you were deep inside that thought

hello 2012-recordings-releases spiegeltent melbourne show march 25th

2012-01-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

Slow starting I know.Had a delightful few , giddy, suspended weeks after the mad rush to jump from a cliff that comes over you late December. Doing nothing much.Freeballing.
Now things have gathered apace.

Clare Moore is dangerously close to finishing off the DAMES album. Sounds great. Ten songs, five of them sung by Clare , three by Kaye Louise Patterson and two Kaye instrumentals.

Harry Howard and the NDE's album "near death experience" is also set for March 1st release on Spooky records. Thats harry on guitar and songs, Edwina Preston on organ, me on bass and Clare Moore on drums.

As to dave graney and the mistLY , we have been working on the material and head into a studio next week to put down a dozen songs. Some have been demoed for a long time. Others have been in our live set for the last six months.

flash in the pantz
I'm not the guy i tried to be
cop this,sweetly
we need a champion
blues negative
mistral
mt gambier night
I don't wanna know myself
playin' chicken
midnight cats
field record me

Its all sounding great. I'm playing electric 12 string and have been working on my amp and sound in a quite maniacally obsessed way for the last few months. It is a hot rod. The sound is singing. Going to be a guitar pop album. bass, drums, guitar and vocals. Sounds mad I know!

Theres also a track I've recorded myself which may turn up called king of the dudes. Its a freaky groove.

17th February dave graney will be helping the BEDROOM PHILOSOPHER to launch his book at Trades Hall in melbourne.Reading from his own "1001 australian nights".

19th February dave graney will be playing a solo acoustic set as part of the Sth Meelbourne street festival which is in Coventry st .

an evening in the garden- perth writers festival - friday feb 24th 7pm
(in the Sunken Garden - writers festival - talking with writer Simon Collins and playing songs on my acoustic)

Dave Graney, Fiona O'Loughlin and Anne Manne consider why they decided to write about their own lives.
(Tropical Grove-Perth Writers Festival precinct- sat 25th feb)

3rd March - Harry Howard and the NDE launching their album at the Tote.

dave graney and the mistLY -spiegeltent - arts centre melbourne sunday 25th march 5pm

buskers delight

2012-01-25T14:28:00.000-08:00

This story appeared in the late 2011 edition of the Melbourne Review, which is a new relation of the long running Adelaide Review. I thought my contributions had to relate the two places. They usually get edited a fair bit due to space. This is the full whack.

We had talked about it on the way over in the van. The way over from Melbourne to Adelaide. Two of us were making the trip in the van and the other two would fly later. I’m loathe to say who was driving and who was flying as I’ve learned, from previously relating the logistical minutiae of our travel arrangements to others, that people can bring very judgmental attitudes to bear on the situation. Snobbish attitudes to the differing modes of transport. Just say i was siting in whatever vehicle impresses you most. I’m most happiest when upgraded to the heights of your opinion. Anyway, the talk was around an idea to busk our way into some Adelaide dollars on a stray afternoon while we were there. As opposed to sitting in the hotel and playing guitars we might as well move out onto the street. Get some folding or jangling stuff to blow at the last remaining pie cart or at the all night caff attached to Villis bakery which we’d only just heard about. (Adelaide people like to keep their secrets secret). Two of us carried on the conversation in the old fashioned verbal style and we thumbed words through the air to the others. As happens in all real life situations those doing the verballing got to write out the rules of engagement and to set the coordinates for the fields of battle.Also, what the tempo, time and duration of said hostilities would take place around. Sorry to immediately use the word “hostilities” but thats what all entertainment is to me. A firefight, deep inside enemy lines. Surrounded by savage hostiles.
Rundle Mall was to be the setting . Well, half of it. the mouth. Where it spills out to King William street and looks across to the wild rapids of Hindley street. We each had a corner and battle commenced on a Saturday afternoon at 2pm. Stu Thomas won the toss and started off strongly with a clarion call of Chris De Burghs’ “the lady in red”. Stu played only the trumpet on his corner and his strategy was hard to fathom at first. I returned fire with Bob Segers “Hollywood Nights”. hoping to douse his daring softness and sensitivity with some cods out stadium tones. Clare Moore had set up her entire drum kit and had already charged - quite illegally and at the very least, quite at odds with the spirit of the game and all decent rules of war, with her faithful to Bonzo interpretation of Led Zeppelins “Moby Dick”. Stu Perera gathered a crowd of lissome Latin American students from seemingly thin air as he pulled the sweet tones of Jobims “the waters of March” from his battered junk shop nylon string guitar. Stu Thomas strode further into whatever moist regions he was summoning with a stunningly static run through of Eric Claptons “ wonderful tonight”. Grown women turned, tears in their eyes and kissed their bemused boyfriends all around him. I let loose in reply with LRBs’ “playing to win” before he had wrung out the last timid chord. People heard the bell cymbal in their minds. An old trick of which I had learned talk of in a doctors waiting room. Previously only theory - going live with it now. Clare Moore was still on at “Moby Dick” and had the biggest crowd. All males in black t shirts. Stu Perera launched his own offensive, more on Stu Thomas’s flank , with Paul Mauriats’ “love is blue” (after Jeff Beck) and was hit heavily on his hands and head by the attendant rain of gold coins. Stu Thomas needed something big and returned soft fire with a bathetic reading of “the killing of Georgie parts I and II”. people cried openly as they emptied the deepest recesses of their wallets. A man in a cafe put his hand down the back of his couch in a desperate search for a coin to join the sad love fest. The pink dollars flew like bees returning to the hive as they flew directly to Stu’s trumpet case. I got my corner jumping with a sharp run through of Kansas’ “carry on my wayward son”. People were amazed as to how I could pump out such dazzling pyrotechnical pomp with just a small wooden guitar. I was simply playing that old waiting room game of letting them hear what they wanted to. Clare Moore was still at that damn “Moby Dick” and could now not be seen at all , such was the throng headbanging Adelaide yobboes around her. She had brought them home! Stu Perera was still nagging at Thomas’s weak flank with a lovely reading of Eltons “song for Guy”. Easily matching “the Killing of Georgie” for sheer volume of lavender soap suds. . Time was tight as we had a gig to do across town. Stu Thomas played it hardcore, closing out his set with a syrupy, lachrymose version of Mike and the Mechanics “ the living years” People slumped and went into a floppy mexican sigh, unable to even reach into their pockets. His commercial gene kicked in and he quickly segued into Foreigners “ I wanna know what love is” to bring them back to fully open top shelf Thetan consciousness and the money flowed again. Like Golden Syrup. I matched him with Foreigners “cold as ice” and ended my set with the Climax Blues Bands’ “couldn’t get it right”. Clare Moore was taking a Masterclass in packing up a drum kit, issuing orders volubly to her faithful army of black to shirt/cut off denim jacketed metalheadz and punching their credit card donations into her laptop from inside Haighs Chocolate shop on the Beehive corner of Rundle Street. Stu Perera was into his thirteenth chorus of “Classical Gas” when he blind turned on a dime into “the william tell overture”, playing a la Glen campbell with the guitar alternately behind his back or with his teeth. Those aimless , drifting rubes ate that hokey shit up!
We threw all our junk into a shopping trolley and rolled down the hill to Thebarton where our gig was at. We were now going to be playing to an altogether sharper crowd who knew our form and had come to the joint under their own steam with knowledge of short cuts to and from the venue in mind and also ideas about what to expect and the likelihood of us playing ball with said assumed ideas. Yes, we had to get our twisted brains and sleeping mode bodies into shape. We watched a video on how to act poor before we played our real set . Ostentatious confidence and displays of having eaten well and the lack of any anxiety in regard to the direction the next meal will approach from are attitudes that are not welcome in the general area of rock music. We banished that cheese eating state of mind from our visible chops and made with the rolling mopes. Not really, playing music makes you feel rich.Whatever!
On the way back to Melbourne we distributed said gold coins among the struggling pastry shop owners of the long strip, saving the best coins for the shop nestled in the groin of the big koala at Dadswells Bridge. Doing our bit for other travellers along this piece of road, keeping the piecarts open. Putting something back in.

Nextshow is the Greyhound-St Kilda- Dec 4th-sunday- 6pm

2011-11-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

The Camelot Lounge is quite a great venue. Surprised us in its size and the care and attention in the decor. Right in Marrickville, tucked away in an industrial cul-de-sac around that sharp corner coming away from the station and towards the Inner west.
We did two sets, continuing to play in a lot of new tracks.Sounding tougher and sharper. I was wearing some black satin shit I've had in the wardobe for a while. All black and white. White t shirt and hat. I've embraced the white t shirt. In the 80s it was so naff. Guys like Eric Clapton and the kind of fellow he would influence style wise would wear a suit with the sleeves rolled up and a white t shirt. With high waisted jeans. I kind of like that look now. But like I'm sure I've said, I like outmoded forms in clothes as well as music. I like to wear and fly shit that people have tried on before. Recognizable forms and feels. I don't have the stamina to invent my own shit, I like to throw incongruous stuff into relief. Things that still have a charge.
I guess thats why I play the headless bass in Harry Howards NDE. people are scared of those futuristic bats with strings!
The gig the night before the Camelot lounge was a solo set above a small Italian restaurant in Drummoyne. Playing with an acoustic is a bit of a novelty for me but I got into it. I can access a lot more of my older stuff with that wooden box. People asked for obscure numbers which I was happy to play. "Anchors aweigh" and "listen to her lovers sing".

Got back to Melbourne and did BLB, the radio show I do with Elizabeth McCarthy everyTuesday from 12-2pm on RRRfm.Elizabeth loves to drive me nuts playing shit like Guns and Roses and the appalling Stevie Nicks. I'm sad to say it works every time. I can't stand that jive ass rubbish! We had Robyn Hitchcock in as a guest . He was in town as part of the "way to blue" Nick Drake tribute shows. Elizabeth wasn't interested in any of it but did the studio panelling and kept it running smoothly. Robyn is one of my favourite songwriters and singers. One of the greatest contemporaries we have. A one off. He had done an interview in the Melbourne Age where he had cconfessed he didn't like Nick Drake at all until REMs Peter Buck and the producer Joe Boyd had tuned him into it in the 80s. Nick had only ever done a dozen gigs and recorded 3 albums. Robyn says that you develop a "beak" in your voice by playing gigs through bad pa systems and Nick never got a beak. He said in the paper that his voice just sat there "like a luxurious poached egg". I congratulated Robyn on this flight of wit and said that if I was the editor of the paper they would have been breakout quotes. "Nick Drake had no beak!" and "his voice sat there like a luxurious poached egg!"
Had some lunch with Robyn and he bumped into an old Cambridge friend . Jerry Hale , who runs a guitar store in Johnston street.
The actual show was deluxe. In the beautiful Recital hall.
Joe Boyd - Producer/Curator
Kate St John - Musical Director
Lisa Hannigan - vocals
Krystle Warren - vocals
Robyn Hitchcock - vocals
Vashti Bunyan - vocals
Green Gartside - vocals
Scott Matthews - vocals
Danny Thompson - bass
Neill MacColl - guitars
Zoe Rahman - piano
Martyn Barker - drums
Luluc - vocals
Shane Nicholson – vocals

Zoe and Steve from Luluc were my favourite singers. Neill MacColl on guitar -and singing on one song- was superb. He was Kirstys brother and Ewans son.Ewan wroite "dirty old town" and "the first time ever I saw your face". I had just bought a vinyl folk album of his in Sydney at a junk shop. "the Manchester Angel and other songs- with accompaniment by Peggy Seeger".
Scott Mathews was a brilliant young singer and guitar player. Robyn intruded at the start and finish with his magnificent beak. Closing the show with his own "I saw Nick Drake". He is a bit of an adept at writing old fashioned broadside type topical songs such as "NY DOLL" from a recent album which he wrote after seeing the film of the same name about Arthur KIller Kane. He also wrote one about Steve Jobs. "I saw Nick Drake" is an elusive, poetic flight. He has mad skills in vocals, words and guitar playing.

Then I took a train to the station and then a bus to the airport and a plane to Hobart where I had a room above the stage I was to play in.

The gig itself was underattended. Hobart is unpredictable. I did two sets. Enjoyed it. Playing anything people asked for.
I also did, for myself, "alabama bound" as originally arranged by the Amazing Charlatans and also the two LOVE songs aI know. "alone again or" and "you set the scene".

Flew back to Melbourne and trained and bussed it back to Upwey where I then walked for twenty minutes uphill to our compound. Had a bath and ate some cookie. Clare was working in the studio with Jane Dust on a 2012 scheduled album.

The next day I sat and worked on my pedals and amps and power supplies and electric guitars to try to get a handle on volume and gains and polarities . Settled on the Roland amp for the 12 string and the Fender M80 with a Sansamp in front of it for the 6 string.
Then I went to see the Dames doing a gig as part of a female musician dominated night at the Greyhound in St Kilda. The north / South divide in Melbourne music could not have been so starkly drawn. Not a sign of any indie rock and all this anachronistic semi goth, tattooed Dave Navarro type attitudinal rock stuff. Actually, if some of the players and people in attendance walked around in Brunswick or Fitzroy, they would be seen as being ironic or wilful/playful SUPERSTARS! Collectively, it was not so impressive. I have always felt myself to be a "south of the river" type , even though its years since I lived there. I still like to be around that part of Melbourne. Something about the lack of hipsters makes it seem more "adult". Maybe it'll change if more gigs happen there and its not so much of a "dress ups" type scene. It'll be a bit more natural.

So, come and see us there St Kilda peeps! We'll be doing two sets from 6pm. Sunday Dec 4th.The Greyhound Hotel. Directly across from St Kilda town Hall.

Actually, it was cool night there as we ran into Alsy and Jill from the Triffids P/L who were in town to do some rehearsing ahead of a show at Queenscliff soon. The'll also be doing tehir own show at the Tote on Wednesday 30th November.

Sydney Camelot Lounge Nov 11th Newcastle Great Northern Nov 12th

2011-11-07T03:14:00.000-08:00

Well I caught some great shows recently. Steve Winwood AND Steely Dan at a big arena show. Only been to that place in Melbourne 4 times. The Highwaymen, Cindy Lauper,Willie Nelson and Johnny Paycheck ( or was it Bobby Bare?) and now these two. Loved both sets. Steve Winwood played mainly Traffic stuff which suited me. I would have listened to him do anything. same with Steely Dan. I find it pretty silly how people can whinge as to how artists dont do what they did 20 or 30 years ago. I'm happy to see them rise to the challenges of life and a performing life. How they negotiate the moment with people who know them. Like a hyper kind of relationship.
Bon Dylan cops it a lot but hes out there playing HIS SONGS . Imagine if the Rolling sTones played as much as him. I think they'd be a pretty interesting act to see if they did. They'd have to pull out a lot of material to keep interested and try a lot of arrangements. Wouldn't have all the drama . Maybe thats just as important too?
Went to a great show by Go Go Sapien. One of my favourite bands trying to cut through the scene at the moment. They have an album out called "this bodies wrong for us". It comes with a MOVIE they made to accompany it.
Go see 'em. they're great! All dressed in silver.Or white.
Also saw Laura Jean launch her album. Stellar album she has and the night was great. Slow burning dynamics. Great lyrics. Folk rock I guess. Laura is over six foot with a Gibson SG set to a great clean tone.

Funny thing with a lot of indie types is they put out an album and then go away and hide! I don't understand. They don't try to get to a level of playing with a lineup where you play so much that the players relax and its not so traumatic. Maybe they like the trauma and the drama? What if they never get to experience the joys of walking on to a stage and its a situation you're in control of. Maybe the only one?

On BLB recently we've talked to football icon Tommy Hafey, Aboriginal activist Gary Foley and writer of "the street sweeper" Elliott Pearlman. Top shelf stuff!
Tomorrow (Tuesday 8th) we talk to Graham Bond. Most noted for creating AUNTIE JACK and probably NORMAN GUNSTON. the following week we will be talking to Robyn Hitchcock. When I say 'we" I mean myself and Elizabeth McCarthy , midday-2pm on RRR in melbourne.

Looking forward to playing more dates. I was a little down in my feel for the idea of the immediate future of recorded music. I am still unsure of what will happen. i was talking to an engineer friend at one of these gigs. He was going to email me a link to where I could download some music software. I marvelled at the age we are in . He said "yes, the best of times and the worst of times..." I could not have expressed it better.

Playing a solo show (no pa !) upstairs at La casa in Drummoyne- Thursday Nov 10th

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist - the Camelot Lounge - Marrickville Friday 11th Nov

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist - the Great Northern Hotel - Newcastle- Saturday Nov 12th

The Alley cat- Elizabeth st Hobart- (solo show) Friday Nov 18th

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist- two sets at the GREYHOUND - St Kilda - from six pm - Dec 4th

The Sherriff Of Hell by dave graney L.Y.M.

be a patron! buy an album!

2011-11-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

Our second or third show in melbourne for the year was a delight. Northcote Social Club is on high street and you could always pull right up to the door of the venue and take your stuff in. Some town planning has been going on however and the footpath has been widened and the road narrowed and the parking forbidden. Dont know who its goona benefit as the traffic is treacley slow at teh best of times. The hipsters are around but its still a great area for ethnic food and there are tons of petrol heads about. Could be the end of the strip as we knew it already!
The Ocean Party are very young and open faced and personable. Instrumentation is two clean sounding guitars into a Fender valve and a Mesa Boogie combo with bass, drums and keys. Looking so much like early Orange Juice. they use sweet major seventh chords and the lyrics are timeless in style and content. Delivered faultlessly. If I said they are a pop band I am not being at all dismissive or negative. Songs with hooks and charm.
The Sand Pebbles were playing without Tor C who is a great singer and guitar player. They do have two other guitar players though and the sound was full of clarity and excitement. Must be a great feeling for them to be able to step up like that. They played some songs from earlier albums as well as from their latest. Not saying they don't need Tor as he usually stands front and centre and the mix of his voice with Andrews is spectacular. Just saying that they were able to play using other feels and dynamics, without him.

We came on and played a set we had been honing in Adelaide for those two nights a few weeks ago. New songs like "cop this-sweetly", "flash in the pantz", "playin' chicken", "lifes a dream", " field record me", "don't wanna know myself" were mixed in with songs from our current album. we could do a whole set of new songs at the moment but that would be cruel. Very keen to get into the studio. Perhaps before the end of the year. Have to work out some way to release recorded music in the current clime, which is sometimes very worrying. The next album will be our first of new material since 2007. In some ways we have been very cautious in introducing new material. People have to be ready to accept it. Ready to hear it. Otherwise, it just doesn't leave the room. As all musicians know, that can be a very hollow and maddening feeling. To do your best and things just don't happen. Be good if there were people or powers to blame but sometimes its all just luck and timing.
The times are funny though, people are beguiled and distracted by technology itself. I could go on....but I won't.

Playing a solo show upstairs at La Casa in Drummyone on Thursday 10th Nov.
Playing with the Lurid Yellow Mist at the Camelot Lounge in Marrickville on Friday 11th November.
Playing with the Lurid Yellow Mist at the Great Northern on Saturday 12th November.

Playing a solo show at the Alleycat , Elizabeth st Hobart on Friday 18th November.
Playing with the Lurid Yellow Mist at the Greyhound in St Kilda at 6pm on Sunday Dec 4th. A very rare show south of the river!

northcote social club- cup eve mon 31st oct

2011-10-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

So we're playing cup eve at the northcote social club. A monday night but its the day before the melbourne Cup and has become a traditional party / going out night. Melbourne Cup stops melbourne for the day. Nobody works. Eventually they made it an actual holiday I think.
We are playing a rock n roll show, previewing some new material as we did in Adelaide. Songs like "flash in the pantz", "we need a champion", "cop this,sweetly" and "playin' chicken". Sounding great. Somebody said it had a harder edge. Don't know when they last saw us though.
Playing with our friends the sand Pebbles who have a new album out called Dark magic. Also the Ocean party who all came from Wagga but are living the dream in Fitzroy. Very young band who I caught playing at a Ron peno gig. Quite post punk in the ringing guitars and vocals. very good songs.

The two nights in Adelaide at the Wheaty were very enjoyable. Also a session I did at an event called the Festival of Unpopular culture." Gas bagging about shit with people like Matt Banham.Db mag called me "the fashionably unhip Dave Graney". I quite like that. Double negative? Edgey!

Went to a cafe attached to a bakery which is in an industrial area and is open 24 hours. Full of night life types and a table of deaf people talking with their hands "loudly" next to us. Reminded me of the old Silver Top taxi cafe in Sth Melbourne. Times ARE good when only a few are experiencing them. Snob! Yes!

A new guitar pedal a "tonerider" has been added , after the micro amp (for clean boost) and the Janglebox. Playing 12 string electric pretty much exclusively. Used to use a multi effects but it died. Back with the Roland GC408 amp. Solid state- four 8" speakers.

Can't help but notice the last chain cd store is stocking less music and more iphone accessories. Don't know where all that is going to end up.

Bought more vinyl jackets and tight pants. Lace ups. Why not?

upcoming dates
Mon Oct 31st- Northcote Social Club
Thursday 10th Nov - solo show at La Casa, Drummoyne- Sydney
Friday 11th Nov - dave graney and the lurid yellow mist at the Camelot Lounge Marrickville
Saturday 12th Nov - great northern hotel newcastle nsw

friday 18th november - solo show at the alleycat bar hobart

http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com

my fave sounds in rock music

2011-10-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

Doing an interview type thing / Q&A for our upcoming dates I got to thinking about what rock music I actually liked. Growing up in the 70s I KNEW all the classic rock when it was modern and happening. teen parties with Black sabbath and Quo and Deep Purple (who I liked the most out of those three) . The Stones being quite distant with their "goats head soup" and "its only rock'n'roll " albums. Huge hit pop singles as well, like "angie" and "fool to cry" and others like the title track to "its only rock'n'roll" really being touched by contemporaries like Slade.

Steely Dan were on the pop radio and pumping out the impenetrably great album like "pretzel logic" and " Katy lied". Freaks like Tim Buckley, Leon Russel , the Blue Oyster Cult, Rory Gallagher and Joe Walsh. Led Zeppelin as distant yet as omnipresent as the Stones. For some reason, the most closest to our experience, in the country, was southern rock. Thats Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allmans. There were a bunch of others too but these were the main acts. So, anyway, I heard all that then. I have the vinyl and play it every now and again. A lot you still hear all the time on classic rock radio. I was lucky to grow up in such a wild and forward moving time.

LYNYRD SKYNYRD IN THEIR POMP

A lot of it was blown out of the water by punk rock. Well most of it. For a bunch of us. For a while. Just made it redundant.

I still love that classic rock.

I also love the sounds from the post punk period that re aligned and re tuned my sensibilities so much.I love it just as much.

ORANGE JUICE

By that I mean the sounds of those early Postcard records by Orange Juice, especially "simply thrilled honey" and Josef K with "sorry for laughing". The Fire engines had their incredible moments with "get up and use me" and " candyskin".
The Pop Group with "she is beyond good and evil". The Birthday Party/ Boys next door with the hee haw ep and their first album. All the stuff they did before they left Australia. I also loved Panther Burns, the Cramps and Vic Godards Subway Sect.

There was also Pere Ubu with their first two albums, especially "dub housing" and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Johnny Thunders Heartbreakers and the Contortions or James White and the Blacks.

Recording was hard then. Expensive and usually a fight against the entrenched attitudes of the kind of guys who worked in studios. It was tough! Even though, all the above somehow made sounds that will live forever and people still try to copy today. The Contortions or James White and the Blacks sound as fresh and as vital as if they were recorded yesterday. I bet all the people in that act wish they knew how they made those sounds!

When young people go on about AC/DC or Chisel I know they're talking about a sensibility which is all about the classic rock period. They must have either heard it from their parents or just hear it all the time on raadio. Still . They're being very obedient either way. I was there as a kid. I don't need to hear it all reproduced again and again. It wasn't perfect or anything. Just goofy and innocent really. Stupid, at its best The post punk period was what was supposed to happen next, and it did. Even if the mass didn't notice.

They're my favourite kinds of rock music.The classic and the revolutionary. Nothing much in between. A lot of modern indie rock is in between. Its small in ambition and intent. Fuck it then.

Look out for shows NATIONALLY to coincide with the release of the book "1001 australian nights" through Affirm Press and the new album "rock'n'roll is where I hide" which is out on Liberation.

Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October- Wheatsheaf Hotel -Thebarton - Adelaide.

Monday 31st October- CUP EVE SHOW
Northcote Social Club in Melbourne w/ the Sand Pebbles and the Ocean Party

Friday Nov 11th Camelot Lounge - 19 Marrickville Rd,(Cnr Railway Pde) Marrickville, Sydney,

Saturday Nov 12th the Great Northern Hotel 83-89 Scott Street, Newcastle,
NSW
http://www.thegreatnorthern.com.au/

further woodshedding in the Hall

2011-10-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

Worked out on some more of the new tunes last night. We rehearse at this place in Yarraville.

YARRAVILLE MOUTH ORGAN BAND HALL

It is empty , of course, when we are doing our rehearsals. A cute ambience though. A little stage at the end where Clare sets up and we all gather round on the floor. Our bass player Stu Thomas organized it as he lives nearby. I walked to the hall from the train station and saw Stu fly by on his electric pushbike to get the key. Clare Moore came from the other side of Melbourne with the drums and my guitar and amp. Stu Perera came from Keysborough, also way out east with his guitar and amp. Stu P has been living at home with his folks. He quit his job to take care of them as they had been battling a few chronic illnesses and frailties of ageing. he has been incredible. Organizing hospital visits and negotiating all the bureauocracy and both are in much better shapes and outlook. What a guy!

STU PERERA AND CLARE MOORE

We spent most of the first hour stretching out on an instrumental groove I have cooked up and called "mistral". By the end I was singing something along with it as I kept having to call out the chords.Stu Perera thinks it sounds like John Abercrombie. I am happy if my songs sound like something else. Preloved!

We then went over a few other tunes we have been working on. "blues negative", "midnight cats", "I don't wanna know myself", "flash in the pantz", "cop this,sweetly", " we need a champion", "playin' chicken" , "lifes a dream", "mt gambier night" , "field record me" and some others. Some we have played live a few times and some we will be taking out for a canter at these shows we have coming up.

Mostly me on 12 string electric, stu on electric guitar, Stu Thomas on bass and Clare on drums.

We talked vaguely of how to record things. I would love, one day, to do a session straight to two track.I mean no mixing, just micing everything up and balancing the sounds and it all goes down to a stereo mix. Otherwise just two mics hanging in the room. With this band, we could do it. Its the best band I've ever had really. Probably meaning that its best for me to express myself within. Playing the guitar and moving the songs. Got my tone together with the electric 12 and the janglebox. These songs are pretty toned and arranged too. Been sitting on some of them for a long time. 11 or 12 songs, all top shelf is what I'm after. Its the first "band" recording of new songs since " we wuz curious" in 2007. Thats my favourite album I've ever done so far. That and "the devil drives" from 1997.
Yes, we could do a live to 2 track with tis band but I think the songs should probably be put down with a bit more attention to a few different sounds. Won't be a lot of overdubs, just a couple of different sounds.

Stu Thomas and Clare Moore have also been rehearsing intensely with Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes for a recording which will probably go down in November. Stu is also doing the odd show with Kim Salmon and the Surrealists. Their last, just last week involved no rehearsal and three sets of songs Kim would either just start of call out. Stu also does his own shows with the Stu Thomas Paradox.

STU THOMAS IN THE STUDIO

Clare Moore has also been working with the Ukeladies (playing vibes) and the Hired Guns (drums)

As we packed up we started talking about Captain Beefheart and everybody was trading lines from his songs. Amazing how much of his stuff is so stuck fast in our brains and how fresh it all is. "tropical hot dog night! Like two flamingoes in a fruit fight! every colour of day running around at night. I'm playin this music so all the young girls can come out and meet the monster tonight!"

On the drive home we listened to Australian poet (favourite of mine) Robert Gray talk about a new anthology he has put together with Geoffrey Lehman. Phillp Adams asked him if any song lyrics were in it. He didn't even need to think and said "no". I agree. Poetry is another discipline. A few lines from great singers are worthy .
All of Bo Diddleys "who do you love ". ( I walk 47 miles of barbed wire/cobra snake for a necktie/brand new house by the roadside/made from ratatlesnake hide/ brand new chimney made on top/ made outta human skulls/come on take a walk with me- tell me who do you love". Anything he did really!
Muddy Waters lines in "I can't be satisfied " such as "I be in my sleep/hear my doorbell ring/I'm looking for my woman I dont see a goddam thing/ you know I'm troubled ! I'm all worried in mind/ you know I just can't be satisfied- I just can't keep from cryin'!". 1947! Cop that pop world!
Howlin Wolf , "I shoulda followed my first mind! Then I wouldn't be here down on the killin floor!".
Hohn Lee Hooker, "I'ma crawlin king snake in a room of death!"
JIm Morrison "the cars hiss by my window like the waves down on the beach/ I got this girl beside me but shes out of reach...windows start a tremblin with a sonic boom - BOOM- a call girl will kill you in a darkened room!""

The rest? Toss their skinny white asses in the river!

Actually it is an area where musical gifts are in the picture as well. JImmy Webb is unparalleled in my humble ears for his imagery and melodic powers.
Not looking to argue or saying one is higher or lower, both fields are powerful. Byron will live forever and so will Rimbaud, Verlaine and Apollinaire. So will Hoagy Carmichael and August Darnell.

We have young Melbourne band (originally from Wagga ), the OCEAN PARTY joining us and the Sand Pebbles at the Northcote Social Club on 31st October.

Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October- Wheatsheaf Hotel -Thebarton - Adelaide.

Monday 31st October- CUP EVE SHOW
Northcote Social Club in Melbourne w/ the Sand Pebbles and the OCEAN PARTY )

Friday Nov 11th Camelot Lounge - 19 Marrickville Rd,(Cnr Railway Pde) Marrickville, Sydney,

Saturday Nov 12th the Great Northern Hotel 83-89 Scott Street, Newcastle,
NSW
http://www.thegreatnorthern.com.au/

oct dates-radio shows-etc

2011-09-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

The beginning of this blog I was questioning what the point of it was. Still haven't really felt much different. Recent book panel thing with a Yank and a Canadian the talk was of writers performing. I said I loved Michael Ondaatje and people poo pooed him for not being a showman. i said "yeah, he's a feckin' writer!" or somethin' like that. People you have the most respect for are teh ones not shootin' their mouths off all the time. Sports players especially.
Anyway, here I am taking up some digital space. Though that is limitless isn't it? Up in the clouds someshwere?

Here are some random places I have been.

Saw a film called "the singularity" about a US inventor called Ray Kurzweill. He made these great keyboards and things that allowed blind people to scan and hear whats in a book. Obsessed with living forever. Makes a lot of dough with vitamins etc. Takes 2 - 300 pills a day. "reprogramming my hardware". Has identified a moment when man and digital technology will come together and teat will come soon. "THE SINGULARITY". Has a shed with his fathers lifes work in it. Wants to bring his dads brian and ideas back. Wants to upload himself. Was an interesting film. three scientists were at the screening, all working on robotics. Some are for the SINGULAITY and most against it. the robots will kill us. One looked like a Grateful Dead fan, another like Ray Manzarek. (a dork). I asked a question, "aren't you afraid that there might be an agent from the future here in the audience to kill you?". I'm afraid the singularity is already happening. We are done for.

Talked with gary Foley, aboriginal political activist on the radio show I do (Banana Lounge Broadcasting midday-2pm Tuesdays on RRR fm http://www.rrr.org.au). The podcast is available on the RRR "audio archives" section of their site. Gary is doinga show at the Melbourne Festival. A great talker.

Also interviewed football legend Tommy Hafey. Coached Richmond and Collingwood, geelong and Sydney. 80 years old, does 200 pushups, 700 situps, a run along the beach and a swim EVERY morning of his life and has never drank booze or smoked. Amazingly focussed 80 year old. Sharp as a tack.

Gonna talk to Graham Bon in November.Also Robin Hitchcock and Fiona Oloughlin.

Read a great book by Delia Falconer . "the lost thoughts of soldiers". Its a great book if you know the characters in the George Armstroing Custers regiment that was at Little Big Horn. I had a cat for 20 years called AUGHTIE,.the name that Custer was called, when a boy, by his younger brother Tom. So yes, I was up to speed on the 7th cavalry.

Also read William Blighs "mutiny on the bounty" . Six months in Tahiti and the crew mutinied when they left. Bligh cast adrift in a long boat with 18 men. Took them 3,600 miles to Java . One crew member was killed by natives on an island they stopped at. Navigating by sextant , telescope and time piece.

Caught up with series 3 of "Breaking bad". What an arsehole the main character is. Quite addictive though. poor Jesse.

Saw two series of "justified". Awesome characters and milieu. Kentucky meth cooking dope dealing dixie mafia bastards.

Started watching "curb your enthusiasm" from series one.

Still catch "neighbours" most nights.

Loved the new album by PJ Harvey, "let england shake" and teh new one by TINIWAREN. the desert dwelling guitar boogie meisters. This is more of an acoustic hitout.

Doing a lot of writing. Looking forward to some playing...

Wheatsheaf Hotel- Adelaide. Oct 14th and 15th. This gig is run by a group of women in a quiet street just off the main squares of the city. Thebarton. No poker machines or sports tvs. A band room out the back. We do two sets, stretching out into new and old tunes.

Northcote Social Club Oct 31st. A monday night, before the melbourne Cup. With our friends, the Sand Pebbles. A great room with a great sound.

