Information Overload

You know when I started this blog it was just a hoot to be writing about music again after a very early retirement. I had an existential crisis about the point of being a critic, when you yourself haven't got out there and created art. Who was I to judge? I was just another opinionated Australian and who needed another one of those? Being a published music critic at age 18 and getting paid for it ended after 4 reviews. Anyway as I got  further into this blogging caper I really started to think I've got to add something useful or unique to the discourse. There are many blogs that offer information on similar topics and I didn't want to add to the glut. So the whole notion of striving to be concise had to be reviewed in my mind. Being concise is good as I believe people do prattle on a little too long and  tediously about topics that don't necessarily warrant their word count.. I've also realised particularly with the Glaring Omissions series that adding my own personal history of my admiration of particular artists and how they came into my life is unique to me and therefore not just adding to the information overload unnecessarily. I don't need to repeat information that can be found in hundreds of different places on the interweb. Is this just me rationalising a reason to continue blogging? Rationalising Andy Warhol's Fifteen minutes of fame? Perhaps some bloggers need to have a little think and figure out why they're doing what they're doing. Is this just navel gazing though for its own sake? I mean people are compelled to blog and who am I to begrudge them?

Another aspect of my blog at the start was keeping an Eye on the critics/journalists involved in discourse of particular dis/interest to me. I felt that hey they can criticise the shit out of someone or something but they were for some reason immune to being pulled up on something or criticised themselves. So they were allowed to say what they wanted but then would get all catty when a taste of their own medicine came their way. Some of the ugliest insults have come my way because of this. All I have to say is toughen up Princesses (ie. critics). I have to admit the only insults/sledges I have received have come from websites with advertising. So certain editors feel the need to throw insults your way to protect their brand. Heaven forbid an advertiser should realise the site they are sponsoring is not really that great or perhaps shite. Some of these sites are not about music at all, they're about business and money. I think I was a little naive when I started blogging thinking music websites, theory based blogs, miscellaneous blogs and music blogs were all part of the anarchic cultural discussion together. How wrong I was! I must admit I don't really trust websites with advertising anymore. Is money gettin in the way of real intellectual opinion?

Teenage Snuff Film- Rowland S Howard

Glaring Omissions V

How could this LP be overlooked by both that 100 Australian Albums book and that Age list? It's unbelievable. Was there a better rock record from the '90's in Australia? I don't think so.

Rowland S came into my life somewhere around 1983/'84 when my older brother brought home Prayers On Fire by The Birthday Party from one of the commercial record shops in Mildura. Suffice to say this was no commercial record. My ears were definitely not attuned to such a cacophony. This was no INXS, Midnight Oil, The Models or even Hoodoo Gurus. That was where my head was at. I thought this LP was some kind of satanic music and it remained on the shelf for a year or two. Then someone borrowed it and in its absence I became fixated with it. Rage (an all night music show) probably got me into The Bad Seeds then The Birthday Party. I never got that record back despite many attempts. I had some z grade tape containing it and the self-titled Birthday Party LP though. Those Birthday Party records became legendary to me, well, up to and including Junkyard, anyway. I pretty much love all The Crime & City Solution records and the ones Rowland played on were fabulous, Just South Of Heaven & Room Of Lights (haven't dug those out for a while I must admit). Then there was the brilliant Marry Me film clip by These Immortal Souls on Rage followed by the underated minor classic Get Lost (Don't Lie) album. We used to think he was a bit funny because he never looked very well in any video he was in. He was fragile and looked like he would not be long for this world. Nobody ever looked so cool yet so ill at the same time. I love the way he stood when he played guitar. He was a unique and fascinating human specimen. Possibly the best white rock guitarist ever.

