Bambino Melbourne Music Mafia

I was gonna go on an all Aussie trip with the bassists and there did seem to be a particular Australian style but the youtube's  annoying me. Maybe another time. Sorry Grant McLennen, Chris Walsh, Ian Rilen, Mark Lock, Mark Ferrie & Brian Hooper.  Geez how's that for a list. They will all eventually be members entered into my Aussie bassplayer phonebox of fame

A few years ago now I don't remember the exact year (2008?) but it seemed like Melbourne rock was really goin' great guns with top records by Beaches, Eddy Current, Ooga Boogas, Witch Hats, The Drones, Fabulous Diamonds all in the same year. Not forgetting the old garde Mr Cave & Mr Graney as well, who delivered the goods too. It seemed like it was gonna go through the roof in the following years but it didn't. Anyway no need to dwell on such ideas. Looking forward to new records from Ooga Boogas and Beaches if they still exist
.

Anyway it seems like there is a bambino Melbourne music mafia now. Twerps, Toatal Conrol, Eddy Current, Dick Diver, UV Race etc. You know they're all playing on one anothers records or producing them. Like the old Melbourne Music Mafia. The bambini have their own scene/quasi sylee/monopoly of cool/uncool now. Anyway I'm also even enjoying a Lost Animal track at the moment. The UV Race have become my favourite post Eddy Current Suppression Ring Band and I mean that as a compliment. Maybe the Melbourne scene will eventually go bananas like the old days, I hope so there seems to be some great talent about. The Bambini Rock (well some of em do).

The UV Race of the Bambino Melbourne music mafia with country connections.

                                                           

Martin P Casey Bassman

Shit I totally forgot about him. There's probably hundreds of tracks he's done and he's usually playing something beautiful, melodic and understated but he can also burst into the spotlight and be bass king. On early tracks like Native Bride, Dear Miss Lonely Hearts and Beautiful Waste he is doing the sweet and melodic thing as well as subtly driving those songs forward.

He's definitely the star of the show on that one. How evocative is it?! Also always reminded me of Blondie for some reason. That bass and keyboard combo is the sound of Australia's debilitating midsummer heat.

Hell Of A Summer

The Triffids

Here is Martin upfront again with a splendid jazzy almost fever like thing goin on.

My Baby Thinks She's a Train

The Triffids

Marty starting to get downright dirty and a little fonky. Totally fuckin suits him.

Property is condemned

The Triffids

Grinderman

I Don't Need You To Set Me Free

Not a dissimilar bassline to that Bad Seeds track Messiah Ward but this one is more to the fore.

Casey could come round and play that bassline for an hour and then I'd still want an encore. Kinda psychedelic, swirling and circular. His style is definitely unique and very versatile. You'd want him in  your group for sure. So cool.

* I could go on posting Triffids/Bad Seeds/Grinderman tracks all day. This is just a sampler of the great mans work that came off the top of my head. I didn't even get to Born Sandy Devotional or Let Love In.

Dull Smug Mum & Dad Mortgage/Renovation Rock

I'm on holidays at the moment so I decided for the first time in about a year and a half to put the radio on. The second song was by the Melbourne indie band (I think) The Twerps who I gave a go to once, couldn't see the point, kinda 80s Aussie/NZ indie vibe but I gotta say I quite liked it.

The Twerps: I don't hate them!

 Later on though I heard the worst fucking song ever. It was a boring schmindie tune. The lyrics were like some middle class turds explaining their 1st world problems to you. They were singing about paying the mortgage and not being able to go on a Bali holiday. Then I think there was a bit about ripping up the floorboards perhaps renovating. It was a bit like watching Getaway interspersed with a bank loan ad followed by one of those renovation shows. This was the pits. It wasn't funny. It wasn't angry. I couldn't detect any irony. They were just gonna write a song about their boring lives and sing and play it in a boring way. I don't think there was any art project pretention about it whatsoever. This is how rock has ended up right where it was supposed to take you away from ie.the domestic drudgery of ordinary daily life. Yeah I know MX80, Devo and Talking Heads sometimes sounded vocally bored but they were funny and the music was always fucking excellent, electrifying & exciting. Ordinary things have been subjects for rock many times before but never this badly and witless. I get the whole inverting of rock: Debbie Harry's awkward dancing, Elvis Costello lookin like a nerd, new wavers putting their knees together, cuties acting pure, virginal and innocent, the faux naivety of Beat Happening and Jonathan Richman. I still like glamour, weirdness, sex, gender issues, creatures from outer space, drugs, seedy stories, love, lust, creepiness, celebration, heartbreak, mentalness, the unthinkable, awkwardness, fantasy, the dodgy, being wrong, politics, cars, strange theories etc. This can all still be done in new and non-cliched ways. But fuck me if I ever wanna hear a song that sounds like a conversation at my friends house on a Saturday morning unless it's really bloody funny or is set to the the most incongruous music imaginable. I don't know what that band was called but I hate them and their dull smug mum and dad mortgage/renovation rock.

