First Tuesday Book Club March 15th ABCtv

I was invited to be a guest on the First Tuesday Book Club and it was filmed in mid January.Based around "cult" books, I had to answer some questions and provide my idea of a cult book. This was when they first approached me. Had to give some information. I dashed it off pretty quick and sent it off in November. Forgot what I'd said by the time it got to taping the show. Jennifer Byrne had it fresh in her mind and I was scrambling to stay on deck and on topic.

This is my cult resume....


1. Describe your top pick for cult novel - and why.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by M Barnard Eldershaw.
Why? A sci fi novel written in Sydney during WW2 by two women, writing as one name. Very modernist. Censored at the time of release. Features a narrative of a writer in the future reading a book he has written about events in Sydney in the past . Leading to the vague, drifting Utopian world they inhabit. Touches on the joys of a writer in the midst of creation when he is in possession and is possessed by a story . Also quite political. The USA offers Japan, Australia at the end of the war, I think.


2. Is the time of your life you read it crucial? Must you be somewhere under 30 - in your teens, likely - when you have your first exposure?
I read in it my 40s. It wasn't widely available and was re released by VIRAGO, not an imprint I was drawn toward when I was younger for some reason. More the accessibility in this case.


3. Does a cult book have to have a broader social impact, capturing the zeitgeist of a time, of others being switched on to the same idea eg Less Than Zero or Fight Club. Or can it be utterly personal?

I like hidden, occult things which escaped the clammy touch of their times. I get the same freshness from reading Patrick Whites stories. And David Fosters.


4. Can bestsellers count? Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh has sold over a million copies, is it still cult? Lord of the Rings is considered cult by many ...

Books which have had a long life are great. Continual re discovery. Best sellers? No, i don't think they can count. Damaged goods. Shop soiled merch for the most part. I saw a sign outside Collected Works bookshop in Melbourne saying that the Bestsellers of the day will all be forgotten and small print books and pamphlets will live forever. And change the world.


5. How much does the lifestyle or excesses of the AUTHOR contribute to making a book cultish? (with extra points given to authors who die young and tragically) Or is it fundamentally about the grip it has on the imagination of the READER?
Some writers are possessed of good looks and dark glamour. Some, like Hemingway, are talked up (and down) by a lousy crowd and a lot of people never approach them. People who might probably love his stuff. I'm not impressed by dribbling drunks or dope fiends. Though some hop heads write great poetry when they are infused with the drama of their scoring and fixing.


6. Is achieving cult status something that happens spontaneously or can publishers create or concoct a cult book?
Yes, spontaneously- though pr companies all try for that authentic note.


7. Truman Capote famously said that Jack Kerouac was "not writing, but typing" - does the quality of the writing count

Well, there is someone like HP Lovecraft or JG Ballard who can, and have been parodied but their actual writing will live on for years.


8. Do you ever go back to a cult book? Or do you suck it up then put it aside, knowing you can never pass this way again

Sometimes I go back and have another look. Never the same feeling of entering the unknown so I don't often think to do it.


9. Do you think less of someone who doesn't share your passion for a cult book? (eg The Alchemist/Chariots of the Gods) And more if they do?
Well it's nice to share an enthusiasm but I don't demand it.



10. Cult books make lousy films. Discuss!

Not always true. Terry Gillams "fear and loathing" was a good film. The director had a feel for the times. Naked Lunch by that Canadian director was good too. He put it in a more biographical direction. "The sheltering Sky" by Bertolucci was a nice try but Paul Bowles's books are unfilmable, I think. Leave them alone.

rock n roll is where I hide /1001 australian nights album-book tour dates

Saturday 26th March
National Theatre - Braidwood, NSW


Thursday 31st March- Dave Graney and Clare Moore playing bass and drums for Harry Howards NDE at the Old Bar- Fitzroy.

Monday 4th April

8am 3RRR, Breakfasters
 
The Circle, Ch 10 LIVE IN STUDIO

Friday 8th  April Dave Graney and Clare Moore playing bass and drums for Harry Howards NDE at the CHERRY BAR- Melbourne.

Saturday 9th April- Clare Moore playing with the Ukeladies at the Old Bar- Fitzroy.


