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.
Hey its a pretty simple kind of song. Guitar tuned to C#m - a tuning I read about John Fahey using - and a beat from Clare Moore's 1998 Ensoniq MR61 keyboard. Recorded parts on a Tascam 4 track cassette machine and back into Protools and also used a Zoom hand held recorder for some parts. Then I hacked into it pretty brutally to edit it into shape. Sound elements caused by rough cuts used as punctuative intrusions here and there.
The lyric is pretty literal. There are captains/leaders and I've never been one or wanted to be one. Thats me. (Tracy Braidwood was a playing Captain Coach and then just a team member as full back for East Gambier Football Club in the '60s-70's)
Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four - Captain
Bob Shearman from Sturt - Captain
In my life, I have known
captains
not the strongest or the
fastest or the best
just captains
I was never captain stuff
follow me! don’t know
where you’re goin’- twice!
I was no captain
Reed from the Fantastic
Four
Tracy Braidwood – long
dropkicks from full back
short back and sides and
no teeth
Bob Shearman from Sturt
they were captains
I was no captain
I just liked to drift
wide on the wing
float sideways over the
pack for a mark and run
I was no captain
Duke Ellington
Count Basie
you’d follow those guys
listen to them - believe
them
Chet Baker, Charlie
Parker, Keith Richard
Those guys needed a
structure
a house already burning
Brian Jones
he was a captain
he left maps and
strategies for Mick
I was no captain
Duke Ellington - Captain
Brian Jones - Captain
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out now
Putting this song together was as quick and spontaneous as My Schtik Weighs A Ton was in 2005. That time a studio musician friend , Greg Den Hartog, called me up and said he had a piece of music that sounded right for me so I went into his studio and laid down a vocal the next day. And that was pretty much it.
This time I found a piece of music we had worked on for a film or tv project and started sing a lyric to it and again, that was it. The music was just guitar with a touch of keys and a tambourine. A circular kind of reel, like an Irish jazz thing.
The words? I did just write it down at some point, thinking of how Warren beatty used to say such and such was a "funny guy". That was it. The words people use in conversations, getting around things and trying to suggest things and finding ways to not say things. But yes, the times we are living through. We will look out the window today or in a few years and say "Everything Was Funny".
Everything was funny
don’t laugh
don’t get funny
I mean funny – like
“you’re a funny guy”
funny like , Warren
Beatty funny
“I liked it – it was
funny”
“there was somethin’ funny
about that guy”
“somethin’ not quite
right”
Everything was funny
Everything was funny
everything
well
if there was somethin’
funny goin’ on
that’s what I tuned into
and took away
that was my take away
Everything was funny
Everything was funny
except the stuff people
laughed at
Everything was funny
right from the start
mostly it all stank
some things just went
funny
I’m not funny
you’re funny
don’t get funny
Everything was funny
Everything was funny
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out now
From Clare Moore "....for me Daves lyric in The Anita Effect is a haunting story of a highly influential woman (women) who moves through a scene leaving her mark, without seeming to touch anything. Often these women are referred to as “Muses “ when in fact they could be the true artists.
I call you – you don’t
call me
I don’t like to get
called
that stuff in your mind,
about me
that was so long ago
when I got exposed
I moved out of frame
I call you – I don’t get
called
I told Mick “be a little
like Brian and a little like Keith”
Well there was this great movie called The Wild Angels which I saw one afternoon matinee session at the Odeon theatre in Mt Gambier where I grew up. A Roger Corman movie - I know now in my adult brain - that starred Peter Fonda (before Easy Rider) , Nancy Sinatra and Bruce Dern.
There was also a local bike gang a few years later. A person could get their licence at 16 in South Australia so there were people who you saw one summer astride a Dragster bicycle at a teen social event such as a Saturday the swiming pool and the next summer they were astride a Honda 750 motorbike with leather jacket and a sleeveless denim "scunge" over that looking like a warrior from the Viking wars.
Telepathy was involved, images up on the screen and in the songs and on the streets.