By the time I was living in Melbourne in 1991 I saw These Immortal Souls support Died Pretty. That was a bit arse about, I thought, but I guess Died Pretty had big major label support at the time. These Immortal Souls were good but not mind blowing, perhaps having a bad night. I don't really know what happened to him after that. There was an LP in '92 from These Immortal Souls which hardly got any airplay on Melbourne community radio. The times were a changin and he seemed to get left behind. I heard the only way he got to come back to Australia sometime in the mid '90's was because an Aussie metal band had a hit with a cover of Shivers an old Boys Next Door song he wrote and the royalties saved his life. It must have been around this time that I would often spot him, with much excitement, in the Acland St supermarket with potato salad in hand. I think it must have been around '96-'97 I saw him play a solo weeknight gig at The Public Bar in North Melbourne to about 7 people, 6 of whom didn't know who he was. It was looking like this legend was fading away and nobody cared.

Then there was this performance on ABCTV's Studio 22 which I managed to tape in 1999. He was back big time. Mick Harvey on drums and Brian Hooper on bass. Rowland was resplendent in pink shirt and the band was totally cookin. I would come home from work after being at the pub and watch this over and over again. I loved it, must have watched it at least 75 times, I reckon. Dead Radio, Exit Everything, She Cried (the old Shangri-La's tune He Cried with a switcheroo), White Wedding (yep the Billy Idol Tune) and if memory serves a version of Shivers. I never bought the record, Teenage Snuff Film, until someone, namely my cat, taped over it with golf. Anyway that made me get the album and, fuck me, there were even better tracks on there. Breakdown, I Burnt Your Clothes, Silver Chain, Sleep Alone, Undone, Autoluminescent etc. This was his most focused and consistent record ever and it was fucking brilliant. No duds here. This was a Lazarus like comeback and The record of his career. Well he said he was "bigger than Jesus Christ" and he was to me and he should have been to mainstream Australia and throughout the world. As he also said in Autoluminescent:

 "I'm White Heat! I'm White Hot Again!"

And he was vocally, lyrically and on the axe. There were pop songs, dirges, doomed loved songs and songs that were hatefully cathartic. Trash/Pop culture references like guns, Coca Cola, Cigarettes, dog nods, stolen cars, Black Holes and blood were scattered throughout. Not forgetting Hell, Jesus Christ, valium, murder, romance, self loathing, being wasted, crime, poor health, sadness, devices, hate/lust, suicide and misanthropy. On the lighter side there was hope, bragging, space travel, sarcasm and love/hate relationships. Discerning what was fiction and what wasn't was half the fun of listening to this record. A fairly sparse approach musically, some fabulous string arrangements, his best ever vocal performances and blistering guitar work all added up to the best Australian rock LP of the '90's. So for me that means he was present on the best Australian rock LP of the '80's (Prayers On Fire) and the '90's. Legend.

Then it was another 10 years we had to wait for his follow up LP Pop Crimes, which would be his last LP before his death and which time will show to be almost as great as this miraculous effort!

RIP

or should that be rest in guitar racket from hell?

Night Of The Wolverine - Dave Graney & The Coral Snakes

GLARING OMISSIONS IV

Mr Graney was going to be Glaring Omission #V and a certain Sydney via Canberra band was supposed to be #IV anyway whatever. I just had to double check The Age's Top 50 Australian albums list because I cannot believe this record and/or some of his others are not included. This is the LP I'm most surprised didn't make it into either list. You Know feedtime and The Primitive Calculators are not that commercial so they weren't surprises just overlooked gems. Less is More by fucking Even gets a guernsey in The Age 50 over this? In that freakin' book Baby fuckin Animals get an entry over this iconic Melbourne via Mt Gambier, Adelaide, London etc. singer/songwriter and his team of crack musicians. Maybe Dave was right that he was the invisible rock singer hiding in full view that everyone just took him for granted. I mean this guy was King of Pop, won ARIAs and shit and uh oh... he had a great fucking personality. This is Australia Bland Please!

