in a world of ICONS! and CLASSICS

an edited version of this post appeared ina  recent edition of THE MELBOURNE REVIEW

I woke up from a short but deep sleep, feeling groggy due to the potions I had partaken of the night before. They knocked me out but wore off pretty quick. I had dreamed, but was going to, as has been my lifelong  attitude to these things, keep them to myself. As soon as I actually remembered them. (This would be usually with a shout of some quite innocuous word at the shaving mirror or at the car windscreen. I would then suddenly look at myself in the mirror. I loved doing that. ). So I woke in my usual manner is what I trying to convey to yas. A time honoured, long held-to direction, and ambled to the kitchen. In a way, I was waking up in a robotic, zombie like manner, though I have since learned I could use a  much grander term. I was operating in a  CLASSIC manner. It was a VINTAGE shamble into a new day. The cat played its part and ran in front of me at every opportunity, herding me towards its food bowl.  I boiled some hot water in the sleek, new, stainless steel, CLASSIC looking kettle and prepared some tea. No tea bags for me, only loose leaves which I had imported myself from a WOOLWORTHS supermarket in South Australia. A RUST BELT state. The tea is in a  packet which I associate with that part of the world where I sprang from. Amgoorie tea. In a brown paper packet with exotic images of the mysterious east all over it. I drive there to get it. 455 kilometres a pack. I assemble a bowl of my CUSTOMARY cereal which is raw oatmeal from the ICONIC house of BLACK AND GOLD. I drench the rustic oats in LONG LIFE soy liquid and open my newspaper. Below the ICONIC masthead which should by rights be rolling upside down in shame at the “all the goss” bilge which is spewed across its pages every day, and spent a good minute learning of the activities of the world while I slept. AS is my want, I throw it away in disgust and leave for the smallest room. I am sure this is the correct outcome of the transaction. I was behaving in a CLASSIC way of a disgruntled reader of my age. They would have had focus groups to agree with them on this. I needed to be herded toward the online version of the paper, which was full of more intelligent shit, as well as blinking lights and sexier ads. The editor should be happy. In the can , which I had had built by a DUTCH man so as I could inspect my PRECIOUS waste rather than drop it into a small pond of water in the ANGLO fashion, I was gladdened to see a log of much health . A glad, JOYOUS stool. AS one of YORE! “Shakespeare could have dropped this!”, I marvelled to myself.  I felt connected to life on earth. An absolute PEARLER. A CLASSIC! A HUMDINGER!

I turned the radio on to listen to the anguished thoughts of the callers. I wanted REALITY, not some namby pamby EXPERT telling me stuff that only he could know.

I drank a can of pop soda. It had my name on it. A friend had bought me a case. CLASSIC IRONY! The drinks name itself was a brand name synonymous with corporate fascism and mass ill health the world over. Loved by billions.

I went for a walk past a toilet I once did a gig in. It was being hounded by near and far-by residents for being noisy and smelly. People rushed to defend it and were referring to it as an ICONIC venue. I reflected , in my now CLASSIC manner, that my morning stool had been more ICONIC than that dump. That PILE of steaming bricks! That was the times we wuz livin’ in though but. People shouted and talked shit up like holy rolling preachers at every turn. Nothing really rated it. Nothing really ever happened any more. It was a CLASSIC STORM EYE we were experiencing. For how long, nobody knew. We looked to SPOKESPERSONS to talk us out of it. So we could see shit from the outside. “You pay peanuts- you get monkeys” was all I could summon as I heard some lame ABC types stretch their skills to the very limit in brave efforts to be entertaining and then Kyle Sandilands and Allan Jones do the same in the way of being informative.

I got back into my car - a Japanese made 4 cylinder van. A CLASSIC from the early 00’s that will never be made again. For some reason. I’m hangin’ onto it. The wheel. Will to live I guess. Some damn INNATE compulsion. I turn on the radio, set to a CLASSIC rock station and listen to stuff I had heard a thousand times before. It had been great. Once. I waited for the magic again. The stuff was guaranteed. SUREFIRE!.

I wasn’t feeling it. I felt off the worlds game. Out of it. Like Steve Martin in THE JERK.

I turned to one of the few stations dealing with new shit and tried some of that. Scandinavian indie bands singing some dreadful, sexless, feckless, filthless , faux folk song that sounded OLDER than time – than recorded music itself. I guess that’s what they wanted. Terrible lyrics and the boy/mans voice came all out of his throat. There was no rest of his body involved. Sounded like musical theatre pipes happening. Thin and reedy. Punk was never going to happen. Is that why people listen to Neil Young? The reassuring grampiness of it all? There were a lot of other acts around on air, they were all generic too. People liked shit that they could see whole. The beginning and the end. They were blind to anythin’ else. Didn’t have the bandwidth. When I grew up there was a squall of old time shit on the tv too. Made it unbearable. The Waltons and Happy Days. How many teen deaths were those shows responsible for? Then we got stoned and turned to the Blue Oyster Cult with their hit, “don’t fear the reaper”. (The singer is dead and is telling his girlfriend to kill herself and cross over- a CLASSIC).  That would have been legendary if we’d all carked out there in the forest, behind the drive-in, with “Tyranny and Mutation” on the tape deck, repeating on the track “OD’d on life itself”. Total teen death VERISIMMILITUDE! Totally! My life would have had , almost, an appearance of meaning.

