You Need A Kleek, Klook

When I was a kid it was the 70s and the era of classic rock and also classic am pop. A very lucky time to be around, so much music in the OPEN AIR. The Rolling Stones and a lot of the British bands always paid props to the people who inspired them. If you liked the Stones you could not know about Muddy Waters or Howlin Wolf. Same with the American bands, really. Hot Tuna had Papa John Creach on violin and Johnny Winter produced and played on those last two amazing Muddy Waters albums on the Blue Sky label. Vintage, African American players and singers were respected and their music was widely available in all kinds of reissues.
I had no real access to live music, an occasional touring band but it was all on the radio or on the tv or in record shops. We listened to music on cassette in cars as we drove aimlessly about , getting stoned on weed and drinking big 750ml bottles of beer. The music really expanded our world, which was very tightly wound.
In some ways, I always had the idea that the party was already over as far as pop went. I was always reading and looking at things that had happened far away and I could not imagine being anywhere cool  myself. The Woodstock movie did the rounds, as did Led Zeppelins "the Song Remains the Same". Jim, was dead, so was Jimi, so was Brian and so was Janice. Even Blind Al Wilson from Canned Heat had copped it.
So I'd be staring at record covers and taking all this information in, hoovering up the faces and names and fonts and dates and times. Lining it all up in my mind.
One of the albums I had very early on, when I was 15 or so, was an old John Mayall disc which mentioned the place it was recorded at. Klooks Kleek.
Sounded impossibly cool to me then it stuck with me.

In late 1983 the Moodists moved from Melbourne to London and most of us lobbed at a squat in the genteel London suburb of West Hampstead. Robert Forster and Lindy Morrison from the Go Betweens had thrown us the keys and we dived into a London life which seemed pretty easy to us. Rowland S Howard and Genevieve McGuckin lived on the top floor. Running water didn't really exist but you didn't really need to wash, and beer - which was our main sustenance -  was very cheap. There was a club up the road we had heard about through news of our friends, the  Birthday Party playing there. The Moonlight Club in West End Lane, West Hampstead.

It turned out that this had been the place where Joy Division had also played their first London shows, also U2 and many others. We were signed to Red Flame, a label run by Dave Kitson, who ran some of these shows and who often talked of a guy called Alan MGee who had a fanzine and a club going and who later started Creation Records (who we also worked with in 1985)


Time goes by and on a  trip to London to play in 2014 we went for a squizz around the West Hampstead area, taking advantage of a new overground railway from South London.

We found the Railway Tavern, which was where the Moonlight Club had taken place, to be boarded up and due for demolition. This was happening all over London.

There was a huge picture of early 60s pop idol Billy Fury near the  pub. I posted a picture online and a fellow responded that he had written a book about the club, which had once been called Klooks Kleek! This was amazing news to me. Turns out it had been a jazz club named after an album by drummer Kenney (Klook) Clarke called "Klooks Clique". It had begun in 1957 and carried through to the late 60s, hosting shows by Cream, Led Zeppelin, Ten Years After, Family and pretty much anybody who was on the scene in that era. This had a lot to do with the fact that Decca Records was just up the nearby lane.

So in 2016 I was, as is my way, thinking on this sort of a portal into time and the kinds of incubators for music that I have been through in my life. Record shops, clubs, pubs and CLIQUES. They're like schools that you go to and you get to be refined as well as pulled and pushed into shape as you move through those joints. Joints that are mostly imagined or fantasies anyway.  They get you to focus your game.

So I wrote this song that is our July release, You Need A Kleek, Klook.
Reaching for a majestic, mythic tone. Twelve string acoustic guitar, bass, piano and synths against a rhythm machine and a heavily reverbed tambourine. Pop music in that Procul / May 68 style and tone, here in 2016.



In the picture on the bottom right is myself and Clare Moore standing outside the Railway hotel. Photo taken by our London friend and artist, Dave Western.


You need a Kleek, Klook
You need a Kleek
people say
How can you happen?
How do you happen, anymore?
You need a Kleek, Klook
You need some weight
wait!
some critical maths
you need a host body
from whence you can dive
You need a Kleek, Klook
You need a push

you need a time and a place and a story
you need to click
you need to slot in and look right at home

you can't just pop
you can't just divide
you need to have happening people around
people need to be dealing with you

You need a Kleek, Klook
You need a Kleek

people need to be dealing with you
like you're a problem
their problem
You need a Kleek, Klook
You need a Kleek

you need to be
boo!
you need to be!
boo!