Thursday 14th April
Reading ?pm House of Refreshment Level 1, Abbotsford Convent, Heliers St 
Abbotsford VIC 3067 p. 03 9419 5255      


Sat 16th April - Clare Moore playing with the Hired Guns at the Retreat.
Dave Graney appearing as part of a  group of musicians for INTERNATIONAL RECORD STORE DAY at Basement Discs in Melbourne. 


Thursday 28th April
12.45pm  -1.15pm The Wheeler Centre
Topic: “Will the social networks bring back an interest in the future/ the unknown?”
176 Little Lonsdale Street  Melbourne 3000 (03) 9094 7800

6.30pm Reading at Readings, St Kilda .
112 Acland St, St Kilda

Saturday 30th April

1-2pm - Reading at TITLE
Sydney Rd Brunswick           
http://www.titlespace.com/

5-6pm Williamstown Literary Festival
Old Council Chamber @ Williamstown Town Hall,
Ferguson Street, Williamstown


Thursday 5th May - Bended Elbow- GEELONG.
Friday 6th May- Bended Elbow - Ballarat.

Saturday 7th May- CD LAUNCH for ROCK N ROLL I WHERE I HIDE at the Northcote Social Club .Go Go Sapien open the show.

Friday 13th May - the LOFT- Launceston
Saturday 14th May- the Republic Bar- Hobart



Thursday 19th May
3pm Better Read Than Dead Book Signing
265 King St, Newtown   
http://www.betterread.com.au/ 

Notes, Newtown
75 Enmore Road Newtown, 2042 (02) 9557 5111      
http://www.noteslive.net.au


Friday 20th May

The Vault, Windsor
146 George Street Windsor NSW 2765 (02) 4587 8146
http://www.vault146.com.au/ 


Saturday 21st May
Coogee Diggers
Corner of Carr and Byron St Coogee, NSW, Australia 2034 02 9665 4466
http://www.coogeediggers.com.au


Sunday 22nd May
Hotel Gearin
273 Great Western Highway Katoomba, Blue Mountains 2780 02 4782 4395
http://www.hotelgearin.com

Monday 23rd May
7.30pm Ariel Booksellers Launch.
42 Oxford Street PADDINGTON NSW 2021


Thursday 26th May
Lizottes, Sydney
4/5 629 Pittwater Rd Dee Why NSW 02 9984 9933
http://www.lizottes.com.au 

Friday 27th May
Lizottes, Central Coast
Lot 3 Avoca Drive Kincumber  NSW  2251 02 4368 2017      
http://www.lizottes.com.au 

Saturday 28th May

2pm Reading @ McClean’s Booksellers 
69 Beaumont Street, Hamilton NSW 2303 p. 02 4969 2525      
http://www.macleans.indies.com.au 


Gig: Lizottes, Newcastle
31 Morehead St Lambton  NSW 2299 02 4368 2017      
http://www.lizottes.com.au

Monday 30th May

Maitland Library READING
480 High Street, Maitland




Wed 1st June solo show at the Hoey Moey- COFFS HARBOUR
http://www.hoeymoey.com.au/
Thurs 2nd June Gollan Hotel 73 Keen st Lismore (solo show)
Friday 3rd June The Flood Collective - Lismore
Saturday 4th June Old Museum - Brisbane
Sunday 5th June- Great Northern - Byron bay-

Thursday 9th - Sunday 12th June- WA dates TBA. 


Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria
Saturday 18th June- Bah Tacos - Rye Victoria


Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic
Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide
Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA

Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar - Canberra


Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

Questions and answers for Australian Bookseller Magazine.

An edited version of this article is in the current edition, along with a review.The writer notes that "some have said" my music is more style than content. Nobody has ever said that. The book is about the style and the content and the tone.


1. How did 1001 Australian Nights came about? Was it something you’d been working on for some time—or were you made an offer you couldn’t refuse that got you writing?



It was an idea that seemed to make sense one day and I started on it, handwriting in a big old blank hardcover book and then I typed it into a computer later on, after I got the feel and shape of it.

I wanted to write the story of my life as a musician and include the flow of the lyrical side of it that I'd been putting out on all my albums. It was a story I'd been writing within my songs and I thought I'd earth it and make a longer piece of it. Only my adult life a s a musician though.