I was dressed in quadruple denim. The world had perverted me. I was always dressing for that funeral that never was. A denim cape, jacket, shirt and pants. I was looking for some denim shoes and a denim hanky to poke out of my pocket. Years ago, I had a denim slouch hat made. A fucking CLASSIC! It was ICONIC! Made from a  Generals titfer. Five folds in the band. ANZACIACAL! Still, people eyed me suspiciously. They still do. I am neither romantically driven nor do I strive for a  classic form. Well I do, but that’s just me being polite, trying to get square with folks. Get out of peoples way. Dodgy, but. What I really needed was a one piece suit in dark denim , perhaps like the one designed by black panther Eldridge Cleaver. It was called a cock suit , because it had an exterior sleeve wherein a bloke ostensibly sheathed his throbbing purple headed Gila Monster. That was an ICONIC bit of clothing. It beheld a narrative - a story! Eldridge had fled the USA to Algeria and had come back, with an eye to making a  killing in the rag trade. They mocked him, perhaps that garments time has come? And I could at last assume some agreed human form? 

speaking of a book I wished I'd written...

I was asked to speak at a "women of Letters" book launch. The brief was to write a  letter to , or on , a book you wished you'd written. I spoke  about this book by Richard Stark. the Playwright Hannie Rayson spoke last and slayed everybody by mocking books and speaking about her life as if it was   a series of plays written by playwrights of each period.

I wish I could have written Richard Starks “THE HUNTER” which was made into a movie called “point Blank”. This is also of course,  a kind of death wish, wishing to have been someone else. But Richard Stark was a name and a mask put on by a writer called Donald E Westlake. Donald wrote great books under his own name, kind of light and funny. As Richard Stark he wrote 21 novels about a lone wolf bank robber called “Parker”.

21 books about this world of loner misfits who were outside of the law and the Mob in, generally, Midwest USA of the 60s and 70s.  The books were also pulp paperbacks sold at train stations and in airports, outside any kind of a self-conscious literary scene. The stories were built like the classics of James M Cain, always starting at the end and the going back to unravel the situation, pulling apart the fabric to get to the bare threads it consisted of.

There have been several films made. Westlake refused to let them use the name PARKER unless whoever was producing would commit to a series of films, to tell a longer story over time. The films were always low budget too. One called “The OUTFIT” with Robert Duvall. The greatest is “point Blank” where the character, called WALKER” in the film, was truly brought to life by LEE MARVIN. A John Bormann movie, filmed on location in LA and San Francisco and, memorably, within the walls of the recently vacated ALCATRAZ prison.

Like many classics of that period, it has been remade, with the Australian/ American Mel Gibson in the lead. I couldn’t watch that. Lee Marvin was IT.

John Boorman went on to make DELIVERANCE.

Lee left a career of great performances, though this and his turn in Don Siegel’s “THE KILLERS” remake are my personal favourites.

Richard Starks character seemed to take over him and the story wrote itself. A writers dream- or nightmare? Any other characters coming into the story to leaven up the pulp got energized and powered up as well. Parker turned them all on.

He threw some characters in just to be silly. One was Grofeld, a hardcore actor who joined in on some of the robberies to finance his experimental theatre out in the mid west. For Richard Stark, the USA was a huge place where you could get lost easy and could also bury anything. Donald E Westlake, was of course, buried within Richard Stark and that’s how he got Parker out into the world.

So I love writing where people hide things say out in the open. Writing that’s widely and generally available but fearlessly and boldly contains many hidden treasures. Perhaps like a bag of unmarked bills left at a bus station lock up in a satellite city in a  rust belt state just past the wheat fields. You could just pick it up and head back to your crib deep inside the Canasta Belt.

