Live Shows coming up in Victoria, WA and Queensland. In A Mistly

Noel Mengel writes beautifully about IN A MISTLY in the online magazine MUSIC TRUST.

an excerpt..  “Graney and Moore have made about 45 albums together, and this is their sixth credited to Dave Graney and Clare Moore. That is a Slim Dusty-level of dedication to the craft when you consider the usual shelf life for a recording artist. And the more I play In a Mistly, the more I think this is one of the best records they have ever made".

 Thanks Noel.

 

We are playing some shows soon, starting in Castlemaine at the Taproom- Shedshaker Brewery on Saturday January 14th.

Then its a trip to Western Australia for the first time in a  couple of years where Clare Moore and I will bejoined by Martyn Casey on bass to play the following venues.

Friday February 10th at Lyrics Underground at Lyrics Lane in Maylands, Perth. Presented by the Perth Folk and Roots Club who will be playing an opening set.

Then Saturday February 11th at the Vault in Kalamunda, Perth and

Sunday February 12th at the Duke of George in Fremantle.

We then fly to Queensland and hook up with Adele Pickvance who will play bass with us  at these venues...

Thursday February 16th we play at Mos Desert Clubhouse in Burleigh Heads.

Friday February 17th at the Hotel Eltham in Eltham (Lismore).

Saturday February 18th we play the Citadel in Murwillumbah.

We are endeavouring to play music from In A Mistly at these shows so we need to make some rock action and drama with bass, drums and guitar. We will be playing other material from our back catalogue as well.

On Saturday afternoon February 25th Clare Moore and I play an opening set for Dog Trumpet at the Northcote Social Club. We will be on quite early.

 

Thursday March 23rd we play our Melbourne In A Mistly album launch at the Nightcat in Johnston st Fitzroy.  We played every Wednesday night in 1999 at 8pm at this venue in one of the first things we did in our post Coral Snakes period. Mick Medew and Ursula will be coming down from Brisbane to open the show as a way to launch their album Love Is Calling in Melbourne as well. 

Friday March 31st we play Smiths in Canberra.

Saturday April 1st we launch In A Mistly in Sydney at the Great Club in Marrickville.

I made a clip for a track from In A Mistly.Its for VELVETS MC. The song is about a music act being like a club or a gang and people join up, even for a band thats been inactive for many decades. members can take on all the attitudes and live through the narrative of the band. They know what happens. 

 

Mark Mordue takes the time and care to write about a show Clare Moore and I did in Sydney in 2022 like few have ever done before. 

Stuff like "Maybe this is the Australian condition for many artists: a small scene that can’t see the true dimensions of its biggest fish; all of us way too close to appreciate one another properly when we are here for the long game."

Thanks Mark.

 I was writing about this kind of feeling or sense of a tight and clammy situation back in 1998 for The Dave Graney Show album on a  song called Am I Wearing Something Of Yours?

you don't know what I've been doing
you're too close
you don't know what I've done
I was doin' it to you
you can't know it but I've finished
I've moved on
you don't have enough room
to put me in the picture
am I wearing something of yours?

 And again in 2012 on We Need A Champion from You've Been In My Mind.

we need help, someone from outside
someone who can see us
we’re so close
we can’t see each other
we’re knockin’ each other up
we need help
someone from outside
oh we’re blind and full of badness
bad blood, bad sweat
makin’ some bad scenes for the hell of it
we need a champion
we ain't got no slack
we ain't got no scratch
we ain't got no rope
we ain't got no background
we ain't got no time
we ain't got no depth
we ain't got no height
we ain't got no room
we're so close we can't see each other
you don't know what I'm doin'
what if I could do it to you?
whatever it was that you were wantin me to do?
we need a champion

 Otherwise, we spent ten days in Sydney over Christmas. It was a bit of a shock to drive up the Hume Highway and be bothered by so many other cars on the same track. I mean, this is usually OUR highway. us and a few dozen truckers. All the service stations were full of families with kids and dogs. Especially the stations with electric vehicle charging stations as the families had to cool their heels for a few hours while their batteries were "filled". This meant that there were a lot of kids high on junk food sugar runing around everywhere. It was horrible!

