2023 book THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT (lyrics 1980-2023)
2023 reissue Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Night Of The Wolverine. Double vinyl release.
2023 ROCK album with Clare Moore IN A MISTLY .
WORKSHY - 2017 memoir out on Affirm Press. Available at shows or via website.
Moodists - Coral Snakes - mistLY.
I don’t know what I am and don’t want to know any more than I already know. I aspire, in my music , to 40s B Movie (voice and presence) and wish I could play guitar like Dickey Betts, John Cippolina or Grant Green - but not in this lifetime, I know.
Minimal keys and less guitar over a
beat reversed and driven over by Dave
Graney
"Gloria Grahame-manifest--manifestly-manifesto..”
A new digital single
from Dave Graney. The third for
2018. This time it’s a breakout keys driven groover called Gloria Grahame (fuck or die). Its vintage Graney.
In the 90s there was the
paen to the laconic and beat actor Warren
Oates (1991), the instrumental Confessions
Of Serge Gainsbourg(1994) and the tribute to Ava Gardner that was Mogambo (1993).
On the last physical
album, 2017’sLETS GET TIGHT, there was the Charlie Parker jazz punning wonder
that wasDRIFTING DONNA REED.
This time Dave Graney drops down to his mean pulp
groundwater with a pulsing, keys driven celebration of film noir icon Gloria Grahame, star of the Big Heat and In A Lonely Place recently the subject of the movie “Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool”. The song celebrates her cold power and
resilience and enigmatic, restless persona. It touches on an apocryphal
incident where, as they watched a couple having sex in a hotel room, she
allegedly pulled a gun on her then husband , director Nicholas Ray and gave him
the choice, fuck or die!
Recorded and mixed at the Ponderosa by
Dave Graney, May 2018.
"Gloria Grahame -
manifest
manifestly -
manifesto
Nicholas Ray
take off your eye
patch and give us a spray
I've got this gun
in your eye
fuck or die
hashtag rebel - of
course
hashtag me too -
whatcha gonna do?
a jug of boiling
coffee
freestyle to the
face
fuck or die
I've got this gun
in your eye
I've got this gun
in your eye
fuck or die
you put me in a
Lonely Place and made me love the killer
fuck or die
where's your son
been?
fuck or die…”
An album with the mistLY is planned
for release later in 2018. Still unsure about its content. Will probably be remastering some tracks we have released this year. Longer versions. I have a half dozen tracks I've recorded with Clare Moore. These include ET TU DOUDOU?, YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR BOOGIE, YOU'VE BEEN IN MY MIND, OLD FRIENDS and WHEN MIAMI VICE CAME TO TOWN. We'll be going in to rehearse and arrange some new tracks July 9th with the mistLY and then recording them July 10th and 11th. These include ULTRAKEEF, IS THAT WHAT YOU DID?, WHERE"S MY BUZZ? and BABY I WISH I'D BEEN A BETTER POP STAR.
Hopefully out this year. Still thinking on it. We're gonna have to get something physical out because we'll be playing a lot of this 2018 stuff.
An edited version of this appeared in the April edition of the RRR magazine for subscribers, THE TRIP.
“He
was some kind of man… What does it matter what you say about people?”
Marlene Dietrich at the end of
the Orson Welles classic film, A Touch Of Evil.
“Great
geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing
about them. They lived in their writing, and so their house – and street – life
was trivial and commonplace”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“So
Queen Victoria
Is a large black slug in Piccadilly, Manchester
Our city hobgoblins
Our city hobgoblins
And they say
We cannot walk the floor at night in peace”
CITY HOBGOBLINS by the FALL
It
feels good to write a note about Mark E Smith in The Trip. A lot of people who
subscribe to Triple R would know more about the work of the Fall than me. Others
would know some of their sounds. Many others would at least know of their
caustic mystique. Many might be interested in listening to them now that Mark E
Smith has left the building.
