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..."
We touch upon these characters in the conversation.
I had the idea to do a podcast, though I don't know much about that world. I only ever listen to one regularly and that is Tony Martin's SIZZLETOWN. I do like some of them when I hear them but mostly I have just never gotten into the habit. Its the nature of time for me. I never feel I have enough and podcasts seem to be for people who have extra time up their sleeves to catch up on stuff. I must be doing it wrong.
I don't really want to take over the world with my version of the form. I am not bothered if its on itunes or spotify so for the moment I am just putting it onto Mixcloud. Its just for those in the know. Players. Its called PLAYERS PLEASE and the first talk I had was with old friend and long time inspiration Peter Milton Walsh aka THE APARTMENTS.
This is how I wrote about Milton Walsh in WORKSHY.
"Someone
who helped us negotiate this period of disintegration and regeneration – well,
helped me, as much as anything – was Peter Milton Walsh, the gold-toothed
enigma from Brisbane whom we had first met in Sydney in his band Out of Nowhere
and then in Melbourne, when he’d been playing in the Laughing Clowns. He had
revived a late-70s band name he had operated under called the Apartments and
had released an album on Rough Trade.
Peter
was a great signal or anchor point for me. I learned poise and attitude from
him. He encouraged me in areas where he’d seen I’d said or suggested something
in a casual way that stayed with him. It can be powerful when somebody you
respect and admire cheers you on or points out a quality in your work or
general shape in the world that you weren’t aware of. They give you the
direction to accentuate some sort of limp or speech impediment if it’s working
for you. You take heed of advice from players you rate.
Peter
had this rare pop sensibility amongst a bunch of people obsessed with post-punk
self-righteousness and striving for authenticity. He had his own brew he’d
cooked up himself. Like Kim Salmon and James Baker, an original gangster. The
French tuned into his work from the get-go and have continued to sustain him.
He was always reaching for notes and epic feels that were hard to get. He got
it more often than not.
Peter’s
lyrics were hard-boiled and his choruses were epic. He found it hard to hold a
band together but kept operating under a band name. He would disappear for
years and then come back into view with his story darker and deeper. He’d left
the Brisbane scene for New York and then left that for Sydney and then London.
Paris took him in and eventually he headed back to Sydney. He took risks by
just walking away.
He
taught me a major seventh chord one day that I ran with perhaps way too much
and wrote a hundred songs around. It had an open voicing that made it hypnotic
to return my hands to and easy to sing against. E was my note – I made it so. The
open strings. You could whomp it. He was either showing me one of his songs or
a Walker Brothers tune. He played guitar with us at a couple of Moodists gigs.
No bass, just Peter, me, Clare Moore and Steve Miller."
Clare Moore contributed some vibes to this song from the new Apartments album.
We have some Stage It shows coming up. Melbourne is easing restrictions but I am still shy of shows out in the world and who knowswhen they will be up and running. We will continue our Thursday night 8pm AEST shows each week and our Saturday night (Northern Hemisphere) - Sunday morning shows every forrtnight.
I did a podcast with Philby J and Nick Vulture on "top three regional towns". I presumed it meant Australian towns and so thats what I talked about. We all had three to talk about.
Melbourne is coming out of a three month lockdown. We couldn't go further than 5k's from our houses or be outside for more than an hour to exercize each day and masks are still mandatory. Clare and I haven't been far from our house since the beginning of March so it wasn't that much of a strain. We also were already wearing masks if we went to the shop and will continue to do so for a while.
It went from a peak of 725 or so in July/August to twelve straight days in a row to today with zero infections. The state government did it all, with the Feds, the media and the opposition all hanging off of them trying to drag them down all the way.
I've been reading books I've bought over the years and could continue that for a while though I do miss rummaging about in secondhand bookshops.
I've been trying to read a bit more French language texts and also got into the collected letters of Paul Bowles.
Every Tuesday I've been presenting a radio show on Triple R from 12-2pm. Its called BLB and I've been doing it via Skype with Andrew Delaney working the panel in the studio. I used to drag in a lot of vinyl to play but I've become obsessed with music released in 2020. I have been endeavouring to use Bandcamp as opposed to Spotify. Bandcamp is the "antispotify".
We have also continued to do our Stage It shows. We also did a private zoom party for some people in Myanmar. Getting used to different platforms for streaming has been an education
For our Stage It shows we first discovered you need Broadband and then an external camera and the an external audiointerface. We have had our NBN BRoadband serviced at the node after a dropout and feel its all pretty smooth now. Though the area is full of variables. Peoples browsers and the internet traffic - which has been heavy with everybody being at home.