 In Sydney we did what most people did, ate and talked and rested and generally forget about deadlines and projects (if you were me) and read books and watched tv. 

I tried several episodes of MAYANS MC which is an offshoot of Sons Of Anarchy. It was pretty dull and turgid stuff. A lot of incredibly fit and ripped tough guys who do nothing but drink beer and smoke cigarettes in between bouts of psychotic violence which is all justified as its about their family. Tedious Yankee shit. Loads of incomprehensible, slow dialogue with these wounded, morose men. I wrote a song about the kind of blinkered silliness in 2014 for FEARFUL WIGGINGS. It was called LOOK INTO MY SHADES. I recorded it quite quickly but feel I need to have another look at it.

look into my shades, babe
travel over the surface
travel those smooth black desert sands
I am mean, babe
I am mean and I have been hurt
I’ve got a right, babe
I’ve got a right to be wrong
it’s not you, babe
it’s nothin’ to do with you
someone is gonna pay, babe
someone is gonna pay
I am gonna lay waste to someone’s little world
I am at war, babe
I'm a man on a mission
I am out to destroy something
anything
I've been wandering the earth, babe
darkness everywhere
devastation, baby
devastation,solitude
it feels so funny to be talking to you
I built myself a surface so wide
no one would ever get around

 But otherwise, the favoured holiday viewing was more Murder, She Wrote and Columbo. The latter being annoyingly not on any streaming platforms. 

We have also been catching Hip Hop Evolution via Netflix. The early episodes on the pioneering djs and then the MCs was pretty thrilling. Stayed in thatgroove with RUN DMC and then Schooly D and the birth of Gangsta Rap. Lots of regional variation. Ice T still sounding pretty unconvincing to me. Just not a very good - or attractive - voice.

Same goes for Q Tip from the Jungle Brothers. He has a big rep which he carries hard with every word he spoke. Just seemed like a small guy, like some lightweight from the local indie rock world.

Shock G from the Digital Underground was just so human and so likeable. His tears came flooding when he talked of Tupacs descent into rage and madness and then his terrible death. Awful. 

Schooly D ruled, as did the Wu. 

Still got some episodes to go - maybe even another series. But eventually we will get to the hip hop equivalent of Grunge or New Rock or Oasis or Cold Play or Arcade Fire or the Flaming Lips. I'll have turned it off by then.  It was a brilliant planet though.

We also caught the 2022 Bowie film Moonage Daydream. A friend in Sydney played it in her garage onto a large screen and a bunch of us sat in deckchairs.

It was quite a nice mix or edit of noted art movies and images that informed a lot of twentieth century progressive music.  Just normal underworld stuff. If you'd been paying attention. Would have been a lot richer if the director had just widened the aperture to include David Bowies actual peers and contemporaries. People like Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry, Vince Taylor, the Pretty Things, Slade, Scott Walker, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Ian Hunter, Mick Jagger, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Kraftwek, Syd Barrett, Lulu. The director had also made the Chicago 10 movie which was a fine thing but a little research into that political scene of the late 60s USA showed up a lot of radical women who were also involved in the demonstrations and subsequent trial. The removal of all of them from that films story diminished that too.

Clare Moore and I did this podcast interview  late last year. It was for the Unfiltered and Undiscovered Podcast which might give you a clue as to our weird standing in the Australian Music Scene. Some days we are "icons" and "legends" and other days we are yet to be filtered and discovered. As befits that loose but jittery time of year (the end times) it was quite a loopy but fun talk. We didn't expect it to be actually filmed but here's how it turned out.

 

Leading up to Christmas we completed our 140th   Online show.

 

 

 

We then spent a great weekend at my sister Marianne's house in Western Victoria. A couple of days with her and her family.  The second time in 2022 we had spent time in a house that had been completely built from scratch by the occupants. Amazing achievements.

 

 

In Sydney we went to Mahons Rockpool at Maroubra a couple of times. Apparently there are 35 of these rockpools in Sydney.  It was pretty delightful.