Because
it’s the work, the music, that will live on with the Fall. It was a powerful
brew. If you’ve heard early Pavement or Arctic Monkeys, you’ve heard the Fall.
Or at least sounds, licks, chords and arrangements put through a strong Fall
Filter.
Mark
passed away in late January. He’d been ill for a year or so but had continued
to perform – up until late December, in a wheelchair.
He
was still burning up life- or it was blasting through him – and was still
unfinished business. He defied shit. He was definite. Very funny in a dry way.
I always remember him saying, when asked about Live Aid, and Ethiopia, “any country that could be invaded by the
Italians must be a right load of cobblers”. He also didn’t shy away from
being positive about the Falklands War when he was touring here in 1982. He was like a latter day Wyndham Lewis (who
declared himself the “enemy of everything”
and founded the modernist magazine BLAST).
I
don’t pretend to know how to talk all around him. Maybe I’ll just tell you of
the few times our paths crossed.
The
Moodists played with the Fall in Melbourne in 1982 when they toured. The venues
were the Seaview hotel in St Kilda and the Mt Erica Hotel in Prahran. I
absolutely loved their singles and albums at the time, Grotesque (1980) , the
fantastic 10” SLATES (1981) and the then current HEX ENDUCTION HOUR. An
incredible racket. Singles like City Hobgoblins (with the amazing b side How I
Wrote Elastic Man) .
They
also invented “Country and Northern” with blasts of power like “Fiery Jack”,
“The Container Drivers” and “T-t-t-totally Wired”.
The
band were really nice to us in 1982- though Kaye Carroll tried to set my hair
on fire (in mockery of its bouffed up trendiness).
We played with them several times the next few years in the UK . Our young
mixer Victor Van Vugt was much in demand in the UK and worked with them and the
Pogues and then the Bad Seeds. Clare Moore and I took a bus down from London to
the Hacienda for its third birthday in 1985.
I dunno why I didn't write about it in WORKSHY but there was
a funny party in London with the FALL there and Karl Burns was giving me shit
about my jacket and seemed to want a fight while Genesis P Orridge was giving
Clare the evil eye from across the room. Years passed and I played at Livid in
Sydney in 1990 when Redhead Kingpin was the headliner but wouldn't play so the
FALL stepped up and did it. Always a powerful live band . Went to say hello to
them then. The band very quiet and Mark the cold ruler.
There was a bogus “meeting of three giants”in a UK with Nick Cave, Shane McGowan and Mark
in 1985 or so. It was notable only for Mark seemingly travelling at three times
the pace of the other two and them having to take all his wild raving because –
he was MARK E SMITH - he had the mozz on them.
When we did Night of the Wolverine , our then manager Mick
Geyer took me aside to play me the new Fall LP, The Infotainment Scan, which
had a song going on about time of the Wolverines... great minds!
The Fall worked their own seam, unique. Unfollowable ,
really. I met a young friend in Hobart in the mid 2000s. In their early 20s,
they had tuned into the FALL and proudly held strong opinions and views on many
of their then 25 album releases. (My own opinions and views being limited to
their early 80s works). I was impressed. In later years Mark E was held up by
conservative curmudgeons as a type of shield against all other pop vagaries
they may have been forced to grapple with. They hid behind Marks trouser legs.
(Like others do with Bob Dylan – Mark was fresher yet dryer. Pretty much
powdered, actually).
But don’t let that grim lot put you off.
Mark was a hero and a villain. There was lots of drama you
heard reports about. The version of the band that walked out on him in New York
in 2006 and how he replaced them immediately and finished the tour, famously
quipping, “if its me and yer granny on
bongos – its the Fall.”
He was probably, often, a bastard. Who isn’t?
There was a book called “The Fallen”, written solely about
ex members of the Fall. All bruised and still tender from the experience, all
recognize being in the band with Mark to be a peak experience of the lives.
There isalso a band led by Brix
Smith-Start of some of those ex members called The Extricated.