Camelot Lounge, Marrickville, Sydney -Nov 11th.
Great Northern Hotel, Newcastle with teh SINS. Nov 12th.

time on the blocks-creative dig - oct dates

2011-09-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of writing and rehearsing with the Lurid Yellow Mist. Songs I've worked on for a couple of years. Using my 12 string electric , mostly. Its a Chinese knockoff of a Music Man. I love it. Especially when its put through a pedal called a Janglebox which is a handmade unit from the USA made specifically for the electric 12. To get that Roger McGuinn, classic Byrds sound. Involves a lot of compression is all I know. ActuallyI've been looking into it a fair bit. People have been chasing that sound for years so theres a lot of talk about it. Basically Roger recorded through two high end studio compressors on the early Byrds sides. At the time , guitarists mostly used flat wound strings. these are nowadays mostly favoured by jazz players. Everybody else uses round wound strings. Roger also used a 12 string Rickenbacker which had the octave (high) strings sitting behind the normal string so the latter would be struck first. All other 12 strings have the octave string first and you get a much "chimier" sound.
The compression gives you a clean sound with a lot of sustain. Its an addictive sound. Roger also played through a Vox AC30.
I'm still flying my Roland GC408. Solid state with 4 little speakers in the slant-back cabinet.
The music world is full of people who try to recreate sounds like museum piece projects. I'm not looking to go back to 65-67. Just getting a sound which I like and which sits great next to Stu Pereras more classic rock tones.
So I've been rehearsing a lot with this setup and we'll head into the studio some time towards the end of the year to start throwing some songs down. They're all vert much fully formed in the arrangements. Short and sharp tunes. Very happy with the whole sound.
I did a writers festival panel appearance up in Brisbane. In their incredibly swish Gallery of Modern Art building. Next door was the Surrealist exhibition. As good as the one they had there in 1994. It was a 4 person panel talking about "what the written word means". We all had little Madonna mics around our faces and an ipad in front of us to catch tweets from people who were watching online. I told them a normal mic would look more authoritative and be easier to use. Also look less stoopid. I don't want to be the iconoclast in these proceedings. Much too mature really.But I can't help it sometimes. Things went on and I tried to be a good team player. A woman on the panel wrote erotic fiction. Sounds good but I thought teres far too much tits and ass around nowadays. Its hardly a hidden, forbidden area. A music writer and a young fellow who did some group writing online rounded out the team. Towards the end I cracked the shits and said I didn't give a damn what people were tweeting or what the audience thought. "They're there to watch and listen!" I cried. Probably more of the tweeting vogue that upset me. I said I didn't feel the need to talk up the technology (itunes,youtube,ipads etc) as it would smash us all to pieces anyway. Dont ask me to cheer it on!
Also did a panel at the Melbourne writers festival. This was four writers who were or are musicians who had wandered into the world of writing books. Jane Clifton and I were the Australians, Simone Felice from the USA and Dave Bidini from Canada. I had loved Janes book about every house she had lived in and Simones novel called "Black Jesus". Daves book was about the HOmeless World Cup. It was called "Home and away". All the publicity mentioned his book title with no reference to the australian long running tv soap of the same name. I am sure most people reading the pr would have thought he was from the tv show.
Proceedings at this were funny and instructive. Jane was the wrangler. The leader of the talk. We all read a bit. It struck me how much the Canadian and I , the Australian male, put out. As if we had to justify ourselves in any context. the Yankee just WAS. He was easy in his skin and in his role and people listened to his voice as if he had natural authority. Americans have their culture working for them all over the world constantly. preparing the ground. Me and the Canadian were sweating it. I liked Simones book.
Part of the talk was about how writers nowadays have to be performers too. I didn't like that. Of course.
They filmed it and it might be online at some point.

Looking forward to more shows in the coming months....

Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October- Wheatsheaf Hotel -Thebarton - Adelaide.

Monday 31st October- CUP EVE SHOW
Northcote Social Club in Melbourne w/ the Sand Pebbles and the SINS (NSW)

Friday Nov 11th Camelot Lounge - 19 Marrickville Rd,(Cnr Railway Pde) Marrickville, Sydney,

Saturday Nov 12th the Great Northern Hotel 83-89 Scott Street, Newcastle,
NSW - with the SINS
http://www.thegreatnorthern.com.au/

a speech I gave at the Wheeler centre in July

2011-08-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

This was part of a night of speeches at the Wheeler centre. I chose to read a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky from a book called "my discovery of america".
The poem is called "Brooklyn Bridge

http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/unaccustomed-as-i-am/?t=30m59s

6.30-7.30pm on Thursday 1 September 2011
Brisbane GoMA
GoMA Talks Novel Worlds, exploring the question ‘What does the written word have to say?’.
This session will look at writing as a means to unlock inner worlds, and will involve a range of writers and other creative people working with language and ideas.
- Anthony Mullins, BAFTA award winning screenwriter and director, and Creative Director, Hoodlum, Brisbane
- Krissy Kneen, author and owner, Avid Reader, Brisbane
- Noel Mengel, music writer and author of RPM (2010), Brisbane
- Dave Graney
Sept 4th Melbourne Writers Festival event
5:30 pm ACMI cinema 2
Dave Graney appearing at Books that go up to 11

Dave Bidini (Home and Away), Dave Graney, (1001 Australian Nights) and Simone Felice (Black Jesus) talk to Jane Clifton about the differences in the creative processes behind their music and books, and in their interactions with audiences.

Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October- Wheatsheaf Hotel -Thebarton - Adelaide.

Friday 28th October- rare Dave Graney solo show at Bar Pizza -Waurn Ponds Victoria

31st October - Northcote Social Club with the Sand Pebbles and the Sins.

Friday Nov 11th Camelot Lounge - 19 Marrickville Rd,(Cnr Railway Pde) Marrickville, Sydney,
book tix for Camelot here

Saturday Nov 12th the Great Northern Hotel 83-89 Scott Street, Newcastle,
NSW
http://www.thegreatnorthern.com.au/

a speech I gave at the WHEELER CENTRE earlier in April

2011-08-25T02:50:00.000-07:00

CLICK THE TITLE OF THIS PIECE AND YOU GO THERE...

The topic of this speech was to be " will the social networks inspire an interest in the future/the unknown". I was going to answer my rhetorical question with a resounding "NO!".
I had found most social networks to be full of nostalgic sludge. I put the words "future" and "unknown" in to twitter and actually came into contact with a character who identified himself as "man from the future". For a few weeks he thrilled a hardy few of us with his pronouncements upon life on earth and our civilization. Then he flamed out and disappeared. I'm afraid I'm all too ready to believe in these sorts of characters. Some of his epigrammatic missives made up a part of my speech. Like most art or theatre events, the wheeler centre lunchtime talk was supported and attended by a lot of women. One elderly lady approached me at the end and asked what the internet was like and should she botehr to gte involved in it. I'm afraid I was jealous of her and said she was better off where she was. Off line.

http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/dave-graney-social-networks-and-the-unknown/

6.30-7.30pm on Thursday 1 September 2011
Brisbane GoMA
GoMA Talks Novel Worlds, exploring the question ‘What does the written word have to say?’.
This session will look at writing as a means to unlock inner worlds, and will involve a range of writers and other creative people working with language and ideas.
- Anthony Mullins, BAFTA award winning screenwriter and director, and Creative Director, Hoodlum, Brisbane
- Krissy Kneen, author and owner, Avid Reader, Brisbane
- Noel Mengel, music writer and author of RPM (2010), Brisbane
- Dave Graney

Sept 4th Melbourne Writers Festival event
5:30 pm ACMI cinema 2
Dave Graney appearing at Books that go up to 11

Dave Bidini (Home and Away), Dave Graney, (1001 Australian Nights) and Simone Felice (Black Jesus) talk to Jane Clifton about the differences in the creative processes behind their music and books, and in their interactions with audiences.

Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October- Wheatsheaf Hotel -Thebarton - Adelaide.

Friday 28th October- rare Dave Graney solo show at Bar Pizza -Waurn Ponds Victoria

Friday Nov 11th Camelot Lounge - 19 Marrickville Rd,(Cnr Railway Pde) Marrickville, Sydney,
book tix for Camelot here

Saturday Nov 12th the Great Northern Hotel 83-89 Scott Street, Newcastle,
NSW
http://www.thegreatnorthern.com.au/

melbourne winter stop- waiting to go again

2011-08-16T20:58:00.001-07:00

I've been writing and playing my guitar. The acoustic and electric. Madly playing and rolling over some licks. Started to rehearse with the band to get some new material together. Haven't really recorded an album of new material with the Lurid Yellow Mist since we did "we wuz curious". that was done in 2007 and came out in 2008. After that it was the studio r&b solo album which was pretty much all Clare Moore and myself on the instruments and desk. Then it was the remix/remaster/replayed "supermodified" and then the current vintage re-recordings set. We've been playing in about six new tracks over the last year or so and I have been getting the rest together. I've changed my mind about the instrumentation and approach a few times over the last year. At the moment I'm thinking of short, snappy songs with two guitars,bass and drums. Lots of vocals. Minimal overdubbing and few keys. Very happy playing the electric 12 string and keeping the sound as limited as possible to that template. Very happy with the songs. I don't know if they're upbeat in a Norman Wisdom way but upbeat in the tempos.

People have often called out for a song called "rock n roll is where I hide" at our shows but they don't know the name of it. At the end of the song it says " the best dressed chicken in town" People have yelled out for "the Chicken song". One of the new songs is called "Playin' Chicken".
Others include "I don't wanna know myself", Mt Gambier night", "field record me", "midnight cats" and "Lifes a dream"

Doing some writers festival events. Appearing with the Sand Pebbles at their album launch in September and doing shows with Harry Howard. Clare Moore and Stu Thomas are rehearsing with Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes. Stu is also doing shows with Kim Salmon and the Surrealists. Stu Perera plays every weekend with his dance band "Ja makin it funky".

Did some music earlier in the year for a film by Donna Macrae called "Johnny ghost" which should be getting a screening soon. Looking forward to working on another film soon. A Surrealist art feature about a Smoking Dog who is looking for Rimbaud. "Le Chien qui Fume".

Doing Banana Lounge Broadcasting with Elizabeth McCarthy every Tuesday from midday to 2pm on RRR fm. 102.7fm
http://www.rrr.org.au
Sophie Cunningham coming up as a guest. Looking forward to talking to Gary Foley ahead of his show at the Arts Festival.

6.30-7.30pm on Thursday 1 September 2011
Brisbane GoMA
GoMA Talks Novel Worlds, exploring the question ‘What does the written word have to say?’.
This session will look at writing as a means to unlock inner worlds, and will involve a range of writers and other creative people working with language and ideas.
- Anthony Mullins, BAFTA award winning screenwriter and director, and Creative Director, Hoodlum, Brisbane
- Krissy Kneen, author and owner, Avid Reader, Brisbane
- Noel Mengel, music writer and author of RPM (2010), Brisbane
- Dave Graney

Sept 4th Melbourne Writers Festival event
5:30 pm ACMI cinema 2
Dave Graney appearing at Books that go up to 11

Dave Bidini (Home and Away), Dave Graney, (1001 Australian Nights) and Simone Felice (Black Jesus) talk to Jane Clifton about the differences in the creative processes behind their music and books, and in their interactions with audiences.

Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October- Wheatsheaf Hotel -Thebarton - Adelaide.

Friday 28th October- rare Dave Graney solo show at Bar Pizza -Waurn Ponds Victoria

Friday Nov 11th Camelot Lounge - 19 Marrickville Rd,(Cnr Railway Pde) Marrickville, Sydney,

Saturday Nov 12th the Great Northern Hotel 83-89 Scott Street, Newcastle,
NSW
http://www.thegreatnorthern.com.au/

three south melbourne nights

2011-07-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

We did three nights in the old council chambers of the South Melbourne town hall. A beautiful, old and grand building on Bank street, off of Clarendon street. the area used to be called Emerald Hill. Lovely wide streets in this part of Melbourne. The council, along with port Melbourne, was amalgamated( swallowed up) by St Kilda in the Jeff Kennett era. Since then it seems to have been used by the "National music school" and as a rehearsal place for orchestras and small chamber groups. Not a real bohemian hot spot. all that trailing crew having their fun across the river in the northern suburbs.
The shows were a part of the cabaret Festival.This festival is run by two fellow who used to operate the Butterfly Club which is just next door. Very capable and inventive people.
The word cabaret is a problem in Melbourne. I made the point at teh start of each of our shows that the term is a great insult in rock music, which is our world- and we had just strayed into this one.Something about the word- full of connotations and assumptions. there is a small audience that gravitates to it and they are up for new ideas and approaches and performers. A larger part of it is up for the tried and true cabaret-circus-campery . The larger audience outside has difficulty approaching it at all.
To that end we played three nights in a lovely room all standing around a grand piano, two electric guitars, bass and drums , bringing the sound down in volume and power.
Thats how music used to be played - at some point, nothing louder than the bass drum. Only the vocals were mic'd up. We had a great time experiencing that and recorded the nights and filmed some of it. Audiences were small but appreciative.
Part of our aesthetic in playing music is that we like to play in different situations and find different audiences. Its a bit of a bummer that so much of music is played out or only looked for on the main travelled roads.

We'll be doing some more dates in September.

upon reflection- tour scoreboard

2011-07-15T19:06:00.000-07:00

WA was not really such a bust. Had a shocking bug that coloured my mood for the flight over and the dates. Coughed for 4 hours during the flight and couldn't do much more than the shows. Met some lovely people. Including a fellow I went to catholic primary school with a thousand years ago on the south eastern side of Mt Gambier. Just across the road from the Badlands. We talked so easily of street names and characters from that pre teen world. Amazing how much of your persona is formed before you become conscious of it. You're already finished and published pretty early on in the game!
Both of us had so few options and faced the same confusing,barren, desolate streets. He went into the army . I travelled into Bohemia I guess.A footloose area of the mind.
Unusual to engage with someone who knows exactly where you are coming from. At least.

So we started this run of dates in early May and it kind of ends at the Sth Melbourne Town hall next week.

We will have done 27 shows in that time. Mostly doing TWO ONE HOUR SETS. Each set having about 13 songs. the first set concentrating on the "rock n roll is where I hide" album and also having a reading from "1001 Australian nights". We were also doing a half dozen new songs which we are intending to record some time this year.

rock'n'roll is where I hide
night of the wolverine 4
feelin' kinda sporty
I'm not afraid to be heavy
man on the make
-----------------------------------------------
mt gambier night
apollo 69
birds 'n' goats
I'm gonna release your soul
the sheriff of hell
three dead passengers in a stolen secondhand ford
let kill god again

my schtick weighs a tonne
we dont belong to anybody
I don’t wanna know myself
the stars
field records me
I will have always been here before
youre just too hip baby
sometimes you can see yourself
what if she comes?
sellout
bodysnatcher

midnight to dawn
all our friends were stars
sign o' the times
parchman farm
a lot to drink about
alphonsus will get you
field record me
midnight cats

I also did about 10 readings at Libraries and Bookshops during the tour.

Clare Moore and myself drove about 5,000 ks and we all flew about 13,100 around the rest of the country.
I broke one string and changed the whole set on my 6 string Ibanez Talman ONCE. I busted 3 guitar pedals. No acoustic guitars were used on the tour.
We were caught up by a cloud of Volcanic ash . A flood came through northern NSW a week after we left. Tiger airlines fell to pieces as soon as we booked three flights to perth. We had two bouts of Flu/cold go through the ranks at various times.

Clare Moore also completed several gigs with the Hired Guns and the Ukeladies during that time as did Stu Perera with his other regular band.

I thought the best run gig was at the Sol Bar in Maroochydore.
The worst was the Clarendon Guesthouse.
The rest were all kinds of shapes and sizes and I enjoyed all of them.
I love it when young people find their way to our shows, I also love playing to people who have come in and out of our sphere going back three decades. Thats rich.

South Melbourne Town Hall .
Old Council Chambers.
Friday 22nd to Sun 24th July 7:45 to 8:45 pm.

victorian RSLs and over to the real economy

2011-07-13T18:19:00.001-07:00

Caravan Music Club is a very cute room in Oakleigh. Oakleigh RSL .I have always loved the name of that suburb. Deeply suburban. A venue opened by a fellow who originally had people playing in his house. A reaction to lack of venues in the area and also people who disliked the ones that were operating. Its become a thing/ a place for older people to go. We play anywhere however and this was our first visit .We'd been travelling so long and so intensely that we had no time to scope it out before hand. Stu Perera and mark Fitzgibbon couldn't make the gig. It was a power trio. Me, Mooresy and Thommo.
A beautiful room in a long quiet street.Excellent hospitality. A good crowd of people came along. The older audience is very direct and demanding. They know what they want. I know that they know what they want. They tell me what they want. I know what I want. We were playing at a highly tuned level. I can't know what they mean- know what I mean?
Excellent job for the man who created the club to get off his ass and do something for the local people.

The very next day we play at 2pm at the Williamstown RSL across the bay. While we set up I hear the strangest music over the PA. "Julia" by Pavlovs Dog. A music club called the "WILD WEST" takes over the RSL every week. The fellow who runs the club has read my book and has his ipod selection tuned to every band or song I mention in it!
We play two sets, again to a mature audience. Different socio-economic bracket I guess. Pez is with us for this one. We are packed up and driving home at 6pm. A fellow talks to us who is straight out of a Henry Lawson story. Long flowing (dyed) brown hair under a big stockmans hat with knee length riding boots and the most proper manners I have ever encountered in years. Very well spoken but so diplomatic and erudite. A country gent. The man who runs the club ( who mixed the ipod) runs a local bank and played for the local footy team and went to the local primary and high schools. A local hero. Made the weekend to meet and talk with the people there.

The next weekend we flew to WA for two gigs. Had booked tickets on Tiger which fell over immediately. Scrambled to get some other flights and got there on the Friday. Stayed at a hotel across from the city rail and bus station. They have been constructing something in this area since 1993. Its always had shit all over the street. Nowhere to eat except at the hotel after 5pm. What a sad situation for a city! Billboards for mining everywhere. Talking over the heads of the people to investors. Real people.
No evidence of a poster in the Freo gig.
People turn up. Must be due to Facebook and Twitter. The promoter doesn't. Sends a girl to work the door who is on her phone all night.
At the end of the gig a security guard throws everybody out immediately. I hate security. Not needed for the most part. Not at any gig I ever do. Superfluous insurance bullshit. Making trouble and tension all night.
Next day we walk through the city. in the shops they all moan that nobody is spending. This is the boom town!
Northbridge gig has no posters. The local promoter arrives.
I think he needs JJJ airplay and a large festival situation to get out of bed.
People are there.We make show like no others.

Fly back the next day. Bumped to Business Class. This is living!

Our next shows are at the Old Council Chambers in the South Melbourne Town Hall from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th July. 7:45 - 8:45 each night. 90 people fit in the room. We'll be doing it as a 5 piece and making it a deluxe show.

http://www.melbournecabaret.com/davegraney.htm

warrnambool to Radelaide

2011-06-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Warrnambool.Played as a power trio.Me on electric guitar, Clare on drums and Stu D on bass. People seem to be able tor elate to trio setups more easily. They can see what everybodys doin'. Add another guitar and it gets diffused. Add a further keyboard and its all a blur.
Played two sets ina lovely room called the LOFT. People pay to get in so they act better than people who drift in and out of free venues. A bunch of young heads light up the room. Dancing and yelling. Older, mad women dancing as well. Met and talked with a lot of people. A girl made me write "something beautiful"across the back of her calico dress.She was a voluptuous , country siren. Straws of hay in her hair. I jest a little. I wrote "dave graney tryna write somethin' bewdiful" .

A band of young players asking about guitars and amps. I love that kinda talk.!

The next day we drove to Adelaide and played another two sets at the Woidy. (Wheatsheaf) An older, more demanding, static, sit down audience. Though having said that-people kept launching themselves onto the stage. The first was a woman anxious to ask Clare as to which Adelaide Catholic school she was talking about in her song "Alphonsus will get you". Another couple of younger, posher women leaped onto my part of the stage demanding a photo as the last chord of the first set still rang in the air. Many photo opps ensued.
The reading happened without incident and also seemed to up the energy in the room (as it had in Warrnambool too). At the end of the show a young woman rushed the stage , demanding we played "my stick".She artfully informed us that she had never really heard of us but a friend had said it was funny. She kept coming back and yelling again and again, well after the pa had been turned off.

The next afternoon we played at the Semaphore Workers Club. A Communist/ Union stronghold down by the old Port area. Both of these venues have no security. And despite the irritating behaviour of some people. I really like that. Its tough and you meet a lot of dicks but anything is better than bored muscle hovering around every situation and pushing people out before the gig is hardly over. Again, there was a bunch of young heads up the front, lifting us higher. A lot of mad dancers too. This was the only place in the whole country where the reading went flat. Partly due to a couple of people yelling and complaining, mostly to do with the foldback not being strongand present enough to pump the plosives into my flow. One of the hecklers was a ships captain of Indian origin who soon left. He told Pez he was into smuggling. "drugs and people"- whatever pays- though that was when I was younger..."
A mad woman in a hat and shades started to dance with her older, skull headed beau. Another woman danced in a totally arty and suggestive , dramatic, Isadora Duncan style all across the front of the stage.
The woman in the hat was demonic. She danced for so long I thought she was going to explode. She yelled incomprehensible, drunken guff in between songs. Then she lunged at a passing woman and they both fell onto my mic stand and pedals. We finished the set. I had already ahaken hands with an old aquaintance who I knew had been involved in a double killing. Hed done some time and was now living his life. I was still disturbed about that. How should I act to him? I had been friendly.

A young fellow requested 'death by a thousand sucks" which suited my distracted mood.
As I was talking to people afterwards the drunken woman in the hat and shades came up to talk. She had a harsh Liverpool accent and bad breath. She wanted me to sign a poster shed ripped off the wall. She went off to bother the others. A man came to talk, so stoned he uttered unconnected, isolated words, having thought the rest of the sentences . Holding my hand and eyes for several minutes .
The drunk woman came back for more. I begged off. She threw a pen at me and called me a "sad , miserable bastard!" She repeated this as she left. To paraphrase Lord Rochester "her belly was a bag of turds and her cunt was a common shore". Scrag.
She ahd some stamina though. A normal drunk would have just conked out on the lawn hours before that.
She must have been powering on something else too. We sat around with the club operator for a while . He had an idea to take a few bands to play in Cuba. Flying via Canada. Using his COP connections, we said yes, of course. He also wants to take a bunch of acts to the Antarctic to play at all the stations there. The acts have to be old though.And they mightn't be coming back. We said yes to that as well and then went to a posh Chines noodle house.
On Monday I did a reading in a bookshop. No mic,just standing on a step and talking to about 30 people. Afterwards. I was signing books and chatting when a very recognizable voice from my past said "you dont know me do you?" It took me a good olfashioned double take to realize it was a certain aristocratic, country squire stoner from back in the days. He figures for a moment in the drug and booze fogged body count pages for Mt gambier in 1001 Australian nights. Three kinds of crystal meth. A Viet Vet who had been in the regular army (not conscripted) due to a family tradition.He talked of how crap the RSL had been to his kind back then. Not bitter or carrying any grudges. You just never hear of how those older guys treated the Viet / Australian soldiers. Its all about the commie peaceniks ruining it for everybody. He went to an RSL once and never went back.He said that we were winning that war when him and a mate were still there anyway.

He said he would be visiting the country soon.For a party.Out of curiosity I asked what he would be taking to teh shindig, pharmaceutically. "Oh - five of us so we'll have plenty of weed, some googs (eccys) and some decent whizz. No point in slowing down at this stage..."
Tall and straight backed, wearing a jacket and jeans with a black leather shoulder bag and snakeskin boots-he could have stepped out of the streets of 1975.

He gave me hope for the nation.

I drove to Mt Gambier and checked into a motel . When I filled out the card, the woman said, "Dave Graney- are you Sean Graneys brother?"

Saturday July 2nd -Caravan Music Club- Oakleigh

Sunday July 3rd - 2pm at the Williamstown RSL

Friday July 8th Norfolk Basement Fremantle

Saturday July 9th the Bakery Northbridge WA

winter seaside idylls-real people and desal working aristocrats

2011-06-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

Got back from Darwin and barely adjusted to the bodily freeze when we were once again in the van and heading to a couple of seaside joints. Different sides of the bay/puddle that are the reason for melbourne being a settlement.
First stop was San Remo which is down near port Phillip. Its a big, old style pub by the beach and the bridge leading over to Phillip Island. French island can be seen also. Wonthaggi and the proposed Desalination plant is nearby as well. The hotel rooms are fouled up by desal workers who are living the dream. High wages a la western and northern mines and bunking out during the week before heading home. No lunch boxes here- counter meals all the way.
We play two sets. I have gone back to my Roland GC408 solid state amp and am loving it again. Four little 8" speakers . A tone machine.
This is the hardest place to do a reading. Big room and disinterested barflies shouting from the other room where big screens show the football.
We sleep all four of us in bunks in the same room! That is a tight unit!
Have a lousy meal slung at us by a bored , sulking teen in a cafe the next morning and walk it off along the jetty. Cold wind in our faces. Overcoats, hats and gloves. Seabirds everywhere. We then drive to Rye, across the other side of the Peninsula. Thommo cracks a beer with the sun over the yard arm. is that midday?
The show in San Remo is in a much smaller space. A Taco restaurant for 80 people, run by a group of 20-30 somethings. The show is one long set and we don't turn down the performance from any other place we have been. We flame the front tables. I am standing off the stage and am feeling like Muddy waters. Have a great time.
WE drive back to town at about midnight, listening to bad classic rock radio. Drop Pez off in Springvale and Thommo by the side of the road in Elsternwick as he feels like kicking on.
We continue another 30m minutes to the hills.The next day, Clare does two sets playing drums for the Hired Guns. What a pro! I stay for the first set and then head to Bennetts Lane where Fitz (Mark Fitzgibbon) is launching is new cd, "Closer". with his quintet.

This Friday 24th we are at the Loft in Warrnambool. Sat 25th at the Wheatsheaf.
Sun 26th at the Semaphore Workers Club.
Saturday 2nd July at the Caravan Music Club in Oakleigh.
Fiday 8th July at Norfolk Basement in Fremantle.
Saturday 9th July at the Bakery in Northbridge in Perth.
Then July 22-24th at the Old Council Room Chambers of the SOUTH MELBOURNE TOWN HALL as part of the cabaret festival.

Darwin- ashen holiday

2011-06-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Stayed in Melboune for a night and a day then caught a midnight plane to Darwin.On the ground at 6 am , though my timing may be off. Maybe it was a 2am flight. Met by our man in the Tropics who has kindly organized the gig and a car (his) and a house (his) and also presents us with a definitive itinerary to the top end. Melbourne had demanded an overcoat, a scarf and gloves on the way to the airport. Here it is t shirt weather. 25 degrees at the least . I do an interview at the ABC radio and we eat some noodles in a mall. Late in the afternoon I do a reading at the Happy Yess which is an arts venue in town. I read from my book and answer a few questions. Things start out a bit wonky as there is a local interpreter involved who feels the need to punctuate my readings with crowd revving cheers and faux showbiz kindling and the like. After a while I get things moving at my own tempo. (This is helpful as I only have one and a half gears).
Things go quite well.
The next day we do two sets at the Happy Yess. The opening act is a young trio from Darwin. Very bright young people who play music that is quite dark and grungey. Downtuned and Yarling (vocal style). Doesn't really feel like its coming from them. They put out though.They could get better.
We use most of their gear and play two sets . Its a pretty hyped up Saturday night crowd, in a beer garden type setting. We give it the full front loaded , teasing it out blow to the face type feinting move we've worked out over the last month and then settle in for an unwinding down over the next couple of hours. I do a reading and that drives people crazier again, as it seems to do. The wrong place and time thing I guess.Challenging the room.
We meet a lot of people who haven't seen us for a decade or so and have travelled a long way for the gig. Feels great to have that connection over time with people.

The next day we while away the day with a barbecue at our hosts pad and then say our goodbyes and line up at the airport. A voice over the speaker informs us that all flights to Melbourne are cancelled due to volcanic ash from Chile coming around the world to sit there in the Victorian capitals bay for a while. Chaos ensues. Passengers yell and scream and stamp their feet. Some scramble other airline tickets on the one other carrier. No hope though.

Virgin pays for a night at the hotel. The next day we go back to the airport, as like in a war zone (!) communication is best coming from the source rather than the tv news. The word is that there is no flight until the Wednesday night. (It is Monday night now) I have a gig in Sydney on the Tuesday night. That is impossible. We sit and have a coffee and wind down again. A woman is sitting near us. Her husband paces the baggage area, trying to will the clouds to roll by down in Victoria I guess. She has been on the phone until 4am that morning. She has paid a fortune for a flight to Adelaide,, in the hope they can get to Melbourne that way. I dont know what is so important . We are settling in for the duration. We go back to the hotel (which is still being paid for) and unpack and go sit by the pool . Getting used to hell. Its a bit like a sudden holiday thats been dropped on your head. We go out for the count. Another day in Darwin, a sunset meal by the beach at the ski club.
Then we make a call to our man in the tropics and another gig is organized . On the next night we set up, again with gear being supplied, at the Railway club, and do anotehr couple of sets. A great place- a bit like the Semaphore Workers Club - with a couple of big snooker tables and a highceiling. Traces of a recent fire in the room leave a real devilish tinge to the ambience.
The next day we take another lap around the town and then take a flight to Melbourne at 7pm. We get off the plane and get to our van and don the coat, the scarf and the gloves and drive to home base.

Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos - Rye Victoria
Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA
Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

Friday July 8th- Norfolk Basement - Fremantle WA
Saturday July 9th - The Bakery - Northbridge WA

Friday 22nd-Sat 23rd Sun 24th July-special shows in the Old Council Chambers of the South Melbourne Town Hall as part of the Melbourne Cabaret Festival.

sunshine coast-byron and rolling down to melbourne

2011-06-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

The Sol bar at Maroochydore was the total opposite of the Brisbane gig. So well run and organized. Great equipment and total pros running the joint. the night before had been absolutely saved by the Brisbane people who came to the gig. they somehow found out where we were playing and what time and turned up in a big mob. All kinds of ages and sizes and gender. Had a great night- despite the venue making it so hard to "make show". Thanks to everybody who came!
My voice was still shot in the upper register and I could barely talk during the day. Arrived in Brisbane early to do a lengthy interview for the ABC conversation hour with Richard Fidler. i must have sounded like Darth Vader or Davros. (Dalek leader)
Then croaked through an interview on the phone with ZZZ and then a book reading at Avid Books in the West End.Been amazed and energized by the book readings at shops and libraries, people really turn out for these events.

Rocked the house in Brisbane and drove to the Sunshine coast. Soundchecked at 3pm and then had a rest. The gig was at 9pm and we did two sets. the venue was packed with young and older people and it was impossible not to be psyched. The venue also provided a great backline of a kit and a bass rig and a brand new fender Deluxe Reverb which I plugged into. I have never experienced playing through one of these. Absolute genius sound. I never swallowed all that jive about Valve amps but now I am a believer. You can just dig in and the amp takes it. the clean sound is a dream. Lifted me for the show.
People were yelling and screaming and dancing. Wild! I did a reading which upped the energy level too.Myself and the room.
Drove on to Byron bay and set up and did another two sets. A smaller crowd but we were enjoying playing . Another great venue. The band is at such an intense level of power and intuition. The best ever.Cruising at a high altitude.
sat on the beach at Byron and ate some healthy food and then got into the car and rolled on to Melbourne. Stopped in the towns of Sawtell and then Goulbourn on the way down.

On Friday 10th I am doing a reading at the HAPPY YESS in Darwin and then playing with the Lurid yellow Mist on saturday 11th.

Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos - Rye Victoria
Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA
Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL
8th July Norfolk Basement Fremantle.
9th July the Bakery- Northbridge- PERTH.

Then 3 nights at the Old Council Chambers in South Melbourne as part of the cabaret festival July 22-23-24.

LisVegas-BrisneyLand

2011-06-04T00:40:00.000-07:00

Lismore is freaky and downright full of dread for most of the day as we pass time until the gig. Damp and humid, semi tropical and recently flooded. The soundcheck has a lot of barflies yelling directions and sneezing and dancing. The gig is a trio - sand Pez who is back in Melbourne. The whole town comes. I have to turn my amp up ore than its ever been as we need fire power for these hostiles. We turn on the juice and slay- its what we do.
Am surprised at the respect and good feeling there is for our stuff around tehse parts. people who've been into our shit for decades. In this kind of town, all types have to rub shoulders- young and old- hippies and black feller. A car salesman and his incredibly blonde, pneumatic girl ask for photos with me. They love "hashish and Liquor". We leave early the next morning for a three hour drive to make a recording of an interview at the abc with Richard Fidler. Exhausted.
Thena reading at a bookshop. Very well attended. My voice is so shot I can barely talk.Croak out some text and a few gags.
The gig at the Jubilee has all the makings of an absolute shemozzle. Brisbane style. Nobody at the pub knows anything about anything. Its been sold in the last week. People in control are security types . musicians are annoying.PA is bad. people start to turn up at 6:30 as thats when they've been told we are playing. We play the first set at 9:30.Surprised when we walk on to see a packed room with lots of young and old people in the house. They help us make a show- with the office style downlights over the stage being on rather than the proper cans that lie unused all night. Too hard for anyone to flick the switch!
Davo,Thommo,Mooresy and Pez rock the house!