"They nodded, nobody mentioning the past hysteria in the Sinatra world
when it seemed CBS was zeroing in on the man; they just nodded and two
of them laughed about Sinatra’s apparently having gotten the word “bird”
on the show—this being a favorite Sinatra word. He often
inquires of his cronies, “How’s your bird?”; and when he nearly drowned
in Hawaii, he later explained, “Just got a little water on my bird”; and
under a large photograph of him holding a whisky bottle, a photo that
hangs in the home of an actor friend named Dick Bakalyan, the
inscription reads: “Drink, Dickie! It’s good for your bird.” In the
song, “Come Fly with Me,” Sinatra sometimes alters the lyrics—“…just say the words and we’ll take our birds down to Acapulco Bay….”
In the story there is mention of new comers on the scene, The Beatles...
"Prior to his cold, Sinatra had been very excited about this show; he saw
here an opportunity to appeal not only to those nostalgic, but also to
communicate his talent to some rock-and-rollers—in a sense, he
was battling The Beatles. The press releases being prepared by Mahoney’s
agency stressed this, reading: “If you happen to be tired of kid
singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons…it
should be refreshing, to consider the entertainment value of a video
special titled Sinatra—A Man and His Music….”
Tthe article was published on 1st April 1966 , five days before The Beatles began work on Revolver .John Lennon apparently read the story.
On Revolver there is a song called "And Your Bird Can Sing" . Pre internet communication was wild and human, even among the Godz.
I liked the phrase when Sinatra said it and wanted to use it in a song. It denoted some fragility, some vulnerability and thats what I wanted to express.
I was young for a long
time
I held my game, tight
I was young for a long
time
I held my game, tight
There was never tomorrow
there was always tomorrow
there was only tomorrow
parties – todays, parties
I had a light touch
I skipped away, free
I refreshed, again
I refreshed, again
I’d find a new obsession
I’d find an old kink
some old face in a new
doorway
same old face in a new
doorway
I’ve been a rocker
that’s how I am
that’s how I got here
so late
a little water on my bird
that's all
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out now
"Being a pop star, a front person, takes indestructible certainty of
one’s own irresistibility. That’s the monster part. If that ego
confidence doesn’t eventually come so naturally that living at all is to
flaunt it, you won’t have what’s necessary to give your audience the
show, the stimulation, it needs."
But when the performer is a woman, they don't ever get that much slack. Its a rarity, a female beautiful monster. A powerful, loose, wild, female presence.
Ronnie loves to hear
people talk about her
she says “tell me what
you said about me that time!”
“Tell me again what you
said about me that time!”
It’s nice to sit with
someone who knows what they want
who tells you what they
want from you
a star – a mon-star - a
wo-man-star
a star – a mon-star - a
wo-man-star
out on her own – stoned,
immaculate
out of place – out of
time
ain’t we all?
a song and dancer
her eyes are closed
her lips are pursed
her pupils are blown
the lights are cursed
she give people what they
want
tells people to give her
what she wants
shewants to get paid
she wants to get paid
a star – a mon-star - a
wo-man-star
a star – a mon-star - a
wo-man-star
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out in October
The period (also known as a full stop, especially in
British English) is a punctuation mark primarily used to indicate the
end of a sentence. It appears as a single dot on the bottom line of the
text ( . ), and it comes immediately after the last word of the sentence without a space."
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out in October
Its a song
about a life of being swamped by American culture- whether you like it
or not. I know little of the band Wilco and what I do know I just wonder
why I have to know. So I thought, do Wilco have a Wilco at the edge of
their mind, whether they like it or not? Do Americans have an America?
Can't wait for people to hear this track. It's got such a seventies feel to it. Like every song on the album, Clare Moore and I play every instrument.
It's also the second song in my career I've been inspired by Phil Silvers aka Sgt Bilko . The first was My Schtick Weighs A Ton in 2005.
Did you know pedal steel maestro Lucky Oceans had an uncle who played Doberman in the show?
Wilco got no Wilcos
I love the blues
Sgt Bilko, Hogans Heroes,
F Troop
Wilco got no Bilko
Wilco got no Wilco – no
other
those guys were worldly –
worldwide
Wilco got no Wilcos
festival favourites – out
of shape guys in denim
happy to be home - happy
to be there
Romans! legionaires!
we saw the white sails
their kitchens came first
– galleys!
clankin’ through the bush
twenty two flavours of
milk shake
Wilco got no Wilco
Yankees got no Yankee
no cultural oppressor
West can’t get no East!