2. Could you talk us through your writing process? You drew on tour diaries for parts of it (specifically the tours with Nick Cave and Henry Wagons). How else did you go about collating or accessing your memories?



Well I like to read books by musicians. Not really by people writing about music so much, very few have any empathy for the players. Miles davis autobiography is great, Charles Mingus, Wreckless Eric, Louis Armstrongs dope dealer ,(also a player) Mezz Mezzrow wrote a really good one. Julian Cope, Zodiac Mindwarp.

I don't like nostalgic things much and its disappointing how much of modern music is driven by it. I'm not really that much of a household name that I think the minuteae of my personal life is worth putting under peoples noses and , in a way, all stories of bands and players are the same. Archetypal stuff. So I tried t write my story in a mythological way at the beginning. the times when I launched into a life of music. I don't come from a rich background nor did I have any higher education. In the world of music this is a bit of an oddity as they're all silver spoon types so I thought it might be interesting to trace where I got the bright idea to be a player. I don't mention many peoples names and tried to keep it interior and mythic. people feeling around in the dark. I wasn't being demeaning or disrespectful to any of my comrades.I hope.
The book is in two parts.One reflective in a long shot style and the other more sharply focussed,recent events.What I thought I was doing and what I think I'm doing.



3. Your love of literature is evident in this memoir. It has a Kerouac-like road trip feel; noir stylings of a hard-boiled novel; and you make wonderful use of the run-on sentence in the section headed I Who Know the Others. Are there any particular writers that inspired your memoir? And would you consider turning to fiction—perhaps a crime novel?



A lot of the book is about where I copped my tone. Tone is everything in music and writing. I love Guillaume Apollinaire and Arthur Rimbaud for their fearless, heroic bravado I love the pulp writers from the 30s to the 80s! I really love the australian poet Robert Gray and his recent book, "the country I came through last" was a great inspiration. Those of us who loved his work would have really tuned into it and, in a way got a bit disappointed when he finally earthed his poems with the real events of his life. He brought it all down for us. Its great. i also love david Foster, especially his recent "sons of the rumour".



4. Sartorial ensembles feature almost as characters in their own right in this memoir. You’re obviously a stylish dude. If ‘clothes maketh the man, what clothes maketh Dave Graney?



I dont talk about this shit.



5. I understand there will be a ‘greatest hits’ album released to coincide with the memoir’s publication and numerous live shows across the country. What else will you be doing to publicise this memoir?



I've recorded an album for Liberation of all my favourite songs (of mine) from the 90s. Its called "rock'n'roll is where I hide. Its kind of a greatest hits but a also a re recording. Its a real rock'n'roll album with my band "the Lurid yellow Mist". its not a sad, acoustic set. All musicians who out records find that they are playing the songs so much better a year later. This will be about fifteen years later for the most part. We know the shit inside out, above and below. Its my third debut album. Its got flow and bounce and thats what I like.



6. Finally, what was the last book you read and loved?



I have discovered a 1920s british writer called AE Coppard. I have read one called "adam and eve and pinch me" and 'clorinda walks in heaven". I find his writing pretty astounding. He has sentences that other people labour over through whole books to express.

CHEERS!

This article appears in the current Adelaide Review.