The Moodists
Couldn't find pic from
the book with Mick Turner

Robert ford on stage look

So I was a country boy (boy was I country) and I must have been in about year 8 or 9 when I discovered the school library and they had some Rock books, you know, like the encyclopedia of rock with Jagger on the cover etc. There were a couple of Aussie ones as well and the one I flogged (no security buzzers in those days) was The Next Thing: Contemporary Australian Rock by C.Walker. It became my ozrock bible and I still have it to this day, school stamps throughout, contacted and with a Dewey no. 780 (was that Dewey for ozrock) WAL. Anyway it was this photo of the band The Moodists that just stayed with me. They looked so normal maybe even a bit daggy, this was the 80s the time of Real Life and Pseudo Echo and at the other end of the spectrum punky/goth shit. Yeah they were like dressed down way before grunge. This book was from 1984. I mean Mick Turner in this photo in the book was wearing the same clothes I was wearing. Dave was wearing something quite unique though.  Anyway I don't think I heard the band until they'd broken up. I have this tape, can't recall where it came from possibly a friend or a friend of a friend or an op shop I dunno. It's a Sony HF90 containing 3 Moodists classics Engine Shudder, Moodists & Thirsty's Calling. I'm listening to it right now and it's in fine condition. I prefer it to the CD compilation which came out in the 00s, things in the right place know what I mean? The Moodists were good at kinda building momentum from their  minimal repetitions that tended to swirl into some kind of intensity. Sometimes they had pop songs though didn't they? Influenced by the Velvets, The Stooges, The Birthday Party, PIL and maybe even Flipper. Some tunes are similar to other artists at the time Like The Gun Club, Dream Syndicate and maybe even The Triffids at their roughest.

Then it was this film clip on Rage (Australian all Night Music show), in around 1990, Robert Ford on Stage where Dave had a twirly mo and a beard. He looked like something out of Deadwood. This was very very strange at the time. Now walking through Northcote can be a bit like the set of Deadwood. I was showing my friends and my little sister the clip saying 'how fuckin great is this song?!' People couldn't get past the image, you know, they didn't look like the Stone Roses. I still love that song. By the time I was living in Melbourne in 1991 he was back from London I think and sometimes I could go and see him for free. Wasn't this guy a legend? I was seeing him for free on a week night at The Espy. Also up in the old piano bar at the Prince Of Wales, I loved that place. By 92 there were some records finally floating around and he was gettin played on the radio finally. He was really finally becoming a Melbourne cult thing. Everyone loved him.

The cover I originally had.

I guess what happened next was a little unexpected. In 1993 he had a top 40 hit with You're Just Too Hip Baby a beautifully soft and funky Doors influenced tune. Then the fabulous LP Night of The Wolverine was unleashed onto the public. JJJ had the single in their end of year top 100 and he was nominated for best alternative release at the ARIAs for the album. The LP is fuckn great from start to finish. Tracks like Mogambo, I Held The Cool Breeze, 3 Dead Passengers in A Stolen 2nd Ford, Maggie Cassidy, You Need To Suffer, I Remember You etc are all classics. Not one dud on the whole record! His songwriting was peaking and the band, man they were cookin. Beer, Scotch, death, cows, movie stars, country, city, Beat poets, cars, loneliness, dwellings, drunkenness, Grace Kelly, Jazz in 1950s Paris, Ava Gardner, Dope, Football, Serge Gainsbourg, Clarke Gable, outlaws and even the Beatles, it was all here and much more. Clare Moore on percussion, vocals and drums, Rod Hayward on guitar, Robin Cassinader on keys and other stuff and Andrew Picouleau on bass. Tex Perkins guesting on the centrepiece of the album Night of the Wolverine 2 which was in 3 parts and was 8 and a half minutes of pure pop heaven. This was a group recorded at an absolute peak of their powers. It's hard to desrcribe the music an almost Euro/Hotel Lobby Band/AOR/MOR feel with some kinda acoustic Australiana/Hollywood/Beatnik vibe played by the best band in the country who you felt could do anything and possibly would. It had an air of timeless sophistication and it was addictive as hell. That record's been played hundreds of times by me and I love it more each time I hear it. The melodies, the words, the band, the backing vocals, the arrangements......so cool!

