Live On Stage Peace And Quiet

 

 I've been walking around all day wondering what would happen if you actually started to say what you really thought. I mean, I'm always thinking of my life as a musician. I read books and see old albums from the golden years. There was a time when players just played, people came and took film of them as they played and critics talked of their technique.
Now there is a terrific load of admin for any player to take care of. So much.
So many idiots. So little time. I mean, they take up your time and memory. Like operating systems updating with builders bog constantly. Spakfilla in our minds. We are on zombie time.  Apps run the scene. Like tails wagging mice... or  something.
Where could anybody get those 10,000 hours in the first place? The days spread so thin.

I could be dead by now/ it’d be all over/you could be on your fourth or fifth
I blew it baby! I screwed up! when it was time to shine I wasn’t shiny
I should’ve stayed on message/ I shoulda repeat myself/ repeat
I shoulda known it was on!
baby I wish I’d been a better popstar

 Very tense and grinding time of it with this Australian election. So many gears crunching. The governing LNP is so bad that half the front bench has already run away or retired to spend more time with their poor families. The other half are in disgrace. The Queenslanders abuse the Victorians.
The national broadcaster has been bashed around so much by the Murdochian atmospherics we all swim in that they only know one mode - to desperately show to their masters that they are not biased. To do this they skew to the hard right constantly.
The Labor Party is treated as an illegitimate interloper. Socialist to boot.
I have a lefty friend air raiding me with texts about how the two major parties are both right wing. probably true but one is totally hard right and downright evil and the other is not.
Rupert Murdoch orders one around and not the other.
I would rather not have the LNP in power. They are the worst.
Our local seat is Casey since  the boundaries were redrawn. The sitting member is the speaker of the house, Tony Smith. An IPA graduate. If you don't know what the IPA is, you're lucky. They are a "think tank" who tell the LNP what their policies are. They are a tax free institution who provide talking heads for most ABC radio and television shows. They do not divulge their major donors though it has been tobacco and mining companies- including Gina Rinehart. Anything cuntish, basically. They believe in the Free Market above all.  One of their top brains, John Roskam went on to the ABC show Q and A and spoke of how "work makes you free". They worked tirelessly to try and get the anti racial vilification laws relaxed and want the ABC itself to be privatized. They are the shittest of shit stirrers. Sui Shitted Shit heads. All Shits and no giggles. Shithouse shitbirds of the lowest order. Shit. Itself.
The local Labour member is on Facebook only and is pretty grassroots. I hope he cuts through.
The seat we used to be in , Latrobe, will hopefully swing to Labour. The sitting LNP member is a former cop who did his best to stir up anti African gang hysteria. He was one of the main backers in teh leadership spill for the other former copper, Peter Dutton. 

meet everybody by the age of ten/ you search for those cats again
all your life/ faces in the street/you put ‘em to that lens
try everything on in your teens even though so much is down to your jeans
never knew such plenty in your twenties/ get real sentimental in your thirties
get awful mean in your forties/ get even better in your fifties
then you better find somethin’ else to do
song of life
ZIPPA DEEDOO what is/was that/this? 

 Yeah sometimes it seems the smart people got out years ago. The musicians are still cool. They just get shoved out of the way by the layers of middle apps people. Weird times. PR abounds with so little media available. Zombie media. The content is the last thing to be considered. Its more to do with the flash. In the 90s the music biz was full of people just slumming it on the way to work in films. I don't know what the motivation is now.

Fuck you day /fuck you time of day
fuck you breakfast/fuck you food/
fuck you mealtime/fuck you bedtime
fuck you Dartford/fuck you London
fuck you England/fuck you France 

 I read a book about the year 1922. That was the year that James Joyce's Ulysses was published as well as TS Eliots The Wasteland. Also, Satchmo moved from New Oleans to Chicago to kickstart jazz for real. It was a pretty inspiring period. (Though I tried Ulysses last year and put it down in exasperation after 400 pages). The text of teh 1922 book went through the year day by day. Others in the yearbook include Wyndham Lewis, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Graves, Nijinsky, Lenin (he died), Jean Cocteau, Andre Breton, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Harry Crosby, Igor Stravinsky, Diaghilev, TE Lawrence, DH Lawrence (In Australia where he wrote Kangaroo), Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd.

