dave graney - Moodists-Coral Snakes-mistLY-FEARFUL WIGGINGS

dave graney - Moodists-Coral Snakes-mistLY-FEARFUL WIGGINGS
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About Me

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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.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Harsh winter and its tolling bells. Vale Chris Fay.




Well its been a long and mean winter. Here in the hills it's been pretty dry but exceptionally windy and cold. Being surrounded by tall trees a persons mind listens for crashing Mountain ash or gumtree branches to fall. It happens pretty spectacularly around the neighbourhood. And did for a poor family a few houses up.

On the flip side however, our nine week stint in the front room of the Croxton Bandroom in April May was so inspiring and energizing that we are going back there for every Sunday 4-6pm in September. All the shows have been so positive this year, I’ve been enjoying playing with the mistLY so much. I feel like I’ve finally become what I’ve always wanted to be which is a kind of Elektra period electric r&b singer songwriter with an absolute CRACK band. Its all come together.

Our shows in Adelaide were a treat. Three sold out nights at the Wheatsheaf. We played a wide range of songs, some unrecorded and a lot from the Post Coral Snakes period. But we played two 60 minute sets each night so the shows drifted all over the roads, the main street and many byways down by the side as well.



I picked up a new hat this young fellow made for me. Blakesby Hats. The man that makes them is  one living ornament to a mid century American ideal. 19th or 20th century - hard to pick. Living there in a beige brick Adelaide suburban street. He looks a bit overdone in this clip but its a year or so ago and you know how far someone in their early twenties can go in that period. LIGHT YEARS!



Our guitarist Stuart Perera lost his mother at the start of the year.  Then Brian Moore left us in February and Moya Moore in July. Clare had been helping our elderly neighbour into Aged care for most of the last year and she died suddenly in early August. Brian Hooper from the Surrealists and the Beasts went down and then it was Spencer P Jones. We have also been spending time when allowed with a gravely ill friend. A rough year on that front.

One that hit really hard was a character and friend whose been coming to see us play in Sydney since the late 80s and probably earlier. Chris Fay. Sudden death. One of those things that really takes the wind out of you. He was always showing up at our gigs, talking a mile a minute. He'd sometimes turn up after we'd played with wild stories of his mad commute. On his bicycle. He'd always be asking if he could help with gear but we'd always beg off as he was really never any help.  He was a funny charmer. Seemed to live quite harshly, for a long time in a hostel taking care of all these busted old blokes who'd washed up there. Chris was there when times were fat and lean, high and low. I remember playing the Annandale in 1990 or 1991 and we were talking in the bar off to the side. Well I was listening to his mad tales. The Coral Snakes were on stage and starting up a song, vamping it. Just when Lure Of the Tropics was coming out. I walked to the stage with Chris in my ear and then just jumped up sang into the mic. Never had that smooth shift from OFF to ON happen so quickly.
A few years later we were chilling after a big show in a  bandroom at the Metro, me Clare Moore, Chris and Dave Wray aka Frank Bennett. Dave suddenly said "c'mon dave, lets go get some hookers and some blow!" Chris looked at me and Clare and said "Isn't it funny how Dave always says exactly what everybodys thinking!"

Thats him in the middle with Clinton walker on the left and Robin Casinader (rare shot with beer can) on the right. Sydney early 90s. 


In 1995 or 96 we did shows in Melbourne and Sydney where we wanted to have Jim Morrison supporting us . (We had a  song on the Soft N Sexy Sound called Morrison Floorshow about Jim coming back from the dead and joining a  tribute band to the Doors) . I just wanted to have "Jim Morrison (unplugged)" on our posters.




In Melbourne Malcolm Hill did a spot as "Revolutionary Jim", coming on and haranguing the crowd to "love my ass!"

Chris stumbled onto the stage at the Metro in Sydney as "Drunk Jim" in enormous mirror shades and leather pants and mumbled his way through some key lines, entangling himself hopelessly in mic leads and knocking stands over. People got really upset, yelling "You're not Jim!". It was a triumph, in my rarely humble opinion.



He also told stories of being asked to be in a  Birthday Party tribute band called THE BIRTHDAY PARTY BOYS.  He declined as he thought it would be uncool but I always loved the idea.



Many times we gave him a  lift back from a show with him directing us through his city of Sydney, getting lost in conversation in the back or distracted or simply seeming to want to show us something that was miles off our course. Then just getting us lost.



About four years ago we stopped for late night food on such a drive around Sydney, myself and Clare and Chris. We ate Falafel. As he got out of the back door we all stared at the Houmous, Tabouli and salad strewn all over the bench seat where he'd been the only one sitting. "That was not me!" he declared in wide eyed innocence and indignation. "That was not me!" . Eventually, like somebody said, you just went with the chaos.

He did the occasional acting job on stage and for film and was always sketching people in his pad.






A delightful Sydney character and his sudden passing really hit us hard. Vale Chris Fay. Dude, majorly.

 We have shows coming up in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, the Central Coast , Nambour on the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane . Bring it all on!





1 comment:

Unknown said...

Fuck,
Just found out Chris had died (don't have facebook)
A very belated Vale Chris Fay from me
He was a sweetheart
Anna Tranter

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