supermodified - why not!

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

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

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

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

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.