Music That I Like

IMPORTANT BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:56:00 +0000

Music That I Like is no more. Thank you for all your support.

This blog has moved wholesale to the new Brisbane music-based website COLLAPSE BOARD

I will be leaving the archives up here.

Song of the day - 158: 8 Eye Spy

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:23:00 +0000

Anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the Music That I (Really) Love will catch the reference in the name right away.

It's a tribute to one of Lydia Lunch's seminal No Wave bands from back in the early 80s. (Actually, I think they were more Beefheart-influenced jazz skronk than straight No Wave, but we'll let that pass.) (Note to self: ban use of the word 'seminal'.) Lydia who? Oh come on...

I digress. Time Kevin from the ever-wonderful Yr Heart Out blog tipped me off to this bunch of Chinese femme pop provocateurs, 8 Eye Spy. In his blog entry he said he was first drawn to a video of theirs on YouTube by chance, intrigued by the possibility of a Chinese tribute band to 8-Eyed Spy... as we all would be right? Even the most rudimentary of listens proves there's more going on than that. Kevin actually sent me the link with the comment "the spirit of UT lives on", in reference to my known total love for this forgotten trio of NYC iconoclasts from the 80s, who I must have watched antagonise audiences on at least 50 occasions. It has the same skewed angry fuck-you attitude, and wonderful abrasive guitar sound, and vaguely tortured vocal. UT who? Oh, come on...

I wrote about UT extensively here. For anyone interested in The Trail, they were the band I immediately thought of when I first heard Babes In Toyland. I'm digressing again. There's a totally awesome comment underneath the next video of 8 Eye Spy in YouTube which absolutely sums up what it was like to be a fan of UT in the 80s (weird that it never really applied to being a fan of Babes In Toyland now I think on it: it couldn't have simply been because the music press TOLD people they should like them? Nah...).

The comment? "Wow, you guys fuckin SUCK."

Ha ha ha ha ha.

It seems like China (8 Eye Spy are from Nanjing) has a pulsating DIY music scene to rival even that of Brisbane. I was aware that there was some fierce femme punk rock happening over there, but... No Wave to rival James Chance? Whoa.

Someone over at the Discontent blog has posted a mix-tape (and explanation) of this music which I'm downloading in delirious anticipation. Here's the link.

And I think I've just found 8 Eye Spy's Chinese MySpace page - if it's not them, it's someone equally as rad, so go and have a listen.

a plug for something you really ought to think about attending if you live in or near Brisbane

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:31:00 +0000

Actually, it's not so much a plug as a lazy-ass link.

But Eternal Soundcheck has long been one of my favourite blogs - and a primary motivation behind wanting to create Collapse Board - and, uh, I don't know. Matt shoots intriguing video documents of Brisbane's DIY underbelly, the sort of stuff that rarely gets written about anywhere... and yet, here it is, in grainy, glorious moving colour with sounds and stuff.

For example.

And now you have a chance to experience it all on a big screen on 16 September. For one night only.

I would have posted this before, but I was still bitter Matt only wanted The Legend! with The Deadnotes to perform (which can't happen, sadly) not The Legend! solo. (Um, not that I blame him.)

Oh, and I should also give a shout-out to my ace music blog students, whose new blog entry jogged my memory about this.

Song of the day - 157: Johanna Buccola

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:03:00 +0000

Ah, this song 'Stockholm Syndrome' is just great.

Laidback, groovy. Turntable movements slipping in and out of view. A backing track that recalls 'Us And Them' from the Pink Floyd album I sometimes pretend I don't own. Slipping through the other side of consciousness. Makes me think of Ann Magnuson and Kid Koala simultaneously. Can detect the hand of my old sparring buddy Steve Fisk in there somewhere. Spoken word, easy - mentions of emergency wards jar. No joking. Really ought to no messing about be on Ninja Tune or someone similar. Just killer, the pace, the beat, the mood, the lyrics, the flirting with disaster.

You can hear it on Johanna's new MySpace page. And you really ought to no messing about should.

Johanna (sometimes known as MC Sweet Pea) appears to be a minimalist performance artist from Seattle and NYC or thereabouts. Here's a video of hers I found at random on YouTube.

Marvelous, simply marvelous. 'Stockholm Syndrome' quite makes me want to go back and listen to Pink Floyd again, no disrespect to any of the concerned intended.

Song of the day - 156: Laura Borealis

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 01:24:00 +0000

...so I receive these emails from a Canadian lady called Laura Borealis and the gist of them is, well, let's have a look...

"I think when you stayed at my place interviewing Sloan it wasn't mentioned that I made music. I've never been signed, 20 years running- a clean record."
No, it wasn't. The place was in Halifax, Vermont (a very snowy town in the far north east of America) the year was 1993 or thereabouts, and I was known as a scene-maker at the time: record companies would frequently fly me to various cities around America in the hope I could repeat the fluke I had with Seattle. I wasn't into Sloan particularly, their music seemed quite ordinary if genial enough, but they seemed like nice lads: and when I made up the entire interview later because I'd lost the tape they didn't complain. Too much. Laura stood out. Even through the years of drunken black-outs and thousands of new 'friends'. I have no idea why. I didn't write about her music because it wasn't my place.
So I wrote back, "Sure, I remember you - you did modelling, or something similar, right? Either that, or you were a PhD student. I like the Rick James cover a lot. Would it be possible to send me a couple of MP3s or something?".

"Good memory! I was going to do my MFA in Chicago soon after your visit. I wish I had modelled. The closest I came to that was attending some terrifying classes at Casablancas in Chicago . It was there that professor Rande Gerber applied my makeup while I encouraged him to call up Cindy Crawford after her recent divorce. I'm usually behind the camera. I directed some music videos for Sebadoh etc. Glad you like the Rick James. I love the [1981] album Street Songs."

Then I wrote something back but lost the email (probably asking if she'd like to hear some of my own music, because I'm shameless) and Laura responded thus...

"Thanks for asking for some mp3s. I'm so happy you like the Rick James cover. My friend Steve Raegele (ex-Besnard Lakes) did a very sensitive Teena Marie. I hope to one day have a complete covers album. Let me know if you want to hear more than four songs. I have four or five albums and an EP. The French Le Look album (2010) is the most current project, although I want to re-do my folk stuff more rock before Christmas ... I made a few concept albums, and 'Crumbling Heart' is from an album of duets with nine different guys, where I wrote songs tailored to them, as a way to cope with my divorce. Get nine guys to sing how much they love me. That album is called I Love You (2009)."

"I was remembering about Sloan that I dated Steve Albini after [Sloan singer] Chris Murphy, and it was then that steve wrote "The Problem With Music" and he slagged Sloan in that article partly because he was my ex. Here are some links to some of the music videos I have directed."

So I wrote... I sure would like to hear more of your music Laura. I like the 'Fire And Desire' cover most still, for your singing, but the others are real nice. [Now, I actually prefer her song 'GI Joe', from the 2000 album Funderful]. Although I wasn't sure about the one with the talking on, at the start. For some reason you stood out on that visit to Sloan town, more so than the actual band. Whatever. Everything's in the dim and distant past."

"Thanks Everett, I'm going to listen to the songs you sent today. I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad you remember me. I should have been brave and given you a tape back then. But I'm happy to exchange songs now. 'Snob Shop - Foxy Inc' was from my first album, a pink 10-inch vinyl. Then shortly afterward, after I sold one at a record store on St Marks and Printed Matter in NYC, Soul Asylum put out 'Frustrated Inc' or 'Misery'."

Time goes by. Laura is kind enough to praise some of my songs. I send another email.
"I listened to all of your songs three times in a row earlier today. I think I might be developing a crush on your singing self."

That's it. End. You should go and check her music out. It's very intimate and rewarding and human and beautiful and coloured with violins and stuff like that. Bye.

Song of the day - 155: The Like

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 01:24:00 +0000

Obviously, I hate everything about this group, but the music and production and playing on this album (courtesy of Amy Winehouse's producer and backing band) is quite exemplary, and...