 dave graney and the mistLY

Friday Nov 9th - the Flying saucer Club. 4 St Georges rd - Elsternwick Vic

click here to book tickets 

peter lillies wake

this was published in a recent issue of the Melbourne Review



I was speaking to a mutual friend of Peter Lillies when the terrible news came that he'd died up in Sydney. Quite sudden news. My friend was wondering aloud how to have a wake of some sorts and being unsure how to get in touch with people, indeed, who to get in touch with. 
Turns out he needn't have worried. Paul Madigan organized a wake at the St Kilda Bowling Club. I turned up at the designated time of 4:30 pm, maybe a bit later, and it was already pretty packed. They came from right out of the very woodwork of Melbourne. Johnny Topper was talking, and continued to talk for longer than I'd ever heard him talk. That strange, high, warbling tone of his. Very funny tales of working in the night rail yards along Flinders and Spencer Street with peter Lillie, lining up for the work like something out of "On The Waterfront". Also, stories of arts grants and spending them on old cars and guitars and starting a band playing at the Pram Factory and La Mama instead of in pubs. Anarchist bookshops and the like. This is early 70s Melbourne stuff. Jane Clifton was sitting near to the stage and Topper kept turning in her direction for corroboration of details. Paul Madigan was also on stage, drinking a pot and interjecting occasionally. The room was full of grey ghosts from that Carlton/Sunbury period. Some had had commercial success, or at the least, access to the public outside the bohemian village, like Greg McCainsh and Bob Starkie and Barry Dickins. Others were more from the world of poetry, theatre and inner city legendary rockabilly and western swing bands. There were also people from that late 70s Melbourne punk scene like Chris Walsh, Andrew Duffield, Ash Wednesday, Greg Ades, Lucky Last and Conway Savage and Amanda. Jim Shugg from the Feral Dinosaurs/People with Chairs up their noses. I had a chat with a bloke who used to do live sound and now runs a pub in Warburton. He was talking of the family who ran the Tote before it was the Tote. Paul, who ended up leaving the family and jumping over the bar to play guitar with the Johnnies, apparently named it. Said it should have something to do with the betting that used to go on there in John Wrens days. He asked if I was working much. "A lot", I said and added that it was hard work. He agreed that it was plain hard work getting people out of their teched up caves nowadays. This gathering was mostly talk of simpler times. People were never in for a while there. Maybe so far in they were out.
Mitchell Fairclough aka Slim Whittle gave a great talk and sang a song accompanying himself on a ukelele shaped like a Les Paul. The song was great. It had a line going something like " I sent a snail to his maker today- you can't always know what you're treadin' on". He had a face and tone of voice like many uncles of mine years ago in the country. They've all turned up their toes now, too. Tracey Harvey aka Tammy Whittle walked past. Johnny Von Goes sang a Lillie tune, Mark Ferrie spoke about going to see the Pelaco brothers at the Kingston Hotel in 1975 or 76. He said it was the coolest crowd he'd ever seen. Some of ' em would've been looking back at him now.
There was a man playing guitar who looked like that ghostly character from Twin Peaks. A passing friend told me he was the father of a kid he knew and he hadn’t seen him for 30 years. I sat with another friend who is not talking to Paul Madigan, who is ten feet away in front of him, playing the guitar.
Fred Negro sang a very respectful version of a Lillie song, as respectful as you can be holding a broomstick with a plastic horses head on one end and strumming it like a guitar. 
People spoke of the person they knew. All being very close to him. All telling their truth. I met him much later on. I’d heard his name. He’d heard mine. We talked across a mess of reputations and bullshit. Ran into him in different places. Melbourne, in the city street the last time. Byron Bay in the mid nineties. Having sudden, spirited conversations about Ern Malley, Max Harris, Fender guitars and amplifiers, Don Dunstan’s vision of the satellite city MONARTO. He wrote songs about all that stuff.
Garry Adams read a wonderful telegram (how quaint) from Peter in heaven where he was in the band and saying that Hendrix was ok on guitar but “not really the sort of thing (I) was looking for…” Everybody laughed too easily. Must have been a raw truth there. My friend said it was great how short and succinct the musicians were when they spoke.
Then Topper was singing. Almost dancing. Never seen him put out so much in years!
I spoke to some of my friends, a decade younger than this lot. The older ones were living and eating healthier is all I can say.  Must have gotten some good dietary habits when a  brief window of common sense opened up there in bohemia.
Madigan sang "new road to Gundagai" and I shed a tear because that song always does that to me. Wistful tune of a delicate sensibility. Peter's and that whole scene of freaks. That crew saw and imagined everyday iconic lolly wrappings and ice cream brands as psychedelical shapes out of time. They celebrated  dumb dead ends and non sequiturs. The new Road to Gundagai mentions staying a night in the TV Motel. The TV motel was in Gundagai and has been torn down now. It was shaped like a tv set! On legs which you parked underneath. Thing is gone and the sensibility and the reaction is gone too. All so delicate. Seemed so solid and powerful for a while.
Rick Dempster did a dance and twirl on his Cuban heel boots because Topper asked him to. A hat was passed around. There was an auction of some Fred Negro artwork. I left early, I guess, crossed the river and sat and watched the Hired Guns playing at the Standard. It was great to sit in a room and hear some music. Let the songs, old and new link up all those mismatched, half imagined and isolated scenes in your mind. In your life.