Soundchecked at Maroochydore this afternoon- the situation is totally teh opposite. Total pros- a grat room and amazing sound system. A backline provided. A Fender Deluxe for me. I NEED ONE OF THESE . Though that will involve hiring someone to carry the goddam thing. Too heavy.
Tonight - June 4th at the Sol Bar in Maroochydore. Tomorrow at the Great Northern in Byron Bay. Saturday June 12th at the Happy Yess in Darwin.

drivin' north-kempsey-taree-grafton-casino-lismore

2011-06-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

so we headed towards our next gig which is to be in Lismore.A change of tense there. On a dime. Constant but intermittent , super heavy downpours of rain all through the night continue as we drive. Heading into the northern river country, we expect things to get weirder. Crossing rivers all the time. Strange old bridges.Metallic and crooked. Coming from South Australia, which has one river, which is sick and busted and has been hardly able to reach the sea at the end, its positively riddled with wide, swollen waterways up here.
We stay for the night in a motel in Kemspey.Next day we load up and drive again.
We stop for lunch in Taree. It has a large war memorial I see. Six rectangular black monoliths with names all over them. At the bottom of on I see three small enamel aboriginal flags on stretched canvas bases. Just laid there, sitting against a monolith. Each has a name and which war they died in. Someone must have put them there that day.
On a more silly note, Thommo went to the can. In the public khazi there was a condom machine upon which a scribe has written , "save yourself the drama-have a wank instead!".
We drove on to Grafton and casino and finally Lismore.

We play at the Gollan Hotel tonight- Thursday 2nd.
On Friday 3rd we are at the Jubilee Hotel in Lismore.
On Saturday 4th we are at teh Sol Bar in maroochydore.
On Sunday 5th we are at the Great Northern in Byron bay.
On Saturday 11th we are at the Happy Yess in Darwin.

maitland-mateland-mateys!

2011-05-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

I have been trapped in Maitland before. Its in my book. Mock horror!
Newcastle show was a blast. We drove through the lovely old party of Newcastle where a food fair was happening on our way out. People pay so much to live in Sydney, Newcastle is waiting to be discovered! Same as Geelong and Ballarat are for those paying through the nose for inner city ambience in melbourne. PEZ left to drive to the airport, Moorsey,Thommo and I drove to maitland, arguing with the GPS all the way. We changed the voice from Teabag Dominatrix to Metrosexual Smooth and back again, still its off key with our sense of direction. Mooresy is usually unflappable with her radar but the king st incident has us shaken. (She does not have any internal compass on that street in Newtown).
Maitland gig is at 5pm in a rock'n'roll shack in an old part of an olde towne. A real folk feel to this joint. They call it the Junkyard. We play a power trio set and then watch a band who have driven from teh Gold Coast called " a french butler called smith".
Then kebabs and tv in our motel room.
Maitland is alternately cute, threatening, lovely , poor and layabout. Changes at every corner.
Tonight (Monday 30th May) I am reading at the Art Gallery - 230 High st Maitland 6-8 pm.
Thursday we are at the Gollan Hotel in lismore.
Friday we are at the Jubilee Hotel in Brisbane.
Saturday 4th we are at the Sol Bar in Maroochydore.
Sunday 5th we are at the Great Northern in Byron Bay.

central coast- newcastle-firefights-triumphs!

2011-05-28T21:34:00.001-07:00

jeez its in close fighting the further out you go. We ain't in Fitzroy anymore! Drove to Kincumber and set up to play. Two sets. My pipes (voice) are playing up due to excessive squawking. Having to find a new, more economical way of delivery. Lost the falsetto. Brian at Lizottes has tipped me to Lemon Myrtle tea with licorice and honey. I am buying into it. Very soothing. Getting a new , clipped style. Kind of country. The notes cut off quicker than usual. Doing two sets and a reading and so many shows is the cause of this situation. Lizottes at Kincumber is close in fighting. Squeezed onto the stage , right in peoples faces, with the spoons and forks being shoved into their mushes!
Met up with Martin who told me to write a book a couple of years ago. i slanderd him on tv, saying he was a dyslexic Postman. he said he was not on the beat, more an office type of guy. like Vic Godard.
I apologized.
After the show, a woman told me shed looked me up on the computer and ,seeing me with a top hatr and tails etc (!!!!) didn't know what to expect. I dont kow who she was looking up but she wouldn'tbe told otherwise. She yelled at me to remember her name as she is a writer too. Another woman breathed fire into my face and told me she'd written five chapters of a book but her computer crashed and her daughter stole the plot for her own book. Fierce!Another dame told me that my cd cover was just like Tim Rogers and that the same artist must have done them. Wouldn't be told any different.
Actually, everybody is asking if its my body on the cover. I never stopped to think of that. Tony Mahony did another cover in the 90s for the original single of "rock n roll is where I hide". Had a picture of a fat, drunk cover band singer. I never stopped to think then that people would think it was me. Tony didn't either. Record companies in the UK looked at it in horror. "I" looked like that fat, dirty guy from that UK comedy with Hyacinth Bouquet. Very nice people in general at the Central Coast.
Next show was in Newcastle. A lovely old cinema made into a venue. the crowd was hyped and so were we!Killed it!
Met many cool people after the gig.
My Fender M80 is on a volume setting of "1" and is deafening. Experimenting with rocking it back at an upward angle. A monsterously loud, clean sound.
Stu "Pez" Perera is back in melbourne for a few days.

We play as a trio this afternoon at the Grand Junction in maitland- me, Thommo and Mooresy - ahead of a reading I am doing at the art gallery 230 high st Maitland tomorrow (Monday 30th May) night.6pm.

Look out for us in Lismore at the Gollan Hotel Thursday 2nd June.
The Jubilee Hotel in Brisbane Friday 3rdJune.
The Sol Bar in Maroochydore Saturday 4th June.
The Great Northern in Byron Bay Sunday 5th June.

Dee Why- eat the book !

2011-05-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

Across the bridge for the first time.(Went under it the night before). Sydneys topography still astounds a hayseed from the flat plain of Melbourne. A long drive through posh looking malls and ALDI stores in towering blocks. The first of three shows at LIZOTTES venues.There are very few gigs on this side of the city. The North Shore. I can remember playing many. The Mosman Hotel, Narrabeen Sands. Probably 1/2 dozen others but I haven't heard of them again.
Two sets and a reading. Taking its toll on my pipes. Lost the falsetto last night. I think I need to drink more tea before a gig and between sets. Honey maybe. Singers always get antsy about their potions. That PROPOLIS stuff! Thats what I need. Spoof from bees in a lolly! Of course!
Food swell, crowd very nice. These gigs are without Fitz on keys so its down to me and Pez to bring some fire and magic. Oh Mooresy and Thommo set the foundations true- but you know, guitars are the glory beeees of the trade.
Got an email today. A lady had bought a book for a friend for a gift but her dog had chewed it up during the night. She needs to buy another... Perhaps theres an angle I can work here. Must learn how to talk directly to the pooches. Beyond the owners to their canine friends. "eat the book!" Dog whistling. Might mean I have to read John Howards autobiography. I couldn't!

Playing at Lizottes Central Coast tonight (May 27th) and Lizottes Newcastle saturday (28th may).
An acoustic show at the Grand Junction in Maitland on Sunday and a reading at an art gallery at 230 high st Maitland on Monday, organized by the Maitland City Library.

Look out Jubilee Hotel Brisbane June 3rd!

Manly ferry-swells and rain

2011-05-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

What an amazing trip to work it must be to ride a ferry across the harbour every day. Lucky people! It had been drizzling a fine mist all day in Sydney. I took the train to Circular Quay and got the regular ( as opposed to the fast one) ferry across the harbour. I stood out on the front deck with half a dozen others, ignoring the recorded messages not to do so as the swell through the heads was so strong. I wanted some sea air in my lungs anyway.
Got to Manly an hour early for my library talk. People rushing across the Corso through the horizontal rain. The rugby state of origin was on that night too. So I was surprised and gladdened that 30 hardy souls turned up to have a few glasses of wine and hear me speak. I love this scene. Read from my book and answered some questions about anything and everything. Thanks to Anne for organizing the event! Had a great time. Took the ferry back. manly streets were deserted at 8:30 pm . A stabbing fight at Bankstown threw the trains into chaos. Got back to the inner west quite late.

Putting the expensive ( kind of) pendant around my neck again and plugging into my Fender M-80 red knob (it had a furry pelt but I got it taken off and replaced with Marshall Tolex) at LIZOTTES in DEE WHY tonight .
Tomorrow, (Friday 27th) we are at Lizottes in Kincumber (Central Coast) and on Saturday 28th we are at Lizottes in Newcastle. Another Libray reading via Maitland Library at a gallery - 230 High st Maitland on Monday 30th May.

Here is a link to a youtube clip of us playing "you're just too hip,baby" at Braidwood in NSW in march.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUkTxm92f3M

further into sydney

2011-05-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

Visited some old friends, Ken and Caitlin, who are running a beaut caff near Newtown called petty cash. Enjoyed their hospitality and caught up with news from fellow travellers and comrades we have lost sight of or touch with for mainly geographical reasons.Dropped into a bookshop in King st called Better read than dead to say hello.Went over to Redfern to see Leanne , who play drums with Kim Salmon on occasion. Then went to an art show bu Susie ODoherty in Chippendale. Old Sydney art crew. Extended fingers reaching to the Mentals and their various art wings. Mambo,Phantom,Brendan Gallagher. Had an altogether excellent day.
Chris and Pete O'Doherty tell me they are down in Melbourne for a week at a print shop in Carlton and to doa Dog Trumpet show at the Caravan Music Club. I strongly urge anyone to get a taste of their humanity and freakiness.
Tonight at 6pm I'm doing a reading at the Manly Library.

Tomorrow , Thursday May 26th, we rejoin Pez and Thommo and play at Lizottes in Dee Why. Then Lizottes in Kincumber and Newcastle.

On Sunday I'll be doing a solo gig at the Grand Junction in Maitland and then a reading at the art gallery 230 high st Maitland, organized by the Maitland Library.

On June 2nd we are playing at the Gollam Hotel in Lismore then June 3rd at the Jubilee Hotel in Brisbane. June 4th Sol Bar Maroochydore aqnd June 5th at the Great Norethern in Byron Bay.

why are australian people so grudgeful?

2011-05-23T18:38:00.000-07:00

No book event tonight. Someone , somewhere, in some line of work had to decamp to Jakarta on account of some dreadful threat to existence etc. This book world is full of drama and intrigue!
Wednesday night at the Many Library of course.

Sun is out again this morning, Walked along the Cooks River. Formerly an industrial sewer, reclaimed as an inner western sydney idyll. Quite lovely. Old factory stacks and Victorian era mills set against grass rolling down to the banks. Saw a large flock of black cockatoos hanging about like a gang of bikers. A large Pelican sitting on a convenient pole in the water. Lots of garbage in the river though. Not for swimming just yet.

A man is building a two storey Victorian style house. From scratch. He knocked down the Federation era one and is going back to an earlier style. Why? Because he wants to I guess.

It is striking how good life is in Sydney. Australia in general really. Yet the screeching of the talkback radio and the anti Labour Government , pro big business newspapers make it seem as if we are in a movie such as "escape from New York". marauding "illegals" with knives in their mouths climbing into our tiny (!) country, business being squeezed by green fantasists etc. Alan Jones on the radio in the morning. he feasts on public anguish which he creates and fans the flames of even higher . Every day! Shouldn't such a rich and powerful man be happy? He carrys on like an old woman with bitterness in her veins. Horrible tone and style. This morning it was all about "the corruption of this labour government!" relentless. there is a younger generation of jocks on air now. Supposedly warmer and more caring. Paul Murray and Chris Smith ( Who led the anti carbon tax marches in every city last month) WE drove into town listening to Paul Murray going on about Sharia Law in Australia and health care being given to "illegals". The whinge of the week is about people who have invested in solar panels not being able to profit from them. The Jocks are wagging the tail of the state government they cheered into power.
Asylum seekers are everywhere on people mouths of course. That an issue can be so dominant is ridiculous.

But the trains in Sydney are great. They have people working at the stations. Yesterday I drove into the heart of the city at 4:30 , parked, did some shopping and drove out at 5:30. Parked on the street! Then i drove down george street and out Parramatta road to Canterbury road and the traffic flowed all the way. I mean the city works.
The Sydney Morning Herald had stories about climate change today. Their opinion pages consisted of a story by Gerard Henderson from the right wing Sydney Institute and a fellow called Ted from the equally right wing Institute of Public Affairs. All these think tanks do is trade in anxiety.

Television is full of adverts by the mining companies telling us how good we have it because of them. Getting truckers to pimp for them. A rugged working face. Tobacco companies are spending just as much to tell us how precious their brand names are and what a civil liberty it is to infringe on their rights. Jeez. What times we live in! What overt bullshitters are bullshittting us so severely!

rest days

2011-05-22T16:58:00.000-07:00

Clarendon Guesthouse in Katoomba has always had POTENTIAL to be such a good gig. A place to put on a show. Lovely little boutique theatre setting in an old B'n'B type ambience in a mountain resort/health spa type area. A cute little town off the main road with an art deco feel about many of the cafes. One day...
Tonight I joust with Tony Delroy! ABC late night radio character beloved of insomniacs and kitchen table boozers across the country! the quiz! the Clue Free zone! I will be pre recording an interview as they are aware I may have other demands on my time. Would have done it in real time though. I love late night radio. The type of person who calls up a station then is from a different universe to the cat callers on the daylight hours. More intelligent I reckon. More lubricated sure, but definitely smarter. I mean, they've turned the tv off for a start. Sitting there in the shed or the kitchen or at work on night shift or in bed with the radio on. What an intimate audience! I would love to be an all night dj. I've been to a few late sessions at ABC radio stations. People padding about the carpeted corridors of the otherwise empty buildings. All to themselves. No pressure to engage with the people in the office. No agitated producers or eager work experience types fussing about. Just the room with blinking lights, a mic, a feint hum of the whole combine moving waves through the night and that audience...
Doing a few more book related things in Sydney this week. Ariel bookshop opening in Oxford st tomorrow night and then a reading at Manly Library on Wednesday. I posted a note to that effect on twitter and a person responded, asking if I was doing it because I didn't have my own copy? Tres droll, non?
Then we are to do three shows at venues called Lizottes. On Thursday at Dee Why, Friday in Kincumber on the Central Coast and Saturday at Newcatle.Lambton in newcastle. I am doing a little reading at all of these shows.

On Sunday I am to do a solo show somewhere in maitland. I'll get that up sometime this week. On Monday I'm doinga reading at an art gallery in Maitland. 230 High street in Maitland. Organized by the Maitland City Library.

Then next week we begin a slow drive north with a show in lizmore at the Gollam Hotel on Thursday June 2nd, The Jubilee Hotel in Brisbane on Friday June 3rd , The Sol Bar in Maroochydore and The Great Northern in Byron Bay .

coogee diggers-dog trumpet 'n' us

2011-05-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

A highly emotional drive from the inner west to Coogee. Driving along a busy road we saw two small dogs dodging the traffic and looking confused. Although late for soundcheck we stopped the van and Clare and Stu (Pez) Perera went to try and help the pooches. Both very small and vulnerable, one seemed to be taking care of the other. Got them into the van ( with Pez having to use a towel to put over the smallest one).
Took them to a vet. Both very skinny and with patchy fur . Shaking. they were said to be quite old and neglected. Microchippped but obviously not being taken care of. They were gonna be taken to the Pound.
Dog Trumpet were on the bill with us. Reg Mombassa and Pete O'Doherty who were two of the four songwriters in mental as Anything.Brothers, though one changed his surname. Reg has such a trademark electric guitar sound. Rough and rude but beautiful. His and Petes songs are all delightful and the way they talk on stage is truly beguiling. You learn stuff! Bernie Hayes, who is a Sydney singer songwriter played a semi acoustic bass and the drummer is tight with him . Superb players.
WE had to step up for this show! Inspired and inspiring company. Seasoned , vintage, classic, great players!
I got a bit rude and we cruised through an hour and a half set. I read from the book. (The part about playing in Kalangadoo to give the Sydney swells a thrill).
Fayelord was there. he arrived and gave me a present of a Rapper DOLLAR sign chain for my neck and a PIMP CIGAR (plastic). He also gave Clare some twirling tassles for you know where. Clare wanted me to hit him but you cant get mad at the Fayelord. He meant well!He tied to get us lost again on the way home but I insisted we connect the GPS and threw his crystal ball out the window.
Got up early to go see two nephews playing in AFL games. Auskick stuff. Ex Sydney coach Paul Roos was red carded for yelling at the Newtown Swans U/14 team after a rough incident. He will have to front a tribunal!
Quite a few music types there. If these teams ran into some Victorian or SA kids they would be destroyed though. Dont have the DNA really.I had a run around afterwards and kicked the ball with my nephew who had just played TWO full games in the U/14 and U/16 teams.He's got the FEVER!

Doing a reading at Many Library next Wednesday 25th May then playing at Lizottes Dee Why on Thursday 26th, Lizottes Kincumber on Friday 27th and Lizottes Newcastle on Saturday 28th .
Also a reading at Maitland art gallery 230 High st Maitland on Monday 30th May. Organized by the Maitland City Library.

The VAULT -Windsor

2011-05-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

With the Snowtown murders having been made into a tele drama/doco and now a film and also being generally a light hearted motif for people to alight upon and laugh at outer suburban loser types I am attuned to thoughts of grisly murder when entering old bank buildings. In Braidwood recently we stayed in a lovely old house which was attached to a bank and was where the managers family would have once lived. How the other half did live! Foot thick stone walls , lovely high ceilings and great air circulation. Staircases wide and beckonging and bookcases filled with National Geographics going back to the 1920s. In Newcastle we also had the pleasure of playing in an old bank building in the old part of town several times. Run by an old time freak who had worked in Amsterdam for years. He sold grog on the sly and ran this lovely room like a speakeasy with people lolling about on cushions. His experience was in lighting and theatre and he made a real great ambience out of an old room that once rang with the sounds of cash registers and adding machines.He told us he had days for families and just took the kids downstairs to the Vault and locked the door. "Kids love being scared!" was what he said and it made sense.They do! Should we have asked to have a further look around? (Cue forbodeing music) Actually Dean is a lovely guy and nothing untoward would have happened. He gifted the town some thrills.
This time around we drove for an hour or two through , in and around the commuter belt of Sydnmey to some very outskirts where we were to play ina place called the VAULT. this was a delightful building that was a heritage listed bank. people had been cracking gags at us about bike gangs and the like.People came and had a good time and so did we. The old actual vault was a wine cellar. Lovely stone building.
We did two sets and I did a reading. The reading gets people yelling! Breaks the flow. In a good way.
Two sets for a few nights in a row. Two hours of squawking, is taking a toll on my pipes and I am working out ways to take care of myself. Bobby Blue Bland used to turn his head to the side to get a rough gravelly sound out. As opposed to shouting or pressuring it out with wind and throat. He called it his "squall". I have to try and find some moves like that. He would do 250 shows a year. I probably do about 70. And I do a lot for an Australian artist.
Clare played amazingly well - AS USUAL- and sang a great version of PARCHMAN FARM. Stu "thommo" Thomas threw down his version of Princes "sign of the times" to much pleasurable catcalling from the crowd.

Its very pleasant playing with the five piece band. I could get used to it . Can't always afford it though. Two guitars, bass , drums and the incredible Mark "Fitz" Fitzgibbon on keys. You can pull back so much in the playing. So much interplay. Can empty things out and just touch a few notes. Talkin about the guitar here.
Tonight we play at Coogee Diggers with Dog Trumpet. Tomorrow we play at the Clarendon Guesthouse in Katoomba.
On Wednesday I am reading at the Manly City Library and on Thursday we start a run of three Lizottes venues. Dee Why, Kincumber and Newcastle.

sydney Notes- NOTES

2011-05-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

yeah a note abouta show at Notes. Get offa my fuckin' NOTE! When Duke Ellington started a show they would doa blaring fanfare and each horn player would have a note. If a new guy came in and stepped on somebody elses note tahts what teh cry would be. GET OFFA MY FUCKIN NOTE!
Show last night was two sets from 8:45 , which is a very good time to play music I reckon. Two sets with a reading. The latter part went surprisingly well again. Seems to up the energy level of the show quite a bit rather than bring it down. Its a challenge and an intrusion.A change of gear.In Ballarat I read a part of the book mentioning that area. In Geelong I did the same and so to for Sydney. Couldn't do it in Hobart as that passage mentions a strange sexy woman grinding her pussy against the foldback speaker and she was actually there again. So I chickened out and read a part about being up myself in general.
Sydney is delightfully sunny yet cold. Perfect Autumn weather. Two of my guitar pedals are busted and my leather cap and trousers seem much more gay when I wear them here. I am chickening out of that too. Have to go shopping for some clothes.
People came to the show who have seen us play since the late 80s and even earlier. I am sometimes amazed how long this trick has spun out. Feel like a country singer.
People called out for strange requests - "Beautiful nightmare" (1991) "Maggie Cassidy" and "I held the cool breeze" (1993). The latter two were attempted and played very well. Very delicately as we felt for the chords. Mark Fitzgibbon had never heard or played them before and caught all the changes beautifully. What an amazing band!It was nice to be inside those songs again.
Somebody kept hollering for a song we had already played of course, which is a bit silly.
Fayelord (whose told us his name means FAIRY in Gaelic)was in attendance so he was no help as usual, despie helping , in either packing any gear or carrying it. But he was excellent and amusing company as usual. Nice to have a FREAK in the house . (You know I love freaks).
Tonight (May 20th) we play at the Vault which is in a place called Windsor which I have never heard of, tomorrow at Coogee Diggers with Dog Trumpet and Sunday at the Clarendon Guesthouse in katoomba.

driving to sydney

2011-05-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

yes that Hobart show was fierce. Never know what to expect down there. Saw Tony Joe White at the airport. Travelling light as usual. An icon and a comrade.People came to our show after seeing him earlier at the Casino.
Yelling and screaming - whooping and hollering crowd- and not just me...
Back in melbourne I did BLB at RRR with E Wack and Mick Harvey came in to talk about his latest album "sketches from the book of the dead". Was on the show for an hour talking about the recording and the deaths and the singing.
Lighter than it sounds. The talk and the sounds.

Drove down the Hume and stopped at Tarcutta at 8:30 pm . Tried Holbrook and Gundagai in the past.The lady brought home cooked lamb shank soup to our rooms. Country cooking and hospitality! I didn't think it existed!
The next day we drove into Sydney. Stopped at Gundagai. A most beautiful country town on a lovely Autumn morning. Sun shining and air clear and clean . Townsfolk are mostly elderly. Had a coffee from the art deco Niagara cafe. Drove on.
Got into Sydney and did a reading/ talk type show at the Seymour centre with Steve Cannane from the abc. Signed a lot of books and met people who would rarely go to a live show. Took questions from them.

The next day I did an interview at Fbi which is Sydneys community radio. Always an inspiring place. Interesting people working there. I had to play some fave artists. I played all contemporary and local stuff. Teeth and Tongue,Sons of Rico,Laneous and the Family Yah, Jane Dust, the Ancients, Belles will Ring and a few others. Meant to play Art Rush and Cloud Control and Stu Thomas and Yeo but not enough time.

Tonight we play at Notes Live on Enmore Rd- 2 sets from 8:45 pm with reading. Sound like a chef/ redstauranteur.
Friday 20th we are at the Vault in Windsor.
Sat 21st we are at Coogee Diggers with Dog Trumpet.
Sunday 22nd we are at the Clarendon Guesthouse in Katoomba.

On Wed 25th I am doing a reading at Manly Library.
Then we do Lizottes in Dee Why, Kincumber and Newcastle.
Then a reading at Maitland Art Gallery - 230 High st Maitland- organized by the Maitland City Library. Thats on Monday 30th May.

melbourne cd launch-hobart republic may 14th

2011-05-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

We played two fine venues in Geelong and Ballarat on thursday and friday. Both towns that had been on our list to never set foot in again due to the population of music lovers therein ignoring our presence there on several occasions. They could have it!
A new album a new book , a new agent and we were again walking onto a stage in both joints. people who do come to shows in these regional centres are always up for a good time so its rarely a total bust. Both Nights were pretty riotous rave ups actually. I did a reading from my book in both venues which is a new thing. A bit of an intrusion into the normal flow of things. A challenge to me and to the audience to make it work or to let it work.
The opening act in geelong was a bunch of teens called the Murlocs who got that "Nuggets " sound that so many strive so hard for, so absolutely perfectly. they have a great drummer and guitarist ( the oldest at 21). bass player and singer. the latter is called Ambrose and he has the louche poise, the wayward fringe, the high Keith Relf like tone in his voice and incredible chops on the harmonica. I hope they can stay together to record something. Who knows?
Stayed the night in Geelong to make some pr stops the next day. Went into a t shirt and geek shop to pass some time. Learned much from the proprietor. Young blokes in the area and down to the coast are mad for that Nuggets sound. Shirts with Brian Jones on walk out of the store. The guitarist of the frowning clouds sits in a corner of an Indian restaurant where he plays sitar all night. Bowie shirts are selling to young women. Smiths shirts sell but not Morissey. River Phoenix from 'stand by me" sells but not from "my own private idaho". Shirts related to "the Big lebowski" sell by the van load. I am told that young stoners int he area watch the Big Lebowski "10 times a month" and they talk in lines from the film! I bought a t shirt with Lou Reeds "sally can't dance" cover and Clare copped a Bowie.
We both wanted a BIG BANG THEORY related t with Sheldon on it but there were too many to choose from.
We moved onto Ballarat where I did an interview on the afternoon show on Victorian ABC.
The show in Ballarat was so cold the audience had overcoats, beanies and gloves on . And it was inside!
The following night we played at the Northcote Social Club. WE are playing as a 5 piece with Mark Fitzgibbon on keys. Go Go Sapien opened the show with a preview of their new video clip for "altered ego". They all dressed in white , the drummer had headwear normally reserved for people working at a damaged nuclear facility. Cal on guitar had an Aztec feathered mask. Em and the bass player looked almost normal and Will the singer had a giant white furry shape over his whole head.
They were very strong and powerful and dynamic. A great band.
The audience were very psyched for our show and we had an absolute ball. The reading raised the tension and the screams and we kicked it home.
This week we are in Hobart which I expect to be colder than Ballarat which is of course , built on the side of a witches tit.

Saturday 14th May- the Republic Bar- Hobart.Special guets- Hey Mook.

Thursday 19th May -3pm Better Read Than Dead Book Signing
265 King St, Newtown
http://www.betterread.com.au/
Wed 18th May- reading event at the Seymour Centre -Sydney writers fest-7pm

19/05 Thursday - Notes, Newtown
www.noteslive.net.au
20/05 Friday - The Vault, Windsor
vault146.com.au
21/05 Saturday - Coogee Diggers
coogeediggers.com.au

22/05 Sunday - Clarendon Guesthouse-- Katoomba
http://www.clarendonguesthouse.com.au/

Sat 23rd may -1001 australian nights -POPCORN TAXI Event at Bondi Cinema 7pm
Monday 23rd May - 7.30pm Ariel Booksellers Launch.
42 Oxford Street PADDINGTON NSW 2021

26/05 Thursday Lizotte’s – Dee Why
27/05 Friday Lizotte’s – Kincumber
28/05 Saturday Lizotte’s - Newcastle

Monday 30th May - Maitland Library READING
480 High Street, Maitland

Thurs 2nd June Gollan Hotel 73 Keen st Lismore
Friday 3rd June Jubilee Hotel - Brisbane
Saturday 4th June SOL BAR, Maroochydore QLD
Sunday 5th June- Great Northern - Byron bay-Ph: 02 6685 6454
Saturday June 11 in the courtyard of Happy Yess Arts Inc Darwin
Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos - Rye Victoria
Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA
Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar - Canberra
Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

april into may notes

2011-05-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

yes I have been doing a few readings in bookshops and the like.One of the likes being at Handsome Steves House of Refreshment. Handsome Steve being the trademarked handle for Steve Miller ,guitar player in the Moodists. This was a very intimate affair.Knew everybody stuffed into the room. Wasn't scared or anything , just very hot and clammy in that room.Very enjoyable. Warm reception. Hugs!
Otherwise, spent a day walking around some shops gripping and grinning. Used to do that stuff in the music biz when there were record shops with people in them. Still are a few thank god but I go to them anyway.
Oh, there was International Record Shop Day which saw me standing on a small stage at Basement Discs in Melbourne for a few hours with a mic in hand, in the company of Henry Wagons. And his poor little pug Gordon who Henry pimps all over the joint to sucker people into thinking hes a nice guy. What sort of a nice guy would treat a pug so wantonly? I arks you!That thing is a ball of wasted anxiety!
Only one reading was a bit of a bummer. Badly organized, like being in a episode of "Flight of the conchords". I've been wearing a t shirt with my name and face on it . i was in a Collingwood/Fitzroy Douche-topian street. A fat man on a bicycle treddlied past and made a "tsuh!" sound in my direction. I upset the vibe of his "Xanadoucheian idyll. Still got it.
Was a relief to get to a rehearsal room with the band last week and go over some music. Tour starts tonight and is on until early July.
I have started playing the clarinet which is a joyful experience. Not to do it on the stage for a while yet.
The Harry Howard N.D.E. album is being mastered. The N.D.E. did a gig at the appallingly twee rock theme pub in the city . In the equally twee AC DC Lane. Opening acts both sounded like Free or the Egar Broughton band and could only be listened to out on the street, so loud were the amps! All band members had ear plugs but.
In honour of the cartoonish rock theme I put two sleeves of tattoos on. People were scared, especially Harry.
I am now acquiring a headless Steinberger bass which may see me thrown out of the band. You can stick them in your pants pocket though. The basses.

Our new cd is available at our website.

http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com/General/swag007.htm

Thursday 5th May - Bended Elbow- GEELONG.
Friday 6th May- Bended Elbow - Ballarat.

May 7th - Northcote Social Club _ "ROCK"N"ROLL IS WHERE I HIDE" cd LAUNCH with special guests Go Go Sapien.

Saturday 14th May- the Republic Bar- Hobart.Special guets- Hey Mook.

Wednesday 18th May- 7pm- Sydney writers festival- Seymour Centre
Thursday 19th May -3pm Better Read Than Dead Book Signing
265 King St, Newtown
http://www.betterread.com.au/
Wed 18th May- reading event at the Seymour Centre -Sydney writers fest-7pm

19/05 Thursday - Notes, Newtown
www.noteslive.net.au
20/05 Friday - The Vault, Windsor
vault146.com.au
21/05 Saturday - Coogee Diggers
coogeediggers.com.au
22/05 Sunday - Clarendon Guesthouse-- Katoomba
http://www.clarendonguesthouse.com.au/

Sat 23rd may -1001 australian nights -POPCORN TAXI Event at Bondi Cinema 7pm
Monday 23rd May - 7.30pm Ariel Booksellers Launch.
42 Oxford Street PADDINGTON NSW 2021

26/05 Thursday Lizotte’s – Dee Why
www.lizottes.com.au
27/05 Friday Lizotte’s – Kincumber
www.lizottes.com.au
28/05 Saturday Lizotte’s - Newcastle
www.lizottes.com.au

Monday 30th May - Maitland Library READING
480 High Street, Maitland

Thurs 2nd June Gollan Hotel 73 Keen st Lismore
Friday 3rd June Jubilee Hotel - Brisbane
Saturday 4th June SOL BAR, Maroochydore QLD
Sunday 5th June- Great Northern - Byron bay-Ph: 02 6685 6454

Saturday June 11 in the courtyard of Happy Yess Arts Inc Darwin

Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos - Rye Victoria
Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA
Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar - Canberra
Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

campaign trail notes

2011-04-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

Time has been eaten up totally with book and cd coming out. The book has been getting an amazing reception so far. Not really used to it. Embraced by critical voices.

Ta!

The launch for the book was incredibly well attended by many old friends and musicians and artists among them. Never ha d a night like it really. Martin Hughes from Affirme Press and Warren Costello from Liberation introduced the night, and me, in a very formal way which was quite touching for us. Introduced to media and artistic people as musicians and an author of interest and integrity. It meant a lot.

Elizabeth McCarthy who co presents "BLB" with me on RRR then gave an introduction to me that was equally impressive. More from a friend and comrade. It meant a lot as she is definitely from "the new world". By that I mean comrades and friends we have worked and associated with over the last decade rather than from the distant past.
We then sat about having a few glasses of water in the bar. Feeling great.

The previous morning I had been a guest on RRR and then went on "THE CIRCLE" on Channel 10 which is an afternoon how presented by women. Like all stalk appearances, it was a bit like an alien abduction. The bright lights come down and you lose track of twenty or so minutes of your life.
The producer was in the Green Room, trying to sort out what I could talk about and how I could interact with the hosts. He mentioned someone from The Scissor Sisters. I said I didn't know squat about that act. He was very nice and not at all trying to make me do anything I didn't want to. He asked if I would dance on , doing a bit of a "mash up" as he had read that I liked hop hop.I said that I had only one gear and it was what he was getting as he spoke to me. He laughed and appreciated that.Chrissie Francis, Yumi Stynes, Kate Ceberano and Glenn Robbins were the hosts. I always feel the hosts are the most nervous in these types of situations. I can control the tempo.

