dave graney - Moodists-Coral Snakes-mistLY-FEARFUL WIGGINGS

dave graney - Moodists-Coral Snakes-mistLY-FEARFUL WIGGINGS
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About Me

My photo
2023 book THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT (lyrics 1980-2023) 2023 reissue Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Night Of The Wolverine. Double vinyl release. 2023 ROCK album with Clare Moore IN A MISTLY . WORKSHY - 2017 memoir out on Affirm Press. Available at shows or via website. Moodists - Coral Snakes - mistLY. I don’t know what I am and don’t want to know any more than I already know. I aspire, in my music , to 40s B Movie (voice and presence) and wish I could play guitar like Dickey Betts, John Cippolina or Grant Green - but not in this lifetime, I know.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

in a world of ICONS! and CLASSICS

an edited version of this post appeared ina  recent edition of THE MELBOURNE REVIEW



I woke up from a short but deep sleep, feeling groggy due to the potions I had partaken of the night before. They knocked me out but wore off pretty quick. I had dreamed, but was going to, as has been my lifelong  attitude to these things, keep them to myself. As soon as I actually remembered them. (This would be usually with a shout of some quite innocuous word at the shaving mirror or at the car windscreen. I would then suddenly look at myself in the mirror. I loved doing that. ). So I woke in my usual manner is what I trying to convey to yas. A time honoured, long held-to direction, and ambled to the kitchen. In a way, I was waking up in a robotic, zombie like manner, though I have since learned I could use a  much grander term. I was operating in a  CLASSIC manner. It was a VINTAGE shamble into a new day. The cat played its part and ran in front of me at every opportunity, herding me towards its food bowl.  I boiled some hot water in the sleek, new, stainless steel, CLASSIC looking kettle and prepared some tea. No tea bags for me, only loose leaves which I had imported myself from a WOOLWORTHS supermarket in South Australia. A RUST BELT state. The tea is in a  packet which I associate with that part of the world where I sprang from. Amgoorie tea. In a brown paper packet with exotic images of the mysterious east all over it. I drive there to get it. 455 kilometres a pack. I assemble a bowl of my CUSTOMARY cereal which is raw oatmeal from the ICONIC house of BLACK AND GOLD. I drench the rustic oats in LONG LIFE soy liquid and open my newspaper. Below the ICONIC masthead which should by rights be rolling upside down in shame at the “all the goss” bilge which is spewed across its pages every day, and spent a good minute learning of the activities of the world while I slept. AS is my want, I throw it away in disgust and leave for the smallest room. I am sure this is the correct outcome of the transaction. I was behaving in a CLASSIC way of a disgruntled reader of my age. They would have had focus groups to agree with them on this. I needed to be herded toward the online version of the paper, which was full of more intelligent shit, as well as blinking lights and sexier ads. The editor should be happy. In the can , which I had had built by a DUTCH man so as I could inspect my PRECIOUS waste rather than drop it into a small pond of water in the ANGLO fashion, I was gladdened to see a log of much health . A glad, JOYOUS stool. AS one of YORE! “Shakespeare could have dropped this!”, I marvelled to myself.  I felt connected to life on earth. An absolute PEARLER. A CLASSIC! A HUMDINGER!
I turned the radio on to listen to the anguished thoughts of the callers. I wanted REALITY, not some namby pamby EXPERT telling me stuff that only he could know.
I drank a can of pop soda. It had my name on it. A friend had bought me a case. CLASSIC IRONY! The drinks name itself was a brand name synonymous with corporate fascism and mass ill health the world over. Loved by billions.
I went for a walk past a toilet I once did a gig in. It was being hounded by near and far-by residents for being noisy and smelly. People rushed to defend it and were referring to it as an ICONIC venue. I reflected , in my now CLASSIC manner, that my morning stool had been more ICONIC than that dump. That PILE of steaming bricks! That was the times we wuz livin’ in though but. People shouted and talked shit up like holy rolling preachers at every turn. Nothing really rated it. Nothing really ever happened any more. It was a CLASSIC STORM EYE we were experiencing. For how long, nobody knew. We looked to SPOKESPERSONS to talk us out of it. So we could see shit from the outside. “You pay peanuts- you get monkeys” was all I could summon as I heard some lame ABC types stretch their skills to the very limit in brave efforts to be entertaining and then Kyle Sandilands and Allan Jones do the same in the way of being informative.
I got back into my car - a Japanese made 4 cylinder van. A CLASSIC from the early 00’s that will never be made again. For some reason. I’m hangin’ onto it. The wheel. Will to live I guess. Some damn INNATE compulsion. I turn on the radio, set to a CLASSIC rock station and listen to stuff I had heard a thousand times before. It had been great. Once. I waited for the magic again. The stuff was guaranteed. SUREFIRE!.
I wasn’t feeling it. I felt off the worlds game. Out of it. Like Steve Martin in THE JERK.
I turned to one of the few stations dealing with new shit and tried some of that. Scandinavian indie bands singing some dreadful, sexless, feckless, filthless , faux folk song that sounded OLDER than time – than recorded music itself. I guess that’s what they wanted. Terrible lyrics and the boy/mans voice came all out of his throat. There was no rest of his body involved. Sounded like musical theatre pipes happening. Thin and reedy. Punk was never going to happen. Is that why people listen to Neil Young? The reassuring grampiness of it all? There were a lot of other acts around on air, they were all generic too. People liked shit that they could see whole. The beginning and the end. They were blind to anythin’ else. Didn’t have the bandwidth. When I grew up there was a squall of old time shit on the tv too. Made it unbearable. The Waltons and Happy Days. How many teen deaths were those shows responsible for? Then we got stoned and turned to the Blue Oyster Cult with their hit, “don’t fear the reaper”. (The singer is dead and is telling his girlfriend to kill herself and cross over- a CLASSIC).  That would have been legendary if we’d all carked out there in the forest, behind the drive-in, with “Tyranny and Mutation” on the tape deck, repeating on the track “OD’d on life itself”. Total teen death VERISIMMILITUDE! Totally! My life would have had , almost, an appearance of meaning.
I was dressed in quadruple denim. The world had perverted me. I was always dressing for that funeral that never was. A denim cape, jacket, shirt and pants. I was looking for some denim shoes and a denim hanky to poke out of my pocket. Years ago, I had a denim slouch hat made. A fucking CLASSIC! It was ICONIC! Made from a  Generals titfer. Five folds in the band. ANZACIACAL! Still, people eyed me suspiciously. They still do. I am neither romantically driven nor do I strive for a  classic form. Well I do, but that’s just me being polite, trying to get square with folks. Get out of peoples way. Dodgy, but. What I really needed was a one piece suit in dark denim , perhaps like the one designed by black panther Eldridge Cleaver. It was called a cock suit , because it had an exterior sleeve wherein a bloke ostensibly sheathed his throbbing purple headed Gila Monster. That was an ICONIC bit of clothing. It beheld a narrative - a story! Eldridge had fled the USA to Algeria and had come back, with an eye to making a  killing in the rag trade. They mocked him, perhaps that garments time has come? And I could at last assume some agreed human form? 