Upcoming shows

Dave Graney and the mistLY play the Grandview Hotel in Fairfield,Vic
Saturday August 20th

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Brisbane Festival (Spiegel tent) September 3rd

Dave Graney And Clare Moore – Bowral Bowling Club September 16th
Dave Graney and the mistLY – Petersham Bowls – September 17th

Dave Graney And Clare Moore – Smith’s Alternative- Canberra September 18th

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Semaphore Festival (Adelaide) October 2nd

Dave Graney'n' the Coral Snakes - who else could take you there?

I always write "Dave Graney 'n' the Coral Snakes", never just "the Coral Snakes". Because.
Well because they're all mostly my songs and I sing them and it feels funny to refer to the situation without myself in it.
We have our modern band which is Dave Graney and the mistLY. Thats, me and Clare, Stu Thomas (since 2004) and Stuart Perera (since 1998).

We'll be doing more shows both historical and modern in the future.

See, the language is getting taut isn't it?

I read an interview with David Thomas from Pere Ubu and he referred to the intial period of Ubus activity as their "historical period". Same goes for other bands I really like such as WIRE. They had that amazing first run of albums, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154. Then they stopped and did  work with different combinations of the band, duo and solo works. Then they got back together and made amazing records and still tour. In their case, it took a long time for them to let their audience find them. They had been hugely influential in the US and toured there in the late 80s with label mates Depeche Mode. Wire were only interested in playing their new music at their own shows. Luckily there was an American band who played their first album PINK FLAG note for note and in perfect album sequence. So Wire got them to be the opening act. They were called The Ideal Copy. Cute, huh?

Robin Casinader, keyboard player for the Coral Snakes, lives in Canberra. We waited for him to come down to Melbourne where we had to go into PBS FM in Collingwood to do a  live to air performance on the Wednesday before our show. Barry Douglas aka Barry Takes Photos was in the studio to film it.




After this session , WE WENT OFF TO REHEARSAL!

The show was at the Corner Hotel. We wanted to do a show in a rock 'n roll venue, in contrast to the MEMO MUSIC HALL we had played at last year. That had been more of a sit-down-theatre kind of setting. A great room also, we just wanted something different.

It was a great night. We had our friends the Sand pebbles and the Ancients play opening sets. Both were wonderful. Great people. Great music.

We did everything for the show ourselves.  All the logistical arrangements and hiring merch people and sound mixer etc as well as talking with the other bands.

I'm saying this because people, even friends, assume we have "people" who do things. All we have is a booking agent. Thats the limit of our engagement with the Austrralian music scene. Its all personal. Our lives are 90% admin.

Thanks go out to Community radio for connecting us with people.

We soundchecked in the afternoon at about 4pm until 5:30 and then hung around until doors. We ate and talked with the Sand Pebbles and friends.

At 11pm we came on and I must say it was an absolutely epic show. After all the hanging and admin and rooting about, to finally just play the shit out of that stuff was quite joyful.

This kind of show is a decade of moves and poses and shapes and song selections all compressed into 75 minutes.





We played so many shows during the 90s and played it in isolation. Fucking grunge years- how funny were they? We were the best, and so we were at the Corner.

If there was a music press there would have been a  review of the show. Who could review Dave Graney 'n' the Coral Snakes though? I tell you, to get a handle on what was going on they would have had to have had a team of scribes, especially a DANCE critic, just to talk about the MEANING OF MY MOVES within each song and within those songs within the greater drama of the show and our career.

As I like to say "who else could take you there! Droppin' some fuckin' science on you there, pal!"

I shit the critics.

It's been great playing with Rod Hayward and Robin Casinader again. Man they play LOUD!

Robin is a genuine freak, and I mean that in the most positive of ways. I'm a proud freak too.
He just starts to meditate anywhere. He cares not for idle chat or what may make other people uncomfortable. He talks when he wants to. We drove him to his hotel after rehearsal and talked of Lionel Barts last great folly and of Anthony Newley. Who else could take us there?

When we first got back together and went over what songs we would play we got to "rock'n'roll is where I hide". I had to mention to Rod and Robin that this song lights up the room wherever we play it. People call out for it even though they don't know the name of the song. Its a monster. They expressed quizzical surprise.

This is the show closer from July 9th 2016.