Looking forward to ore shows and readings over the next couple of months.
Harry Howard and the N.D.E. album in the can. Started to learn the clarinet.(Well it took me half a day to get a note and I'm enjoying the feel of it)

Thursday 14th April
Reading 6pm House of Refreshment Level 1, Abbotsford Convent, Heliers St
Abbotsford VIC 3067 p. 03 9419 5255

Dave Graney appearing as part of a group of musicians for INTERNATIONAL RECORD STORE DAY at Basement Discs in Melbourne.

Thursday 28th April
12.45pm -1.15pm The Wheeler Centre
Topic: “Will the social networks bring back an interest in the future/ the unknown?”
176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne 3000 (03) 9094 7800
6.30pm Reading at Readings, St Kilda .
112 Acland St, St Kilda
Saturday 30th April
1-2pm - Reading at TITLE
Sydney Rd Brunswick

5-6pm Williamstown Literary Festival
Old Council Chamber @ Williamstown Town Hall,
Ferguson Street, Williamstown
Thursday 5th May - Bended Elbow- GEELONG.
Friday 6th May- Bended Elbow - Ballarat.

May 7th - Northcote Social Club _ "ROCK"N"ROLL IS WHERE I HIDE" cd LAUNCH with special guests Go Go Sapien.

12th May - appearing on the Marngrook footy show.

Saturday 14th May- the Republic Bar- Hobart

18th May- Sydney Writers festival - READING/appearance at the SEYMOUR CENTRE 7pm.

Thursday 19th May
3pm Better Read Than Dead Book Signing
265 King St, Newtown

19/05 Thursday - Notes, Newtown

20/05 Friday - The Vault, Windsor

21/05 Saturday - Coogee Diggers

22/05 Sunday - Clarendon Guesthouse-- Katoomba

Monday May 23rd. POPCORN TAXI with Dave Graney- Bondi Event Cinema- Bondi Junction.

Monday 23rd May
7.30pm Ariel Booksellers Launch.
42 Oxford Street PADDINGTON NSW 2021

26/05 Thursday Lizotte’s – Dee Why

27/05 Friday Lizotte’s – Kincumber

Saturday 28th May
2pm Reading @ McClean’s Booksellers
69 Beaumont Street, Hamilton NSW 2303 p. 02 4969 2525
http://www.macleans.indies.com.au
www.lizottes.com.au
28/05 Saturday Lizotte’s - Newcastle
www.lizottes.com.au

Monday 30th May
Maitland Library READING
480 High Street, Maitland

Thurs 2nd June Gollan Hotel 73 Keen st Lismore (solo show)
Friday 3rd June Jubilee Hotel - 470 st pauls terrace fortitude valley Brisbane
Saturday 4th June SOL BAR, Maroochydore QLD
Sunday 5th June- Great Northern - Byron bay-Ph: 02 6685 6454
Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos - Rye Victoria
Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA
Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar - Canberra
Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

rock'n'roll is where I hide/1001 australian nights tour dates

2011-03-20T03:24:00.000-07:00

DAVE GRANEY - CLARE MOORE - LURID YELLOW MIST
'ROCK'N ROLL IS WHERE I HIDE' ALBUM TOUR

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist live and work out of Melbourne Australia. Dave Graney and drummer Clare Moore played with the Moodists from 1978 to 1986. They then played with the White Buffaloes/Coral Snakes from 1987-1997.

“Rock’n Roll Is Where I Hide” is a collection of electric rock’n’roll re-recordings of a dozen Graney classics. Dave describes it as “our 3rd debut album”.

"I mean your debut album is the one where the band knows the material inside out and just lays it down in the studio without even thinking. They know it so well.
The songs on this record are songs that we’ve been playing, on and off, for a very long time. Sometimes, we went for a decade without touching them. Then we came back to them from a different direction. By ‘we”, I mean myself and Clare Moore who are the only ones to play on any of the original recordings. Stu Thomas has played bass with us since 2004. Stuart Perera has played guitar with us since 1998 , when he joined us as a teenager. Mark Fitzgibbon is a jazz powerhouse who we first played with in London many years ago in the Moodists. They mostly learned the songs at rehearsal from me going over the arrangements on a guitar. Years ago. Then we kept playing them into different shapes. For some, we might have listened to the original recordings. Mostly, we wanted to play them a bit differently and sometimes they just grew to be different.”

“To mix the record we asked Victor Van Vugt (PJ Harvey, Beth Orton, Augie March) in New York City, who had left Australia with the Moodists many years ago and also produced our 1995 cd, ‘The Soft’n’Sexy Sound’ “ - Dave Graney.

“Rock’n Roll Is Where I Hide” will be available from your favorite music vendor on Friday April 15th, 2011 through Liberation Music.

As well as the album Dave Graney is also about to publish his memoirs in book form: '1001 Australian Nights' has the legendary rock showman taking us on a journey about growing up, finding your voice and hitting the right pitch. In August 1977, Dave sets off on a road-trip from small-town Australia, a young man fired up by punk rock, outside of life and looking for a way in. When he loses the map Graney finds his groove, then twists and turns his way through three decades as a working artist. This is no standard rock'n'roll trip; it's Graney up close, out there and on his game. Published by Affirm Press & available from your favorite book vendors Monday April 4th.

DAVE GRANEY & THE LURID YELLOW MIST
will be performing the music of 'Rock'n Roll Is Where I Hide' at the following fine venues:

Thurs May 5th THE BENDED ELBOW, Yarra St, Geelong VIC
PH: 03 5229 4477 www.oztix.com.au

Frid May 6th THE BENDED ELBOW, Lydiard Street, Ballarat VIc
PH: 03 5332 1811 www.oztix.com.au

Sat May 7th The Northcote Social Club, 301 High Street,
Northcote, VIC
ALBUM LAUNCH “ROCK’N’ROLL IS WHERE I HIDE"
w/- special guests Go Go Sapien.
Ticket enquiries PH:: (03) 9486 1677
or purchase direct from The Corner Box Office, 57 Swan St, Richmond

Sat May 14th THE REPUBLIC BAR, Elizabeth St, North Hobart TAS
PH: 03 6234 6954 www.republicbar.com or www.moshtix.com.au

Thurs May 19th Notes, 75 Enmore Road -Newtown, NSW
PH: (02) 9557 5111 www.noteslive.net.au

Fri May 20th The Vault, 146 George Street - Windsor NSW
PH: (02) 4587 8146 www.vault146.com.au/

Sat May 21st Coogee Diggers, cnr Carr & Byron St, Coogee, NSW
PH: 02 9665 4466 www.coogeediggers.com.au

Sun May 22nd THE CLARENDON HOTEL, Katoomba NSW
PH: 02 4782 1322 www.clarendonguesthouse.com.au

Thurs May 26th Lizottes, 4/5 629 Pittwater Road, Dee Why NSW
PH: 02 9984 9933 www.lizottes.com.au

Fri May 27th Lizottes, Central Coast, Lot 3 Avoca Drive, Kincumber NSW
PH: 02 4368 2017 www.lizottes.com.au

Sat May 28th Lizottes, Newcastle , 31 Morehead St, Lambton NSW
PH: 02 4368 2017 www.lizottes.com.au

Thurs June 2nd THE GOLLAN HOTEL, 73 Keen Street, Lismore NSW
Show info www.sideshowpresents.com.au

Fri June 3rd THE Jubilee Hotel, 470 st pauls terrace,
Fortitude Valley QLD
PH: 1300 762 545 www.oztix.com.au

Sat June 4th SOL BAR, Maroochydore, Sunshine Coast QLD
Show info and tickets: www.oztix.com.au

Sun June 5th THE GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL – Byron Bay, NSW
Ph: 02 6685 6454 www.oztix.com.au

Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria

Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos - Rye Victoria

Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic

Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide

Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA

Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar - Canberra

Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com
http://davegraney.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/davegraney
http://twitter.com/davegraney
http://www.reverbnation.com/davegraney

For further album & tour information & interview opportunities regarding the
‘Rock ‘n Roll Is Where I Hide’ album by Dave Graney
Please contact Mushroom Group Promotions
Melbourne: 03 8687 1353 | Sydney: 02 8356 1299 |
Or Email info@mgpromotions.com.au
National Project Publicist; Sarah Morgan 03 9695 7824/0408 540 019 or sarahm@mgpromotions.com.au
Blog: http://mushroomgroup.wordpress.com/

For further information & interview opportunities regarding the publication
“1001 Australian Nights” by Dave Graney
Please contact Zeitgeist Media Group:
Benython Oldfield 02 8060 9715/0410 355 790 benython@zeitgeistmediagroup.com

First Tuesday Book Club March 15th ABCtv

2011-03-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

I was invited to be a guest on the First Tuesday Book Club and it was filmed in mid January.Based around "cult" books, I had to answer some questions and provide my idea of a cult book. This was when they first approached me. Had to give some information. I dashed it off pretty quick and sent it off in November. Forgot what I'd said by the time it got to taping the show. Jennifer Byrne had it fresh in her mind and I was scrambling to stay on deck and on topic.

This is my cult resume....

1. Describe your top pick for cult novel - and why.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by M Barnard Eldershaw.
Why? A sci fi novel written in Sydney during WW2 by two women, writing as one name. Very modernist. Censored at the time of release. Features a narrative of a writer in the future reading a book he has written about events in Sydney in the past . Leading to the vague, drifting Utopian world they inhabit. Touches on the joys of a writer in the midst of creation when he is in possession and is possessed by a story . Also quite political. The USA offers Japan, Australia at the end of the war, I think.

2. Is the time of your life you read it crucial? Must you be somewhere under 30 - in your teens, likely - when you have your first exposure?
I read in it my 40s. It wasn't widely available and was re released by VIRAGO, not an imprint I was drawn toward when I was younger for some reason. More the accessibility in this case.

3. Does a cult book have to have a broader social impact, capturing the zeitgeist of a time, of others being switched on to the same idea eg Less Than Zero or Fight Club. Or can it be utterly personal?

I like hidden, occult things which escaped the clammy touch of their times. I get the same freshness from reading Patrick Whites stories. And David Fosters.

4. Can bestsellers count? Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh has sold over a million copies, is it still cult? Lord of the Rings is considered cult by many ...

Books which have had a long life are great. Continual re discovery. Best sellers? No, i don't think they can count. Damaged goods. Shop soiled merch for the most part. I saw a sign outside Collected Works bookshop in Melbourne saying that the Bestsellers of the day will all be forgotten and small print books and pamphlets will live forever. And change the world.

5. How much does the lifestyle or excesses of the AUTHOR contribute to making a book cultish? (with extra points given to authors who die young and tragically) Or is it fundamentally about the grip it has on the imagination of the READER?
Some writers are possessed of good looks and dark glamour. Some, like Hemingway, are talked up (and down) by a lousy crowd and a lot of people never approach them. People who might probably love his stuff. I'm not impressed by dribbling drunks or dope fiends. Though some hop heads write great poetry when they are infused with the drama of their scoring and fixing.

6. Is achieving cult status something that happens spontaneously or can publishers create or concoct a cult book?
Yes, spontaneously- though pr companies all try for that authentic note.

7. Truman Capote famously said that Jack Kerouac was "not writing, but typing" - does the quality of the writing count

Well, there is someone like HP Lovecraft or JG Ballard who can, and have been parodied but their actual writing will live on for years.

8. Do you ever go back to a cult book? Or do you suck it up then put it aside, knowing you can never pass this way again

Sometimes I go back and have another look. Never the same feeling of entering the unknown so I don't often think to do it.

9. Do you think less of someone who doesn't share your passion for a cult book? (eg The Alchemist/Chariots of the Gods) And more if they do?
Well it's nice to share an enthusiasm but I don't demand it.

10. Cult books make lousy films. Discuss!

Not always true. Terry Gillams "fear and loathing" was a good film. The director had a feel for the times. Naked Lunch by that Canadian director was good too. He put it in a more biographical direction. "The sheltering Sky" by Bertolucci was a nice try but Paul Bowles's books are unfilmable, I think. Leave them alone.

rock n roll is where I hide /1001 australian nights album-book tour dates

2011-03-08T21:07:00.000-08:00

Saturday 26th March
National Theatre - Braidwood, NSW

Thursday 31st March- Dave Graney and Clare Moore playing bass and drums for Harry Howards NDE at the Old Bar- Fitzroy.

Monday 4th April

8am 3RRR, Breakfasters

The Circle, Ch 10 LIVE IN STUDIO

Friday 8th April Dave Graney and Clare Moore playing bass and drums for Harry Howards NDE at the CHERRY BAR- Melbourne.

Saturday 9th April- Clare Moore playing with the Ukeladies at the Old Bar- Fitzroy.

Thursday 14th April
Reading ?pm House of Refreshment Level 1, Abbotsford Convent, Heliers St
Abbotsford VIC 3067 p. 03 9419 5255

Sat 16th April - Clare Moore playing with the Hired Guns at the Retreat.
Dave Graney appearing as part of a group of musicians for INTERNATIONAL RECORD STORE DAY at Basement Discs in Melbourne.

Thursday 28th April
12.45pm -1.15pm The Wheeler Centre
Topic: “Will the social networks bring back an interest in the future/ the unknown?”
176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne 3000 (03) 9094 7800

6.30pm Reading at Readings, St Kilda .
112 Acland St, St Kilda

Saturday 30th April

1-2pm - Reading at TITLE
Sydney Rd Brunswick
http://www.titlespace.com/

5-6pm Williamstown Literary Festival
Old Council Chamber @ Williamstown Town Hall,
Ferguson Street, Williamstown

Thursday 5th May - Bended Elbow- GEELONG.
Friday 6th May- Bended Elbow - Ballarat.

Saturday 7th May- CD LAUNCH for ROCK N ROLL I WHERE I HIDE at the Northcote Social Club .Go Go Sapien open the show.

Friday 13th May - the LOFT- Launceston
Saturday 14th May- the Republic Bar- Hobart

Thursday 19th May
3pm Better Read Than Dead Book Signing
265 King St, Newtown
http://www.betterread.com.au/

Notes, Newtown
75 Enmore Road Newtown, 2042 (02) 9557 5111
http://www.noteslive.net.au

Friday 20th May

The Vault, Windsor
146 George Street Windsor NSW 2765 (02) 4587 8146
http://www.vault146.com.au/

Saturday 21st May
Coogee Diggers
Corner of Carr and Byron St Coogee, NSW, Australia 2034 02 9665 4466
http://www.coogeediggers.com.au

Sunday 22nd May
Hotel Gearin
273 Great Western Highway Katoomba, Blue Mountains 2780 02 4782 4395
http://www.hotelgearin.com

Monday 23rd May
7.30pm Ariel Booksellers Launch.
42 Oxford Street PADDINGTON NSW 2021

Thursday 26th May
Lizottes, Sydney
4/5 629 Pittwater Rd Dee Why NSW 02 9984 9933
http://www.lizottes.com.au

Friday 27th May
Lizottes, Central Coast
Lot 3 Avoca Drive Kincumber NSW 2251 02 4368 2017
http://www.lizottes.com.au

Saturday 28th May

2pm Reading @ McClean’s Booksellers
69 Beaumont Street, Hamilton NSW 2303 p. 02 4969 2525
http://www.macleans.indies.com.au

Gig: Lizottes, Newcastle
31 Morehead St Lambton NSW 2299 02 4368 2017
http://www.lizottes.com.au

Monday 30th May

Maitland Library READING
480 High Street, Maitland

Wed 1st June solo show at the Hoey Moey- COFFS HARBOUR
http://www.hoeymoey.com.au/
Thurs 2nd June Gollan Hotel 73 Keen st Lismore (solo show)
Friday 3rd June The Flood Collective - Lismore
Saturday 4th June Old Museum - Brisbane
Sunday 5th June- Great Northern - Byron bay-

Thursday 9th - Sunday 12th June- WA dates TBA.

Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Bah Tacos - Rye Victoria

Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA

Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar - Canberra

Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

Questions and answers for Australian Bookseller Magazine.

2011-03-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

An edited version of this article is in the current edition, along with a review.The writer notes that "some have said" my music is more style than content. Nobody has ever said that. The book is about the style and the content and the tone.

1. How did 1001 Australian Nights came about? Was it something you’d been working on for some time—or were you made an offer you couldn’t refuse that got you writing?

It was an idea that seemed to make sense one day and I started on it, handwriting in a big old blank hardcover book and then I typed it into a computer later on, after I got the feel and shape of it.

I wanted to write the story of my life as a musician and include the flow of the lyrical side of it that I'd been putting out on all my albums. It was a story I'd been writing within my songs and I thought I'd earth it and make a longer piece of it. Only my adult life a s a musician though.

2. Could you talk us through your writing process? You drew on tour diaries for parts of it (specifically the tours with Nick Cave and Henry Wagons). How else did you go about collating or accessing your memories?

Well I like to read books by musicians. Not really by people writing about music so much, very few have any empathy for the players. Miles davis autobiography is great, Charles Mingus, Wreckless Eric, Louis Armstrongs dope dealer ,(also a player) Mezz Mezzrow wrote a really good one. Julian Cope, Zodiac Mindwarp.

I don't like nostalgic things much and its disappointing how much of modern music is driven by it. I'm not really that much of a household name that I think the minuteae of my personal life is worth putting under peoples noses and , in a way, all stories of bands and players are the same. Archetypal stuff. So I tried t write my story in a mythological way at the beginning. the times when I launched into a life of music. I don't come from a rich background nor did I have any higher education. In the world of music this is a bit of an oddity as they're all silver spoon types so I thought it might be interesting to trace where I got the bright idea to be a player. I don't mention many peoples names and tried to keep it interior and mythic. people feeling around in the dark. I wasn't being demeaning or disrespectful to any of my comrades.I hope.
The book is in two parts.One reflective in a long shot style and the other more sharply focussed,recent events.What I thought I was doing and what I think I'm doing.

3. Your love of literature is evident in this memoir. It has a Kerouac-like road trip feel; noir stylings of a hard-boiled novel; and you make wonderful use of the run-on sentence in the section headed I Who Know the Others. Are there any particular writers that inspired your memoir? And would you consider turning to fiction—perhaps a crime novel?

A lot of the book is about where I copped my tone. Tone is everything in music and writing. I love Guillaume Apollinaire and Arthur Rimbaud for their fearless, heroic bravado I love the pulp writers from the 30s to the 80s! I really love the australian poet Robert Gray and his recent book, "the country I came through last" was a great inspiration. Those of us who loved his work would have really tuned into it and, in a way got a bit disappointed when he finally earthed his poems with the real events of his life. He brought it all down for us. Its great. i also love david Foster, especially his recent "sons of the rumour".

4. Sartorial ensembles feature almost as characters in their own right in this memoir. You’re obviously a stylish dude. If ‘clothes maketh the man, what clothes maketh Dave Graney?

I dont talk about this shit.

5. I understand there will be a ‘greatest hits’ album released to coincide with the memoir’s publication and numerous live shows across the country. What else will you be doing to publicise this memoir?

I've recorded an album for Liberation of all my favourite songs (of mine) from the 90s. Its called "rock'n'roll is where I hide. Its kind of a greatest hits but a also a re recording. Its a real rock'n'roll album with my band "the Lurid yellow Mist". its not a sad, acoustic set. All musicians who out records find that they are playing the songs so much better a year later. This will be about fifteen years later for the most part. We know the shit inside out, above and below. Its my third debut album. Its got flow and bounce and thats what I like.

6. Finally, what was the last book you read and loved?

I have discovered a 1920s british writer called AE Coppard. I have read one called "adam and eve and pinch me" and 'clorinda walks in heaven". I find his writing pretty astounding. He has sentences that other people labour over through whole books to express.

CHEERS!

2011-01-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

This article appears in the current Adelaide Review.

Went for a walk one morning. Just after Xmas and New Year and the world was still kind of giddy and hungover and not quite back into gear. Where I live is a bit like the Adelaide hills, only further out from the city and covered in fern trees and gums. Hills. The east side hills of Melbourne. A walk is as good as a run and you go up and down the vale. The road twisted to a dirt track and a fellow was ahead of me, struggling with a box. he kept stopping to rest and I eventually caught up with him. Ahead of us was a bluestone set of steps and then two quite sheer streets that take a lot out of the fittest person. he had stopped to rip open the carton and down a beer. it was 9:30 on a Sunday morning. I am always gladdened by the sight of people misbehaving and offered to help him with his burden up the next few levels. He said he was ok but he was puffing and I picked up the box. We walked on and he was embarassedly saying that the next few streets were just that bit too steep at the moment. I agreed. I offered some advice to him in that he could have bought cans and probably got 30 to a case and they’d still have been lighter. He said he liked Crown Ales.
He had standards. he said he’d started drinking at 6 am that morning. His wife was not around to tell him to stop and the beer was sitting there in the sky. the way he said it sounded logical.
I helped him to his gate and we parted ways.
I’m not a drinker myself, though I once was. I got out of the habit when I moved to this area. It involved so much more driving that I just stopped. I also noticed I dropped about 8 kilos immediately and that was s a plus too. Also, being a musician, you find after a while that its great to FEEL the EXCITEMENT and the fear when you’re performing. To know and to be aware .To have the PRESENCE.
I know a lot of drinkers and I see a lot of drinkers. Like that fellow on the street they can be cute and funny for a short time. Prolonged periods spent in their company can get a but tedious. Repetition etc. Maudlin mood swings. Jolly drunks are cool. When I drank I stayed up. I was talkative and came from a family of heroic drinkers. And that family came from a town which was in a country where boozing was a national sport. People used to carry BATHTUBS full of cans and bottles into Adelaide oval to watch the cricket.I’ve seen film of that crazy mob doing that and it filled me with pride that I once lived in such a free and easy country. Now its all law and order and the booze and food concessions are sold to private companies who sell light beer and pale foodstuffs to well behaved crowds and the sponsors are happy etc. The crowd is bought and sold and fed and watered. Football and cricket the same. I know the cry is that its more of a family friendly thing but I despair of living in a world fit only for goddam kids. Hey let ‘em look through the window at the adult hell inside the bar. They can look forward to it with FEAR or EXCITEMENT. At the moment though, its not for them.
On the other side of life in the hills- the night time.-just before Xmas a wild looking character had his picture in the paper for allegedly attacking a copper with a knife. In a suburb even further out. His picture made him look like a zombie, worse than Saddams when he came out of the hole in the ground in Iraq. People thought it funny and pasted the picture as their avatar on social networks as the image of their post Xmas/new Year feel. He was still at large though. The papers said he was in the forests of the hills “travelling up to 30 k’s a night”. For about a week a helicopter kept flying around in the early hours. Someone in a house further into the hills, someone who was staying there for a few weeks, had heard a noise outside and called the police. (Its so quiet up hear you get woken by birds and a car driving past is thunderous). Dutifully, the helicopter was sent out at 2am. People reported that they had fewer eggs so he must be nearby. Up went the chopper again. The folk devil was eventually caught in an inner city suburb and charges have yet to be laid. Back on your heads everyone!
Cheers.

New cd- "rock'n'oll is where I hide - due April on LIBERATION.

New book- "1001 Australian nights" - due April on Affirm Press.

death by harmonica

2011-01-10T00:14:00.000-08:00

THIS APPEARS IN THE LATEST EDITION OF AUSTRALIAN MUSICIAN MAGAZINE.

Death by Harmonica.
I was doin'’ a gig deep in the hills. A modern day gig which means it was pretty primitive. I mean not much thought went into the situation. Nowadays, people have watched so much music on tv and youtube that they think it just “happens”. There is not a lot of empathy with the players in most areas music. I mean look at the critiques. its all about the business (and don’t they know it all) or about the medias perception or recognition of something. They don’t know shit. The public like to think they know whats goin on too. Have you ever wondered why everybody thinks they’re cool now? Its because they know the tempo. Because most of the music allowed in public is OLD. Because people HATE new stuff. The clubs are definitely on that beat. They treat the players like bums. You have to go into these joints like a commando.
Anyway. This little joint was a resonant , hard surfaced cube. Even talking in the room was hard. Three people talking made a real racket. The reverberant sound blew it all up into a major squall. Made it sound busy and exciting I guess. I could deal with that.
(I must say, there's a whole new business out there to be made in dealing with sound in places like gyms. People don't understand it at all. They only know volume).
Had to take my own sound in etc. I could do that. I was by myself with a great amp with a twelve string guitar and a mic pumping through it. Times like that, you dig in and open fire. I pumped out two sets of about an hour each of my own songs. I was a machine.
After the second set I was packing up and a fellow approached me with a beer in his hand, aussie young man style. He asked did I want to have a “jam” with his friend. Turned out his friend played the harmonica. He was “real good” I was told. I’d had to get into a certain mode of defiant hardness to do the gig and was still coasting on that plane. I said, “ I bet he’s real good, I bet he tells you too!”. The kid nodded. I asked if he played anything. He said he mucked around on the guitar. I was feeling like I could give a fuck so I told him. “Cos thats a real instrument. A harmonica is like a sad bike thats left outside a supermarket that everybody gets on and goes for a ride!” He still didn’t seem to get my evil drift and I went on ( and on) that an instrument like a guitar or a set of drums or a sax or a piano is something you never really get to the end of and is also really hard to get a note out of at the beginning. You have to dive into it and get humiliated at first and that feeling of humility never really leaves you when you get down to it.
I was feeling a bit silly and felt I was owed something and that he wasn’t really going to respond so I turned it up a notch . I said “ I see your mate over there. He looks real confident and I bet he is. Harp players are like that because anybody can get a note out of those damn things. They march into your dressing room and light up a fag like they’re a brother and everybodys into getting fucked up and they’re too loud and they never fucking stop. They slobber all over every part of every goddam song if you let them! I have just played for two hours, songs I have written over a couple of decades. From my mind and my life and you are asking me to stand here and comp a twelve bar while this dribbler in high waisted stretch acid washed jeans blows some crummy licks from a fuckin’ toy at me? No I think I’ll pass on that. Stick to the guitar!”

I was being reasonable and unreasonable. Rude and stupid. Sometimes you find yourself, as a player, a musician, in a world of pain. Painful, yabbering, swaying, wall eyed t shirted , gelled, bunged up drunks. And they get stuck in a loop and try to drag you into it. If you’re a player, you still have your legs and you know the room, you feel the need to take something back from this world. Perhaps your own dignity. For a moment. You get over it and then wake up to a new day. Its not always that way. Can be if you let it.

The next week I did a gig and I had my band with me so I was happier. In firefights, its best to have some light artillery on your side. At this gig I saw and heard Matt Walker and Broderick Smith playing together. Both can make the harmonica do things that the crude archetype I was mocking above could never do. Matt was playing guitar this time and Broderick was singing and playing the harp. What a master! He concentrates on that little thing and gets melodies out of it. Its there to sing as well as him. Supreme players , performers and writers.
Mike Rudd from Spectrum also has a distinctive tone and grasp of the harmonica. He gets it to do stuff for him and doesn't just bring it in for a melancholy wail here and there.
Other harp players I love on records would be Norton Buffalo who played a lot with the Steve Miller band, Lee Oskar from the amazing r&b/funk/soul band WAR and Magic Dick from the J Geils Band. Stevie Wonder hit it and made it dance but he can do that with any instrument. The classic Little Walter and Howling Wolf put sounds and licks together for everybody else to copy for several generations. And, of course, Toots Thielmans. Any of his albums.
So, I’m trying to take back some of that slack I stole when I was abusing some hardnut harp player who must have upset me somewhere along the way. Blow that thing, its easy!

squelch!

2010-12-03T15:10:00.000-08:00

This appears in the latest TRIP magazine.For subscribers of RRR Melbourne Community Radio

Squelch. Its a form of music. A nano genre at the moment but I am handing it to the public to make it into something enormous. Take that to the bank! Simple as that. Doing BLB with Elizabeth early on I was moaning about pathetic names for genres of music. Like “beats”. That has got to be the worst. What the fuck is that all about then? I never go near anything if its called “beats”. I mean I probably have heard a lot of it and liked it and I probably listened to some very recently. i wouldn’t call it “beats “ though. “Dance” is also piss weak. And that scene is usually full of great pr whizz with great names for tracks that don’t really deserve it. DJs have great names too, and they mostly don’t deserve much. I respect their biz though, their shamelessness is most admirable. I love it. Their view of the world is total SQUELCH.
One night I sat at a club and asked a lady to identify all the sounds that were flying around the room. She did this for me, she was glad for the opportunity to dump this useless offall that was crowding her mind onto me. SQUELCH! Turned out that each song was its own micro genre. Just as I suspected! They know how to squeeze every ounce out of the stuff in that scene. Nothing is left to chance. Flog it!
Reggae is a great name for a form of music. It took a while and then someone heard someone say it and it caught on. Rockabilly too. Actually, while we’re at it, “spoken word” has to be the lamest shingle anybody has ever put out in front of their act doesn’t it? SPOKEN WORD! That is bad. For people who are trading in WORDS, that is very , very lazy and mo poke in the extreme. There is no jizz in that title, no bounce. Jazz is a great name for a form of music. Blues. Punk. Anything with “core” in it is pretty pathetic. Like a dangleberry or clingon on the arse of something bigger, grimly hanging on. Same with “post” or “alt” . Just substitute “not”. Modern shit with good names are GRIME. CRUNK. Shit, thats about it.
Rock Music is hopeless. Whats the best they came up with recently ? Emo! They ran out of puff trying to say a word and we were left with that three letter furball . Paste a message on Friendface and leave us! SQUELCH!

I could go on. On BLB, Elizabeth usually stops me. Ta.
I have to say that she has the capacity to go on too. I am a live and let live guy though. I just put on my earphones and listen to sports radio until it looks like its all over. The loyal BLB listeners text me constantly to keep me in touch with what shes on about this time. What can I say? I’m a man- I give- I bend like a tree in a gale- then I give again.

One day I came into the studio and said I wanted to hear nothing but squelching sounds. I wanted to get my SQUELCH on. I was after a new kind of SQUELCH. I wanted , you know “ dark side of the squelch” or "never mind the squelch “ or “ a hard days squelch”. “The SQUELCH SESSIONS”! “the squelch remains the same!”
“I know what you mean” Elizabeth said. I reached for this disc by “SPOONBILL” called “AIRBORNE”. It was total squelch. See, I’d already slipped into talking about a noun there. i moved from adjectival discourse into naming the sounds. Thats what happened on the show that day. I got so many texts from BLB listeners wanting more SQUELCH! Straight off. We had a movement. People wanted squelch before hey knew what it was. And then , best of all, it was already here. SQUELCH was in the house! Elizabeth and I moved quickly to define the new genre. I wold say it s a form of music with no known boundaries save for the lack of loud guitars. Effected guitars are ok though , bendy, wah and soft fuzz sounds. Octaves especially. That sound on a lot of 70s soul with the trickling waterfall effect. Thats total SQUELCH. SQUELCH is a smooth and viscous sound. Like machines shitting. Horribly organic. Vegetable automatons gurgling to the nth. Taking things to the logical rotting conclusion. Its rooted in machines having wet dreams. Nocturnal funk. Smooth and bubbling. Electro diarrhoea. Non verbal. Know what I squelch?
We tried to reach into the past and we played a song by a person we archly and crassly called “the Godmother of SQUELCH”. This was Sophie Ellis Bextor , mainly because I had her cd in my bag and I think shes a doll. “Murder on the dancefloor”. We heard SQUELCH everywhere. It was a SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH world.
Later, I was working in my studio and used a plugin , ( a virtual effect). It was called COSMONAUT and it eq’d the sound to make it vintage and clunky. It also had a setting called , you guessed it- SQUELCH! There is nothing better than making something up that already exists . I’m sure everybody has experienced that heavy, throbbing, thrill. It must be good if its already here! Authentic also. Its just that nobody has identified it yet. Its a fact that you simply cant see things that you don’t recognize. Its not there until you see it! All performers know this conundrum.

So, for the history books, let it be known that SQUELCH - a new microgenre of music was first identified and therefore sighted and named and therefore created and sent out into the world from the studios of RRR fm in Melbourne by Dave Graney and Elizabeth McCarthy from within the sturdy construct that is their show, BANANA LOUNGE BROADCASTING in August 2010.

postscript. The week after we’d invented SQUELCH, when we were all set to deal with POST SQUELCH, Elizabeth had to go away on a course with that guy Anthony Robbins and I had to do the show solo. I was going to have an old friend in on the sow, New York based record producer Victor Van Vugt. I called him and said I was going to be playing some SQUELCH on the show. Without dropping a beat he said, “is that like SQUEE?

Semaphore-" like the sixties with a hardon!"

2010-11-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS STORY APPEARS IN THE CURRENT ADELAIDE REVIEW...

