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.

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Lyrics Book Launch was a party

 Thank you to everybody who came to the One Star Gallery and Lounge to the launch of my lyrics book.
The book was self published and I got the design together with the help of Simon Strong.

The launch was set up with a casual suggestion to Katy Beale and Mick Harvey. Its a great, flexible space that perfectly suited this kind of affair.

 


Doors opened at 6pm and I stood around as people started to fill the place. There was no hiding out in a backstage room (though there was one available) as this was to be a very casual soiree.

I hadn't really prepared anything to read out as its a lyrics book (though with many annotations and notes in regard to song chords and structures and production) and I just thought I'd wait and see who turned up - if anybody! I had my Crate acoustic amp with both my guitar and mic plugged into it, ready to make show.


 

People arrived on a very wintry Thursday evening, coming from work and home. By car and tram and foot. Wine and beer were served and chairs were lined up  for an attentive audience. 

The place was full with about 70 people so I started at 7pm. I thanked everybody and told them what the book was and about the design and that it was lyrics from 1980-2023 with no images, only text and was 374 pages in total. Book design is based on a classic French Éditions Gallimard NRF form of paperback.


I mentioned that I'd written about how I got my tone of voice in my 2011 book 1001 Australian Nights and mentioned my blue collar and regional town background. I was explaining how I found it difficult to howl songs starting with "I" like my heroes did so easily. How "I" as an unreliable narrator of my own story or self but felt the pressure of the particular moment of the music scene I was immersed within to write my own words and to fashion them from my own environment. I had found this difficult also because all the sounds and images we liked were from the UK or USA.

Then I read out the words to How I Wrote Elastic Man by The Fall as if to illustrate the way that Mark E Smith - in his post punk META stance - opened up so many new ways of expression for me - and I'm sure for others as well. It didn't have to be all "I - I - I" it could be also a kind of meta eye view of your own situation (even as you were doing it). A kind of pulp reportage. 

I'm eternally gratefulTo my past influencesBut they will not free meI am not diseasedAll the people ask meHow I wrote "Elastic Man"
Life should be full of strangenessLike a rich paintingBut it gets worse day by dayI'm a potential DJA creeping wreckA mental wretchEverybody asks meHow I wrote "Elastic Man"
His soul hurts though it's well filled upThe praise received is mentally sent backOr taken apartThe Observer magazine just about sums him upE.g. self-satisfied, smug
I'm living a fakePeople say, "You are entitled to and great."But I haven't wrote for 90 daysI'll get a good deal and I'll go awayAway from the empty brains that askHow I wrote "Elastic Man"
His last work was "Space Mystery" in the Daily Mail,An article in Leather ThighsThe only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyesSo I'm resigned to bedI keep bottles and comics stuffed by its headFuck it, let the beard growI'm too tired,I'll do it tomorrowThe fridge is sparseBut in the townThey'll stop me in the shopsVerily they'll track me downTouch my shoulder and ignore my dumb missionAnd sick red faced smileAnd they will ask meAnd they will ask meHow I wrote "Elastic Man"
 
 I mentioned how crude the music was but how great and Marks voice so harsh and sometimes unintelligible but also great.

I then picked up my guitar and went through the chords and the lyics of some of my songs.
 I got into Death By A Thousand Sucks from 2000's Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye and the title track of Heroic Blues from 2001. 
 
"death by a thousand sucks
you know what I'm talkin about
you know mate, that guy would give a dogs arse heartburn "
 
I went through the chords of Heroic Blues but should have explained how we recorded it on a digital Zoom hand held device at a soundcheck in Tarwin Lower. A big, empty room we could improvise into while the sound of women washing dishes in the kitchen added a melancholy, empty ambience to the space. I meant to explain how this was a kind of production and presentation that was integral to the song as much as the chords and the improvisation. It was an improvised field recording. 


"I'm standin in a bar
singin my songs
theres six people hangin around
they've got nowhere else to go
I'm a hero, thats what I do"

 

 I played parts of Lt Colonel Cavalry from THE DAVE GRANEY SHOW album (1999).


"I was a free man
like a highland prince
a fur trapper gazin into the distance
nobody bothered me with trifling details
my mind wandered the earth and the cosmos
rightin wrongs and cuttin fools down where they stood"

 Talked about the chords and how the chorus has a drone note going through four changing chords underneath, holding it at the treble end while the emotion shifts underneath.

I said that I had never had much feedback for my work as in the moribund, straight rock scene of Australia I sensed I was seen as mostly an annoying ironic presence who was not serious. Serious rock music being unreservedly grim.  

I didn't mean that I wanted to be taken seriously, I meant that I didn't take any of that seriously, only my work. My songs.

 I also played The Old Swagger and ended with Where Are You In The Underworld. Both from my most recent album, IN A MISTLY.

It was a very enjoyable night and I thank everybody who came along. You really made my night. And day.


THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT IS AVAILABLE VIA BANDCAMP.


 


Simon Grounds and Clare Moore


Maxine, Katy Beale, Will Hindmarsh and Kim Salmon 
 


Miles Brown in the back chugging on a beer. 


Mick Harvey checking the football scores




Friday 28 July – The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Tickets


Saturday 29 July
– Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood NSW
Tickets


Thursday 3 August
– The Factory Theatre, Marrickville NSW
Tickets


Friday 4 August
- The Imperial, Eumundi QLD
Tickets


Saturday 5 August
– The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Tickets

Sunday 6 August HOTA, Surfers Paradise QLD
Tickets


Friday 11 August
– The Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
Tickets


Saturday 12 August
– Gnomon Room, Ulverstone TAS
Tickets


Sunday 13 August
– The Palais Theatre, Franklin TAS
Tickets


****NEW MELBOURNE SHOW ADDED****
Thursday 17 August
- The Gershwin Room , Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda.
Tickets

Friday 18 August – The Corner, Richmond VIC
******SOLD OUT****

Saturday 19 August
- The Gov, Adelaide SA
Tickets


Friday 25 August
– The Heritage, Bulli NSW
Tickets


Saturday 26 August
– Drifter’s Wharf, Gosford NSW
Tickets 



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for writing up the night and thanks for putting the book together. yr lyrics are peerless, Dave, completely fucken peerless and there's the hard copy proof

dave graney said...

Thank you!

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