene of melbourne.In the small clubs watching young Melbourne bands. Mad old swingers in the room.!
The album was recorded at Sing Sing South in a day ( after drilling the music for two months in rehearsal at the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band Hall) and then mixed over a month at the Ponderosa by us. Each member of the band was asked to provide music for a song.
In the mixing I like to put the drums and the vocals at the centre and then attend to everything else. The guitars are trebley and panned wide as in classic r&b sounds. I mixed the voice up as loud and upfront as I like it, taking as a reference, the classic country sides of the 60s by George Jones and Jerry Lee Lewis. I prefer to mix and produce my own music but I like pro engineers with great rooms and mics to record it.
We had so many great mics on the drums and the guitar amps they didn't really need much eq'ing. I used the room mics and added the touch of weirdness from mics that Adam Rhodes had placed in odd areas.
I like the sound of the drums all together in the room from different areas. Each drum affecting the sound of the other, rather than the 80s style of isolating everything and then putting it back together.
I've always been a one take kind of singer and did most of teh lead vocals on the one day that we recorded eight of the songs. the other four songs were done at our studio, the Ponderosa.
On the vocals I like to use some slap delay because I'm mad for that country / rockabilly presence you get on those records. For some reason, reverb went out of style about ten years ago. I never stopped using it. Same way dumb guys with beards sniff at electric pianos because 'they're not real'. Screw you guys!
Stuart Perera plays a a left handed Rickenbacker and loves Slash and that Grant Green Wes Montgomery octaving style. He plays through a small Laney valve amp. I play an Ibanez Talman (made in China) which has a semi hollow body and I love the clean sound of r&b and jazz players. I play it through a Roland GC408 amp which is solid state and super clean. Both my amp and guitar are 90s models which were only available briefly and have been discontinued, as am I.
All the keyboard sounds that Mark Fitzgibbon plays are not on different tracks, Its him switching the sounds inreal time on his electric keyboard. In 'lets kill God again' he switches fro piano to organ to a sound with choir voices and strings. Its all o the one track. I only had to look at riding the volume for the different sounds.
Stu Thomas played a Fender precision through a super pre amp and Adam caught a great sound.
Clare records with a black Gretsch kit that she bought in London in 1983.Its been on every record we've ever made. She has a sentimental idea that its an old one of Charlie Watts' as she always loved his style and he played the same brand. It records brilliantly. Adam knows you dont have to do much with it. It has oomph and slam and bounce. It has an internal ambience that is pre industrial and especially pre digital.
Clare has endured younger and dumber engineers fucking about with it but has let them have their way and then nothing changes anyway. (Guys who have read too many books about Neil Young and the Beatles in the studio). Live she uses her Tama kit as its built to travel.
On the other four tracks. 'punk dies', 'I needed someone to find me', ' crime and underwear' and 'Junk time'. everything was played by myself and Clare, save for some bass in a verse of 'punk dies' by Stu Thomas.
I love to play bass although I'm pretty simple in my time and spatial abilities. Real bass players are time (and space) lords. I have a bass which is red and which I have great faith in because it has two names, both of which are very macho. It is a 'La Grange' brand and a 'bronco' model. I play it onto the tracks via a classic sansamp.
I also overdubbed some 12 string and six string acoustic guitars.
I also used a casio keyboard and I warmed up the sounds with a Joe Meek preamp / compressor and a Blues Driver or sansamp pedal. In the studio, on guitar, I love to use wah wah and octave effects. (Live , I dont use any pedals, only a channel switcher between a clean and slightly dirty sound. )
Clare built up her track for 'Junk time' using her Ensoniq MR61 keyboard for all the organ , string and tuned percussion sounds/She also played synth bass through the keys . We got in Elizabeth McCarthy and Jane Dust to add some backing vocals.
We also used another organ we have which is more of a bit of ungainly furniture but has a great distorted sound. Then there is the xylophone and the vibes and the bass vibes.
The chourds I favour are all suspensions. Unresolved and tense 6ths and 9ths and inversions thereof. I dont use many major chords, major and minor sevenths mainly.
Some of the songs have musical puzzles built into them. 'You had to be drunk' , for instance, is not a regular eight bar figure. It is six and so has a feeling of continually rising so although the musical chords repeat, they keep repeating in different and unexpected spaces. They are all suspended chords too. Its all suspense !

social rounds-May 07

Time with the gear stowed down below and the van sitting in the driveway has been spent in the studio and with the face in between manuals. After using software and hardware crudely and blindly there comes a time to read the manual. I have been also using a measuring tape and looking for second hand windows. Interesting.
The Sand pebbles have been doing a track or two at our studio and it is always enjoyable to see the inner dynamics of other creative outfits. Ben wrote the tracks and other members have been coming out to add their voices and guitars. Tor laid down some bell like vocals and acoustic and electric guitars to a brual two chord slalom ride which suddenly bloomed into a psych folk gem. I didn't have much faith in the piece at the beginning of the day but with a bit of toil from my part and much natural gifts and energy from them produced a some magic. I just had to get out of the way and let them though.
We also did asession with penny Ikinger, following on from our two songs we cut with her last year at our place. I'm on bass and Clare is on drums and Penny playes the loud electric guitar. She is great to work with and is open to input from us . We have to be sensitive to her as she has definite ideas but takes a while to decide to leap into action. Its worth the wait though. Her chords are major and minor and she is looking for a pop, upbeat push from our direction. After rolling a few ideas around for a day we ended up wit two great tracks. Brilliant vocals and very fast tempos . This is turning into a great project.
Clare has been continuing the recording project with Crystal Thomas over at Matt Walkers studio which seems to be slowly coming to a kind of finished state. They are using actual recording tape which is a cute idea but a bit of a luxury in my world. I'm sure it will end up in a unique sound anyway. They'e all digging it but I would go mad with the painstaking nature of tape again. It does sound great though. (I'm sure you could just bring it in at the end, I mean finish it and then run it over some tape to get the saturation).
On Thursday we went to the Red Stitch theatre which is across from the Astor cinema in St Kilda. We've been going to a few of their plays. (Subscriptions are inespensive from their site). They have little funding and are run on a shoe string. They do plays by overseas writers. In general I prefer Australian writers as the plays are so alive and epehemeral ( rarely does an Australian play get a second production). The previous one was called "Rabbit Hole" , an American play which I'm told has just won a Pulitzer prize. It was set in Brooklyn. It had great actors but was like the Honeymooners without the laughs or Jackie Gleason. Like a soap or being at a family argument for an hour.
I like theatre experiences to be abstract and to be dealing with huge ideas. This weeks play was more like that. "After Miss Julie" by Patrick Marber from a play by August Strindberg. This was just threee actors in a room which was downstairs in an aristicrats house in England after WW2. The drunken , skittish and beautiful Lord of the Manors daughter is coming on to the chauffer in the kitchen. The boundaries of their roles and their worlds are negotiated and all the consequences are imagined and experienced. It was so intense. An amazing scene with the drunken woman in a white ballgown with blood smeared across her crotch with her hands down the mans zipper , yanking him off as he gasps in pleasure/horror and she tells him just how hopeless he is. The actors were incredible, as was the direction. (There were long moments of suspenseful darkness as things happened off stage and lights gradually shifted in the room and a woman walked around and through the room, noticing things. We sat, as an audience, filling in this enermous blank, fed on only sounds from another room and small head movements in the shadows).
Also been going to a lo of shows by our sometime piano comrade Mark Fitzgibbon . He has been performing with an old friend from New York, George Coleman Jnr on drums.The band also has Dale Barlow on sax and Sam Manning on bass. Its Georges show. He sits behind a tiny jazz kit and drops bombs all night. Incredibly good players. Dale barlow has such self possession on the sax and holds the attention with ease . Last night he did a showy solo with all this circular breathing, blowing for a spectacularly long time while he used his cheeks to keep the note going as he took a breath from his nose. He is equally great on the flute. Mark is a master on the piano , his left hand is always shifting and pushing as his right flies down from the otehr direction) and I am always amazed by the bass players (Sam is the only one I have seen do more than one show, there have been three or four others who have parachuted in to do a set, with no rehearsal and just the fly shit to follow) . George is quite an inspiration with his power and the world he comes from. His father played with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock and Booker Little. (He introduced a song from John Coltrane called Aunt Mary, mentioning off hand that he knew Mary and hs mom used to hang out with her. Family friends. He is from a land of Giants!) They played in Melbourne at the Paris Cat, Bennets lane, the Blue Diamond Club and the Belgian Beer Cafe which is about the limits of the known Jazz world. they also played at the Wine Banq in Sydney and at the Zoo in Brisbane.
Time has also been spent in the loungeroom listening to our own recent records at high volume which is a rare experience . I loved Hashish and Liquor.
Doing this is a way to begin thinking of a further leap into the void, the abyss. I am slowly working up to something but, like that theatre experience, I want it to be big and abstract. I am also aware that, for me, Hashish was all that. I put a lot into that and I loved the arranging , the recording and the mixing and all the players involved in it. It fired me up so much that it extended into the live shows and the accompanying cd "Keepin it Unreal". It was fired off into the void and.........thats what I was thinking about....my sense of where the enemy positions, if any, were at this moment, how stretched my supply lines were , what useless piece of ground I was asking my men to die for, what men and women I could use for this final offensive and what my exit strategy was.....
I have some themes and songs that I've been kicking around for a few years now. I need a moment to start to pull it together. I need a break in the weather. I don't like to dawdle around things. I like to do it quickly.
I'm also working on a compilation of recordings of mine for the hell of it. Unreleased versions of songs from over the years. A bit like Keepin it Unreal but all electric and played by the Lurid Yellow Mist. All the songs that have gone over with people. Songs that had legs. (Also songs that are no longer available anywhere, even on itunes but are kept locked up by different recording companies.) The tracks sound great, full of fire and blood, better or at least, very different from the original recordings. I want it to be like the Doors "an American prayer".
In May we will be mixing more of the Sand Pebbles as well as Penny Ikinger as well as recording the next Darling Downs album.
Now we look forward to getting back in the van for our show at the East Brunswick on the 19th (With Conway savage and the Stu Thomas Paradox) and then SALMONS launch at the Northcote Social Club on the 23rd May and then our week at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in June and then our week in Brisbane in July for Mick Harveys Melbourne Mafia Festival.



Anzac day...what is that all about then?
Current mood: awake
I thought it was all over and now its back. Like some horrible semi religeous festival for death trippers.
Its a Wednesday today. Like Darwin before the big wet there is the slow build up to todays national emotional purging and mythic football playing . All for the diggers, who have been pulled down into the trenches again. A newspaper last Sunday had a review page for 7 new books about gallipolli. There are tv shows about the annual pilgrimage to Anzac cove and all the politicians jockey for the right position to take at the services. All this is difficult because the current soldiers are away on questionable errands for the powers that be but with the mystic, holy qualities Australia bestows on its diggers, they must never be criticized. They could be on their way to hell but we are always told that we must support them. These Anzac services are always linked with the current adventures and any protesting voices, as ever, are howled down.
Anyway, i was heartened to hear some voices let through to question the whole over the top festival it has become so I thought I would add my voice.
When I was a boy I saw a few marches. My father was in WW2 but never marched. A lot of guys never did. I probably saw a lot of first world war guys marching, or in wheelchairs rolling down Commercial street Mt gambier. it got smaller and smaller.
All us boys grew up reading war comics , American and English. And we watched countless war movies and tv shows. It was overkill but it was still close to living memory and still raw and we still saw through it all. It was too much. Shit, there was even a scene in A Hard days Night when the Beatles expressed their fatigue with it all. ( An old guy say he fought the war for them as he looks at the Beatles and John says "bet you're sorry now!")
There was a popular play n the 60s and 70s called the One Day of the Year which was full of all the generational tension about thewars. It was taught in schools, thats how hip those days were. (It would be banned as being politically correct and too left wing now) The WW1 guys gave it to the WW2 guys and the Viet vets got it in their turn and were not allowed in to the RSL for years. The whole show seemed to be on the way out. The pubs are shut today until after the march. this is because, when there were lots of soldiers, they would all meet up and just stay in the pubs and forget to march. As they should have.
Now its back and its portayed as a folk revival but I can't buy it. I know that kids from schools are bussed there and I hear and see the relentless propaganda.
In the first World War, miilions died for the royal families of Europe, who were all related and were in conflict with each other. The French threw tens of thousands of their Vietnamese colonial troops in to the front lines and the British did so with the Australians. Unimaginable numbers were slaughtered. For nothing.
A bright shining idea came from the Bolsheviks in Russia who said they would immediately stop fighting because they would not kill their fellow man for the benefit of the industrialists and the nobility.
Millions more were slaughtered a generation later. Mostly civilians. Millions displaced. Carnage. Horror. Death in industrial precision. The Russians won it by grinding it out with the Germans.
Later the French attacked the sons of the Vietnamese who had died for them and then so did the Yanks and the Australians.
Now we are providing a fig leaf for the Americans in Iraq.
Here are some words by Guillaume Apollinaire. He was a poet who signed up joyfully for the army in 1914 and wrote about the marvels of bombs and machines. He died of influenza on Armistice day in 1918.
"so many universes forgotten
yet where are the truly great forgetters
and whoever will teach us to forget this or that corner of the world
and where is the Christopher Columbus to forget entire continents
to lose
really to lose
to make room for the windfall
to lose
life to victory"

Who would I have in the trenches with me?

Often , during the Anzac day football match , ( and during the rest of the season) television performers will put on their most gruffest, blokiest voice to say about a player that he is the kind of bloke they would want to be in the trenches with. It is a high honour to bestow on a man. That other man has no choice in it . He is dragged into the trench to sit with the cowardly television anchorman. To hold his hand I guess, and roll some smokes and to generally stand in front of him.
I would do my best to avoid ever being in a trench. I have taken note of events in the past and have seen what happens once you get into that trench . And it doesn't matter a bit who you have next to you. You are pretty well cactus. Goodbye soldier. next!
No, I would walk in some other direction and point out the said trench to anyone I came across and advise them to alter their travel plans. if i was driving, i would flash my lights in the traditional, courteous warning sign understood by all.

Night PM

Wyndham Lewis, the 1920's writer and painter ( much admired by Captain Beefheart) wrote a book called "the art of being ruled". I have never read it as its hard to get like all his works but I understand it is just what the title says. A book that tells you how to live in a society that's not a democracy. I don't think he was a middle ground guy and he occasionally hit the wall at the furtherest edges of the then known world of what was considered hard left and hard right. Its one of those things I look forward to finding one day and reading.
He was writng in England between the wars. A time of great hope and just as great despair. I wonder what a guy like him, with expectations of some sort of dramatic change- some sort of future world- would have made of Australia under its rulers in 2007 , Queen Elizabeth and John Howard?
The ABC replayed a speech by Paul Keating from 1993 in a park in Redfern where he was talking about the year of indigenous peoples in the world and the Mabo decision and Australian history in general. It was a speech about the past and the present and the future and it touched on Australia and its place in the world and the failure of peoples imagination in the past and the present to see themselves in the place of aboriginal people and they way they had been,and continued to be,treated. It was pretty bold but those were different times.(It can be listened to at the Radio National website)
And then there was John Howard. And then a lot more. I doubt that anybody really likes John Howard. He has been voted in four times in a country where voting is compulsory. That's pretty telling.
I consider him a little man who has diminished everything around him. In the first election , against Keating, he pointed at a map of Australia , on national television, and stated that the aboriginal people wanted to take all of the land back and that was what he was against. (Native title was a recognition of ownership predating the invasion. Any freehold title since that time extinguished that claim to ownership. In the areas in question, in far north Qld and west NSW and WA and SA, there were enormous pastoral leases for cattle. The black population had worked on all of these for years until 1967 when they were recognized as citizens and given the vote and so, expected to be paid. They were then all kicked off their lands. Native title was to give them rights to access, to walk across, these huge tracts of land which were leased. In short , to have the same freedom as the cattle.Howard portayed this as an attack on small farmers when the big lease holders were Rupert Murdoch and the Sultan of Brunei and other large concerns. Howard made a bogus 10 point plan to stop any more rights being easily given away and , basically , giving the land to any concern who had "improved" it.)Without fail, whenever he has been in trouble, he has kicked the black fellers, and united the rest of the community, including the poorest, in downward envy that others are getting more for nothing than them. Of course, he has had no opposition and the media has given him a green light for whatever he wants to do. In the future people will look at this little suburban squib and wonder what took a hold of peoples minds to elect him so many times as their leader. At times you feel so helpless against the mad spin that comes from all the media outlets. He is constantly painted as a genius and a man with his finger on the pulse of the community. What a shockin' period the last decade has been? The parade of crooks like Reith and the grey ghost Ruddock. The dribbling tool that was the affable national party leader, Tim Fischer (who promised "bucketloads of extinguishment" against the demands of the black population).There was the election with the Tampa and the lies of the children thrown overboard. I always hoped some of the poor people he trampled on would be the catalyst for his downfall but in the end, it will probably be the very quality which the media has somehow portrayed as his "magic" (with which he has cast his spell) which will drag him off the screens and out of our minds. Yes, his dullness and plodding , snaggletoothed "oh I wouldn't know about that!" goofiness which will do him in. Not the elites ,who have seemingly haunted him and who you wish really existed, just to challenge him and his gang of chairborne cheerleaders.
Have you ever seen the man of the people , via the tv of course, engage with the general public? It is so awful you have to hide your eyes and get behind a chair. Worse than seeing "the Office" for the first time. He'll always say the wrong thing and any approach leads to a dead end. He'll have his special "country" hat on for any trip out of the city. He'll walk into a factory and go up to a young guy and shake his hand and ask him how he is and then how long he's been here and the kid will say, "just got here" or something hopeless like that. Harold Pinter could not write the dialogue he has with Joe Public. Howard has no common touch. All he ever wanted was to be in power. He had these things he was interested in like a tax and he hated unions and he wanted to sell big government concerns. All unpopular things which he drove home by constantly dividing the populace with envy for those poorer than them. Envy that those losers were getting shit for free! Is that sort of duplicity to be admired and applauded. For the last decade, yes.
It helped that everybody got in debt up to their eyeballs as well. They put the noose around their own necks and jumped.
Of course, we live in a two party tyranny. Today I read in the paper that the leader of the Labour Party was driven back to the House from CHURCH by the treasurer. Isn't that cute?
Just lately some world of real events and uncontrollable , unknowable unknowns seems to have come over us all though. Including our leader, Fearless Fly. Climate change, the disaster that is the Iraq war and the Australian David Hicks who has been in a cage in Cuba for five years. In the end I guess, we'll all have to look at each other and answer questions like
"how did we live under that prick and his crazy gang of grey kooks for so long?" .
"How did anybody take him seriously?"
"That funny walk of his every morning, he looked like he about to fall over every step!"
"Costello and Abbott, what a couple of squares! And they carry on like the hippest guys in the room! And what about when they tried to be funny?"
"Barnaby Joyce was the opposition?"
"Phillp Ruddock,!When they cheered him into the party room after Tampa!"
" There were anthrax powder incidents all over the country!"
"ASIO started being listened to like they were not paranoid dills"
" if you didn't support the war in Iraq you were pissing on our soldiers who were in Iraq!"
" and you were also pissing on the Americans!"
" America said not to use the word rebel as it was too romantic so everybody dutifully learned the word insurgent!"
" the stolen generations had to be referred to as the alleged stolen generations!"
" Climate change was unproven scare-mongering!"
"he was the minister of health and then he took a job with a medical technology company!"
" the government wheat board was the main bankroller of the country they were at war with at the time but nobody knew anything!"
" then the directors of that company got paid off with more millions after it was all proved to be boring enough to forget about!"
"Peter Reith trained private security in Dubai to break the waterside unions!"
"Tony Abbot the mad monk and his anti women/ anti stem cell Catholic suffering !"
"free market ideolgy driven anti tariff policy for all industries except for private health as that is so unpopular it needs to be bankrolled by the very government which hopes to dismantle Medicare!"
"weapons of mass destruction!"
"nuclear energy is the greenest!"
"he liked Bob Dylans music but not the words!"
"he got involved when a sex shoppe on Bradman Drive in Adelaide used its address in its name. He made a law that you couldn't take the Dons name in vain!"
"He refused to move to Canberra because of his kids! (They were all in their 20s!)"
To be continued……..

pic Dave Western- Brixton 2008

melbourne to gundagai

so this will be a list of prosaic small town australian name dropping. Pulled out of melbourne at 3pm and drove to the picturesque town of gundagai, noted in a famed old folk song about a dog dropping a turd in his masters lunch. Though the cleaned up version says the dog "sat" in the tuckerbox as opposed to having "shat" in it.
Got to the motel at about 9, hoping to catch the last show of "Dollhouse" on cable but the motel had no Fox 8.
Gundagai has a lovely old theatre which is now an arts and crafty joint. Many pictures inside of past community beheadings of tourists.
As I jogged back to the motel, I noted that it had obviously been recently gutted by a fire in the main part of the building and our room was the only part unscathed. How odd.
Country towns in general used to have more young people in them. Now its all Coffin dodgers. Alright, oxygen thieves .
Tomorrow its Lismore. Come along anywhere. We need some friends!
Drove to Taree and had some fish in a posh joint then into a motel in Port Macquarrie. We begged that w e ha d a van full of gear and got the presidential suite.
The next day we drove to Coffs Harbour and opicked Stu up at the airport, just past teh 4 stoorey windmill restaurant.
Played a show in Woolgoolga, a town made very cute by many Taj Mahal - esque building put there by Sihks who must have gotten terribly lost. The show was good. Some of the people were truly crappy. I will cast that old bitch from my mind an dremember Billy the blues harp player in the Hound Dog Taylor cap and our old friend Louis Tillet who was always great to run into. I sit typing this in a motel in Burleigh Heads. The Gold Coast. Gold help us all. This part of the world runs on drunken teens fucking in the bushes and throwing up at the same time.
They'll be booking their tickets now. Its impossible not to sound like a snob, so I wont try.......

Turned out that it was the best experience we ever had on that Golden coast. The venue was great. Previously all the rooms had 12 tv screens blaring rugby on every side of the stage. This one was lovely. Cool crowd of people. Great sound, had a ball.
The young guy running the PA played the Mothers "freakout" after we had finished!
Drove to Lismore, stopping off at "tropical fruit world to load up on star fruit and custard apple fruits. The tropics!
Lismore was a show in a theatre to the true believers. Another swell night.
We are actually DRIVING to all these joints. The first show was roughly 1300 k's away from home base. thats keen.
Tonight in Byron we played two one hour sets. the audience the usual funny mix of mad locals and millionaire blow ins. I love the locals.
A samoan girl called me "brother" many times. I was honoured.
Staying here for an extra days swimming and r&r. Then on to Sydney

ps, in the Gold Coast I went to the supermarket. An old man , trailing his wife in t he aisle, was glumly saying " I think I can handle an egg slide!" A younger couple came around the corner. The woman said " You always get stressed when we shop! " and then walked off at a fast pace. the man, looking pathetc and harassed but with an annoyingly knowing smirk said , "Darl! Tissues! " to the wind.
I can't stop saying this. "Darl! Tissues!"

byron and down to sydney

Byron Bay was windy and almost cold. We watched a Jim Carrey flick, walked along the beach, checked out the town and caught up with our valued comrade James Cruikshank.
Drove Stu to the airport and then carried on to Sydney.Back through Newcastle and a few seachange type towns.
We are playing in Sydney this coming Friday at the Sandringham hotel in Newtown. Then oin Saturday, Clare Moore and myself will be joined by some Sydney pals to do a semi acoustic set at the Clarendon in Katoomba. We'll be taking a similar approach at El Roccos in Kings Cross on Thursday 17th SEptember.
Look out for our "Live in Hell" narrative show at the Butterfly Club in Melboune in October. Saturday, September 12, 2009

sandringham hotel

We blasted out two sets at this venue in King street Newtown last night. Stu Perera was blazing on the guitar. Stu Thomas is a stellar bass player and singer and Clare Moore is an amazing drummer and performer.
We had a great bunch of people come along who were right into our music and my songs . they just go with us. What more could you ask?
Sydney is so different to Melbourne, you could fire a rifle down King street after midnight and not be in any danger of hitting anybody. And thats supposed to be a happening road.
The Sydney Morning Herald had two pages of music coverage this morning. Two pages of esoteric lame brained yankee roots and indie people. I get this shit at RRR and I throw it in the bin! The writers are so lazy. As bad as the radio people. They must feel dirty if they ever have to handle anything Australian.
I digress, we had a great time.
A young fellow who has been coming to our shows since he was in high school in the mid 90s told me how he went to a second hand store back then and the Vietnamese proprieter, who served while laying on a bed, asked him loudly, "you want sex?" Our young friend thought it was a proposition and ran away. he said he went back three years later ,when he was more confident, and the same thing happened. he waited a beat and the old man opened a curtain to a stack of porno dvds and stroke mags. His summation? "I got "wet Latinas #14"! It was amazing!"
Gold!!!!We are playing a semi acoustic show at the Clarendon in Katoomba tonight and also at El Roccos in the Cross on Thursday 17th September..