 I'm still hoping to get my book of lyrics out in the first half of 2023. Its being edited at the moment. 

THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT Collected lyrics 1980-2023.

 

IN A MISTLY- some notes on the songs.

 This album has been received very warmly by people who have heard it and we appreciate the kind words that have appeared on Social Media. Thank you!

art by Tony Mahony

IN A MISTLY is available via Apple Music and all other portals.

 Available in a Compact Disc via Bandcamp.

We are doing some online shows again but won't be doing any live work until 2023. Here are some links to the next online live sets.

Thursday 24th November at 8pm.

Thursday 1st December at 8pm

Sunday morning 8am 4th December. Which is, of course, 9pm Saturday UK time, 5pm Saturday USA EDT, 4pm Saturday USA CDT, 2pm Saturday USA PDT.

 

Clare Moore and Dave Graney - photo by Ilia Kupriianov

1 Silver Bullets  3:29

This is played in open G tuning. Stu Thomas on bass and Stuart Perera on guitar. Clare and I started playing it in our online shows in mid 2020.  It seemed like a groover. Folky arpeggio in a Led Zeppelin style . (I often refer to my songs as being within the realm of another artists aura or shadow as a kind of note to myself as to how to play it, the tempo and attack of the playing. It doesn't really mean its a literal attempt to imitate something).

2 The Old Swagger 3:56

We must have rehearsed this with Stu and Stuart before our 2019 album ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? It was hard to get going as I'm often starting a chord progression at a different spot. It's hard to find the "ONE" for the beat. Clare is used to it. Its often "1-2-3-4-1", sometimes its on the "and" if you get my drift.But this was very frustrating as we couldn't lock into a groove. Then we got back to it three years later and Stu and Stuart found a way in, a way to lock into the groove. Both played brilliantly on this track, Stuart Perera playing some sweet 70s licks all through it, but especially when he answers the raga type lines of mine in the chorus.

3 Tang 4:12

 This started out with two chords, a C and an F. Both containing B and E notes in them. Then I worked out a change from A# to Ab to A and the chords wanted to be played in a really "new wave" style . All down strokes wth the pick. On the beat. I had been playing my guitar with an MXR Phase 100 pedal as I really wanted to get the sound that Keith Richard had on the Stones album  Some Girls in 1977/8. That was their reaction to punk and their last really great album.
I thought it should have a really propulsive, straight ahead beat like those 70s German pre-punk bands and the bass a lot like the early Cure. I played the guitars and the bass and Clare Moore played the drums and the piano and Will Hindmarsh aka Twinkledigitz sang some background vocals.

 

 4 How Can I Be Old?  3:40

 Dave Wray on sax, Clare Moore on drums and keys and myself on acoustic and electric guitars.
Another song in a kind of post punk or new wave style with flat fives on the A minor chord.
The lyric moves around a lot, like all my songs. I don't write with messages or to get to A point. I like lots of different points. I like the thing to have a living flow.

 
5 What Used To Be There? 5:22

Clare Moore and I started playing this during our online shows in 2020, when Melbourne was locked down. It was very fully formed when we brought it to Stu and Stuart. Lyrically its a very straight ahead song, musically it has some great, disparate elements. A new wave style downstroked guitar in the verse to a quite high, folk-rock chorus and a tense descent via semi tones to a very harmonic middle eight and also a terrific three bar circular set of chords to end in a hardcore prog style with Stu Perera weaving a web of long delays on his guitar.

6 Velvets MC 5:39

 Clare and I were playing this into shape during our 2020/2021 online live sets. It was pretty fully formed. Its a song about a cult around a rock band. A long dead- but still twitching -  underworld rock band. Their aura so intoxicating that their followers take on all the attitudes suggested by the other brethren. Like being in a motorcycle club.
I play the guitars and the bass and Clare Moore played the drums and the piano. The latter was an overdub we happened onto as we worked the song into shape. Then I added some slide guitar.  It proved to be difficult to mix as to overall volume as we didn't want much compression and it almost ended up as a song in two parts - with two volumes - so the head room for both had to be managed.