Went for a walk one morning. Just after Xmas and New Year and the world was still kind of giddy and hungover and not quite back into gear. Where I live is a bit like the Adelaide hills, only further out from the city and covered in fern trees and gums. Hills. The east side hills of Melbourne. A walk is as good as a run and you go up and down the vale. The road twisted to a dirt track and a fellow was ahead of me, struggling with a box. he kept stopping to rest and I eventually caught up with him. Ahead of us was a bluestone set of steps and then two quite sheer streets that take a lot out of the fittest person. he had stopped to rip open the carton and down a beer. it was 9:30 on a Sunday morning. I am always gladdened by the sight of people misbehaving and offered to help him with his burden up the next few levels. He said he was ok but he was puffing and I picked up the box. We walked on and he was embarassedly saying that the next few streets were just that bit too steep at the moment. I agreed. I offered some advice to him in that he could have bought cans and probably got 30 to a case and they’d still have been lighter. He said he liked Crown Ales.
He had standards. he said he’d started drinking at 6 am that morning. His wife was not around to tell him to stop and the beer was sitting there in the sky. the way he said it sounded logical.
I helped him to his gate and we parted ways.
I’m not a drinker myself, though I once was. I got out of the habit when I moved to this area. It involved so much more driving that I just stopped. I also noticed I dropped about 8 kilos immediately and that was s a plus too. Also, being a musician, you find after a while that its great to FEEL the EXCITEMENT and the fear when you’re performing. To know and to be aware .To have the PRESENCE.
I know a lot of drinkers and I see a lot of drinkers. Like that fellow on the street they can be cute and funny for a short time. Prolonged periods spent in their company can get a but tedious. Repetition etc. Maudlin mood swings. Jolly drunks are cool. When I drank I stayed up. I was talkative and came from a family of heroic drinkers. And that family came from a town which was in a country where boozing was a national sport. People used to carry BATHTUBS full of cans and bottles into Adelaide oval to watch the cricket.I’ve seen film of that crazy mob doing that and it filled me with pride that I once lived in such a free and easy country. Now its all law and order and the booze and food concessions are sold to private companies who sell light beer and pale foodstuffs to well behaved crowds and the sponsors are happy etc. The crowd is bought and sold and fed and watered. Football and cricket the same. I know the cry is that its more of a family friendly thing but I despair of living in a world fit only for goddam kids. Hey let ‘em look through the window at the adult hell inside the bar. They can look forward to it with FEAR or EXCITEMENT. At the moment though, its not for them.
On the other side of life in the hills- the night time.-just before Xmas a wild looking character had his picture in the paper for allegedly attacking a copper with a knife. In a suburb even further out. His picture made him look like a zombie, worse than Saddams when he came out of the hole in the ground in Iraq. People thought it funny and pasted the picture as their avatar on social networks as the image of their post Xmas/new Year feel. He was still at large though. The papers said he was in the forests of the hills “travelling up to 30 k’s a night”. For about a week a helicopter kept flying around in the early hours. Someone in a house further into the hills, someone who was staying there for a few weeks, had heard a noise outside and called the police. (Its so quiet up hear you get woken by birds and a car driving past is thunderous). Dutifully, the helicopter was sent out at 2am. People reported that they had fewer eggs so he must be nearby. Up went the chopper again. The folk devil was eventually caught in an inner city suburb and charges have yet to be laid. Back on your heads everyone!
Cheers.

New cd- "rock'n'oll is where I hide - due April on LIBERATION.


New book- "1001 Australian nights" - due April on Affirm Press.

death by harmonica

THIS APPEARS IN THE LATEST EDITION OF AUSTRALIAN MUSICIAN MAGAZINE.

