I am now a third of the way into "The Fifth Child" by Doris Lessing. She is great writer and makes it easy for the reader. That's my excuse anyway.
So the first date of the Croxton front room we played mostly songs from You've Been In My Mind from 2012. This was a great rock album and the last real expression of the mistLY transforming and expanding my songs in the studio. The album was coloured by my 12 string electric guitar and lots of vocal harmonies. A rock album with the rock being in the sound spectrum that was first explored on Love's Forever Changes or the Byrds Younger Than Yesterday. It was a very personal album in the lyrics as it was just after my memoir "1001 Australian Nights" and when my friends or family would say they'd read it I had the queasy feeling that they'd been in my mind.
The set went like this ....
Blues Negative
We Need a champion
Flash in the pantz
Mt gambier night
I don't wanna know myself
Playin chicken
Midnightcats
I'm not the guy I tried to be
Cop this, sweetly
Field record me
I also played Song Of Life which was our February digital release and two of my new songs I'd written for slide guitar, You're All Wrong and You've Been In My Mind. The latter being my proud entrance to the tradition of a song sharing the same title as a previous album, released six years before.
For the second week we tackled songs mainly first released in 2001 on Heroic Blues and in 2003 on the Brother Who Lived. A lot of these were restrung/re-sung and remastered for SUPERMODIFIED in 2010. There were also two songs from I Was the Hunter And I Was The Prey in 1990 and one from Hashish and Liquor in 2005.
For this gig, Clare Moore played keyboards as well as drums and vocals.
Sometimes you can see yourself
Anchors aweigh
All our friends were stars
Midnight to Dawn
The brother who lived
Twilight of a villan
A boy named Epic
Heroic Blues
Clinging to the Coast
You're all wrong
You've been in my mind
Song of Life
I've got myself a beautiful nightmare
Everybody does what they want to
There's the Royal troll
For the third week we played songs from two albums that were real peaks of songwriting and creativity for me and the mostLY, We Wuz Curious from 2008 and Knock Yourself Out from 2009. Both written and recorded when my parents were seriously ailing in health and ultimately passing away. I kind of threw myself into work when I could.
Both albums fevered and concentrated. Incredibly funky. Both with amazing cover illustrations from Tony Mahony.
I would have loved to have gotten either released in Europe. I was told by one distributor about We Wuz Curious that the sort of person who might have sought it out doesn't exist anymore and that the cover art was terrible. The loneliness of the long distance Australian rock singer! It's no longer available in any physical form but you can get a digital copy.
Knock Yourself Out had music mostly written and recorded by Clare Moore while I toured with Henry Wagons. It's the funkiest and most dense and richly lyrical record I've ever done.
Check this out, THROWIN' ONE INTO THE WORLD.
The third set was..
You had to be drunk
I come from the clouds
Lets kill god again
Dylan the Indie fake
Honky tonk rope a dope
Punk dies
I like to be haunted
Bring me my liar
I'm in the future now
Bodysnatcher blues
We also did two new songs which differ from a lot f recent songwriting in that I really cooked them up with the mistLY. Real band related songs.
Is that what you did?
ULTRAKEEF
The latter is a meditation on the mythic rock'n'roll droog that will alway be - Keef. The former is a great monstrous groove in a Grateful Dead / Pedal gaze style with lyrics asking "that thing that you're doing - is that what you did?"
In the meantime I have a new digital release out. YOU'RE ALL WRONG. I call it a pop blues. One of several songs that fell out when I bought a six dollar guitar that was covered in One Direction stickers in Ararat, tuned it to open G and tried some slide guitar.
A cry from the heart/brain/traffic/mirror. YOU'RE ALL WRONG! I played slide guitar and bass over a narcotic beat I took from a toy keyboard and added some autoharp and a touch of piano at the end.
I found a film that was in the public domain about Watts Towers and Simon Rodia, the man who built them and I put the song to it and made a clip.
From Wiki ... "The Watts Towers, Towers of Simon Rodia, or Nuestro Pueblo ("our town" in Spanish) are a collection of 17 interconnected sculptural towers, architectural structures, and individual sculptural features and mosaics within the site of the artist's original residential property in Watts, Los Angeles. The entire site of towers, structures, sculptures, pavement and walls were designed and built solely by Sabato ("Simon") Rodia (1879–1965), an Italian immigrant construction worker and tile mason, over a period of 33 years from 1921 to 1954. The tallest of the towers is 99.5 feet (30.3 m). The work is an example of outsider art or Art Brut and Italian-American naïve art".
Always been fascinated by the Watts Towers and referenced them in the lyric to APOLLO 69 on The Soft'n'Sexy Sound album in 1995. "billowin' public cloud below/groanin' shakin' scaffold sways/Nelsons Column/Isaac Hayes' SHAFT/ Watts Towers"
You're all wrong
not everybody
just you
but all of you
no!
I see a spectrum under you
thats a nice way of saying you're on it
you're all wrong
you're all wrong
you're all wrong
you're not right
you don't feel us feel you
you're all wrong
you're all wrong
ok, everybody
all of you
that's the way you're gonna hear this
you're all wrong
you're all wrong
nah-
just you
but all of you
you're all wrong
you're all wrong
your nose, your smell
your walk
your words
your voice
your vibe
you're all wrong
you're all wrong
We have two more weeks in the front room at the Croxton Bandroom. People have been asking requests and any intel on what we have planned but I just want it all to be a surprise.
Saturday April 28th - Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes play Dashville-GUMBALL festival in NSW.
May 12th - we'll be playing a show at the Skylark Room in Upwey.
May 17th, we'll be playing as opening act for Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds at the Caravan Club in Sth Oakleigh.
Dave Graney and the mistLY play ADELAIDE at the Wheatsheaf Hotel August 10th/11th/12th