Dave Graney and the mistLY play the Grandview Hotel in Fairfield,Vic
Saturday August 20th

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Brisbane Festival (Spiegel tent) September 3rd

Dave Graney And Clare Moore – Bowral Bowling Club September 16th

Dave Graney and the mistLY – Petersham Bowls – September 17th

Dave Graney And Clare Moore – Smith’s Alternative- Canberra September 18th

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Semaphore Festival (Adelaide) October 2nd

Election Limbo-Monday night after Saturday vote

Well the seat we live in - Latrobe- is still up in the air. Postal votes coming in to be counted tomorrow. Apparently about 12,000. I hope Labour wins. The Liberal is an ex copper. The only advice I ever got from my Dad was "don't mess with the Gendarmes!"
My mother? She said "once a cop- never a man!" 


We went down to the Primary School to vote at about 3pm. A long queue greeted us. There were people from The Greens, the Labour party, Animal Justice Party and one with a  UNION how to vote card. They were all female.
As the queue progressed there was a Liberal party worker who handed out his Senate and House Of Reps how to vote leaflets to people just behind us with the words "we've got to sort this CFA mess out!". He added that he was a CFA member. The couple behind us agreed. I couldn't let it pass and told him that this was a Federal election on s and that the CFA dispute with the Fire Fighters Union was a State Government issue. There was no way a federal government could do anything. He backed off a bit but the couple behind me started yelling that the CFA was important. I said I loved the CFA , and also sausages (there was a bbq nearby) but that was a State issue. I guess they went and voted Liberal. I ran into the woman at my booth and then Clare ran into them at the Supermarket as we made our way to a party.



The party was a friends 40th in the Hills, not far from home. After a while, everybody had their phones out, looking at the count coming in as an upset seemed to be possibly- maybe - happening.

We stayed until 11pm and then went home to catch the Election broadcasts. It turned out to be an exciting, unpredictable event. Not at all what I was expecting. I wanted Labour to win but couldn't believe it ccould really happen. It's not the kind of place to go mad like that. I mean, in a good way.
Queensland went mad, as it usually does. Them and their bitterness and their baseball bats. Always out to clobber some political party, but usually for reasons of .... who knows? They just like to hit people with baseball bats I think.

Anyway, they voted in two Senators from the One Moron Party.  Thanks for that, Maroons!

I have been working on our July release. Just finished it. I used the term Chamber Pop to Clare Moore. She heard it as Chamber Pot. So, no, I won't be using it to describe this song when it comes out. Kind of a baroque, pop folk feel to it. 12 string acoustic, piano, organ, backing vocals, reverberant tambourine and swelling cymbals tinging and crashing. It's going to be called "You Need a Kleek, Klook".
Someone needs a home, context, a background, a story, a crew, some cocoon to emerge from within. They need a Kleek, Klook.
Someone will know what I'm talkin' about.

Best things about the election?
No David Leyonhelm. Wyatt Roy. See yas!

Worst, still got Christopher Pyne, Peter Dutton, Cory Bernardi, Scott Morrison, Greg Hunt. And others....

Malcolm Turnbull kept going on about his PLAN but no one knew what it was. He was either not himself- (its strange how intimate everubody is with him, calling him Malcolm, as if he's someone they really know.) or he has hypnotized people to imagine he  is different to what he is. He had all the same ghouls surrounding him as the man he toppled, Tony Abbott, and all his cruel policies. But people think MALCOLM is really a nice, soft, caring old school Liberal. He just had to win the election then he could be himself. By himself I mean that other person in some peoples minds.

But the people surrounding him are looking at the wreckage of the election and saying he wasn't hard or cruel enough. All those people who voted for the One Moron Party  did so because the Liberals weren't hard enough. Isn't that telling? The Conservative party is so far to the right they look to One Moron to get their bearings?

How about the fact that James Ashby is her political advisor? The guy who sued the former Speaker of the house Peter Slipper for Sexual Harrassment  and so Slipper was removed from the Labour Party - in a  minority government. And someone stole his diary - and the Liberal MP  involved , Mal Brough, had to resign as the Federal Police investigated and Christopher Pyne was mentioned as well as Wyatt Roy. How grubby are these people, the adults?

Maybe Labour will still get a minority government together?

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes July 9th at the Corner Hotel - Melbourne

Harry Howard and the NDE -  July 16th the Grandview Hotel in Fairfield,Vic

 Harry Howard and the NDE July 23rd Croxton Park Hotel

 

Dave Graney and the mistLY play the Grandview Hotel in Fairfield,Vic
Saturday August 20th

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes - Brisbane Festival (Spiegel tent) September 3rd

Dave Graney And Clare Moore – Bowral Bowling Club September 16th

Dave Graney and the mistLY – Petersham Bowls – September 17th

Dave Graney And the mistLY – Smith’s Alternative- Canberra September 18th

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Semaphore Festival (Adelaide) October 2nd