Brix wrote a memoir, “the Rise the Fall and the Rise”,as did bass player Steve Hanley with his “The
Big Mid-Week”.
Mark wrote a biography in 2009 called Renegade.
Marc Riley, guitarist in the Falls “Hex/Grotesque” period
and currently a dj at BBC6 said that Brix and Steve Hanleys books could be made
into a a great tv show, as one was like Dallas and one was like Coronation
Street.
What did Mark seem to like? He spoke highly of Link Wray and
the Stooges and Dr Karl from Neighbours (especially his band) and the Fall
covered songs by Sister Sledge, the Saints, Charlie Feathers, Pete Seeger, Lee
Perry, Tommy Blake, Iggy Pop, Nervous Norvous, The Groundhogs, Wanda Jackson, R
Dean Taylor, Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps, The Other Half, The Searchers, the
Sonics, The Monks and The Kinks. He loved a British writer by the name of
Arthur Machen.
But before all else you should dive into some of their
music.
In 2010 they toured here and I opened for them again with
Adele Pickvance and Tim Byron in Brisbane and in Sydney and with the mistLY in
Melbourne. At the latter Mark pretty much made us go on as the doors were
opening. He was acting up with the mics and all, turning amps on and off etc. I
went to their band room after the Melbourne show, expecting to see a big
sulking post argument scene. The band were all quite happy and Mark was sitting
by himself. He was being very funny about mutual acquaintances. Evil humour. He
asked me to go with them to Golden Plains the next day but we had a gig booked
to play a private party and I wanted to be able to pay my band properly before
Xmas. He would have understood. Like Howling Wolf, he valued being a“pro” more than anything. Saw them play again in 2016 at the last ATP
Festival in Wales. He brought all the drama and noise.
A terrific influence on me. On their classic album Grotesque,there is a
track called “C and C S mithering”. Mark lays into his then ambitious peers ,
saying
“All
the English groups
Act like peasants with free milk
On a route
On a route to the loot
To candy mountain
Five wacky English proletariat idiots”
He
then lampoons the false bonhomie of travelling bandsyears before Spinal Tap , saying
"see ya mate-
yeah see ya mate" in a parodic, matey tone.
Oh he was harsh. And unfair. RIP to the Hip Priest.
Australian
– New Zealand dates 1982 by the Fall.
Thursday,
22 July 1982 Musician's Club, Sydney
Saturday,
24 July 1982 Family Inn, Sydney
Sunday,
25 July 1982 Stranded, Sydney
Monday,
26 July 1982 Stranded, Sydney
Tuesday,
27 July 1982 Canberra
Thursday,
29 July 1982 West Town Hall, Geelong
Friday,
30 July 1982 Jump Club, Collingwood, Melbourne
Saturday,
31 July 1982 Crystal Ballroom, Seaview Hotel, St. Kilda,
Monday,
2 August 1982 Prince of Wales, Melbourne
Thursday,
5 August 1982 Prospect Hill, Melbourne
Friday,
6 August 1982 Mt. Erica Hotel, Melbourne
Saturday,
7 August 1982 Crystal Ballroom, Seaview Hotel, St. Kilda,
Tuesday,
10 August 1982 Trade Union Club, Sydney
Wednesday,
11 August 1982 Trade Union Club, Sydney
Thursday,
12 August 1982 Wollongong University, Wollongong
Friday,
13 August 1982 Old University, Brisbane
Saturday,
14 August 1982 Manly Vale, Sydney
Tuesday,
17 August 1982 University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Wednesday,
18 August 1982 Town Hall, Christchurch
Thursday,
19 August 1982 Victoria University, Wellington
Friday,
20 August 1982 Main Street, Auckland
Saturday,
21 August 1982 Main Street, Auckland, New Zealand
Dave Graney and Clare Moore with Georgio "the dove" Valentino and Malcolm Ross
Dave Graney and Clare Moore with Robin Casinader - In Concert
ONE MILLION YEARS DC
Starts with a Kinksy groover sketching a 21st century populist tyrant who coasts in power on waves of public resentment at those on the lowest rungs of the ladder (He Was A Sore Winner). Sweeps across a sci fi terrain with nods to songs in the sand at the end of the world (Pop Ruins) and nods to the ties that bind in the underground communities (Comrade Of Pop and Where Did All The Freaks Go?).