Adelaide has presented many faces to us but we had never experienced the likes of the Semaphore Workers Cub. What a pleasant surprise it was too. Semaphore is some sort of a fading rose of a seaside idyll. In its late bloom. I went there only a couple of years ago and was charmed by the wide streets and the sleepy country town tempo of the place. How such a joint had been allowed to be accessible to anyone but the super rich was a conundrum. It is beautifully down beat and genteel. Old world. (Even though the smart people have obviously already gotten involved and put in a lot of confusing traffic diversions in that beautiful wide main street leading to the beach. It wont be long until this late bloom is over and the harvesting of real estate dreams begins) On this trip we were to discover it had an even richer and stranger inner life.
The Workers Club has no signage outside as they “ don’t want any passing trade”. This alarmed us as we musicians have been bashed and narrowed in our thinking to be completely commercial at all times. We drove the short distance from the delightful hotel to the club. Inside it was all high ceilinged wide ambience just like those old dilapidated former embassies people used to live in in St Kilda.
Walls absolutely festooned with banners from Communist groups the world over. Images of Che and Ho and various Euro Reds looked over the proceedings. We were told that the phone had been ringing hot which sent our hearts low as that usually means no one will bother to actually come. We finished the soundcheck and were enjoying game of pool on the full sized billiard tables as the people started coming in. Apparently there had been a queue around the block . They charged in and lined up at the bar. A totally blue collar, brawny, rough hewn , up for it bunch of party people the likes of which I didn’t think existed anymore. I thought they'd all been domesticated. This was not a crowd from the prissy world of indie rock music or Sunday colour supplement stories of the best bars/coffees in whatever sad city you live in. This was a real underworld crowd. There were music clips being shown on one wall, “howlin wolf” and “sonny boy williamson” and “etta James” all bawling the blues. Mesmerising in its lost worlde class.
Stu Thomas did a set with himself on his orange baritone six string bass/guitar hybrid style of playing along with sunglasses,white jacket and Clare Moore on drums and vocals. They played for about an hour. (They had already played a set the night before at the Grace Emily).
Then we got up and did an hour long set ourselves.Two guitars,bass and drums, all keyed up by the crowd and the blues in the room.
The gates were closed and no one else was being let in.
I always say “hello Comrades” at shows as a fellow once said it to me at Trades Hall in Melbourne and I felt so great I took it on. In Brisbane, opening for Glen Campbell last December I said it and half the audience walked out. They hate “commies“ up there. (Commies being interchangeable with “from melbourne” which I had also informed them was the case) . Here, everybody was addressed as “comrades and fellow workers”. I felt I was at home.
At the break I walked off the stage towards the door and a fellow stopped me to say hello. “You don’t remember me do you?” I said I was having trouble and he told me his name. An old friend from the country. I’m not the hugging type but I felt kind of emotive and we embraced. Probably because I knew him at that time in your life before the retrograde sets in - when your were just a kid. He used to dink me home from footy training. Anyway, something was troubling me, something I was supposed to remember. Then it hit me, this fellow had been involved in a double murder- of his parents. I didn’t know him when that happened, I only knew him from an earlier, untroubled period. Can you shut things like that from your mind? Should you? Sometimes its easy to talk to people you haven’t been in contact with for a while. I said “So, you’ve had an ....interesting life...”. He agreed and alluded to his parents. No smiling at all from either of us here. He introduced me to his girlfriend. Later, I felt I had to ask about the time I had referred to as “interesting”. He just looked at me and said, “madness , Dave- madness” and we talked a little more in that crowded room, touching lightly on very heavy areas. It was a difficult conversation to have and a difficult place to try and have it in. I knew I had to go back on and do another set. Sometimes, being a musician, going onto the stage or taking care of your gear is a good way to take your leave from people and situations that get to be a bit too chaotic. I enjoyed running into him though and wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid talking to him again.

We got up and played for another hour. The joint was jumpin’!
As we walked off “the Internationale” was played at a rousing volume. We sat around and talked to people , those attending the show and then the people from the club. What an amazing place! So connected to history and the local community.
You also get the greatest critiques in places like that. A guy apparently left saying, “Dave Graney! Like the sixties with a hard on!”
The fellow who books it talked of being sent by the PARTY to Cuba to attend a conference. Lost worlds.
The next day we got up at midday and played for an hour on the foreshore at Semaphore. A different crowd and a different sound. Blasting sunlight and strong sea winds. Guitars went out of tune and I couldn’t see the led lights of my pedal.
Then we drove to the Wheatsheaf and played for an hour at 4pm. This set was gonna be soft and conversational. It was , for about two songs. My watch stopped somewhere along the way and the second set stretched out for another one and a half hours. This was Grateful Dead style playing. Clare Moore and Stu Thomas eventually played for seven hours over three days.
After the set a white haired woman bailed me up and bawled at me for not lowering the door price while I was on stage. She flounced off still yelling at me for being up myself. I went to talk with some friends. A tripping barfly came up to give me some shit about my moustache, yabbering about a 60s movie with Shirley Maclaine he had seen. “Jimmy Edwards” I said, referring to the moustachioed British comedian who was in the same film. “Fuck off! How can you know who I’m talking about!” he yelled. I begged off. he came back to talk of an Adelaide musician called Benjamin Hugg. I said I had that album, the one with the cover shot outside of Trims from the late 70s. He shook my hand. He said I should listen to the record. I said I would. He said "Fuck off! I don’t give a fuck what you think!”. I said “sure” and bade my farewells to friends. He followed me yelling about how I should do what he said and every time I agreed he told me to “fuck off”. A difficult character to engage with. I escaped to pack up my gear.
We were still staying in Semaphore. the next day we loaded the van and paid the hotelier. He had been a pretty taciturn character- a busy weekend. Things were a bit quiet now so he spoke more freely. Learning we had been to the workers club he talked of his own father who had been a radical communist and union man. Eventually blackballed from a lot of employment. The publican himself had gone to Moscow to attend a student and workers conference in the 70s. He had enlisted into the armed forces but had had his papers stamped “commie” after a day. He said he didn’t talk about his past to many people as they accused him of being “things like a... traitor”. He laughed, saying he was a “Utopian now”. Whatever the hell that is.
Semaphore was beat. Blue collar. Totally downbeat and beatific. They’ll have to ruin it.
We drove to the bustling wide spot in the road known as Bordertown and engaged an innkeeper for a room for the night. A morbidly obese woman sold us some parcels of indeterminate food material soaked in concentrated animal fats. Bear Grylls would have recoiled at this stuff but we did the right thing by somebody or other and ate a few mouthfuls.
In Melbourne we made camp for a couple of days before blowing town in separate directions. Clare to Hobart and myself to Mt Gambier. I had some personal stuff to take care of.
I stayed with a cousin on his farm about 35ks toward a fishing fleet town. I was wearing leather pants, shirt,waistcoat ,tie and jacket as I was also gonna have my photo taken near one of the mills down there and couldn’t be arsed packing anything more delicate. I was kitted out ‘end of the world” style.
I found myself standing out in a paddock with a herd of shitting, spluttering, pissing cows a couple of times. Being no help but looking cool (in my world). Brando out bush. In spite of the crowd I was hangin’ with. The neighbours will be talking about it for a few years. My cousin was driving across the fields, herding the cows from one field to another, Black Sabbaths “paranoid” album blaring on the cd player. You find out what has endured out in this sort of a map reference. I said , through the noise of the music and the car and the cows, that Ozzie was a bit sad now. My cousin said that he was always a bit of a tool and that Tony Iommi was the brains of the outfit. That is wisdom. In the straight world, people follow along with the idea that Ozzie was a wildman- just like a herd of cows. The man can hardly move , let alone talk!
We sat in his old Cockys farm house, that he has renovated- to make it SMALLER - and listened to the Who on his handmade stereo and ate pasta and chocolate. The sea and the weather happening eternally outside and the cows adding their very ephemeral sounds to the nightly fields .I learned some country wisdom. He has a friend , who has rarely saddled up, though he has a female he is smitten with who “narrows him up a bit”, whose view on marriage or co habitation was , when pressed, “ why give half your tucker away to get the other half cooked”. I guess you could take that to the bank to see what they make of it. As a fellow cheapskate , it made a lick of sense to me.

interrogations via the magic box!

2010-09-27T05:43:00.001-07:00

well you put out a record and people from the internet send you questions and you asnswer them...

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Everyone joins or forms a band to get laid. If your band represents your sex life are you Casanova or spending plenty of time doing the five knuckle shuffle?

I PLAY MUSIC BECAUSE I LIKE THE MUSIC PART OF IT. IF MUSIC IS ANY GOOD , YES, IT HAS SOME SEX IN IT OR ON IT OR AROUND IT.

We don’t want to know about the painfully hip bands your press release says you’re influenced by. Take us back to your bedroom when you were 14. What band posters did you have on the wall?

MUDDY WATERS, HOWLING WOLF, ROLLING STONES, HOUND DOG TAYLOR, JOHHNY WINTER, DEEP PURPLE, ALLMAN BROTEHRS, QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE, JJ CALE, LYNYRD SKYNYRD, IAN HUNTER, LOU REED, WAR.

What’s been your worst gig and why are you glad there’s no footage of it on Youtube … yet?

DEPENDS WHO IS BAD FOR. DO YOU MEAN FOR US OR FOR THE AUDIENCE? AS TO THE LATTER, I DID DO A GIG IN PERTH WHEN PRINCESS DI HAD DIED (sic) AND ATTEMPTED A VERSION OF STREET HASSLE WITH HER BEING MENTIONED IN IT. YOU KNOW THE PART WHERE THERE IS A DEAD PROSTITUTE ON THE FLOOR AND THE DOPE DEALER IS TELLING HER BOYFRIEND TO 'DRAG HER OUT IN THE STREET AN' BY THE MORNING SHES ANOTHER HIT AND RUN..." THE ROOM WAS SLOWLY CLEARING OUT. I WISH THERE WAS SOME YOUTUBE OF THAT....
I ALWAYS ENJOY PLAYING MUSIC AND DOING GIGS.

Tomorrow’s payday, so we’ve only got $20 to get you drunk. Where do we go and what do we buy with it?

I DON'T DRINK. I LIKE TO SIT AND HAVE A COFFEE IN THE CITY. BUT I ONLY LIKE STARBUCKS . BREWED COFFEE ONLY. NOT TOO STRONG AND IN A BIG PAPER CUP.

We’ve been looking in the $2 bin at Dixons Recycled and also bidding on eBay – what releases are we looking for there that your band has put out?

I GUESS THAT WOULD BE THE HIGHEST SELLING ONE AND THAT WOULD BE "THE SOFT AND SEXY SOUND". ITS A GREAT DISC. I WOULD BE HAPPY FOR PEOPLE TO ENJOY ANY OF THE DISCS WE'VE MADE. I DID THE BEST I COULD WITH 'EM ALL. THE LATEST, 'SUPERMODIFIED" , IS A PRETTY GOOD PLACE FOR SOMEONE TO START ACTUALLY. YOU KNOW, IF I WAS INTERROGATED BY THE SECRET POLICE AND THEY WANTED TO KNOW WHAT IT WAS I DID I COULD TELL THEM TO LISTEN TO SUPERMODIFIED AND THAT WOULD BE IT. A LOT OF MY OTHER RECORDS HAVE STRAYED AWAY FROM OUR CENTRAL THEMES BUT THE LAST THREE HAVE BEEN VERY FOCUSSED.

Suppose we put a gun to your head and force you to kiss a member of another Australian band. Who, which band and why?

I THINK THE RAPPER DIRTCHILD MIGHT BE WORTH THE PUNCH YOU'D PROBABLY GET FOR YOUR TROUBLES. THEN YOU MIGHT HAVE AN INTERESTING CHAT AFTER ALL THE VIOLENCE. INTERNATIONALLY, IT WOULD BE SOPHIE ELLIS BEXTOR. BECAUSE SHES AN ABSOLUTE DOLL.

Don’t talk to me about ...clothes. If people talk about what you are wearing it means you've done something wrong.
The secret to success is ...to make up your own prizes and to also keep it a secret when you have won them.
I’m most proud of ....being a musician and playing with my band who are great people and company and are incredible players. The best I have ever been with.
The three people I’d love to invite to dinner are ....Guillaume Apollinaire, Brigitte Bardot and Jim Thompson. A French poet, a French actor and an American pulp writer.
When I was a kid I wanted to be .....a priest, then my sister kicked me under the table and I changed my story to a pop star. The Brothers in skirts were just about to shove me in to the big black van that took little altar boys away....
I laugh every time I .....watch the Big Bang theory, the IT Crowd or IDEAL.
The thing I’d change about me is .......the amount of money in my bank account. Then I would go and live in Paris.
I’m ashamed to say I .....don't drink alcohol. I was a great drinker once. A champion, like all my family.
My favourite word is..... "boom!" I smash my fist on the table as I say it- after dropping a bombshell...
The talent I wish I had is ......to play the guitar like willie nelson or grant green.
My course in life was set when .....I was born.In country south australia.
The person I admire most is ......Patrick White. Australias greatest ever writer.
My greatest extravagance is ......wearing denim or leather. I love denim and am looking for a denim suit. One or two piece. I also never pay more than $300 for any piece of musical equipment. Guitars or amps etc...
My friends think I am ......tight. as a fishers arse. And they know me very well.
My favourite place on earth is ......London,with a lot of money. So I have never really experienced that!
The most useful advice I ever got was ......"theres no retiring n this business! I relaxed after I knew I was a hostage.
As I’ve gotten older ......I’ve got to hate playing slow music. Or listening to it. The whole shithouse is goin' up inflames! Melancholy is or young people.
The thing I hate most is ..... commercial radio not playing any new music and no australian music.
My most treasured possession is .....a guitar a friend lent me.
I last cried when .....my cat of 20 years died. Just a couple of weeks ago. Aughtie. She bit or scratched everybody else who came near.
My last meal would be .....pretty tasteless i reckon. My mind would be fuzzing out or slowing down. I wouldn't be into it.

bass- a story I wrote for Australian Musician Magazine

2010-09-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Bass . Think of words like Monolithic.Megalithic.Prehistoric. Primitive.Mystic. Then try to place it in the mix.

When I first started playing music, in the late seventies, everybody seemed to covet Rickenbacker basses. I don’t know why. They had a very hollow type of a sound. Trebly and lots of string in it. Was it the after effects of an influence by Chris Squire from Yes? Bruce Foxton from the Jam played one. Tracey Pew played one in the Boys Next Door.
Otherwise , in the post punk scene the bass guitar was present only occasionally as a deep , driving distorted engine of funk. Jah Wobble in PIL had a great tone and image and their sound, along with the Pop Group ( from Bristol) really brought your attention to that dub influenced spectrum of the sound. The music was open and full of space. Time and space is what the bass players control.
Youth, in Killing Joke had the same sort of goofy, primal aesthetic happening. A big sound with lots of smoke in the players hair. Jean Jacques Burnel in the Stranglers had already brought a lot of focus to the bass with his sound and his lines. He stood right at the front of the stage too, not hiding his lights back with the drums. The Stranglers had that spooky organ with four to the floor drums and spare, fender guitar touches not unlike the MGs. Plenty of room for the bass to step up and play a central role. Peter Hook in Joy Division really anchored that band with his earthy, distorted lines. Crude slabs of sound, pulverising beats.
Hook also had that melodic side which ran through a lot of post punk music and which still pops up as a kind of indie signifying mode. The bass line plays a third note and brings in a melody underneath a scratchy, thin guitar line. The Go Betweens early singes had this down perfectly. Orange Juice with “simply thrilled honey”. Sonic Youth used it a lot.
The bass player in our first band, the Moodists was Chris Walsh. he grew up running around with Tracey Pew out in that hotbed of Melbourne punk, Glen Waverley. Chris played a fretless bass through a Peavey amp with metal pick. His sound was the centre of our band. All the songs swung around the bass and the vocals. the guitars were off to the sides , wigging out.
He is a great player. We got back together fro some reunion shows. No one asked us or was really waiting for us. It was more of a case of some unfinished business. We were soundchecking at the gig. Chris and our guitarist Steve had not done a real lot of playing recently. Their sounds were perfectly preserved from the time our band was playing. Back in the old days. The young front of house guy was from the early 2000s new rock revival scene. He told our guitarist to “dial some mids in”. The guitar was plugged into a Fender twin and every dial was on 10. I told the kid to back off because we weren’t really looking for an Aerosmith type of sound. Steve and Chris were rocking sounds you couldn’t dial up from a pod or a digital amp.
After Chris left the Moodists we played with David McClymont , who had been in the aforementioned Orange Juice. He had had an experience in music from total indie label POSTCARD to pop stardom and recording in the Bahamas and back again. He was very intuitive about music. I mean he didn’t know what each note was called. he had great groove though and we learned a lot from him about arrangements and dynamics.
In the Coral Snakes we had Gordy Blair on the bass. He was a very melodic player. His first instrument was the sax. He was from Belfast , and then London but also from that post punk scene which was like a kind of a school. A lot of shared attitudes.
Adele Pickvance came to us via Robert Forsters band. She later went back to play with the Go Betweens MK111. She had learned to play the bass as a kid, in Queensland clubs with her father. He played the keys and guitar and got more dosh if it was a duo! She stood there for a while and eventually started to play. I mean over a long period. She was never scared of being on stage or in different situations. She came into music by a really natural way, not from a music school or a careers officers suggestion. Such a melodic sense. She could swing and groove too. Outstanding player!
After she left we had the luck to play with Stu Thomas. He started out on the trumpet. He plays a Fender bass , when we are rocking and then when we play a more minimalist setup, he drags out his 6 string Burns baritone which he plays as a bass. It gets that great “plunky” sound you hear on 60s soundtracks. We toured for a year with that sound. It was up against Clare on the vibes and me on acoustic 12 string. A great trio sound. Room for the lyrics to come out.
Bass players listen to the music and songs from a different perspective. I often think of dark, earthy types standing still at the back, while the lead singer and guitarist throw all kinds of mad shapes. John Entwistle from the Who, Bill Wyman grimacing a s well, John Paul Jones escaping all the cameras completely.
There were those others like Chas Chandler from the Animals and Glenn Wheatley from the Masters Apprentices who were actually standing up the back, thinking about the number of payers and how the business could be tightened up.
There have been bands like the 70s prog blues band “Back Door” which was just bass , sax and drums . I once saw a German band with SIX bass players and a poor girl on drums. God it was horrible! I hope she wasn’t a hostage.
Then there are the jazz and funk masters like Bootsy Collins and Larry Graham. Forces of nature. That bit in Sly Stones “Dance to the Music “ where the fuzz bass comes in! OOOOH thats good! Charles Mingus, Barry Adamson, that green devil with the big thumb in the Mighty Boosh....
Recent developments have seen bands like the Dirty three, the White Stripes and the Black keys do without a bass. I mean , the Cramps did it, although Bryan Gregory had an amazing bottom end of low fuzz on his guitar. And in the Doors, its still a baffling mystery how Ray Manzarek did what he did to make the bass seem to happen as well as the right hand handfulls on the organ. (I think they had an actual bass player sometime in the studio).
All these bass less acts know what they’re missing eventually. A joke is a joke , really! You got to have that low end drive in the end.
I did see a great film on the county singer Buck Owens though. He was famous for getting this sound , the “Bakersfield sound”. An area then on the outskirts of LA. He explained that he asked the engineer “how much does that goddam bass take up in the sound?” “About 80%” said the engineer. “Well get rid of it then!” said Buck and thats how he got his sound. He wanted more room for the guitars and the voice. He must have stuck with it for a while though I bet he moved some back in after a while, after he got the hang of that Bakersfield sound.
All the bass players I’ve played with have had amazing skills and chops. I learned so much from all of them.
Stu Thomas, who I play with now, has his own band, THE STU THOMAS PARADOX. Its the band where he drops all the science hes picked up into. they have a great album out called “ESCAPE FROM ALGEBRA”
I love to play the bass too. On records and when I get to play with friends like Harry Howard. Last show I did with him , I borrowed the bass amp of the other act, Ron Penos RSVP. It was a sansamp into a Galleon Kruger head into a 4 by 10 bass cab. Then the other bass player , from Black Cab, brought his cabinet of the same size up and I had a massive tower to plug into. I've always complained about bass players amps, usually when helping them lift the things. Now I understand. You NEED that power under you to really get the oomph required for the true bottom end!
Had such a great time. Like driving a steam train. All that power at your touch. Dampening it and pumping it. Riding it! Not having to smile. Brooding up the back. Thinking about the dosh. It was , no I was monolithic. Megalithic. Primitive. Godlike. I had the total package.

SUPERMODIFIED- EMERGING- ETC- REVIEWS PLUS

2010-09-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

SORRY IF THESE BLOGS SEEM TO BE QUITE COMMERCIAL IN NATURE BUT THEY ARE ALL AROUND MY LIFE AND MY LIFE IS A MUSICAL LIFE. I am not really interested in much else, except for books , poetry and dumb tv so its not really commercial. Other people blog about the colour and consistency of their snot. I beg off on inviting people to share that kind of intimacy. Ditto the qualities of my farts. I keep that jive ass stuff outta my music too. My music is actually often about music! I like to descend/ ascend in spirals. While I wait for you know who...
I have actually written a book which is about my music life and its gonna be called "1001 Australian nights" and it'll be out in March 2011.On Affirm press.

I have this remix/remastered/re-sung/re-played/re-strung collection out at the moment. Been doing a lot of shows and will be doing a lot more. I like to play live. Sue me! I like rock clubs and people who go out and be social. Melbourne is a great place for that kinda stuff.

Otherwise, been reading some books. Discovered a character called AE Coppard who wrote in the UK in the 20s. Astoundingly tight and condensed sentences. Other people would take whole chapters - or books- to drop what he does in a single line.

Continuing to do a weekly radio show on RRR with Elizabeth McCarthy which has been great. We interviewed Jacki Weaver who is in town for a David Williamson play. I blushed when she said she and her boyfriend "kissed" to the SOFT 'n' SEXY SOUND.

A lot of other artists and writers and comedians have come in. And I hear a lot of great music. I play all the Australian stuff I like - which is a lot of it- and a lot of jazz and hip hop. I recommend the newish cd by Chuck Prophet called "let freedom ring". Otherwise I toss any cds by hipster yanks in the bin. Everybody else scrambles for that shit. They're all old enough to know better but they act like they're still being bullied. Except for Josh Homme and Bonnie Prince Billy. The rest? Toss their skinny white asses in the river!

The winter has been dark and long and cold and its been difficult to move around outdoors. In the middle of it, our little cat who has been with us for 20 years went downhill due to kidney failure and died. I found her on the floor one cold morning. Stiff as a board. She bit and scratched and hissed at anybody who came into our house for years . A real presence. I called her "aughtie" which was what Tom Custer used to called George when they were kids. She was a Port Melbourne street cat. Padded around us for every cd we've made since 1990. Whenever we moved gear in and out of the house we had to first open the door a little to see if she was waiting there to make her escape. (She never went outside except onto the deck). She was always there on the other side of the door, doing what came naturally and attempting to head for freedom. She had a bell on her to warn native birds for a while. Its all over the cd "heroic blues" , ringing softly as as she walked around the studio. Always scurrying around your feet as you struggled with a big amp or piano. She had all that imponderable, wilful, unknowable, unpredictable stuff that cats have intrigued and amused and bedevilled people with over the years. Funny that an animal can let you know so much, about yourself and the world.

That was very upsetting and I let you in on it. Now I will back off and request you assume the formal position of all strangers on the island. As you were!

Even his staunchest fans would admit that Dave Graney is something of a queer bird. With his penchant for archaic fashions and mannerisms, he seems quixotically at odds with the modern world. Despite this, his artistic persona also neatly encapsulates some of the key strategies of postmodernism, such as a playful artifice and ironic distance from his own creativity. Graney holds the real world at arm’s length, yet he is fascinated with current and historical pop culture.

His recorded work reflects this magpie approach in a way that can render it confusing to casual listeners, who find it hard to distinguish between the actor and the real person beneath the dandyish swagger. The way Graney has positioned himself as an anachronistic enigma has come at the expense of commercial success – even within the sphere of so-called “alternative” music. This is a shame, as Graney has produced a formidable body of work over the last three decades, his career punctuated by many highpoints from all his different incarnations.

From the thundering onslaught of The Moodists’ album Thirsty’s Calling (1984), to the widescreen epic of Night Of The Wolverine (1993), to last year’s critically feted Knock Yourself Out, it’s clear that Graney’s power as a writer has remained consistent over the years. This is by no means an easy feat. One only needs to look at Graney’s celebrated peer Nick Cave, whose increasingly hapless and desperate fumblings for relevance have sent his credibility plummeting in recent years. In contrast, the last decade has seen Graney’s muse in overdrive, releasing a steady stream of strong material. The formation of his own record label, Cockaigne, surely precipitated this artistic renaissance, allowing Graney the freedom to do as he pleases, regardless of commercial considerations.

Holed up in his suburban recording studio with his longtime partner and musical foil Clare Moore and a host of regular musical collaborators, Graney created the dark and moody masterpieces Heroic Blues (2001) and The Brother Who Lived (2003) in the early years of this decade. Both albums were perfectly crafted collections, so it comes as a bit of a surprise at first that he’d want to revisit them on Supermodified. The album contains four songs from Heroic Blues and a whopping 10 from Brother. In addition there are four previously unreleased tracks from the same era.

It’s a risk for any artist to re-interpret their own back catalogue, since most fans are inclined to view the original versions as definitive. On the other hand, by shifting the focus away from the content of the songs, Graney and Moore have been able to explore the subtleties of their arrangements more effectively. For years, the pair have been fascinated with creating something they dubbed the “smooth and sexy” sound – basically a mélange of different easy listing styles, such as smooth cocktail lounge funk, ’70s West Coast rock and adult contemporary pop sheen. What previously seemed like a playful subversion of degraded musical styles – those generally shunned by rock purists – has been warped into a muscular and super-charged 18 tracks that work seamlessly as a whole.

Remixing and re-recording vocals and instrumental backings means that songs like ‘All Our Friends Were Stars’ and ‘Midnight To Dawn’ bear very little resemblance to their original restrained settings. Structurally, many numbers are extended with instrumental passages or repeated refrains. In each case, it’s not merely the kind of remix a clever engineer might do, but a complete re-arrangement of a song’s constituent parts to imbue it with a whole new mood.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that Supermodified will be regarded as more than a footnote to the albums it draws upon, but as a stop-gap before Graney’s next batch of musical missives it’s more satisfying by far than that old stand-by: the live album.

by René Schaefer- MESS AND NOISE

David Graney has released an abundance of records in his time on planet Earth, and with the release of Supermodified, it's time to add another feather to his bound-to-be flamboyant hat. Supermodified is Graney pimped out, re-worked and custom-build, its sort of like that Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Palace Music record. Old songs newly recorded and freshly worked. Some people tell me, “hey, some of the Graney records have strange production values, but when I see and hear him live the songs are a billion times better”. Well, if that’s the case for you, then this album will be right up your alley.

It’s an accurate portrait of the live sound, and its shit hot funky. Taking ten tracks from the 2004 album The Brother Who Lived , four from Heroic Blues , and four unreleased ones means this record isn’t just for Graney enthusiasts or diehard fans, but its also a good starting place for beginners. Everything is sounding crisp and top-notch, which is something you’d hope to expect for a band that plays nearly everyday of the week. “The Brother Who Lived” and “All Our Friends Were Stars” should be hit singles, “The Royal Troll” has thick distorted riffing and pounding drums with the typically laid-back Graney croon. “Midnight to Dawn” is another rocking number with wife Claire Moore crashing about in the rhythm section. The whole album sounds like glam rock from a boom box at a gay parade in Melbourne. But sung by the straightest man on earth who is for some reason leading the rally. Think Roxy Music but with the Australian equivalent of Jonathan Richman on vocals. “Clinging To The Coast”, has some interesting compression on the drums, but it works. “Anchors aweigh” are the sounds you’d be hearing if you walked past a sleazy neon-lit cocktail night bar, in fact the lounge-esque themes are pretty common throughout the whole record. I never heard the original to begin with, but this one is well recommended.

Review Score: 7.5/10
nathan roche- au review

Talking of Dave, and being cool, then it’s great to report that Mr Graney is back – along with Clare Moore of course – and the Lurid Yellow Mist band, with his latest album “Supermodified” – and the clue is in the title as this is a re-working of a whole load of songs from the “Brother Who Lived” album and a smaller selection from “Heroic Blues” release. This is altogether a more relaxed, and relaxing effort, than its predecessor the excellent “Knock Yourself Out” album, with the volume turned down and the atmosphere turned up a notch or two. Graney is the ultimate 21st century crooner – reflecting back to the sultry funk of the Coral Snakes at their very best – but also using a selection of “modern” recording techniques and band styles that make it all very relevant today. And the trick, I think, is that Mr Graney can lure the listener in with his laid back style and then drop either a beautiful melody, or a stunning arrangement to create a sensuous listening experience. “Like a Millionaire” is a case in point with its extended coda which builds up the tension but retains a relaxed an open feel. That’s not to say its all “cocktail bar latino cool funk”. “The Royal Troll” for example has a definite driven feel, and the re-working of “Clinging to the Coast” is superb more or less completely revisiting the song from its original stripped down version on “Heroic Blues” – it turns out in hindsight that Dave had a pretty bad lung infection at the time of that album which would explain the contrasting styles and delivery. ”Midnight to Dawn” has a great rock feel with Clare channeling John Bonham under riffing guitars. If I was going to pick out a memorable track then “Are we going to fast for love” is just simply beautiful, however it would be remiss of me to single out one song on what is, simply put, a wonderful album.

rob salford - aural delights blog -salford city radio

LIVE DATES

Saturday 11th September at the Tote w/ Telecom + Brainrust + Money for rope.

Friday 17th September - Esplanade hotel, St Kilda- Victoria

Saturday 18th September - Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria.

Saturday 25th Sept- (GRAND FINAL NIGHT) - The Old Bar- Smith st Fitzroy.

Saturday 2nd October- Semaphore Workers Club

Sunday 3rd October (afternoon) Semaphore Music Festival- Adelaide

Sunday 3rd October (evening) Wheatsheaf Hotel - Thebarton- Adelaide

Friday November 5th - Coogee Diggers.NSW (w/Conway Savage)
Saturday November 6th - MORPETH BITTER AND TWISTED BEER FESTIVAL.
Sunday November 7th - Sandringham Hotel Newtown - w/Conway Savage.

SUPERMODIFIED - what went down- get it now

2010-08-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

dave graney and the lurid yellow mist - super modified

We recorded and released Heroic Blues in 2001 and the Brother who Lived in 2003. Prior to and between each I was either incubating a vicious and tenacious lung infection that finally broke out of me on a Paris metro in 2001 - much blood and a stay in hospital - or getting over it and working out how to stop it happening again and living while the inflammation slowly died down. Both these records were real documents of the time . Recently we were going to release “the brother who lived “ digitally and I listened to it and then opened up the files. I started to tinker and couldn’t stop and this album is the result.
“SUPERMODIFIED”.
Its like a souped up hot rodded version of the original songs, with some extra tracks that got lost along the way. We put the songs up on the blocks and re-tuned them, re-sang them, re-strung them , put more drums and percussion and vocals and keys and remixed all of them. Inserted ,bussed , sent, returned, compressed , tweaked, eq’d and coloured all the reverbs and delays and remastered it at the end. Its a new thing. Adam Rhodes was the recording engineer for the original album sessions and the raw material was pristine.

the brother who lived
Recorded this for the album of the same name in 2003 with Greg Walker from Machine Translations. I played the bass and the guitar (The weird , off beat clean guitar licks) .Stu Perera comes in with the overdriven power notes on guitar and the clean r&b bends and sings as well. Clare Moore played all the keys and the drums. Though Greg recorded each hi hat , rim shot and snare tap individually and put them back together. Its her trademark latin kinda feel. The real drums sounds were mixed with those from our old drum machine. (I took this rhythm track and used it to build “throwin’ one into the world” on “Knock yourself out” in 2009 ). I sang this one again in 2010 as my voice was in better shape. On the original session, I couldn’t make it through a verse without a violent, out of control coughing fit. Greg was set to call an ambulance at first but he got used to it. The song is about two musicians, one lives and one dies. Though as it seems to happen, the one who dies , lives and the one who lives, dies. Kind of.

all our friends were stars
Again with Greg Walker. Used a rhythm from our old organ/drum machine and put it through a sansamp. I play the bass and the guitar. Clare played all the euro vibing keys. I sang this again too. We thought both of these tunes were “pop” . For what its worth.
Our kind of pop. R&B/Euro/disco in the sensibilities. We loved going to see Greg play at the time and the sounds of his records with Machine Translations. We felt he was some kind of a fellow traveler. An outsider who was sure he made his own kind of sense.
The lyric is about a time in our lives when everybody seemed to manifest huge personas they were either flying or running with. Vivid chracters and masks and modes of being. Young street life.

like a millionaire
We recorded a bunch of tracks in one day at Woodstock studios in East St Kilda. This was half of “the brother who lived” album. All in the room together, including me, singing. A lot of bleed in the vocal mic. Adele Pickvance plays such a great bass line here. Bill Miller comes in with all these mad country-ish licks on his old green Strat. Both are masters of feel and time. The song is about an artist being so on his game that his life is singing. He can see it all happen just as he dreams it up. He’s playing loose and wide, because he knows whats going to happen and so he can afford it.
I added some more guitar, 12 string, wah and fuzz, buried way back in the mix the way I like it. Stirring the funk from the lower depths. This sounds much more pop to me. Brought out the funk and didn't fade the song like it had been done before. The backing vocals were meant to be 60’s moderne. Phillip Glass-like. Mock epic and grand. Speaking of Epic.

a boy named epic
A song about Epic Soundtracks. A friend from the 80s London scenes. He started out in the Swell Maps with his equally exotically auto-named brother, Nikki Sudden and was also in These Immortal Souls with Rowland and Harry Howard and Genevive McGuckin. Bill Miller plays out of himself again. Stu Perera adds the rhythm. I added some 12 string electric guitar and keys and backing vocals to this. I love the chords. Suspended major sevenths. I brought them out more with the keys in the chorus. Loose jazz/r&b in its touch,voicings and tone. We swung out of stuff like this to “Hashish and Liquor” in 2005 and, especially, “we wuz curious” in 2008. I don’t think Epic would have liked any of the musical setting -too much jazz in the voicings- but then he was into reading his own story.

the royal troll
This has Stu and Bill blazing from the get go. I added some electric 12 string and backing vocals to this track. This could have been a song by the Moodists in some ways, but in other ways, maybe not.This has got the oomph and the swing but also clarity and punch in the dynamics. I play the blazing harmonica solo. The way Adele and Clare swing on the chorus is amazing.
The songs is about a very fiercely hedonistic old friend. A fiend. A demon! I saw him one day , in his civvies - shat, showered and shaved- transformed and on his way to his day gig. I knew the Royal troll.

clingin’ to the coast
Orginally on “Heroic Blues”. Added some real drums to this as well as singing it again and adding some more guitar. In 2001 I wanted to write a song like the Stranglers “strange little girl”. An ingenue in a boho, retro, vintage , mod, finessed inner city world. Totally impressed, of course, a la Candide. Bill Miller plays amazing licks on his beautifully recorded 1920’s Gibson acoustic guitar. Clare played the keys and the drums and drum machine.

