picture Bleddyn Butcher.
Two Fisted Art: the new double CD compilation
Here is a page with links for downloads , from the latest Dave Graney and Clare Moore albums as well as many other Dave Graney cds. Tracks can be digitally bought and downloaded from emusic, itunes, mp3.com.au, Rhapsody, Napster etc.....
The Moodists are now available via itunes. All the tracks from the "two fisted art" compilation.
The Moodists were a Melbourne band. A really Melbourne band. We didn't travel to Sydney until 1982. When we got there we slept on peoples floors and drank cans of Victoria Bitter constantly. We felt obliged to conduct ourselves so. The tv was never, ever off. Sydney people seemed to want to wear loud , colourful clothes and be outside all the time. We lived and played (almost exclusively) in the derelict, bohemian Melbourne suburb of St Kilda and when we travelled to Sydney, we played almost exclusively in the derelict, bohemian inner city suburb of Darlinghurst. Both places had a warm red light glow which infused the residents with a "big city" feeling.
The Moodists put out two singles and an ep on Bruce Milne and Greta Moons' Au Go Go label. In late 1983 we moved to London where we spent the rest of what was our career, (save for six months in 1985).
Our friends and contemporaries were the Go Betweens, the Birthday Party (and later, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), the Laughing Clowns, the Triffids, the Died Pretty, the Beasts of Bourbon, the Feral Dinosaurs, the people with chairs up their noses and Buick KBT.
Our first shows in the UK were opening for the Fall and the Go Betweens. The London music scene, compared to Australia, was full of drama and intrigue. It was also heavily played out in the pages of the weekly music papers. We were totally into being in a band. Drinkin and stayin up all night and writing songs all together. We had no manager or buffer zone of any type between us and the rest of the world. We were very raw. We liked the music of the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, Suicide, Flipper and the hard country sounds of Merle Haggard, George Jones and Hank Williams(Jnr and Snr).
We went to the UK as a short cut to live the kind of ferocious, footloose kind of life we thought you had to live in order to make music. We weren't "rootsy", it was more of a journey away from any roots that we had. I would characterise it as more of an interior, mythological trip we were on. All the music we heard and the magazines we read were imported. It was all exotic and so very far away. In Australia, the suburban pubs were where you went to pursue a career in music. We only played the inner city venues. We never even really tried to venture any further. (Famously, the Scientists opened for pub rock chart toppers, The Angels at the Parramatta RSL and were canned off the stage). In essence, most of the inner city crowd all came from the outer suburbs and didn't really want to go back. Clare and Steve and I were a little outside of this dynamic as we all came from South Australia, we were a little more removed. Through friends of our friends, the Birthday Party, we received some outlandishly good reviews of our early singles in the UK press and, after a visit to Australia to check both us and the Laughing Clowns out, Londons' Red Flame records, signed us all up.
Greta Moon, AuGoGo records
Click on the image to go to the WMinc site to purchase the new CD.
a short bio of Clare and David
The Moodists and pals, words from people who were there