Then there is Sunday December 6th (Australian time )when Clare
Moore and I play a live streaming set at 8am AEDT which is Saturday December 5th 1pm in Los Angeles, 3 pm in Chicago, 4pm in New York and 9pm in the UK.Tickets link here.(We do a set every second weekend for our mates in the Northern hemisphere).
People all over the world are booking live shows in 2021 and beyond but I am not so sure yet. This is going to be it for a good while and I have been really enjoying it.
Here
is a rough list of the 115 or so songs of mine we have played.
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (2000)
Song Of Life (2019)
Where Did All the Freaks Go? (2019)
Be Sad For Me (2017)
Anchors Aweigh (2001)
Everybody Loves A Mass Killer (1997)
The Devil Drives (1997)
Drugs Are Wasted On The Young (2000)
Tuning Up (2020)
Mt Gambier Night (2012)
Answering Machine (2019)
The Brother Who Lived (2003)
Twilight Of A Villain (2003)
The Stuff That Night Is Made Of (2000)
Vengeance Is On It's Way (2000)
Night Of The Wolverine (1993)
I Need Some Scratch (2000)
A Woman Skinnies A Man Up (2014)
Midnight To Dawn (2003)
Chads Car (1981)
All Our Friends Were Stars (2003)
Everybodys Gone (2005)
A Man On The Make (1997)
Comrade Of Pop (2019)
My Schtick Weighs A Ton (2005)
Where's My Buzz? (2019)
Apollo 69 (1995)
The Birds And The Goats (1995)
Lifes a Dream (2012)
Bodysnatcher Blues (2009)
Baby I Wish I'd Been A Better Pop Star
(2019)
Hell Is You, Babe (2019)
You've Been In My Mind (2019)
I Wanna Get Lost Again (2005)
Sometimes You can See Yourself (2005)
I Will Always Hate You (2001)
I Will Have Always Been Here Before
(2001)
Ruperts Pets Grave (2017)
Are You Out Of Your Mind? (2017)
Your Masters Must Be Pleased With You
(1999)
Lets Live Properly (2005)
We Don't Belong To Anybody (2011)
You Need To Suffer (1993)
We Need A Champion (2012)
You're All Wrong (2019)
Saturday Night Bath (2005)
Everything Was Legendary With Robert
(2014)
Have You Heard About The Melbourne
Mafia? (2000)
You Put A Spell On Me (2000)
Finally I Come Clean (2019)
Blues Negative (2012)
They Wanted To Be Players (1999)
I'm A Comander (1999)
Lt Colonel Cavalry (1999)
Only The Stoned (2005)
Am I Wearing Something Of Yours? (1999)
That's Frankies Negative (1984)
Ultrakeef (2019)
The Stars, Baby, The Stars (1994)
Eye O' The Vibe (2001)
Where The Trees Walk Downhill (1980)
Clinging To the Coast (2001)
You Need A Kleek, Klook (2017)
I Ain't Hi Vis (2017)
Are We Goin' Too Fast For Love? (2001)
Playin' Chicken (2012)
I Need To Be Hot (2017)
Matey, From On High (2017)
I'm Not Just Any Nobody (2019)
Flash In The Pantz (2012)
This Is the Deadest Place I've Ever
Died In (2017)
You Can't Have Your Boogie (2019
I Don't Know Anything (2001)
Runaway (1983)
2068 Babe (2009
Dylan the Indie fake (2009)
I Need My Guitar (2009)
Country Roads, Unwinding (2014)
Je est Un Autre (2014)
I Dig The Pioneers (1997)
the Greatest Show In Town (1988)
Biker In Business Class (1997)
Son Of Maggie Mae (2001)
Where's My Buzz (2019)
Flower Of The Earth (2014)
I Like To Be Haunted (2009)
You Had To Be Drunk (2009)
The Sheriff Of Hell (two different versions) (1997-9)
Pianola Roll (1997)
I Know You Can't See Me (2014)
Land Of The Giants (1997)
Field Record Me (1997)
Midnights Cats (2012)
I'm In The Future Now (2007)
The Pre Revolutionary Scene (1995)
Imagine If What You Did On Your Weekend Was Your Life (1994)
Oakleigh Bowie Blues (2010)
Mr Bad Luck (2005)
King Of The Dudes (2012)
Mogambo (1993)
Rock n Roll Is Where I Hide (1995)
The Birds And The Goats (1995)
I’m Not Afraid To Be Heavy (1995)
I’m Gonna Live In My Own Big World (1995)
You Wanna Be Loved (1994) I'm The Stranger In Town (2014) I Been Trendy (2017) I Don't Wanna Go Bush (2011) Ther He Goes With His Eye Out (2005) Old Friends (2019)
New instrumental pieces..
Beckett And Joyce
Diaghelev and Nijinsky
Teardrop Weirdo
And we have done
these 35 songs by other artists...
My Foolish Heart (Bill Evans - John
McGlaughlin - Billy Eckstine and many others)
Theme From Midnight Cowboy (John Barry)
Everybody's talkin' (Fred Neil)
Time Waits For No One (Rolling Stones)
High Coin (Van Dyke Parks - Charlatans-
Jackie De Shannon)
We May Never Love Like This Again
(Maureen McGovern)
Clang Of The Yankee Reaper (Van Dyke
Parks)
Diamonds Fur Coat Champagne (Suicide)
Lowdown (Boz Scaggs)
Hyacinth House (Doors)
So You Wanna Be A Rock N Roll Star
(Byrds)
Baby I'm A Want You (Bread)
Walkin' On The Water (John Fogerty-
Richard Hell)
Walk On Water (Kevin Ayers)
Alabama Bound (Charlatans)
In A Misty Morning (Gene Clark)
1-2-3 (The Len Barry Combo)
Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers)
Taboo (Arthur Lyman - Martin Denny)
Black Stick (The Cruel Sea)
You're Gonna Miss Me (Thirteenth Floor
Elevators)
The Dolphins (Fred Neil - Tim Buckley)
Sweet Surrender (Tim Buckley)
Parchman Farm (Mose Allison)
Ex Lion Tamer (Wire) Arnold Layne (Pink Floyd)
Codine (Buffy Saint Marie) Showbusiness (AC/DC)
Alone Again Or (Love)
Live and let Live (Love)
Dropout (Urge Overkill)
Empty Shell (Subway Sect)
Bless the Weather (John Martyn)
Dive For Your Memory ( Go Betweens) Who Of Us two? (M)
We are slowly putting down some new material , beginning with our instrumentals, and should have that stuff coming out in 2021.
In the meantime we are almost finished Dave Graney and the mistLY LYVE AT BYRDS which we recorded at a jazz club in Melbourne in late 2019. Its a real rock'n'roll set.
What am I looking forward to? I would love to go for a drive in the country and also need some white turtle neck jumpers or skivvies . Maybe a leisure suit as well.
Something happened to us just last week at our Thursday
Stage It Dot Com show. Something was happening and we really didn’t
understand did we? Yes, it was balls of confusion all around. King Of
The Dudes was the billing. Sorry for the drama, we are working something
out with head office. What do I mean? Turns out we might’ve played a
GHOST SHOW! But we played the whole time! We will be fronting up again
at the doorway to the universe/the possible void this Thursday at 8 pm
AEST ( as well as a Sunday 7am/Saturday night show for our mates in the
Northern hemisphere this weekend.
You know what pandemic time is like! Fast but
still. Slow but tense. It folds up on ya! Anyway, these shows have given
us a great outlet and focus. What’s on ? A pretty different set. Drums,
vibes, bass vibes, rhythm tracks, instrumentals and our rhythm ace drum
machine, 12 string and 6 string electric and my little Maton Alver given to us by Des Hefner in 1985 which was more of an ornament over the years (and indeed stayed in a storage chest for five years while we were in the UK) but I got it fixed by Maton and have been playing it on these shows. In open D. Yes, I've been fooling around with some tunings and the house has guitars in every room, all tuned to different keys.
I Read a book lent to me by Tony Mahony and found a
documentary about Dean Reed aka Comrade Rockstar aka The Red Elvis.
Born in Colorado and Hollywood pop deserter . Huge entertainment figure
in South America, Spain and Italy then the USSR and the GDR where he
lived. Stuff I never knew! Here is a link to a film about him.
Our shows go for 50 minutes and there’s a small fee for
admission. We have this set very low but you can pay more if you are
flush. We play a different set each week. The other week (I forget which) there was a real
focus on the Devil Drives album from 1997. Well we played four or five
songs from it. Artwork by
Tony Mahony and title glommed from a book about Victorian era explorer
and linguist Sir Richard Francis Burton. It was released to radio with
an interview disc called Coffins Have No Pockets where I was
interviewed by HG Nelson aka Greig Pickhaver. Oh and Lee Marvin seemed
to fit too.
We also played two songs by Love and another new
instrumental, our third over the last month. The inspiration was my getting a delicious sound from my electric twelve string after a decade of hit amd miss attempts. the secret was a pedal I'd only used on my bass before and Clare had used on her keys. A Digiyech Bass Synth Wah. I was looking for a sound for my other guitar that Keith Richards got on Some Girls. I guess he was drying out from long term heroin use and also he looks super fit in pictures of the time so maybe his ears were more sensitive? Anyway he apparently used some sort of MXR Phase 100 pedal on the whole album. I had a more pronounded autowah setting at first but dialled it back to a subtle octaving boost at the bottom end. I don't turn it off.
I also made a breakthrough with my small Red Witch delay pedal. Again I was erring on the side of good taste and just using a short repeat but after a while I turned it right up and that has also been a revelation. I remembered Rod Hayward who played guitar in the Coral Snakes talking about the development of his playing and he talked about amps and guitars and strings and straps and he finished by saying "then you discover delay....". Hey! He was not shittin"us!
We have also had a real crack at
playing our pandemic epic, We May Never Love Like This Again (theme from The Towering Inferno) properly.
We have almost achieved it, several times. One of those 2:20 pop tunes with a unique arrangement and a thousand slight chord variations.
This week? Vibes, drums, 12 and 6 string guitars,
voices, live from our Melbourne studio. Thursday night 8pm AEST and then Saturday night GREENWICH TiME - it’ll be 7am for us but 10 pm Saturday
night in the UK and afternoon or evening depending on which coast of the
USA you are near or nearest. No worries.
Work continues on our next release, Lyve At Byrds. Its a real rock'n'roll epic recorded at Birds Basement in Melbourne with the mistLY in November 2019. Blazing!
In other more BLOGLY type news, I'd been finding it hard to settle on a book. I read the Dean Reed bio and then Albert Camus' THE PLAGUE (in French so I was struggling), then some short stories and Stanley Booths saga of the Stones 1969 tour of the USA but couldn't really settle into anything.
I tried Clive James DANTES INFERNO but its an impressive, howy achievement but alas, not for me. I can never get over once reading him railing against John Coltrane and the bebop generation and championing Louis Armstrong and trad jazz. I do like Louis and haven't really heard a lot of Coltrane but I love Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian and the whole bebop era. I can dig both. The poem is about 400 pages of strict rhyme. Very strict. I have read Byron in that long form but that was Byron. This just didn't grab me. Sorry Clive. Too much has happened in poetry since Dante and I must say, Ed Dorn is more my thing. Wild and scrappy 60s/70s small print stuff.
"We’re inside the outskirts, announced the Horse, a creature of grass and only marginally attracted to other distortions. Here we are in the sheds and huts of the suburbs. There are some rigid types in here. It’s kinda poignant but that doesnt move it any closer to the centre. Yup! empty now of all but a few stubborn housewives and disturbed only by the return of several husbands known to be unable to stay away during this celestial repast called lunch. Thats where youre out before you leave. Theres a man turning on his sprinkler, it should be illegal a small spray to maintain the grass, the Edible variety no one doubts. But I see none of my friends grazing there these green plots must be distress signals to God that he might notice their support of one of his minor proposals He must be taken by these remote citizens to be the Patron of the Grass Holy shit, Lawn grass… from the great tribe they selected something to Mow"
Then turned to Paul Bowles who guided me through the 80s as I read all his works. Started on his collected letters. He leaves NYC in the mid 40s on a freighter ship with 3 other passengers. His room has a bed, a "large table for composing" (he was a musician first) a porthole on two walls and a door opening onto the deck. It cost $200 and he was heading to Tangier where he had been once before the war and would stay for the rest of his life.
“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it
will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that
terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we
get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a
certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more
times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some
afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even
conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more.
Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
―
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
photo by Bleddyn Butcher and also contains some art bordering by Dave Western.
Thursday nights 8pm is where we've been at. Coming up to our THIRTY EIGHTH SHOW. It's been a focus for us each week and a way to connect with people. I'm talking about our online shows via Stage It Dot Com. We also do a set every second Sunday morning at 7am to make it a Saturday night 10pm time in the UK and afternoon/evening in the USA.
We play for 50 minutes, using vibes, drums, keys, guitars, rhythm machine, percussion, on occasion some pre recorded backing grooves, melodica, autoharp and our voices. Stage It requires people to pay an admission fee and we have this set at $US5. You can pay more if you like.
In some ways its been reflection in other ways a revision.
Playing songs we have rarely played live or not for many years.
Also wearing clothes and playing instruments that we would never take out of the compound.
Its a live set, we dont record it and there is no way to watch it back.