I am your humble servant
A political election type song. I thought the old style of corpulent, diseased, corrupt ,branch stacking type politician was preferrable as you saw where all the money went. Into him. As opposed to the grey ghosts who front for who knows what today. This is me running for office. I am your humble servant! The last song from that one day session at Woodstock. Bill Miller blazing on that old acoustic again. Stu Perera was asleep in the van by the time we cut this. Exhausted. I was on my acoustic and singing at the same time. Lots of bleed into each mic. I added drums (played ‘em too) , electric guitars , percussion and keys to this track. I also fuzzed the bass in parts to get some extra votes in the marginals.I love this track, its smoking now.

are we goin’ too fast for love?
From “Heroic Blues”. Always thought more could have been done with it. Kind of a Euro r&b pop track. An adult swingers song. Kind of COUNTRYPOLITAN in the lyrical style. Adele on acoustic bass. Clare on piano . Originally it had a lonely bongo rhythm track. I sang it again , through a mic in a guitar amplifier , and we added some proper drums.

anchors aweigh
This is from “Heroic Blues”. I wrote the song when David McComb and another friend died around the same period. I sang this again and added guitars and worked on the drums sounds and added some backing vocals. The vibes are huge and I pushed them out further. Whenever we worked with rock producers in the 90s they always kept them at a very orderly and barely audible level. Often you only heard a small part of the sound. The out of tune, decaying part. We liked them as they were heard on Martin Denny or Arthur Lyman discs, enveloping the whole sound. Everything existing within the reverberant , towering waves. In the green room.

I’m seein’ demons
A song from the Howard Years of divisiveness , queue jumpers, spooks, backwardness, separation and demonizing. Those guys were in your face , pimping the old myths every day. The verse about “hamhocks and hog jowels” comes from an interview I read with country singer Chad Morgan where he talked about performing while sufferering with the DT’s and looking out to see the audience in a Leagues club complete with pigs heads and trotters, looking back at him.
Recorded all together at Woodstock with me in the middle of the room playing acoustic and singing. A lot of bleed into the mic. (So I didn't sing it again) Added 12 string electric guitar , harmonica , vibes and spooked up the backing vocals and brought the drums up - more into the foreground of the mix. This is boomin'! Demonized.

midnight to dawn
I thought this song was great but in 2003 I’d been too wacked in the lungs to give it the right vocal kicks. I sang this again in 2010 and also added some backing vocals and guitar. A country kinda song given the post Moodists jolt of power treatment. Stu Perera and Bill Miller played it up supersized and Adele Pickvance channels John McVie. Clare Moore pounds the hell outta those toms. Its a classic rock epic.

twilight of a villain
Recorded at the Ponderosa for “the Brother Who lived”. I played bass and guitars . Clare played keys. Added some drums and did the vocal again in 2010. Played with the reverbs and the delays on the vocals , just for the hell of it. Bringing the focus to the groove and the music rather than the text. Villains,crims, musicians are all the same to me. Night life types. Working the angles and watching their backs. Wise guys, living by their wits. I love this track too. Its come up so well with the jazz chordings and the hip hop drum attack and dub styled delays on the vocal.

I ain’t natural
Another unreleased track from the Heroic Blues sessions. Adele Pickvance on acoustic bass again. Stu Perera and Bill Miller on electric guitars. I played acoustic guitars and added the keys. Also added some percussion. I sang it again in 2010. I like to have lyrics with opposing , contradictory lines like “I ain’t natural - its just the way I am”.

she looked at me from out of her eyes
Recorded at the Ponderos for “the brother who lived”. I played bass, acoustic, electric guitars and keys. From “the brother who lived”. I wanted it to be more evil and sinister. The title came from a late period Raymond Chandler story. I loaded it with some more fuzz , octave and wah to get the sleaze cooking down below. Plenty of delays and gated, reversed reverbs on the vocal. I gave it the creeps.

my old gloves
From a session in 2004. I was gonna make a bluesy album. Recorded this and “oakleigh bowie blues” and “I don’t wanna go bush” and “easy blues” which appeared on “knock yourself out” in 2009. I liked the groove on this track so we added some drums in 2010. Its about a pair of gloves that were sitting on a box. A plastic box. Just after this, a street bum broke into my car and stole one of them. Thats why I never sing about myself! This would be the most STONER track I've ever put down. I was stuck on those gloves. Which were sitting on a plastic box. But I still got to record my thought.

While you dream,I live
This came out on a promo single - very, very limited edition- in 2003. Recorded two years earlier, at the “Heroic Blues” sessions in 2001. I sang it again and worked on the mix in 2010. I was going for an ‘evil and sinister sound” . I play most of the guitars, Stu Perera hits the wah notes, Also the prog lines. Adele Pickvance on acoustic bass. I’m hitting all the wrong notes on the keys. Putting it out of kilter. As if in a dream. Grabbing handfulls of the shit.

I don’t know anything
From “Heroic Blues”. I sang this again in 2010 and added some drums and 12 string electric guitar. Also whomped the backing vocals. Shjizzed ‘em with some coloured and phased studio dust. Inspired by an interview I read with Richard Hell, as an older man, talking of the power and concentration he had as a young man.

commercial street east (starry)
A track from “the brother who lived “ session. This was an extension of the song “all our friends were stars”. It has a part of that song but with the keys pushed way forward and no chorus change. Looped to the descending euro verse changes. We added some drums and bass in 2010. Commercial street is the main street in Mt Gambier, SA where I grew up. Its more of a direct take on the song as far as the kids who used to lap that street back in those Arcadian days. When we were in a tight spot and bored to death but hungry for life.

supermodified - why not!

2010-07-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

We put out an album called “the brother who lived” in 2003. It was, in many ways a new beginning for us and you don’t get many of those. Well, its hard to spot them. Clare Moore and myself prepared the songs for it just after we had done some gigs with the Moodists for the first time in 18 years or so. We were still fizzing from the experience. The previous record “heroic blues” had been billed as a “folk soul” set and it was. Acoustic strums and bouncing, light rhythms. I had a bunch of songs ready that I’d written in the same style, with some tight little licks played on an acoustic and the vocal staying down , tightly boxed in by the chords . After the Moodists we took the same songs and played them in a more supersized manner, Flying V guitar amped up and Clare smashing the drums on songs like “Midnight to dawn” , “like a millionaire” and “the royal troll”. It felt great to be opening up the chest again and singing out.
There were also two ultra pop songs ( for us) that we cooked up with J Walker from Machine Translations. “The brother who lived” and “all our friends were stars”. We were re-engaging with our own past and also the present, feeling comradeship with people around us in the music scene.
Then , last year, we realized we hadn’t made the album available again digitally. Via the internets. I started to listen to it and then went to open up the original recording sessions again. I heard my own voice trying to leap out of both albums. Back then, I wasn’t hitting it like I wanted to. Around the time of “Heroic Blues” I was harbouring a tenacious lung infection that would burst out between the time it was recorded and mixed. I was in poor shape and pretty shocked. It took a while for me to get a hold of my health again. That kind of total inner inflammation gets up a head of steam and takes time to power down. A couple of years later, while doing “the brother who lived” I was still coughing like a coal miner between takes of the songs we did with J Walker. I was firing on half cylinders but trying like crazy to bust into the moment. When I listened to the tracks I wanted to sing them again, now that I’ve got my body back in shape. So I did. And I added some drums and guitars and percussion and other textures. Just for the hell of it. Theres the whole album from “the brother who lived” as well as four tracks we recorded at the time but never released. There are also four tracks from “Heroic Blues” that I wanted to have another pass at with my now, better functioning pipes. Drums and guitars were added and remixing and remastering done. Its a new album, remastered, re-played, re-sung, re-strung, remixed and remastered. . I’m calling it “super modified” . Its
a hot rod of an album.

Out on AUGUST 7th on COCKAIGNE. Distributed via FUSE.

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play the following NSW July dates w/Tiffany Eckhardt opening.

Thursday 29th July.- Lizottes, Central Coast NSW
Friday 30th July. - Lizottes- Newcastle
Saturday 31st July. - Notes- Newtown
Sunday 1st August. - Brass Monkey ,Cronulla

Friday 17th September - Wellers ,Kangaroo Ground- Victoria

Saturday 2nd October- Semaphore Workers Club
Sunday 3rd October (afternoon) Semaphore Music Festival - Adelaide
Sunday 3rd October (evening) Wheatsheaf Hotel - Thebarton- Adelaide

supermodified-the wild bunch

2010-07-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

Stuart Perera plays guitar in our band, the Lurid Yellow Mist . He was born in '77, the year I pretty much thought about playing music. We had another guitar player Bill Miller (who hasn’t played with us for five years but may be coming back for some shows) had a number one record with his band , the Ferrets in the same year. We had no trouble talking about musical ideas because we all like playing music. Its like solving a series of problems, or walking across some abstract plane that keeps changing as you set each foot down. Some times its like a 3 dimensional field and you can see where the notes and the beats fall before it happens. Other times its like a fogged battlefield. Does that make us diggers! Cripes!
Bill went off for a walk a while ago. He was “gonna be some time”. Actually I started to play more guitar and there wasn’t the room or the moolah.
Stuart has played with us since 1998, the year that broke on us after we finished playing with the Coral Snakes. It was my idea to finish that scene and start again. I needed to do it. Stuart was playing at a VCA jazz youth concert and I asked him to play for us. I was lucky.

Clare Moore and I have played music together the whole way. Since 1978. We have shared our terrestrial life as well. Nae probs. We get to run out on that abstract field and we are fully manifest there. We know that. We don't talk about it much , we just know it. The band is completed by our bass player Stuart Thomas and , sometimes , our jazz fellow traveller. Mark Fitzgibbon. (He is full of talk, spending so much of his time in a completely abstract, instrumental world. He loves to talk of the indignities that come your way as you live a musical life. Each outrage is documented and recast to his new audience, us, in even grizzler detail.)
Stuart Thomas plays in the Surrealists with Kim Salmon. He also plays his own music with the Stu Thomas Paradox.
Anyway, we all meet up, like the Wild Bunch and deal with whatever spotfire or situation I have gotten us into. Its not like a band where the experience has all been shared. We all came by a different route. We've all been up and we've all been down. We like to play in this field, this area we know how to operate in. Its like being a pro gambler or a fighter I guess, only the stoned will know. Memory doesn't have much to do with it. We've had to make up some other way to speak with each other. We can't just refer to past battle plans and victories or defeats. Its always been new. We have to go over the top together.

Stu Perera has played on every album since “the Dave Graney Show” in 1998. He also plays around Melbourne clubs very regularly in a funk outfit. He is highly match fit. Not at all indie either. Adele Pickvance played bass on that Dave Graney Show cd and several that followed. She left to rejoin the Go Betweens. Stu Thomas has played with us since 2004 and made his recorded debut on “keepin’ it unreal” in 2006.
Most albums we have made have include about 40% of material recorded and played completely at our Ponderosa studio by Clare Moore and myself. The rest we have gone into a bigger room/ studio and laid down tracks with our band. Its always been a thing with us to have a band. The music sounds best with a collective feel and energy. A unit that is locked in together. Someone could write a book about holding a band together. It might be a bit tedious for some but you consider say, Duke Ellington who had 16 of the greatest, (and they all knew it) players in the world of jazz . They rode trains and buses and planes and reassembled on stages together for 40 years! He apparently never sacked anybody. He just sat someone down next to them playing the same instrument. At the beginning of a show they would do a fanfare, a blast of notes. Everybody had to have their own note. Players would call out , “get off my fuckin’ note!”
We also like to have a band because our songs need instrumentation and dynamics. We don’t really believe that everything can be boiled down to a single element of an acoustic guitar. I once saw Prince do an acoustic set on cable tv. It was so throwaway as he knew it was NOT what it was supposed to sound like. Nothing else was revealed. Its the same with songs by August Darnell ( Kid Creole). The tunes are simple but the rhythms and melodies are nuanced and sophisticated and need the voices and voicings of a couple of keys players, guitar and percussion as well as drums and bass and vocals to bring it to life.

Occasionally we play a show with a keyboard player. Mark Fitzgibbon, a jazz powerhouse, played with us on “HASHISH and LIQUOR” in 2005 and then on “WE WUZ CRURIOUS” in 2008. Hes’s been involved in the narrative shows, “POINT BLANK” AND ‘LIVE IN HELL”.

Mark was living in Perth for 2009. That year we had the pleasure of playing with ADAM RUDEGEAIR who plays with his own jazz trio as well as with HENRY MANETTA AND THE TRIP.
Clare Moore has recorded and played with the latter as well as with JANE DUST AND THE GIANT HOOPOES (who also feature Stu Thomas on bass) and THE DAMES ( with Kaye Louise Patterson and Rosie Westbrook).
Dave Graney and Clare Moore also play with SALMON very occasionally and also as bass and drums with HARRY HOWARDS N.D.E.
Stu Thomas has his band THE STU THOMAS PARADOX.

We like to play a pretty upbeat set when we appear. Not much room for ballads.Its too late for that!

Our new cd is called “SUPERMODIFIED”. Its 18 tracks recorded mostly in the years 2001-2004, remixed in 2010. Re-sung,re strung, replayed, remixed and remastered . Its out on August 7th. On Cockaigne through Fuse.

Played a show last night and Bill Miller got up to play some guitar. I think we’ll be pulling his talents back in as I got to bust some old schol moves and liked it a lot. Stay tuned.

Thursday 22nd (w/Go Go Sapien) July Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play at the Grace Darling Hotel, Smith st Collingwood.

Saturday 17th July. Dave Graney -- OSCARS Alehouse in Belgrave.

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play the following NSW July dates w/Tiffany Eckhardt and Dave Steel opening.

Thursday 29th July.- Lizottes, Central Coast NSW
Friday 30th July. - Lizottes- Newcastle
Saturday 31st July. - Notes- Newtown
Sunday 1st August. - Brass Monkey ,Cronulla

grateful dead- winners

2010-07-11T17:25:00.000-07:00

I write a column which appears in the Australian Musician magazine which is available for free in every music instrument shop in Australia. This is the latest.

Nostalgia in music is quite a large part of whats left of the business. Its a charge , a weak spark, a lead that people seek to follow , into the audient chaos, hoping a crowd will join them . Yeah! Nostalgia happens on a large scale when things are allowed to happen big in public, open areas. I really love things that happen BIG and nobody in the media or the business seems to notice. Theres no one sniffin’ round , workin’ out how to “monetize” the situation.
Sometimes I hear a snatch of a song and its a powerful shock, all of a sudden I get a glimpse of something like a parallel dimension. Usually a brightly lit kitchen with the radio on and my mother cooking something . Its just there for an instant. I know the songs that have triggered that flash. It doesn’t happen if you seek to possess the music and own it and pout it on again. Its not like having the keys to that other dimension, it just happens , when things are a bit out of phase, when you’re open to it. I have a lot of vinyl and cds. Sometimes I think it’d be great to have such and such a disc that I so enjoyed many years ago and I go and get it. It rarely has the same charge as hearing something new for me. And something new doesn’t have to be something made in 2010, though that is good too. I mean its new to me. I’ve been chasing down the music of Bert Jansch, the genius folk guitar player. Its all new to me. I’ve heard pieces here and there, but he has so much more to reveal I’m sure.
I had the Grateful Deads “American Beauty” when I was kid. It was already about seven years since it had been made and that seemed like a long time. The general feeling I had about music then was that it was all over. I’m sure a lot of young people feel like that now!
So I listened to it as an artefact and , because I was young, quite seriously and with a piercing but narrow gaze. I dug it.
Recently my brother in law got rid of all his vinyl. I rescuedit and gave it a home. . A large part of it was an amazing collection of Grateful Dead discs. Bootleg vinyl with beautiful handmade sleeves. And all the records are from a particular era. Up to 1972, when the original keyboard player , Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died. (He died, strangely for the time, from Cirrhosis of the liver.A juicehead among the trippers).
You can get a great dvd about the Dead. Its called “Anthem to Beauty”. One of the “classic album” shows. But the Dead were not like any other act and really couldn’t be reduced to one emblematic album.
Basically , the two “acoustic “ albums “workingman's dead” and “American beauty” were the most “song based” recordings. Short, vocal based tunes with mostly acoustic instruments. the band had two guitarists, a bass player, two drummers and a keyboard player. Actually they went through keyboard players like drummers in Spinal Tap. It was a death sentence to get that gig! Four or Five in all and only one survivor.
So I want you to know I’m not talking about the Dead as a nostalgic thing. they never came to Australia. Like Elvis (who never left the states) they hard ever went to Europe. Perhaps a handful of times. They did , however , play at the Great pyramid of Cheops. BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO!
They gave up recording from ‘79 to ‘89 because they didn’t like it and told their fans to tape them. They set up a special platform at every gig for the bootleggers.
These discs I have come from an earlier period, when they were still recording. The band were just too much for the business and the formats ! Its strange, they are hard to like. Bits and pieces here and there are great but it rarely holds together for a whole song, let alone for a whole album. My favourite piece of music, for Jerry Garcias guitar tone ( which had a lot to do with Tom Verlaines) is “Dark Star”. Its on almost every one of my bootlegs and is best heard on the double live “LIVE DEAD” which was their third album release. They were rootsy at times. And very bad at those times, but they were also trippers, and went further than most, taking a huge crowd with them.
The lyrics are always very obtuse and poetic. And I mean in a good way. Robert Hunter, a Dead fellow traveller with links , like the whole band, back to Ken Keseys Acid Trips and Kerouac and Cassidy from that earlier generation of beat hipsters, wrote most of the good ones. The band were very street level and drove CBS records and their staff producers nuts with requests to record “thick air” or “coloured silence” for certain parts of a song.
When they gave up recording, for a decade, they continued to tour, and became the biggest live act in America. Eventually, they made an album , recording on a live sound stage and had a late period hit with “touch of grey” in 1989.
Their live sound system was something out of the box. Owsley Stanley III who was an early proselytiser of the then legal LSD , had a hand in designing the double, out of phase vocal mics which allowed them to stand in front of the massive wall of speakers (using no foldback monitors) and have no spill into them, only the singers voices. (Owsley now lives in Queensland. )
Vocals, lead guitar and rhythm guitar and keys each had their own channel and set of speaker, as did each tring of Phil Lesh's bass Each drum also had its own channel and speaker.
The band stood in front of the “wall of sound”.Theoretically hearing the same music as their audience!

If you followed that, the Dead were not only experimental, they had clout, financial power. And they belonged to no one!
In the 90s, they operated their own travel agency for their fans and before coming to a town , would contact police to tell them to not bust people as they were bringing so much into the local economy! I repeat, WINNERS!
Like I say, in my journeys within the ouvre of the Dead I have found them to be so big and unwieldy that I can only make sense of them at points here and there. Like a planet with a strange surface you can never find a place to land on. I enjoy listening though. I have found parts of their post ‘72 albums to be my favourites, notably 1975s, “Blues for Allah”. They also always had such great imagery. Look up Jerry Garcia on youtube, he is such a great talker. The Grateful dead really did it their way. Winners.

Theres this attack on live music happening at the moment by the squares. I hate it when they talk about musicians being victims or losers. And its a bummer when musicians act that way too, getting wasted and moaning how nobody lets them do their popcorn. Musicians are tough and hardy like cockroaches! They also live in the present and the future like no one else. Think of all the ways that people are learning to live nowadays, flitting from precarious job to precarious job in flimsy cardboard set up hole in the wall shopfronts. They have to live by their wits and blow hard. Cutting through the blues and living right anyway. Thats the way musicians have been twitching it for years. Winners.

Thursdays 15th (w/ Stu Thomas Paradox) and 22nd (w/Go Go Sapien) July Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play at the Grace Darling Hotel, Smith st Collingwood.

Saturday 17th July. Dave Graney -- OSCARS Alehouse in Belgrave. Dave Graney solo...

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play the following NSW July dates w/Tiffany Eckhardt opening.

Thursday 29th July.- Lizottes, Central Coast NSW
Friday 30th July. - Lizottes- Newcastle
Saturday 31st July. - Notes- Newtown
Sunday 1st August. - Brass Monkey ,Cronulla

crowbots- tiges etc

2010-07-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

I've been writing columns for the Adelaide Review. This was written for the start of the season. For one reason or another, space and timing, it was held up for a few issues. At one point, it could've made a serendipitous issue that coincided with an Adelaide vs Richmond game. But alas, not to have been. Things change a lot during the season. Those two teams have been written off and have gotten up off the mat several times now. It will grind on, the players being shoved into the dirt during the coldest months which are upon us now.Carrying the hopes of the loyal marks, I mean punters with them...This is the unedited piece, with all sorts of collateral junk kept in....

I feel bad kicking the Adelaide Crows – but - I write this from Melbourne. So i feel a sense of detachment and and the security of several hundred miles between myself and anybody who might get upset. I also wrote this a few weeks ago now and football changes fortunes pretty quickly. The pundits are all supremely unequivocal in the demolition of careers and personalities but they also change like the wind. They flip flop! The archmchair brigade!
So here goes. the Crows. Has there ever been a more desperately humourless team? (Until they lost so many in a row.Now, like a departing politician, they assume human form and sensibility again) Their coach, what’s his name? Dentures! All the science and technology, the relentless drilling down into statistics - where’s the simple joy of playing? Such a brittle construct to begin with. Scott Hodges, he failed in the big room. Same as that blonde headed wingman with the viking mullett. (Which one?) Then there was Andrew Jarman, we already have Rex Hunt as he’s as phony as a three dollar bill. Ken Cunningham was odd but it got confusing trying to translate his garbled vowels and messed up consonants. (Could have been the noise of my chillum as well though.) The inside of the screen was covered in spittle. Graham Cornes climbed out of his coffin to bite the inviting neck of a passing virgin every once in a while. That was good, he was a player. He tried it on for North Melbourne in the seventies but he had no flesh on his bones cos he lived only on fluid - blood. He could fly for a mark but the treacherous Victorian winds blew him out to sea. It got to be embarrassing trudging back through the gates, with his boots on, all drenched and hair messed up.

A couple of players transcended the constraints of the uptight panto story they had to follow. The amazing Tony Modra, the premiership winning Darren Jarman and current marquee star Andrew Macleod. The rest? They’ve earned the nickname my nephews in Sydney have for them: “Crowbots”.(And in Sydney they only heard about AFL recently, when they were given a premiership for a stir).

Both Adelaide teams need to go right down to the bottom of the ladder and to see what’s there. The fans need to get a grip, a sense of humour. It’s hopeless! You’ll never win anything! That’s where you start and everything else is a bonus. Like life, really.

All that hopeless drama was there in the SANFL. These synthetic teams have to live and love a little. I know Richmond fans, and if that team ever gets a few wins on the board, there are many tens of thousands of them, who endure each season with such a grim, dark and damaged outlook. A power team of the 70s, their last premiership was in 1980. The club beheads presidents and coaches every other season. Like a tiny African republic, it has been said. Kevin Bartlett refuses to go back to the club which sacked him as coach in the mid 80s. He is forever dirty on them, but smiles and waves when asked. Their president of the glory years, Graeme Richmond, used to run the Seaview Ballroom, which was the home of punk rock in Melbourne in the late seventies. Champion wingman Francis Bourke ran the Tiger Lounge which was another post punk venue. Champion centreman Ian Stewart (who they had swapped with St. Kilda for Billy Barrott) ran another music venue. My Tiger friend said to me the other day, “At least it’s not like this time last year. Then we had hope! At least we don’t have that this year!” (Last year Richmond rode a wave of Ben Cousins inspired euphoria which crashed early in the first quarter of the first game, as Ben’s hamstring pinged and the crowd gasped, went all floppy and left the stadium in single filed silent misery.) Bens back in favour with the pundits now. Taking one for the team. They stare at him and ask what drugs are like. Their bellies spill out as the buttons pop on their shirts , reaching for a pie and opining that he has ruined his health. Ben smiles and winks at his private film crew.
St Kilda fans can’t bear being in the finals, they don’t know what to do. Hope is not an option. The Crows , well Darren Jarman, destroyed them in 1997 and ever since the Saints dread being put in that position. Daring to hope!

The late JG Ballard wrote in one of his later novels that the hysteria around sport is a guide to how terrifically bored the population is. Melbourne is top of the ladder I think. World class. How is Adelaide doing in that Dream Team comp?

Henry Wagons barracks for the Tigers. He always asks about Dale “Flea” Weightman. The Flea stopped playing in the late 80s. Stu Perera and Mark Fitzgibbon , who play in my band, also go for the Tiges, they have to be told when the season is on. Mick Molloy is a big fan too. He is emblematic of Richmond fans. Comic Pain!Heres some other emblematic barrackers.
St Kilda= Mollly Meldrum, Clare Moore, Johnny Depp.
Essendon = Peter Costello, Aldo Ray.
North Melbourne = Tim Rogers.Simon Crean, Karl malden.
Melbourne = David Bridie, Andrew Duffield.
Carlton = Robert Menzies, Bob Santamaria, Martin Scorcese.
Geelong = John Brumby, Felicity kennett, Dennis Walter.
Western Bulldogs = Ernie Sigley.
Brisbane Lions = Bert Newton, Ben Michaels from the Sand Pebbles, Ernest Borgnine.
West Coke Eagles = Ashley Davies, Tab Hunter.
Fremantle Dockers = The Remaining Triffids, Donald O’Connor.
Collingwood = Kim Salmon and Paul Keating, neither of whom care a damn about football. Political cachet only. Mick harvey is a true believer, Norman Wisdom.
Sydney Swans = Conway savage from the Bad Seeds , Abe Saffron, Karl Stefanovic, Bob Skilton!
Hawthorn = Jeff Kennett.
Port Power = Bubbles Obst ?
Adelaide Crows = Graham Cornes ?
Gold Coast = Barnaby Joyce ?
Western Sydney = Dave Graney

As to the latter, I am taking the rare opportunity to barrack for a team with no players or colours or name . Its peaceful over here.

The Grace Darling - Smith Street Collingwood- Thursday 8th July w/ Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes.
Thursday 15th July w/ the Stu Thomas Paradox
Thursday 22nd July w/ Go Go Sapien.

Oscars Alehouse- 7 Bayview rd Belgrave Saturday 10th and 17th July.

Then we head to Sydney

Thursday 29th July at Lizottes on the Central Coast.
Friday 30th July at Lizottes in newcastle
Saturday 31st July at Notes Live in Newtown
Sunday 1st August the Brass Monkey in Cronulla.

cold cold cold nights- need blood

2010-07-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Played a gig on an icy , windy Thursday night at the Grace Darling Hotel in Smith street. The Dames opened the show. Its hard to get people out on nights like these. The cold is a shock. People will get used to it. Thats me being positive. Musicians are generally negative types but they can fan flames from the smallest spark to keep themselves alive when they are deep in the forest. Of a cold, windy, icy , wet night.
Two days later I played a couple of sets at a cute boutique beer bar called Oscars Alehouse in Belgrave. This is a gig I could walk to. If it wasn’t so damn icy and windy and wet and uphill all the way. Maybe in the summer. But people in the hills are more used to the elements. They turned out. At first the place is full of twenty somethings , who are generally oblivious to music being performed. We come from different dimensions , it seems, though I can see them. Its like an episode of TRUE BLOOD. Astoundingly tall and lean , glamourous , beautiful young girls with their boyfriends, who dress in t shirts no matter what time of year.
Slowly, the music crowd come in and sit around the bars and the tables. Its me and Stu Thomas. Its cute. They sell mulled wine as well as all these exotic, strong beers. I stick to chewing gum and lemonade.
We visit these joints again this month.

The Grace Darling - Smith Street Collingwood- Thursday 8th July w/ Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes.
Thursday 15th July w/ the Stu Thomas Paradox
Thursday 22nd July w/ Go Go Sapien.

Oscars Alehouse- 7 Bayview rd Belgrave Saturday 10th and 17th July.

Then we head to Sydney

Thursday 29th July at Lizottes on the Central Coast.
Friday 30th July at Lizottes in newcastle
Saturday 31st July at Notes Live in Newtown
Sunday 1st August the Brass Monkey in Cronulla.

Come along.We need your blood.

live dates in July

2010-06-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

Played bass with Harry Howards NDE the other night at the Tote. The joint is all clean carpets and spanking sound system. Quite liked it. There is also a taco stand out in the beer garden. I can now enjoy saying "lets blow this taco stand!" at the end of a night and experiencing it being rooted adjacent to some kind of a reality.
Clare Moore on drums, Harry on one of his excellent, collectable guitars and home made amp and Edwina Preston on vintage organ. I borrowed the bass amp of the other act, Ron Penos RSVP. It was a sansamp into a Galleon Kruger head into a 4 by 10 bass cab. then the other bass player , from Black Cab, brought his cabinet of the same size up and I had a massive tower to plug into. I've always complained about bass players amps, usually when helping them lift the things. Now I understand. You NEED that power under you to really get the oomph! required for the true bottom end!
Had a great time. Like driving a steam train. All that power at your touch. Dampening it and pumping it. Riding it!

Got plenty of dates coming up. Some of them being duo gigs and most with the Lurid Yellow Mist.

"Super Modified" is set to drop in August/September. A remix comp. 18 tracks. All sounding great.

Thursdays 1st (w/ the Dames) ,
8th (w/Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes),15th (w/Stu Thomas Paradox) and 22nd ( w/ Go Go Sapien) July Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play at the Grace Darling Hotel, Smith st Collingwood.

Saturdays 3rd,10th,17th and 24th July. Dave Graney -- Oscars AleHouse in Belgrave. The first two a duo with Stu Thomas on bass and the second two a duo with Clare Moore on vibes.

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play the following NSW July dates w/Tiffany Eckhardt and Dave Steel opening.

Wednesday 28th July. - Clarendon Guesthouse- Katoomba
Thursday 29th July.- Lizottes, Central Coast NSW
Friday 30th July. - Lizottes- Newcastle
Saturday 31st July. - Notes- Newtown
Sunday 1st August. - Brass Monkey ,Cronulla

Ruby,Sammy,the heroic Staffy,Pippin,Bambi and Aughtie etc

2010-06-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

I went for a walk/run this morning, attached to my old discman. Intending to listen to an album I’ve been remixing. The speakers in the studio are good and can take a lot of bass frequencies. When I play it on the normal, household sound system, theres always too much bass for those speakers. I want to hear it on the tiny ear plugs as well. Running around the hills, I get to hear it with all manner of bird sounds as well. I got used to it on the last album, “knock yourself out”, and added some squawks and exotic jungle fowl shrieks to the last track “2068 babe”. That seemed to complete it.
On the previous Saturday morning I’d been for a run and stopped to chat with an older gent who always walks his two dogs , Ruby, a rusty coloured terrier, and Sammy, an old salt and peppered Jack Russell. The man, whose name I have neglected to ask him of, always wears a smile and a single earplug for his radio gaffa taped to his ear. We stopped to talk. He never liked dogs but his late wife did and he got used to them. He used to tease her for talking to them but understands that they respond to emotional sounds. he even posited that a plant will grow if you talk nicely to it. I laughed. He began a bit of talk about God but I begged off and he didn’t continue. I asked him where his accent came from. “Dresden” he said. The story came out as to the fire bombing and how he was told to lie on his stomach when the air raids started as the bombs could move the air with such force it could crush your lungs. He was nine years old when the fire bombings occurred towards the end of the war . He rushed out of the house as it started to burn and saw another bomb hit , leaving a crater the width of the road we were standing next to. He pointed at it to illustrate the dimensions. He lost his entire family in the conflagration. That very day. He mentioned he saw a little Daschund running around in the crater that was where his house had been. It was his companion, for a while. He grew up in Dresden as it became a part of East Germany. I mentioned the recent German film “the lives of others” , which he hadn’t seen. I mentioned it had to do with a Stasi agent. We were standing on a dirt walking track on the edge of the forest and he still looked around and over his shoulder before he spoke to me of a friend who was cautioned to change his ways of talking lest he encourage the interest of that secret service, whose informers were a good portion of the population. I was patting Sammy and Ruby through the story. Good companions for this fellow.
I continued my run and listened to my music. My mind had been enlarged considerably though. The reverberant room was bigger and connected to other , unexpected things since I had left the house. Up ahead there were a trio of people looking intently through the undergrowth for something. Magic mushrooms, I surmised. Its the season for organic psychedelics and they grow well on the edge of the forest. Actually, every day this week there have been mushroom gatherers treading carefully and looking hopefully through the ground debris there at Sherbrooke Forest. I was gladdened that there is still that deliberate interest in getting out of it in the community . Times are awful dull, why not!
Sometimes on my run I hear all never see a soul on the streets but hear all the dogs begin to call out to each other from their locked gates. The area is a bit of a dormitory. Little traffic and no shops or distractions. Suburban streets with enormous trees and much greenery hiding and draping each dream home. (All the homes being very different to each other).
Today I stopped at the edge of my driveway and spoke to Pru who was walking Bambi, her Pomeranian who marched up to see if she could bite me on the nuts, and Pippin, a white little terrier who was more mature. Stand-offish and disinterested, though she liked a bit of a neck rub just where that damn collar sits all the time.
I continued on, turning the corner where Suzie, the old, kind Kelpie always comes up for a chat, past the teen party house where the all white guard dog and his delinquent pal sit and bark by the gate all day. Further up the hill is the house where the chihouhua jumps up and down , vertically, behind the curtained window in complete frustration as my nuts walk past so invitingly. Down the dirt track there are the two St Bernards and then the tiny terrier who provokes its pal, the Staffy, to race out and chase me. Somewhere in there is a new, preposterously huge McMansion which sits where a very moderne wooden house used to be. Only it was burned down one night , perhaps a bong slipped from somebodys hand. The family was roused to escape the ensuing fire by another failthfull Staffy. We still refer to the whole corner by that incident. “The Staffy block”. Then the two Shitzus who shout from behind the wooden fence as I start up hill again. Finally there are Toby and Ruby, two miniature Schnauzers who get into a delirious funk of barking as I ( and my nuts) run past their manor. I have seen these two being walked past my joint and they are strangely silent and polite , with their owners, (whose names I have again neglected to learn) as they get their exercize. No bother, they are moving soon, I see by the sign on the front lawn. My favourite neighbourhood dog, Tony, left about eight years ago. he was very smart and would race out from his driveway and accompany me on the whole circuit. His owners gave him to another house around the corner. the new family changed his name to ANZAC and then “sent him to the country”. I have never spoken to the latter again and the former bunch are now vacating the valley. Perhaps our icy demeanour has frozen them out?
We have no dog, just an imperious cat named Aughtie. Named after Custer. Its what his brother Tom called him when they were children.

diary o' activities autumn- winter 2010

2010-05-25T04:57:00.000-07:00

I've been involved in remixing, re-singing and re-stringing (more guitars) our 2003 album "the brother who lived". I was gonna put it on itunes but opened the files and started to tinker. I was misfiring on a couple of cylinders health wise for a few years and thought I could sing it all much better now. So I Hot Rodded the album . Sang most of it again and added a lot of instruments and generally spooked it up a lot. Goosed it , lowered it, and gave it some hot wheels and extra mags, a spoiler and general trim. Chromed it. Sports steering wheel, bucket seats, eight ball on the stick shift. It is a chariot! Also did four tracks from "Heroic Blues" as well as four other unreleased tracks from the vaults. All recorded around the same time. Its gonna be an album called "Heroic Brother- Super modified" and it'll be out in September.