They want it, but can’t
Wilco got no Wilcos
No Wilcos on their case –
in their mind
out on the town- Hershey
bars and silk stockings
Wilco got no Wilco!
Wilco got no Wilco!
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out in October
I started smoking at about 12 or 13 and carried on for about two decades.
An excerpt from my book, WORKSHY...
"We all smoked and drank in our family from
an early age. I was on the fags regularly from about thirteen. I smoked my
mother’s and father’s. Peter Stuyvesant soft packs. In high school I would get
some lunch or lunch money, along with about four smokes. One morning I left my
lunch and extra smokes at home and my mother took them up to the school office
so they could give them to me at lunchtime. ‘He likes a couple of smokes on his
way to school and on his way home,’ she informed them. They gave me the lunch
money but not the smokes. I marched to the Principal’s office full of teen
righteousness to argue my case. Wearing my old faded jeans with ‘Dave’ sewn
across the arse. That square got a fright. But I didn’t get my fags back".
The smoking years
I loved the soft packs
European style – toasted
I was in surplus
I had a life to burn
later came the bulk
packets
the bad burning, no name,
loosely packed
I was in surplus
I had a life to burn
started on Trent, ended
up Embassy
Zippo lighter, engraved,
scrimshaw
still got it!
chain smokin’ , blowin’
smoke rings
beyond words
like an actor – any
actor! - it was a great act!
a prop – way up high
hidden in a cloud
I was in surplus
I had a life to burn
Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out in October
Lyrics from Where did you glom your glimmer? a song on our 2021 album EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY.
It's a queasy, horror blues. Murky and dank.
glimmer
/ˈɡlɪmə/
verb
verb: glimmer; 3rd person present: glimmers; past tense: glimmered; past participle: glimmered; gerund or present participle: glimmering
shine faintly with a wavering light.
"the moonlight glimmered on the lawn"
glom
/ɡlɒm/
verb
informal•North American
verb: glom; 3rd person present: gloms; past tense: glommed; past participle: glommed; gerund or present participle: glomming
1.
steal.
"I thought he was about to glom my wallet"
2.
become stuck or attached to.
"the ice gloms on to bridge pilings"
Gee, two verbs.
I asked Google,
"Can I use 2 verbs in a sentence?"
In English, sentences have two basic parts: a subject and a verb. ... Some clauses can contain two verbs.
These constructions are called compound verbs, meaning that two verbs
appear in a single sentence, even when there is only one subject.
These are the lyrics to a song from EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY - which comes out October 1st. Which is next week. Album cover picture Kristyn Jones. The other picture- doesn't he own that Social Media platform? Gee.
I thought about us making show on the bandstand, looking out at the people over - lets say - three or four decades period of time. Feeling like we can see everybody while we just play the archetypical roles of musicians. So they just see us deep within a costume or a known character. Meanwhile, we could step out of that and let our eyes wander the room and - perhaps - name some of the dances that are being attempted.
Title track of the 2021 album from Dave Graney and Clare Moore. Like the other songs, the only song of it's kind on the album. A circular musical motif. Mostly guitar and vocal.
Wilco Got No Wilco Wilco Got No Wilco- kinda says it all, really. A very smooth stop and start groove on this from Clare Moore. Yacht Rock? Only if you consider that a totally positive thing. "Wilco got no Wilcos
I love the blues
Sgt Bilko, Hogans Heroes, F Troop
Wilco got no Bilko
Wilco got no Wilco – no other"
The Anita Effect Another Rolling Stones related mythological groove. (Follows ULTRAKEEF on ZIPPA DEEDOO in 2019). The shadow of a female presence on a bunch of heroes. Her touch.
"Marianne knows! Only Marianne and I could know
we rode in with the boys
told them where to stand
how to say things
what to wear"
I
Knew The Wild Angels All mixed up song about a bike gang in town when I was a kid and a Roger
Corman movie of the same name and the same subject which would have been
in peoples minds also at the time. I was wrtiting a lot of songs and kept playing them but forgot this one and it took a week for us both to put a semblance of it back together. It wasn't exactly what it started as but would up somewhere different. A chugging 6/8 time with rolling toms and vibes and electric guitar. (I always avoided 6/8 time songs)
"I knew the Wild Angels
when they came into town
long fringes over their faces
ruffled shirts, spurs
helmets with fox tails"
I Was No Captain Another song musing on military rank and the musicians identity. Leaders, captains in a scene of loners and rebels, Dottie.
