I Was No Captain - a lyric from a song on EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY

 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

itunes  link

https://music.apple.com/au/album/everything-was-funny/1583892134

 

Bandcamp Compact Disc or digital album  link

Everything Was Funny - a lyric from a song on EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY

 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

itunes  link

https://music.apple.com/au/album/everything-was-funny/1583892134

 

Bandcamp Compact Disc or digital album  link 

 

 

 

The Anita Effect - a lyric from a song on EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY

 

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”

that’s what he did

 

I was a soft explosion

I was just passing through

Prince Stash! Eurotrash!

Tara! Tara! Tara!

 

I call you- I don’t get called

not anymore

I liked the drugs

they were my drug

I call them – they call me

they’re allowed – they’re me

 

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

 

It’s the Anita effect

I call it the Anita effect

don’t ask me

people come into my room

things happen

they stick around - too long

what can I do?

people get hurt

people get lost

people get burned

 

It’s the Anita effect

I call it the Anita effect

 

I Knew The Wild Angels - a lyric from a song on EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY

 

 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. 

https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/11/20/3894955.htm

They were the social lions of the party scene.  They did actually have fur covered helmets with fox tails traling out the back. 

 

I knew the Wild Angels

I knew the Wild Angels

I was hangin’ around

not part of the gang

Blue and Nancy – wow!

 

the girls boosted the boys

talked them into shape

hoisted them onto their feet

picked the hills to die on

and picked the fights

I knew the Wild Angels

 

I knew the Wild Angels

when they came into town

long fringes over their faces

ruffled shirts, spurs

helmets with fox tails

I knew the Wild Angels

 

The girls burnished their breast plates

and whistled and cheered

picked the hills to die on

and picked the fights

“c’mon!”

put their feet down

“c’mon!”

I knew the Wild Angels

 

Everything Was Funny- Dave Graney and Clare Moore album out now

itunes  link

https://music.apple.com/au/album/everything-was-funny/1583892134

 

Bandcamp Compact Disc or digital album  link

 

davegraney.com

 

A Little Water On My Bird - a lyric from a song on EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY

 

I read in a story about Frank Sinatra once that he was shooting a  film and fell in the water while doing a  scene. Everybody fluttered around him asking if he was ok and he said something like "just a  little water on my bird". It is inside  this - very long - story which was an early example of "the new jounalism". 

"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

itunes  link

https://music.apple.com/au/album/everything-was-funny/1583892134

 

Bandcamp Compact Disc or digital album  link

 

davegraney.com