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Katoomba- semi acoustic show

This was me on acoustic 12 string and electric guitar, Clare Moore on drums ( minimal setup) and old friend from Sydney Greg Thorsby on electric guitar. A Maton Ibis in fact.
Greg used to be in a band called the Atlas Strings which is where we met him. Also the Tenants after that and makes "stings" for TV1.
I was gonna do these shows as a solo set but I find that a bit boring to do and my songs always have a few counterpoint type rhythmic or melodic things. Or maybe I like the other textures. Anyway, I find it much less enjoyable to play and to travel by myself. Seeing as we were in Sydney for a week or two we thought we'd do them with Greg.Young Greg.
The music sounded great. More of a vocal and lyrical type sound as you get all those low notes coming through with your voice.
A small crowd at this lovely small theatre type cabaret room. The hospitality was generous as usual.
The walls are covered with posters of the 'roots " type music. I hate that shit, there are no songs, only forms and types and grooves. Its all too "real" for me. Humble fake troubadors and guitar slingers. If they dont have the cojones to walk into the middle of the stage and declare something by themselves they should not be in the room! That dick who juggles 3 didgeridoos was nowhere on the wall. he plays to theatres and rock palaces now. God help us all. I blame scientology.
We played two sets. Many different tunes than we have been doing. We'll be doing a similar approach at El Roccos on Thursday 17th. This Thursday.
Sydney is delightfully warm and there is a soft breeze blowing.

the kuchar brothers films at mumeson archives

So we've been enjoying a few days in Sydney - civilian style,. No rushing in and out of town and friends lives with shows to do and then "goodbye". Catching up with some people for the first time in a long while. Aimless drives around inner western sydney.
Visited Fuse yesterday, our distributor on top of their amazing "title" store in Crown street. Box sets of Chaplin and Keaton and Harold Lloyd films. Box sets of Charlie Parker cds."The Many Moods of Murry Wilson" on cd. Too much stuff in one place!
We went to a few junk shops today. I got a pair of blue velvet dacks and some suede boots and a Charles Atlas spring muscle developer thing. You put the stirrup end under your foot and do arm curls.I never thought I needed one of those but for $2.00 I found myself walking away with it. Also got a video with the incredible pairing of my fave movie oddball singer Eddie Cantor with Ethel Merman. Those two would have had enough energy to power a trip to Saturn.
Tonight we went to the Mumeson archives which is a film night/ archive run by Jamie Leonardev and Aspasier in their compound just up from the Annandale. Nothing official about this operation. they set uip the screen and the chairs and you get a glass of wine and some soup at half time. Its all completely underground. I mean underworld. WE watched all these rough independent movies by George and Michael Kuchar. The movie critics would hate them. The longest was the last one, "sins of the fleshapoids" which ran for 45 minutes. An inspiring night.
We are doing our show at El Roccos tomorrow. 154 Brougham street, Kings Cross. Friday, September 18, 2009

The Cross. Home!

It was cool to be pulling up to a gig in Kings Cross, famed bohemian area of Sydney. Nobody knows where this place which is more a state of mind than a suburb begins and ends. Well this gig was right underneath the giant Coke sign at the top of Victoria street. An old jazz cellar. In the basement. Under the ground IN HELL! Cool. I felt at home there. Away from the seachange/suburban joints. Another lost world.I was told Sinatra played here. Place might hold 60 people at a pinch. Sounded great. All the wailing has sealed the walls over the years.
The venue operator asked us what time the people were arriving. We said it was his club. A problem of communication. People came anyway. Hipsters flipping us their lobes. Old friends who only come to cool places like Dave Wray and Matt Sigley.
Clare Moore, Greg Thorsby and myself did two sets.
Had a cool time. I felt odd walking around the Cross all dressed in leather.Perhaps I was from a lost world.
Today it is warm and sunny in western Sydney. We have driven miles and done a longish run of shows.
We are watching the football with friends tonight.St Kilda Vs Footscray.For a chance to play in the Grand Final. The Sts last won in 1966, their only flag. The Bulldogs in 1954, their only flag.
Thanks to everybody who came to the shows .... Friday, October 09, 2009

recent activty- stuff- you know

Well the trip up the coast was quite exhausting. Got back to melbourne and fell in a heap. Clare Moore has been doing some recording. i have been doing some writing. Playing guitar and sorting out a few gigs. been very much enjoying reading Tony Martins new book, " a nest of occasionals". Its great. His second book, a follow up to "Lolly Scramble". kind of a memoir but so much more too. Very , very funny.
Been doing the Tuesday show on RRR. "Banana Lounge Broadcasting" with Elizabeth McCarthy. Shes been writing the playlists up on teh BLB Myspace. We interviewed mark Seymour and Johnette Napolitano recently. the latter was a very clasy person. Very generous.
Writing some songs, thinking of what sort of recording to do next. i think something arty and slow is gonna take shape. 12 string guitar. On the otehr hand, really been digging the late period Animals recordings by Eric Burdon. "Sky Pilot" and "Monterey". I need to get people to hear my goddam music though.
Reading more Patrick White. the man was , really, a genius. Australia hasn't had many!
On tv, my fave show is "the big bang theory". Those guys are funny.

THE AB BOX - 2009

Last time we played in Adelaide, that is myself and Clare Moore and the Lurid Yellow Mist, we were in a tent down by the river. I’m into Chris Farley but I don't think many other people are so I kept this thought to myself, until now! The character the late Chris Farley played was a life coach who proudly proclaimed he “LIVED IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!” to everybody he was trying to help up out oif the gutter. The fact he was still living IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER never dampened his enthusiasm. If ever I see an old clip of him it cracks me up when he explodes with that routine. Chris died in a hotel room where hed been partying for several days until his body gave up. It blasted through his mind and was found there, like an old balloon one day by the irrelevant authorities. We know better now, we have Dr Phil.
I ran into an old friend from the punk rock wars in Coffs Harbour last year. He's a Sydney cat but we pass each other now and again over the years. Its a light thing, low maintenance, that's how I like it with friends. Anyway, he came out of the swamp, literally, to a gig in the middle of winter in that grim retirement camp of a town. (The streets are full of tiny investment motels in which you can see the owners, sad retired fellows staring at a flat monitor in the evening gloom). Yes, my friend turned up at the Wednesday night show and we shared many easy laughs after hours. Especially the news that he was living in a van down by the river in an area called “the gallows”.
I stowed my gear away and go off with my fiend and his girlfriend to a nearby house where we eat burritos and drink tea . They also had a couple of skinny joints.We talk of Arthur Lee and Roky Erikson and friends with liver damage.And madness, drugs and booze.
While I was at the gig the sound man had been playing Howlin Wolf. It sounded great but it was the London Howlin Wolf sessions where he is backed by all the Limey blues rock royalty and Eric Clapton tells him how to play 'little red rooster'. My friend had commented that it sounded too slick but you could still hear the madness in the Wolfs voice. I was so happy to be gifted with such a sophisticated and easy opinion. Someone in the room knew stuff, they had drank deeply of real dark and tonal music, the brandy of the damned. Bathtub stuff! And I knew what they were talking about. We laughed like friends.
I digress, last time I was in Adelaide I myself was in a tent down by the river. There were lots of circus type people about. Not dodgy, rootless and toothless strongmen and the like, more your modern educated variety. Bright young things with degrees in unicycle tricks. I wanted a taste of the other side of Adelaide. The washed out blue collar side of town. I had heard of a place where they sold a dish called an “AB Box” and I wanted one. I had been told it was originally called an “abortion” but the political correctness had , once again, gone mad.
We got to the joint and parked Miles Davis style, illegally, but right out front. A guy was asleep in his chair with his arse hanging out into the traffic. I mean his arse too. He was probably dreaming of being on the can.
There was pack of kids all around their giant AB, all sticking forks into it. They were all in skinny jeans but the giant box of Yiros meat covered in chilli sauce and yoghurt on top of a vast bed of chips was going somewhere. The hollow legs of youth I guess. We ordered our food in the brightly lit room and enjoyed the carnival that was in front of us. A really drunk man carrying a Central districts football holdall bag was sitting and eating in giant gulps. Swaying all the while. Suddenly we were all ordered out as a fire started. The Centrals player saved the day when he wandered around and put his drunken two cents worth in. Whatever he did or said, it galvanized the crew of cooks into the proper action and normal service was soon resumed. We eventually got our food and sat down to eat. It was a mess o’ food right there! Elvis would have loved this place. Moby would have been revolted .
We were happy to be rollin with E and Miles. As we drove off we saw the Centrals payer slumped in his chair on the footpath next to the man with his arse to the world. Shittin on the world! Another man was throwing up. Another table of young boys and girls were tucking into a giant AB. With the demise of the floater I suggest the AB for that late night evil mess o’ Adelaide grub.

My indie dream team - 2009
The Community Cup gets off to a bad start next week when its sinks to the organisers heads that I , who have been listed as chairman of selectors, will not actually be there. Luckily, I had foresaw this eventuating and had gotten a team together and sent them towards the field of play before I left. A friend had told me that a certain bike gang would, for a fee, collect any bad debts you had lying around and do a job for you. Its the new black economy , only its kind of red, blood red. I had a ton of bad debts around the town and got in touch with them via Ben Cousins and Alan Didak. They took the black holes out of my wallet and I traded them for the task of press ganging a team together for the cup. The players I had in mind would not be volunteering for the job. In fact, the football match or the charity it was supposed to be helping would not be on their radars. Not because they are not generous people, more that they are consumed in a titanic inner city group mind meld of such intricate sensitivities and tensions that they could not just leave off and stray outside the city walls. The city of indie rock that they had if not built, at least had redrawn the boundaries of . Once it had been only Fitzroy, now it stretched all the way to Fawkner.
This community cup was problematic too, in that it had links to the other ancient bohemian city state that had existed south of the river. No one ever went there any more. It was a known mafia stronghold and people went missing there. It was like a little bit of Sydney down by the beach. It was evil.
So I sent my brothers out to the dens of Indie world to get a team together and take them to the Elsternwick Oval. (Elsternwick! What devil had chosen this hell hole for the game? Known only for the most famous brothel in Melbourne, “the Daily Planet” , and the ABC studios where Countdown had once been filmed and Spicks and Specks was shot now. Both shows being foreign countries to indie rock, one being a lost world of actual pop stars from pop radio and the other being some sort of adult parlour game for drunken straights). There they were to corral the mob into a change room, lock the door and by the time the game arrived, we would have a team.
Knowing I was going to be away, I left a strong game plan which I recorded onto a cassette tape , to be played on a constant repeat to the team as they were held in the dressing rooms until the day of the game. Basically this was to go and and kick long droppies and to take long runs along the wing, bouncing the ball and mocking the opposition and showing off merrrily to the assembled gallery at every opportunity. Also, to kick lots of goals and so , defeat the opposition. Sounds simple, but true and thats what it is. Hopefully the players would come out of the game and take the same approach their music careers. i.e. just write some short pop songs and get them on the radio.
Here are the players I picked for my ultra indie dream team,
First, I wanted some South Australian skills in the line up. A peace gesture across the border and also we needed some football smarts. So I got Matt Banham from the rock band “No Through Road”. A name like that would make a killer full back. He can also talk underwater and has an encyclopediac knowledge of awful 80s movies to broaden our teams inner cultural reserves. Remember, there was to be no coach, just a big leadership group. We needed an extensive reserve of clichés and moves and references to bring the team together at crucial points . Matt could just yell, “OK! Its like that time in Lethal Weapons 4!” and everybody would be on the same page. From the West, I needed Joe McKee from Snowman, he was tall and mean looking and surely could kick the pill along a little bit. Lots of gas in the tank. I would have to fly him back from London in a helicopter, perhaps to arrive at half time , the team being hopelessly smashed, the sprigs of his boots glinting in the afternoon sun and him saying , deadpan like, “ I hear there's a game goin’ on!”. The indie team would then grow a few feet and tear the opposition a new one.
Also, as Joe was talking, Sara from Batrider would sneak off the helicopter and onto the field. For the rest off the game she would walk around, as a floating player , screaming in peoples faces with those incredible pipes of hers.
Back pocket, we would have Jon Michell from the Ancients and Mum Smokes to beat up the resting rovers. Stand on their feet and pinch them. Hopefully “they” being a girl but I’m sure Jon would like a scrap anyway.
On the other defensive pocket we would have Ian Wadley, just keeping him out of the action as he's a bit unco-orfdnated. Tall though, so he could mind the other resting ruckman. Running half back flank would be Michael Stranges from Salmon. Soccer skills coming in handy. Centre half back we’d have Chris Hollow, former St Kilda and Port Melbourne player. And bass player for the Sand Pebbles. Hopefully the ball wouldn’t get past him at all so the back line could just lay around and do drawings and stuff most of the day. On the other flank we’d have Ben Cousins just for a stir.
Centre wing, Si the Philanthropist from the Wagons. For rolling joints and his height of course. Centre, Plutonic, a man of few words but a steely gaze. He could talk some beats with Si and bamboozle the opposition. They dont know what “beats “ are. Centre wing, Zoe from LuLuc. Shes very Nordic which always catches the umpires eyes so she ‘ll get free kicks all day. Also very intelligent and will add to the teams inner culture by educating them at the changes. In the ruck we have Henry Wagons. Not really that tall but solid and again, good with the talk. He’ll either annoy his opponent off his game or into punching him, or both. Either way, good for the team. Ruck Rover, Matt Walker. He cant kick or mark but is a great guy and just loves to run. We’ll give him a go. Rover, Jeff Lang, he has the worst temper in all of music. Its like having the Tasmanian Devil on the ball. Ashley Davies would like to play and is just as ferocious but he’s an Eagles fan and would be distracted by the proximity of Ben Cousins. He can’t let go. I think we’ll draft him to the other team. He’ll just stare at Ben.
Half forward, Dom from the Wayfaring Strangers. Such a great mover. Quick and unpredictable. Centre Half Forward, Tony Martin the genius comic writer, performer and director. Hes got the height and the glasses so he’ll see the ball before anybody else. Also has never played before so he’ll be thinking unlike anyone ever in the history of the game and will be very inventive and creative. That looks great on paper, at least . On the other flank we have Jane Dust. She has just started being interested in the game two weeks ago so again, we will be leagues in front of the other team who will be hopelessly stuck in the old paradigms. the fools!
We would also have Zayd Thring from Pets with Pets, standing in the middle of the field with the sleeves of his already torn guernsey over his fisted hands, occasionally wiping his nose.
At Full foward we have Guy Blackman. he has the height and again, the glasses and is blonde. So, as I have said, he will be able to see the ball first and will get free kicks constantly (the umpires being traditionally dazzled by blonde hair- see Jason Akermanis) . He is also west Australian and will bring some of those mysterious sandgroping skills with him. they learn shit in the cradle out there. Winners!
On the foward pocket we have Oliver Mann, who has a very loud and clear voice which is imperative on the field , and his brother Grand Salvo on the other pocket. He sings very softly. You need balance in all areas of life I find.
On the interchange bench we have Beaches. They count as one player , they are such a unit. I will leave instructions for them to be part of a midfield rotation which will leave our opponents in the dust. Also, Rowland S Howard and his brother Harry will be there, should we need some height , cigarette smoke and imperious stare if Tony martin falls over. Team management is a science. Our secret weapon will be Mark “Barrage “ Barrage who has a very big pair of glasses and also works for ASIO so he will be able to bring along some taser guns and capsicum sprays and neat shit like that. He will be a shady presence on the field. Is he a player or a runner or a trainer? Those other idiots will be consulting the rule books as we slot goal after goal after goal.
Daina Fanning , once of the Emergency, should be in a band and had a brother who was ruck for Collingwood so she must have learned something at Xmas time. She is interchange as well.
Just by the interchange bench we would have Lewis Boyes from St Helens in full kit ready to run onto the field. he will not be in the team though. he will not be told this. We need to see his tall athletic frame ready to launch onto the filed at any moment. He will be chewing up the dugout, ready to play. He is there to give the opposition the heebs and also to give those in the crowd something to moan about. They can talk to each other about how the game would have taken a different course if only Lewis had been thrown on earlier. People need dreams. Especially impossible, thwarted , stillborn ones.
There is no opposition who could stand up to this team.
The one I imagine to be there would be a couple of managers who had dreams of one day going to South by South West with their mobiles on hold at the switchboard of a commercial radio station , waiting to ask someone what they should do, the players dutifully hanging on for the next word.
Of course they could also be a mob of those hard drinking , tattooed ,dangerous types . They would all be gathered around our mates from the debt collecting biker gang like a BUNCH OF GIRLS!
I now leave town, knowing I have done my bit for charity, football and rock music of the futu re.

Rock 'n' roll movies - 2008

If you’ve ever seen the movie “the girl can’t help it” you would know how great and kooky rock’n’roll can look on screen. Director Frank Tashlin came from Bugs Bunny cartoons to movies and brought all that slapstick, broad comedy with him. The opening scenes see the impossibly pneumatic Jayne Mansfield walk down the street , creating mayhem wherever she goes. A man delivering ice leaves hiss gloved hands on a large block as he ogles her and we see the ice melt comically as she glides by. A milkman has all the bottle tops in the crate he is holding pop at the sight of her.
There is a slim story to the movie but it basically allows us to the some of the great rock n roll acts of that era perform in studio lit situations, filmed in fully saturated wide screen Technicolor. Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Little Richard and the Upsetters,the Platters, Eddie Cochrane and teh genre trancending Julie London. Its one of the rare instances when Hollywood and popular music gelled and got it all right. It had the poise and the energy and the smarts and the dumbness. The flash. They complimented each other. There haven’t been many other such felicitous meetings. For the most part, in the era of rock n roll modernity, Hollywood was hopelessly behind the times. Well, music was actually moving along at quite a pace and a giant mob audience was going with the flow as well. Since the waves broke on the shore and the island dwellers have gathered on the beach , looking wistfully “back to the day” there have been a few great movies like “dazed and confused” where they got the tone right, but hindsight can always be perfect. Ever since that its been the art directors field and it gets awful boring to see things done so correctly. At least in “dazed and confused” they got the haicuts of 1976 right. That is to say, no young males actually had haircuts. it was all grown out in whatever awkward way the hair went . Kind of short and kind of long and all kinky and daft. The soundtrack to “dazed and confused” was perfect too. Am radio Hits and album tracks of the time. Impossibly right stuff like Foghat and Gary Wrights “dreamweaver”. A film that right about that era will never be made again. From now on, whoever has an idea to visit that p[lanet will be studying “That 70s show” it it will be all Ashtom Kutchered.
My other favourite music films would be “Hustle and Flow” from 2005 , “Ray” , “Spinal Tap” “Wattstax” and the hilarious “walk hard - the Dewey Cox story” which is really a spoof on music bio pictures.

beatle free zone

First off, I must state that there is altogether too much remembering about music. . Whats used to be a swift creek has been slowed down by all sorts of sentimental sludge. Rock'n'roll is like a young accident victim who has been shoved into an old folks / geriatric home because that's the only place that is equipped to keep the kid doped up and quiet. The old inmates aren't particularly happy either. The music is piped in around the clock and at an appropriate volume and everybody is said to be content. Only you really have to be on heavy sedation so as not to go mad.
Have you ever tried to spend a day without coming across either the music of, or talk of that British phenomenon of forty years ago, the Beatles? Its impossible. I'll quote Mark E. Smith here, (terrible I know to mention somebody who has never troubled commercial radio in Australia….the inmates might get confused! Or at the very least, disturbed!) "four wacky proletariat idiots, enroute to candy mountain.". He wasn't talking about the Lads of course, just a bunch of other sad pricks who followed the same trail years later. Anyway, while you're sitting around in the sun room, after tea and pills, try it. Have a Beatle free moment or two. Good luck!

Inspirational show. Rock music lives!

It was a cold Sunday night and we dragged ourselves out of our compound to go to our local rock club to see an act we'd been promising ourselves we wouldn't miss. I locked the front door and left the cat in charge of defences and then instituted the codes for the electric fence and then the door to the Keep opened and the drawbridge came down and the fake bushes flew up and our motorbikes blazed out of what , to outsiders, seemed to be the side of the local football club.
Yes.
The club is in Belgrave which is 40 kilometres outside of the city of melbourne. This makes it one of the very few venues outside of the city entertainment prcincts. Its one of the best experiences to see an act here. They think they're in the country and in some ways , they are playing to a different audience than is found in the city. For one thing, people get ferociously wasted out here on the perimeter. They is stoned. Not immaculate though. Just shitfaced.Blootered.
Not tonight though. Its a small and young crowd who are here for a musical experience.
The first band on are Batrider. I see them sitiing a couple of feet away from me. They look small and indie. They then amble to the stage and put on their instruments. I saw them briefly a couple of years ago. They are from NZ . I also see their name at a rehearsal room we use. They are always there and I am impressed by that. The singer is a tall girl with a Louise Brooks bob haircut that shades here eyes in a brutally severe fringe. Her hair is clean and shiny and jet black. She wears a light, loose dress and black tights She plays a pink Stratocaster with gold hardware (the bridge anyway) through an enormous fender Bassman amp. The other guitarist is in a severe charcoal long sleeved top, skirt and trousers and has her brown hair swept back from her face. She plays what looks like a Danelectro Yin Yang guitar through a smaller combo. A girl sits behind the kit and the bass player looks like a young Dean Stockwell. i.e. not at all masculine . They all look very clean and intelligent. Their skin is very white.
They start to pay and are immediately superb. Every song starts out in an off kilter way and then a beat kicks in from a totally unexpected direction. The guitars lock in with all kinds of dissonant notes. The sounds are very powerful and clean though. The singer also knows when to sit out and just play. The two guitars have such a great dynamic. They know what they're doing and everything is emphatic. The girls vioce is amazingly strong . Her presence is huge. No one really sweats or grinds it out but it has such power . The first words I catch are " she can't have you if I can't have you" Elsewhere I hear "I hope you falter" and " Is this where I should be? Where have I ever been?" I am totally impressed. Batrider. They can hold your attention . Hell they demand your attention and theres is so much ahppening you are spellbound.
The next act is the one we have come to see. Snowman are from Perth. Joe the guitarist played a set opening for us in Fremantle a few months ago. He is stage left . Well over 6 feet tall with a Fender tele and a Fender twin amp. No effects just the Reverb and that totally clean and reverberant Fender sound. Joe curls his long body around in and S shape. Like the son from that cartoon "the Triplets of belleville". Then there is a drummer who looks a bit like Joe. then there is the other singer who looks and acts like Jackie Chan. Half the height of Joe, he plays a Gold top Gibson les Paul and, occasonally a violin. He is a total crackerjack and spends the whole performance dealing with an electric charge running though his body. Then there is a blond girl on bass. She is totally Nordic in demeanour and stance. i mean she is ice cool.
They begin with a spooky reverbed out ballad and the sound is all around you straight away. The vocals nag at the edge of your ear and the whole assault is pretty sudden. they deal in orchestrated crescendoes that happen before you know it. It is so complex and involved but the twin attack of the two singers and guitarists and the absolute unity of the attack of the band pulls it all together. In a way, they never stop , like a normal band. It is like a long horror movie soundtrack. They love falsetto voices and stuttering guitar lines. They end the set with the smaller singer playing bongoes and Joe playing shakers and the bass player playinga cowbell and the drummer setting up a Surf instrumental rhythm while they make jungle and bird noises. Then the guitars appear as the percussion is tossed aside and we are into a total garage/ Cramps groove. Somehow, the bass player is now playing a sax for 8 bars too. it all happens naturally and quickly. Unbelievably good.
I thought rock music was a dumping ground . A waste land of alt country / alt rock / ac/dc soundalikes and indie children who do everything half way. This gig was a total inspiration. Both acts could not help but be huge within a year.