Here are some photos from over the last few months. Mostly taken by Bob Osborne from Salford, Mark O'Brien from Sydney, Trish from Adelaide, Richard Watters from up Yarrawonga way, Ursula from Brisbane and a few others. Thanks to you all!
Here is a rough list of the 98 or so songs of mine we have played.
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (2000)
Song Of Life (2019)
Where Did All the Freaks Go? (2019)
Be Sad For Me (2017)
Anchors Aweigh (2001)
Everybody Loves A Mass Killer (1997)
The Devil Drives (1997)
Drugs Are Wasted On The Young (2000)
Tuning Up (2020)
Mt Gambier Night (2012)
Answering Machine (2019)
The Brother Who Lived (2003)
Twilight Of A Villain (2003)
The Stuff That Night Is Made Of (2000)
Vengeance Is On It's Way (2000)
Night Of The Wolverine (1993)
I Need Some Scratch (2000)
A Woman Skinnies A Man Up (2014)
Midnight To Dawn (2003)
Chads Car (1981)
All Our Friends Were Stars (2003)
Everybodys Gone (2005)
A Man On The Make (1997)
Comrade Of Pop (2019)
My Schtick Weighs A Ton (2005)
Where's My Buzz? (2019)
Apollo 69 (1995)
The Birds And The Goats (1995)
Lifes a Dream (2012)
Bodysnatcher Blues (2009)
Baby I Wish I'd Been A Better Pop Star (2019)
Hell Is You, Babe (2019)
You've Been In My Mind (2019)
I Wanna Get Lost Again (2005)
Sometimes You can See Yourself (2005)
I Will Always Hate You (2001)
I Will Have Always Been Here Before (2001)
Ruperts Pets Grave (2017)
Are You Out Of Your Mind? (2017)
Your Masters Must Be Pleased With You (1999)
Lets Live Properly (2005)
We Don't Belong To Anybody (2011)
You Need To Suffer (1993)
We Need A Champion (2012)
You're All Wrong (2019)
Saturday Night Bath (2005)
Everything Was Legendary With Robert (2014)
Have You Heard About The Melbourne Mafia? (2000)
You Put A Spell On Me (2000)
Finally I Come Clean (2019)
Blues Negative (2012)
They Wanted To Be Players (1999)
I'm A Comander (1999)
Lt Colonel Cavalry (1999)
Only The Stoned (2005)
Am I Wearing Something Of Yours? (1999)
That's Frankies Negative (1984)
Ultrakeef (2019)
The Stars, Baby, The Stars (1994)
Eye O' The Vibe (2001)
Where The Trees Walk Downhill (1980)
Clinging To the Coast (2001)
You Need A Kleek, Klook (2017)
I Ain't Hi Vis (2017)
Are We Goin' Too Fast For Love? (2001)
Playin' Chicken (2012)
I Need To Be Hot (2017)
Matey, From On High (2017)
I'm Not Just Any Nobody (2019)
Flash In The Pantz (2012)
This Is the Deadest Place I've Ever Died In (2017)
You Can't Have Your Boogie (2019
Runaway (1983) 2068 Babe (2009 Dylan the Indie fake (2009)
I Need My Guitar (2009) Country Roads, Unwinding (2014)
Je est Un Autre (2014)
I Dig The Pioneers (1997) the Greatest Show In Town (1988)
Biker In Business Class (1997) Son Of Maggie Mae (2001) Where's My Buzz (2019) Flower Of The Earth (2014) I Like To Be Haunted (2009) You Had To Be Drunk (2009) The Sheriff Of Hell (two different versions) (1997-9) Pianola Roll (1997) I Know You Can't See Me (2014)
Land Of The Giants (1997) Field Record Me (1997) Midnights Cats (2012) I'm In The FutureNow (2007)
New instrumental pieces..
Beckett And Joyce Diaghelev and Nijinsky Teardrop Weirdo
And we have done these 32 songs by other artists...
My Foolish Heart (Bill Evans - John McGlaughlin - Billy Eckstine and many others)
Theme From Midnight Cowboy (John Barry)
Everybody's talkin' (Fred Neil)
Time Waits For No One (Rolling Stones)
High Coin (Van Dyke Parks - Charlatans- Jackie De Shannon)
We May Never Love Like This Again (Maureen McGovern)
Arnold Layne (Pink Floyd) Codine (Buffy Saint Marie) Showbusiness (AC/DC) Alone Again Or (Love) Live and let Live (Love) Dropout (Urge Overkill) Empty Shell (Subway Sect) Bless the Weather (John Martyn)