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/goodbye-to-all-that-quirkiness-20120920-268jz.html 

playing the flying saucer club in elsternwick friday 9th nov

Loved playing in Perth and Fremantle and the show at the Red rattler was a blast. Great venue!
Band is playing at a high level of match fitness. One more show for this tour and then we'll be reloading in some way.

Friday 9th November at the Flying saucer Club 
4 St Georges rd Elsternwick

We'll be playing with the Dames who are Clare Moore oin drums, Kaye Louise Patterson on piano and Rosie Westbrook on bass. They have been working on an album foir abouta  year and threaten to release it soon. For live shows they are joined by Will Hindmarsh on laptop and keys and myself on guitar.

The last gig we did was an acoustic spot at a  bookshop in Canberra. Played my K Yairi 12 string and Clare played some percussion and sang. Had  great time. Will be doing more of that.

playing the red rattler -marrickville friday 19th and smiths alternative bookshop canberra sat 20th

Clare "Mooresy" Moore, slamming the drums, Stu "thommo" Thomas pumping the bass , Stuart "pez" Perera blazing his left handed Rickenbacker and Dave "david" Graney chiming his chinese made electric 12 string. dave graney and the mistLY come from the clouds. An abstract songwriter with a band who can lay down a  crude and filthy boogie, they play few ballads. Its all on the UpBeat. They are not a green band. Not ecologically minded. They like throwaway, ephemeral stuff. Silly, goofy and stupid being more highly prized than worthiness and classicism. They like suspense. Suspension. Flat fives also. Dave Graneys fave movie of 2012 is the Farrelly Bros "the three stooges".

Dave Graney is associated with words and stories but people coming to the mistLY shows get a  spectacular twin guitar and groove jam. Stuart Perera on the Rickenbacker has skills and chops like no other. This ain't indie rock! Clare Moore and Stu Thomas on drums and bass set up a rhythm section like nothing else on the scene. High energy all around.

They've been playing in dinner and show joints but the plates are shaking , the wine glasses are cracking and the clothes are getting ruined with the dancing and the only thing that fits is the weird chordings that help people digest all that posh food. So dave graney and the mistLY are playing in a music place- forget the food. The Red Rattler in Marrickville. With their pals from far western sydney - the Holy Soul. (actually theres a great kebab trailer just outside-good enough for the late night cab drivers!)

How do they fit in the current scene? Its like Steely Dan or Little Feat was out there playing the circuit! For real! Its a West Coast thing!
new album "you've been in my mind" out on Cockaigne (Cock21) and live dates are happening NOW....

Friday Oct 19th - The Red Rattler- Marrickville NSW w/ the holy soul
Saturday Oct 20th - The Paperback Sessions - Smiths Alternative Bookshop - Civic -Canberra solo show with a  reading

         http://www.paperbacksessions.com.au/gigs_Dave%20Graney.html                                        

(yeah, on the way home, dave is stoppin' to do a  solo show/ reading at this great new venue in Canberra)

See a great new clip for "we need a champion" here.Made by young Melbourne film maker Nick Cowans. Its a dance off a la SOUL TRAIN. Dave Graney wins because he wrote the song and rigged the whole thing to drop his way.
http://youtu.be/G7yLv4uMMKE


This tour is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria

dave graney and the mistLY are out on tour behind their new disc "you've been in my mind" . Its a rock'n'roll set powered

by drums ,bass, 12 and 6 string electric guitars and lashings of vocals. Dave calls it "west coast" in its chordings and beats
as thats the kind of 70s rock he was raised in. We are talking about Love and the Doors and the Byrds kind of "west coast".
Songs like "flash in the pantz", "blues negative", "cop this,sweetly" ,"midnight cats" and "playin' chicken". The album is upbeat and taut but
includes "quiet storm" moments like "lifes a dream" and "I'm not the guy I tried to be". Out now on itunes and in the shops.


see a video of "Mt Gambier Night" here http://youtu.be/VBjAuttiOto

"It’s all worth the evening — busted shoes, city munters, a missing twenty-dollar note — when the band finish the main set with Mt Gambier Night, distilling all of The MistLY’s exercises in poise and restraint into four compressed minutes. It’s exceptionally beautiful: still quite pop, but with a layered density.

After pretending they’re not going to do an encore, Graney & co close the night with Rock & Roll is Where I Hide. It crackles over with dangerous energy, Graney delivering his prose with a sneering cadence, and it hits its theme too well: Tinker-Tailor-Spy, this is not a real person you’re looking at.