Death by Harmonica.
I was doin'’ a gig deep in the hills. A modern day gig which means it was pretty primitive. I mean not much thought went into the situation. Nowadays, people have watched so much music on tv and youtube that they think it just “happens”. There is not a lot of empathy with the players in most areas music. I mean look at the critiques. its all about the business (and don’t they know it all) or about the medias perception or recognition of something. They don’t know shit. The public like to think they know whats goin on too. Have you ever wondered why everybody thinks they’re cool now? Its because they know the tempo. Because most of the music allowed in public is OLD. Because people HATE new stuff. The clubs are definitely on that beat. They treat the players like bums. You have to go into these joints like a commando.
Anyway. This little joint was a resonant , hard surfaced cube. Even talking in the room was hard. Three people talking made a real racket. The reverberant sound blew it all up into a major squall. Made it sound busy and exciting I guess. I could deal with that.
(I must say, there's a whole new business out there to be made in dealing with sound in places like gyms. People don't understand it at all. They only know volume).
Had to take my own sound in etc. I could do that. I was by myself with a great amp with a twelve string guitar and a mic pumping through it. Times like that, you dig in and open fire. I pumped out two sets of about an hour each of my own songs. I was a machine.
After the second set I was packing up and a fellow approached me with a beer in his hand, aussie young man style. He asked did I want to have a “jam” with his friend. Turned out his friend played the harmonica. He was “real good” I was told. I’d had to get into a certain mode of defiant hardness to do the gig and was still coasting on that plane. I said, “ I bet he’s real good, I bet he tells you too!”. The kid nodded. I asked if he played anything. He said he mucked around on the guitar. I was feeling like I could give a fuck so I told him. “Cos thats a real instrument. A harmonica is like a sad bike thats left outside a supermarket that everybody gets on and goes for a ride!” He still didn’t seem to get my evil drift and I went on ( and on) that an instrument like a guitar or a set of drums or a sax or a piano is something you never really get to the end of and is also really hard to get a note out of at the beginning. You have to dive into it and get humiliated at first and that feeling of humility never really leaves you when you get down to it.
I was feeling a bit silly and felt I was owed something and that he wasn’t really going to respond so I turned it up a notch . I said “ I see your mate over there. He looks real confident and I bet he is. Harp players are like that because anybody can get a note out of those damn things. They march into your dressing room and light up a fag like they’re a brother and everybodys into getting fucked up and they’re too loud and they never fucking stop. They slobber all over every part of every goddam song if you let them! I have just played for two hours, songs I have written over a couple of decades. From my mind and my life and you are asking me to stand here and comp a twelve bar while this dribbler in high waisted stretch acid washed jeans blows some crummy licks from a fuckin’ toy at me? No I think I’ll pass on that. Stick to the guitar!”

I was being reasonable and unreasonable. Rude and stupid. Sometimes you find yourself, as a player, a musician, in a world of pain. Painful, yabbering, swaying, wall eyed t shirted , gelled, bunged up drunks. And they get stuck in a loop and try to drag you into it. If you’re a player, you still have your legs and you know the room, you feel the need to take something back from this world. Perhaps your own dignity. For a moment. You get over it and then wake up to a new day. Its not always that way. Can be if you let it.

The next week I did a gig and I had my band with me so I was happier. In firefights, its best to have some light artillery on your side. At this gig I saw and heard Matt Walker and Broderick Smith playing together. Both can make the harmonica do things that the crude archetype I was mocking above could never do. Matt was playing guitar this time and Broderick was singing and playing the harp. What a master! He concentrates on that little thing and gets melodies out of it. Its there to sing as well as him. Supreme players , performers and writers.
Mike Rudd from Spectrum also has a distinctive tone and grasp of the harmonica. He gets it to do stuff for him and doesn't just bring it in for a melancholy wail here and there.
Other harp players I love on records would be Norton Buffalo who played a lot with the Steve Miller band, Lee Oskar from the amazing r&b/funk/soul band WAR and Magic Dick from the J Geils Band. Stevie Wonder hit it and made it dance but he can do that with any instrument. The classic Little Walter and Howling Wolf put sounds and licks together for everybody else to copy for several generations. And, of course, Toots Thielmans. Any of his albums.
So, I’m trying to take back some of that slack I stole when I was abusing some hardnut harp player who must have upset me somewhere along the way. Blow that thing, its easy!

squelch!

This appears in the latest TRIP magazine.For subscribers of RRR Melbourne Community Radio

Squelch. Its a form of music. A nano genre at the moment but I am handing it to the public to make it into something enormous. Take that to the bank! Simple as that. Doing BLB with Elizabeth early on I was moaning about pathetic names for genres of music. Like “beats”. That has got to be the worst. What the fuck is that all about then? I never go near anything if its called “beats”. I mean I probably have heard a lot of it and liked it and I probably listened to some very recently. i wouldn’t call it “beats “ though. “Dance” is also piss weak. And that scene is usually full of great pr whizz with great names for tracks that don’t really deserve it. DJs have great names too, and they mostly don’t deserve much. I respect their biz though, their shamelessness is most admirable. I love it. Their view of the world is total SQUELCH.
One night I sat at a club and asked a lady to identify all the sounds that were flying around the room. She did this for me, she was glad for the opportunity to dump this useless offall that was crowding her mind onto me. SQUELCH! Turned out that each song was its own micro genre. Just as I suspected! They know how to squeeze every ounce out of the stuff in that scene. Nothing is left to chance. Flog it!
Reggae is a great name for a form of music. It took a while and then someone heard someone say it and it caught on. Rockabilly too. Actually, while we’re at it, “spoken word” has to be the lamest shingle anybody has ever put out in front of their act doesn’t it? SPOKEN WORD! That is bad. For people who are trading in WORDS, that is very , very lazy and mo poke in the extreme. There is no jizz in that title, no bounce. Jazz is a great name for a form of music. Blues. Punk. Anything with “core” in it is pretty pathetic. Like a dangleberry or clingon on the arse of something bigger, grimly hanging on. Same with “post” or “alt” . Just substitute “not”. Modern shit with good names are GRIME. CRUNK. Shit, thats about it.
Rock Music is hopeless. Whats the best they came up with recently ? Emo! They ran out of puff trying to say a word and we were left with that three letter furball . Paste a message on Friendface and leave us! SQUELCH!