MX80 SOUND
At their funniest/most exciting when sounding bored.

Killer Bass

I don't mean to be so obvious but how could you go past this and didn't it get sampled a couple of times.

Bass Most Awesome!

Liquid Liquid

Cavern

Probably not an obvious choice but I used to love the bass in this.

Disappointingly the real clip not available.

The Buggles

Video Killed The Radio Star

I couldn't sign off without the greatest funk bassist of them all. It starts off slow then his bass starts bubbling up unexpectedly then eventually goes intergalactic by the end of this epic. Timeless bass gold.
Bootsy's Rubber Band
Munchies For Your Love

Gimme More Bass Man

Here's some more bass classics over at Blissblog

God I could on forever. Don't get me started Peter Hook, Tina Weymouth, The Contortions, Gang of Four, The Fall, The Moodists, ESG, The Slits, Ian Rilen, The Pop Group, 70s reggae, PIL, liquid Liquid, Joseph K, Can, every band from the 60s, Michael Henderson, Bootsy fuckin Collins, every soul/funk band from USA in the 70s, Paul McCartney, Fire Engines, Minutemen, Jon Entwhistle, Died Pretty, Pete Wells, Gary Gary Beers, Mark Ferrie, James Freud, Steve Hanley, Andy Rourke, Bruce Lose/Will Shatter, Debbie Googe, Grant McLennan, Steve Kilbey, Kim Deal........somebody stop me.

Just one Fleetwood Mac track

Me & the Mrs agreed on this one.

The Chain

Now this one is a bit more complicated because there' kinda 2 basslines. They're both great but that synth bass wow. Fucking awesome Nick Launay production and performances from Duffield and Freud.

The Models

I Hear Motion

Tracey Pew Bass

I Haven't read the new Wire issue yet on bass but I thought I'd put my Tuppence worth in anyway. Immediately what sprang to mind was Tracy Pew of The Boys Next Door/The Birthday Party. There's a reason why he's on the cover of that HITS compilation because he was the heart and soul of the band. He drove them and without him on bass they would have been nowhere and nowhere near as fucking great!

The first one I love is The Friend Catcher particularly when the guitar/clarinet/sax(?) end up following his bassline every now and then. I could post entire LPs but I'll spare you. Mr Clarinet and Happy Birthday are much tighter and clipped but no less effective. A Catholic Skin is so good for the most part it is just one bass note propelling the song forward. Hats On Wrong is a much looser Pew and an indication of what was to come, geez he was good.

Then there's The Red Clock where Rowland S Howard does the old Ozzy Osbourne trick of following his vocal melody with whatever Toni Iommi guitar is playing (or was it the other way around?), except with Rowland's vocals it's to Pew's bass.

King Ink is possibly Tracey Pew's finest moment of bass glory. It's just so fucking grimey, muck is pouring from his fingertips. Human Skin and electricity fusing for a pure expression of filth. How does he keep playing that bassline amongst the rest of the shitstorm that is going down in this song.

Zoo Music Girl's bassline is just dirty funky fun for all the family. I could go on. Tracey Pew's bass on Nick The Stripper and Figure of fun are killer. 

Lastly there's Yard off Prayers On Fire. This is fucking incredible. Pew plays the bluesiest and most lonesome bass I've ever heard in my life. I think it's the only time he ever played double bass on a Birthday Party record.                                                                            

John Whitney's Matrix III

John Whitney

Matrix III

1972

I was on a blog the other day and I never watch youtube clips of things I've never heard of, anyway this caught my eye. It was from 1972 and looked like something they might have shown down at the old Melbourne Cinemateque, then housed in a crappy little theatre at RMIT, in the early 90s. So I checked it out and it was incredible. So if you're only gonna watch one youtube clip from my blog this year make this the one. So this is some kind of Avant-Garde 70s Graphic Cinema. John & his brother James had started this kind of thing in back the 1940s. Take the trip man!

John Whitney

Permutations

1966

This one is six years earlier but just as nifti. Don't drop the brown acid man. John was quite famous I think and influential in computer graphics etc. and ended up interested in Eastern philosophy. Using mandala like meditations for his films. They're mesmerising! Great colours, circles, lines and dots.

Mixtapes again

Playground Mix 66-
Demdike Stare

Totally diggin this Playground Mix 66 by Demdike Stare. It comes from a Spanish website (I think) Playground Magazine. I once had a Demdike Stare record but didn't like it/give it much of a chance. Enjoying this mix so much and their musical tastes are up my alley making me reassess them, perhaps I should give them a second chance. Old faves Chrome, Branca and Cosmic Jokers mixed with unknowns (to me anyway) Jan Schaffer, Third Ear Band, Black Cat Bones and even one of their own tracks.