...I'm glad I'm not the only one who misses the original Pipettes.

This is Wendy James-level desperate, and Transvision Vamp-level good.

Now, maybe if Mark Ronson and the Dap-Kings could find a decent singer to front their killer sound...?

(Incidentally, their 'live' acoustic version of 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow' is an absolute travesty, but I guess it doesn't have Ronson present to gloss over that horrible, self-satisfied, smugly soulless voice.)

Song of the day - 154: Winston Echo

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:07:00 +0000

Winston Echo. He makes Daniel Johnston sound like Daniel Johnston.

He makes Clive Pig sound like Clive Pig. He makes Lesbo Pig sound like Lesbo Pig. (See what I did there?) He makes Ivor Cutler sound indubitably like Ivor Cutler. And so on. He doesn't like folk making jokes along the lines of "Is there an Echo in here" when he plays live. He's an unwanted pip. He believes in the magic of whistling, and in the magic of Jad Fair. He sent me a bunch of his new lonesome songs - which you can find over here - but when I went to link to one of them, I was entirely distracted by this old homemade animation on YouTube (which makes Dan Luscombe look like Dan Luscombe, for all you Mess And Noise fans). So here it is.

Winston Echo. He once interned for me, you know.

Song of the day - 153: Grinderman

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:32:00 +0000

Ask, and lo, it shall be delivered!

I'm a frabjocilous fool sometimes. I've been a-whining and a-griping that no one's bothered to send me the new Grinderman, and there it's been, a-sitting in my email inbox for a week now. Sitting there, slightly festering and mouldy, and angry at my complete lack of know how, no way. Bangs alive, but I love the Internet sometimes. So I can't recite for you my thoughts on whether the new album is a goodie or a stinker yet because I've only heard.seen this one song, live on Ed G's wide-screen television... well, if this was anyone else I would, so what's stopping me? Am I Australia's Most Hated Music Critic or what?

So yes, the new Grinderman album has humour. Yes, it rocks. Yes, the beards are out-of-control and Miss AMP's male menopause is to the front. Yes, Cave enunciates. Yes, there is plenty of wah-wah. Yes, there are gunshots and girls sitting in bath tubs sucking their thumbs. Yes there is timing. Yes, it pulls the same tricks as it pulled last time around only with three times as much aplomb. Oh wait. There's no 'No Pussy Blues'. But it does boast one splendiferous, churning gut-wrencher of a promotional video, to whit:

I was most amused when YouTube made me agree to viewing "possible inoffensive content" before viewing this video. I mean, Mumford & Sons this is not. Love the laser beams sparking from the eyes of Ellis and Cave. Love the Buddha dancing. Love the topless black female Jesus. Love the gladiator costumes. Love the pornographic poetry.

Oh yes, this is my song of the day. No doubt.

Song of the day - 152: Black Diamonds

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:28:00 +0000

It would be ridiculous not to list one of the many incredible bands I unearthed in my research for my new Something Awful column.

It's called Everett True's Australian Garage Rock Primer, and many of the recommendations came directly from a thread on the Mess And Noise message board, so props to all involved. And props to my editor at SA also, who actually bothered to find the links for around three dozen bands, so you can sift through and delve at your leisure. Thought I'd give you this one to start with, Black Diamonds - 'I Want, Need, Love You' (which you can find on the unbelievably fine Ugly Things 1 compilation).

(from the Black Diamonds' Myspace page)

Hailing from the coal mining town of Lithgow in the Blue Mountains district of New South Wales (approximately 145 kms west of Sydney) The Black Diamonds were one of the most enduring Australian Rock & Roll bands of their era. When you include their later incarnation as Tymepiece, the group managed to have a foot in three decades — the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. But criminally, during their tenure as the Black Diamonds they only got to release two singles — a little over ten minutes running time for nearly a decade of slog. (And this was a band who could boast of being able to play for 48 hours straight without repeating a song!) Still, what the Black Diamonds’ discography lacks in weight it more than makes up for in class. From the lush, dynamic power-pop of Not This Time and See The Way to the dreamy Outside Looking In — every track that the Black Diamonds released was a gem. Though for punk fans of course, it is their first B-side — the seething fuzz masterpiece I Want, Need, Love You — for which the Black Diamonds will always be remembered. And why not? I Want, Need, Love You is pretty much as good as it gets. -- Ian D. Marks

You can call it freakbeat if you want, or garage rock, garage beat, whatever. Damn it's great. Well worth the $300 (US) amazon are currently asking for it.

Song of the day (Australia) - 151: Super Wild Horses

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:19:00 +0000

I've mulled and mulled over this. I want to include present-day Australian bands I love in this mini-series, otherwise it wouldn't be representative - but I've already written about dozens here.

I've written about Melbourne's Super Wild Horses as well, but they have their debut album Fifteen out this week or something, so it seems churlish not to follow up my original blog entry, especially as they exhibit so much (imagined) promise. It's imagined promise as I still haven't seen them play live yet because they always seem to play after midnight, thus neatly cutting out jaded old dudes like myself from their audience, as we have to be in bed by nine or our lives explode into merriment. So, yeah.

I was going to hold back from praising their album, actually. I listened to it three times straight, was put off by the entirely ridiculous and ill-founded claim on Mess And Noise that the first track sounds like Gories covering Suicide - if only! - and was all prepared to write a diatribe about how most Melbourne bands and writers are too fucking cool for school and I think I'm starting to prefer Sydney anyway, and how the production on this from that Eddy Current Suppression Ring dude is way, way too one-dimensional... and we ain't even talking a dimension I particularly like. In other words, I couldn't hear dynamics, all I could was the same trick applied to the drum sound that ECSR apply to their drum sound, and half the time it sounded like a vaguely inferior version of Melbourne's proto-Riot Grrrls Matrimony anyway - too polite, too slick (which just WON'T do on a garage record).

But then I heard this, for the fourth time.

(Which, as it transpires, is the first single to be lifted from the album.)

And fuck me if everything didn't slot into place. I still find it odd the way the vocals don't grate, and the way the guitars don't serrate, but I think all that was happening before was that I was looking in the wrong place for my garage fix. I was expecting something like the Gories or Shop Assistants (yeah, thanks Mess And Noise!) or perhaps The Gun Club. Now, that ain't what this is about at all. Give it a listen. It's The Fastbacks! It's Dolly Mixture! It's every ace local band you ever wanted to see wrapped up into one tumultuous stripped-back whole, with drums that rattle and guitars that rattle and vocals that shout blissfully into the distance. I can certainly hear the influence of Love Of Diagrams and Beaches in there, and one of those forgotten early 90s post-grunge American bands (Lotion, I'm looking at you). It still disappoints me, the way that everything that isn't the Gories still disappoints me, but Bangs alive, that ain't hardly Super Wild Horses' fault!

I still miss Melbourne.

a new Deadnotes + The Legend! song

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 07:18:00 +0000

I swear to Bangs, this is just about the most incredible piece of music I've ever been associated with!

It reminds me of, variously, ATV, loneliness, The Door And The Window, useless energy, Lindsay Cooper, fierce skills, The Red Crayola, that scary bloke who always seems to pin you down with his eyes when you get on the tube, the more avant-garde side of Half-Japanese... and way more besides. Stuart's trumpet is just fucking incredible. I was going to write that it's only the vocals that let this down but... fuck it, I really like my vocals on this. Starts off a little slow, but really fucking hits the mark around six minutes, and keeps going.

Here's your link. Don't say I never treat you.

P.S. I just got a correction from Sandra, crediting all the instruments properly. (Man, you'd think I'd know, being there and everything!) I really couldn't figure out at all who was playing what where on that track. I reckoned Leighton had to be playing the drums, but even I realised he had to be playing the clarinet... so it had to be Eugene on the delightfully loose, almost Turkish army drumming. But then I couldn't figure out who the hell was wandering around doing the live effects (it was all recorded live, on one microphone), if Stuart was playing trumpet and Sandra was playing sax somewhere...