I could go on. On BLB, Elizabeth usually stops me. Ta.
I have to say that she has the capacity to go on too. I am a live and let live guy though. I just put on my earphones and listen to sports radio until it looks like its all over. The loyal BLB listeners text me constantly to keep me in touch with what shes on about this time. What can I say? I’m a man- I give- I bend like a tree in a gale- then I give again.

One day I came into the studio and said I wanted to hear nothing but squelching sounds. I wanted to get my SQUELCH on. I was after a new kind of SQUELCH. I wanted , you know “ dark side of the squelch” or "never mind the squelch “ or “ a hard days squelch”. “The SQUELCH SESSIONS”! “the squelch remains the same!”
“I know what you mean” Elizabeth said. I reached for this disc by “SPOONBILL” called “AIRBORNE”. It was total squelch. See, I’d already slipped into talking about a noun there. i moved from adjectival discourse into naming the sounds. Thats what happened on the show that day. I got so many texts from BLB listeners wanting more SQUELCH! Straight off. We had a movement. People wanted squelch before hey knew what it was. And then , best of all, it was already here. SQUELCH was in the house! Elizabeth and I moved quickly to define the new genre. I wold say it s a form of music with no known boundaries save for the lack of loud guitars. Effected guitars are ok though , bendy, wah and soft fuzz sounds. Octaves especially. That sound on a lot of 70s soul with the trickling waterfall effect. Thats total SQUELCH. SQUELCH is a smooth and viscous sound. Like machines shitting. Horribly organic. Vegetable automatons gurgling to the nth. Taking things to the logical rotting conclusion. Its rooted in machines having wet dreams. Nocturnal funk. Smooth and bubbling. Electro diarrhoea. Non verbal. Know what I squelch?
We tried to reach into the past and we played a song by a person we archly and crassly called “the Godmother of SQUELCH”. This was Sophie Ellis Bextor , mainly because I had her cd in my bag and I think shes a doll. “Murder on the dancefloor”. We heard SQUELCH everywhere. It was a SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH world.
Later, I was working in my studio and used a plugin , ( a virtual effect). It was called COSMONAUT and it eq’d the sound to make it vintage and clunky. It also had a setting called , you guessed it- SQUELCH! There is nothing better than making something up that already exists . I’m sure everybody has experienced that heavy, throbbing, thrill. It must be good if its already here! Authentic also. Its just that nobody has identified it yet. Its a fact that you simply cant see things that you don’t recognize. Its not there until you see it! All performers know this conundrum.

So, for the history books, let it be known that SQUELCH - a new microgenre of music was first identified and therefore sighted and named and therefore created and sent out into the world from the studios of RRR fm in Melbourne by Dave Graney and Elizabeth McCarthy from within the sturdy construct that is their show, BANANA LOUNGE BROADCASTING in August 2010.

postscript. The week after we’d invented SQUELCH, when we were all set to deal with POST SQUELCH, Elizabeth had to go away on a course with that guy Anthony Robbins and I had to do the show solo. I was going to have an old friend in on the sow, New York based record producer Victor Van Vugt. I called him and said I was going to be playing some SQUELCH on the show. Without dropping a beat he said, “is that like SQUEE?

Semaphore-" like the sixties with a hardon!"

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS STORY APPEARS IN THE CURRENT ADELAIDE REVIEW...