It isn’t exactly so much fun as essential: merci, comrades… " Dermot Clarke - Offstreet Press - Brisbane August 2012

http://offstreetpress.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/interview-dave-graney/



see a video of the "flash in the pantz"  via youtube here... http://youtu.be/fYswivN8rXk
see a video of the recording session here http://youtu.be/_-xKwLzUkgs

Photos from a recent Adelaide show via the Au Review
http://www.theaureview.com/photos/dave-graney-and-the-mistly-the-wheatsheaf-02-09-12/dave-graney-and-the-mistly-76509

Podcast of a recent interview with Dave Graney on Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/weekendarts/dave-graney/4247132

Genius UK comedian Stewart Lee reviews YBIMM for the Sunday Times
"The older the listener gets the more sense the gnomic beatnik platitudes of Dave Graney, the Lee Hazelwood of suburban Melbourne, make; functional philosophy, crooned over coiled leads and funk-footed rhythms.
Transcending his punk past, and his subsequent immersions in the various genre fictions of country, lounge and songwriter styles, Graney sculpts the slick Seventies rock of his youth, unsentimentally anatomized in the pin-sharp recitation Mt Gambier Nights, into a series of sparkling as-live sides.
Ventriloquising various delusional deadbeats, or hidden in deep cover self-mythologising, Graney quietly releases another late career classic into the wild".
http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/album_review_archive/g-graney_dave-youve_been_in_my_mind.htm

"Naturally, the songs are superb: ‘Flash In The Pantz’, ‘We Need A Champion’, ‘Cop This, Sweetly”, the weirdly nostalgic ‘Mt Gambier Night’, the aforementioned ‘King Of The Dudes’ and the self-effacing closer ‘I’m Not The Guy I Tried To Be’ are all vintage DG nuggets. As ever, Graney disperses sneering “ooh”s and lascivious “mmm”s between his savage witticisms, all the while playing the jazziest 12-string electric guitar since Roger McGuinn’s ‘Eight Miles High’ Coltrane-isms. The top-notch accompaniment is likewise a familiar delight, with Clare Moore effortlessly switching between rhythm patterns, Stu Thomas – who might just be one of the finest white bass players in this land – maintaining the swing, and Stu Perera taking his left-handed Rickenbacker for a walk in areas Nels Cline has yet to tread.
Never a flash in the pan, Dave Graney again proves he isn’t the kind of an artist who’ll be on your mind after you’ve absorbed his tonne-weighing shtick. Instead, he’ll be in your mind".
Denis Semchenko - The BRAG

"Self-recorded and mixed, with help from engineer Andrew “Idge” Hehir, the performances are mostly live, not overdubbed, reassuringly-immediate and seemingly in thrall to ’70s production values, as if Tony Visconti was at the desk in their Brunswick studio. The piercing sustain of the guitars is thin and trebly, while the choruses of ‘I’m Not the Guy I Try To Be’, ‘Field Record Me’ and ‘Cop This Sweetly’ - great titles, as usual - flow in a wash of harmonies that could have come from Bowie and Osterburg’s own throats in Hansa Studios in 1976; the latter track even ending with desperate yelps like The Idiot’s ‘Funtime’.
While the first half is upbeat and mid-paced, the second drops to a slower, dreamier cadence. Songs like ‘Playing Chicken’, ‘I’m Not the Guy I Try to Be’ and ‘Midnight Cats’ are made for the early hours. The spoken-word ‘Mt Gambier Nights’ is autobiography melded with dry observation, quoting William Blake to an evocative backdrop of staccato guitar reverb.
This is a seductive and comfortably re-playable collection of dependable material, boding well for an extensive national tour this month".
by Aaron Curran MESS AND NOISE


Fuse distribution.
  http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com

Please ring Karen Conrad on 0400 527 365 or email kcpublicity@optusnet.com.au for more info/hi-res pics/interviews.


http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com


http://soundcloud.com/dave-graney-lym/we-need-a-champion

http://soundcloud.com/dave-graney-lym/flash-in-the-pantz

what doesn't kill ya- almost does the job!

Yes, this tour has been challenging. But whatever doesn't kill you, as you know, damages and weakens you , and pretty much almost kills you. So I'm taking that as a  positive.
Shows have been up and down in violent swings. Very much buoyed by playing in places like Brisbane where the venues open and close and the people are pretty resourceful- and they find you and come and have a  ball.  Playing in Adelaide is also always enjoyable. I feel kind of in tune with people there. South Australian tones I guess.

Played a gig on guitar sitting in with the Dames, opening for Barry Adamson. Stu Thomas, also learned the whole set on bass as Rosie Westbrook was away playing with Mick Harvey. Emily Jarrett also learned all the songs for the gig on extra keys as Will Hindmarsh was away in Europe. The set went really well and it was a blast to see Barry play with his band. Then the show was reviewed by a  KNOW NOTHING IGNORANT PRIVATE SCHOOL HACK in an online paper who sniffed at the DAMES for not beeing teens and called them Aussie rock. As if they are one of many female led bands on an endless touring circuit. Get a fucking clue you phony, ill educated mere bug! It was also stated that it was  a mismatch with Barry, who produced my first  recordings with the Coral Snakes (including Clare of course) in 1988 and we've known for ages and I wrote the liner notes for his first solo  album. The writer then said Barry sounded like Nick Cave. Fuck you. In the nose!