Turns out the "incredible trumpet" I'm referring to above is actually Sandra's sax - so apologies, and major props for that. As Sandra explains, "Stuey is hardly playing trumpet at all in that one... part from right near the end. For most of it, he was mixing the effects on my sax. Anyway, doesn't matter, just thought maybe you were thinking of a different song or something?"

No, right song. I just have cloth ears sometimes!

Song of the day (Australia) - 150: Witch Hats

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:52:00 +0000

I've thought about this next entry, a lot. (Did you miss me?)

I want to balance out this series of being Australian with old and new, otherwise I'd just pack it with Lighthouse Keepers and Hummingbirds B-sides. And I can't find a link to Melbourne's own proto-Riot Grrrls Matrimony... oh wait. That's a lie. Here's their MySpace page. Let's not get too diverted, though. I want to post something current today, OK?

So here's my interview with Kris from Witch Hats from The Vine, last year.

Blah blah blah. Quit fucking with the atmosphere. Creatures soaked in alcohol forgot to get their stomachs full. He was crippled by the boredom of his decisions. You’re starting to make me think, about the bloodstains in ma kitchen sink. Blah blah blah.

There’s a moment in the interview that follows when Kris Buscombe – the suave, self-lacerating singer with Melbourne’s Witch Hats – accuses me of not being able to count when it comes to detailing how many songs are present and incorrect amid the sensurround sleaze of his band’s new EP, Solarium Down The Causeway. He’s wrong to do so. I’m perfectly able to count: five blistering originals, and one that’s a direct rip from Boys Next Door’s second album. Oh, whatever.

As I (approximately) wrote on my very own blog, sometime during the week: I want to shout this band’s name from the balustrades, proclaim in every pungent barroom and unfinished street in the land, bow down to their vicious, sullen beauty and insouciant swagger, fuck with the dregs of humanity and call it a new religion. I want to roll through the crowds, ducking and scowling, punching the chaff aside. I want to dance naked in the fire-light, calling and carousing, and giggling insane as the house collapses round my feet. I want to lie sprawled on the stairs, tinnitus pounding a rhythm to my brain. I want everyone to know, everyone to know about The Majesty That Is Witch Hats. I don’t ever want this feeling to die away again.

Interview follows. My questions are in bold, in case you can’t tell the casual geniuses apart. And I’m the one originally from the UK, now living in Brisbane.

1. Your new EP Solarium Down The Causeway was recorded in California. This leads us to our first three-part question –

1.1 What’s wrong with Victoria?
Apart from being a gigantic eroding paddock, months away from apocalyptic fire, Victoria is OK. When you are away on some crazy tour in California, wanting to record music in California, you record in… California! An excited gang of Australian dicks ending a three-month American tour, foaming with new music to record – an audio documentation of our first international tour. Let’s cross “band writes album on the road” off the to-do list of clichés. By the time we piled into the concrete tomb of a milk factory they call The Creamery (a warehouse recording studio in Oakland), we were in perfect mental condition: deranged, tortured musical soldiers pulling into port, bound by temporal insanity floating face down in the trenches.

?? Anyway…

Our tour manager kindly ‘borrowed’ almost all of our money and had flown home without us. Things were getting pretty hairy but the recording managed to maintain a sense of celebration. Prior to this tour we’d only played in Australia, rarely doing more than one show a week. The boy at the recording desk was passing out during takes and our guitarist got a case of gout. He was limping around with a flagon of black cherry juice trying to cure him self. We also managed to fire a pistol out of a skylight in the ceiling.

That is all I remember really.

1.2 Which building are you specifically referring to in the EP title?
It’s not a building, Everett. Maybe they are in the UK – thousands of people lining up for a bit of artificial sunlight? [Fuck you, it so is. A “room built largely of glass to afford exposure to the sun”, to be Wikipedia precise – ET]

I’d seen some ‘California babes’ sunbathing on beach towels – not at the beach but in the Los Angeles Terminator 2 aqua ducts. The title makes a vague and confused reference to that. It’s also part of a lyric in ‘Fucking With the Atmosphere’ where its meaning changes and becomes a metaphor for looking back on an event with contrasting perspective. “What is that doing down there?” But more than anything, it’s just some words I liked the sound of put together!

1.3 Why the fuck aren’t you influenced by Animal Collective? What’s up with that?
I’ve never heard their music. To make an assumption from pictures I’ve seen of that band in magazines I’d ask, are they part of all that Internet dork music?

2. Your new EP Solarium Down The Causeway features the sort of music that makes critics want to use the following words: caustic, spiky, post-punk, rotten. This leads us to our second three-part question –

2.1 What’s wrong with Australia?
“Don’t get me started on the western lifestyle in Australia! I hate it although it’s all i ever wanted!”

I couldn’t think of an entertaining way to answer this question so I asked a crazy Lebanese woman and received the strange answer above.

2.2 What is the most musically fertile period you’ve been exposed to?
When I was 14 or 15 years old, I went to see Foo Fighters play at Hobart Festival Hall. Opening for them that night was a band called 50 Million Clowns who played music unlike anything else I’d heard at that point. It was so un-musical in a piercingly interesting way. Like discovering a giant X in the desert sand and instantly digging, I discovered a wealth of Tasmanian bands like The Stickmen and Sea Scouts after this experience.

These bands sparked my interest in music when I was a teenager sneaking into bars witnessing totally unique visceral rock music played by very strange-looking people in bad clothes. That was my light-bulb moment.

2.3 Why the fuck aren’t you influenced by Radiohead? Don’t you want to be making money?
I dunno, why the fuck aren’t we? Cause they are a mentally bloated mixture of awful genres? Cause they look like you’d fall asleep talking to them? Actually I don’t know anything about Radiohead that’s probably why. Maybe people with wonky eyes shouldn’t play music? As far as money goes, I’ve written four songs on the new Powderfinger record. This funds my less commercial endeavours. I also wrote three Silverchair songs in the mid-90s.

3. Your new EP Solarium Down The Causeway contains five songs, some longer than others. It sounds like it might have been made by a band from Melbourne, if you get my meaning (and not many do). This leads us to our first five-part question –

3.1 What’s wrong with Brisbane?
Brisbane is OK. Are you referring to those odd emails I sent you ages ago? I was surprised someone like you would choose to live there, lumping you in with the stereotypical view of pasty British people whinging about heat and stuff. I guess it’s a bit backwoods up there but most of Australia is.

3.2 Are the five songs contained therein written around specific incidents, and if so please elucidate. And if not, please elucidate.
There are actually six songs if you look carefully! I’ll try and give a brief synopsis of each one. The themes are kinda messy:

3.2.1: 'Stomach In Your Hair'
Glowing out the window, darts of fire taking off, bits of plastic melting in the heat, dumb music floats across the street as confused drunks attack a house with their stumbling bodies ‘tripping’ in every direction. Sometimes I get flashes of a thousand different nights hit me in a blur-inducing fever.

3.2.2: 'Check the Center'
This song is about zombies who demand flesh medium-well, preying on sun burnt people ‘bronzing on the brown sand’.

3.2.3: 'Pleasure Syndrome'
There’s a bunch of random themes here. One day is a dart thrown into a calendar. I can’t be bothered elaborating much on it. Play it in reverse for a backwoods sound.

3.2.4: 'Fucking With the Atmosphere'
I’ve answered this one in an upcoming question.

3.2.5: 'Sessa (son of a silo salesman)'
I kept catching segments of surreal American television shows on the tour that led me to believe (after getting several stories mixed up) Howard Hughes strangled someone to death with a telephone chord. I got the name ‘Sessa’ from a flirtatious and inviting message some mysterious 14-year-old girls left attached to our tour van in Milwaukee.

3.2.6: 'I’m Paroling'
This is a brief story about someone getting out of gaol in 2008 during the Olympics. What the fuck?

3.3 Most noise bands sound like their songs are going to fall into ‘War Pigs’. Yours sound like they harbour a desire to mate with ‘Nick The Stripper’. This pleases me, because I’m old. Fair comment, and does it still please you while you’re young? Please elaborate. Who is Phill Calvert? I know, but other people might not. Please elaborate.
We’ve had Birthday Party tags thrown at us for a long time for lots of reasons. They are an influence for sure but no more than say The Fall, The Scientists or The Beatles. Actually the guitars would be the key. Thanks Rowland.

Of course working with Phill Calvert invites further comparison. Phill Calvert was their original powerhouse drummer who parted ways with [The Birthday Party] before they recorded their last two EPs. He is a tremendous fellow who I’m pleased to call a close friend. He’s been a huge help for years now in lots of areas. He’s also got the coolest house I’ve ever seen (a swanky converted church) that he shares with his lovely wife Julia.

3.4 ‘Fucking with the Atmosphere’ – is it about that I suspect it’s about?
Most people think its addressing environmental concerns (nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Gary) in song form. It’s actually a snide attack on someone who was bothering me immensely at the time of writing it. It’s an insult song to a particular person, my ‘Idiot Wind’ perhaps.

3.5 Have you all got a belly full of fire?
There is a small fire warming a Caramelo Koala leaving room for Fredo the frog.

4. Your new EP Solarium Down The Causeway is out, presumably some time around now. I have the word association game for you to play now. Type the first three sentences that come into your head upon seeing the following words...
4.1 Sadism
4.2 Satire
4.3 Stomach
4.4 Sinister
4.5 CelluliteCraig was acting irresponsibly when he danced on that soiled package of lumpy biscuits. I wasn’t using satire I was deadly serious in that song you’re thinking of, leaving IOU’s in Chocolate girls envelope bursting with fat bloated cellulite fingers making contents for your stomach. It’s not sinister to marinating in your own sadism.

5. Your new EP Solarium Down The Causeway is not any of the following (list five, in full)...
5.1 Used by Greek women as a musical contraceptive.
5.2 Dangling proudly from Flavor Flav’s neck as he snorts coke from Morgan Freeman’s ear.
5.3 Found in US Marine ‘Welcome aboard Yankee’ gift packs.
5.4 Having sex with a comatose television addict, asleep on a burnt couch.
5.5 A dart thrown into a calendar with plans to flunk a course in propaganda.
Everett True

Back when I was a working critic (part two)

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:51:00 +0000

I'm trying to avoid working here, so here's another excerpt. Taken from 2001, I believe.

FRIDAY AUGUST 17 2001
Clever, friendly and articulate, I notice I have no memory of the events that transpired more than three days hence. The sun beats down upon a town of ingrates and foreign students, each more desperate than the last. Headlines read of Helen from Big Brother's fondness for television and porridge in both the downmarket tabloids and 'intelligent' broadsheets. Everywhere is sound bite city. I think perhaps that I am old, or just misanthropic. The world is so much prettier through a picture frame, so I refuse to leave my room. Fireworks explode with a monotonous regularity and I cannot wait for Fireworks Night because if there's one thing I love it's monotony. My fiancée travels every day on a train she hates to a place she hates to a job she mostly hates. Two years ago we would have been sipping whiskey in the Punters Club, alive with the possibilities of a new country, and travel. Publishers want to publish a bastardised account of my life story, celebrity as flipped on its head and exposed for the sham it is, but I feel too disconnected to even bother lying now. I used to call it glamour. Perhaps I possessed some: but increasingly I cannot understand why I should view life except through the screen of a Gameboy console. My book has slipped out, and no one cares, me least of all. I knew the bullies and braggarts would win: Charles Cross with his magical ability to recreate the thoughts running through Kurt's head as he killed himself, Charles Cross and his ability to keep his mouth shut in the right places so he is rewarded with the journalist's prize of prizes, the dead star's journals. I receive emails from Tobi, desperately upset at the intrusion into her life. I'm a critic, not a journalist, and I'd never want to be included with that breed. Sure Courtney betrayed me, but then she never did understand the word loyalty or indeed the meaning of FUN. I'm all for rock revisionism, but not if it means that all I lived through was as dull as some have gone and painted it.

In the evening, I visit the Concorde 2 bar in the company of my sweetheart, and stand in the drinking section among the bright lights and purple walls as some timid boy goes through the routine of playing rock music on a stage several feet away from us in another room. We are too disconnected: me too cynical and wary of sounds that have been made many times before, her tired from the process of living. Sparklehorse are fine, especially when they flick a switch and the guitars light up like Brighton Pier on a summer evening, like Dinosaur Jr made ridiculously easy. I don't like the ones where he mumbles into his beard and beer because I personally can do that sort of stuff much better, although nowadays I like to sing brash and loud like a camp Philip Schofield auditioning for the lead in 'Cats'. It's emotional, it's sensitive, it's moving, and we leave after 20 minutes.

During the night, I would imagine that I searched the Internet for three hours for a new mention of myself, even my book, but no. The only review I've received was a full page pasting in The Times - that bastardised soap opera of an imitation newspaper - that couldn't even be bothered to get my name right. The review made me laugh because it was funny and so clearly didn't understand the thrill of DANCING. The review made me angry because I hate people who don't understand the thrill of DANCING.

I want to regress to a point where I no longer stare at blank walls.

SATURDAY AUGUST 18
Here's what makes me happy: badminton. When did the world stop laughing? It's the only time each week that I feel fulfilled, hitting a damn piece of plastic around a too-bright court, hampered only by my inability to move my wrist. I would play for eight hours a day, if I could, and afterwards drink deeply on a Stella Artois, secure in the knowledge that at last I have done something of worth. We play with a market trader and his driving instructor wife, a lady who's had a few near misses recently. There is no secret, no guest list and no kudos to be had from choosing who and who not to speak to. There is the sweetest music to be heard: the sound of 1-0, 0-1 first serve, 0-1 second serve, 1-1 and so on - plus the odd frustrated bark of comment. That is music, my friends.

In the evening - skimming past days spent in bloody DIY stores and painting doors several shades of white and maybe cooking a mustard beef joint - we break routine, and visit the Hanbury Ballroom. Quasi are playing and this is an occasion for joy, especially as there is no support band just a mausoleum room full of friendly sorts all shy and happy to have braved the rain and ventured out. My nights are filled with referencing the I Love Music message board at greenspun.com where it seems there is nothing more important in life than that which we choose to make important. Two bands are mentioned a fair amount, the White Stripes and the Strikes or Strokes or something, because of course most of these correspondents are NME and ex-Melody Maker readers. The former has just two members and play rock music, fancy! So I boast and I brag and I even tell a few sorts that I will witness Quasi but no one is impressed and that makes me love the band even more because such casual brilliance is always swiftly ignored. I stand down the front and I dance solidly and rather spastically alone all evening. Sam batters his keyboard into several shades of submission and even plays my favourite Seattle, three AM and those damn immigration bastards have turned away my girlfriend from America, soundtrack moment upon request - 'It's Hard To Turn Me On'. (It most certainly is.) Janet drums like the goddess of my dream - or at least similar in spirit (if not style) to Allison, my first ever rock drummer - and is always inventive, always having fun. Those minor chords churn my insides, and the melodies leave my reeling in a cornucopia of bedazzlement. Bedazzled, that's the only song I want to write. It's like seeing the Shop Assistants during the 80s, the same overwhelming sense of euphoria.

Afterwards we troop merrily and a trifle blearily through Kemp Town - surprisingly rejuvenated and clearly gone upmarket since my last visit, with Ninety Nine several months back - until we reach a Thai Restaurant, wherein we drink red wine and I ask Sam and Janet several pertinent questions barring the only one I wanted. This band are better than Nirvana, honestly, trust me I do this for a fucking (part) living, right? Afterwards Charlotte remarks that she expected Janet to be warmer, but I imagine the Portland lass has met people like me before... actually, that's unlikely. (I mean fans.)