The MC Bits shows went well. Me on vocal and guitar and Mark Fitzgibbon on piano. Might do it again later in the year.

Another Sunday at the Retreat the other night. That is such a great place to play with a hard driving band like us. Great people seem to show up there. A real cool time. As they say.
That week after MC Bits saw us hanging out at a gig in Melbourne by Paisley Park alumni Ricky Peterson and the Peterson Brothers. The three brothers played keys, bass and guitar. Oh, and they had Sheila E side of stage on drums. It was such a tight, funk sound.
Those of us in the audience got a treat. A very unique audience of music instrument shop types of people and r&b folk. Not like a rock crowd at all.

A few days later we saw Kim salmon and the Surrealists play their new album "Grand unifying theory" at a rock club in the city called Cherry. Kim kept pulling the envelope way out of whack with the amazing jams on the new album and then punching it back uptight with classics from his back catalogue. Shit the audience was panting for. It was classy and cruel. Go Go Sapien opened the show. they are so great. All dressed in white and playing super arranged pop classics. All major blocked chords with great lyrics and giant choruses.
After the bands finished people got up on the stage and vogued to old trad rock stuff like the Velvet Underground and AC/DC. OOOOOWWWWWWW!

We played at the Retreat with Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes who are really gelling. A country funk sound not to be heard anywhere else in 2010. Jane Dusts album is dropping soon. Its a classic.

Dates coming up---------------

Sunday June 13th Dave Graney and the Lurid yellow Mist play at the Retreat Hotel-Sydney Rd Brunswick.Special guests Go Go Sapien.

Thursdays 1st (w/ the Dames) ,8th,15th and 22nd (w/Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes) July Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play at the Grace Darling Hotel, Smith st Collingwood.

Saturdays 3rd,10th,17th and 24th July. Dave Graney - solo- Oscars BAR in Belgrave.

Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist play the following NSW July dates w/Tiffany Eckhardt and Dave Steel opening.

Wednesday 28th July. - Clarendon Guesthouse- Katoomba
Thursday 29th July.- Lizottes, Central Coast NSW
Friday 30th July. - Lizottes- Newcastle
Saturday 31st July. - Notes- Newtown
Sunday 1st August. - Brass Monkey ,Cronulla

mc bits

2010-05-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

MC Bits - songs that destroy is a show I'm doing at the Butterfly Club this weekend, Friday 14th and saturday 15th May. The shows start at 10:00pm.
The venue is the Butterfly Club which is in a large Victorian House at 204 Bank street South melbourne. Right near the South Melbourne Town hall.
Its a cabaret room. It holds 50 people, who are seated and is run with all the formality and show manners of a theatre. You walk in off the street and down a corridor to a lounge area and a bar. There are other rooms for lounging up the stairs and a covered garden area out the back. Back out towards where you came in there is the performance area.
Usually there are no microphones in the room. A little lighting and a stand up piano is what the show is given.

We first did a show there in 2006 called POINT BLANK. This was a narrative show built around songs of mine, mostly from the albums "the devil drives" (1997) and "the dave graney show" (1998) . The narrative was that of a performer walking onto a stage and what he brought with him to that neutral area, that foreign planet, and the heroic battles he fought to conquer it. At the end he walks out to the stage and is met with the attentive gaze of a suddenly interested audience who can see him. Thats the POINT BLANK. We did it in the Butterfly Club twice and in Adelaide at the Cabaret Festival twice and at the Sydney Opera House Studio.
That show was performed by myself with Clare Moore on vibes and percussion and vocals and Mark Fitzgibbon on piano.

In 2008 we did a sequel called "LIVE IN HELL" This has been performed at the Butterfly Club twice. (two SEASONS of four nights) with Stu Thomas on a very quiet fuzz bass, Stu Perera on nylon string guitar, Clare Moore on a toy drum kit and myself on guitar. That show took up fom the end of POINT BLANK and began with the performer coping with life inside the perception of others. Previously he had been free to roam wide, coming out of the shadows and able to constantly renew and reinvent his own life. Now he was fixed in time and was in HELL. Songs included "one night of sin" by Elvis, "the Bogus Man" by Roxy Music, "new face in hell" by the Fall and many songs of mine. It ended with a recital of "lament for my cock" from the posthumous DOORS album, "an American Prayer".

MC BITS is a set of songs I'm gonna sing with Mark Fitzgibbon on piano. I just wanted to do a set of heavy songs. Songs that destroyed.Me. Music is a powerful force and eats up people who dive into it. And you have to dive into it. People think its easy because you have to get some skills to perform music. Balance, tone, cadence and poise. Things that destroy you for anything else much. You become a husk of a person. A collection of routines. MC BITS.

"hong Kong Blues"- Hoagy Carmichael.
"if the world wasn't there" and " love is teasing" - Bert Jansch.
"walk on water"- Kevin Ayers.
"paper Moon"- Nat King Cole.
"serpent at the gates of wisdom"- Robyn Hitchcock.
"I can't be satisfied"- Muddy waters.
"the goodbye train"- Peter Milton walsh.
"the blind mans penis"- John Truby.
"franklins tower"- the Grateful Dead.

And a whole lot of my own songs. Heavy songs like "saturday night bath", "lifes a dream" and "I will have always been here before".

You can check out the venue at http://www.thebutterflyclub.com

Radelaide- cool machine!

2010-05-10T06:43:00.000-07:00

The hotel we played in in Adelaide is really on that side of the city that is the best. I mean the innovative and self sufficient and totally effective side . Its in a part of town thats a bit of a secret. Not at all hip or hyped up but you could walk to it from the end of Hindley street. Quiet streets but there were three pubs having music in a couple of blocks, in the middle of a lot of old houses. Somehow they have it working.
The pub is run by a group of women. I heard they applied for a loan to buy it as a partnership or company but were refused by the bank as their business plan did not include poker machines. Did you ever wonder how things happen in certain directions? Undeterred, three of them secured personal loans and they bought the place , freehold. they have no poker machines and the only tv in the place is a small one with a rabbit ear aerial up the end of the bar. No food, just booze and music. They sponsor an all girl roller derby team and on the Saturday night of our two night stand, they all came back after their match. This had been in front of 2000 people at the Showgrounds.
There is no security as they keep the numbers allowed in below that which triggers the need to do so. They charge an entry fee to the room where the band is and everybody gets paid. there are lots of seats and tables and the equipment is good. People old and young like going there. We played on the Saturday night at about 10:30 pm for an hour and a half. Stu Thomas Paradox opened the show. On the Sunday the brilliant Adelaide band No Through Road did a set at 4pm and we played from 5:30pm until Seven. How easy does that sound? Pretty easy when people know what they’re doing.

There were four of us playing. Clare Moore on drums, Stu Thomas on bass, Stu Perera on guitar and myself on guitar on vocals. We play electric guitars through smallish combo amps. We all sing and generally tell the local engineer to give us an R&B sound with the vocals up front.

We drove from Melbourne to Adelaide with our gear and the two Stuarts flew. We carry our own gear and generally look after ourselves.

We played these songs...

the sheriff of hell
night of the wolverine
a man on the make
pianola roll
bodysnatcher blues
feelin kinda sporty
rock n roll is where I hide
dylan the indie fake
mt gambier night
I like to be haunted
you had to be drunk
I come from the clouds
you’re just too hip, baby
the birds n goats
apollo 69
I’m in the future now
lets kill god again
I’m gonna release your soul
My schtick weighs a ton
sellout!
lifes a dream
midnight cats
I don’t wanna know myself

Most are from our last two albums, “we wuz curious” and “knock yourself out”. There were four or five unrecorded songs that I like to play as its something absolutely fresh in the room for everybody to check out. We also play songs from our albums going back to 1993. Anything earlier, we play if people ask for it and we know it. On the Sunday night I asked if anybody wanted to hear anything. There was a call from “three dead passengers in a stolen second hand ford” which hadn’t played for a few years. We stole onto a sweet version of that, with a bossa nova beat. Someone asked for “the Moodists” so i went over to Stu and played the bass line of a song we did with them called “runaway”. Clare hit the beat and I cued Stu Perera to start wailing half way through the song.

After the show we went to a house nearby and ate pizza and drank wine with Matt Banham from No Through Road. There were all these intelligent women there, smoking Adelaide joints ( rolled with herbal tobacco) and we watched a video of Adam and the Ants clips. Stu Thomas is an expert on Adam and he talked us through the changes.

We drove back the next day. Thats how you do it!

review of a Ray Charles bio from 2004

2010-04-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the AGE more than half a decade ago. Its a good read if you can find it...

Ray Charles: Man and Music - Michael Lydon
2004- 494 pages.RIVERHEAD

This is a book about a musician and his music.That the musician is Ray Charles and that he embraced the music of a whole charged up country and melded it as he pleased means that this is a big,mother fucking hard covered,historical epic.The writer, Michael Lydon, approaches the story with great gusto and gets involved at all turns. Ray is seen up close as we can get to a creative artist. Ray is of course ,blind and this removes him totally from most of our experience of life.Ray is consumed by music and life. This life is almost totally spent travelling on the road. He walks into hotel rooms and steps out the dimensions and architecture of the space he is going to be moving through. He has a valet on constant call but likes to do as much as he can by himself. Through the writer we see Ray hot and bothered, waving his arms and legs and bumping into walls after shooting up some smack and running his band through his paces like a machine. Ray is hard and unquestionably the boss and emperor of his world.
This might seem like much of the hyperbole that surrounds the strange ,stiff formality that surrounds other black American touring organisations of the era.Think of James Brown and his extended court who all addressed each other with a stiff “Mister” around any of the hired help. Think of BB King touring for half a century in a succession of vehicles, well aware that outside of this well regulated environment he is a poorly educated African American with roots sewn very shallowly,if at all in the actual, mean , business world. In contrast, Ray Charles rules Ray Charles Enterprises in cold , hard fact. As a musician,I sat with my jaw in my lap and then felt like jumping up and cheering as I read the section where Ray negotiates a deal with ABC paramount records in 1959.Ray had been with Atlantic records which was a premier ,innovative black R&B label run by the young Turkish jazz fan,Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler since 1952.They had had faith in his ability to truly find his own voice and come out from his initial overt imitations of his idols,the smooth Nat “King” Cole and the rough and bluesy Charles Brown.Their patience had been rewarded first with “I got a woman” and then “What’d I say “. Ray was not yet thirty and coming into all his powers. At this point he went his own way and signed with ABC. It is a thread running through this story that Ray is his own man. ABC offered Ray a 75% his way deal his and would let him produce his own records. Ray was already producing his own sessions and thought the deal was sweet.At the end of the discussions he casually asked if he could own his own master tapes. This brilliant ,fearless question was eventually answered in the affirmative and to this day,Ray owns all his recordings. Many years later,when his post Atlantic records would be re released on many different labels,all the people would have to deal directly with Ray Charles Enterprises. Ray Charles was in control like few others. This is something to see when you tally it with the images of the boy growing up in the poverty of rural Georgia in the Thirties.The little boy who goes blind at the age of seven and is sent off, walking by himself , to a distant school for the blind. He makes his own way in the world better than so many others who should be able to see so much clearer than him. Ray is on his own from an early age.

As a music fan the glimpses this book gives of that great period just after the second world war when mass immigration of African Americans from the South to the North and the great leaps in technology of recording and playing music produced the shapes of sounds to come for the next half century.The characters involved here are a roll call of icons.Ertegeun and Wexler at Atlantic are complemented by their recording engineer,Tom Dowd, who,after witnessing the nuclear blasts at Bikini Atoll as a young physicist, scores a job at a New York recording studio.(At this stage they wear white lab coats to work!) His enthusiasm for work sees him find ways to record sounds loudly yet clearly, just at the edge of distortion. He invents the “Atlantic sound”.
You also get to meet Quincy Jones as a fifteen year old trumpet player and budding arranger.You think of all the other cats moving around the States at the same time.Duke Ellington,Charlie Parker ,Hank Williams ,Wynonie Harris and Count Basie.The level of musicianship required of all these players would make a modern player afraid to walk down the same street! Everybody had to be able to sight read and music was played and listened to in the moment.Vinyl,long playing records were a new technology. Music was experienced. Ray is once again seen moving through this world as a supreme master of his music, unencumbered by ideas of staying in a particular genre. He more or less invents soul music by singing sex drenched street talk against gospel grooves and then has his biggest hit with a country album.Ray learns to read music by braille. First the left hand with the right hand reading and then the other way around. All of his arrangements for his bands were done ,note for exacting note, in his head. He would shoot up some heroin, lay back on his bed and dictate whole arrangements to his musical director,for each instrument! Every transposition and cymbal crash!

This is a big story and it is a long story.Most of the last century in fact. We leave the book and Ray is still on the road. The delightful fact that his big band still sets up with no microphones on stage save for one for Rays piano and one for his voice is seen as a negative. I would love to have heard that band playing like that!

Ray is also seen in these pages as a junkie,a chronic pants man and a cold, distant bastard to family and friends but when all is said and done,it’s the music that will live on. Like any musician, he put everything into the grooves.

http://www.michaellydon.com/

tasmaniacally weighted stuff/ stuffed

2010-04-26T03:50:00.000-07:00

Now if a musician is talking in a public space about what they're doing, you have to bear in mind that whatever they say, its said within a realm where perception is the whole of the law.
I mean if you want "truth" or anything resembling it- you might get a whiff but its all smoke , reverb and mirrors- dig? Shit comes from us coated in primo fairy dust . The cadence is real but its weighted! Because we gotta talk our stuff UP . Its gotta be pointed that way.

So we flew to Launceston, Clare, Stu Thomas, Stu Perera and myself. We were having a backline provided for us at the shows so we carried a few guitars and a set of cymbals and a snare.
Two of us were getting over that persistent Melbourne bug that has taken peoples voices away and given them stuffed heads for the last five or six weeks. The two others, Stu Perera and myself,were just entering into that state. It was wet and drizzling in Launceston. I wore my clothes coz I'd been here before. leather pants, waistcoat and jacket and a pair of ripples.
Before the gig we went and spoke to some "troubled kids" in a youth social work centre. they had a kit and some instruments set up. Talked to them about music and the life. Played a song and got them to strum some chords. One was really good and one was painfully shy and one was a wise guy. i told the latter to be the singer.
The venue was to be in a beer garden so as to let people smoke I guess. It was a tough gig. And if we find a gig to be tough that means most musicians would die as they stepped onto the stage.
I took the Vox amp and Stu took the Fender.
Playing music was, as usual, the easy part. A small crowd including some good friends from melbourne who were in town to pick up a picture one had done for an art exhibition.
We played about seven or eight songs from the Devil Drives (1997) and "the soft n sexy sound" (95) and "night of the wolverine (1993) . Then we stepped off and played a lot of unrecorded stuff and other songs from our two most recent discs, "we wuz curious" and "knock yourself out".
Launceston is a beautiful looking smallish city built on spectacular hills and rises.Compared to melbourne and Sydney, most Tasmanian joints look olden as their has been fuck all development or tearing of old shit UP.
It is also a pretty blue collar scene. Trucks laden with logs of wood pass by at every corner. Guys in fluorescent semi official working over jackets everywhere. the Greens party also had five members elected in the recent election. In Tasmania, everybody rubs up against each other.
So at this gig the venue had a large tv screen in the next room blasting out some video music hits all night as we played and a dj in another room played the worst and the loudest doof type disco prog sludge all night as well. If I was in melbourne I could have made a noise complaint, arguing that I was both a newly arrived resident and that i was the most deserving of heritage listing and so, be treated with all the care and regard that would befit my most elevated status and unarguable importance . If I was in Melbourne. Here, we just had to sort it out. We won in the end. People even danced.
A fellow and his wife approached and asked the traditional Dave Graney question, 'what are you doing HERE?". I replied that I weren't no snob etc. Turns out he is a timber union worker and next time he'll bring a whole crew down. Its almost enough to make me think about visiting Launceston again. Being a genuine blue collar hero. But no.
There was also the noise from the pub across the road which played nothing but bad techno versions of classic rock songs at massive volume all night. I mean until 7 am. In our ears, as we tried to sleep in the rooms above. Conveniently easier for the sounds to swell out and totally envelope us.
We left early and didn't look back. A friend had recommended a bakery in a town along the 200k drive down to Hobart. We walked in and were served by a funny old maid in a bonnet and dress that were straight out of "the old lady who lived in a shoe". The food was less well dressed .Nice and ordinary, though pretentiously priced. I stopped at a supermarket and lassoed some neo wild apples.
The Hobart gig was immensely enjoyable. We played late to a crowd of people who were helpless when confronted with our skills and power. We played the same kind of destroy and step off set. We killed it.
This time I had a smaller , solid state Vox and Stu had a Roland JC 120.
Met many people, none of who were locals. A mature beauty in a Pashmina from Byron , a rich couple all dolled up as if for the Opera from Melbourne , a crew of wild surfers on a safari from Adelaide, a woman from poland. We had slain them all anyway.
Our band is supreme. Though we exist so far off from the known maps of the old music land mass known as rock n roll. We really play it as it should be played. Clare Moore and Stu Thomas lock in on those grooves and their minds and hands are supple from all the shows and gigs they are doing with their own music and with other bands. Stu Perera plays every week in melbourne with a reggae dance act. Everybody who hears him wail is amazed, nobody hears licks like he throws anywhere on the scene. He is a fuckin' NINJA!
When we come together like the wild bunch its an amazing sound. Its funny, the two guitars are getting close to that west coast San Francisco sound I've always loved but always thought was separate from the actual music I was making . Its getting closer and closer now, after all this time.

Probably won't be recording these new tracks until next year. I want to have a period outside of recording world for a while. Playing songs for a long time before putting them down.

Got on the plane to come home. There was a dopey 60s looking young band on the plane. They looked very straight in their winklepickers and cardigans.Like a whole band of Ringos, or Georges.

We felt guilty about leaving Stu Thomas there but he had a solo gig to do. He survived. We are all sitting back in Melbourne , totally wrecked. Tasmania kicks the fuck out of you.

pioneers! Diggers!

2010-04-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, sorry about that shit that offended you. Whatever it was . Something always does. I was just givin’ one off the wrist, you know, just foolin’ around. I’m often rushing off at the mouth and then feeling like a fool two minutes later. Impulsive type. Hot to exist.
I have noticed , in my movements through the tiny world I am able to access. Make that, as I go about the place - that people are quick to take offence if you gratuitously offer an opinion, or adopt a position which appears to be definitive. People see it is an insult to other people trying to occupy the same area. You are somehow queering the pitch for anybody and everybody if you leave a note ringing in the air. It is always interpreted as an off note. negative. To have an opinion is bad. Its taking some oxygen out of the room. Its therefore cynical and even perhaps bitter. This is, for me , hard to swallow in situations where people talk about music. Basically, you never hear from musicians. You get people who are self appointed experts such as Molly Meldrum or Glenn A Baker or Richard Wilkins or the cast of tv shows like Spicks and Specks or Rock Wiz but you never ever hear from musicians. Isn’t that strange!

Whenever sports is on the pubic tongue the voices most trusted are players or ex players. Same with anything to do with farming, they always genuflect to the guy sitting on a tractor, swiping flies from his face. The one who never moves his lips when he talks. People respect his words though. But don’t you worry about that!

In my case I must proffer a disclaimer, as far as the pompous pop group Queen goes, I hated them way before I could ever twang a note on a guitar. And I still do! The mark of a square! (another is a Kiss t shirt)

I have also noted the hysterical tone that some talk / writing on the magic box (internet) operates at. I guess its the way that it has naturally gone. Like in the industrial touring part of the rock scene where nobody is listened to or respected unless they are threatening violence at any moment. All the language is acidic and crude and nobody hears you otherwise. Its pretty camp to tell you the truth.

Anyway, the talk. It suggests a walk. as in talking the talk and walking the walk. Years ago, I heard that Stephen Stills (Buffalo Springfield/Crosby Stills Nash and....) was talking about his time fighting in ‘nam. While all the hippies were peacing out in SF. Someone had to remind him that this hadn’t happened and that he had been very publicly involved in rock music all through that period. The drugs.
Some people who talk about music suffer a bit from those phantom war experiences. Like the man from the RSL here who had told everybody he was a POW for decades. There are rock’n’roll soldiers who have endured the years of slogging it righteously for the Stooges or the Dolls. They endured the wrongs of history and the cruelty of the pop scene. Eventually, they think they were in the Stooges or the Dolls. Or Crack the Sky or Black Flag. Name your club and get you patch on. Some bands must have had more members than they ever played to.

The magic box , with all its talk and chat, lets all this stuff hang out , dripping wet, for all to see. Its all opinion, like most things in the digital world. It’ll all change soon. I was told , by a person who WORKS WITH COMPUTERS, that soon the internet will be full and they’ll have to start charging people to use it- if they want to use the fastest aspects of it. Whadda ya reckon about that? Will that be inevitable? It sounds plausible. Its a pretty good rumour to start anyway.

I don’t know what I’m talking about so I am a disinterested voice. I mean , I’m not lying.
My friend. lets call him “deep throat”, said that there might be a supercharged , turbo driven type internet available but you’d have to pay more to use this. There would be a public, cheap kind of experience as well but the super dooper one would be there for watching movies ( if anyone is making them) or listening to music (if anybodys making that) . That would be an immediate experience. The public, cheap one would probably be as slow as my current , and probably future experience. A degraded and sluggish taste of something , well not real, but almost so. Kind of like mp3s or music in paddocks (aka rock festivals) or online porn . Perhaps it’ll get people out of the house a bit more when they reject it? Somehow I doubt it. I mean look at football fans, they’ll take anything from the AFL and their clubs. And still they come back for more....

I digress. The talk about music in the rock n roll area is full of dashed dreamers and greatness the public ignored. Its a thing that started happening in the late seventies when another narrative of music was cooked up, a second rail that ran alongside the publicly recognzed one. This one had the Velvet Underground and the Stooges as the marquee acts. Many others have been added to the list since. The ones who were wronged by the times. Instead of the main travelled roads there had been these other, more authentic side roads that had been opened up. And they were more true in their orientation as regarding both the past and the future than that main highway. It was a very beguiling and convincing story.
It was just a story of timing. Those acts still cut through. They just went off later is all. It happened to the French poets of the 1880s- the bomb dropped in the States in the late 40s with the Beats. People are still digging up a few sad zombies here and there. For the most part, everything was released and broadcast up to about 1974 . In My humble opinion! People are zombie hunting because it makes it easier to stomach the fact that the general public doesn’t know about their act who are operating currently. If greatness could be ignored then it could be being missed right now! A comforting thought. It helps to ease the pain I guess. And it helps to stop even trying to push yourself through. Don’t fall for it! Its a scam!

Look out for us in Launceston and Hobart April 23 and 24- Adelaide May 8th and 9th at the Wheatsheaf and my new show "MC BITS- songs that destroyed" at the Butterfly club may 14th and 15th.

"Kind of Blue, the making of the Miles Davis masterpiece" by Ashley Kahn

2010-04-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is a review of a book that was published in the Age a long while ago....

Miles Davis. He was bad. He was terrible. People want to be down with him even now. Even though he ain't here anymore. People just want to be near him, for him to maybe notice them. His recorded output is so vast you could spend the rest of your life just digging into the surface of it. They call him "Miles' like they know him and his work intimately .Just saying that makes them feel cool.
This is the story behind and around a recording made by Miles Davis' sextet in 1959. It is billed as the best selling album in Miles' catalogue and the best selling classic jazz album ever. The story of the group itself is enough for a book. Each member was well on the on the road to becoming a superstar and Miles was only able to hold them together for a few months. Bill Evans (and Wynton Kelly) on piano, John Coltrane tenor sax, Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, Jimmy Cobb on drums and Paul Chambers on bass.Miles himself had already been on the scene since playing with Charlie Parker in the mid 40's bebop scene and releasing "the birth of the cool" in 1950. He was 32 when "Kind of blue" was recorded and was already making what some people saw as a "comeback". His image was , and still is, diamond hard and brilliant black.
The book is also a glimpse into a lost world. The American recording business of the last half of the 20th century. The recording itself took two sessions , each lasting three and a half hours. The studio was owned by Columbia records and was situated in an abandoned Greek orthodox church that measured 100 feet by 100 feet. The ceilings were extremely high and the control room was set up in the church's balcony. Seven microphones were suspended high in the room (two being close to the drums) , the object being to record the sound in the room and the musicians being expected to regulate the volume of their own playing. The president of Columbia could read a musical score, was a composer himself , frequently worked in the control booth and had a policy of only hiring people for top positions who were musicians or had been musically trained. Artists were expected to release three albums every year. There was also no distinction made between jazz records and pop records and all releases were given the same promotional treatment! What sort of insanity was at work here?
"Kind of Blue" was an immediate best seller and Miles went on to turn the musical world on its head a couple more times. Coltrane recorded "Giant Steps" months after this session and Bill Evans also released his second album , "everybody digs Bill Evans" in the same year. The book is full of brilliant detail and fills in the background and foreground of the music scene at the time so the event of the albums release in 1959 is not seen in isolation . ( The soundtrack to "My Fair Lady" sold 5,000,000 copies for Columbia in 1957 and Ornette Coleman was just stirring the pot with the beginnings of "free jazz" as the album was coming out.) "Kind of Blue" has never been out of print and an employee at Tower Records flagship store in Manhattan (which probably doesn't exist in 2010) is quoted as saying the it is their "best selling catalogue album period. Better than any record by the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, anybody".By 1984 it had sold 500,000 copies in the US. After that, with the advent of the cd and the relentless record company repackaging of their back catalogues, it really took off, selling 5,000,000 by the end of 2000 (when this book was written) .

In a way, it is strange to read a story of those far off days when music was modern. "Kind of Blue" went into record stores where there was no "retro" section and to radio stations that eagerly awaited new releases. There were few "classics" and the live audience was sophisticated and hip to the idea of hearing something totally unexpected. ( Modern hip hop is the only comparable scene) . You feel you are being suckered into another reissued cul de sac. Then you play the album again and wonder at the convergence of ambition and energy that led all those great players together on those two sessions. Thats the beauty of recorded music. It really is a glimpse into a simultaneous dimension.

malcolm maclaren

2010-04-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

It was quite a shock to hear of Malcolm Maclarens death. He was always so rude I imagined that rudeness to extend to his health. As they say. I never knew him of course. Just his public face. That was not exactly loveable He was pretty brilliant as a character. And in the story of the Sex Pistols, that was an amazing cast of characters. Resonant and powerful and capable of bending and twisting time and its perception so old things became new and new became old. The Sex Pistols made everything seem old all of a sudden but at the same time brought out adjectives like “Dickensian” in regard to the look and deportment of the main players . There you had the 19th and 20th centuries in harmony all of a sudden. Before them it was all just a bit sad and faded denim- like as rock music started to slow down to check itself out in the shop windows all the time. The first seasons of nostalgia. Maclaren was there when the brilliant flash of punk happened.

His greatest role as an irritant was what gave punk its mad spark which still carries a charge today.
To all the cries of “its a scam!” and “its a fake” he rudely agreed and put more kero on the kindling. No one could ever get teary and sad about punk while he was standing near the grave site, selling t shirts. He stamped it with that great duality that it was probably all a load of bullshit and flammery as well as being an amazing moment of illumination. Thats what made it so great! Punk Dies!

He kept saying he made the band up and hinted he wrote some of the songs. He seemed to try to claim Sid - up to the point of the MURDER and SUICIDE. Parts of the story were all too real and uncontrollable. He tried to control some of the story. it all got so out of hand though.

The other players in the story rebelled and walked out of the theatre. Their story was told thrillingly in the Julien Temple film “The filth and the fury”. Malcolms presence in that story was a figure in a complete body and head bondage gimp outfit.

Julien Temple had also, with Malcolm, painted his very different side of the story in the earlier film , “the great rock’n’roll swindle”.

So many contradictions.

Others have pointed out the effect on Johnny of an intelligent, cultured older mans attention and the encouragement he must have given them all. Young, inarticulate, poor, thieving, skiving, powerless dudes. Perhaps he resonated them first? I mean he was the first audient? The believer? And then he turned from Johnny to his friend Sid and tried to work a new smudged area into the picture himself! And claim it all as his own work! The story will go on forever.

I have a dvd of a “rock n roll revival “ concert from London in the early 70s. In the crowd scenes you see Malcolm and Vivienne selling t shirts outside the arena.

He practiced his dark arts on the New York Dolls. And fumbled it (Red leather with hammer and sickle flags) and ruined them.

Some say he saw Richard Hell in a torn t shirt and stole a generation.

He crushed Adam Ant and took his band to make Bow Wow Wow. They were great too. So was Adam when he picked himself up again.

Later he tried Opera and hip hop and square dancing and a film about the great shops along Oxford street.

What could you compare him to? Suge Knight? L Ron Hubbard? Gourdjieff? Ouspensky , Master P? Franz Mesmer? Colonel Tom Parker? Dick Clark? John Dee? Alan Freed? Lee Gordon? Don Lane? Graham Kennedy?

Like I said, I did not know the man and I am no expert.

He is to be buried in Highgate cemetary, near where he was apparently born. Thats real.

blb playlist 06/04/10

2010-04-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

BLB is a show I do every Tuesday on RRR in Melbourne from midday to 2pm with Elizabeth McCarthy.
I was flying solo again and we had no guests so it was all music this week.

“ode to Billy Joe” - instrumental version of this Bobbie Gentry classic by the late Clarence White (the Byrds) on guitar. A string bending telecaster toned wonder.
“kneel down at the altar of pop”- Kim Salmon and the Surrealists from the new album “grand unifying theory” out just now on Low Transit Industries.
“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”- a 1965 instrumental. Two acoustic guitars played by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn.
“MISSISSIPPI”- Bobby Gentry.
“Yesterday”- Ruth Brown. Fulfilling our Beatles quota for the week.
“Light My Fire”- Julie Driscoll and Brian Augur.
“looking through a window”- Wendy Saddington.
“I think its gonna rain today”- Dusty Springfield interpreting this Randy Newman CLASSIC.
“Harper Valley PTA”- Jeannie C Riley.

I explained that I had had to put all my vinyl in a new cabinet and had been inspired to bring some to the studio.

I busted out some more contemporary stuff...

“Old Money”- from an ep by the Hungry Kids of Hungary.
“In my fortress”- Lilith Lane. New single from this Melbourne singer.
“The hangover”- the Bedroom philosopher. Very funny and very groovy single from this Melbourne cat.

Back to the vinyl for...
“Nights On Broadway”- Candi Staton ran through this Bee Gees hit.

“Cosmic caveman” - Snog. A track from their “Last of the great romantics” which is out NOW on Hymen records.