I guess he also introduced me to some cultural icons like Serge Gainsbourg and now one of my favourite actors Warren Oates. After reading his terrific book 1001 Australian Nights I thought I'll have to dig out those CDs My Life On The Plains, Night Of the Wolverine, Soft & Sexy Sound but they were gone (too many share houses, robberies etc.). So he is one of the few artists I have bought their same record twice (rare company indeed only Beefheart, My Bloody Valentine and Roxy Music are in this category). Still can't find the first couple of records anywhere though. I'm not an E bay type of human yet. Other Graney records also could have made it here and certainly would be in my Aussie 100 list like The Soft & Sexy Sound, Hashish, Knock Yourself Out, We Wuz Curious etc. I am also diggin on the new one You've been On My Mind!

The cover of my 2nd copy.

   *I used a Dave Graney tongue ie. 'I was a country boy (boy was I country)'

 **There was a Coral Snakes tongue throughout the entire post actually.
***Interview with Clare more here at messandnoise

Primitive Calculators - Primitive Calculators

Glaring Omissions III

"We were suburban filth from Springvale"

Stuart Grant

Glaring Omissions started as a series of records that deserved to be in The Top 100 Australian albums book and the Age's Top 50 Australian Albums list. This is the 3rd installment with perhaps another 4 or 5 to come. This record came into my life as a teenager living in er....Cardross. For those who don't know that's like 15 KMs out of Mildura and over 600 ks from Melbourne. My bro was living in Melbourne and would often bring back strange and interesting things for me. This was pre JJJ National Radio/ pre internet etc. This record probably reached me pre Rage era perhaps. BeatBox and Rock Arena were probably the only 2 shows on tv at the time where you could hear the weirrd, wonderful and independent. So sometime in the mid to late 80s I first heard The Primitive Calculators. The LP also came with a postcard and a 7" single and was recorded in 1979 in a Melbourne pub. Many years after leaving home I asked my Dad where were the records I left behind? he said I gave them to the op shop. Anyway I still had a Sony C90 tape of it in some kind of working order until that reissue on Chapter came along in the 00s.

Me and my little sister used to put it on and go what the fuck is this? It was so anti social and noisy we thought it was hilarious and a bit frightening. Were they for real we wondered. Or were they just havin' a laugh. The music was a harsh onslaught of electroncly fucked with guitar, 2 keyboards and drum machines with what seemed like no regard for recording technique or er.. melody. Were there really people like this living in Melbourne? It was great music for a teenager because it was so obnoxious and fuckin funny. Mum didn't like hearing that one comin out of the bedroom.  Anyway over time it seemed to never leave me and never get old. It sounds just as great now as it did over 25 years ago. This was no fuckin' Clash record. This was beyond punk, what punk should have been, sonic violence for the demented. So over time I have noticed the chaos is more controlled than I used to think and just maybe there were some great pop songs hidden in there somewhere. It is not a record I expected to still be diggin at my age. I think I love it more than ever actually!

So maybe they are pop songs. Stuart says he saw the band as an Australian Boogie band in the vein of The Purple Hearts, The Throb, Chain and Billy Thorpe. It starts to make a lot of sense they were an electronic version of a one chord Aussie boogie band with a bit of Stockhausen chucked in. My favorite track from the album bake in the sun was so funny and had great lyrics. These are some I randomly recall probably not in the right order. This could be our national anthem.

I'm bake in the sun

I wanna spend my life down by the sea

I wanna shrivel up

I wanna smell some seaweed

I wanna peice of cake

I wanna go home

I wanna revolution

I don't wanna do another days work in my life

I want some food from the kiosk

"If their intention was to be hated then they certainly acheived that.....on a personal level as well"

Rowland S Howard (Guitar/Saxaphone/Vocals in The Birthday Party)




Back cover to Primitve Calculators LP


"Nothing else in Melbourne influenced us. We were such obnoxious little shits, we didn't give anybody a chance to like us" Stuart from Primitve Calculators.

Stuart Grant (guitar and vocals) in the We're Livin On Dog Food doco and RadioNational's Hindsight: Do That Dance radio show has been incredibly insightful and articulate about what circumstances, theories and attitudes shaped the band and that entire Melbourne Post-Punk scene. He really enjoyed the idea of punk and the fact it was saying something truly antisocial. He thought the anger and disillusionment of it just seemed right. He thought with the Ramones arriving there was a strong sense that his culture had arrived. Stuart aknowledges the legacy of the Whitlam Government and their making the dole liveable with my favorite quote of his."The State Paid us to Reject it!"

Stuart is eminently quotable. I could quote him all day but here is one last one that sums up the bands ethos.
"What we realised when we started using the drum machine and we got electronic (was that) we sounded much nastier. We started to actually try and make music that would hurt people. Making the sounds as brutal and horrible as possible. Making the drumbeats as repetitive and fast as possible and tried to get it ugly"

I Can't Stop It-The Primitive Calculators

Their one and only film clip I think.

"The Primitive Calculators were a completely unreal band and there's no 2 ways about it! Live and on record."

 Quote from Natioal Treasure Philip Brophy.

*One cool thing I've just noticed that I'd forgotten is that this record was recorded at Hearts in North Carlton where my brother's band did some gigs and even my old band played there once,

**Here is where to download that podacast Do That Dance about the Melbourne Post-Punk scene.

***Many quotes taken from Richard Lowenstein's doco We're Livin' On Dogfood. Thanks Dick I'm sure you won't mind anarchy and all that.

Coloured Balls - Ball Power

Glaring Omissions II

Ball Power

Coloured Balls

(1973)



This is the most glaring omission of them all from that book and The Age Top 50 Australian Rock Albums! Why? Well because it should have been NO. 1! How can this record remain so overlooked? It totally baffles me. This is the rockinist rock ever from the Antipodes.  It's likely to have influenced the most rockin' Aussie bands such as ACDC, Rose Tattoo, X, Radio Birdman, The Saints etc. Not many bands have been this on in the recording studio. They were at some kind of intuitive peak during the sessions for Ball Power. Proto-punk or proto-hard rock? Who really gives a fuck! It's got all you need from a rock record-mad grooves, slashing guitar, good times, speed, existential blues, experimental bits, a fuck you attitude and great songs. I can't believe every household doesn't have a copy. This record hasn't just transcended genre but time as well ie. It still sounds grouse as opposed to some of the other music made during this era. The All Time Ausralian Rock Stone Cold Classic.

R.I.P  GOD (Lobby Loyde)

* The LP only made it to number 13 on the charts.

** Out of The Age top 50 Australian Albums Coloured Balls directly influenced at least 10 of those albums without getting their own placing (rock experts, please!).



proto what? err.... bogan!



feedtime - feedtime (1985)

GLARING OMISSIONS PART I

I don't know where to start with these guys, but this has to be one of the great unheralded classics in the history of Australian Rock ( the only time I've come across them being discussed is by Americans). I've been thinking how the hell am I going to describe this record and do it justice?  So it's been weeks since I was originally going to include it. Suffice to say I don't think I've come up with much apart from 'This is a truly fuckn' unique record!'  They could be influenced by X (the great Australian band) or Wire, but I don't know for sure.  So they were a 3 piece from Sydney in the Eighties and this record was their first LP.  feedtime's hypnotic harsh minimal approach could perhaps be considered post-punk but maybe not. I see them more on the outside of everything. By the sounds of stories I've heard they might have been. There is definitely something menacingly about feedtime's music and it could be one of the greatest drivin'/bikin' records ever made, along with Snapper's records, Loop's Fade Out or ZZ Top in their prime. Whereas Loop were hairily over the top psychedelia, feedtime were a tight monolithic machine of a band with tinges of psych and blues (bottleneck on the guitar). Sometimes their music reaches such machine-like states I wonder whether it's still music at all.  I can't not think of Chuck Berry when I hear the lyrical dexterity of a track like Fastbuck: "I got a Pontiac, gasoline, grab the cash, split the scene."  They also had that serious/funny thing goin' on too. This is an unrivalled original of an LP.  Let the good times roll!