Mark Fitzgibbon and Dave Graney

30 Sep 2007
POINT BLANK- first week

We started the shows on Thusday night. Being a prt of the Fringe festival its a bit of a scrap to get any awareness out there of the event happening. The first night is me gesticulating and frothing at the mouth ( well thats the way it must have seemed) and grabbing my crotch and talking to a small statuette of myself to a handul of ladies who of course, are the kind of daring and up for it people who keep theatre going. Clare heard one saying 'well that was differrent!" on the way out. Thats a high compliment.
Friday got better and Saturday (even though it was Grand Final night) was a full house. Two people got up and walked out and I took that as a sign that I still had it as well. (the delusions of performers have neither beginnings or end) .
We set up again tonight and then again from next Thursday to Sunday. The show is really humming and has gotten bigger and sharper. This will be the last time we do it in Melbourne. We are looking for a venue in Sydney and maybe Newcastle as well for December.
Following is a story that appeared in the Age on Friday.....................
Officer of musical truth
The Melbourne Fringe festival kicked off on Wednesday and this year's program hits a number of musical high notes. Dave Graney's acclaimed Point Blank show, playing at the Butterfly Club, features Clare Moore on vibraphones and bongos and Mark Fitzgibbon on piano.
The performance is part-music, part spoken word - Graney strips back autobiographical songs such as No Pockets in a Jumpsuit, I Held the Cool Breeze and Lt Colonel,Cavalry to their essence, singing them unamplified and filling in the gaps with tales of his upbringing in Mount Gambier and his reign as the King of Pop before going it alone as an independent artist.
He explains that Lt Colonel,Cavalry was inspired by an article written by British rock journalist Nik Cohn that described lounge singers across the US as the infantry holding up the sagging front lines of the entertainment war. Graney continues the theme on I'm a Commander by urging musicians to die for his song.
"Music and entertainment is a war," he tells Sticky. "At a certain level, road crews are like pirate gangs, coming into port, attacking and securing a situation and holding it to their advantage, press ganging local layabouts into their crew for a day and then leaving the scene by darkness as if they'd never been there. There are songwriters and musicians, camp followers, infantry and the officer class."
He also likens fleeting pop stars to soldiers - "they are told to go over the top and fight for a certain bit of land and, unbeknownst to them, to DIE", while the officer class are behind the scenes, summoning up the pieces of land and devising the battle plans.
"Officers for me are Hank Williams and Jim Morrison. I check with them," says Graney. "All the people who play with me are officers. Everybody else, we pretty much consider infantry, especially the ones on the covers of magazines and on the radio. Michael Jackson was an officer who had a great officer in Quincy Jones on his staff. Prince is a five-star general."
Graney says the local twist to this paradigm is that Australians have always been told that they are roughnecks and larrikins who do not take kindly to officers. "It takes real officers to command and prevail in this particular theatre of action. It's a civil war here, I guess." Intrigued?

Dave Graney and Clare Moore sitting in with the Sand Pebbles 2006. Esplanade.

The Lurid Yellow Mist

INDIE ROCK -HOW TO......

Its an indie indie, indie ,indie, indie world. Well from my couch it seems to be . Everythings gone indie. The banks tv adverts are all indie. Croaky faux americana folk music and young people bending and folding computers. McDonalds runs an indie line, to compliment its historically untrue heritage line where old people remember the days when they met and ate apple pies under the Golden Arches. The time is ripe for an indie Hitler I think. people go for anything as long as it seems right.
The aesthetic “indie” was invented by the Manson family in Death Valley in 1967 or 68. It was a slow, organic process. Strange that such a do it yourself kind of aesthetic was born right next to the Hollywood dream factory which was still, but only just, under the control of the studio bosses. Manson and Hopper kicked the doors down and made the world safe for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and the Hollywood blockbusting teen pics we have a choice of today.
Dialectical I presume. they were butting up against their opposites. All the slick hustling of Hollywood led to the Manson Family getting their own precious thing together. They always said they got messages from the Beatles who had gone all indie themselves and locked themselves away from the filthy general public and issued records at a steady rate from their studios in London. Must have seemed very exotic and other worldly to the family as they sped around the sand dunes on their buggies, practicing manoeuvres for the coming race war. They must have also looked to the Monkees who were a nearby, dream factory merging of the Beatles and Hollywood. The times were so kinetic, The Monkee model actors had ideas of their own and connections to the real world of murky underground ambitions . This gave the show a bit of a low spark. A weak charge .Charlie even auditioned to be a member of the Monkees. Still, their band in a house as a show style had a kooky correlation to the Family down on the ranch. The Monkees also had a lot in common with the plays of Eugene Ionesco. People were in a room, permanently, there was no time, and occasionally other people walked in. The rules were set and they had to remember them over and over and act accordingly. Very indie.
The basic thing about indie is to be piss weak. I don’t mean this in a judgemental way. I mean in a qualitative, forceful way. I mean conviction. Its a desultory boot of a tin can along the ground with your hands in your pockets, thinking of what you didn’t have for breakfast. This is as opposed to putting on some boots, warming up with a few laps and giving a football a decent roost towards the goals. To be lacking in energy, or any sense of power, is very indie. Bloodless, no show of emotion. To never approach anything from a head on direction. Shrugging everything off. Its a bit like the ideal state of women in upper class Victorian England. They had to be sickly and weak. It can be scary, in a creepy kind of way. Rarely is though. Strangely contrasting with this detachment is the insistence on trusting intuition and the truth of first reactions. Almost Bruce Lee like in attitude. “Don’t think! Feel!” Rehearsing is bad as it leads to phoniness. Oh, and play only to your friends. Outsiders are to be mistrusted. Waco! The best part of the indie state of mind and body is the constant spinning of the wheels. Going over and over the same constructions and arrangements. Such a thin pool of ideas allows anybody to come in and get on the bike straight away. Such a passing parade occasionally lets new , weird blood in and then mistakes are made. These mistakes are the great leaps forward of indie-dom. Well, piss weak leaps up in the air with an accompanying, thin and weak “woo Hoo!” . After that brief break for freedom its all back down, ankle deep in the puddle again. To make an indie song or sound , make sure the drummer does not play the snare or the cymbals. Hi Hats are okay. In stiff double time . Indeed, the drummer should be so stiff as to be in constant danger of rocking right off the stool, such is the perpetual , petrified motion that is engaged. The bass player should have a large amp, an odd looking and weak sounding guitar and an antique white, curled guitar lead. They must always play the 3rd note in the chord, this gives a sad, piss weak melodic quality to the playing and keeps it away from the drums. The guitar is thin and trebley and one foot is pointed in a funny way to show the inner anguish inside an otherwise static performer.
Lyrics are so personal as to be unknowable by anyone but very close family. They are delivered mostly off mic and very uncompressed. Real!
I gues the indie field suffers because it has lost its otherness. The big blocking out the sun style mainstream has been obliterated by technology and the indie led rush to the margins.
Indie is adrift. On its own. Its own piss weak turf. There is nothing in the middle. Just a thousand mainstreams. And they are all flying apart too.
Personally I like some indie things. Ginger beer , liquorice, and....er well , the fact that you never hear AC/DC or bluezak at any of the shows. It is a scene with quite a vast and wild inner life. It actually contains some roots, strangely enough. Trace elements of real heroic stuff. Yes, I much prefer that to the parts of the cene that profess roots but use that as an excuse to wail so emotionally off the dial that they float off the earth itself. Too unreal for me, all that pain. Jeff Buckley, goddam your fruity pipes!

MY GEAR - 2007

MY gear by Dave Graney..........
I play an Ibanez Talman TM71 semi hollow body electric guitar. I bought it from EBay for $300 and picked it up from a guy in Essendon. I wanted a hollow body because I want a clean jazzbox kind of sound. Stuart Perera, who plays guitar in my band, the Lurid yellow Mist, plays a left handed solid body Rickenbacker and he does all the blazing sustained notes. i wanted clean notes that didn’t sustain.
I also wanted a guitar that looked like something from the inner gatefold sleeve of the first Roxy Music album cover.There is a picture across the entire inner sleeve of the whole band posing with guitars. Bryan Ferry and Eno and Phil Manzanera and the sax player Andy Mackay and even the drummer Paul Thompson are all holding these incredibly glamourous guitars. they must be Hagstroms or something. They are all brightly coloured and textured. Mother of pearl inlays and the sorts of tricked up and boldly flecked colours you only ever saw on total hotrods.
So I bid for this guitar and no one else did and I picked it up. Also, I am a musician so I dont have a lot of money and if I did I wouldn’t spend it on a guitar.
I looked up the particular model on the magic box and saw that it was only available for a few years in the late 90s and was discontinued. That made it even better . It is an odd shape, like a Fender Jazzmaster crossed with a Gibson 335, so its hard to get a case for it.
I got my amp the same way. I wanted a solid state amp as I ain’t no electrician and valves would outfox me. I wanted a loud and clean sound. Ideally it would be a Polytone Teenybrute as all my favourite sounds are by jazz and black r&b players but I couldn’t find one. I found this model of a Roland called a GC408. On Ebay for $300. Its about 80 watts and has 4 8” speakers. It is perfect for me and I love to play through it. It was also a strange hybrid model that was available in the 90s and then discontinued.
You can also get a separate cabinet for it but they are proving hard to find.
I listen to a lot of r&b and jazz and country music and the guitar sounds are all trebly and clean and sit in a place in the sound of the recordings that I find to be the sweetest. I dont like music where the guitar is right at the centre and everything else has to fight to be heard. I like the sound to be fitting around the drums and the vocals.
I don’t use any pedals playing live. I find singing and playing to be enough to work out on and the singing is the most important. (Though playing guiar helps me sing better in some ways). I played music for years as a stand up lead singer and only started fooling with a guitar in the late 90s. When my amp and guitar were calling out to me I guess.
I still like to take the pendant off and bust a move as nobody else can do that like me.
I also have a Canora Flying V vcopy that I got at a hock shop. I wanted a Flying V as that was the only guitar that Miles Davis ever thought was cool.
I played it a few times. Its loud so it comes out for SALMON gigs. (SALMON is a six guitar, two drummer hard rock art instrumental outfit I play in led by Kim Salmon).
Oh, and theres my KYair 12 string acoustic which i have played a lot over teh last few years in semii acoustic shows. I love teh sound of a 12 string. It took me a while to get a handle on it. With my picking and dampening and fingering. I also needed a Sonic Maximize/Big Bottom to get the right tone for me. I dont use any funny tunings. I just play it. And I carry it around in an alligator skin guitar case.
Our new album has my guitar all over it though I mixed the record and I put the guitar where a person who is used to hard rock probably couldn’t hear it. Its a total upbeat r&b album called “we wuz curious”. Its the 21st album we’ve made. Scoreboard.
My favourite guitarists are Kim Salmon, Danny Rumour, Mike Rudd (from Spectrum/Ariel), Hubert Sumlin, Hound Dog taylor, Ike Turner, George Benson, Matt Walker, Grant Green, John Schofield, James Williamson, Rowland S Howard, Greg Walker ( fro Machine Translations) and many other like Curtis Mayfield and Ernest Ranglin.
My favourite guitar bands are Queens of the Stone Age, the Birthday Party, the Blue Oyster Cult, the Byrds, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Young Modern, “How insensitive” (Croxton records)

Young Modern is the name of a band that played every Friday and Saturday night in Adelaide during the years 1978 and 1979 and then left town for Sydney where they were lured by promises of bigger and prettier smelling action. They rejected the pub rock world as harshly as it rejected them and left one album , which was re released last year, the ironically titled “play faster”. Their music was light and jangly and pop. Harmonies and tambourines and light trebley guitars. No distortion. There were a few people around the world trying for the same feel but this was a case, like the Saints in Brisbane in 1973, where an Australian band got somethiing rolling all by themselves. They were innovative and totally in on the zeitgeist. It didn’t play in the beer barns or in the tiny, corporate offices through which strutted dudes who knew best what the people wanted. And they didn’t want this weird shit!
Well its 2007 and there are even more dudes who know what people want in the music business and Young Modern are back with their second album. 30 years between drinks and the same line up is back with a fresh load of pop tunes. Lead singer John Dowler got to places before many other people. Years later there have been a couple of generations of bands who are hip to the Byrds and Love and Big Star but Young Modern had taken off from those launchpads and made their own flight plans way back in 1978! Its a record by a band who made that original sound up. Original gangsters! Made guys from Adelaide!
The new album is great. Its called “How insensitive” , which is such a Young Modern title, sparking off of an easy listening catchphrase and also saying the truth all at once. How insensitive for them to come back again! And to be so good! the album starts with “Do you Care!” and never lets up. A beautiful light sounds that thousands have tried for but these guys tune into and let fly so easily. They don’t have to sell their soul, Its already in them!

what I'm hearing - 2006
Bought a lot of vinyl classical lps over the years. I live in an area which has been mainly settled by European immigrants over that last 40 years. The second hand shops are full of classical vinyl. I started buying them for the great covers. Russian mainly. I have decided to play it over the last week. I feel elevated. Prokoviev, Shostakovitch , Stravinsky and the Hungarians Bartok and Kadoly. ( I think I must've spelled all those wrong.) Stravinsky impresses but thats partly the cover and mainly that I saw his name dropped so many times by Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. I was impressed that they were impressed. So I was ready to be impressed. I was pre emptively impressed. Anyway, its high falutin and thats what I wanted. I am up to page 410 of a book called "conspirators". About the Vienna of the pre first world war. Radical Jewish prophets, the crumbling Habsburg dynasty and the coming war. I really wanted to dive into it but the writing has failed to pull me in. I am skimming over the surface. I looked up a review and it said the same and that "nothing happens for the first 350 pages". !!!!!! I will persevere as someone has put a lot into it. It has moments that stop me.
On a brighter note I watched a dvd of a 1977 Australian film called "the picture show man". Amazing performance by the great John Mellion. I must get all of his films out.His pauses rival Christopher Walkens for their strangeness and weird effect. Such an Australian face and such a high BBC accent.

Red velvet suit- 2006

back in 85 I asked my mother to make me a suit and gave her a picture of Marvin Gaye in the mid sixties and a couple of metres of red velvet. She knocked up this box jacket with little lord fauntleroy big gold buttons and stovepipe trousers. I wore it all over Europe. I wrote a song called " a million dollars in red velvet suit". Back in Australia I left it in the wardobe and then , after a while, found I couldn't make it into it very comfortably. In 1997, I was in a moment of heat in the business and was surprised to be asked for some item of clothing by the Performing arts museum. I thought it was a naff idea but was in the mode of saying yes to everything. ( I was so surprised to be in tha moment of heat I thought I should just go along and see how far the ride went). I gave them the red velvet suit. Over the last decade I started a lot of physical training and dropped my weight to the same as it was when I was a kid leaving home. I thought about all the clothes I'd thrown out and that red suit really bugged me. I called up the museum and they , reluctantly, said I could come in and talk about it. I thought I would walk out with my baddest threads. A young woman met me at the door and took me down to the vaults. There were all these cases of Kylie Minogue gear from her recent exhibition and these enormous Dame Edna Everage costumes. She pulled back this large metal wall of clothes and ushered me in. I asked if I should just first try on the trousers. I was most disappointed to find that I could not get them on any better than before. All that goddam exercise had given me some muscles in my legs.! I sadly put them back on the rack and put the covering linen smock over the suit. I put it back on the rack where it sits now, until whenever the hell it will be wheeled out. It stays there in the temperature controlled room, next to a leather jacket from Bon Scott and beneath a row of stage outfits from Split Enz.

a political circuit breaker--Hawaiian styled!

I read the morning paper and flicked through the tedious posturing and vogueing gestures of the two political groupings in record time and then sat down to watch Hawaii Five -Oh. (A Saturday morning pleasure). I then had an idea for the future of our country. Hawaii was being threatened by a Tsumani (very current) and Steve McGarret was being flown about in the Five -Oh chopper (looking worried and concerned, scanning the sea for the oncoming wave and consulting the seismographic readings through his binoculars for good measure) and I was amazed how great his hair looked and how it never moved. We got many great shots of Hawaii from the air as it was deserted for the safety of the hills by its obedient and fearful inhabitants. We wanted to live there, as long as they kept those stupid people out.
Anyway, I thought to myself. That invisible mullett (shaved head) is not working for the shadow environment minister and latent rock singer Peter Garrett any more. What he needs to do is to got to Memphis and visit the Carl Perkins Hair Unit Emporium and get himself a decent rug with a dramatic , breaking wave of a quiff. And then he could change his name to Peter McGarrett (or better still, just McGarrett) and barnstorm the country in a helicopter, punching out sqaures and chasing bums out of town all the way . He needs a flunky like Danno and a couple of hapless ethnic types like Chin Ho and Kono to throw his heroic shape into relief. To reaffirm his natural leadership qualities for us all. Get Radio Birdman to write a theme tune for the campaign and ....Bingo! El Presidente de l'Australie! Fuck off Yankee soldiers and planes! I meant it first time around! Liberal / National party creeps, get thee to a barbecue and talk shit for decades! Relax everybody! Sit back and watch a fellow kick some ass ! Step aside and let a bloke do the popcorn!
Just an idea.

Canberra and Brisbane- hard bop school in town!-2009

It is a little unnerving flying away from home base with the state around us in flames but we had some gigs booked and we are pros.
So we flew to the nations capital and did a set in a tent in the middle of Civic on a Wednesday night. We played tonight with Robin Casinader on keys who played with us for 10 years in the Coral Snakes. No rehearsal. He lives in Canberra now and just turned up. He knew the Coral Snakes era tunes we were playing and also joined in on everything else. He also, is a pro!
It was great to have his quiet and assured and confident presence around and hopefully we'll hook up again.
The set was blisteringly good. I am having a significant birthday today and am feeling that I should say what I really think from now on. I hope this feeling lasts as I sometimes get the vibe I have been too easy with people. Especially in the music scene. Its full of fucking idiots and you have to tread lightly as they move three years behind you (me) most of the time. Generally, you are only understood if you have private school tantrums every five minutes and keep peoples attention in a childlike , shitting your nappy way. I have always been a bit hard boiled and away from the mainstream concerns and have drifted into most scenes with a congenial tone in effect. I generally enjoy playing music too. I have read that Apollinaire had this congenial vibe. You dont have to be mewling and puking at all times really do ya?
Anyway. Lux Interior and Ivy shunned the straight rock world and so do we. Its strictly for dopes. Straight dopes.
Where was I? Oh , we were great. It was Canberra and part of a Fringe festival and their expectations (of rock music as it could be in 2009) were low and there were a lot of burlesque/circus type "vibe perfoermers" wandering annoyingly about the room. We cut through that jive and delivered some rock music that I would compare to Hard Bop ( if we were talking in a jazz vernacular). (Hard bop followeed on from BeBop. Being a pefrect and thrillingly poised pitch of the form) It was just precision formation chords and shapes, done to a tee and spun on a dime. Playing "bring me myliar" is always a highlight for me. Having Robin on board was great.
We then travelled to Brisbane where I write this. We are here for a SALMON show.
Those poor simple minded square headed Brisney landified dim fools!
I was in Canberra
and then Brisbane and then Adelaide. Then Mt Gambier. Whilst in the
latter town I heard of a fire near my homebase so I drove all night to
get there and save a few things. Five hours later I was in my driveway
and the fire had been contained. 100 hectares burned . Too close for me!
The SALMON gig at the Troubador went very well. Prior to the gig Clare and I had a few days r and r at an old friends pad deep in the Canasta Belt of the Brisney suburbs. It rained for the whole time we were there so we had to eat and watch tv. Tough.
SALMON for this gig was like the old crew getting back together. Penny Ikinger, Mike Stranges, Anton Ruddick, Matt Walker, Kim Salmon and us two. And also Stu Thomas for his debut hitout.
All te other gigs we'd done Kim had used a sampler for his vocals, with "C'mon" and "alright" and "whooh!" all being there at the touch of a key and him miming/ mouthing the yelps and words and cries. For this trip we left the sampler at home and we all had to "sing". This made the gig a bit special and a bit of a trip. there is nothing else like SALMON. Its a one off. Every member has their own scene but joins in the collective of SALMON totally. We love it. Each gig takes at least three rehearsals. Its complex. there is no jamming. Every note is created and directed by KIM. We all follow orders and we all wear his black t shirts with the evil fish with horns symbol on it.
Also, when you walk on stage with SALMON, you are ON! There is no mooching about, its all drilled and the execution has to be ON. Some songs are only a minute long. Parts of songs are played as segues and beginnings for others. Its all got to FLOW.
This night at the Troubador it did just that. A great night out. For us and THEM!
After a quick trip back to Melbourne Clare and I met up in Mt Gambier where I was visiting family and drove to Adelaide. We played two nights at a tent in the park called Cascadeur. The tent is called that. the park is called somethin' else. It sounds embarassing playing in a tent but people are suckers for this shit! There are four tents in the park. Spiegeltents under other names. Like I said, people love this jive so we have to go and play where people like to go. We were surrounded by pork pie hat wearing Circus trained darlings at every turn so we were determined to put on a ROCK show. Which we did. We killed it. I was in black leather from tip to toe and we tore it up. Twice.
I love being in Adelaide. the post colonial vibe is great. The size of the city is perfect for Festivals, which is nice as they have one there every week!
Clare then went on to Sydney where she is doing a show as part of the rhythm section ( with Adele Pickvance on bass) for a New York Cabaret artiste called Jusitin Bond. Its a Carpenters Show. They are on for a couple of nights at the Opera House and also at te Powerhouse in Brisbane.
I went back to Mt Gambier and then had to dash back to Melbourne as there were reports of a major fire near our place. There was.
I am continuing to work on the album, "Knock yourself out". Its almost done. The next gig we are doing will be at the Corner Hotel on the 8th March with Magic Dirt and You Am I. After that we get to our next narrative show at the Butterfly Club. Its the sequel to POINT Blank and is called "LIVE IN HELL!"

Cocos in the tent by the lagoon

Clare e-kit

Stu Perera and Stu D

11 Sep 2007

recording session

We had been rehearsing new material for the last few months in the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band Hall (which is an experience in itself) and had also been playing a few tracks live. We went into Sing Sing South studios last Saturday (sept 7th) to lay down the song with Adam Rhodes. Adam has worked with us on many discs such as "the first Dave Graney Show cd, Kiss tomorrow goodbye, Bad Eggs , the Brother Who Lived and Heroic Blues. He is a great "can do" guy and a good friend. He also has all the old school recording skills to do with mic placement etc as well as the new world digital know how.
We had last been in a big studio to do a session about nine years ago, to do the first Dave Graney Show cd which came out , kind of, on Festival records. (Since then, we have been at our own place, the Poderosa or recording , setting up a computer in different spaces we liked) This studio had been very spruced up and vogueuish then. In a late 90s techno style. The place had been the stomping ground of a svengali type producer who had a teen rock act coming out just then called Killing Heidi. The place still had his touches on it with one wall of the control room being covered in faux bunny rabbit tail furry things. Something you'd giggle at if you were stoned I guess. Otherwise it was still a great room to record in. Before him it had been a top shelf working studio called Platinum and had a history going back to the 50s.
We had also done the Devil Drives album, which was recorded in 1996, in here and a session with the Dirty three to murder a Burt Bacharach tune around the same time.
This time was a bit different. Different world outside. Music was under different pressures to exist at all. The only people who give a fuck are us.
We set up the drums and the keyboards in the big room and put the guitar amps in smaller rooms where they could be closed off. the bass guitar went straight into a preamp ( no amplifier box) and I stood iin the control room with Adam and played my semi acoustic guitar and sang a guide vocal. ( So everybody can follow the arrangements)
We started running through the songs at about 1 pm and had seven in the can by six pm. Three were pretty modal slow burning funk grooves and three were pretty tightly arranged pop songs. We broke for a meal and Mark , our keyboard player, wrote out the charts for a piece of his music. (Everybody else had written the music for a song which I then put some lyrics to) . This took a bit of rehearsing but it turned out great, like a classic Roxy Music song and I started to do the vocals. By ten pm we had all the backing vocals and lead vocals done and we were packing up.
Recording sessions have never been more productive or sweeter. I don't know why they've been so daunting in the past. The music we're playing is pushing the boundaries in all the areas a lot more. The arrangements and playing and keys and tempos are all different. (As well as more varied) Must be that we're all on the same page somehow. All that rehearsing and nutting out arrangements in the GIMP Hall.
We recorded "lets kill god again", "I'm in the future now", "I like to be haunted", "I was a country boy", " I come from the clouds", "bring me my liar" , you had to be drunk" and " whores of the orient".
We have a few more songs to record, such as "crime and underwear".
We plan to put a single out ( via itunes) in November and release an album in 2008.


Gertrudes show Friday nite

Friday night saw us arriving at Gertrudes in Fitzroy to open for Batrider. A small joint, Batrider arrived with their gear and left to go and do something else, saying anybody was free to use their stuff and they would see us later. They are a very relaxed and cool unit.
We soundchecked with their drums and bass amp. The pa was strictly for vocals and we were set up on the floor.
It was myself, Stuart Perera, Stu Thomas and Clare Moore. Drums, bass two guitars.
We left and had some fine Indian food and then arrived back at the venue. Pets with pets were doing the opening set. A young fellow with a hoody on drums facing sideways on the right and another young fellow on Casio and guitar facing sideways on the left . They were fast and willing. Zayd ( the guitarist) stood over the Casio , wearing a black duffle coat with black jeans and sneakers , manipulating some pedals and playing these mean and low arpeggios in minor modes with his black fringe hanging down like Jerry Lee Lewis. His voice was untrained ( in a military/gun barrel sense) and uncompressed and sprayed out like a cat. He also picked up his white Strat and played hard and true chords wih great precision. I was conscious we were playing to a group of people who would never come to see us but may have heard of my name and may associate me with somethin' vaguely stoopid so I was looking forward to doing a highly compressed set . (So this is how I presented what I thought was our best sounds and moves to this crowd of aliens)
We came on and played Feelin Kinda Sporty with two guitars blazing , then we did lets kill god again which is a groove and Stu thinks is like a Prince song , I put down the guitar for my schtick weighs a ton which has some tongues and drama in the setup and delivery. A man on the make is a groove with a syncopated lyric and story, Stu sings his classic what if she comes? Biker in business class has its Coltrane like beakdown and rock groove, Clare sets up and goals with alphonus will get you, we switch to Miles Davis modal style with bring me my liar , go into a classic groove with I'm gonna release your soul. We then present I'm in the future now which is a new song with music by Stu D and lyrics by me an finish with youre just too hip,baby where I tell the people I'm going to show them some old school dance moves. For historical interest.
It was great fun playing to a new crowd and people really got into it. They took it for what it was. It worked on a simple level of flash and fire. Coming out of the clouds!
Batrider then come on and do a blisteringly great set. I have never seen them do a bad show and they can set up anywhere and wail. They are great and they will be doing one more show in melbourne before leaving for the UK. They will be in Brisbane at the Troubador this weekend


musical trips

So we got into playing Miles Davis "in a silent way" at the Blue Diamond which was a big step for us into some big shoes. People were dancing to it which was a blast!
The next day we started to think about recording a track for the "I'd rather Jack" show which is on at midnight on Wednesdays on RRR. They wanted guests to come in to do cover versions or , as it was late, to pre record one. I said we'd prepare one at home. We'd been talking for ages about doing a version of "hard times" from the first album by Dr Buzzards Original Savannah Band, an album which came out in 1976 and which is a classic of writing and playing and producing. (The band featured August Darnell and Coati Mundi who went on to form Kid Creole and the Coconuts). Listening to the song we realized it had quite a sophisticated chord structure so I asked a fellow on Myspace called the Chameleon who I noted was a Buzzard afficionado and he suggested contacting Coati Mundi who played vibes in the band. I did just that and woke the next morning to see a reply from Coati ( aka Andy "sugar coated" Hernandez) where he kindly gave me the chord roughs. We spent a couple of days working on the track and then burned a copy. It was too late to post it so we dropped it in to the studio at midnight after a rehearsal. RRR is in the middle of a radiothon/ subscriber drive so the studio, which would usually have been quiet, was buzzing with a roomfull of volunteer phone operators and different musicians hanging around. RRR is an amazing institution in Melbourne and drives so much of the creativity in the scene. Its is alive with interested parties and people pay for the privelege of having it every year. Amazing.
The girls, Clem and Jess had me on as first guest and made me read a poem about Shane Warne out of a recently published book by Victoria Coverdale called "Come Shane". I chose one called "cream for Shanes groin" because it promised some smut and thats always good for late night radio.
The next stop after Miles and Dr Buzzard was Elvis presley. We had been asked to play a set at an exhibition at the RMIT in Melbourne called "Living Elvis" . The very next night after the RRR visit. It was a very , well , arty to do with speeches by august cultural commentators and many art pieces in different materials. Paintings and video installations and textiles and some of Elvis's costumes. Elvis does not need the art comunity to interpret him of course. As they said at the time, "50,000,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong". The artists had a lot to play with anyway. His presence is exhaustive. After the speeches we went to a corner of the white walled gallery, beneath a couple of huge coloured interpretations of Andy Warhols interpretations of Elvis and ripped through the following songs
Good Rockin Tonight
Mystery Train
Suspicion
Crawfish
Return to Sender
One night of Sin
Thats alright mama
I'm a stranger in my own home town



the Blue Diamond experience

We did the last two Saturdays at the Blue Diamond which is a club on the 15th floor of the RACV building in Queen st Melbourne. We set up at 5pm , went out and ate in the city and did our first set at 11pm, arriving back at the home compound at 4:30 am.
Queen street is a riot of 20 something partying all night. The streets are covered in spew and girls and boys running and falling around freezing their arses off in t shirts and lingerie in the winter night. This is what we got up to over the last couple of weeks.
Stu Thomas , bass guitar , vocals and trumpet
Stu Perera , vocals and guitar
me on electric and acoustic guitar and lead vocals
Clare Moore on drums and vocals
Mark Fitzgibbon, electric piano
It was quite relaxing playing three sets to such a late night crowd. People coming and going over along period of time. Didn't have to do so much talking and try to knit a narrative together. it was all about keeping a pulse going and building up some moments.We played on a rectangular stage and all around the room was the city with its towers and lights putting on another show through the windows....
have you heard about the melbourne mafia?
don't mess with the blood
ooh child (stairsteps)
A man on the make
what if she comes? (stu Thomas)
he was only passin through (unrecorded)
sometimes you can see yourself
goin down south (instrumental arranged by Mark Fitzgibbon)
I'm in the future now (unrecorded)
I wanna get lost again
parchman farm
death by a 1000 sux
mr wicks (instrumental from Bad Eggs)
feelin kinda sporty
mr bad luck
out of where
in a silent way (MILES DAVIS)
boogie oogie oogie (a taste of honey)
alphonsus will get you
lt colonel, cavalry
real big spender (stu thomas)
all our friends were stars
apollo 69
the brother who lived
I'm a stranger in my own home town (Percy Mayfield)
You're just too hip,baby
my schtick weighs a ton
lets live properly
a lot to drink about
bring me my liar (unrecorded)
Biker in business class
crime and underwear (unrecorded)
lets kill god again (unrecorded)
I'm gonna release your soul
I will have always been here before
feel like makin love (Roberta Flack)
I'll be around (Kim Samon)
the bogus man (Roxy Music)
sorrow (Daid Bowie)

Billy Thorpe

I was listening to Sports radio this morning when I heard of Billy Thorpe dying this morning. Not many Australian musicians cut through the fog of Sport to rate a mention!
I never met him and would really have liked to have done so. Interviews with him were rare and I liked the way he seemed to intimidate everybody. The last thing I read about him he was bagging an act who were big in the 70s and asking where they were now. He said to the interviewer something like "I'm so fast , you can only see where I've been!". I love that sort of hyped up shit!
The closest I ever got to him was when he played in Mount Gambier in the 70s. At the South Gambier football club. I couldn't go as I was looking after my brother and sister as both my parents worked nights to get everybody through school. My pals went and they got the courage to speak to Thorpey after the show. They reported to me that he said, "got any sisters?" They said "no" so he said "well fuck off then!" Being country boys, they thought this to be bad form and they stole a mic on their way out. They tossed it to me the next day. ( I don't know why, I was no musician!) I had that mic, a Shure 58 for years, and it came in handy when I did become a musician. Scuzzing about in London in the 80s, I thought it was funny to have a totem from such a time in my life and from such an anachronistic ( it seemed at the time) performer. In those Mt Gambier days I had heard some of his music and had really liked the album he did with the keyboard player Warren Morgan (Thumping' Pig an' Puffin' Billy). I still always look for his soft soul/ disco album which he did before he left Australia at the end of the 70s, "Million Dollar Bill". This had a great single called "It's almost summer". I didn't much go for the bombast of his "ooh poo pa doo" period. ( I heard the original of that song later on and was amazed by its lightness and its weird mantra like lyric which basically said "I won't stop tryin' till I create a disturbance in your mind")
(I guess I also came close to Thorpey in the early 80s when the Moodists recorded with Tony Cohen. The only musicians Tony held in awe were, of course, the ones he'd met when he was a teenage tea making assistant. Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs all walked into Armstrongs studios in 1973 with a case of beer on each shoulder to make their album "more arse than class". He was amazed, at the time, at how they could stay up for days and just wheeled each engineer they reduced to rubble out and got a fresh one in. He held them to be Gods! So too did, we , briefly, in our own haze of smoke and booze and speed and all night sessions and the safety of the future) .
Back in Australia in the 90s was another different time. Thorpey re appeared on the horizon and made noises of settling in Australia again. He had made a fortune in some sort of Space Rock/ computer design scam / business in the USA and was bored. . He did a return gig at the Myer Music Bowl in the heart of Melbourne. I was thinking today of how much ballsitude that took, to arrive back in Australia with no label or anything and to book a gig at one of the biggest venues in Melbourne, which he had filled to capacity in 1972! The return gig was in 1994 and Clare and I went along. We were amazed by the crowd who were that original audience, more than twenty years later, the toughest birds we had seen anywhere. Mean and grizzled and wiry people. This guy walked towards us out of the mob with a t shirt saying "toe cutter". We loved it. It was an Australia we thought dead or heavily disguised. Thorpey came on and was riveting for about 15 minutes. I didn't have the nostalgic investment to love any of the loud soloing or festival of yore bombast. He had real impact though.
For his next career move he proceeded to release an autobiography called "most people I know think I'm crazy" .This was a hilarious, bragging tale of a knock 'em dead winner from Brisbane who takes on the pop scene and wins. Along the way he shags the best looking stripper in the Cross, and then her girlfriend hops in with them as well and he also helps solve a serial killer mystery with the aid of the lowlife contacts he has made and also his friends the coppers. Brilliant.
Where he stood in the Australian scene seemed to be a little like Sinatra in the US I guess. He seemed to be feared and to be able to get things done. He knew how to handle a show and a career. He kept things at a certain level and valued professionalism and craft. He knew people at the centre of things and they seemed to feel good that they knew him. He had form. He had pretty much taken rock music from the cute dances at town halls into pubs where the music was played deep within a masculine pisshead subculture. It was new territory and the space he carved out pulled in acts like AC/DC and Rose Tattoo to fill the vacuum that he left in his wake. I have heard some musicians say that nothing was louder than the drums until he started a fetish for louder and louder amps which demanded bigger foldback and pas. For good or bad, he had an effect on things. He was also intensely loyal to old friends and knew what the Australian scene was like before rock music hit it. He knew how tough it was to get through to Australian people. It's not because they were so sophisticated or knew any better than anybody else. Its just that they couldn't believe in anything that was so close to them. I guess that made him turn up and up, to get through to people!
I would have loved to have talked to him about this scene.

six strings.apply for the licence here. do not pass go

Kim Salmon once idly ran up the idea that anybody wishing to play the guitar should really have to apply for a licence. A licence to rock. ( Now, strangely, a song that is performed by his instrumental hard rock behemoth, SALMON.)
As I flicked past a rock video channel, unable to be held by the vision of another group of four lovable moptops flouncing around with electric guitars, I couldn't help but agree. I am of the immoveable opinion that most new rock is the worst of the old rock recorded and compressed in the modern style and thrown out with little abandon and a repulsive neediness that turns guys like me away. They want " in" so bad that its embarrassing. It reminds me of Silverchair playing "new race " at the 1994 or 5 ARIA awards and smashing their instruments and the collective record company barons of the day all leading the standing ovation. Oh it was rank in that theatre that night!
Anyway, I concur with Kim, just for the hell of it. Something needs to be done to stem the tide of this algaeic bloom that is modern rock. Its too easy! Surely a few disappointments may even prove to be creative to some people, in their hard and heroic travails! Get rid of some fuckin chaff 'ey!
I loved the way Rowland S Howard played the guitar in the Birthday Party. He and Mick Harvey were quite a team. Not a blues solo within hearing. Rowland also invented a few new moves too. The guitar dangling from the neck and the back bent and leaning over and swaying. Him and Wilco Johnson from Dr Feelgood had the most singular and personalized moves. Rowlands solo on "the hairshirt" is a doozy. He just takes off. Stomps on that MXR blue box octaver and flies. What guitar did he have in 1980? A Firebird? Later it was some sort of Jazz master. The post punk guitarists tool of choicer was always something budget. Fender Squires all round for the Subway Sect. Ed Kuepper made his own rules up and played, always, with a Gibson SG.
I also loved the guitarist in the Contortions. That must be the blueprint for the sound when people who write about music casually drop the term "New York No Wave". Its a sound and approach that was unique. The rooms dont exist anymore! The time has gone!There is no way to reconstruct it! If the bird is re captured and flies through the room again it will only fall with a thud in front of the bored onlookers!
When the Moodists reformed to play a gig in 2003 the mixer was a New Rock type who ordered Steve Miller to " notch some midrange into the amp". It was Steves amp from 20 years before. And his guitar from under the bed. It was HIS SOUND. I told the young fellow that we had no dreams ,ever, of sounding proper, like Aerosmith or Bon Jovi and he would have to deal with it.
Rod Hayward was a great guitar player in the Coral Snakes and the White Buffaloes. He had a Stratocaster and a great sound , fully informed with whammy bar and delay and a Marshall amp. He was right there, like Steve Cropper. We always played with a keyboard and , couple with Gordy Blairs amazingly fleet fingered and tuneful bass playing , the guitar was always finding sweet spots in the rhythm and the melody.
WE played with Malcolm Ross in the early Coral Snakes. Malcolm was in Josef K who I really dug before I ever met him. He had that total , original , speedy , trebly , fast chording Fender sound that is copied by the Strokes now. And Franz Ferdinand and everybody else. He is a great player.
I love to hear Danny Rumour play. And Kim Salmon. Penny Ikinger is out on her own as far as influences go. She is like Link Wray. Matt Walker is also endlessly inventive when it comes to the guitar. He started out playing acoustic and slide and lap steel. For his third album he took on a Les Paul Gold Top and had a rock trio. His audience couldnt follow him. I hope he gets back on that gold horse.
In our group of players that has been the Show and the Royal Show and now the Lurid Yellow Mist, Bill Miller is a Strat master who always looks for the place to fit his "rubber band chords" as he calls those upswept , light as a feather rhythmic chords you hear on any 60s soul record. Bill has no blues in him. He is pop. A brilliant singer and arranger, hes always thinking of the whole thing. Stuart Perera plays a solid body Rickenbacker. Hes right into funk and plays very quietly. (We have had to tell him to turn up). He gets into the heavy riffing and loves to octave those solos and uses a few effects. I love his clean sound and the sweet tone he gets. Endlessly inventive. Out of the Jerry Garcia mould in the tone he gets. In the beginning, I just asked him to solo all the way through. I always liked the Dead.
Oustide my own experience I must say I always stop to listen to Jimmy Page and George Benson when theyre playing. Jeff Beck is always worth a listen too. I always look for Ike Turner records. They are hard to find. I read a hilarious interview with him in a guitar magazine. ( I bought it because he was on the cover). He refused to hold a guitar for the photo. He just wanted to shoot the breeze and guitars were just a tool to him. He talked about having Jimi Hendrix in his band and how he sacked him because he was always looking for a pedal to step on for his solo and took too long. Ike really rated a guy called Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. I found an album By Gatemouth called "San Antonio Ballbuster". Ike said he was the most violent player he had ever heard or seen. Ive had this album for a few years and have been playing it recently and its true. It sounds like hs busting the guitar every time he blazes away. And its not loud metal distortion. This is a light and impossibly trebley sound in the middle of a jump blues track. He is shocking! Actually, it seems to be a thing for all thos e 50s black players to make it extremely trebly. Muddy Waters has an amazingly piercing tone when he deigns to rip out 8 bars on slide. Wow! He takes your head off. In that vein, I am quite partial to Hound dog Taylor and Howlin Wolfs guitarist, Hubert Sumlin. Ike is also a king. I must confess I disagree with him about Hendrix. He was just out on his own. I used to have one of his posthumous releases when I was a kid., a live disc called "Hendrix in the West". I found it a bit of a crud sound. Recently I have been listening to his first three albums. The problem is that he was so great in so many areas. As a guitar player, few could follow him . But he was also a songwriter and performer in areas that only Sly and Prince would stray into at other times. He was also a studio cat with a great bent for experimentation and technique,. He was a total package!
(He is the yard stick that Kim thought should be put there when anybody applied for their guitar licence.. He was the one that people should aspire to approach. The top end. To get their beginners licence they had to be at least as , I forget, but someone much better than me)Yes and I must shout out to Duane Allman and Johnny Thunders and Robbie Krieger and Willie Nelson and Steve Jones and Bo Diddley and Chris Spedding. All possessed of licences to drive any type of guitar. Large, small, acoustic or electric.

proximity

The British writer, Nik Cohn, (who wrote "awopbopaloobopalopbamboom", an early reappraisal of pop music, as well as the story which inspired Saturday Night Fever" and more recently a book on Broadway as well as much great writing on New Orleans hip hop) used to, hilariously , bag Bob Dylan, because he saw him as a fake and a ham. He must have been able to see who Bob Dylan was channelling . The originals must have been fresh in his mind. Now those original figures, ( who Bob Dylan always attempts to draw people s attention to) are all but invisible and Bob Dylan is seen in splendid isolation, it is hard to see what Nik was getting at. The last time anybody cared to ask him as to whether he had changed his mind, Nik said something along the lines that he though Bob Dylan was hokey but he hadn't seen Bruce Springsteen coming. That's funny.
It.'s the same with a lot of popular music though. Things come and go and disappear like fuckin.. snow. I saw that character Devendra Banhard, ,whose initial pr encapsulated everything that I thought bogus and dim about indie music, on tv and was shocked at the outageous hamminess of his act. I'd heard his songs and the only thing I could detect of interest in his music was that little warble in his voice that was pure Marc Bolan.If you didn't know Marc Bolan you would be charmed, I am sure. If you did know Marc Bolan and T Rex, you would , of course, know where Marc took that great vocal effect and how he dressed it up in glam clothes and traded his acoustic for a Les Paul and spent years listening to nothing but Ricky Nelson records with that great LA rockabilly sound and all those cool James Burton licks. You would know that. That was in the future, in a funny way. You would also know it was , hopelessly, in the past.
Anyway, I'd heard the songs and had some hilariously hyped emails from his Australian promoter. Talking of this tramps genius and how he recorded his albums like a cat ,coughing up furballs in his sleep - and how none of it was tainted by artistry or craft, just unconscious luck and shit.. It was "ultra whatever,,,acoustic.." I'd even emailed back to the agent, saying , "this prick sounds like Forrest fuckin.. Gump!" ( In my world, an indictment of a recent modern scene but in reality, an affirmation of the innocence of idiots, loved by dolts the world over). And then I caught him on Jools Hollands show "later". He was sittng cross legged , with candles all around him , dressed in some sort of wizards cap and cloak, playing an acoustic guitar. Of course, all I could see was Marc Bolan in his pre electric Tyrannosaurus Rex days. I thought it was cute. It was a show a couple of years out of date. I remember that time. The national youth boadcaster radio network, had 9 songs of Devendra Banhards on their very tight and rare NATIONAL playlist at the time.
I guess its proximity. I was at high school when Queen actually had that horrible single out, "bohemian Rhapsody". The only kids who were into Queen were ones that would grow up to be Alan Partridge type characters. Guys who would wear driving gloves and play golf and actually BE swinging voters. That is where my mind has stayed with them.
AC/DC were funny. Now they are blown up hugely and what matter was there in the beginning just can't take the strain of so much interest. And they used to be a place for outcasts to go to and find like minded bedraggled headbanging types and be far from the trendified shit that was out there in the world. Now everybodys in on it! Leave AC/DC alone!
There is an act from Melbourne who make a music that is informed by the sounds of 1975. No punk rock and no mucking around. ( well there are lots of young acts like this, reactionary types). Anyway, they have been so enormously successful that its not worth talking about. They are in their early twenties and the singer was talking of his battles with Cocaine and writing their second album. Now , really, that is so scripted and lame that you would be ashamed to say it. Cocaine, the businessmans drug. What problem could you have? I am old school, you should only talk about drugs and problems, to the press, as you are COMING OUT OF GAOL AFTER BEING BUSTED!". Wouldn't it be boring to follow a script so closely? Why bother continuing? We have all seen Spinal Tap. Theres some girlfriends and some managers and some touring and a break up.
Speaking of Spinal Tap. We went to see it when it came out in London at a cinema in Notting Hill. 1984.I was wearing a leather coat ( brand new, like the Black Panthers) and leather pants and leather boots. Clare was dressed up like Annie Oakley in fine Western shirt and dress. There was hardly anybody there and it was so true to any musicians experience that we sat in a foetal position for the entire time. We tried to sneak out, feeling ashamed to be so overtly prarding our Rockitudeness. I read somewhere of the singer of Silverchair talking of watching it with his dance nusic buddy and how they "cacked themselves". I was not surprsied to hear this . To us it was no laughing matter! We had the same experience watching "the Mighty Wind" People, who were not musicians, had told us how fun it was. This was even sadder than Spinal Tap. We knew people like that! It was very affecting. Again, it..s the proximity. This tinted drama into slapstick, the further away you got.

the proximity effect two

I guess I'm writing about that feeling of being , and of things, being neither here nor there. Everything is here on MySpace for instance. You can experience the digital presence of long dead musicians and artists and adorn yourself with them and be seen in proximity to them.
Of course, I know that D. Banhard plays music that is enjoyed by many people and seeing and hearing his music via a tv show is very much neither here nor there. I try to be more generous with people than I have been in younger days. You don't want to be a lonely mope do ya! Anyway, I also know that if you get a gig on television, its almost better to annoy people than to play it straight. It's a cameo appearance. So you got to play the fool . Play things up a bit. Play it big.Good luck to him. He's probably even an excellent performer. Its just that modern phenomenon that when a new thing happens, it happens everywhere at once! Here in melbourne a new sad Yank appears every week with their anti promise of an anti performance of their particular anti music and so only anti types should apply for admssion. And then they are forgotten. Old school balance of nature etc.

Fire! Birds!

We live in the hills. We moved here ten years ago and there was a massive fire when summer came through. We were in Sydney and watched a news report of our area " in flames!" We caught a flight back and listened to the car radio list all the streets that were "gone" and followed the flames through a street directory as we took the hour and thirty minute long drive from the airport. We rounded the corner at the foot of the hills to see a roadblock and and a helicopter bombing the trees with water. We got to our street and packed some stuff in the car. And then sat and had a beer. The danger soon passed and the neighbours gathered to talk. More than we had before and more than we ever have since.
The drought and the promise of a new El Nino and a sudden cosideration of the reality of climate change has got the war drums going again in regard to a new season of fire.
To that end I have been down in the back block gathering a haystack sized mound of leaves and debris. I am moving it away from the house. The main weed is called Wandering Jew and you can roll it down the hill with a rake like a big carpet. It..s a bit like jungle combat out there. A nice result is that Kookaburras come to land very close by on tree branches and swoop on all the worms and bugs that I am disturbing. One kookaburra is following me like an old friend. They are such cute and wise looking birds. And they are not at all timid.
I sometimes take a walk in the city and miss the opportunity to be lost in big crowds of strangers. I think it would be cool to live in a walk up apartment in some old stone building. Then I think that I am tripping out on some urban scene from europe that probably doesn..t exist anymore.
One or two nights a year we are disturbed by the soft cooing of a Tawny Frogmouth which is a kind of owl. Mythic birds . Wise and rare. The sound is very human and soft. You have to go and take a look and most often, you find that , when you shine the torch into a tree, they are much., much closer than the sound is telling you they are. You shock each other for a moment but the bird rarely flies away. You go back to bed and listen to the soft voice take you to sleep.
While I have been working, as well as the kookaburra, a Twny Frogmouth has been voicing his contentmey, in the daylight soemwhere nearby.
Suddenly, I was looking at the pile of leaves and weeds and it now looked quite combustible. Flammable. I reluctantly started to burn it off. And I found it to be a very pleasant experience. Fire is quite cleansing in its way. I have been a demon for fire for a week now. It..s a combination of creativity and destruction all at once. Like editing text or a piece of music. You cut and burn stuff and it isolates and reveals things in a new aspect.
Nice...
And then Matt came around with his chainsaw..Gabba Gabba Hey! We accept you! One of us! At last I am a member of the community....

writers clamber up to take in what they can...

Recent writings on our activities. Some good some bad. Just to see whats happening outside the room. Blind dudes feeling parts of an elephant and describing what their fingers tell them , what?
21.07.07: Brisbane Powerhouse
The confines of the new Turbine Hall at the Powerhouse find the evening open up with Rosie Westbrook's bowed double-bass instrumentals, as Mick Harvey's After Dark shows offer up a rare solo set from his touring bassist. Shadowing the instrumental depths of Sigur Ros and The Dirty Three, the Melbourneite (complemented by electric piano, guitar and drums) provides a rather interesting take on stand-up bass playing that's difficult to pigeon-hole, yet simple to find irresistible.
Mt Gambier's favourite son Dave Graney is tonight in exceptional form. And with his pared down band and 12-string acoustic strapped up high like an Easybeat, his consummate showmanship and charisma help colour Graney's command of the English language. A South Australian Serge Gainsbourg in op-shop clothes, he's a man born for the lights and the stage  -  resonating a bygone polyester-clad sexuality complete with witty wordplay. Guiding the audience through stripped-back versions of songs from his Coral Snakes-era of the early 90s right through to today, the hits and coulda-been-hits neatly sidle around the set's early highlight, Graney's romantic reading of Suicide's 'Diamonds, Furcoat, Champagne.'
With his long-time partner Clare Moore on vibes and shakers and Stu D on a Burns 6-string electric bass making up the Lurid Yellow Mist, the '95 hit 'I'm Gonna Release Your Soul' is stripped of its Vegas-like bombast, revealing a newly acquired sense of intimacy. Recalling her stint in a Catholic school, Clare Moore's tender reminiscence about a nun's disciplinary cane named 'Alphonsus' almost steal's the show,  Graney indulging in some rather risqué stage moves as he's freed from vocal duties, as Moore dips into selections from her Liquor album.
When people go to Dave Graney shows, they come from all walks of life  -  the teenager, the elderly gent with the salt-and-pepper beard, and the dapper chap with the English accent in the seat behind reminiscing about a Moodists' show he saw at Dingwalls with his friend are all here to be entertained. And as far as entertainment is concerned, Graney proves that it doesn't have to be throwaway  -  or too deep and alienating  -  in order to be understood and appreciated.
Australia's 'King of Pop' may have since been dethroned and been replaced by mediocrity  -  yet his relevance remains not only intact, but endlessly endearing upon each new experience.
DONAT TAHIRAJ
Talent: Dave Graney and Clare Moore and the Lurid Yellow Mist

Clare Moore towers over her vibraphone to the left of stage while, to the right, a very dapper Stuart Thomas checks his bass. Centre stage, Dave Graney swaggers a little. Together, they open their set with a song called Vengeance Is On Its Way. This is a pared-back version of Dave Graney's band - the Lurid Yellow Mist. But, the guts of what's being executed are present, and I'm loving the sound.
It's not often you get to hear a vibraphone live in action, and Clare makes it chime perfectly in accompaniment. There's something about Stu and Clare's unison backing vocals and that vibraphone which casts a Californian, gameshow-like quality to tonight's sound. I can't quite describe what it, but it's unlike any other treatment of downbeat rock-pop I've heard. Dave himself is an odd bloke, like an uncle that invites himself into an outdoor spa with leopard-print swimwear, a cigar and scotch, while his nephew and mates are trying to avoid the old folks. His shtick is unashamed (if it is indeed mock), and that's part of his charm. He's that crooner you'd prefer wouldn't croon in your direction, but does so anyway. And, somehow it's a joy.
I've never seen Dave Graney before, so I was looking forward to seeing him and his creative partner Clare Moore at the Turbine Hall as part of the After Dark series that Bad Seed Mick Harvey has curated. All I knew of Dave was that he was awarded an ARIA in 1996 for Best Male Vocalist. And I recall images of him on television talk shows, striking an odd point of difference in Australia's music scene.
Since then, Dave and Clare have chosen to continue making music in a do-it-yourself fashion, and they've been touring with the Lurid Yellow Mist since releasing Keepin' It Unreal in 2006 (a retrospective album of sorts - 15 songs from throughout their career). Consequently, the rapport between these three is obvious. Clare rolls her eyes at Dave's self-depreciative jokes and Stu seems to really enjoy the bass/lead guitar interplay with Dave. For a few numbers, Dave concentrates on lead guitar, as Clare and Stuart perform their own songs about big spenders and nuns with canes. Though, two of the best songs of the night are Dave's - You Put a Spell On Me (a play on Nina Simone's I Put a Spell On You), and the energetic Let's Live Properly (Like We're Stoned). Overall, the three of them are great to watch and are incredibly open with the audience, with Dave talking quite freely between songs.
There's no other songwriter or character quite like Dave Graney, and there is certainly something very 'Australian' about him. Whatever that quality is, though, I'm not sure this particular setting is the right fit. The Turbine Hall has become an odd space at the Powerhouse, trying to accommodate small-to-medium scale performances.
Friends who've seen Dave and his band at music festivals say that's the perfect environment to see him, so maybe that's it. Either way, something's not quite right about tonight. Perhaps it's the bar's proximity. Dave seems like he'd benefit from being within view of liquor. I don't know. As they say, I want it again, with feeling!
- Scott Spark Young Fogey, Brisbane.

Thomas Wydler & Friends
Brisbane Powerhouse - Thursday July 19
It's from a group of his friends that Mick Harvey has selected to curate four nights of live music in the Powerhouse's airy but warm Turbine Platform as part of the Queensland Music Festival, with a very matey feel enveloping the performances. Best known for his work alongside Nick Cave in The Bad Seeds (and earlier), some of Harvey's friends are peers whose careers also stretch back decades into the Australian underground (Dave Graney, Clare Moore, fellow Bad Seeds), while others are younger contemporaries with sympathetic tastes (Melbourne independent instrumentalists Silver Ray). Regardless, an almost subconscious theme of music of the '60s seems to abound, whether in the shape of old-time country, cinematic jazz, or avant-pop. The second and fourth nights of the program are examined here.
Supports each night feature members of other bands on the bill performing solo. The third member of Graney and Moore's trio, Stu Thomas opens Thursday with a set of old Americana country, from a time when 'if the sun and scorpions didn't get you, a bullet would'. Death, old testament God and dark romantic obsession are referenced so often that songs about people outside the law by Johnny Cash and Peggy Lee are almost an uplift in tone. Using his guitar alternately for both melody and rhythm, Thomas most notably uses space in his songs, further fleshing out the lonely feeling of an open plain where a note can carry for miles.
Cam Butler of Silver Ray provides two vastly different support slots. Thursday's begins with just Butler and his guitar, but via a self-operated sampler, he builds a band behind him, recording and adding sounds at the press of a pedal. The effect is relatively hypnotic, falling into a widening 20-minute groove that uses harmonica, feedback, tapping his guitar and even sliding his finger up the strings to experiment with new noises. His second instrumental support is backed by The Shadows Of Love Orchestra, whose use of double bass, violin and cello as well as drums and Butler's guitar on largely unnamed tracks ranges from the echoing mournful to the rollicking manic. Also, Butler's handlebar moustache is captivating.
Mick Harvey & Friends
Brisbane Powerhouse - Sat July 21
Morphosa Harmonia has only been performed publicly twice before, so little is known of the eight-piece led by the composer and Bad Seeds drummer Thomas Wydler. Comprising drums, strings, guitars, keys, a laptop and a vibraphone staffed by Harvey, Moore and the festival's other participants, dirty bar grooves, gradually structuring atmospherics, and urgent detective noir soundtracks are included in the fifteen lyric-free songs. However, the standout performance is from a masked Graney, whose role from a stool up the back of stage, is to introduce each song with a spontaneously lurid story, and sit in the spotlight while it's played, adding a ridiculous element to a fantastic show.

salmon east brunswick thursday 2nd August

Overseas, SALMON's debut album, "Rock Formations" is garnering the kind of praise befitting such an extreme and complex outfit of six guitars and two drummers. On the one hand Denmark's Low Cut are saying, "If you have heart troubles, avoid listening to this record .. a vicious aggressive kick in the nuts … if you dig Slayer, Hawkwind and Sabbath, you'll love this – four stars". In the UK Stewart Lee of Sunday Times London says, "…a clever cubist critique .. an act of genius – four stars!"
The Spanish press are even more slavish saying " Blues, heavy metal, rock n roll, even pop are extrapolated into symphonic movements like a rain of steel from this squadron of Junkers bombers." Ruta 66
It's not just overseas that they've been garnering high praise.
Here in Melbourne, "Rarely has the line between genius and madness been so obscured – four stars" – Jeff Glorfeld, The Age, and it's "the soundtrack for a journey through the suburbs in a hotted up Monaro" – Patrick Emery, Beat Magazine.
If, you're still not sure……
SALMON play the East Brunswick Club on Thursday August 2nd.
Cover charge is a puny $12.
Support is Batrider.
There will be copies of 'Rock Formations' in cd or double gatefold vinyl for you to buy so that you can own an 'act of the genius' too. Currently listening :
Era Vulgaris
By Queens of the Stone Age
Release date: 12 June, 2007
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25 Jul 2007

social rounds 2007

Well there was the night at the Hat Society dinner where I had been wrangled in to be a judge. Sitting with a Samoan woman (who actually makes hats in a factory) and her construction worker husband. Across the way there was a man with a fez which had a stuffed bid on top of it and all around , women with outlandish creations dangling over and beside and around their faces. The Samoans had tried to get out of the dinner as they don't fit in this society scheme but they had to come as she was, like me, for some reason, a judge. Her husband ate all the bread he could get and drank the wine and was singing softly to himself, with his eyes closed, before the main course arrived. As he opened his eyes we were surrounded by skinny models in bikinis modelling hats , walking in a circuit through the room. Ending on a raised podium just above his head.
There was a competition which had a prize of $3000 given by a rich Perth financier and his film maker wife who were sitting opposite. A lovely couple , they told me they look for things to support with money every year. I wish I had some cash to lose. Just for a stir.
At the end there was an incongruously cute raffle which had about 16 prizes. these included jars of buttons and boxes of "stiff cataplans". (Probably spelt this wrong, something you need to make a block for a hat).
Before that there was the radio show I did with Elizabeth McCarthy on RRR. For three hours, there'll be another one on August 7th from 9am to midday. I try to play contemporary music and some stuff from my vinyl collection. (Last time it was "Don Adams, the roving reporter". This time it was some of Steve Martins "comedy is not pretty" album and "the piano teacher" from Dudley moore and Peter Cook.) Elizabeth plays her music of choice as well and works the panel. Theres so much music released its hard to find a way into it. We decided to play track 8 from every CD as she says thats always the best. Next time it will be my fave track, 6.
Then there was my nephews engagement party which was held in Springvale and was a traditional Cambodian affair. A totally new housing area, we all stood in the cold but brilliant sunshine and walked down the street, carrying plates of fruit and rice cakes , walking in file two by two and stopping as the master of ceremonies asked that we be admitted to the girls house. After we were let in there was a lengthy discussion as the parents on both sides were bowed to and given respect. then there was a barbecue out the back. The Cambodian men all standing around the barbie cooking an enormous amount of meat. there was an older crowd and a younger crowd. Some of their life stories are incredible wth boats over the ocean and time in refugee camps and being kids in a foreign land and not speaking english. I spoke some halting French with afellow around the barbie. We both wished we had atrip to Paris soon. Inside, the giant plasma screen played the Collingwood game to a roaring crowd.
We've also been recording the new Darling Downs album with Kim Salmon. Ron is coming out soon to put his vocals down. Penny Ikinger has been recording as well and also the sand pebbles. Clare is also recording and playing with Crystal Thomas.
The Darling Downs did a show at the Tote organized by Crystal and I did a dj set. Probably the first time that Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Ghostface Killer, the Sugar Hill Gang, Notorious BIG , Slick Rick etc have been played in that joint!
Then we left for Brisbane where we were part of a week long series of shows organised by Mick harvey. On the first night I was standing around, checking out the race, when Ed Kuepper came into the room. We were chatting away and then Chris Bailey loomed into view! My brain could not compute the two of them being in the same place! Amazing.I would have loved to have seen the Saints who had played the previous week.
On the first night Rosie Westbrook played with a band including Josie Jason on guitar and Clare Moore on drums and vibes. then Silver Ray did a set. On the second night it was a brillant solo set by Stu Thomas ( standing at the back of the stage with his baritone guitar/bass and a radio headset mic, singing all songs about the devil and gaol and satan and death row) and then Cam Butler doing a solo set and then Thomas Wydler playing with the Morphosa harmonia ensemble. This has Thomas on drums at the centre and front with Julitha Ryan on piano. James Johnson on guitar, Rosie Westbrook on bass, Mick Harvey on guitar and Clare More on vibes. I was asked to mc the show which I did from the back of the stage, wearing a Zorro mask.
On the Friday night Rosie Westbrook did another set. this time with Brett from Silver Ray on drums.
I then did a set with Clare Moore on vibes and Stu D on bass. We rocked.
On the last night it was Mick Harvey closing the season with Julitha Ryan, James Johnson, Thomas Wydler and Rosie Westbrook. the opening set was by Cam Butler with his string section.
Then there was an all night party in Brett's room.
The first night back in Melbourne we were rehearsing with Stu Thomas and Stu perera for new material and the upcoming shows in Melbourne.


Jim said it was all over , as a ritual, back in '69!

I am compelled to register my tiny opinion on the two large concerts that I allowed to enter my compound via the television monitor, however briefly, over the last week or so. I must begin by asserting that I am terribly biased by my own experience and aesthetics and coupled with that, I am a bad critic. Deal with it.
The concert organized by the two princes who are, unfortunately, not in the tower ( where in a perfect world they would have been put by their evil father Charles, who coveted the throne and was , so , forced to have their heads propelled towards the chopping block in order to achieve that aim) , William and Harry. (The latters father was obviously the cad and bounder drunken louche with the red hair, another thing that fucks with Charles as he looks for the executioners number on his mobile). This concert could only have been worse had it been organized by their dead mother! Then it would have been Chris De Burgh , Chris Rea, Phil Collins , Duran Duran and Level 42. ( Charles would have wanted the Three Degrees and Shirley Bassey. Another thing that fucks him off). The boys opened the gig with some bad public speaking. the bastard son of the polo playboy sent a bad tempered cheerio to the lads in his squad in Iraq, saying that he wasn't alllowed to go.Diddums. This moment was the actual rebellious part of the day. I watched Elton and thought of nothing and then Duran came on and eventually I went out for a walk. It seemed to be really the end of the road as far as rock concerts go. A senseless crowd coralled into a football stadium to wave their hands in the air for a few hours. My only hope is that there was a new JG Ballard somewhere in the crowd, or watching it on tv, thinking of something less pragmatic and real than this voided mob. In the seats above them the two princes "partied" with their strumpets and their minders. Neither of them spilled wine from their goblets as they tore a chunk from the side of a leg of lamb with their rotten teeth and then fell from the balcony as they tried to rip the bodice from their wenches dress so they could cop a nice English handful of their comely bristols. No lone assassin rose up from the crowd and threw a round black bomb with a burning fuse in their direction. Being a crude and bored televisual customer, this is what I wanted in my 21 st century cocoon and, being denied it, I did that most rare thing, I turned off the machine and ventured outdoors.
I was gone for days, lost in a social world of playing music and engagement with human beings. I came back to my pad and flipped the life support system on to find another gargantuan entertainment offering on show. This was Live Earth. A global event.
Now, music in these giant stadiums succeeds only in making music smaller And the fact that it is global and everything distorts the performers minds and bodies and they run around like chooks without heads trying to entertain the planet. They look angry and puny.
I said I am a bad critic and I say here that I have only ever been to one concert in a football stadium in my life and even though the band was good (the Rolling Stones in 1995) , the whole ambient experience was really quite poor. Its really not meant to be that way. It sounds bad and it looks bad. And giant tvs are only good in the cinema.
Anyway, the planet kicked off with the Australian show. Paul Kelly dragged Kev Carmody onto tv and that was great. He had Ashley Naylor playing with him too. A star and a friend and a fellow member of SALMON. After that it was the best of Australian music 2007 style . In a stadium, playing to the world. On their best behaviour as someone important , (from the world!) might be watching. Here are some names. Missy Higgins, Wolfmother, John Butler, Eskimo Joe and Crowded House.blank .......space......

I went out with some rubber boots on and dug some wet clay out for a retaining wall . In the rain.
I switched the plastic box with the curved glass window on again and saw Shakira playing a blue strat and doing some rock music. It was awful. then Duran popped up again.
I went and read a book about Bohemians in Paris in the early 20th century. I made a vegetable and lentil soup and went for a walk.I went out with Clare Moore and watched her playing with Crystal Thomas. The club was dirty and the whole audience consisted of musicians. In thrall to rock music from 1972.
I looked at the machine again and Madonna was performing "ray of light" with a les paul guitar and a troupe of dancers dressed in black shirts and trousers with white ties who were dancing in formation in front of her. She went to her Vox amp to get some feedback happening and a kindly fellow twiddled her gain knobs to facilitate said squall of noise as she gyrated in a sexually suggestive manner against the speakers. The crowd was still impressed by this shit!
I thought Madonna was holding some ground of her own high above the pack. It was sad to see her acting so squarely. She'd been brought down to earth.
My expectations were low of course, so nobody really got hurt on the day.
The Live Earth concert had a message behind it of course but you would have to be a reall dill not to have heard that message from outside of that event. You would have to live in a goddamned cave with no tv and no computer not to have gotten that call by July 2007.
Thusly , for better or worse, I have felt the need to opine and have done just so.
Die! Rock festivals and Large Concerts!
Jim was right.


the apartments-pals etc

Fridays show at the Northcote was very very sweet. Many old friends and new friends all in the room. We got to play with drums and amps for the first time in many months and the feeling was powerful. Clare slamming into the drums and Stu Perera whomping that trick of a guitar. Stu Thomas is , of course, a genius bass player and singer and Mark Fitzgibbon dropped by unexpectedly so we got him to play some keys. I clued him on the notes as we stood on the stage , ready to rake off and there we went.
I took the opportunity to play some music to set the scene and removed the sad, indie Neil Youngismic dirge that was stuck in a droopy loop on the machine and banged up the vibe with Lil Kim . A complaint came from higher up so I switched it to the Sugar Hill Gang with Rappers Delight.
We payed an hours set and pulled out three unrecorded unplayed ever before numbers as I have become addicted to the feeling of playing music that exists only in the room where we are gathered. We did "lets kill god again", "bring me my liar" and "crime and underwear". It was such a thrill to be new again. In the flow of creation .
I was playing my golden gizmo brand new ebay chinese made hollow body guitar and the whole band was cookin'. I put the guitar down for the last song as I wanted to give the people a lesson in dancin'. I busted every move out that I would usually pace over a whole hour set. The stage was in danger of catchin' fire. We trooped off at the end and said to Milton Walsh , "follow that cobber!"
Of course, he followed it very well , playing the first set of his songs for 15 years to an audience who were here to be takensomewhere by a guy they'd heard of, somwhow. I knew all of the material and I was diggin' it. the first song was the first track from 'drift". A dark and driving track called "the goobye train". Sounded magnificent.
"where are you now? my dark obsession
I walk through every crummy room
through smoke and rain to get to you
your bitterness your disillusion
I thought I'd die of loneliness
whoever loved you you just left
you tore your dress
you tore your stockings....' Or something like that and the chords drifted between a minor and then a major seventh ( I mustv'e nicked that chord from him) and then another and then the mood dives down a key with a crashing major chord chorus. Masterful and dramatic powers were there when he wrote the stuff and here it was all again when he took the songs out again. they all flew.
It was never going to be anight of nostalgia as his presence on the scene had been so fleeting over the years. (Like the Moodists return shows in Melbourne) It was going to a new thing for everybody. he told me he'd never had much of the feeling of playing to an audience who were there to hear his music. After our show with the Fauves we have been lucky to be doing shows which have a slender thread of personal community to them. Soon we will be in Brisbane playing as part of a week of shows put together by Mick harvey from the Bad Seeds. We are all doing our own shows as well as playing dates with other artists. Clare Moore is playing vibes with Bad Seed drummer Thomas Wydler , (I am mc for that gig too) who is playing with Mick and Rosie Westbrook and the band also features Julitha Ryan who will be doing a set with Silver Ray whose Cam Butler will be doing a solo set as will Stu Thomas from the Lurid Yellow Mist. After that we are talking to our favourite band of outsiders , Batrider, about doing a show with them in August,as they get to release their album and then head off to the UK. Yes , please. Its cool to be connected.

Playing it cool

2500 ks past Perth into the Ocean, on top of a dormant volcano , 10 feet above sea level with a five kilometre drop to Davey Jones Locker. Givin' it heaps.

The kids know what I'm goin' on about!

Yeaahhhh!

the sheriff of hell

Here is a clip from a great psychedelic movie called "Zachariah". Its a psychedelic western which has appearances by Country Joe and the Fish and the James Gang ( Joe Walshs first band). Its stars a very young and androgynous Don Johnson. I met the film producer once which was something I never expected to happen. (His only other film had involved George Harrisons Wonderwall and he was in London looking for Oasis)
Anyway, this film is a Western and it has a BAD sheriff, played by the great jazz drummer Elvin Jones who kills people and then does celebratory drum solos. This is what I was hopped up on when I did "the sheriff of hell" on our album "the Devil Drives. The song went,
"theres an evil night club across the main street
the devil plays the drums
anythin' goes in this heat he just plays with the tempo
dresses in black leather
an' wishes that fool across the street was real
hes the sheriff of hell
theres not a lot he can really do
sittin on the boardwalk
hat over his eyes
boots up on the rail
hands down hs pants"

makin the scene / killin’ the Dean....
On Youtoob there is a clip from the Sand pebbles at the Meredith festival earlier this year. They were the opening act so they wanted to make a bit of a splash as the audience unpacked all their bongs and toilet rolls and plastic ponchos and put their ipod headphones in their ears so they could listen to rad stuff like "exile on main street" all weekend.
Here they run through a track from their last album "atlantis regrets nothing" called "futureproof". Their usual drummer, Piet Collins was off on a long tour he'd already committed to and , as they keep their public appearances so rare and they had experienced this situation before (he has to put some eggs on his plate!), they asked Clare Moore to play the traps for them. They seem to think rehearsing is "bullshit" so Clare just gets a whisper from Chris Hollow on bass just before the gig as to what is going to happen. He thinks this is a big surprise but its always the same jive, "VU! All the way!". Clare acts like this is something rad and does the gig appropriately and kicks the gig home with a strong backbeat.
They have two brilliant guitarist / singers at opposite sides of the stage , Tor and Andrew. They also have Ben on a more Eno-esque type of wildcard yet rhythmical / wall of sound role further out to the left. His guitar is in some open tuning and he has a Star Trek/Hotwheels type arrangement of effects he stares at and manipulates during the show.
Here they have enlisted a Sean Simmons from the Spoils to play another pedal called a tambour which gives a sitar like sound which can not be turned off! They are tall and imposing bullies so they made him accentuate his ethnic appearance by putting a turban on top of his head and telling him to sit cross legged. In the percussion section you will note Crystal Thomas in a starring role in a bright red dress and Mahalia Tanner in the Elizabeth Taylor role. Tim McCormack who plays with Crystal and also in fast rising woodchuck act the Downhills Home can be seen playing a stick with bottle tops nailed into it in a most accomplished fashion ( as far as I can tell, being no expert on the lagerphone) . Speaking of lager, at some point a distant relative of the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld wandered onto the stage from a passing van of ravers who had been dancing in the nearby forest for a decade. (I looked in his eyes and saw a vast eternal darkness that promised both moss and glitter! It was all I could do to pull myself back from that terrible drop into NOTHINGNESS ITSELF!) I was there to sing a verse in a song that I wrote the lyrics for called Natalie. I was going for an Italian film director type look. I can be seen staring angrily at the lurid yellow security wristband which is fucking with my facade. The audience was busy lining up at the coloniacal enemation and aurazmic reading tent , attaching the wheels to their oxygen cylinders and telling each other how much they loved Neil Young.
After the gig we left the Pebbles sitting in lazy boys backstage , working their way through a slab. Tim was off on a real journey of self negation and Crystal sailed through hell with poise. Elizabeth taylor remarried Richard Burton and Clare and I got out of there before the sun went down. We like the city. Unfortunately someone had changed all the signs in the surrounding area and we kept driving in a loop and passed the festival site three times , screaming louder every turn, over the next couple of hours. We stopped and robbed the nearest Quik E Mart and when the young Filth arrived to help us we requested we be locked up in a city watch house.
NB. I should state here that the sand pebbles are good friends of mine and are a great band full of strangeness and charm. And character. They all dive in completely and have their own parts to play. I say they don't like to rehearse but this probably isn't really true. They love spontaneity above all. their records have all been real surprises but , much like the Doors, their live shows are rough while their recorded sounds are smooth. They have a new one coming out soon.

Salmon/Batrider show 2nd August

If you don't go out to see music much i would recommend the East Brunswick Club as the stage is high and well lit and the sound is fantastic.
Batrider opened this show. In the near future some smart writer will be telling everybody how great they are and people will all agree. Some writer from the UK or the States perhaps. They will be right. I'll try and tell you what type of band they are. They have two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer. Sarah, the singer plays a pink Strat and leans down into her mic with a fringe and some side bangs of gleaming black hair completely framing and covering her face so you rarely see her eyes. She is loose physically and dances and plays easily and LOUDLY through her Mesa Bogie amp. Her voice is loose and poweful as well. Very powerful. A force of nature. She can let out a squall unheard of ever before yet it is not some deranged display of madness, its all attenuated and freed up dynamic gusto. Julia plays a brown strat and a Silvertone through a Fender Bassman. She has such a direct and unflinching gaze and unfazed coolness as she weaves great waves of arpeggiated chords through the drums and the bass. She has poise. Tara plays the drums and you just never know where shes going to put the accents. When she does she is unerring and strong. She slams it. Sam plays the bass and tonight he is loud and present. The rhythm section is open and strong.
They have such a sense of dynamics. Suddenly Sarah wil stop playing and just move around and then slam both guitar and towering voice down onto the huddled masses, wild! Other times she just puts the guitar down and plays a tambourine and then blows a big toy harmonica. What sort of band are they? They don't use guitar stands and just lay them down on the floor or beside their amp.
They are about to put their new album , "Tara" out and we will be playing as opening act for them at Gertrudes in Fitzroy on the 17th August. ( "We" will be myself and Clare Moore and the Lurid Yellow Mist. Bas, drums, two guitars and maybe a piano. There will also be a band called Pets with pets).
Sgt Ashley Naylor being away playing with Paul kelly, the SALMON army must go over the top tonight and follow Batrider minus a guitar. Matt walker steps up and takes on the shredding, harmonic role as well as general artillery battery service and we are off. Tonight, Kim introduces a new piece for the world. "KFS". "Kentucky Fried Salmon". This sits alongside "ACO" (Alien Chord Ostinato), "SMR" (speed metal rocker) and our cover version of the Blue Oyster Cults' "ETI" (Extra Terrestrial intelligence). We also play "prog suites 1 and 2" as well as "axes of evil", "punk fatwah" , "guitarmony suite" , "Cheap and nasty" , "pearls before swine" ( the only song with vocals) and "get off!". All these songs are written, arranged and conceived by Kim. Tonight he arrives wearing a black shirt and trousers and tie. He stands in the centre and mans a sampler which contains his voice yelling and screaming and saying things like "Balthazar!" and he mouths the words. he also plays the guitar. A telecater. Every guitarist has a small amp. Practice amps. There are two drums and (usually) six guitars. No bass. What sort of band are salmon? A European review commented that our album is "one of the best things running on fossil fuels". A Batrider told me it was unarguable and dealt with absolutely nothing that was topical and was both brilliant and daft all at once. I think that what Kim had in mind.

SALMON - at the ROCK FACE!

This is a link to a new Melbourne based online radio station that recorded the gig that SALMON did last Wednesday 23rd May. New Found Fequency. And you can listen to it here. Isn't technology amazing!
http://www.newfoundfrequency.com/concert/2007-05-23/Salmon/
Below, you can be amused by several writers climbing the steep and insurmountable edifice that is the sheer rock face that is SALMON. They clamber up to take a part of it in and then spill their puny impressions onto the page !
Salmon
Rock Formations
(Bang!)
A friend of mine once described Wolfmother as Dead Zeppelin – or was it Led Purple – and professed nothing but spit and bile for the band's well worn (but celebrated) collection of neo-70s riffs, screeching vocals and iconic rock theatrics. The same objection can be (and is frequently) hurled at Airbourne, and a host of other rock revivalist bands that have achieved local to significant success in the last few years. Sometimes it's simply a matter of irony – you either see it, or you don't. In a post-modern world, objective truth is waste of time and money.
Kim Salmon's six guitar, two drum rock 'n' roll hydra Salmon is a grab bag of neo-70s riffs, screeching vocals (albeit computer generated) and iconic rock theatrics. But, unlike his artistic juniors or pale imitators, Salmon has actually thought long and hard about this particular celebration of the power of rock. Rock Formations – released on the Melbourne-ophile Basque label Bang! – captures the beast in two different settings.
The first part of Rock Formations is recorded in the captivity of a relatively sterile studio environment. It's a survey of rock through the ages: Punk Fatwa is the perfect punk rock call to arms, a melting pot of manic drum beats, grinding guitars and patented Salmon screams. Prog Suite II, by way of immediate (and chronologically ironic) contrast, is a bruising slog through the quagmire of 70s progressive rock. It Wears A Kilt is glam rock in a glittering jar, and Licensed to Rock is the soundtrack for a journey through the suburbs in a hotted up Monaro. Speed Metal Rocker is where most teenagers find themselves after a skinful of cheap vodka and an armful of Black Sabbath records, and Alien Chord Ostinato is mood music for the metal generation. Cheap and Nasty (based on a song written originally by Salmon and Dave Faulkner in their Perth punk days) is a fist-waving primitive punk ode, and The Axes of Evil might be labelled pretentious if it didn't come armed with a big stick of hard rock riffage that'd scare the bejeezus out of the most hardened long-haired bogan.
The second part of the album sees Salmon unleased in its natural live rock 'n' roll environment, with a show recorded at Sydney's Metro theatre in early 2006. As well as the tunes on the recorded part of the album, there's some other live favourites, including Blue Oyster Cult's ETI (Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), the grinding and gyrating 13th Bar Blues, two minutes of free form guitar self-indulgence in 2 Minute Noodle and the uplifting prog rock love of Guitarmony Suite. To cap it off there's a throbbing rendition of the Surrealists' Non-Stop Action Groove, complete with Kim's distorted electronic introduction of the band members. Save for the occasional technical and sonic glitches, this is the Salmon beast in its most appropriate and comfortable state.
The contradiction that lies at heart of Salmon – a barrage of macho rock riffs as tightly choreographed as an Albert Hall orchestral performance – is also Salmon's intrinsic attraction. In fact, it's arguable that on this album Salmon has achieved with appropriate levels of irony what many of his contemporaries continue to strive for without acknowledging their tongues should be in their cheeks.
PATRICK EMERY. C/O i94bar online magazine.
A must-have music for lovers of heavy rock. There's no denying the hypnotic, thundering grooves.
The salmon spends much of its life swimming upstream against the current, driven by some inscrutable biological imperative to battle against prevailing natural forces.
Likewise in his many musical guises Kim Salmon has never done things the easy way, and his music has always benefited from his willingness to take a risk. Rarely though has the line between madness and genius been so obscured as with his latest release.
In 2004 he assembled a band comprising himself and five other guitarists and two drummers. The nine tracks here from those sessions are astonishing. Even if he meant it as a monumental pisstake (Six guitars? Pwah!) there's no denying the hypnotic, thundering grooves.
The drumming by Clare Moore and Mike Stranges is of the most basic yet effective variety, and what passes for vocals are mostly sampled shouts and chants. The album is rounded out by 13 tracks recorded live last year at the Sydney Metro, which are good but lack the emotional clarity of the original nine.
This is must-have music for lovers of heavy rock.From the AGE EG

ROCK FORMATIONS – Salmon (Bang! Records/Fuse Music)
I remember the sniggers when this project was first made public. A six guitar band with two drummers? All crowding onto the Tote stage?  To be "conducted" by Kim Salmon? And with Dave Graney playing (whisper it) rock music??
Well, yes, yes, yes and decisively yes. This is definitely not a joke. It's a crack team of Melbourne based musicians kicking it out, letting it out of their systems, with an air of abandonment and glee permeating each and every track.
Most of the personnel present are of a certain age, and so have an involvement or at the very least an interest in music which pre-dates punk- and that deep grained love for the Led Zep, Pink Floyd & AC DC they were listening to in their teenage years before the Ramones et al hove into view is blatantly obvious.
Heavy boogie riffs, falsetto vocals, thumping glam beats, "TNT"-style chants of "hey!"- they are all on plain view here.
You get nine studio tracks, plus a further 13 live numbers recorded at Sydney's Metro, including a take on Blue Oyster Cult's "ETI (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)" and version of "Cheap and Nasty", a chestnut that Salmon co-wrote with Dave Faulkner way back when.
With the band's own tunes carrying titles like "Prog Suite 1 & 2" and "Licensed 2 Rock" there is obviously a sense of humour at work here, but there is no irony to be heard. This is serious as it wants to be, and as heavy as fuck in the main. There are tunes here that would easily give the likes of Voivod and Slayer a good run for their money. 
There are minimal vocals from Kim, mainly confined to some vintage style yelps and roars, screams of "All right!" and such. But it really is an instrumental album at heart, with all those guitars combining in huge overdriven harmonic riffs to give the tunes their body. That said, at times it feels slightly hamstrung by not going the whole hog and giving the songs the sort of lyrical treatment they deserve, and could certainly carry. Short song length is another issue- some of these could have easily been stretched out to true metal opus length of eight minutes or so.
Not sure of the lifespan of this project- due to other ongoing commitments on the part of all involved the band may well never re-coalesce, which would be a shame. The upshot is that this collection may well remain a curious footnote, a solo oddity, in the annals of Australian pre AND post punk rock. Hmm, but I bet Kim could write a cracker of a song called "Solo Oddity" for the follow up though. - TJ Honeysucklec/o the i94bar


the fauves graney moore show east brunswick june 8th

The Fauves are playing their 1000th show at the East Brunswick on the 8th of June and they asked us to be involved as part of the bill. The Fauves and us are kind of fellow travellers having both been involved with Universal records in the 90s and knowing the touring scene in the golden days of Ansett airways.
I have seen them play more recently than I did in the old days as their music has gotten more and more toward something I can tune into. ( No fault of theirs, more of a glitch in my reception). I saw them play at Rubys in Belgrave when their most recent album , "Nervous flashlights", came out and also at the Troubador in Brisbane. They are a very impressive unit in the way that the Triffids were in the old days. Very self contained and light hearted. They make their own kind of sense and deliver it with real conviction. Their last single from the album . I'll work when I'm dead had a great Byrdsian vocal sound and light , cruising delivery. The lyrical sentiment of the tune is to be applauded loudly and the heroic bludger is one Australian icon that needs to be lauded more often !

Their gigs see them revisiting songs that got away onto the youth broadcaster and others that didn't make sense to anybody but they love doing them anyway. they take no prisoners. they have had their experiments in 80s disco and pub rock and electro and they give it all a bash. All the way through, Andrew Cox gives everybody the high hat with the most acidic put-on of a professional performer he can manage as they throw more and more pearls to the swine they see all around. And people love it. Because he is inexhaustible. You think he will run out of juice at some point and start crying or screaming with despair at the ridiculousness of fate and timing and the stoopidity of the world they find themselves in. But no, he stays on his feet and deals deft blow after deft blow at all comers he sees coming at him from the darkness of the void beyond the lip of whatever scuzzy stage he finds himself on. He will talk of the acts they have given breaks to who have then unceremoniously vaulted over his band as they are rewarded by the great public for being tighter, smarter, stoopider, uglier than them and he will never fail to communicate his disgust and surprise. If you like Tony Hancock or Larry David, you could easliy see either of them writing or appearing in the Fauves.
Of course there is also Phil "the doctor" Leonard on guitar , Adam Newey on drums and Tim/ Terry/Ted Cleaver on bass. They aspire to Oz rock which is odd. Am I communicating their weirdness enough? they put out a Sydney Olympic themed tune in 2000 called "Celebrate the failure".
On a musical note, I was very impressed when they programmed Rage when the Doctor played a song by the late "Aaliyah". When she was still alive and just on the rise. That was awesome.
The Fauves think 1000 shows is a lot. We must have done about twice that easily but we are saying nothing.
We will be doing our Keepin it Unreal vibes ,bass , percussion , 4 voices and 12 string set and they will be bringing their particularly odd and scratchy sound to the East Brunswick Club on Friday 8th June. This is one of the best sounding room in melbourne.

Lie if you have to!

People ask to be my Myspace friend. I also ask to be others friends. They are generally involved in music. I look at their influences or whatever they like. Sometimes, my name even appears. This is momentarily cheering. I respect that this how they are presenting themselves to everybody. This is their ideal self. For the most part I see words like " Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Jeff Buckley..." Blah blah blah.. I mean 95 % of people say this ! Is this the best front they can muster? The best background they can work up? My heart sinks. Really. ( I mean, these dudes are undeniably okay, but so much else has happened...like the entire history and galaxy of rap music for a start)
Why no Michael Jackson ? Check out any of his music, everybody in the world has heard it . He sold 100 million of one album. He made records under such pressure and expectation that nobody else has ever had to deal with. And he came through for the most part. Why no Led Zeppelin? They also played everything bigger and louder and more preposterously than anybody else, and produced pieces of music that inspired whole genres. Why no Hank William? Merle Haggard? Dwight Yoakam? Dwight Twilley? Antonio Carlos Jobim? Duke Ellington? Grant Green? Linton Kwesi Johnson? Burning Spear? Everybody! Smarten up! Check out some pumping R&B! Make out you..ve thought of perhaps doing something interesting! Fuck 3/4 time and accordeons off. Slow music sucks! The world is going up in flames you sad , tight bastards .

Moodists play the Birthday party

So last night at the Prince of Wales in melbourne we did a spot at the AGE EG 21st Birthday Party. I'd been asked to mc the night and volunteered the idea that we would do a few Birthday party songs to, in my view , represent some Melbourne weirdness in the evenings entertainment.. I was going to ask Mick Harvey and Rowland Howard to play and also myself and Clare Moore and Chris Walsh from the Moodists. it turned aout that Rowland couldn't or wouldn't make it so Steve Miller from the Moodists kindly stepped in. Steve and Chris have that sound from back in the eighties. In their hands. No one can dial it in from a pedal or an amp. They have it. We were to do "the friend catcher", "mr clarinet" and "happy birthday". I chose the songs . All were recorded before the birthday party left Melbourne all those years ago. It was when they were young and arty. I love that stuff. We had a rehearsal the day after Mick returned from An overseas trip. By Friday he was badly jetlagged and threatened to go
home and fall asleep for a day or two. The show was incredibly late and there was a lot of free grog. I thought it wouldn't happen. The show went on. Ron Peno did a great version of "come on Spring": by Kim Salmon. Kim did a brutal led Zeppelin-ized version of my song Night of the wolverine. there were raffles and auctions and awards. Dan Kelly did a version of the Go Betweens "draining the pool for you", Renee Geyer did the Church's "under the milky way", Stephen Cummings did a great version of the Easy Beats " wedding ring". Paul Kelly threatened not to turn up and then did. TISM won an award. Then , preposterously, Bonnie Tyler did "total eclipse of the heart". The crowd went nuts! Lighters in the air and all singing along. Then the kit was changed from left to right handed for Clare, it took 20 minutes, and then we were on. It was amazing to resurrect that sound and blast it out. Mick Harvey plays TOTALLY. He is like his personality. Its all apparent. He looks you square in the face and plays loud. So did we all. Half the crowd went nuts ( young goths and old st kilda types) and the other half looked on open mouthed and stuck their fingers in their ears. It was an incredible challenge to play the songs right, knowing some people would have lived with every note for years. It was a total blast.

PARTY SET 2

Played at a private party on the weekend. I always like to do that. We prepared some party tunes but they wanted to hear our music the most. Especially the most obscure, post radio airplay era stuff which we were delighted to play. Had a ball. At the end a woman asked me to sign her inner thigh and another asked me to sign her ample breast. I didn't enjoy this as much I would have a couple of decades ago, but then my hand would have been shaking and I would have fallen over after the first two letters. In 2009 I wrote in an expansive cursive script and let the "y" of "graney" end with a long flourish leading to the gates of wisdom.
Everybody was in fancy dress. Not us. But we fit in dont you worry. It was a kind of 70s look in attendance. I quite liked being in a room full of bewigged women looking like cool country singers. Loretta Lynn and Jeannie C Riley and Bobbie Gentry. There were a few Elviii around the room. I like to spend a few moments talking to Elvis as well.
A guy dressed as a sharpie with braces was watching me work on the long blondes inner thigh . He asked me, jokingly, to sign his prick. I was about to utter that Truman Capote line about initialing it but didn't want to push things. People were really inhabiting their costumes by that time.
Anyway, we had a great night and drove back the next day through the town of Kilmore. The recent firestorm started there but the area was quite unscathed. It moved away and did all its damage elsewhere. Its still known as the Kilmore fire. Its a quiet, wide spot in the road. I think Ben Lee should move there.

Early 2009
last saturday we did a set at a suburban town hall. Not an old school Victorian hall as you see in Sth Melbourne or St Kilda. This was in a more affluent area and so a more modern theatrette. Great to see suburban councils putting on some performances on Saturday nights.
We did the show with two guitars and drus and were mindfull of taking the opportunity to play some slower , more dramatic tunes and also that you didn't have to play so loud in this dead sounding room. It was great to hear sounds coming out of dead silence and you could really use that pure event as songs could build and swell. We played songs like "the devil drives" and "my only regret (I opened my mouth)" from the same album.
The guitars sounded so sweet and clear and our voices were all so acoustically right. We had soundchecked of course, and asked the mixer to let the drums play without the aid of the PA and we'd keep the music at that level.
So much modern music is ruined by volume and engineers coming out of schools having studied how to make an OZ ROCK band crank. Making bass drum hit you in the chest and keeping any keyboards to a minimum etc.
We will be making a real effort to get things right in this area. Anybody whose a musician would know that they have opinions in every area of the music business that are considered superfluous at best and ephemeral in reality. While we're here we should get the sound right for US.
Speaking of guitar sounds. I love that late 60s sound you hear on the Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother Holding Company albums. I realized its the large rooms tat the guitars were recorded in. At least they did not have mics close up to the speakers. You could hear the room.
On the way home from the Glen Eira Town hall gig we listened to some classic Jerry Lee Lewis Sun Sessions stuff. Drums, piano and guitar. Absolute fired up genius on every track. Jerry Lee is the king! He makes that old track "Goodnight Irene" sound so mean and demonic, and he was only in his early 20s. Again it was mics in a room recording the players. You could hear the room.
The next morning i was still buzzing and turned on the tv and watched "the Doors live in Europe". What an amazing band. guitar, organ and drums. All so in tune with each other. Such great sounds. Robbie Krieger with that Gibson SG. Apparently he loved to have strings as old and dead as possible.
His touch was unerring. John Densmore on the drums had all those great latin feels that must have come from being a musician and a person in LA.
Ray Manzerek on the organ with his left and doing all the bass runs on a keyboard and his right playing the chords and melodic lines. Then theres Jim. the great dramatic poses he makes. I saw Mark Stewart play with the MAFFIA in the 80s in London and he had the same non performing type of style. It made a brilliant performance. No mugging for the audiences attention at all, Mark walked around drinking out of a can of Fosters and occasionally yelled about government attacks on his psyche while the bass player played with his teeth . it was great.
Jim did a lot of standing still. And then when he moved it was a major move. He was like a brilliant actor and singer . One of the greatest!
In the meanwhile , after a heavy and fast start to the year I have been getting stoned and watching dvds.I have now watched "Walk Hard- the Dewey Cox story" 4 tines, including the hilarious commentary"
"Matador" with Greg Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan is very kinky and excitingly odd in the way that "the Limey" or "sexy Beast" was. Its great.
I also caught the incredibly gory "apocolypto" which was directed by Mel Gibson. In a similar violent jungle vein I enjoyed Werner Herzogs "Rescue Dawn". I was disappointed by "how to lose friends and alienate people" because I loved all other Simon pegg movies so much.
The HBO series "Madmen" was incredible and I must tell any modern woman to catch it just to see why feminism was so inevitable and needed!
Also saw "Black Snake Moan" as I loved "hustle and flow" so much. It wasn't as good but was still pretty rooted in a music experience and a Memphis one as well.
Musically I highly reccomend the new album by Boz Scaggs. "Speak Low". Its a great collection of classics and jazz brilliance. A small band and a great singer. Like thse ones Rod Stewart does but absolutely classy and not at all easy listening. Quite inspiring.

the party set

Okay, we played at our good friend Tony Mahonys party. Tony has done all our record covers and videos. ( Except for the Moodists, White Buffaloes and I was the Hunter which Dave Western did).
Tony lives in what would be a classic enormous artist warehouse joint above a car detrailing plant in a still deserted semi industrial area right on the very tip of the inner city of Melbourne. How long such an area can stay like that is anybodys guess, but its pretty cool right now.
So it was a big vat of punch and dress for the occasion and much bottled beer and a few bowls of olives and nuts.
People there included rock..n..roll artist/guru Philippa Berry, Steve Miller (from the Moodists and now a bar owner and operator) and Helen Enright, (a university lecturer), Melanie Ostell, (a book editor and commissioner), Helen sister and her architect husband, Maurice from GB3 and Underground lovers and the world of animation fame, Tony Wyzenbeek, (tv producer and film maker), Bruce Kane, (ABC producer of Spicks and Specks), Quinsey Mclean (of Blue Ruin and co owner of Bakehouse studios), Helen Marcou, (the other co-owner), writer Sean Condon, musicians Penny Ikinger, Leroy (from the Renovators) and Malcom Hill, Clothes maker and importer and exporter Lynette Clucas, art critic and libertine Robert Sorelli, film editor Robin Plunkett, film lecturer Nicolette, film cameraman Boffa, Tonys artist brother Kieran Mahony, dj cleancut, actor Angus Sampson and film maker Spike Jonez and attendant entourage. Probbaly about 80 people all up. The Ukelele ladies did a totally acoustic set of hawaiin flavoured songs, sitting on a large crate with leis around their necks and flowers behind their ears.
Clare Moore, Stu D, Stuart Perera and myself then did the following songs to keep the party flowing. We started out on acoustics and vibes with "am I wearing something of yours","diamonds fur coat champagne" and then the Perry Como/ Hugo Montenegro hit "seattle". Clare then got behind the kit and Stuart got the electric out for the following,
Sorrow (David Bowie)
It never rains in california ( albert hammond)
Eight miles high (the byrds)
Biker in business class ( us)
Big Spender ( stu D)
I..m a stranger in my own home town ( percy mayfield/ elvis)
The crystal ship (the doors)
Ooh child (stair steps)
1-2-3 (the Len Barry combo)
boogie oogie oogie ( a taste of honey)
whos that lady? (the Isley brothers)
shame shame shame ( shirley and company)
coz I luv you (slade)
We then packed up and let the disco dancers flow. The punch proved to be very strong and many people got smashed on booze. Blood was seen to flow from a fellows bonce as a result of him attempting to open a door which was unfortunately just leaning against a wall, an unfinished project. The dancers were great to watch as they busted their moves with great flair. They seemed to be the younger set and perhaps they were aided by substances other than booze as they kept it up until 4 am.
I noted that the best moves came when the hip hop and new orleans funk was playing. Someone put on the Modern Lovers "roadrunner", which was great to hear really loudly but it was very on the beat, like a marching band song, and the dancers were foiled into jumping up and down a la the pogo of old. Angus Sampson put on the soundtrack to Deliverance and the room was cleared as the banjos squared off. A top night out on the very edge of the inner city of Melbourne.


hustle and flow

TV is so bad I've been reading a lot of books and watching some dvds. I must say I laughed from start to finish of "the 40 year old virgin" and also was completely held by the German film, "Downfall" ahich is about Hitler in the last months in the bunker. That film was heavy. Theway he was humanized made it more compelling and real that he was voted in and cheered along by so many people.
To keep the 40s vibe going I watched "things to come" , the 1936 sci fi film starring Raymond Massey. The screen play was written by HG Wells. This was great. Why have we not experienced this type of a sleek future? Where is my rocket back pack?
I also watched "Head of State" which has Chris Rock going for President and "Kings Ransom" which has Anthony Anderson as a black tycoon having himself kidnapped. It was stoopid.But funny.
Anthony Anderson also popped up in "Hustle and Flow" which I missed when it came out. It was cool watching an actor in a slapstick comedy and then get to grips with a heavy part in this amazing film about a pimp who wants to be a rapper. Got to be one of the best music films ever made. (Not hard I know as there have only been a handful of greats). The music itself is amazing and then there is the drama and the pathos of the main character, DJay (played by Terrence Howard) and his three prostitutes and the two friends who are helping him get his tracks together.
This is a great film. I cried and cheered and fell off my sofa.
I was really amazed at how good the music was and it also had a real sense of place . I then watched the extras on the dvd and it had a short film called "Crunk time" which had the director and the music composer talking about the city, Memphis and its effect on the film. they were all from memphis and they were totally into the cultural flow that they were a part of . The writer and director, Craig Brewer is a young white guy and he just loves the city and dedicates the film to Sam Phillips from Sun studios. He talks about the music thats come from the city from Ike Turner to the Crunk hip hop scene. They are all alight with fervour. They then have Isaac hayes ( who plays a small role) talk about the music and then they show the actual players in a small Memphis studio. They are all the guys ho did the "Shaft" soundtrack with Hayes back in the 70s! The drummer spits out that hi hat shuffle and the guitarist shifts into his wah wah licks in the most head splittingly shrill treble register you could get. It is so great to see guys like that playing. All through the film you hear snatches of the greatest blues and funk grooves as well as the filthiest dirrty south hip hop joints. It is busting out with great sounds.
The film features a theme song/ rap that they pull together in a small studio. the director tells the story of a totally subterrranean underground rapper called Al Kapone( who is selling his music out the back of his car at a drive in at the time ) who gets in touch with him saying he has music if he needs some memphis beats. The director tells him a bit of the story behind the main character and he gets the song together in one night and it is so great it directly affects the story of the film!
This is like a Hollywood army coming to town that is actually listening to the feel of the street and word actually gets through from that street . Thats why the film is so good. Its alive with a feel for the characters and the place.
Look out for us playing with the Apartments this Friday 29th June at the Northcote Social Club. We're getting the drums and guitars out for the first time this year. ps
the other great music films are:
"the Girl Can't help it" by Frank Tashlin. Glorious technicolour with Jayne Mansfield and Gene Vincent and Little Richard. Probably the greatest ever made. You can stop here!
Withnail and I.
Spinal Tap.
The Mighty Wind ( neither of these are wholly comedies -to a musician. they are real!)
The filth and the fury
Ray
John and Yoko, a love story ( its funny!)
Round Midnight
Miles Davis at the Isle of Wight Festival
the Led Zeppelin two disc , five hour live dvd
Elvis Presley, the 68 Comeback. (Well pretty much any Elvis performance film is worth watching)
Dazed and Confused. ( the feature film set on the last day of high school in 1976. The art direction is spot on and the soundtrack is perfect)
CoalMiners daughter
the Buddy Holly Story (Gary Busey!)
Who'll stop the rain (Nick Nolte in a post Vietnam "old time weirdness" epic)
Big Wednesday. The John Milius surf epic.
Anything with Tupac in it.
Any of the "Friday " comedies with Ice Cube.
Two lane Black Top.
The HBO tv series , "the Wire".
Zabriskie Point.
Zachariah-the psychedelic western.

SALMON

Mark Fitzgibbon and dave Graney

DESERT ISLAND STUFF
These are discs that have never stopped giving for me. I have tons of records. On vinyl and cd , but these mentioned below are records that I have played recently and that always sound fresh and new to me. Stuff that..s not nostalgic or anything, just great music.that I can pull out any time and be so amazed I have to sit down and marvel at the artistry and the lost world it conjures up. Failsafe music.
"Quiet" by John Schofield. The only album I have by this jazz guitar player and the only one he has ever made with an acoustic guitar. Apparently Miles Davis heard him playing an acoustic and told him that it was his instrument. So, John did what Miles told him to do. This must have come out in 1997 or so. It has great arrangements. In particular the horns. The opening track is most beguiling. A swinging feel with drums and bass and guitar and then the horns. Very arranged French horns and trumpets. Like a fanfare type of thing, incredibly arresting. I first heard this on a plane and it came through those crappy speakers and the surrounding interior plane noise like a bell.
"new orleans suite". 1975. One of Duke Elllingtons concept albums. This is to the city and its music and musicians. The last album that his great sax player Johnny Hodges plays on. Every track is a standout.
"The Best of Grin". Grin was the first band that featured Nils Lofgren, who has his own solo career and who sometimes plays guitar with the E Street band. Used to listen to this with friends back in 76/77 , when it was already an artefact and re issue by a "lost " band. ( at the beginning of rocks backward gazing) . The sound is so fresh and his composing and guitar playing and desperate singing voice just carve up the room.. Standout tracks being "see what a love can do" and " moontears".
"Dr Buzzards original savannah band". The first album, which features "cherchez la femme" ("Tommy Mottola lives on the road/ he lost his lady three months ago.."). This is adult seventies disco in a distilled, purified form. Lyrics by August Darnell and music by his brother (?) Stoney Bowder Jr. Conceptual and flowing , like a club sound . Very 1930s/40s chic in the art deco lettering and Vargas style illustrations. I love the track "hard times" and plan to cover it some day.
Urge Overkill, "Saturation". The best rock album of the 90s. The singing , the songs, the general presentation and the genius stroke of having it produced by a couple of guys from the rap scene. You must know most of the greats on here. "Sister Havana", "Positive bleeding" being just two.
"All eyez on me" by Tupac. The production, the drama around the making of it, the rapping, the arrangements, the different talents involved. A double cd that you never get to the end of. Its too big to take in all at once. Always sounds fresh. Genius. I particularly love "how do you want it?" and "picture me rollin". Then there is the genius single , "Cailfornia love".
"Ready to die" by the Notorious BIG. Just to balance up the twin towers of rap that were on the airwaves back in 95/96. Until they WERE BOTH KILLED AT SUCH YOUNG AGES! Never fails to stun me how good this is and how crappy all the people that stole the aura and personae of these two guys are. This was a great cd, his first.
"Wu Tang Forever". Their second cd. Totally brilliant in the production and the cast of characters. There is no end to their mystery.
While I..m at it I must mention all their first solo albums. ( I..m still learning from them - I know they..ve put out more) Ghostface Killah (Ironman) , GZA (Liquid Swords) , RZA (Bobby Digital) and of course, the mad bl;ack genius that is "Nigga Please" by Ol.. Dirty Bastard. I know I have to get three or four more Wu albums. I know.
"Lowrider volume 9". This is a compilation of latino rap that I scored in Sydney in the 90s. there was a whole stack of them and I should have bought the lot. Must be the best compilation I have. Great cover with a girl with enormous breasts standing in front of a long , low and jumping hotrod. This features guys rapping over a Santana groove and another taking on Nirvanas "come as you are".
Dr Doom , "first come , first served". This is a character who mostly appears billed as Dr Octagon. I can never get past the first track where he disses the entire world of rap with such cold precision that it cracks me up.
Pulp, "This is hardcore". I am embarassed to say I only got into this recently. Amazing songs and general claustrophobic vibe. Intimidating and steely in its unrelenting examination of some kind of deadly life.. In cinemascope.
Steely Dan "Everything must go". Their 2004 album. The production , of course , and the songs. Lyrically, they are masters and this music is so rare for people in their 50s to be so witty and to still have such a spark and to have the chops and the fire. Most of all to still have the music business power to get music as rich as this out to the world. No one writes sings like "Pixeleen" which approaches the world of the distracted , animal male gaze and the cold availability of internet porn ..no one else could. Its middle aged and that..s not only paunchy and tired. Its fear and anguish and bitterness full of bleak gallows humour and you just get a whiff of it here. Superb.
Burning Spear, "man in the hills".Mystic brilliance. I loved this back in 76 and it never fails me now. The chanting and the singing. The themes of slavery and simple village life. And blackness. I would have to say that "Marcus Garvey" is equally as rewarding.
"Linton Kwesi Johnson, "Bass Culture". Another reggae album., . This one from 78 or 79. Also, from the experience of a black man in London. Very miitant. Great production by Dennis Bovell who also did the Pop Group and , later, Edwyn Collins. You listen to the steady rolling menace of "street 66" and puch the air at the end when the dreads take a last toke and invite the coppers in to "tek some righteous licks".
Scott Walker."Boychild". This is a 90s compilation of all the songs he wrote himself during his first four album solo career. (He did a lot of other peoples material) It is amazing in its reach for the stars orchestration and vocalizing. I love the title track and "the old mans back again". (The last one just for the bass playing).
...to be continued

My Film My Australia Jan 07

A friend was talking over the kitchen table in regard to Sydney film maker Baz Lurhmann new project. It is to star Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. Its is to be set in the 1930s and is to be called "Australia",. My friend was offering a bet that it would have to be a four hour epic story that went across the intermission in the cinemas, (Do they have an intermission?) a la Bertolucci’s "1900".
He was also positing that the southern hemispherical auteur had been immersed in such lengthy and heavy tomes as Xavier Herberts "poor fellow, my country" and many others. He also reckoned it would have to be a positive story.
I said that would actually be hard to do about this country. I put on Ed Kueppers "Smile Pacific" cd which has a great song on it called "I still call this failure home".
If I made such an epic story, that song would have to have to have a major part of the soundtrack.
I would open 10 minutes of flies buzzing , crows crying and wind blowing and then have some black fellers walk across the screen and then slowly away from us , all the way to the horizon. I would then have them stop, urinate and have a look around , turn and come back. Burke and Wills walk across the screen in the other direction and disappear in a puff of smoke. The back fellers laugh.
This would take us to the 20 minute mark. I’d then have some convicts and sailors parked on some beach in Tahiti, singing rude songs around a camp fire with a bunch of happy tahitians. One sailor draws a picture in the sand. He is elected king by the Tahitians and we then have a15 minute scene where he makes love to several women and is given the biggest hut in the village and the sailors leave him to his new kingdom. My song, "the birds and the goats" would be on the soundtrack.
I would then cut to an ugly, muddy village by the harbour in Sydney with a lot of drunken redcoats and hard working convicts. No women. There would be a lot of gratuitous gay sex in the streets and bushes. In a nod to commercialism I would have a song by Hazel Dean in here, perhaps, "lets hear it for the boy!"
We would see a filthy convict draw some grafitti on a wall. A big cock and balls. A shadow comes across him, a redcoat hands hima revolver and he blows his brains out.
I would then have a few goldrush images and some political talk. In every scene I would have a black feller walking across the camera view.
And an artist on the beach with an easel and his suitcase beside him as if he was waiting for a boat as well as painting.
Then there would be some posters demanding soldiers for the Great war.
I would then cut to Turkey with a lot of fellows getting mowed down on the beach. The French soldiers would be represented by their Vietnamese troops who were thrown in at the front line.
A painter would set up on the beach. Both sides mow him down, in slow motion, for five minutes.
I would then have some swaggies and starving lines of sacked workers on the docks at the depression and then we would see Nicole and Hugh. He would be an artist who meets Henry Lawson . Henry is drunk and tells Hugh to go catch a boat for Europe or, failing that, to go down to the beach and blow his brains out. Nicole is at home, battling a snake in the house with ten kids crawling about the dirt floor of their mud slab hut. They all get bitten and all but two die.
Hugh doesn’t do anything rash and settles for a job with the PMG. We next see one of their kids in Changi prison, getting flyblown flesh scooped out of his shin by Weary Dunlop. We see him back at the family farm later on. He joins the communist party and goes underground, forever. Nicole runs an sp bookmakers ring to put bread on the table , is discovered and tried and thrown into gaol. Hugh had dobbed her in. For the good of the country. Hugh then gets a job walking around a mushroom cloud at the British atomic tests in Maralinga. We cut to the commie son. He has a girlfirend and lives in the small town of Nimbin. They have twin boys. One grows up and is conscripted to fight in Vietnam. The other goes underground again, a family tradition, and goes away to Albania. We cut briefly to an Albanian art gallery. It is full of pictures. Heroic commie pictures! Of guys on the beach blowing their brains out for their country!
Nicole comes out of gaol, a hardened crim. Her grandkids come home from the war , and Albania, also hardened by their experience. They settle in Nimbin and start a tantric yoga school.
They have a tip that it will be big. They also run a buddha stick importation business on the side. Hugh is against it but can longer talk, from the radiation poisoning. He is also shrinking and is now 6 inches high. He has nightmares of being stepped on by a filthy , clodhopping foreigner.
We leave them as the giant family applaud Hugh as he speaks, through a strange device at the side of his throat and an enormous microphone, at a political rally. We see the same scene on the screen of a tv set and they have made Hugh seem a handsome, normal sized leading man type of politician. His voice is like that of Prson Welles. He is elected leader of Australia. A black feller walks across the screen. An artist is seen in his bedroom, putting on his bathers, applying zinc c ream to his lips and nose, taking his gun and walking down to the beach. The end. Cue Ed Kuepper song.

takin all the slack back-feeling for real worlds - mid 2009

Putting out a cd is a leap into the void that gets tougher and tougher. Eventually artists get shy of it and stay home with their mouths shut. They get to a point and cain't go no further.
I have been quite impatient with "Knock yourself out" I always want more than is possible. I think thats the only approach you should take, the most impossible one. The Australian music scene is rather like the country itself. A closed, gated community, fearful and home alone, looking offshore to the real world. Where real things come from. Critics, programmers, HANDICAPPERS!They think they own the track. Conjurers ! Mediocrity from Gold!
I try to keep my mouth shut and smile and wave. You get tired of the saps though and have to lash out occasionally. Was lucky to do a spot on radio with a large audience. Adult. Talk. They played "Martha and the Vandellas " before talking to me. Impossible to air my stuff of course. . I had to fashion an acoustic version of a track from my very very studio constructed set of songs. I pulled it off. I said I come from a "post punk" background. So funny after all these years to be still explaining myself. The interrogator , who had a default mocking attitude to all music and artistic pursuits, gasped and said "you weren't a punk!" It was useless to argue. I did my best though. He let his angst out totally on the next guest who was a young guy whod written a book about graffitti. He copped it. I thought he was gonna vault the desk and snap the dj as hed threatened to do earlier, off air. That wouldve been a first.
I sucked it in and continued my rounds. A writer mockingly responded to us lamenting that we didn't sound like Bon Iver. I asked who the fuck that was. Sad pricks everywhere.
Bearded yanks in demand still.
Saw Jay Z on tv with "DOA" (the death of autotune) Jeez, thats the real world!
Found myself in a radio studio waiting room again. A show about "songs that changed your life". Some jiveass shit that civilians moan about, who gives a fuck? A young girl was sitting, stroking her iphone. I made conversation as I read a paper. She asked what kind of music I made. I said I'd made 22 albums and left lt it at that. I asked her about her work. She said she'd studied jazz and had a jazz band with a very well known jazz impressario/composer and also an indie pop band. I was filled with inertia. How could you balance these two? One is an application of technique and skills and the other hangs around waiting for an accident to happen. I asked what her life changing song was. She said "rufus Wainright". I was tired and couldn't help myself. I said, "I can't stand him, or his sister or his father." She looked up briefly and inquired could I really not like the fathers work, I said "Motel Blues" is alright but only if Alex Chilton is singing it.
She indied away to the studio . An extremely bright and prettty girl sat down. I asked her where she'd come from. She said she was in a production of "wicked " and had been doing 8 shows a week for a year in the city and had moved from Perth to Melbourne to do so. Her smile beamed. This was another real world to me.
She left and the indie jazz girl came out and said, as she consulted her iphone, "have a great day". Not very convincingly. I nodded.
She was identifiably an artist. She had studied . In a school, and exhibited a self absorption that was total. I've met those types before. They got no stamina. They end up in hick towns like New York.
Eventually I went on air, full of gas and energy from all this swirling miasma I had been diving through. It was the rough surf I had come in on. The two hosts were pinned against the wall as I threw bomb after bomb and took as much of the airwaves as I could. My fave song was "down on the killing floor" by Howling Wolf. A song from Chicago, the abatoirs of Chicago where all the black workers got actual jobs as they took trains from the Southern states of the USA to the Northern industrial and transport hubs that needed tough bodies to toss all that meat around.A song from the real world, in fact.
I qualified it by talking of the time I heard it. I was a teenager and rock music, like it must feel to young people today, was dead. Deader than the papal penis as Nick Tosches would have it. I tried to explain how depressing it was to endure a tv show like "Happy Days". The inane Fonzy and the mediocrity of all the dames in that show. Horrible melancholy music like Neil Young and Gallagher and Lyle. Ridiculously anachronistic acts like AC/DC! I talked of hearing the Rolling Stones , (with Brian Jones already dead!) playing their version of "Little red rooster" and how they always credited their influences and how I looked up some Howlin Wolf and got to meet the monster! His gargantuan voice and presence and the brilliant guitar sound of Hubert Sumlin.
Sad people kept texting their melancholy ideas about music in and it was all duly reported.
I only care what artists think, its so hard to hear them nowadays, the goddam audience is yammering so much!
This kind of stuff I'm writing about. It isn't cynicism or bitterness, its a reaction to life. People can be so goddam soft nowadays, an opinion is ascribed to darkness and bruised , pained injury when its just an opinion. Give it some air!

qld trip - mid 2009

Took a trip last weekend to play in brisbane, at the gallery of modern art. I travelled with a silver case which contains a pre amp and an acoustic exciter pedal and my 12 string in its faux crocodile skin case. People still stare at it.I drop my guitar off at the special baggage counter along with the winner of Australian Idol.
I went up the night before as I had to do a radio interview the next morning. Took a train to Spencer street and then a cab. The cab driver was Indian. I noticed a lot of cab drivers are Indian. We talked a bit during the ride. I asked where the best curry joints were. he said King street in Melbourne.
Got to the hotel which is across the road from the gallery, by the river in Brisbane. its t shirt weather all of a sudden.
I take a walk into the mall in Brisbane. I hear so many foreign languages. South American, German, French, African, Indian. I visit a record store and a book shop.
I go back to the hotel and go to the gym, practice some guitar and eat dinner.
The next day I go for a run and then visit the local ABC and ZZZ radio stations.
The gig , which has me playing from 7:30 and then Kim Salmon doing a solo set from 8:30, has drawn a large crowd. 650 people have bought tickets.My usual visits to Brisbane do not do this.
We are to play in the middle of a water feature in a vast art gallery chamber. A walking bridge leads to a square in the middle of the pond where we are to set up. there is water on all sides and the people gather around three sides. We go with the flow. I head out first. It takes a moment to tune into the reverberant nature of the chamber. Slower songs would be best. I try and look at people on all three sides as I'm playing. The week before I had done a solo acoustic show at the Forum in Melbourne and had enjoyed sitting down and playing. This needed me to stand up. Damn! I liked that sitting down approach.
I play these songs,
"while you dream, I live"
"mogambo"
"out there in the night of time"
"bodysnatcher blues"
"I need my guitar"
"sellout"
"Oakleigh Bowie Blues"
"crime and underwear"
"alone again or" (LOVE)
"the crystal ship" (THE DOORS)
"Live and let live" (LOVE)
I leave the gladiatorial arena and Kim poceeds to slay them with his brilliant solo electric guitar and dictaphone set.
I stand around and talk to people and sell some cds. It is a very enjoyable night.

meantime- listening and writing mid 2009

We are off to play some dates in NSW and Qld next week. Coffs (Woolgoolga),Gold Coast (Currumbin), Lismore and Byron and then Sydney.
The music from Knock Yourself Out is sounding great live. The band is bringing it some extra bounce. Its got some juice.
The Melbourne launch was in a theatre situation, we did a long set of new music to people who were seeing us for the first time or who hadn't seen us for a decade or more. People are generally surprised, I think, by the high energy nature of our show and how different it is to the act that is skewered occasionally in the mainstream and rock'n'roll press. Thats the "self proclaimed king of pop, laid back, ironic lounge act". Actually that sounds pretty good as I write it, no wonder they like it!
Been spending time in Melbourne doing Banan Lounge Broadcasting (RRR Tuesdays 12-2pm). last weeks guest was Mike Rudd from Spectrum who has been playing music in Australia since he came here with the Chants in 1966. Look up his website...
http://www.mikeruddbillputt.com/
A brilliant guitar player and singer.
Otherwise been trying to do some writing. I find playing music helps me get in the mode. Though I still have to make 30 laps of the table before I sit down and try to get it going. Been playing a lot of vinyl I have had for years but never listened to much. I have to say the second side of the first Split Enz album, "Mental Notes" is absolutely superb and singularly strange prog pop. Thats the band before Neil Finn joined. It is so ambitious and so successful artistically as well.
Margaret Roadknight is a tall Australian woman who unbelievably ha d a radio hit with the amazingly sad "girls in our town" in the mid 70s. A cold and chilling song, it stops me in my tracks. As direct as Hank Williams . "no one better at 17 to hold , then they get married and then they get old. ...."Well it sounds better than those lines written down , you can hear a bit here...
http://members.iinet.net.au/~margretr/intro.htm
Also listened tp Spirit , with their reunion album, "farher along". This sounds like something I'd aspire to. It is as good as Loves "Forever Changes". Also listened to a mid west USA prog ( a fave genre of mine) . Crack the Sky with their brilliant second album "animal notes". 1976 northern state band. There is also "Pampered menial" by Pavlovs Dog which had the great single "Julia". 1975 or so again. Produced by Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman who were responsible for the Blue Oyster Cult.
Some UK prog by Family. "Its only a movie" and "music from a dolls house".
"801 live" which was a one off album by Eno and Phil Manzanera and some progly types from the UK scene in 1976.
Also the first Blood , sweat and tears album which was driven by Al Kooper. Very good, as good as Spirit. They them got rid of him for the second album and had David Clayton Thomas singing. Contained the hits "spinning wheel", "you make me so very happy" and "when I die".
Another fave is Pentangles "basket of light" and Steve Winwoods first solo album from 1976. That guy is funky. And he is a winner.

comedy festival- makin the scene

Went to see Mick Molloy, Geoff Stilson and Glenn Robbins on Monday night. They are doing a show at the Northcote Social Club, every night until Sunday. they start at 8pm and finish at 9pm. (Just by the by, why can't rock music shows be at that hour? Just for a bit of variation).
It was the first night and so they were feeling their way into it. It was absolutely sold out from Monday to Thursday. Three guys and one microphone, I'm jealous.
Glenn , to me, is a comic actor and so his set was really dependent on his jokes. Geoff had a sly style and , being American, He had all the cultural goofs as experienced by a real outsider to draw on.
Then Mick came on and showed the benefit and power of having an actual larger than life persona. He just walked out and basically stared at people, smiling. Everybody cracked up.
He has this "touch" with people and they go with him. Its all like its a life experience from an actual guy they know. Thats a hard trick to pull off and he is a master.
Mick came on our radio show, Banana Lounge Broadcasting" the next day and we had a great time talking shit on air. He is also a brilliant broadcaster and the energy level was really hyped up. he raised the speed and the tempo.
Last year we had Tony Martin on the show and Tony is the same. Great skills for delivering ideas with payloads. Of course, we've also had John Clarke and Rod Quantock as well as many writers and musicians.
Last night we went to see Steve Coogan at the Forum theatre. This pace holds abot 1800 people and he has sold it out for a couple of weeks. I am jealous.
He is also, absolutely brilliant. This is a one man show with more of a theatre production than a simple club set.Video projections, powerpoint moments and musical backing for his songs as ell as voices coming from offstage for him to talk to.
All his characters were in effect, most of which have never been on Australian tv so Paul and Pauline Calf were very new to people. Tony Ferrino could play anywhere and Alan partridge was the whole second half. The audience seemed to be about 50% British people anyway.
It was a superb show, right to the very end where the "real" Steve Coogan comes out. Amazing.

Parnassian vibe

Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
Upon reflection, after watching football downstairs whilst reading some stories aboiut the late comic genius Peter Cook, (By the by, there were several moments during the game which could have given the commentators the opportunity to portray the events on the field in an Anzac-iacal light. These opportunities being left begging , I must question the patriotic fervour and spirit of said sporting pundits. they are not putting in! Was all that useless slaughter for nothing?) I have come to the conclusion that my vibe, my general thing, is Parnassian. But perhaps that early and late Parnassian the crossed over into Symbolism. Thus allowing the great respect for formal arrangements that characterized the Parnassian as well as the striving for the opaque objectivism and repulsion for their precursors, the Romantics, wallowing in emotion and feeling and free verse. The crossing over into Symbolism could explain the demands and tension my very expressionistic and determinedly individual mythologising places on the classic forms and structures I like to inhabit. I like to hang loose and play wide within a set of boundaries I know and range like the back of my hand. I like to lair and I am a lair and I inhabit a lair. The 2009 Worlds Lair!
Everybody else ? Stuck in a Romantic phase, or is that a neo classical loop? Hopelessly generic for the most part. Rooted in alkaline, sterile water. Hydroponically suspended in a bowl. Smooth between the legs. Stoppered with dried plaster. With no memory of being able to move.

Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim

I was playing this record today.I've had it for years but sometimes it seems you are in the right moment to truly "hear" something. This is a transcendant album of songs. Sinatra invented the idea of an album being a collection of songs around a theme. He is a titan among stellar names and brands. He made so many records that its hard to figure where to dive in. I would recommend this one. Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. They only made this one and its a perfect meeting of great artists in their ascendant powers. Theere is a dvd you can get with Sinatra appearing on tv with Jobim , playing some of these song . it is also incredible. Just the two of them, Jobim hunched over his nylon string guitar with his lank fringe over his head and Frank in his tux, smoking a cigarette and singing so perfectly.

This album has a great cover shot and brilliant liner notes. They apparently recorded
a few more songs and they've al been collected on a cd. I'm talking about the original stand alone recording on Franks label , Reprise.
Like many people, I always had the feeling that the music scene was jumping some time before I got onto the scene and its all a bit of a wasteland now. I guess its easy when you approach an artefact like this when its out of context. Its all so untidy and suspended when youre in the midst of events. At the time I guess Bossa Nova was the new thing and Dizzy Gillespie had brought a lot of latin feels into the jazz scene and then it filtered through to guys like Sinatra. This is till something to be marvelled at though. The artistry and the ambition is incredible. The adult nature of the lyrics and the sophistication of the chords and the arrangements. the overall lightness of touch is just so beguiling. Did you know Frank used to walk through public places like the floor in Vegas and if someone was good to him he would have folded his large notes into easliy slipped packages and would , as he would say , "duke 'em". Class.
This album is Sinatra the artist. Not Frank the violent character of infamy and gangsterism.
These are some of the words he gets to sing, a song called Meditation,written by Jobim....
In my loneliness
When you're gone and I'm all by myself and I need your carress
I just think of you
And the thought of you holding me near
Makes my loneliness soon disappear
Though you're far away
I have only to close my eyes and you are back to stay
I just close my eyes
And the sadness that missing you brings
Soon is gone and this heart of mine sings
Yes I love you so
And that for me is all I need to know
I will wait for you till the sun falls from out of the sky
For what else can I do
I will wait for you
Meditating how sweet life will be when you come back to me


SALMON - ROCK FORMATIONS

Below is how SALMON is described by Bang Records on their site. I'm not here to argue with them. Perhaps if you were to read the legend first then you could come back here to see it from where I stand.
Bang is the Spanish label that releases a certain kind of Australian music in Europe. Basically hard rock. SALMON must be the most modernist type thing they've ever bitten off. They should be applauded for their madness and interest and the energy they bring to the scene they are translating for Europe.
Anyway, Kim is held in some regard by people who love that certain Australian sound of hard rock. But he is a restless artist among a bunch of beer drinkers and that crew do their best to ignore stuff he has done in the two decades since the Scientists such as the brilliant Surrealists (both line-ups) and the astounding song writing and playing master class that was "the Business". At that same time he also teamed up with Dave Faulkner of the Hoodoo Gurus for the stylistic playfulness that was "Antennae". (This album contained the brilliant "Come on Spring"). He has also done his "roots" / solo acoustic album which he called "E(a)rnest". Since then he has taken time to tour and reissue and re record albums by the Scientists as well as do an album with Ron Peno as a duo called "the Darling Downs".
Somewhere in the middle of this, as he heard the constant calls for him to get back to his hard rock 'roots" he came up with the idea of SALMON. SALMON would be 6 electric guitars and two drummers. the guitars all do different tasks as part of an orchestrated heavy metal and the drummers play in unison. there was to be no jamming, every note was written by Kim.

WE started rehearsing in 2005. Rehearsals have far outstripped the number of gigs we have done. Kim set the agenda. Every member of SALMON has their own thing or career happening. In that thing of our own we call the shots. In SALMON, we do as we are told. The guitarists all play small amps and we all dress in black. Ashley Naylor and Anton Ruddick stand in the centre and do the shredding, technical demanding stuff. Penny Ikinger and I stand to the side and do the rhythmic, weird noisy parts and the pick burns. Matt Walker joined when I couldn't make a show and has never left. he can do both the shredding and the weirdness. Clare Moore and Michael Stranges sit at their kits, faithfully reproducing the rhythms that Kim had originally written on his archaic little drum machine.
Kim stands on the other side playing guitar and sending off all these little cries and yelps and screams from his sampler.(There is no actual singing as such and so the stage is never cluttered with mics or foldback speakers).

Each song is like a hard rock universe in miniature. I would compare SALMON to one of those "projects" that those jazzers would get together in the 50s and sixties. Like Miles Davis's nine piece horn section that he got together when he first went solo. SALMON is arty and crude.
The SALMON album has appeared. Really, we didn't go into a studio and get it together painstakingly separating everything to then put it back together. The album appeared and Kim told us it was from the protools recordings of the rehearsals we did and a live show in Sydney. Its all going to his crazy plan!
Here is the track listing:
Punk Fatwa
Prog suite 2
It wears a kilt
licensed to rock
speed metal rocker (SMR)
Alien Chord Ostinato (ACO)
Cheap'n'nasty
the axes of evil
prog suite
13th bar blues
2 minute noodle
guitarmony suite
ETI (a cover of the Blue Oyster Cult song)
Tha album flows wit many segues and reprises of each song, as does the live show. Like some fascist heavy metal orchestra. Here is the view from Spain.....
We are launching the album at the Northcote Social Club on May 23rd.

KIM SALMON. What else do we need to say? Just naming the Master of swamp sound is more than enough to guarantee total quality.
Mr. Salmon flies free in this new project. His wish seems to be developing the maximum brutality. A band of evil instrumental songs with 6 guitars (Kim Salmon and Penny Ikinger among them) and 2 drum sets, all of them perfectly sincronized by pairs.
Kim Salmon manufactures this project wich reminds us of a cross between the most primitive sounds of Seattle grunge (begining of MELVINS or GREEN RIVER), as well as Ozzy Osborne´s BLACK SABBATH, all of it mixed with the original touch of Kim Salmon´s SCIENTISTS or SURREALISTS.
THE DRONES, as well as everybody who has been able to see them live, melt in good words about this amazing new project from Maestro Salmon.
In order to increase the widness of this album, Mr. Salmon does the first half in studio, and ends it with a live concert. Released by BANG! Rcds. on CD with triple cigipack cover, as well as limited double LP deluxe edition (embossed cover, thick vinyl 500 copies, gatefold...) For extreme sounds lovers only.
"If you have heart problems, avoid to listen to it", Penny Ikinger.SALMON is looming.
What is Salmon?
SALMON is five guitarists…generating scrap-yards full of metal for two drummers to belligerently pound, slam and flam their way through!
SALMON is 8 individuals of iconic stature wildly shape-throwing and shredding their way through the biggest barrage of demonic power-chords known to human kind.
SALMON does it tough!
In SALMON nothing gets in the way of what counts.
In SALMON what counts are the RIFF and the BEAT…. played heavy.
What about songs you ask?
SALMON doesn't need your puny songs!
Songs are for propping up weak riffs and lame beats that can't stand on their own.
SALMON has scientists working round the clock to come up with riffs so hard they stand up on their own.
SALMON has carefully selected its crew from the finest available to drive its stellar machinery. This crew comprises… Matt walker, Ash Naylor, Clare Moore, Anton Ruddick, Mike Stranges, Penny Ikinger and Dave Graney and Kim Salmon. These brave folk are indeed the right stuff for the mission.
These brave folk have put themselves under the all seeing, all hearing scrutiny of SALMON .
Other bands hustle record deals, then plan and record albums.
SALMON does nothing! A SALMON record album comes into existence like the force of nature that it is! Like the 'Big Bang!' Indeed Bang! records came to SALMON and the Album 'Rock Formations' came into existence!
'Rock Formations' is the onslaught of SALMON made actual! In CD or double gatefold vinyl album form! Now you can have the six axes of evil and the twin drums of doom wreaking havoc in your own home!
Pretenders shall bow down before SALMON as it lays the rock and roll world to waste. You may try to hide from the inevitability of SALMON but be warned.
Resistance is useless!

Beastie Boys Sabotage
So I went to Mt Gambier at Xmas and had a chance to duck into some old time op shops. I came out of one with a hardback book by Lawrence Durrell called "Tunc""and a VHS full length video by the Beastie Boys called "Sabotage". After being back in the Ponderosa compound for a week or two I had a moment to check out the Beastie Boys. This is a full length exposition of their live show and rehearsal room and general tooling around lifestyle at the time when their arura and mystique was most potent. Just after "Pauls Boutique" and at the time of making "Check your head" , "Ill communication" and that instrumental cd "the in sound from way out". The latter was only available, seemingly, from insiders and was a hand to hand release, later commercially available. Until Eminem, there was no other white act so close to the action as far as hip hop tastes ran.
They had their own thing rolling with the brilliant magazine "Grand Royal", (in which they pretty much invented the concept of the "Mullett" as a recognized hairdon’t. They were plugged in and were jolting.They even make skateboarding look good!
This video is a classic and has the great Spike Jonze clip for "Sabotage" where they mimick and mock and revel in disguise as 70s donut eating, car bonnet rolling, villain tossing cops. Its fantastic. (Here are the characters as they are credited, Sir Stewart Wallace as himself (played by MCA), Nathan Wind as Cochese (also played by MCA) , Vic Colfari as Bobby, "The Rookie" (played by Adrock), Alasondro Alegré as "The Chief" (played by Mike D), Fred Kelly as Bunny (played by DJ Hurricane.)
It also has them playing some punk rock at some earlier gigs and also goofing off live as Triphammer, their heavy metal outfit at a live gig. They also appear on some cable shows in their sabotage cop outfits.
I saw them around this time at the Livid festival in Brisbane. It was inside a big tent. I was out front waiting for them to come on. You could see through to the backstage area through an opening. They had their dj come on and then this bright light kept playing through that opening in the tent and you could catch glimpses of them. It took an age as they ambled to the stage with somebody holding a light above them. Like a tv crew would do, if a boxer was walking to the ring. The crowd was going nuts as they could see them and they were building it up so slowly. One of the best entrances in music I’ve seen.
Anyway, I opened the vhs and inside the box with the video was an empty plastic bag with a few dope seeds in it. Do you reckon they released it like that ?

talking of my kinda art the other night

We were asked to perform at the NGVA , which is in the Ian Potter centre. Not the national gallery which is just over the other side of the river but the national gallery of Victoria. Its at Federation Square across from the Forum theatre. Part of the performance was for me to give an "art chat". All this was to happen at 6pm .
I started my talk by saying I was pretty much educated by tv. Old films and tv series. Sounds bad but I got exposed to the greatest of early Hollywood films from the silents to film noir to all kinds of B movies and comic events like "F Troop" and "Get Smart" . Also "The Invaders" and the Australian scifi aboriginal series, "Wandjina". Lots of crap too but I watched it all and saw things by accident that you would have to get a degree to know of their existence nowadays. Everything might be available now but you have to know about something to look for it, in a way, and the chances of being exposed to all that cultural swamp, by accident, are very slim now. Only in some kind of "festival" would you get to see a movie like "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" or "amateur night at the Dixie Bar and Grill".I added that I never went to higher education so I really was schooled by popular culture and it was pretty good.
I talked about my love of mythology and especially self mythology and read a poem I'd written many years ago about my favourite mythic rock band, the Charlatans from San Francisco. The poem is called "the Charlatans playing silver city 1965". They were pretty much the frst of the SF freak bands and played their first gigs ina wild west replica saloon in Silver City.
I read from the fake "Benny Goodmans tour diaries" from teh fake GI music mag "Nuts to you". I read the first page of Ricahard Starks' "Point Blank" (Richard Stark was really Donald E Westlake) and talked of my love for 30s pulp writers like Paul Cain. ( he wrote the great "fast one" and one other collection of stories "seven slayers")
I read from Iceberg Slims "pimp" and talked of how you had to go into the erotic paperback section section of a secondhand bookshop in Kings Cross to find a book ilike that as it was not recognized by respectable book shops.
I read the first two words from Mayakovskys "my discovery of America. Written in 1925 by this young recolutionary poet and playwrite, the first two words are , "TWO WORDS!".I like his declamatory style and droll humour. And I discovered America again, reading him.
I also read some James M Cain. i was going to read a poem by Guillaume Appollinaire called "the pretty redhead" but I had left it home. I really love that poem and identify with lines very strongly.
I ended the talk with a reading of "lament" by Jim Morrison from the classic posthumous Doors album "an American Prayer".
The area we were playing in was a foyer just outside the John Bracks exhibition at the gallery. People were walking in and out. We were joined bya great turnout of people who I had never seen at any club gigs before. It was a fantatsic experience. Playing at such an early evening hour is sensational. Why dont more venue do this?
Basically I was trying to say that I found my kind of art by accident and , in that peculiar australian way, it took me a long time to consider myself an artist, to don the cloak, without smirking.
We began our set with "the birds and the goats and ended with "crime and underwear" and "lets kill god again".

rrr live to air last week

WE played a set in the new performance space at RRR last Wednesday night. It was the first time we'd played all the materia from "Knock Yourself Out" . Either Clare Moore had built and played all the tracks on the album or I had. We had to pull it all apart over the last couple of months at our Yarraville rehearsal place and play it as a band. We'd never had to do that before. It was like doing cover versions of my songs. They are sounding full of bounce and grit. Its another kind of energy and level of intensity in the dynamics.
Thanks to everybody for coming along, it was a great night. It went out live from 6:30 to 7:00 on Richard Moffatts "incoming" show. Afterwards we went across to the Lomond pub for a drink, well I had a lemonade. There was a duo playing, two fellows , one on drums and another on electric guitar. They play every Wednesday night and are called "Stackfull". The drummer had a real, old jazz kit with a big bass drum which had the front skin still on. He kept talking to us and telling us who they were. Their poster, he told us, was designed by Ian McCausland. This fellow has a lot of work out there. Have a look...
http://www.ianmccausland.com.au/
I looked up the drummer , Harold Frith ,on the magic box and he is now 73 and has been playing since that mythic time cefore the Beatles screwed the whole scene up, in a Melbourne band called the Thunderbirds.
http://www.thethunderbirds.com.au/pictures.html
The guitarist, les Stackpool, had played in many bands from the late 60s on. Including Levi Smiths Clefs and Doug Parkinson In Focus.
I always love to see players keeping on playing.
The next day I flew to Sydney to catch up with the people at Fuse and tehn to sing some songs at an event that wa s a part of Brian Enos "Luminous " festival. A very distant part I guess. Heres what the Creative Sydney people said....
"Hear the likes of Old Man River, Spod, Sui Zhen, Loene Carmen and members of Dappled Cities, Bridezilla, RedSunBand, Tom Ugly along with special guests Simon Day (Ratcat) and Dave Graney reinterpreting old-school hits and indie classics, all backed by a supergroup of a house band featuring Lindsay McDougall (Triple J, Frenzal Rhomb), Cec Condon (The Mess Hall), Sam Worrad (The Holy Soul) and Cameron Bruce (Waikiki, The Beautiful Girls).
The night will open with a set by three generations of Sydney performers all from the one family - Holiday Sidewinder (Bridezilla), her mother Loene Carmen and grandfather Peter Head - performing some of Peter’s classic songs about Sydney such as “King of the Cross” (about Abe Saffron) and “William St Blues”.
It was a very warm event to be invited to be a part of. i was the only Melbourne person. An accident I think. I really enjoyed seeing Loene carmen pefroming with her father and her daughter , all of them taking the mic to sing a couple of songs in turn. Simon Day always makes me wonder why he isn't more active musically. One of teh dappled City fellows did Eric Bogles "the band played waltzing matilda" to this hall full of up for it 20 somethings. I thought he was mad. they quite liked it, but I always misjudge the current generations sentimentality about WW1. They've been brought up with it as a semi religuous holiday every year.
I got up eventually and did "hindu gods of love " by the Lipstick Killers and "smith and wesson blues" by rado Birdman. Two iconic Sydney acts. I also did "bodysnatcher blues" as its a one note boogie and I thought the band might dig it.
I went back to my hotel room, which had a view of the lights and vido art being thrown all over the Sydney Opera House. I turned th tv on and watched the entire game of St Kilda vs Carlton. It was a very exciting match.

WE played a set in the new performance space at RRR last Wednesday night. It was the first time we'd played all the materia from "Knock Yourself Out" . Either Clare Moore had built and played all the tracks on the album or I had. We had to pull it all apart over the last couple of months at our Yarraville rehearsal place and play it as a band. We'd never had to do that before. It was like doing cover versions of my songs. They are sounding full of bounce and grit. Its another kind of energy and level of intensity in the dynamics.
Thanks to everybody for coming along, it was a great night. It went out live from 6:30 to 7:00 on Richard Moffatts "incoming" show. Afterwards we went across to the Lomond pub for a drink, well I had a lemonade. There was a duo playing, two fellows , one on drums and another on electric guitar. They play every Wednesday night and are called "Stackfull". The drummer had a real, old jazz kit with a big bass drum which had the front skin still on. He kept talking to us and telling us who they were. Their poster, he told us, was designed by Ian McCausland. This fellow has a lot of work out there. Have a look...
http://www.ianmccausland.com.au/
I looked up the drummer , Harold Frith ,on the magic box and he is now 73 and has been playing since that mythic time cefore the Beatles screwed the whole scene up, in a Melbourne band called the Thunderbirds.
http://www.thethunderbirds.com.au/pictures.html
The guitarist, les Stackpool, had played in many bands from the late 60s on. Including Levi Smiths Clefs and Doug Parkinson In Focus.
I always love to see players keeping on playing.
The next day I flew to Sydney to catch up with the people at Fuse and tehn to sing some songs at an event that wa s a part of Brian Enos "Luminous " festival. A very distant part I guess. Heres what the Creative Sydney people said....
"Hear the likes of Old Man River, Spod, Sui Zhen, Loene Carmen and members of Dappled Cities, Bridezilla, RedSunBand, Tom Ugly along with special guests Simon Day (Ratcat) and Dave Graney reinterpreting old-school hits and indie classics, all backed by a supergroup of a house band featuring Lindsay McDougall (Triple J, Frenzal Rhomb), Cec Condon (The Mess Hall), Sam Worrad (The Holy Soul) and Cameron Bruce (Waikiki, The Beautiful Girls).
The night will open with a set by three generations of Sydney performers all from the one family - Holiday Sidewinder (Bridezilla), her mother Loene Carmen and grandfather Peter Head - performing some of Peter’s classic songs about Sydney such as “King of the Cross” (about Abe Saffron) and “William St Blues”.
It was a very warm event to be invited to be a part of. i was the only Melbourne person. An accident I think. I really enjoyed seeing Loene carmen pefroming with her father and her daughter , all of them taking the mic to sing a couple of songs in turn. Simon Day always makes me wonder why he isn't more active musically. One of teh dappled City fellows did Eric Bogles "the band played waltzing matilda" to this hall full of up for it 20 somethings. I thought he was mad. they quite liked it, but I always misjudge the current generations sentimentality about WW1. They've been brought up with it as a semi religuous holiday every year.
I got up eventually and did "hindu gods of love " by the Lipstick Killers and "smith and wesson blues" by rado Birdman. Two iconic Sydney acts. I also did "bodysnatcher blues" as its a one note boogie and I thought the band might dig it.
I went back to my hotel room, which had a view of the lights and vido art being thrown all over the Sydney Opera House. I turned th tv on and watched the entire game of St Kilda vs Carlton. It was a very exciting match.