Clare Moore and Dave Graney - photo by Ilia Kupriianov

7 We Get Life 3:55

Clare Moore and I worked on this during 2021 and played it in our online shows a few times. This was a song where we both heard the "One" happening in a different spot so we agreed I would start it and wherever Clare came in was it, the spot around which we grooved. I looked upon this as a Chuck berry type of tune. Lyrically, a song about the gift we get - to be in this spectacle and inside our physical carriage for a brief time. The music moves around a slight key change and Clare really brought the chorus and middle eight to life with some piquant harmonies and keyboards. It was difficult to mix and put together so I eventually included an alternate version on the Bandcamp and iTunes version. (The guitars are a bit louder and the vocals doubled and tripled and some rhythmic editing on occasion). 

 
 8 Now You Must Die 3:27

 We started playing this during our 2020/2021 online shows. Its played in open G tuning. Originally it was to be a vibes and guitar track but one day I asked Clare to play drums on it and I thought I could play the acoustic with a more driving strumming pattern much like "Thats Entertainment" by The Jam. We were going to record two versions but it sounded great as one mix of vibes, guitars and drums. Vibes are always hard to mix when put in amongst so many competing instruments as often whole areas of the sound are obscured. Lyrically it grew out of our shared enjoyment when somebody says "Now you must die!" in spy or thriller movies. One of those things we often say privately when it suits. I thought it could become a thing in offices for people to say under their breath as their overseer walked off after hugging them. Perhaps even on a coffee mug.

 
9 Where Are You In The Underworld? 3:28

 Also developed during our online show over 2020/2021. Also intended to be recorded in two versions, one with vibes and another with drums. We played it with vibes first and then Clare played a beat, I think we were thinking of a Joy Division feel with loads of toms happening. It sounded great. (We didn't play it for  while and hadn't recorded a demo and Clare forgot the beat but after we talked about a Joy Division feel she was able to get that groove back).  Also difficcult to bring the vibes out in the mix as well as the toms and the vocals.
Lyrically inspired by thoughts of underworld stars and how intense their dark power is. How intense the engagement with their audience, however small. The cosmology of the underworld.

 
10 We Need Cash, ( She Said) 3:11

 Lots of toms and downstroked guitar chords in the verse with the bass coming in for the chorus was the original arrangement. Stu Thomas and Stuart Perera locked into this straight away. Starts with a  chorus. A series of shifting chords which all share the same three notes but the root note changes. C#, E and F#.
Lyrically inspired by something a friend said on a rare night out in public.
The middle eight and ending have a kind of "grunge era" feel to the chords in their intonations and their attack.

 
11 Thanks To The Women For Dancing 3:10
Dave Wray on sax, Clare Moore on drums and myself on bass and guitars. This felt like an old school rockabilly tune, something Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps could have cooked up.
A track we have played at a  rehearsal with the mistLY in 2019 but hadn't been able to record. Clare More and I put it down in late 2021 in at Soundpark. A rough arrangement which stayed that way, must have been intuitive. Dave Wray lives up near Lismore and recorded the sax at his home studio.
We have known Dave for many years and met him when he was first doing his Frank Bennett shows. (Fronting  big band playing popular - grunge era- songs and singing in the style of Frank Sinatra) He guested on several tracks on our 1997 album the Devil Drives, as a singer.
Lyrically? Surely you have noticed at clubs all over the world that its the women who always get up to have a dance at live shows. They bring it to life! Thanks you!

Stu Thomas, Dave Graney, Clare Moore, Stuart Perera on the day of recording in the kitchen at Soundpark Studios, Melbourne.

12 You Are The World 5:21

Dave Wray on sax again. I thought of Roxy Music and the Who when  putting this together (just the sax and power chords and pick burns).
Its a simple song saying the world is screwed up and mad but its not my fault, I'm not the world...
We put the backing vocals on in the middle eight and then played something similar with keys on the long tailout. Clare and I were both playing the keyboard and using the tuning wheel to give it it that special wonky feeling all through it. I overdubbed more guitars and then an autoharp and it made a crazy kind of sense.But you know, I'm not the world..

Dave Wray - photo by Bruce Tindale

IN A MISTLY - our new album is out now.

 

 IN A MISTLY, our new album , is out now via Bandcamp where it can be accessed as a digital album or as a Compact Disc.

 

It's also available via Apple Music and all other digital portals.

Here is a great review of the album from BACKSEAT MAFIA.

Compact Disc copies are available at Greville Records and Rocksteady Records in Melbourne right now.

 Copies will be available for Sydney people at Redeye Records soon and Streetlight in Adelaide and DaDas in Perth.

Review of the album from Bob Osborne at Different Noises. 

We have a Live Stream show on this Wednesday night 8pm Melbourne time. Its show #133. Tickets here 

We are also doing a Live Stream set Sunday morning 8am Melbourne time . This should make it 

9pm Saturday UK time

5pm Saturday USA EDT

4pm Saturday USA CDT

2pm Saturday USA PDT

 We will be playing some shows outside of our house/studio in early 2023, booking dates at the moment.

 

 

TANG – loaded up with TANG
tanged to the gills
but I ain’t in the water
I’m in the TANG – full of TANG
a tanker load by the side of the road – a prang
TANG – biker grade – wholesale TANG
farmgate TANG
chop chop
TANG TANG burning bright across the screens all
through the night
all tanged up- nowhere to go
the mouth all silted up – closed
tanged up in blues
a gutfull of TANG
not life – not a bite – just a TANG
a TANG of life you cant take it anywhere
people don’t talk- trade pics and gags
words – less – faces – pulled
letters dropped out lol scroll on
omg msg gee
you get my msg lol
TANG
TANG

 

photo by Ilia Kupriianov

davegraney.com

 

pressing play on a pre release of IN A MISTLY and guiding yas through whats inside it.

 

 

Pre-Order IN A MISTLY via Apple Music here.  

Pre-Order IN A MISTLY as a Compact Disc and/or digitally via Bandcamp here. 

A great early review of IN A MISTLY by Bob Osborne here.

As any players know, its very hard to get peoples eyes and ears onto things in 2022. And as you human beings know, we are constantly addressed, messaged and insulted by creepy A.I. type apps that think they know what we want. In 2022.

So this space here is not occupied by a robot and they aren't writing the words either. The whole show its a part of is very human too. Learning instruments over many years, playing shows, highs, lows and the different rooms and the shifty technology and the songs and the players. All pulling a person and the artist and the work in different directions.

Hey, I'm not being a sook I'm just noting the pressure points and the energy sources. Where the action is and where the reactions come from. Is it all good, like they say? On the street? I'm sure you've heard that said. It's even made it into the name of a tv character. "It's all good, man. " Saul Goodman.

I digress.

I made this film this morning on a whim. Surrounded here in this room by decomposing tech. Typing this into an old computer that barely hangs on with the last OS I updated it with. I don't wanna ever update it again! Yes, I mention a few things in the clip. Four track cassette recorder, a double live Grateful Dead cassette. (Just stopping to put that on).  It's Without A Net from about 1990, given to me by Chris Walsh and Kate Jarrett for a long bus ride from Melbourne to Adelaide, who I'm sure thought it amusing that I listened to the Dead. Jerry sounds great. Brent Myland on keys. I think he soon passed and Bruce Hornsby sat in for a while - even though he was having his own AM hits at the time. 

The cassette sat with some CDs. Illinois Jacquet and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Things have sat in the corners of this room for years.

But here we are with another album to bring out. Yes, we are very happy with it. A rock album.

Clare and I have played so much this year as a duo and look forward to more in 2023. We will be looking at playing where we can with Stu and Stuart as well to play the music of this album properly.

There are so many people out there playing at the moment. Its crowded. We won't be doing anything until the new year. Perhaps one more at a charity event in the hills Oct 30th.

I did a talk at Belgrave Library last Saturday and had a wonderful time. I didn't write anything as I fully expected nobody to show up at 11am on a Saturday morning. Pleasantly surprised by  30 people doing just that.

The previous week we had played in Portland in a lovely arts centre, an event which had been booked in 2019 and postponed three times.

The country is full of these great little arts centres that are so rarely used. A great shame.
About 60 or 70 people in a  room that could fit 100. Beautiful sound.
What sort of people? One fellow up the front in a Ramones t shirt who was there after the show with albums going back to the Moodists for us to sign. Another who also only spoke of the Moodists. Also a loud business man type who had called out "Princeland" when I asked for any requests. I thought that strange as it was an article I had written for the Griffith Review years ago about a failed attempt to forge a new breakaway state with Victorian towns Portland, Warrnambool, Port Fairy and South Australian towns Mount Gambier and Robe. But yes, a lengthy article in a  magazine. He came to talk with me after the show and talked about it. He knew nothing about my music, even after sitting through 90 minutes of it. He had previously lived in Melbourne but had lived in the Portland area for a decade. After a while he said in ironic tones that he would leave me to "all your fans". I knew it was a great turnout for a live event in an area that doesn't really have much music going through - so people just aren't in the habit of even thinking about attending an event - but he perhaps had some outdated idea of what a crowd of people at a live gig should be. Some idea from the last time he went to a show; in the 80's or I suppose. So he mocked me, reflexively. (Isn't it a bummer how much of your mind is filled with the negative encounters in your day?) The performance had been really enjoyable and the requests people asked us to play were for deep cuts from stranger albums. ( I say stranger because they are probably all strange but some are stranger than others)

Portland is a pretty town and has a lovely harbour area that is still half industrial with it being used for the Alcoa smelting plant as well as local farming produce.

The next day I attended a High School reunion 100 Kilometres away in Mount Gambier. I was of course, full of repidation as probably were most attendees but I thought that fate had drawn me so close that I should show up. 

We drove to Mt Gambier on a  beautiful, sunny day and I went to pay my respects to my parents grave site and then drove over the hill to the Catholic school I had been in for my primary years and where my brothers and father had gone to be beaten up as well. It used to be strictly for poor Catholics and a large portion of them being from Lebanese, Italian and East European backgrounds. Thanks to Australia's mad funding of private schools it is now the premiere place for education and is many times the size it was. It still has a beautiful natural ampitheatre for sports events, a field which is surrounded by hills on each side, as if in a small, dormant volcano. I travel with a football everywhere. Doesn't everybody?

(We did athletics on this field. The teams were Champagnat - green- Lavalla - yellow, Tenison -red -  and Moorak - blue)

 We then drifted over to McDonald Park, home of the East Gambier Football club where again, my father and brothers had all spent many years running about on in joyous play.

We then drove out of town again for about 20 k's to visit old friends and who had said we could stay at their place. They lived in a stone house they had built themselves over 35 years. They had bought the plot of land and, while working and studying in Mt gambier, lived in a tin shed with no power and a kerosene lamp for light. The man worked in the forest and one day saw "a reef" of sandstone which he started to take home from work in a trailer and they would spend weekends splitting the big stones with chisels. They used this lovely, smooth rock to build the house. The place was built so well! What an achievement!

They drove us into the hotel where the reunion was being held. I was wearing a mask, as were my friends, but no one else at the party did so. I took it off for photos.

It was a very pleasant evening. the women were much easier to talk to, or had more to say, or were able to talk to more people, than the men. Like most groups I guess. Women live longer because they are better at being sociable.

I was able to apologize to a couple of people who had I had been horrible to which was the main thing I wanted to do. It was a reunion for people who started high school, not the ones who'd finished. 

There were some funny conversations. One woman was a bit tipsy and carrying on as if I was a total pop star and her friend was non plussed and looked at me and said "what, are you some kind of musician or something?" to which the other laughed loudly and said "It's Dave Graney!" to which the non plussed one said "Who? Sorry, I don't even remember him from school so why would I know anything else!" Fair enough!

I drifted off and tried to engage a quartet of blokes. One just yelled, "get that mask off!" To which I said, "no, thats not gonna happen." and that was it.  Then I stood there while they told me a story of how they had met and learned they were related. I drifted off quite soon. In the photo below, one woman seems to have two heads...

Most of my friends in those days were either through my football club and went to other schools or were from a year above me but it was a very enjoyable night. 

Leon came along, he was a friend from that older year but we had been great friends and shared many great times listening to music out in the bush and drinking loads of beer and smoking weed. All that classic rock n roll teen stuff.  The sort of people I drifted towards and away from my football mates. It was great to catch up with him, as well as Debbie and Bouch, with whom we stayed at their beautiful house.

We came back to Melbourne and while making a  trip to the local shops, I ran across the Victorian Chief Health Officer and was able to thank him for his and his teams continuing hard work during this pandemic.

We then stayed for a week down the coast near Geelong. 

davegraney.com

Dave Graney and Clare Moore TANG - single from forthcoming album IN A MISTLY

 

 

We have a new single coming out called TANG . Its from an album that will be released 11-11-22 on Compact Disc and digitally called IN A MISTLY.

Yes, 11-11-22.  We thought about industry standards of release times for vintage players, (or any kind of player) was it too soon for us to bring out an album? Was it the right time of year?

Then we realized it could be coming out on 11-11-22!
11th-11th – Gough Whitlam dismissed and Ned Kelly Hanged!

Perfect TANG!

  

I wrote it during the long Melbourne lockdown when Clare Moore and I were doing regular online shows - 130 to date - and churning through a lot of material. It really kept us in shape for playing and learning, adapting, arranging, writing and recording music.

I started out with two chords, a C and an F. Both containing B and E notes in them. Then I worked out a change from A# to Ab to A and the chords wanted to be played in a really "new wave" style . All down strokes wth the pick. On the beat. I had been playing my guitar with an MXR Phase 100 pedal as I really wanted to get the sound that Keith Richard had on the Stones album  Some Girls in 1977/8. That was their reaction to punk and their last really great album. 

I thought it should have a really propulsive, straight ahead beat like those 70s German new wave bands and the bass a lot like the early Cure. 

We started to rehearse it with our band, the mistLY, but the travel restrictions got in the way of rehearsing, let alone recording. In 2021 we started recording but this was one of a bunch of songs that needed a band approach. Guitar, drums, bass and vocals. So we didn't try it for the album we made that year - last year - Everything Was Funny - as that was more about songs than a sound. More about recording experimentation as well.

At the end of the year the travel restrictions eased and we booked a couple of days at Soundpark. It was mid December and everybodys availability was then being caught up with seasonal things, as they do at that time. So it turned out that not everybody in the band was available and the studio was also being heavily booked into the following year as well (as people came out of lockdown in the same state of mind - eager to record) but I was writing more songs all the time and I just wanted to get stuff down so Clare Moore and I went in and recorded a lot of material with drums, guitars and bass and vibes and piano.

 

TANG was one of the songs from that session.

 

 

In late March we got together with Stu and Stuart and recorded four songs for the album. Four that we had first rehearsed a year or two previously. 

 

 

Dave Graney - vocals, bass, electric twelve and six string and fuzz guitars.

Clare Moore – drums, piano and backing vocals.

Will Hindmarsh (aka Twinkledigitz and head Go Go Sapien) - backing vocals.

 

Recorded  at Soundpark in Melbourne December 13^th 2021 (engineer Andrew “Idge” Hehir ).  Mixed  by Dave Graney and Clare Moore at the Ponderosa January to August 2022.
 Mastered by Gerry McGough.
Cover image by Tony Mahony.

 

A new wave beat with fuzzed and clean guitars.
Worrying, dischordant chords phased and downstroked. Chorused bass. Blocked piano.
Upbeat though, full of mad energy. Tang!

 

“all tanged up! Nowhere to go! The mouth all silted up! Closed!”

 

Whats it about? Screen life. Screened life. Virtualized stuff.

 

“TANG - loaded up with TANG
tanged to the gills
but I ain’t in the water
I’m in the TANG - full of TANG”

Written by Dave Graney. - Copyright Control

 

First single from the 2022 rock album IN A MISTLY which is to be released 11-11-22.

Preorder the album here.

 

davegraney.com