Songs about intense, long relationships, defunct technology that didn’t answer back, severe social status definition (I’m Not Just Any Nobody), people wandering through your mind as if it was a garage sale, the anxiety of the long running showman (wide open to the elements again) and ends with a song that’s “a little bit Merle Haggard and a little bit Samuel Beckett”.
" Edith Grove! Powis Square! 56 Hope Road! Petrie Terrace!..
The Roxy! The Odeon! Apollo! Palais! Olympia! The Whisky! Detroit Grande!”
Pop Ruins!"
ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS?
ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? (The title comes from the chorus of “Song Of Life” ) is a classic rock’n’roll album. Classic if you lived through what has become known as ”the classic rock era” as it rolled out new and even broke onto the beachhead and morphed into punk. That’s the direction Dave Graney and Clare Moore have always been coming from. They have spent their lives schooled by and immersed in rock ‘n’ roll culture. Neither attended higher education and they dived in deep and kept swimming. From the Moodists through the Coral Snakes /White Buffaloes to the mistLY
This is an album with their band, Dave Graney and the mistLY. Stuart Perera has played guitar with them since 1998 and Stu Thomas on bass since 2004. MARCH 2019
ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? 2019 album out on Compact Disc - available here via mail order...
If you are from outside of Australia and wish to purchase a Compact Disc copy of ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? please use this button (different postage)
LETS GET TIGHT
FEARFUL WIGGINGS
2014 solo album from Dave Graney.
*****"If I've learnt anything in my years of writing about music it's that if you are going to do anything of worth in this tough game, you better have your own thing. Today's generic is easily replaced by tomorrow's. And yet you need to be flexible, to follow wherever the songs demand. In the case of this, only the second credited as a solo album among 30 or so Graney releases, it's a curious yet welcoming lane he walks you down, with acoustic guitars, not much percussion, vibes, smooth sounds. At the end of it you feel like you've awoken from a strange yet pleasant summer's dream. As shot by Luis Bunuel. It ranges from off-kilter reveries (A Woman Skinnies Up a Man, The Old Docklands Wheel) through to the softly seductive (How Can You Get Out of London) and the downright arch (Look Into My Shades, Everything Is Great In The Beginning.) This is music that is neither folk, nor blues, nor country, but it's all Graney, somewhere out to the left field beyond Lee Hazlewood's raised eyebrow. It's astringent on the tongue but sweetens in the telling." Noel Mengel Brisbane Courier Mail
you've been in my mind
June 2012 super high energy pop rock album - blazing electric 12 strings - total 70s rock drive. Greatest yet! available via paypal - $20 pp
rock'n'roll is where I hide/- 2011 "vintage classics/ re recordings" on LIBERATION
SUPERMODIFIED - August 2010 remixed/re-sung/re-strung//remastered/replayed comp via PAYPAL
also available as a digital album
Knock yourself (2009)-first ever dg solo set-filthy electro r&b-available via Paypal- $20
available as a digital album too
We Wuz Curious (2008)-blazing R&B jazz pop album available via paypal-$20
UNAVAILABLE-COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!!!
AVAILABLE AS A DIGITAL album
Keepin' It Unreal-(2006)-minimalist/lyrical vibes, bass, 12 string set - CDs sold out - digital only
Hashish and Liquor (2005 double disc by Dave Graney and Clare Moore) available via Paypal $25
UNAVAILABLE-COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!!!
Single album HASHISH available as a digital release
Heroic Blues- "folk soul" set from 2002-Availableas a digital album via BandCamp
UNAVAILABLE ! Completely sold out!
It is written,baby-book released 1997- available $10 via paypal
