interrogations via the magic box!

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

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

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.