Stu Thomas is such a  match fit player. Aside form learning all that DAMES stuff he has been doing shows with us and with his Stu Thomas Paradox, and guesting in Billy Millers WHO show and playing with Kim Salmon and the Surrealists ( who seem to improvise 1/2 their set) and also playing with Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes and Mikelangelo and also some shows on bass with Martin Cilia from the Atlantics. I mean, he gets across all the material and plays it with his whole mind and body. he throws himself into stuff.

The show in Westernport was mad- wildly drunken audience.  Bonnie from Wonnie. I mean "shagtown". (Wonthaggi). They drunkest and loudest guy in the world walked to middle of the dancefloor and pulled his pants down during "flash in the pantz".
Eating breakfast the next morning a  man came up and  said " does anybody under 40 know who you are?" A bit gratuitous. "Yes, some do", I replied.
Brutal conversations like that abound. Too many to recount. I don't want to drag them out, it would seem like I am complaining.

People think musicians are lost and silly types. I think that the players are  closer to currents that are swiftly moving than many in the straight world know are even moving.  Things are not as they seem in many ways, people and their fantasy views of what is going on "out there" I know.


The Brisbane writers festival was cool. Met with Jeet Thayil, a writer from Hong Kong/New York and Bombay who had read my book and said "it could have been a work of fiction!". The greatest review I have had. He is up for the Booker prize.

Played a solo gig up there. Enjoyed that. I will be doing a  lot more after this tour.


Newport Substation was a great gig . Very well attended . No other venue like it in Melbourne.

 The Adelaide show (two weeks ago now) was noteable because our brother -in-law Graeme came along, even though he was battling mutiple tumours. He loved our band and the latest record and would always come to see us. A lovely guy. Blessed to have known such a generous character. He died two nights ago. As we packed up in Hepburn Springs.


Heading to WA next. Four of us, travelling from melbourne to the other side of the country.

Thursday 04th Oct Clancys Fish Pub (solo), Fremantle w/ the morning night
Friday 05th Oct – Clancy’s Fish Pub , Dunsborough w/ lucy peach
Saturday 06th Oct – the Bird - Northbridge - Perth w/ the morning night
Sunday 07th Oct – Mojos - Fremantle WA w/ lucy peach

Friday Oct 19th - The Red Rattler- Marrickville NSW w/ the holy soul
Saturday Oct 20th - The Paperback Sessions - Smiths Alternative Bookshop - Civic - Canberra
This tour is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria

people-get a grip - just because I'm laughin' - get away from my stuff!

Passremarker on Songwriting

at The Pineapple Lounge at Brisbane Writers Festival  2012

Interview on Songwriting with Dave Graney

Name (not for zine):
Pineapple Lounge performance name:
AKA (if you want this included in your interview):

How would you describe your current musical style, and how did your music journey take you there?

Rock Music. Done properly. Everybody else does it wrong

Which songwriters from the past or present do you respect and influence you?

Syd Barrett, Bert Jansch, Robyn Hitchcock, Paul Westerberg, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, Leon Russell

What is one particular song that has really stood out for you, remains a favourite; and what is it about this song? (the lyrics will be included in the zine at the end of your interview)

The Waters of March or Quiet nights of quiet stars by Jobim. More for the music than the lyrics.

How do the words come out and get onto the page? Do you carry a notebook at all times? Scrawl as you awake in the middle of the night? Need to spend a lot of time alone? 

None of the above. I don't sweat it. 

As in all creative professions, you must have at some stage, experienced creative doubt: how did/do you deal with it?

Never, only disappointment in the organized music world really. 

If you write your own music, do you consider the music to be equally as important as the lyrics? And which comes first the music or the lyrics?

Music. Lyrics are for sooks.

Do you keep your songs a secret until you perform? Or do you bounce your work off fellow musicians and friends? 

I like music and words that are dirty and grubby with the fingerprints of many people on them. When I play them, I want people to take them away and do what they like with them. 

How do you feel about reactions to your songs? Please elaborate on a prominent incident of this from your past.

I like people dancing , really. I like grooves. 

The music industry, like publishing, is in a time of great transition: what has changed for you, and what excited you about the future, and what is pissing you off?

People love technology, and its going to do them in.Suckers.  The war has been lost. End times are here for life on earth.

  

As a songwriter do you feel connected to poetry? How?

I love poetry, but I wouldn't let it near any songs. I hate "spoken word" bullshit. Poetry is to be read. In your mind. Musics about voices and luck. 

