Players Please Dave Western-Londoner and Artist-Artist and Londoner.

PlayArn Player #2

Players Please.

Second edition of my wayward podcast. Available only at Mixcloud.

This time its artist Dave Western. An artist and a Londoner. A Londoner and an artist.

Here is a link to Daves' website.

We talk about 80s London, musical London and eternal London.

Dave worked on this book on THE HEATHWALL a secret river below Battersea. 

There was also this beautifully illustrated book on Londons lost river, THE EFFRA.

And this book on a bike ride from gallows site to gallows site in South London, Death On the Brighton Road.

Dave did record sleeves for us in the vinyl era. When we first started up Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes around 1987 or so and put out two 12"eps and two albums with Fire Records.

 

 

 

We also touch on a night in 1984 at the FRIDGE in Brixton when the Moodists played but their opening act was Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds playing their first ever show.

 

 

Dave Western supplied all these images of his artwork.  Please respect his work and if youre going to share them, credit him.

 

From WORKSHY ... "

One night we got a call that there was studio time the next day at a place in Waterloo called Alaska. We rang around everybody in the band, some being out on the turps at a gig, and got to the studio in some sort of shape the next day. Despite its name, Alaska was a hideously hot and airless underground bunker. It was a bit of a shock to us after our last experience at the much more spacious Livingston Studios in Wood Green. We made show and put down three tracks. Mick Harvey came in to play some piano. The heat played havoc with the tuning so it had an authentic saloon-bar wonkiness to it...."

 

 and...."  Like Malcolm Ross, Chris Carr had been brought up in East Africa. Chris is still working in London. In that vast combine of industry, money and real estate. In the digital era, he meets people face to face and talks with them and brings things to his own tempo. We had met Chris through the Birthday Party and he had been connected, by marriage , to Chris Bailey from the Saints. He still works with Chris Bailey. Yes, old school.

We also had a great ally in an artist called Dave Western, who we met through Chris. A wonderful, modern-day William Blake figure who knows London like an intense palimpsest image and has arcane pre-digital skills in art, photography and illustration. Also a rock’n’roll cultured geezer who operates far from any sort of academy. We’d sit with people like this, blowing off smoke and alcohol fumes in a Soho pub, also joined by a record producer called Phil Vinall. We’d work with Phil on our first two albums and Dave would provide the artwork..."

 

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 We touch upon these characters in the conversation.