Adelaide has presented many faces to us but we had never experienced the likes of the Semaphore Workers Cub. What a pleasant surprise it was too. Semaphore is some sort of a fading rose of a seaside idyll. In its late bloom. I went there only a couple of years ago and was charmed by the wide streets and the sleepy country town tempo of the place. How such a joint had been allowed to be accessible to anyone but the super rich was a conundrum. It is beautifully down beat and genteel. Old world. (Even though the smart people have obviously already gotten involved and put in a lot of confusing traffic diversions in that beautiful wide main street leading to the beach. It wont be long until this late bloom is over and the harvesting of real estate dreams begins) On this trip we were to discover it had an even richer and stranger inner life.
The Workers Club has no signage outside as they “ don’t want any passing trade”. This alarmed us as we musicians have been bashed and narrowed in our thinking to be completely commercial at all times. We drove the short distance from the delightful hotel to the club. Inside it was all high ceilinged wide ambience just like those old dilapidated former embassies people used to live in in St Kilda.
Walls absolutely festooned with banners from Communist groups the world over. Images of Che and Ho and various Euro Reds looked over the proceedings. We were told that the phone had been ringing hot which sent our hearts low as that usually means no one will bother to actually come. We finished the soundcheck and were enjoying game of pool on the full sized billiard tables as the people started coming in. Apparently there had been a queue around the block . They charged in and lined up at the bar. A totally blue collar, brawny, rough hewn , up for it bunch of party people the likes of which I didn’t think existed anymore. I thought they'd all been domesticated. This was not a crowd from the prissy world of indie rock music or Sunday colour supplement stories of the best bars/coffees in whatever sad city you live in. This was a real underworld crowd. There were music clips being shown on one wall, “howlin wolf” and “sonny boy williamson” and “etta James” all bawling the blues. Mesmerising in its lost worlde class.
Stu Thomas did a set with himself on his orange baritone six string bass/guitar hybrid style of playing along with sunglasses,white jacket and Clare Moore on drums and vocals. They played for about an hour. (They had already played a set the night before at the Grace Emily).
Then we got up and did an hour long set ourselves.Two guitars,bass and drums, all keyed up by the crowd and the blues in the room.
The gates were closed and no one else was being let in.
I always say “hello Comrades” at shows as a fellow once said it to me at Trades Hall in Melbourne and I felt so great I took it on. In Brisbane, opening for Glen Campbell last December I said it and half the audience walked out. They hate “commies“ up there. (Commies being interchangeable with “from melbourne” which I had also informed them was the case) . Here, everybody was addressed as “comrades and fellow workers”. I felt I was at home.
At the break I walked off the stage towards the door and a fellow stopped me to say hello. “You don’t remember me do you?” I said I was having trouble and he told me his name. An old friend from the country. I’m not the hugging type but I felt kind of emotive and we embraced. Probably because I knew him at that time in your life before the retrograde sets in - when your were just a kid. He used to dink me home from footy training. Anyway, something was troubling me, something I was supposed to remember. Then it hit me, this fellow had been involved in a double murder- of his parents. I didn’t know him when that happened, I only knew him from an earlier, untroubled period. Can you shut things like that from your mind? Should you? Sometimes its easy to talk to people you haven’t been in contact with for a while. I said “So, you’ve had an ....interesting life...”. He agreed and alluded to his parents. No smiling at all from either of us here. He introduced me to his girlfriend. Later, I felt I had to ask about the time I had referred to as “interesting”. He just looked at me and said, “madness , Dave- madness” and we talked a little more in that crowded room, touching lightly on very heavy areas. It was a difficult conversation to have and a difficult place to try and have it in. I knew I had to go back on and do another set. Sometimes, being a musician, going onto the stage or taking care of your gear is a good way to take your leave from people and situations that get to be a bit too chaotic. I enjoyed running into him though and wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid talking to him again.