Who are your favourite authors and poets? And which of their works in particular?

Guillaume Apollinaire for his book of poems Alcools and also Blaise Cendrars.

Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, JG Ballard, James M cain, Paul Cain, Delia Falconer, David Foster, Hal Porter, les Murray, Robert Grey. Joyce carol Oates, Walter raliegh, AE Coppard and many more. 

Why do you write songs? What does it do for you emotionally?

Just for the thrills really. I like the ephemeral nature of it. I hate shit like leonard Cohen . Give me Lil Wayne any day.

Have you had any premonitions with your future? Do you think you’ll continue song writing and music? If so, what direction?

Rave to the Grave!

  

One more thing: please include four full song lyrics you will be performing during your set.

No! people can hear them, I sing proper! Also, I didn't even know I was playing! 

 Post Script ? further correspondence (thought this might be interesting. I try hard to be nice. This exchange all happened just after a lot of travelling- including our night of HELL on the GOLD COAST which is a fulcrum upon which I have spun and which has determined my attitude and trajectory for THE REST OF MY LIFE!

yo Dave,

I'm not meant to write to you, but I'm writing the zine for BWF, and need your answers by the morning, because my deadline with them is tomorrow.

If you can fill it out... that would be sick.

I've attached it again, and need a pic of you also.

Be great if you could possibly not mention to them that I wrote to you, cause I was given strict instructions not to. ha! Strange world with all that bureaucracy.

I sent my answers last week in an email to the BWF person

yeah they just sent them to me today... thanks. ( :

you definitely don't want any lyrics included?

all good if not, just checking.

no, I'm not sure what or how long I have to play. Will make up my mind on the day I guess. I was trying to say I'm more of a musical focussed person. And pretty much all rock lyrics- except mine- are fucking rubbish.

except for led zeppelin, rollingstones, talking heads. there's a number that have some good lyrics I reckon.

anyway Mr. Graney, see ya on the 9th.

those are all very good musical acts. lyrics pretty good for the Stones , terrible for zeppelin but the best is by Steely Dan , Paul Westerberg, Bonnie Billy and August Darnell.

'll have to check em out one day.

My favourite lyricist of all time... well two acts: Cake and Butterfingers.

hey, just bear in mind that you're talking to a fucking expert in this matter. I know everybody has an opinion , but I have the skills and the experience and have written 25 fucking albums and two books. Cake are (1) shit and (2) yanks...

                        ...being yanks means they get a free ride from colonials...

I ran into the young lady who put a bit of time into making the fanzine at the festival. It was lovingly tied with a  bit of string. I have a phobia about cds and papers tied up with string. It creeps me out.

I said hello and also that I was being a little bit funny in my responses. Little bit. The fanzine included some lyrics by Jobim. Someone else had done my bit, she said. She was a bit excited – I guess - and cried out that she had read my responses and thought “wow! Who is this guy? Who the fuck does he think he is?” I only regret that , once again, I didn’t express myself HARD ENOUGH! I was dave FUCKIN" Graney! 

Sat 15th September Westernport Hotel - San Remo
Friday 21st September - Palais- Hepburn Springs
Saturday 22nd September - NEWPORT SUBSTATION -NEWPORT book tickets here

Thursday 04th Oct Clancys Fish Pub (solo), Fremantle
Friday 05th Oct – Clancy’s Fish Pub (indoors), Dunsborough
Saturday 06th Oct – the Bird - Northbridge - Perth
Sunday 07th Oct – Mojos - Fremantle WA
This tour is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria

adelaide 2012 then a long drive for mt gambier night

Clare Moore and myself drove across the state and up and down the hills and onto North Terrace in Adelaide, across from the university, parked our van and dragged some gear in to the studio. We kicked some dust off and threw down five songs with electric guitar and a snare drum and tambourine and spoke with the smart young bloke from Radio Adelaide.

After that, we retired to our hotel of choice, up the far end of Hindley street, and unpacked again.

The next day we were joined by Stu Thomas and Stuart Perera again and played a  Saturday night show at the Wheastsheaf Hotel in Thebarton. You could walk there from the hotel, really, but its tucked away in an almost inner suburban street. No problems with noise, no security, no poker machines or big sports tv screens and people love going to it. We played two sets to a rowdy crowd. So great to be playing to people who've been tuning into our music for a long time ,a swell as some youngsters who get off on our flashness. After the gig, we dropped into the Villis Bakery which has a 24 hour cafe attached to the big ovens. Great place. Full of night life types. Well , people who are hungry at the wrong time of day anyway.

The next day we played another couple of sets in the  late afternoon at the same venue. The band is playing so well. Some people mention words like smooth" and "soft" in the press but we're coming on so much stronger. Waves of power from the rhythm section and the guitars. Playing the best music in our lives right now.