If only I worked conversation into all this then I too could be parading my dull insecurities in the pages of Heat alongside the mass.

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 22
Another review has appeared, in the Independent On Sunday, one that mentioned authenticity and drink and memory loss and enthusiasm and Angels of Death like they were the only things in life that mattered. Four stars, and a lovely summing up, but the review was short and the review was brief and I strongly suspect the writer might be an old friend so that doesn't count as it merely proves the point that the only people who could possibly enjoy my writing as those who know me anyway. Mick Houghton doesn't send me the Mercury Rev album even though I ask him once. Virgin Books advise that there is no possible way they can let me have more review copies to send out - at my own cost - because, hell, they've done more than enough in the pursuit of a hopeless cause anyway. I'm currently fluctuating between numbers 40,768 and for one heady moment 3, 412 on the amazon.co.uk chart. Borders have sold at least two copies, but again, each to people I know. Good job I have such a large family.

During the day, perhaps I interview five famous imaginary animals for Rank magazine (no pay, but hell the abuse they give me more than makes up for that) - thus taking away from myself my one conversational gambit. I'm fed up of saying oh I have eight books on the go because that is patently a lie that doesn't even interest me any more. I have to write a Ramones biography by February so I ought to think about it soon and if Vision On ever decide to call me again perhaps a fanzine-based (Legend) compendium will appear but... frankly, it's not the most exciting way to continue a conversation. Much better to tell your new neighbours on either side as you sip French beer in small bottles and discuss the loneliness of touring with the former Alien Sex Fiend soundman that you have the imaginary animal scenario happening. Someone suggests I should return to writing for fanzines and I'm too tired to argue, as long as they don't fuck too much with my lifestyle by offering money or anything.

In the evening I am in a state of high anticipation, this being the moment the previous two weeks have been lived for - no, not badminton, that comes along tomorrow and sure I want that, but this is even rarer, a gig populated by females mainly and featuring bands who I know and like. I turn up at the Komedia outrageously early, drink in a solitary manner and am rewarded for my pains with an evening high on dudgeon and backbiting. These are of course my favourite evenings. Sarah and Maggie from The Bangs tell me that they call David Feck 'Daddy' Feck and this makes me laugh immensely mainly because I'm so drunk and have such a crush on Sarah and Maggie from The Bangs momentarily. Sarah Dougher imparts many words of sweet wisdom to me and I remember none of them, except how in awe I am of her sweetness and simultaneous sternness. I hope I said nothing bad, but suspect I did. The Gossip are like the Make Up, Mecca Normal and Sleater-Kinney all rolled into one so I hate them until they start spitting hatred at the ridiculously favourable crowd. Of course Jon Slade is dancing down the front to them because no one likes to stand out and watch the Lollies now do they? Oh, you must have looked. I talk about bad jobs with my friend Delia from London who I have known for so many years, and who even gets a mention in my book I think for being so much of herself. (It's only a small mention though so don't concern yourselves unduly.) An angel with a taxi cab rescues me from the inevitable beach party scenario that would have awaited poor drunken me, and I return to tell my lady love several dozen times how much I love and appreciate her in French, her trying to sleep.

During the night, I write several nasty emails, immediately deleting the evidence so as to fool my sober side, and resolutely ignore all my friends. Someone accuses me of loving irony, and this is so beside the point and WRONG I vow instantly never to speak to them again. I have to go now, or my homemade Lemon Sorbet might spoil.

THURSDAY AUGUST 23
The day is spent in that old familiar state of paranoia and post-coital (I mean alcoholic) regret and I try to ascertain how much damage I may have done and then realise it doesn't matter as I fell off the edge of the world a long time ago. I see Jon Slade in the afternoon in the beer garden of a pub where presumably it has been ascertained it's cool to hang out, and we swap subtleties and insults and putdowns so adroitly I still feel we should be on stage, being paid, in front of a bunch of idiot students, together. I am tired and the sun beats down upon my head. A boy from Circuit suggests that I should write, for free. Ali from the Cranes suggests I should write, for free. Virgin Books think I should pay my entire way on my mini-promotion to tour (to Glasgow, Manchester and London) to help make them money. A man from a record promotional company thinks I could interview Smog, as one of a series on a message board. (I had that man from Smog come down to Brighton once, when it was the fashion. He spoke two words the entire day, to ask what the Pavilion was. That comprised the only interview Allan Jones refused to run.) I write for MOJO who unusually agree to pay and even have the good grace to show interest in my interest in new bands. This pleases me, and makes me smile and race around the house singing old Tom Waits numbers.

In the evening, I play badminton and sweat profusely. I watch Lift To Experience - a Texas band whose album had appealed to me in the same way that Slint and Mogwai and even perhaps Ryan Adams once had - at the Free Butt, now turned into a terrible pale shadow of its former glory thanks to money seeking landlords and idiot security supplied by same unnecessarily thank you very much. The sweat is good, the talk with Rory is good and dwells on the idiot media (anything people think I might want to hear) and the heat and noise is very good. I think it will be suitable for these men in their big hats and bigger sideburns and I hold a candle aloft in anticipation but wrongly as it transpires because this is simply Chapterhouse under a different name and less cuddly singer - shoe-gazing that has snuck back into alternative music, made OK simply by its country of origination, and I've never been one for that. Maybe I was tired. Maybe it was the sad state of the Free Butt. It certainly wasn't the heat because I thought it was spot on appropriate. But that whole trick of turning your guitars up LOUD and onto over-chime is kind of lame nowadays, reminds me of hippies in the 70s that I grew up despising. I must listen to the album again, and see whether I am losing my instinct.

SATURDAY AUGUST 25
I wake up screaming, having dreamt of unspeakable forces in the forest. I dream about Beef Wellington and other fine fare. In the town, the flocks of geese gather, crowding around the newsstands and pizza stalls, anywhere that the names of Helen from Big Brother, the Strikes or Stripes or whatever, Nick Hornby and the tarty one from Survivor might be mentioned. People are scared to venture out by themselves so they always shop in packs. The only memory I'll take away of this country is a false one, of shopping malls in the middle of former villages, of men with cropped hair and women with bleached ponytails. I never trusted those slides of tribes with facial piercing that you find in the old colonial places. I waste days away by bounding up and down flights of stairs. I fuck irony. I fuck irony and spit on every last accusing side-glance. I want every sullen teenager to revel in Slipknot and Sylvia Plath and realise there is no difference, no difference at all just a more media literate marketing agent. I lie awake, bolt upright, in a seat, lights glinting in the still air, dreaming of the day when crowds disappear and when crowds make sense and are one welcoming sensation. I eat slices of melon and irony and new potatoes, organic because I don't know if I want to fuck with God, not yet anyway. I dream of the day when stars come tumbling down, and it's my fault.

In the evening, the entire missing puzzle is sitting outside the Concorde 2 sipping on a pint, basking in the sunshine, making the odd abstruse comment about the same and same, Reading Festival and my newly cropped hair. All I want is a shave and a shoeshine. The boys talk of Chan Marshall and the way she is so damn mysterious, the way she's so annoying in her insistence at treating each live performance as something unique, never content in her misery and dark whisperings, never content to lean within them, but always seeking the new, the false, the lure. The girls talk of little else, because in this world girls do not exist. We stand chilled in our artificially darkened corners and sway in the breeze of a voice that doesn't exist, only exists inasmuch as Chan makes it easy for us to place our own interpretations upon it. I talk of friends and Australia with two Australians. I talk of dancing. I talk a lot about dancing nowadays. A man named Stevie Chick sends me a typewritten review that suggests I'm the more soulful of two whores. I guess he could be right. The girl on stage sings the blues only it's a very maudlin, insular music even for that, and only made bearable by the complete stark lack of instrumentation. Any louder and we'd all be screaming. A couple sits in the corner proud in their unit and ignored by all their former friends. 'She looks so beautiful, though,' comes the cry from a broken man.

Afterwards, we stand outside the Hanbury Ballroom, revelling in our beauty and grime. Four nights ago, I fell asleep on the bathroom floor and woke in the morning with a towel wrapped around my waist. Jon and Lorne stood outside refused entry because Lorne was too... What's the word Jerry? Drunk, I helpfully suggested as security laughed. I danced like a blushing 18 year old to the sounds of Martha & the Vandellas and didn't think of Reading once. Chan Marshall becomes sexy when she dances. I drink too much and become extremely obnoxious, depressed and argumentative. It's OK. I'm among fellow drunks. As long as your behaviour doesn't deviate from the norm you'll be fine. Know when to act like an asshole.

Back when I was a working critic

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:04:00 +0000

(Excerpted from my 2001 journal, posted at the Tangents archives.)

Saturday July 8
... so I'm stuck high up in the rafters at Dublin's Lansdowne Road international football ground, freezing my fucking fingers off, chatting to Dave Simpson about the stupidity of editors and the rise and rise of PRs in the music business industry (why, some of them even are my editors now) and how it's impossible to do anything for the London-centric media if you're not based with the rest of the aristocracy there... and all I can think of is home, is of seeing Supergrass in Melbourne, everyone all excited and it's cosy and warm, the night lights twinkling even though we barely knew anyone and even though it's nice that everyone starts singing along with "Moving" as we take our 30 minute trek round the stadium along the river's edge because the police and organisers are plainly incompetent, there is no escaping these grey skies, there really aren't, and I would rather be anywhere than here today... and I'm stuck up in the rafters, watching this rock'n'roll band called Oasis act like they could give a fuck, and all the kids are singing along so loudly and proudly and with no cynicism whatsoever to "Stand By Me" and the wonderful "Look Back In Anger", it's all I can do to stop myself from wondering what time bed is and whether there might be food somewhere at the end of the rainbow and how is it OK for Terry Hall to treat me like shit despite the fact she's known me for so long professionally (or is it just an indication of how far down the ladder I've slipped)... the show's great, as I tell five different web sites and MM the following couple of days, but who gives a fuck about that I just want to pull the covers over my head and slide away, never to think about anything again... the after-show is faintly ridiculous, the man from The Sun recognises my name and someone buys someone a drink, we talk to a couple of kids with strong Dublin accents and the sky is still absolutely crap... afterwards I wander the streets with a lady from a web site and a MM photographer and I wonder how I could have lowered my standards so much to be in this position, maybe I should fucking DRINK DRINK DRINK and fuck shit up but I don't have the energy any more... maybe the energy, but not the inclination, also I can't be bothered to waste my talents on fucking nobodies... the show was fine, honest. It's almost as good as the expensive Indian curry we eventually tracked down.

Wednesday July 26
... and so I find myself drinking cheap industrial-strength red wine by the bottle on Brighton beach with Jon and that boy who helps run Melting Vinyl promotions in town and a drunken obnoxious Japanese friend of Jon's and one other that I cannot name... and I'm boasting about Seattle exploits and Melbourne exploits and how much I despise and loath this country with a crimson clarity... and it seems that once more I'm living, once more I have glamour around me even if it is only the cheapest of cheap glamour, purchased for three quid in an all-night off-licence... and I wander off to piss under the pier, and others wander off to piss there too... and I'm remembering the evening, how Maslam (the local hopefuls who one person had compared with PJ Harvey) were so dreary and meandering, the girl probably possessing an interesting voice but she had laryngitis, and the rest of her band are certainly art-school wankers... and I'm remembering the evening, at how I needed to drink beer and chat with Anna, the other half of Melting Vinyl promotions, and also the small one from Ninetynine, the Melbourne band who so deliciously reminded me of all my cherished Northwest bands while I was in Australia and dispossessed... and Ninetynine sounded so brutally alive, the xylophone sparking sounds of fury and that boy with the crazy hair leaping up and leaping down and singing in ridiculous falsetto like I remembered... and later me and Jon fought in the streets of Brighton, walking back from Andru's flat in the later wee hours of the morning, all emboldened by the knowledge that at least we were having experiences that were unique to us and millions of other drunkards... and all evening I was as cruel as I could be, because that is the only defence... the concert made me want to race round town, trumpet my art from every roof and rafter, even when we were briefly queuing outside the Pavilion Tavern before we all came to our senses and realised that perhaps House music isn't what we were looking for to keep our senses heightened...

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It made me want to slip, retrace my steps, recapture that elusive feeling which I seem to be disallowed to feel nowadays... even the day was good. I rose early. I bought Melody Maker, as embarrassing as ever, I paid cheques into Nationwide, I read comics. I started sorting through the spare room, as promised, with Jon's help. I even did a fast phone interview with a very tired Kathryn Williams, just nominated for the Mercury Music Award. The Newcastle-based singer said one great thing, about how when she was originally asked how it felt to be included among the nominees she replied that "she was extremely happy", but that after 14 hours of continuous interviews she just wants a big hug and to go to bed.

It was the best of days. It was the worst of days.

My Last FM Top 15

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:41:00 +0000

Thought I'd update you. I love Last FM's automatically-generated charts. They're so random.

1 (1) The Deadnotes + The Legend!
The six-CD set is moving closer to realisation.
2 (2) Frank Sidebottom
Timperley's finest.
3 (-) Etta James
Nothing like a dose of Etta to get the day going.

4 (3) Los Saicos

The Peruvian link between the Monks and The Trashmen, it says here - and I see no reason to contradict that.
5 (5) The Thin Kids
Fresh from our triumphant tour with Kate Nash.
6 (4) Soda Fountain Rag
Still my current favourite pop crush.
7 (8) Mountain Man
I reviewed their fine album for The Vine.
8 (-) GO!GO!7188
Crazy crazy Japanese pop music.
9 (-) David & Jad Fair
It's nearly Halloween time.
10 (-) Super Wild Horses (pictured)
Been listening to the new album from these Melbourne ladies. Not convinced as yet...
11 (6) Las Kellies
They're like the Argentinian Pylon!
12 (7) Brilliant Colors
They're like the Californian Wolfhounds!
13 (-) Woom
I think I'll go listen to this now.
14 (-) Kate Nash
Fresh from her triumphant tour with The Thin Kids.
15 (14) Lloyd Clarke
Some fine, fine bluebeat.

Song of the day (Australia) - 149: The Birthday Party

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:05:00 +0000

No explanation required here, I hope.

The interview that follows the video is lifted from Careless Talk Costs Lives #6 - which came out in January 2003 (split cover with Erase Errata because we figured Nick to be a little too well-known to command the cover just by himself). I think the order of it was actually different when it was printed, but I sure as fuck am not going to start scanning in issues of CTCL just for this blog. The interview in Hove was actually the first time Nick and I met (notwithstanding the occasional brushes with microphone stands back in the early Eighties).

We have met since, on several occasions.

(And my Rowland S. Howard tribute is over here.)

Can someone PLEASE send me the new Grinderman now?

So, a couple of weeks before the wedding, the vicar came by our house and I made him a variation on Chicken Malaysia and a crumble afterwards, of course – no custard, because if there’s one thing the Reverend Jonathan Greener can’t abide it’s custard – and we sat around and discussed the music we wanted to play during the ceremony. We were unsure about one song, whether or not it would be considered offensive, so we figured it best to play it to him, even though we hadn’t yet found a singer with a voice low enough to infuse the opening lines, *“I don’t believe in an interventionist God but darling, I know that you do”* with the necessary gravitas. We wondered if it’d be suitable to play the CD in the church, whether, indeed, it would be possible to play a CD in a building so designed for live music without losing most of the subtleties and cadences of expression.

As the final few chords of “Into My Arms” echoed away, the vicar chose his words with care. “Well, I don’t find it offensive – although there are some in my regular congregation who might,” he said, “and I should always be considerate of their feelings. I think that, if you can’t find someone who’s able to sing it, we shouldn’t include it because it’s a very intimate song, isn’t it, and I don’t think a CD would work.”

He was right. We dropped the song.

“It’s a good one for a funeral,” Nick Cave laughs. “I’m always ending up at sitting at someone’s funeral with that…”

I was watching your new video again this morning. I really like the one for “Babe, I’m On Fire” with yourself and the Bad Seeds dressed up as different characters from the song – the drunk, the punk, the brave Buddhist monk, the fucked-up Rastafarian, the dribbling libertarian, the sweet little Goth with the ears of cloth… it’s really funny.

“Yeah, I enjoyed doing that.”

I can imagine. What gave you the idea to do it like that?

“Oh, the video was an afterthought. We were asked to do some kind of DVD thing for the record, which we’re totally fucking sick of doing, you know, you can’t do a record without some kind of attachment to it… and they wanted to do the usual kind of ‘How the record was made’, or interviews in the studio, which is so tedious. So we decided to do this long, absolutely useless video for that particular song [it lasts close on 15 minutes], something they could never use. We were given 20 characters each to dress up as, and we’d go in to wardrobe, and they’d say, ‘Now you’re the deranged country vicar’, so you’d get dressed up, and see Conway coming up the hallway dressed as grandma, or something. We had no idea how it was going to turn out.”

Nick Cave’s studio is situated right by the sea-front in Hove and, no, I’m not going to tell you the exact road so stop pestering me, the man has a right to privacy like anyone else. Inside it’s clean, cold (mostly because of the weather and a busted heater), focussed – sterile, even. There are no posters on the walls, no empty cigarette packs littering the floors, no old pizza boxes or mementos or gold discs or stains or anything to distract the artist from the room’s primary purpose: a place of work, a place to do work within. There’s a piano along one side, where Cave composes his songs, an organ at right angles to it. The third wall contains the couch upon which I’m now seated, sipping at a cup of tea (nice china!) and sucking on a Strepsil. A table with computer and computer files fronts the fourth, alongside a variety of boxes and containers. Nick welcomes me in, shoves the kettle on: he’s not warm, but he isn’t cold either. I’ve waited nine, 10 years to interview him. While at *Melody Maker* we would ask routinely, every new album, always refused, can’t blame him. It’s been over 22 years since I first Nick’s guttural yowl in Melbourne’s Birthday Party screaming out “The Friend Catcher”. I still have no urge to devalue the myth.

“Fancy meeting God,” we’d yell to each other sarcastically as we tore another piece from his nicotine-stained suit down the front of Birthday Party shows in London. We knew this shit was funny, and worth venerating.

It occurs to me I still have no idea whether Cave is his real name or not, or if he ever shagged Kylie. I never asked.

My wife and I had an argument over the other video. She wanted to know why it’s so obscene. She expected more from Nick Cave.

“Um, the er…?”

I’m talking about the one for “Bring It On”, with all the gyrating dancers.

“Was it obscene?”

She thinks it is. It’s not necessarily my view.

“Basically, er… Basically I was just… I think this question was asked in the… er… did you get some kind of…?”

Press kit? No, I didn’t. We aren’t your conventional press. We don’t do press kits.

“Well, it was… the director asked, ‘What kind of video do you want to make for this new thing?’ I said, ‘What kind of videos do MTV show these days?’ He said, ‘It’s usually a lot of black girls shaking their arses at the camera’. And I said, ‘Well, let’s do that then’.”

The discussion featured more around whether I thought the video was sexy or not. She most certainly didn’t.

“And?”
Well, she is my wife, and we did get married two months ago, so…

“I think it was pushed a little bit beyond that. We went through a period of doing videos that were absolutely useless. We’d spend money on them. They’d never get played anywhere. They might have been minor works of art, or something like that, but there was no point making them. It’s totally un-enjoyable doing it, getting up and miming to a song for an entire day. So this was an attempt to get MTV to play one of our songs, but at the same time, there’s an irony to it. Maybe that didn’t come across too well. We didn’t set out to make the sexiest video ever.”
Well, all of you are in it. No disrespect, but…

“Exactly.”

(Laughter.)

“I apologise to her. I’ll never do it again. We were going to make a follow up and get loads of old bag ladies of the street doing the same thing, pay them the minimum wage and sue MTV for not showing it on account of ageism.”

So, one day in about ’82 or ’81, I get a call from my mate Geoff The Postman and he’s like, “You’re in *Sounds*, you’re in *Sounds*, there’s a Birthday Party interview and half of it’s about you and – ”, and I’m like, “WHAT?” It transpires that he’s right (sort of), cos a few weeks ago there had been a Birthday Party show at the Africa Centre or some place, no stage (as ever), ferocious slam-dancing – Birthday Party fans invented slam-dancing way before Black Flag ever got puritanical on the Yanks’ asses – and someone pushed Nick meanly as his back was turned, and he went sprawling arse-over-tit over a monitor, got up, face like thunder, grabbed a microphone stand and…

Thing was, I didn’t notice. I was too busy fucking dancing down the front, but every other fan did and had magically melted away from view… so Nick turns round and there’s just innocent me there (first sang on a record at the start of the live Birthday Party/Lydia Lunch split 12-inch, saw the Cocteau Twins’ debut London performance cos they were fellow Birthday Party freaks like us, stopped going to Birthday Party shows when all the goddamn (spit) music press-led Goths began showing up and laughing at my screen-printer dungarees)… so he grabs the microphone stand and goes fucking “WHACK!” straight across my face, and over I go and over he goes and a couple of kids rush to pull me back…

A week later, it’s all over the fucking national music press.

I don’t tell Nick any of this.

I’m halfway scared he may still think it was me who tripped him.

I never usually come to interviews with any questions…

“That’s cos you’re old school, right? 75 per cent of the article is going to be how you got here and the coffee you had on the way.”

Forget about getting here, 75 per cent of the article will be about what I did last night – watched Nick Cave videos. No, the one question I ask people is, “What is your motivation? Why?”

“Why? I guess, for me, why I do this is cos I find it quite difficult to cope without it and I’m not greatly impressed without it. I can be alone and I can be in my imagination and create an alternate reality that’s not like it is out there.”

What was your motivation when you started?

“Probably much the same as everyone: the booze and the broads.”

You didn’t think of it as a career option at that point?

“It was the secondary interest. I was an art student, which I took seriously. I had a band on the side. I failed art in the second year and then punk happened and the band was playing music that was vaguely in that area...”

That sound is back in fashion now. I keep hearing new bands and I think, “This sounds like something I heard 23 years ago…”

“I’m not a journalist. I don’t have to listen to it. I have a son that’s 11 and he drags that kind of stuff into the house. It all sounds very familiar.”

What made you decide to be the front man?

“Basically because we were 15 when we started this band and everyone played an instrument, and they needed someone to sing. No one else would do it.”

Does your motivation change over the years?

“I was very uncomfortable at school with myself and not very popular. The band was just the way in, in that sense. As soon as I started getting gigs things changed. But obviously it’s not for those reasons now. For me it starts in here [indicates the room around us]. It’s about an absolute need to do that. When I don’t do this, I don’t function properly, unless I’m connecting with some other world then I just don’t function out there [indicates the street outside]. The live situation is something where I take the songs we’ve recorded in the studio – which we do a lot quicker now – and turn them into what they’re meant to be, seeing which ones survive. Live and being in the studio are completely different things. The recording situation is more meditative, and live, everything accelerates.”

Do you enjoy being in the studio?

“I do. For a short period of time.”

Presumably the reason it’s for a short period of time is because you’ve worked with the same musicians for some time now. (2003 will be the 20^th anniversary of the Bad Seeds.)

“Yes it is. We’ve become better at playing together and more ruthless in our technique – we don’t allow overdubs. What you hear is pretty much the live take of the songs. Because we don’t rehearse, we don’t really have a full understanding of the potential of the songs. Some of the songs are at their most beautiful because of that, because there is a sense of discovery about what we’re doing. Other songs, especially the louder songs, come into their own live. They just become these incredible things.”