We got up and played for another hour. The joint was jumpin’!
As we walked off “the Internationale” was played at a rousing volume. We sat around and talked to people , those attending the show and then the people from the club. What an amazing place! So connected to history and the local community.
You also get the greatest critiques in places like that. A guy apparently left saying, “Dave Graney! Like the sixties with a hard on!”
The fellow who books it talked of being sent by the PARTY to Cuba to attend a conference. Lost worlds.
The next day we got up at midday and played for an hour on the foreshore at Semaphore. A different crowd and a different sound. Blasting sunlight and strong sea winds. Guitars went out of tune and I couldn’t see the led lights of my pedal.
Then we drove to the Wheatsheaf and played for an hour at 4pm. This set was gonna be soft and conversational. It was , for about two songs. My watch stopped somewhere along the way and the second set stretched out for another one and a half hours. This was Grateful Dead style playing. Clare Moore and Stu Thomas eventually played for seven hours over three days.
After the set a white haired woman bailed me up and bawled at me for not lowering the door price while I was on stage. She flounced off still yelling at me for being up myself. I went to talk with some friends. A tripping barfly came up to give me some shit about my moustache, yabbering about a 60s movie with Shirley Maclaine he had seen. “Jimmy Edwards” I said, referring to the moustachioed British comedian who was in the same film. “Fuck off! How can you know who I’m talking about!” he yelled. I begged off. he came back to talk of an Adelaide musician called Benjamin Hugg. I said I had that album, the one with the cover shot outside of Trims from the late 70s. He shook my hand. He said I should listen to the record. I said I would. He said "Fuck off! I don’t give a fuck what you think!”. I said “sure” and bade my farewells to friends. He followed me yelling about how I should do what he said and every time I agreed he told me to “fuck off”. A difficult character to engage with. I escaped to pack up my gear.
We were still staying in Semaphore. the next day we loaded the van and paid the hotelier. He had been a pretty taciturn character- a busy weekend. Things were a bit quiet now so he spoke more freely. Learning we had been to the workers club he talked of his own father who had been a radical communist and union man. Eventually blackballed from a lot of employment. The publican himself had gone to Moscow to attend a student and workers conference in the 70s. He had enlisted into the armed forces but had had his papers stamped “commie” after a day. He said he didn’t talk about his past to many people as they accused him of being “things like a... traitor”. He laughed, saying he was a “Utopian now”. Whatever the hell that is.
Semaphore was beat. Blue collar. Totally downbeat and beatific. They’ll have to ruin it.
We drove to the bustling wide spot in the road known as Bordertown and engaged an innkeeper for a room for the night. A morbidly obese woman sold us some parcels of indeterminate food material soaked in concentrated animal fats. Bear Grylls would have recoiled at this stuff but we did the right thing by somebody or other and ate a few mouthfuls.
In Melbourne we made camp for a couple of days before blowing town in separate directions. Clare to Hobart and myself to Mt Gambier. I had some personal stuff to take care of.
I stayed with a cousin on his farm about 35ks toward a fishing fleet town. I was wearing leather pants, shirt,waistcoat ,tie and jacket as I was also gonna have my photo taken near one of the mills down there and couldn’t be arsed packing anything more delicate. I was kitted out ‘end of the world” style.
I found myself standing out in a paddock with a herd of shitting, spluttering, pissing cows a couple of times. Being no help but looking cool (in my world). Brando out bush. In spite of the crowd I was hangin’ with. The neighbours will be talking about it for a few years. My cousin was driving across the fields, herding the cows from one field to another, Black Sabbaths “paranoid” album blaring on the cd player. You find out what has endured out in this sort of a map reference. I said , through the noise of the music and the car and the cows, that Ozzie was a bit sad now. My cousin said that he was always a bit of a tool and that Tony Iommi was the brains of the outfit. That is wisdom. In the straight world, people follow along with the idea that Ozzie was a wildman- just like a herd of cows. The man can hardly move , let alone talk!
We sat in his old Cockys farm house, that he has renovated- to make it SMALLER - and listened to the Who on his handmade stereo and ate pasta and chocolate. The sea and the weather happening eternally outside and the cows adding their very ephemeral sounds to the nightly fields .I learned some country wisdom. He has a friend , who has rarely saddled up, though he has a female he is smitten with who “narrows him up a bit”, whose view on marriage or co habitation was , when pressed, “ why give half your tucker away to get the other half cooked”. I guess you could take that to the bank to see what they make of it. As a fellow cheapskate , it made a lick of sense to me.