On the Monday I loaded the van and drove back in a  homeward direction. to Melbourne, Along the way, I got the idea to detour to Mt gambier to shoot some film on   a little camera I'd been fooling with. Six hours later I arrived in the town and drove and walked around for a few hours before continuing on, planning to stop somewhere. I stopped in Coleraine and had a  nap, then drove on to Glenthompson. I was really fatigued, normally I can always keep driving but the last couple of months has been tough going.

I woke up at 4 am and drove another three hours into Melbourne. Quite delirious I guess. I stopped at  a shop in the Hills and some gent came up , asking if I was who I looked like. I wasn't the warmest to his enquiries I must admit. The thousand yard stare was in effect.

On Wednesday I put this clip together , for a  song thats been growing in power in our live shows. I thought it was too personal to come across to people but what the fuck do I know?

The clip begins with some introductions to the song as we kicked it into shape on last years tour. Then theres the footage I shot on the Monday. Its heavy on the "bright satanic mills". I didn't focus on any of the natural beauty of the town. Felt like accentuatin' the horror. Well maybe the intimacy of some of the associations. I worked at one of those mills when I left high school. (Didn't work again for another few years!Happy days! ) At 4:21the camera turns a corner at the house we all grew up in. At 5:55 there is the small Catholic church and primary school we all went to on the East side- ST Marys. At 6:07 there is a drive past of McDonald Park, home of the East Gambier Bulldogs where I played as a kid as did all my brothers and our father is number 1 life member.

2012 shows 
dave graney and the mistLY


Sat 15th September Westernport Hotel - San Remo
Friday 21st September - Palais- Hepburn Springs
Saturday 22nd September - NEWPORT SUBSTATION -NEWPORT book tickets here

Thursday 04th Oct Clancys Fish Pub (solo), Fremantle
Friday 05th Oct – Clancy’s Fish Pub (indoors), Dunsborough
Saturday 06th Oct – the Bird - Northbridge - Perth
Sunday 07th Oct – Mojos - Fremantle WA

This tour is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria

ararat - live

"ararat Live" was all we knew of this gig. Not the name of  a place, more a name for a  group of people or an event that seems to move around this town which is past Ballarat on the way to Adelaide. Didn'y know what to expect and just made the drive and walked into an old pub in the main street. the Ararat Hotel. Lovely art deco frosted glass over the high doorways. Dave and Rob were setting up the vocal pa and moving some lounge settees about. We had some lamb roast of the day for dinner and set up to play two sets.
People came from all over the district. Enough people to sit in the room on those comfy settees and listen to all our music. Posters were put up in all the nearby towns and emails were sent. Back to the old days of people in regional towns making their own fun up.
They yelled and cheered at the end. I wish there were lots more of these kinds of gigs.

A young fellow called jack was curious about our guitars and amps. chemistry student at uni. He had been brought here by his grandfather who has all our cds. His grandpa was a cool guy, explaining that it was a good turnout- especially considering that we were a  "very weird band". He loved our weirdness, he was just saying it as a fact. that was so much better than people usually coming up and saying its not a big number or people in the room, as if we have always been a huge pop act. Its true- our music is freaky and not for everybody. Its got grooves and funk and dynamics because that the way we like it but its also- in comparison to most other stuff - and especially music by our peers and contemporaries- WEIRD. Its fast for a  start. Also not generally sad.

We were sleeping upstairs in the old pub. We watched a  little country mouse bounce off the glass door as a young bloke belted out a hundred buskers faves in the other room. He didn't stop with th singing for another hour or two. The mouse must've been trying to get some shut eye.

As everybody was leaving Dave told us casually of the ghost upstairs. Noises and children whimpering were to be expected. Ararat used to have a hospital for the "insane" as well as a  prison ward for "the criminally insane" . A lot of restless soul flying about one imagines.

Stu Thomas heard the noises . He said they were comforting as he slept. Also, he went to the can during the night and the door slammed in his face. I believe it!


In the morning we beat it to Adelaide, after picking up an egg and bacon roll and a coffee from "DEbs". The cook was like a  grounded biker. Lashing of bacon! Shit, milky coffee, even though we asked for it black. thats the default coffee out here. Flat and white.

Clare and I made it in time for a live to air duo style at Radio Adelaide on North Terrace. We missed Stu and Stuart!

2012 shows 
dave graney and the mistLY


Sat 15th September Westernport Hotel - San Remo
Friday 21st September - Palais- Hepburn Springs
Saturday 22nd September - NEWPORT SUBSTATION -NEWPORT book tickets here

Thursday 04th Oct Clancys Fish Pub (solo), Fremantle
Friday 05th Oct – Clancy’s Fish Pub (indoors), Dunsborough
Saturday 06th Oct – the Bird - Northbridge - Perth
Sunday 07th Oct – Mojos - Fremantle WA

This tour is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria