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

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

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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.

Monday, October 19, 2015

CREATION RECORDS - ARTIFACT - rare Moodists tracks and the next DEMO album collection at itunes next week.







The Moodists were a Melbourne band who’d come to London in 1983 to make records with Dave Kitson at his indie label Red Flame. We were lucky to run into him and he put us into a great studio and left us to do what we liked. To be ourselves. Like a lot of  labels in that era and scene he eventually sided up with a bigger label (Virgin) for distribution and pr clout. They were interested in one of his acts. Things came to a head – in that backroom business sense- while we were back in Australia, opening for PIL on a  tour of capital cities-places we’d never been to before like Brisbane and Canberra. Dave was getting squeezed by the bigger partner he’d attached himself to. Conversations on the phone went bad and we left Red Flame but  soon returned to London as we loved the drama and fizz of the music scene there. (Our guitarist Mick Turner  elected to stay in Melbourne)
Whilst we’d been at Red Flame, Alan McGhee had been a name we’d often heard as he’d been running some nights at a venue called the Moonlight Club and also had a fanzine called the LIVING ROOM. I’d heard the Jesus and Mary Chain while we were back in Melbourne and looked him up when we got back to London. We met in a café in Kings Cross, just near the Scala Cinema. Alan and Slaughter Joe. Alan said something along the lines of “you’ve been wearing leather pants for ages haven’t you?”. I was fond of those trousers at the time and that seemed to be enough to forge some sort of crude understanding with Alan. We agreed to make a recording for his label, Creation. A single and then an album. One night we got a call that there was studio time the next day at a place in Waterloo called ALASKA. We rang around everybody in the band, some being out on the turps at a  gig , and got to the studio in some sort of shape the next day. Despite its name, ALASKA  was a hideously hot and airless underground bunker. It was a bit of a shock to us after our last experience at the much more spacious Livingstone Studios in Wood Green. We made show and put down three tracks. Mick Harvey came in to play some piano. The heat played havoc with the tuning so it had a quite authentic saloon bar wonkiness to it. We also had Adam Peters come in to play some cello. He was a friend of a friend. We were quite a band of chancers and trusted in the world to let us happen.
Creation Records had an office in Clerkenwell, a quiet area off of Farringdon station and quite near the remnant rump of Fleet st which was still dealing with Rupert Murdochs pulling his army of drunken pen pushers from the vicinity 


I enjoyed the London scene. Everybody at Creation was into playing roles and always referring to myths and stories from Rock Music Lore. Slaughter Joe was comically grim and serious. He always carried a brief case and somebody looked in it one day only to see a half a packet of chewing gum and a pencil. Alan talked fast and volubly. His bottom lip was always slick with spittle. You could sense there was a lot of drama within the circle as some had been old friends for a long time and now were feeling the pressure of a watching and waiting business and now they had to come up with stuff to fit the play they’d set in motion. They had to come up with the goods and sometimes, well, old friends just don’t make it. I say I sensed this because we were outsiders, always. Australians with dumb guts and tin ears for the accents and class stresses going off in the casual conversations all around us. The Weather Prophets were the band I most felt akin with. If only for the fact they were nice guys and talked to us! I loved their T Rex like grooves they’d get to when they played Chuck Berrys “Down bound train”.  The Jesus and Mary Chain were hilariously real. We went to the show they did at the Electric Ballroom and found it to be a bit silly. The way everybody had to take their belts off at the door and the like. The sound was horrible and they were on late and for what seemed to be a very short time. It seemed kind of predictable. All just to stir up some shit. Still, it was funny to see them turn up, all together like a moody gang, at a Clarendon Ballroom gig by the Butthole Surfers. They’d just mooch around like a four headed thing , all in black and huddled around a pint. Yeah, they were for real. There always seemed to be someone at Creation sidling up to say that they’d actually recorded the Jesus and Mary Chains first records. It was a funny scene, full of drama and ambition, yet kind of tight and all too human as well. Like any music business happening – luck was the big thing that happened in there somewhere, somehow. 



Our band was kind of flying apart (our bass player Chris Walsh left after a European tour to return to Australia) and we didn’t really gel that much with the Creation mythology. It was a very London, or at least British move they were making. The record we made was strong but didn’t catch or touch anybody. I spoke with Alan and he suggested we do some demos for the album. I was silly with representing our group pride and sulking, brooding (though very much unspoken) ethos and refused. We had never done demos. That was the end of that. We went on to record more in 1986 and 1987 for another label. Then I started to write and record as a singer songwriter with a band rather than a lead singer of a band. I didn't think I ever did many  demos but the idea must have gotten into me because I found a lot. 

While going through the tracks for this set , I was asked for  any rarities and came across some tracks we somehow recorded in the period after Chris Walsh left. 
There is a version of THE SHANGRI LAS "Train from Kansas City" sung by Clare Moore and also a version of the (then very rare) Brian Wilson/ Glen Campbell track "I guess I'm dumb" sung (badly) by me.  There is no bass on either track.

There is also a  song called "The Day They all Woke Up" from some time in 1985/86.

Also four songs from the second John Peel session we did .

"Bullet Train' - pretty lugubrious , slow and long track. I don't really like it.
"Take the Red Carpet Out of Town"
"Other Man"
"Justice and money too"

The other tracks are the three we released on CREATION.
"Justice and Money too"
"You've got your story"
"Take us all home"

It was while looking for these songs that I came across the Coral Snakes / WOLVERINE era demos we've been releasing at itunes and Bandcamp. 




The second volume is coming to itunes next week. "Once I Loved the Torn Oceans Roar - 80s/90s demos Vol. 2" 


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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