Dave Graney and Clare Moore with Georgio "the dove" Valentino and Malcolm Ross

Dave Graney and Clare Moore with Robin Casinader - In Concert

ONE MILLION YEARS DC

Starts with a Kinksy groover sketching a 21st century populist tyrant who coasts in power on waves of public resentment at those on the lowest rungs of the ladder (He Was A Sore Winner). Sweeps across a sci fi terrain with nods to songs in the sand at the end of the world (Pop Ruins) and nods to the ties that bind in the underground communities (Comrade Of Pop and Where Did All The Freaks Go?). Songs about intense, long relationships, defunct technology that didn’t answer back, severe social status definition (I’m Not Just Any Nobody), people wandering through your mind as if it was a garage sale, the anxiety of the long running showman (wide open to the elements again) and ends with a song that’s “a little bit Merle Haggard and a little bit Samuel Beckett”. " Edith Grove! Powis Square! 56 Hope Road! Petrie Terrace!.. The Roxy! The Odeon! Apollo! Palais! Olympia! The Whisky! Detroit Grande!” Pop Ruins!"

ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS?

ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? (The title comes from the chorus of “Song Of Life” ) is a classic rock’n’roll album. Classic if you lived through what has become known as ”the classic rock era” as it rolled out new and even broke onto the beachhead and morphed into punk. That’s the direction Dave Graney and Clare Moore have always been coming from. They have spent their lives schooled by and immersed in rock ‘n’ roll culture. Neither attended higher education and they dived in deep and kept swimming. From the Moodists through the Coral Snakes /White Buffaloes to the mistLY This is an album with their band, Dave Graney and the mistLY. Stuart Perera has played guitar with them since 1998 and Stu Thomas on bass since 2004. MARCH 2019 ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? 2019 album out on Compact Disc - available here via mail order...
If you are from outside of Australia and wish to purchase a Compact Disc copy of ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? please use this button (different postage)

LETS GET TIGHT

FEARFUL WIGGINGS

2014 solo album from Dave Graney. *****"If I've learnt anything in my years of writing about music it's that if you are going to do anything of worth in this tough game, you better have your own thing. Today's generic is easily replaced by tomorrow's. And yet you need to be flexible, to follow wherever the songs demand. In the case of this, only the second credited as a solo album among 30 or so Graney releases, it's a curious yet welcoming lane he walks you down, with acoustic guitars, not much percussion, vibes, smooth sounds. At the end of it you feel like you've awoken from a strange yet pleasant summer's dream. As shot by Luis Bunuel. It ranges from off-kilter reveries (A Woman Skinnies Up a Man, The Old Docklands Wheel) through to the softly seductive (How Can You Get Out of London) and the downright arch (Look Into My Shades, Everything Is Great In The Beginning.) This is music that is neither folk, nor blues, nor country, but it's all Graney, somewhere out to the left field beyond Lee Hazlewood's raised eyebrow. It's astringent on the tongue but sweetens in the telling." Noel Mengel Brisbane Courier Mail

you've been in my mind

June 2012 super high energy pop rock album - blazing electric 12 strings - total 70s rock drive. Greatest yet! available via paypal - $20 pp

rock'n'roll is where I hide/- 2011 "vintage classics/ re recordings" on LIBERATION

SUPERMODIFIED - August 2010 remixed/re-sung/re-strung//remastered/replayed comp via PAYPAL

also available as a digital album

Knock yourself (2009)-first ever dg solo set-filthy electro r&b-available via Paypal- $20

available as a digital album too

We Wuz Curious (2008)-blazing R&B jazz pop album available via paypal-$20


UNAVAILABLE-COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!!!
AVAILABLE AS A DIGITAL album

Keepin' It Unreal-(2006)-minimalist/lyrical vibes, bass, 12 string set - CDs sold out - digital only

Hashish and Liquor (2005 double disc by Dave Graney and Clare Moore) available via Paypal $25


UNAVAILABLE-COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!!!
Single album HASHISH available as a digital release

Heroic Blues- "folk soul" set from 2002-Availableas a digital album via BandCamp


UNAVAILABLE ! Completely sold out!

It is written,baby-book released 1997- available $10 via paypal