pic Bleddyn Butcher.
Our next show is Thursday July 2nd. Tickets link here.
We will also be doing another UK Sat Night/Australian Sunday Morning show. That's on Sunday July 5th at 7am in Melbourne WHICH IS OF COURSE 10pm SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE UK.
pic Barry C Douglas
I have also continued to do a weekly radio show at Triple R in Melbourne every Tuesday from 12-2pm.
I talk via Skype from our studio to Andrew Delaney at Triple who comes in as a volunteer to man the desk and keep the show on the tracks. The station is in East Brunswick and the office has been closed - or manned by a skeleton staff- since March/April. It is a community station run by volunteers and driven by sponsorships and subscribers. A lot of the sponsorship came via venues and performances or tours and that has all stopped as well. So a subscription to the station is a must for Melbourne people.
Here is a page which outlines all the benefits for subscribers.
My show? You can listen back to programs via this link.
Melbourne has experienced a surge in Covid 19 which has resulted in an extended lockdown. The State premier, Daniel Andrews, has been pretty amazing in his efforts and has suffered incredible pressure from the Federal government and the filth Murdoch press to open up the economy and get the slaves back to work. They were at him for being too draconian and now, of course, they are at him for not being tough enough.
So these shows are our outlets and we have been loving doing them.
I got a call tonight from a Melbourne venue owner about doing a show. Took me by surprise as it's been a week of rising infections announced every day in Melbourne. It was nice of him to call and everything but I was filled with dread as I'm not really ready to just "get out there" and "snap back". In some ways I have enjoyed this radical shift in the world and in my life. I was hoping to come back into a different world as well, a better one, not just the same old scene. In our Stage It sets we have been presenting different sets each week from our albums. Doing stuff we haven't done in years or have never done. I have been really digging it. People are up close to us and we are playing from inside our studio - inside our house. The idea of going out as a commodity and identifying and representing the tiny parts of our work that are recognized as being worthy of commodifying in a commercial area was a long way off from my mind.
Here is a clip I found from about 2011 or so. I think. Barry C Douglas filmed and edited it. The song is from our re-recordings album we made for Liberation. It's called We Don't Belong To Anybody.
The clip is full of little dramatic moments as my guitar cuts out and I try to fix it as we play the song.
We have this digital album out called In Concert. a one off show from Februry this year in Canberra by myself, Clare Moore and Robin Casinader. I made a clip for it. We played three shows in this keys, guitar and mellotron trio amid areas either burning with bushfires or soaked in semi tropical rain so there was no real opportunity to film it.
The album is quite unique and contains a lot of material from our 90s period done in a real concert style with lyrics right up front.
We have just mastered the second of our releases from the vaults which should be out next month. This time its a set from 2017 when Clare Moore and I played a lot of dates in the UK and Europe with Malcolm Ross and Georgio "the dove" Valentino. It will be a 17 track album from shows in London and in Hull. It sounds great.
Otherwise, Clare Moore and I have been learning songs to play and also have begun a recording project which involves the use of a Four track Tascam cassette machine. Its been challenging - and very interesting. I have a lot of songs to get down. Different guitars and tunings.
We have been watching the Persuaders on DVD. A 70s UK show with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore as rich guys swanning about in Europe fighting crime for kicks. made around the same time and by the same company that made Jason King. (Which was much better).
It does have the most fantastic theme tune by John Barry which I want to play and which we used to walk on stage to when we were playing as Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes. One of those things in that time that I was quite sure no one in our audience knew about. I felt a gulf between what I was throwing out and what people were getting. That was why I was a mixture of recklessness and strict control in those years. I'd blurt stuff out and then retreat into the shadows. perhaps I've always been like that. Excited by trangression but uneasy in the spotlight.
Maxim Porter from Sydney did a podcast interview with me for ART WAR. He is a great young musician and gig producer . Its on Spotify and elsewhere but here it is on Youtube.
Its late on a Tuesday night and the infections are rising. the future is unknown. Australia, like the UK and the USA has in power probably the worst people that they could have chosen for such a critical time. Hopeless student politicians who know nothing but marketing and do the bidding of mining companies and Rupert Murdoch. I hope we get lucky again. Thats all we have ever had here. Luck.
I am reading a 1979 book by Patrick White, our greatest ever author. Its called The Twyborn Affair. I don't know where that is going either. It is pretty great though. Queasy sexuality and manners, rich Australians in Europe in 1914. Who else could take you there?
I saw a picture of a Sydney street online the other day and felt a wave of emotion. Bittersweet feelings of walking out into a street scene like in the picture. It wasn't that I was young or anything, it was the time that I could walk into a mythic plane of reality. The humid air and the pubs with icy beer open onto the street. A place that existed for itself and was humming there as I was strolling into it. Steak sandwiches. The shops full of books and papers. Stuff to burn.
A bientot comrades!
No comments:
Post a Comment