"In my life, I have known captains
not the strongest or the fastest or the best
just captains
I was never captain stuff
follow me! don’t know where you’re goin’- twice!"
Diaghelev and Nijinsky We wrote and named this instrumental after watching a 1981 movie
starring Alan Bates as Diaghelev. Fascinating people in an amazing
period.
I used a new kind of tuning and Clare used a digital mellotron app and played the keyboard bass.
Everyday It’s The Blues, Period. The longest track on the album. We played it a few time and like the way it shaped itself. "every day it’s a test of what you believe
what you are - who you’ve been
every day its a dive to reach
what you were- who you’ve been
every day it’s the blues, period."
Where
Did You Glom Your Glimmer? I Wanted a spooky, queasy blues feel and we used a Tascam Portastudio to record parts of this (and other songs on the album).
Toglom is a slang word from the criminal world , probably Yiddish in
origin. To take, steal or more correctly to kind of ingest or take in or
on something.
"Glimmer" is a kind of glamour - most ofteen used in reference to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
"pink rocks fizzing under your skin pop (doin’ it right there)
Where did you glom your glimmer? where?"
Ronnie Loves To Hear People Talk A song about a powerful female performer. "Ronnie loves to hear people talk about her
she says “tell me what you said about me that time!”
“Tell me again what you said about me that time!”
The Ballroom Blitzed All the dances we've seen people attempt in the ballrooms as we look out from the bandstand. "slow dancin’ – moga done
the leaning tower – the static statue
the grim reaper – the junkie at the crossing
the luuude dude
arms in the air – eyes closed
epic?"
Beckett and Tubbs Instrumental named after a favourite writer (Whose most famous book defeated me thrice in 2020-21) and a favourite tv cop.
The Smoking Years I was on the smokes from a young age for a couple of decades. "started on Trent, ended up Embassy
Zippo lighter, engraved, scrimshaw
still got it!"
A Little Water On My Bird Something Frank Sinatra once said. After falling into a pool. Suggested a feeling of vulnerability. "I had a light touch
I skipped away, free
I refreshed, again
I refreshed, again"
Recorded
and mixed at the Ponderosa in Melbourne May to August 2021 by Dave Graney and
Clare Moore.
Mastered by Greg Wadley.
Photo by Kristyn Jones.
A wild and willful yet very focused set of songs.
All instruments played by Dave Graney and Clare Moore. Produced by Dave Graney
and Clare Moore.
“I don’t need a pandemical lockdown to
happen to write some songs. Same way I never read any”war poets”. If they need
a war to write something it’s not really worth it!”Dave Graney Though of course there was a pandemic and there was a long
lockdown in Melbourne and of course it seeped into the music.Dave Graney and Clare
Moore had planned two albums for 2021, a rock album with their band the mistLY
and then something like this one – something more unbuttoned and freaky. Then a
second long lockdown happened and it was impossible to rehearse let alone
record with the band so the two changed tack and got freaky in their own studio
with keyboards and drums and new guitar tunings and time signatures and here we
are with EVERYTHNG WAS FUNNY. They were also able to do some live dates around
Australia in between travel restrictions and on one trip to South Australia, a
visit was made to Dave’s second cousin in Dismal Swamp, Kristyn Jones, who had
had an idea for a portrait shot. There’s the cover of the album. Lyrical tracks,
trailsand themes involve a further
Rolling Stones mythological piece (The Anita Effect), teenage biker gangs (I
Knew the Wild Angels), American cultural firefights (Wilco Got No Wilco),
tobacco scenes, alcoholic scenes, iconic female rambling singer scenes and two
instrumentals – one very Russian and another kind of Dublin/Miami.
Be in no doubt though, that something funny was going on! There was something
funny about that guy. She’s a funny girl!Somethin’ not quite right! Everything Was Funny!
“funny like Warren Beatty funny…”
“I liked it-it was funny!”
“if there was somethin’funny goin’ on
that’s what I tuned into and took away
that was my take away…”
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