“Albatross” - Fleetwood Mac. Elizabeth McCarthy loves Fleetwood mac , but only the Stevie and whatsisname years. Some sort of joke I am sure......
“you and your sister”- Chris Bell. From the “I am the cosmos” collection. this song features his old bandmate from from Big Star, the late Alex Chilton.
“Willie Mae and laura Jones”- Nancy Wilson.
“I made you that way”- Nancy Wilson.
“mesmerized”- Faith Evans.
“my mind”- Jimi Tenor from his album, “Organism”.
“It was then or never” - Dave Graney! From “Knock Yourself Out”.
“Let it come down”- Mose Allison, from the new album by this 83 year old jazz songwriter.
“Fresh Garbage”- Spirit.
“see what a love can do” - Grin - featuring Nils Lofgren.
“water down”- Native Cats- Tasmanian duo featuring Peter Escott who is suddenly appearing in Melbourne as a comedian!
“Funky but chic” - David Johansen from his debut album in 1978.

the tinny halls of state politics

2010-04-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

This was published in the current issue of the ADELAIDE REVIEW...

I read in the paper that there was discomfort in the halls of the SA government , not only in the chaffing and discomfort of the premiers raging suit pants but also in regard to the bike race with Lance Armstrong. One of those things silly where the fellow is paid so much more to just turn up than the events prize money pays out. Isn’t it funny how those sorts of things are just accepted as “thats how it is since 9/11” or something along those lines. Victoria paid Tiger Woods six million or so to play here. They are desperate to throw the same amount of cash at him again. Even with his tumescent shame in his hands Sydney paid , perhaps, just as much to Brian Eno for their Luminous festival. Personally I think spending on the arts is more preferable. Not just high end arts though as they soon become just more bread and circuses , just like the bikes and the cars. The thing that was reported about the Tour Down under bike race was Mike Rann saying sagely that they couldn’t divulge exactly how much they paid as their competitors could outbid them. Isn‘t that lame! Its like sitting in a room with two lawyers arguing, and you’re paying. They use that arch, hyped language of steroid powered manners and mock , panto outrage . You want to laugh but the meter is ticking over and its connected to your bank account.
So the competitor is Victoria. Thats it.John Brumby here in Melbourne uses the same tactic to keep the enormous black hole that is the Victorian (formerly Adelaide) Grand Prix out of any public discussion. Jeff Kennett , the former Premier seemed to invent the term they bandy about. “Commercial in confidence”. It is such bad language it must be a derivative of a latin phrase. Nobody has ever asked, thats how docile the press is. Brumby can’t divulge how much they pay for the right to stage the Grand Prix ( let alone how much it actually loses every year) as Victorias “competitors” might outbid them. The competitor is South Australia.
State Governments don’t seem to have much to do. Its a problem. The Melbourne music scene has been feeling the hand of the law in recent months. The large nightclubs in the city have been the alleged cause of violence in the streets. Previously the violence had been more in the suburbs I guess. Its more exposed now. (The influence and power of CCTV footage) So they have been wielding the , until now, rarely enforced powers of the Liquor Licensing regulations to bring some law and order to the streets. Trouble is the big night clubs (up to 1500-2000 patrons) of King and Queen and Prince streets are dark during working hours and the agents started to walk into the little pubs off the other streets. They were being fined for not displaying responsible serving of alcohol certificates and forced to install cameras and two security guards after certain hours. These were pubs with toothless geezers playing banjos on Sunday or hosting live music to 20 or 30 people during the week, The result was the closure of the Tote Hotel which had been an institution for more than 30 years in Collingwood. The state government was unyielding in its stiff upper lip and “would not resile” from its tough stance. All designed to impress voters for the Liberal party in the outer suburbs .Social networks went crazy and 2000 usually quite apathetic people turned up at the corner of Wellington and Johnston streets, Collingwood, where the Tote was, to protest. Quite an amazing and spontaneous event. the next day, a Monday, 26 acts played all day on the very last day the pub opened. the money went to pay off legal fees the pub had incurred fighting the Liquor Licensing commission. The government still played it tough and l kept referring to the particular circumstances of the Tote while all the protesters , well most of them, pointed out their concerns were for the whole live music scene in general. Basically, there is no violence in these venues. And they are some of the few public spaces where a woman can go alone, to see and hear some music being played without being bothered by men presuming she is in a singles bar. The scene is very delicately poised.
Even Eddie Maguire , who hosts a morning show on MMM here, got onto the theme and perhaps it was him who got through to Brumby that it was a live issue in an election year.
Mostly, it has been a series of events that has exposed , for me, how out of touch politicians rare in general. I might have had that as a default opinion before, but hearing them talk about a world that I am a part of, I KNOW they are talking rubbish . From out of their boots. They don’t know anything about the world at street level and they are interfering in it. Music is not just a youth thing anymore is something that should be understood. And filling giant arenas with people to hear Pink or Fleetwood Mac is not really indicative of a healthy music scene. Also, law and order and is okay for the suburbs but a city needs less regulation so things can happen spontaneously . Tidy town awards are for tidy towns where theres nothing much else to do except sweep up the leaves.

Basically I think the whole music scene has been doing fine with no government involvement and they should just leave off. Of course, if they wanted to they could tell Australian commercial radio to play Australian music. That could help.

One of the government suggestions had been that no security was needed before 10pm. At some point I said that it could all be side-stepped if the venues had gigs EARLIER. It was an idea that was not taken seriously at all. Mocked in fact, mainly by people who I rarely see at any shows at all. Not a single musician I spoke to thinks it to be a bad idea to have shows starting after work or in the evening. then people could catch up with each other and chat , rather than being thrown out of the venue immediately.
The coalition of forces that came together for the march was very very good and impressive. As a political movement it could not possibly hold as, for instance, the musicians needs are not always the same as the venue operators. For instance, if security guards are automatically paid on an hourly rate, and without question, why not the musicians?
The march is over, a petition with more than 20,000 signatures is going to be going around several more festivals and events before being tabled in parliament in March. I was told that events are now out of the question at the Sidney Myer Music bowl as LLC has demanded so much security at the site. No promoter can afford it!
Basically, get the politicians away from a cultural area that works very well without their input. Leave them to cultivate bread and circus events they can manage. The venues do not need to be made safe for people who never go to them.

The government is facing an election and this issue has been massaged out of the main frame until then. The Liquor Licensing commissioner finishes up in April. What’ll happen then, nobody knows. The agents are still going around, visiting some clubs two or three times a night. Its another one of those things where the protesters are dismissed, as John Howard was fond of doing as “the usual suspects” or “rent a crowd”. I have a friend who wishes music would go underground and become a clandestine , secret affair. Perhaps it’ll have to. These politicians have no idea on which way to jump. Surrounded by smart guys who poll the wind and the trees, they appear on tv and radio all day, talking about nothing . They have transport, hospitals, bread and circuses to run. The feds want to take over one of them, that leaves the trams and the Casino and the Grand Prix.
Right now, its all highly illogical. Law and order, always a popular electoral truck to roll over everything in sight.
Not much can really obscure how lame and mediocre state politics is though. And we have two house of it in most states.

playin' the guitars

2010-04-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

This is in the current -AUTUMN- issue of Australian Musician magazine which is available at all musical instrument shops in Australia .

Guitars. Great to play, silly when everybody in the room, including the player, has fluorescent earplugs in. I was skipping rope yesterday with the door open, listening to John McClaughlin. He has a great sound on this CTI record from the early 70s. He has great fingers and tone. I’ve heard him do some horrible stuff but guys like him make the world of music go around by going off every now and again for a piss and a look around. They risk looking and sounding stupid but every now and again they come back to base camp with some amazing stuff they had to travel into some goofy places to find.
He does a track on a Mahavishnu Orchestra album (“the inner mounting flame”) called “you know you know”. Its such a great groove in a strange time signature that Massive Attack sampled it. Every now and again John comes in with this incredibly violent , intrusive chord that blows the speaker with its atonal notes and the crudeness of the sound. never fails to thrill me.
I also love that late sixties sound that you hear on early Jefferson Airplane or Country Joe and the Fish albums. Something about the semi acoustic guitars that those guys ( Jorma Kaukonen and Barry Melton) played, or maybe it was their skills that they all learned on folk tunes before getting amped up or maybe it was the big amps they were playing . Perhaps the mics were way at the back of the room and the sound was aloud to swell out properly rather than a mic being shoved right up next to the speaker, where no human ear has ever been. Jerry Garcia had such a great tone in the Grateful Dead too, and he hated recording. (They gave up for a decade and just told their fans to tape them, providing a special platform at their gigs for the bootleggers).
One of my favourite sounds is The late John Cippolina from the Quicksilver Messenger Service. On their second album, they cut a live set as their singer was in gaol on a pot charge. Its a great twin guitar freakout album called “Happy Trials” with one of the most perfect Psychedelic inversions of a wild western Frederick Remington painting on the cover. The tone of his guitar is amazing. Much of it is to do with his freaked out , souped up amp which is in the Rock’n’roll hall of Fame. His guitar was a Gibson SG. Two leads came ot of it. One pickup fed two small Fenders, also connected to some car air horns and the lower bridge pickup went to a giant bass speaker. That generation built their own sound.

Now I love to listen to players with flash and tone. Matt Walker is so great to see do any kind of gig. His skills as a writer and a singer put most to shame but I love it when he steps out on his semi acoustic and whomps a filthy boogie for ten minutes or so. His harmonica skills make me feel bad for bagging anyone for wheezing into those contraptions. In my band, the Lurid Yellow Mist, Stu Perera comes from that ill attended school, Guns ‘n’ George Benson. Danny Rumour from the Cruel Sea had such a great touch and his own aesthetic from surf and reggae players. He has an aura. Mike Rudd from Ariel/ Spectrum has the chops and a great voice. Its great to hear players who’ve been running up that fretboard for decades. I did some gigs with Glenn Campbell and he would just continually step off and blaze with this country picking sound and all these mad jazz octaving flourishes. He’d get all lost as he tried to find a new way from a verse to a bridge and out to a chorus and the look of mad delight on his face was great. It was one of those lessons that you never get to the end of some music.

Now with this festival season there is gonna be another visit by Jeff Beck. I saw him last year and he is a master of tone and whammy and evil touch. Not a pedal or even a tuner on the stage and he beat that guitar around. Bill Frisell at the jazz festival this year was a session with a master as well.Both Beck and Frisell did “a day in the life” from those four plucky proletarians from Liverpool and almost made me like them, for about five minutes. Songs by those mopetops are great when put through the six strings of an adept. Check out George Bensons “other side of abbey road”). People of all schools turned out to see Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe recently . Those guys are not on any real operating radar system but they pulled people into the Palais in Melbourne and from all reports delivered what the people had come for, and more.

Buddy Guy is gonna be around too , he knows how to destroy a guitar! And then Chris Spedding who had the skills of wearing a leather suit, slick back hair and Flying V straight into his amp. (He was with Bryan Ferry for the “in your mind “ period). He’s playing , again, with rockabilly man Robert Gordon.

James Williamson is back from beyond, if only on Youtube, with his trademark Les Paul violence with Iggy and the Stooges. He’s mean!

Theres also gonna be a visit from them Crooked Vultures and Josh Homme is, like Matt Walker, a master at many skills. He can turn on a dime.
Then theres gonna be a new album from Kim Salmon and the Surrealists. I’ve heard them play it live and its a guitar freakout album that I’m expecting in 2010. The Surrealists are unfinished business for Kim and he’ll be bringin the noise and the pain.

So if music is too confusing and everything is too available, too unlimited,perhaps you could just focus on one aspect. A tiny aperture. Perhaps just one instrument, and then whole different worlds can open up.

http://www.johncipollina.com/rockAmpStack.htm

blb playlist 30/3/10

2010-03-30T16:16:00.001-07:00

BLB is a radio show I do every Tuesday with Elizabeth McCarthy from midday to 2pm in Melbourne on the premiere community / subscriber radio station in Australia, 3RRR. Its on the dial at 102.7fm and can be streamed via http://www.rrr.org.au
The show has been going for a couple of years now. We have a guest in each week. So far we have had the honour to talk to the poet Robert Gray, Ben Elton, John Clarke, Tony Martin, Mick Harvery, Bob Ellis, Kaki King, Johnette Napolitano, Stephen Cummings,Greg Wadley, Mick Molloy, Mike Rudd, Shaun Micalleff, Camille O'Sullivan, Kimya Dawson, Barry Divola, and many other writers, artists, comedians and musicians. I try to play as much Australian, current music as possible. Occasionally straying into other areas of interest.

This is a playlist for Tuesday 30/3/10. A bit of an abberation as I was doing the show alone. I busted out a lot of jazz and r&b grooves as thats my leaning in music in general.

Elizabeth McCarthy was unable to make the show due to fracturing her ankle so I was left to fly alone. This time TWO GUESTS had been arranged. Writer Catherine Deveny and musician David Thrussell from SNOG.

I began the show with some jazz and kept it mostly instrumental as there’d be a lot of talk coming up.....

Dizzy Gillespie - “MANTECA”
Bill Evans and Jim Hall - “my funny valentine”. piano and and guitar taking this song at breakneck speed from the album “undercurrents”.
Emir Deodato - “Also Spake Zarathustra”. From a CTI collection. I enjoyed writing the name Richard Strauss in the “composer” section of the RRR playlist log.
Sun Ra - “blues on planet Mars”. From the double cd , “THE SINGLES”.
The Beastie Boys - “Sabrosa”. From the amazing instrumental album “the in sound from way out”.
Willie Bobo - “La descargo de Bobo”
Sergio Mendez - “Fool on the Hill. Fulfilling our beatles quota for the year. A song with vocals!
Dr Buzzards original Savannah Band - “Mr Love”. From their second album, “meets King Pennet” .

Then David Thrussell entered the studio and we played songs from the new Snog album , “last of the great romantics”.
“We’re all in this together”.
“the end of the world”.
“wargasm”
“this world done me wrong”.
We also played “the hangover” from the Bedroom philosopher.

There was also a lot of yapping and hollering from David and Catherine.And me.
David talked about the new album and let slip with some scuttlebut about a certain politician which had the program manger coming in with some warnings about defamation. Catherine talked about her show "god is bullshit" which is on at Trades Hall during the Comedy Festival. David seemed to be spoiling for an on air fight agains "the Dawkin- ites" and I unfortunately kept diverting the conversation.

You can see our other playlists at ....

http://www.myspace.com/bananaloungebroadcasting

cars - again - street chariots - mags- spoilers

2010-03-28T23:24:00.000-07:00

We never had no car in our family when I was a boy. We lived in a thriving country town where it was possible to walk or ride your bike everywhere a kid wanted to go. The only sense of social disadvantage came when we had to go on school or footy trips to nearby Victorian towns. Even then, it was cool to ride with your friends parents in their wagon. Not being used to riding on four wheels at high speeds my mind was always conscious of the hard road running just inches from our feet and there was sometimes a weird temptation to open the door.
As I got closer to the world of adults I had a different view on cars. In South Australia at the time you were eligible to get your licence to drive at the age of sixteen. Driving a car meant drive in bottle shops, drive in movies, laps of the main drag and impressing the sheilas. South Australia was then, as now, blessed with much looser roadworthy laws than operate in NSW and Victoria. As such, it was the home of the hotted up, lowered and wildly sprayed street car. Old EH Holden station wagons and panel vans were the ideal vehicle in which to be seen cruising the main street with your arm out the window , casually lifting a 740 ml bottle of beer to your lips. That was the image of a young man in a complete state of grace. Ready for any event, on the move. Older model Holdens such as the FB, FC and EKs were also plentiful. (Even in the early seventies, FJs and FXs were becoming a rare sight and even the most tasteless street driver would prefer one in mint stock standard condition). The bench seats were ripped out and replaced with those of the bucket style, the column shift was considered daggy so a floor shift was installed, preferably with an eight ball for your grip and, most importantly, the large, ungainly steering wheel was replaced with a bulbous racing wheel the size of a beer coaster. Fat tyres and mag wheels were a must, the front should be lowered and for the serious driver, a spoiler at the back. Actually, you couldn't help but notice that the more serious hotted up cars were always driven by blokes who were always alone. It seemed that they must have forgotten to put a passenger seat in or that the car was only perfectly balanced with the one occupant. Or perhaps it was the last stages of a real obsession and the driver could not bear to share the car with another person and, he could only risk taking it out of the garage for a weekly drive around the town and even then, only after a thorough waxing. Other raised lowered, sprayed and overhauled looks favoured by the seventies boy/man included the Mini panel van, the Morris Minor panel van (Stuart Perera tells me its called the traveller) and the Bedford van (with dope smoking thrones in the back). Only the top of the range could afford the Ford Falcon GTHO's and the SL Toranas. Even with these production line Hoon mobiles the emphasis was on power at all costs and the idea of brakes being able to restrain the beasts was not all that cool a subject to bring up.
Ultimately this heady cocktail of booze, runaway hormones, rough sex and tricked up V8 vans that had inferior brakes led to a horror road toll. I don't know how I made it through my teenage years and knew many people that didn't. I always seemed to be a passenger in fast cars driven by people who were pissed or were doing a great job of pretending they were pissed in order to be in the same car as their mates. Fear sobered me up very quickly and all I did was hang on. A big night out was a trip to the Speedway where fights would break out all over the place randomly and the whole misty night stank of booze, spew, blood, petrol and burnt tyres. I remember riding back once at high speed bouncing around in the back of a hot FJ panel van. I kept yelling above the sounds of Black Sabbath that were belting from the tape player that it "felt a little bumpy " on my side of the car. Eventually, the car was stopped and, by torchlight on a twisting country road, we saw that the back wheel was holding on by the last thread of one solitary nut. There is one road I could have really gone down.
Those were of course, in the early years of legal limits for alcohol in the blood of drivers. People really resented it at first but the carnage on the road would be horrific if we still put up with the action that was considered reasonable only twenty years ago. Still, I would rather see a hotted up muscle car than a stock standard, clean as a whistle museum relic. Perhaps the Seventies individualised street rider will become a mainstream collectors item for tomorrows business tyro with some cash to drop before the tax year ends. It's good to see that South Australia and Queensland are still home to lurid street chariots that would never be allowed past the Roadworthy certificate testers gaze before he or she even ordered it up onto the hoist.

cars

2010-03-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

This was published in February in the Adelaide Review...

We grew up in Mount Gambier with no car in the household. Well, you can walk everywhere really but it still made a trip in a vehicle a bit exotic when we were kids. You could get your licence at 16 of course. The road toll was something shocking but we all viewed the drink driving laws as a bit of an imposition that would soon go away. Everybody would come to their senses. The off roads around Mt Gambier were full of drunken drivers, farmers and their sons, hoiking it around the unsealed roads like they were on a rally, blind as can bats. Shickered! Molo!
Later on, we had a car parked outside our house, mum had gotten sick of the walking and wanted a bit of power. It was a Mitsubishi Colt, and then a Honda Civic. We were all leaving home as soon as we thought we could. My sister marianne drove off with a friend in a fantastic hotted up white Holden FB station wagon. My older brother had a great Holden HD and then a Ford Transit van with mag wheels. I had a Hillman Minx I found to be so embarrassing I left it by the side of the road one day when it broke down. A cop came around and I sold it to him for $20. The column gear shift had a funny kink pull to get it into reverse and the back doors flew open when I went around a corner.
Panel Vans were big among my friends. Morris Minors with wooden panels down the side and Holden EH and EJ models being popular amongst those who surfed the cruel and cold waves down around the South East. Those cars were ubiquitous. Did you know that Holden started in Adelaide and the letters in front of their various models until the 80s were the initials of members of the family?
Someone also found a purple Dodge DeSoto on a farm and scored it for less than a hundred bucks. It had such a powerful V8 motor , giant leather seats and very helpful holders for beer bottles down by your legs. We liked to salute each other with long necked 740 ml bottles as we drove up and down the main street anyway. We were in a tight spot and did the best we could to get some personal space happening. Toranas were murderous. Big engines and tiny brakes. A friend from school picked me up in a car his mother had bought him. A green Ford Falcon GTHO . The seatbelt was like that on a jet, going up straight over both shoulders.

In our late teens we got to know the highway between Mt gambier and Adelaide. It was always a drive into the unknown. Adventures, booze definitely, dope sure, , perhaps sex. We all piled into the car and drove for five or six hours, taking many breaks to water the long paddock by the side of the road due to the excessive amount of beer we drank.
At the end of the trip was a dramatic series of turns and twists in the road leading finally to the Devils Elbow. It was leaning into each other holding your breath moment as we careened into that turn. It was dangerous and exciting. Afterwards, it was a relaxed roll down the hill to the corner of Glen Osmond Road and Adelaide itself. My auntie Celeste was in the Carmelite Convent on the corner there. I had visited her with my mother on a few occasions and found it so distressing as they talked and finally tried to clutch each other through the bars in the room where the nuns were allowed to talk to people from outside. Later, things got more relaxed and they were allowed to move around in the secular world.I painted a little cottage there once. A place where someone could go during a “retreat”. The whole place had quite a Modernist feel to it. Open and full of sunlight. I visited her there later on , when there were only a few nuns left. It seemed to be quite an idyllic place for an older woman to live.

Now that entrance into Adelaide is a bit more relaxed. A straight descent has been blasted through some of the hard rock of the surrounding hills. Its easier for cars but apparently not so for large trucks. The previous winding descent had allowed for more serious gearing down and braking over a longer period with a heavy load on the back. Like a train ascending or descending a mountain with switchbacks built into the climb. Now its a long, slow ascent and then descent that depends more on the brakes. Perhaps the truckers need some pills to slow down nowadays? Something calming? A free herbal tea stall at one of the last truck bays before the descent?
The road and the tunnel are amazing constructions anyway. We don't have stuff like that in melbourne. Theres no hard rock. The tunnel for cars under the Yarra is a tube floating in silt!

'74

2010-03-25T05:16:00.000-07:00

"feels like its 1974
waiting for the waves to crash on the shore
but you're far inland
you're in funky denim wonderland
you and David Crosby and a bloke with no hands....."
Robyn Hitchcock "feels like 1974"

What kind of wave was it? Some look back and say it was the wave from the future which came in the form of Punk Rock. I could just as easily argue that it was the wave of popular music , drawing its' energy from deep in the past that finally broke into white water in that year. Ever since, we have just been paddling about in the shallows. All the forward momentum is still derived from sources deep in the past. The current scene is reeling from successive blows of wild, uncontrolled technology that leaps faster and faster out of anybodys control. Have you seen that great new Joss Whedon show “Dollhouse”? Its about NOW!

In the world of music ,1974 was a year of desperation and exhaustion. David Bowie was yet to have a hit in America and released "Diamond Dogs" (following the previous year "Alladinsane" and the covers collection, "Pinups") as well as the double, "David Live." Miles Davis released "Get up with it" and didn't appear in public again until 1981. Lou Reed released the live metal run through of his Velvets nuggets ,"Rock'n'roll animal" as well as "Sally Can't dance". (Meanwhile, he was working away on "Metal Machine Music " which he released the next year at the height of his dark glamour. A double album, each side consisiting of 16.01 of white noise. I remember sitting with pals who had shelled out all their pocket money to buy it, listening over and over and staring at the brilliant, cruel picture of Lou in his metal glory on the cover, trying to hear what Lou said was in the grooves. Man, that was a cultural event!)

"Feels like 1974
Syd Barretts last session
he can't sing anymore
gonna have to be Roger now for the rest of his life......"

Why not 1975? Well it was all a lot more organized then and soft rock ruled the scene. 1974 was the last of the wild, untamed times. The energy of the psychedelic years was still being felt. People still acknowledged a high, moral "underground". Stadium rock was settling in. Led Zeppelin were touring and in the middle of recording "Physical Graffitti". Bad Company were lording it over the scene in the middle of their brief, two album peak period. America crawled with British acts on tour such as the Climax Blues band, Wishbone Ash, Fleetwood Mac and Foghat. (Much like , on a tinier scale, Australia is crawling with woodchuck post rock acts today). Weird offshoots that went off unpredictably were the arrival of Bob Marley and the Wailers with their breakthrough "rock" album "Natty Dread" as well as Burning Spear releasing the heavy, mystic "Marcus Garvey". (Black music in general was and is always more in touch with the original, deep driving energies of music. Disco was really pumping out brilliant regional variations such as the "Philly sound" as well as George McRae coming from the South). The New York Dolls released "Too Much Too Soon", (produced by the Shangri La's Shadow Morton). Roxy Music released "Country Life" and Bryan Ferry put out "another time, another place". The Stooges were exhausted after making Raw Power and Iggy Pop would pretty much disappear until 1977 and "the Idiot". The Blue Oyster Cult released the last of their true mysterioso metal albums in "Secret treaties". The Allman Brothers were at a standstill. With Duane and Berry Oakley recently dead , Dicky Betts and Gregg both released solo albums. Other events included the arrival of the Bay City Rollers, David Cassidy leaving the Partridge family, the demise of the Faces with Rod Stewart leaving to totally concentrate on his solo career, the release of the second Lynyrd Skynyrd album, Pink Floyd's "Dark side of the moon" completing its second year of what was to be a decade in the American album charts, the death of Duke Ellington and the release of what was to be the last Tim Buckley album, "look at the fool".It was all happening in a weird kind of slow motion. Like an arty surf movie of the period.

"Rebel Rebel was your favourite song
on the Archway Rd where it all belonged
all those molecules of time that you thought you'd shed forever"

2010? Well , its a shadow of a lost world. Quite brilliant in the right light though. People always find ways to get lost . Much weirder in a way. All the old world charts and measurement practices are still around though. That makes it confusing. The Beatles. (In 1974 they were Nowhere!) Depends where you’re coming from. The past ...or....A thousand atomised niches all cocking a mean and cool snoot at the “others” who are all wrong. Everybody spiralling deeper and deeper into inner space. Myspace.....Face book....Friendface! At least back in those ancient , high waisted, flaring days people stood up for themselves. Now , nobody wants to be in the centre. Pity that. Come on! Even the stupid acts from 74 were unabashedly stoopid. Are there any really bad tracks out there nowadays? I mean terrible. Not like Miles said it either. Shit! Good taste and musicanship are the worst poles for any scene to revolve about. Shit songs! Dud poses! Great sounds! The boy can play!

"Pythons last series and the Guardian said
'the stench of rotting minds'
but what else could you smell back then?
you didn't have too inhale too hard
you could smell the heads festering in the back yard".

feels like its 1974
ghastly mellow saxophones all over the floor
listening to Led Zeppelin in Grimsby.....oh Christ...."

Now I don’t know if we’re totally back in some sort of new stone age or not. Certainly music is all folk again. But without the people. The actual folk. Or the fevered airwaves. It was all a bit over stretched, blown out and over pimped and primped during the 80s. You know the way commercial radio djs talk- nobody really talks like that! Bring back Wolfman Jack! People still love it. It was just exagerrated to a phoney level of importance. The electric charge and the smell of money has long gone. Its not even underground. Optical or something like that yeah? Spilling around and about somewhere in the belly of a rusting tanker I suppose. Out in some antarctic clime. Finland and Iceland is where they keep the new servers isn’t it? Cloud storage. Far away anyway. For the story. Fuckology I guess.

Scoreboard. Underlying trends. Essays into weird countries, places we got to first.

2010-03-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, was the Moodists who played around in melbourne from 1980 to 1983 and then were based in London from 1983 to the end of 1988. We played it slow and tense and for real. Our peers were the Scientists and the Triffids and the Birthday Party and the Laughing Clowns and the Go Betweens. That whole bunch was scrambling for space and time and were incredibly competitive with each other. Once we made a bit of a crib, we could relax with each other, until then...... We were the best! People we looked to were Tav Falco and Panther Burns, Hank Williams, the Doors, Alan Vega, Jerry lee Lewis, the Cramps, the Gun Club, the Fall , Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown.

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes, London live sets 1987/1988. Songs included covers of Gram Parsons, Gene Clarke, Lou Reed , Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Kris Kristofferson, Sir Douglas Quintet.
"there’s a picture of serge gainsbourg on her wall"…." From 3 dead passengers in a stolen secondhand Ford. Written 1991, recorded 1992.
"the confessions of serge gainsbourg"…instrumental b-side of "I’m gonna release your soul single. Recorded and released 1994.Featured sound effects of a day in the life of a pop idol. Drinking, laughing to himself, snorting something, having sex ( to wild applause) and finally flying off ( in the Concorde)
"the soft’n’sexy" live shows . Acoustic and bass-less sets played in Melbourne and Sydney during 1991/2. Exploring textures such as multi vocals ,percussion and strings , taken to the fullest extent on the album "the soft’n’sexy sound" in 1995.

Songs covered during 1992/4 included "money changes everything" by Cyndi Lauper, "pillow talk" by Sylvia Robinson, "32-20 blues" by Robert Johnson
Songs covered during 1995/1997 included "penetration" by the Stooges , "showbusiness" by AC/DC , theme from S Express by S Express and "alabama bound by the Charlatans".
Songs covered 1998-2002 included "Joanne " by Mike Nesmith, "Seattle " by Bobby Goldsboro, "1-2-3 by the Len Barry Combo, "I’m five years ahead of my time " by the Third Bardo "the gift" by Lou Reed , "don’t fall in love" by the Ferrets and "it never rains in California" by Albert Hammond.
Songs covered 2002-2006 include "the crystal ship" by the Doors, " diamonds fur coat champagne" by Suicide "the Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs, "whos that lady?" by the Isley Brothers, "Boogie Oogie Oogie " by A taste of Honey, ", "heavens in the backseat of my Cadillac" by Hot Chocolate, "Coz I luv you" by Slade, " "Jeepster" and "telegram Sam" by T Rex, " Luther the anthropoid" by the Jimmy Castor Bunch, " the bogus man" by Roxy Music, "sorrow" by David Bowie, and "who of us two" by M.

First ep by Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes (1988) produced by Barry Adamson.
"I was the Hunter and I was the prey" and "my life on the plains" produced by Phil Vinall who also worked, subsequently, with the Auteurs and Placebo and was brought to Australia , years later, to polish Magic Dirt.
"The Softn’n’Sexy Sound" produced with old compadre and live mixer for the Moodists, Victor Van Vugt, who also worked with Beth Orton, PJ Harvey.
During the live shows to play this album, a Jim Morrison act was hired to open in Melbourne and Sydney. Diiferent actors. Melbourne got revolutionary Jim and Sydney got stoned Jim. Other opening acts during this period included Melbourne poet Peter Bakowski, 70s Melbourne prog legends Mike Rudd and Bill Putt (Ariel/Spectrum) , the Dirty Three, Augie March, the Whitlams, Custard, Malcolm Hill.
The Devil Drives recorded in Melbourne and mixed in London in 1996 by David Ruffy and several players in the then thriving drum ‘n’ bass and trip hop scene. The single , Feelin’ kinda sporty, recorded and mixed in the same., "remixing" kind of attitude, by Andrew Duffield and Phil Kenihan in Melbourne. The Devil Drives also featured lounge thug Frank Bennett on vocals on three tracks. A flute player was also added to the band at this time.
Other producers worked with include Tony Cohen, Phil McKellar and Adam Rhodes.
Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes appeared at the Livid Festival in Brisbane in the years 1990/1/2/3/4 and 1997.
They also appeared at the Big Day Out in the years 1992/3/4/5/7 and 1999.
TV shows appeared on include the Andrew Denton Show, hey hey its saturday, the Shaun Micallef Show, scheduled to appear on the Mick Molloy Show the night it was axed, Roy and HG, Club Buggery, Live and Sweaty, the Midday Show, the morning shows with Bert Newton, and Denise Drysdale, Recovery, Sale of the Century, australias dumbest musician, the arts review show, Jimeoin, tv video smash hits and Rage. Also appeared , over two episodes , as myself, on Neighbours in 1997. Many others also.

Book published 1997."It is written,baby" ( title taken from a song on the "soft ''n sexy sound" called "the birds and the goats". The book was a collection of song lyrics with annotations provided as to what I was trying to say or where it began. Intended intially to be a simple song book with chords and lyics. The annotations were inspired - as a mode of talking out of the corner of the page - by those of Richard F Burton for his "Arabian Nights" .

The stories were accompanied by images by Tony Mahony who has done every cover for our albums save the first two and "keepin' it unreal". He has also done MOST of the videos.
Tonys covers for us have been hand drawn or hand created collages . No photoshop skills involved. Old school attention to details.

The art happening. 2007 . The BEWDY OF SPEED. Hour long show at the Melbourne Arts Centre. Audience in the middle. Performers all around them. Each performer plays a song, one after the other. The Lurid Yellow Mist, Plutonic Lab, Penny Ikinger, Joe McKee from Snowman. The audience was trapped. Images on three screens from the Mumeson Archives from Sydney. Inspired by Futurist art and manifestos. People at the back of the crowd would suddenly be at the front.No talking or explanation at the beginning , middle or end. Finished with us all playing Miles Davis's "IN A SILENT WAY".

The "narrative show" - "POINT BLANK" and its sequel "LIVE IN HELL" were both performed at the Butterfly Club in Sth Melbourne. POINT BLANK also made it to the Adelaide Cabaret festival twice and the Sydney opera House. Not Cabaret, not "unplugged" not just a gig. Each show an hour long narrative about a performers heroic journey onto the stage and then , once taken into the eye of the world, subsequent life in hell.

This was the show that took a lifetime to get together. The story and the skills.

There will be another show in 2010. This is more about the songs that destroyed me. It called "MC BITS - songs that destroyed". I was a nice kid, then I heard some music and it all got fucked up.

indie - the genre - towards a definition?

2010-03-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

This was published in MESS and NOISE last year.

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 guess 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 scene 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!