Then there are two (I don't think I've mentioned before) from Lunar Atrium aka Panabrite's blog. One is called Mix 3 Aquatic Sounds and is 25 minutes of the best underwater/aquatic library/oceanic documentary sounds you are likely to hear in such condensed form. At last check I had downloaded at least 12 aquatic themed records mainly from the Lunar Atrium site. Ever since I heard Sven Libeak's Inner Space LP many years ago I've been hooked on this kind of thing. I wish there was more of it out there. The mix includes Roger Davy, Eugen Thomas and Joel Vandroogenbroek amongst other luminaries of the library music scene. Choice.

Mix 3 Aquatic Sounds

Lunar Atrium

The other mixtape from Lunar Atrium is a fantastic cosmic synth mix with many arcane delights included. I think Phil Davies and Harry Ford are the only ones I know but that doesn't make it any less great. He's called it The Galaxyactivatorconnexionmix and it's every bit as quality as this years previously mentioned Lunar Atrium Mix.

Otherwise known as The Cosmic Synth Mix
From Lunar Atrium

Playground mix 73
by Mark Van Hoen.

This Playground mix 73 from Mark Van Hoen is much weirder than the last one on Pontone but no less interesting. Scott Walker on 16 rpm with Durrutti Column, Polysick, Cybertron and even Demdike Stare. What can I say this is one strange voyage. The wrong pills have been mixed with some bad punch and nobody knows what's lurking around the corner. Everything should turn out fine I think even if you're left a little disorientated.                                                                                                                         

blah blah blah.....

Reading Fiona Scott Norman's article in the doctor's waiting room about bucket lists last Friday made me laugh. She said her bucket list was going to be to write bucket list. I thought I'll go her one better by not even writing anything for my bucket list. Don't write in I realise the paradox of this statement. But she got me thinkin I hate that shit. "You really have to go to the French Riviera." Like it's gonna change my life. Uluru - that looks like a nice rock but fuck It'll be hot and it is just a rock

Great big very far away hot rock

Fiji's heat is just bearable because I'm only ever 1 minute away from a swimming pool or the sea. Don't get me started on extreme sports. But they're gnarly dude! What about a quick game of Tiddlywinks instead.

Hey kids you too could get this guy
down to his undies in a game of strip
Tiddlywinks! (me suspects he plays
to lose)

A game of homemade indoor golf where you have to get the ball into a cup after a spontaneously arranged obstacle course. There's no limit to the amount of holes, it could be just a two hole game or 73 holes. Afterwards you don't have to drink in a bar with a bunch of people who probably think they're better than you. You can can have a slab and or bottle scotch with your fellow players to the tunes of your choice. Jumping out of a plane - big whoop! How many people go to places that might be tourist attractions that are really interested in them or are just going because it has become an attraction for tourists.

 Don't get me started on tattoos what is goin on there? I never really had an issue with tatts until I watched a series of LA Ink. It's not about being cool or tough apparently. It's about having a really tedious story in the most earnest sense about something deep and oh so meaningful that's happened in your life and you are going mark this event with a tattoo. Then later when someone asks about your tatt you'll once again get to regale your fucking story as earnestly as possible. My God these people were taking themselves so seriously it was fucking demented. It made me never want get a tattoo but it also made me love those people who just got a tattoo for no reason, because they were bored or they were so drunk in Thailand they can't even remember why. I'm torn about not getting a tattoo or getting the most frivolous/meaningless tatt I can imagine (but will that then make a tedious storyteller about why I got such an absurd tattoo, uugghh! the conundrum!).

Problem solved I'll just go with this!

Primitive Calculators...a reprise.




Rare live colour photo of The Primitive Calculators in their attempt to hit the brown note.

I left out two quotes one from Stuart Grant:

"The utter negativity and the Nhilism of it was just absolutely intoxicating"

Listening to the band you really get that gleefull sense of the void.



Tracey could you just take off the
hat! It's not a goodlook. I'm not
even gonna mention the
mesh t-shirt.

Then there was this great quote from Rowland S Howard (The Birthday Party, These Immortal Souls, Solo performer etc.) which made me realise he wasn't an egotistical bitch:

"Even The Primitive Calculators who I loathed were unique. I can't think of anybody else around the world who was doing that kind of thing."

There will be a companion piece to The Primitive Calculators Glaring Omissions article on the Little Bands scene that they instigated. Denise (keyboards) might even get a word in in that article. The Beat Goes On!!!On & On!!!








Primitive Calculators in the late 70s wastelands of Melbourne.

*Thanks again ABC's Hindsight and Richard Lowenstein.