Gloria Grahame/manifest/manifestly/manifesto/
Nicholas Ray/take off your eye patch/give us a spray/Nicholas Ray
I got this gun in your eye/I got this gun in your eye/fuck or die 

 Yes, all this admin. You always had to be part politician to be a musician but now more than ever. You have to abide by the rules of general play. No horse-play! Actually no play at all!
Look at the sorts of music tv shows we've had in Australia. Very popular and repeated constantly. Just shows for parlour tricks and games. Musicians brought down to earth to trivialize themselves. There was a recent attempt on tv last year and that suffered from it a lot too. Even though it had live performances from young players. I know there are no soundstages to record tv shows any more but this was set in a kind of domestic situation and it was really hard to distinguish the players from the audience. I found it a way of levelling out the performance just too much. The players need to be isolated to shine.

Your masters must be pleased with you/your superiors must be happy/
you’ve explained us to them/takin’ care not to identify yourself with us
you know they’ll never let you in 

 Clare Moore and I are almost finished album number two for 2019. We are still getting ZIPPA DEEDOO out but we've got the songs and I just feel like going at the pace of creativity rather than any idea of proper music marketing. We could probably have another finished before the end of the year. If you got it - get it out! This next one is just Clare Moore and myself and has about twelve songs almost finished. Songs like Old Friends, You Cant Have Your Boogie, I'm Not Just Any Nobody, Et Tu Doudou, You've Been In My Mind, When The Weird Cant Get Goin', Finally I Come Clean, Hell Is You Babe and others.. I'm very happy with it.

the man from the museum was passin’ through town/he said “I ain’t comin’ in unless I get it in print
that you’ll be doin’ what you did/is that what you did?Is that what you did?
should I know? I just gotta know
is that what you did?this thing that you’re doin’?is that it?
I just gotta know

 I did another Parlour show and had a good time. A house in Mt Eliza. I played on the back verandah with my guitar and mic running through my amp. I'm keen to do these shows so hook me up if you want. I quite like the aspect of it not being in the area of organized music entertainment. Pubs and clubs. If you're in driving distance from Melbourne I can come with my amp. If you're a flight away, we'll work something else out. You go to the Parlour site, apply and then sort out your friends and the place. You need to agree to have about 40-50 friends pay around $30 for a performace and we agree on a time.Click on this image to go to the site.

where’s my buzz?

I walked in here/like I rolled/my head was tight/my tongue was thick/my eyeballs were warm and full

my voice was burred/where’s my buzz?

 Yes, whats a songwriter in Australia? Show me one? Yes, that fellow. Indubitably. Are there any others? Ok, whats a song? What's in a song? How long should it be? How should it finish? Aren't there courses on this stuff in school? Who teaches? Players who couldn't stomach the game any more?
Yes they have courses and blowhard apps people talking about the importance of emotion and inspiration. They all namedrop Dylan but none mention the Brill Building.
What do we get? Buskers is what we get. Desperate emotive mimics. Not just an Australian phenonemon, look at Ed Sheeran.

You’re all wrong/just you/not everybody/but all of you/you’re all wrong

I see a spectrum under you/that’s a nice way of sayin’ you’re on it/you’re all wrong 

 Oh, I am so much looking forward to these shows we are doing. Just getting in the van and setting up and playing. Thank fuck music is still there and still accessible. Getting on stage and playing is just such a  sweet spot to be in. Some peace and quiet.

Wednesday 8 May - Brass Monkey Cronulla (Graney and Moore with special guest Jodi Phillis)
Thursday 9 May - The Bunker Coogee
Friday 10 May - Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville
Saturday 11 May - Metro Social, Katoomba
Sunday 12 May - Dangar Bowlo.NSW

Friday May 24th - Tanswells Commercial Hotel - Beechworth (Graney and Moore)

Saturday June 1st - The Railway Club Darwin (Graney and Moore)
Saturday June 15th-Major Toms, Kyneton(Graney and Moore)

Sunday May 26th - Northcote Social Club (afternoon) ZIPPADEEDOO album launch show.w/ David Cosma

Friday June 21st the Bison Bar, Nambour.
Saturday June 22nd- Sunday June 23rd - the Bearded Lady, Brisbane.
Saturday June 29th - The Caravan Music Club - Bentleigh w/ Sean McMahon

July 12th - THE GOV - Adelaide. w/ the Sunday Reeds

 

original hand drawn art by Tony Mahony in a frame.