When you go to record a new album, how do the ideas gestate? For example, with the “Murder Ballads”, you clearly had an idea in mind. Does it always happen like that?

“It depends on the records. The last three records were all written before we went into the studio. The ‘Murder Ballads’ was largely written in the studio. I had books of traditional folk lyrics lying all around, loads of lyrical ideas. The music was very fast. That record has a great playful feel. Some of the other ones, there was very little when I went into the studio.”

In conversation with Will Oldham the other day, he implied Nick Cave is commercially driven – by surrounding himself with the same musicians (the Bad Seeds haven’t changed line-up for five years), he isn’t taking any risks with his music, becomes formulaic, and is able to build on his audience with each new record. I started to argue back, but then it occurred to me the crucial difference between these two most personal of artists is that Nick Cave, at least partly, makes records for his fans whereas the former Palace singer makes records only for himself. I would deny that Cave is formulaic – at least not in the dull sense – and argue that the idea of taking “risks” with music is a nebulous one at best.

Take his new album, “Nocturama”. It’s another series of devotional love songs, tinged with black humour here and there (“Dead Man In My Bed), lifted by refrains you’ll want to hum in your lust hours, and finished off with the magnificent live studio outing “Babe, I’m On Fire” – all the passion and anger and devilry of old, topped with a lascivious pounding vocal that recalls such gems as “The Mercy Seat”. Nick is 45? Whoa! The band are *stunning*, operating at the peak of their form, clearly able to knock off songs like this any day of the week… but does this devalue the art-form, that musicians are able to create so easily such sublime moments?

Of course fucking not. Look to classic runs of singles from artists like Ramones, Pet Shop Boys, Blondie… It’s simply a whole other game, Will. The two artists have different motivations, value systems and approaches. Is one more authentic than the other cos he always seeks to radically change his work: what of honing your craft, year after year, whittling down the same picture from the same damn stick? Should authenticity even matter?

So this isn’t his best record ever. It’s not malicious enough. It doesn’t come close to the brilliantly cruel and spiteful dissemination of American small town values on “God Is In The House” (to name but one) on 2001’s “No More Shall We Part” – or 1990’s epic album, Gabriel Garcia Marquez-influenced, “The Good Son”. But fuck. Nick’s shittiest is still way better than most people’s best. And this trips my trigger just fine.

I’m just a simple hack, a fan, a dotard, a lime lizard with a tongue like silver and brass. Don’t ask me.

Was it like a massive leap from The Birthday Party to making solo records?“Well, I had no intention of doing that. We broke up and that was it as far as music went for me. I went back to Melbourne and did nothing for a year. Mick [Harvey] dug me up and suggested I start another band. I was writing lyrics, but I had no idea of what kind of music I wanted to make. That first record is the sound of a band having no idea what they wanted to do.”You’re speaking to someone who is trying to immigrate to Australia, particularly Melbourne. What made you want to go the other way? “Every Australian wants to get out of Australia. Everyone in Australia is led to believe that the rest of the world is a much better place. We live our lives thinking that England and America are better than Australia. It is ingrained in the national psyche that we are inferior. Everyone wants to at least see what the rest of the world is like, and we had the opportunity to come over here. Everything had fallen apart for most of us in Australia. The band had been playing to the same 200 people for four years. We came to England, and it was such a shock to actually see what it was like here. I couldn’t believe it on every possible level – that’s usually what happens with Australians.”So what made you stick here?“There isn’t any reason or rationale over the years about what I did. You just were somewhere and went along with it. You moved towards places that you feel happiest, and we were incredibly miserable in London, our circumstances were dire. We had no money whatsoever. Suddenly there weren’t people who’d lend you money and we were living in squats and not getting any work.”I remember seeing you at the Rock Garden in front of eight people…

I remember seeing Nick Cave play in front of eight people. He’d lean out right over the audience, a mutant bastard Antipodean play-acting Iggy Pop – not that any of us were aware of it at the time – and we’d reach up our arms as if to catch him and pull them away right at the last second. It was a game, a vicious, disturbing, brutally ALIVE game, one tempered by un-sex and no-mates and all that other crap stuff that happens when you’re 19, 20 and not one of the townies.

I prefer it when the storyteller immerses himself so deeply within the tale he is recounting that fact becomes indistinguishable from friction, reality and fantasy blur into one. Nick Cave’s songs are inhabited by artifice and surreal creatures – God, “a guy with plastic antlers”, the apostles, dead wives – yet they never cease being believable. Cave sings with such obvious relish, and such an instinctive grasp of when to testify and when to shut the fuck up, that all characters burst into sudden, intoxicating life. Or death, as it may take them.

That’s my first point. Cave is a master of his art: he makes the imagined real.

What is it about the outside world that makes you want to stay in your studio?

“I find it increasingly difficult to find anything authentic out there. The two main areas of my life are my work and my family life. I’ve always been able to work hard, sit down at the piano and play, but the rest of my life was not… to and fro… and then I got married, and that shut down that side of my life. I was very pleased about and I feel protected by that. If I don’t feel protected by that, then I just feel disgusted and infuriated. Any sort of salvation for me comes through work, having something that I’m excited by and something to put my energies into – I feel physically changed by that. When I don’t have that, I feel kind of useless and half human. By separating myself and isolating myself, that is my way of connecting with the world and doing it some kind of service.”Do you still get as excited about writing new songs as you used to?

“Yes, I do. Definitely. I get less impressed, possibly, by what I do, because I’ve always had a tendency to think the thing that I’m working on is the greatest thing I’ve ever done. But once you go through the recording process and you get the CD in your hand and put it on… it’s always disappointing. Songwriting is just something I do all the time, and that can be intensely frustrating and also very exciting when something actually happens, but that excitement is quite short. Just as soon as you’ve finished a song that can take a day or a week, you’ve got to start writing another one. But if I have a bigger project like a prose or a film script then I still get that thing where I can’t sleep and I’m always thinking about it. It’s exciting. I feel like somebody. I love it.”Do you not feel validated unless you’ve got your art?

“I’d say that’s true. Outside of my area of expertise I feel very mediocre.”

I wish more people would feel like that. How do you write a song? Do you write them on the piano or organ?

“I just write them there [gestures towards the piano], yeah. Or I get a title and then a few lines, then a couple of chords, it’s not that hard to do actually. What I find exhausting about the process is that you’re always thrown back. It’s not like when you’re telling a story or writing a novel and you can run with it. You’re constantly back to square one and you have to start again. I’m at the start of writing the next record and I’ve got two or three songs for it, but I’m still at that place of working out what it’s all about. You want to feel like you move on and that your ideas progress, and that your relationship with the world progresses in some way. And often it doesn’t feel like that. You feel like years have gone past and you’re still in exactly the same place. I guess the records are a reminder that you are. I don’t feel much change. I feel like I still have the same sensibilities, the same responses to the world that I had when I was 19. I may not be as young or have the same kind of energy or the same kind of ‘fuck you!’ attitude as I had back then, but those ideas are kind of branded in you very early on, or at least in me.”Do you write lyrics consciously or unconsciously?

“It’s both. I feel like I’m given a little – a basic idea, a few lines. I couldn’t really tell you where that came from, and then a lot of it is sitting down and working out where it’s going. The thing about this office is I don’t sit around waiting for inspiration to hit. It’s about coming in here everyday and working. It’s got nothing to do with how I feel. Feelings are overrated and just get in the way.”

Nick Cave is surprisingly introverted, considerate, thoughtful… alright, I’m not *that* surprised, but I do come away feeling he gave my questions too much respect. (I don’t often feel that about musicians, believe it: mostly I think them to be asinine grinning monkeys who are so fucking self-satisfied at having learnt how to plug an amplifier into the wall they spend the rest of their lives crowing about it.) This interview is transient, disposable, a blurred snapshot of a man whose hidden depths have been explored so frequently it’d be nice to read a conversation where he just made fart joke after fart joke.

Often, I’ll have moved onto another topic while he’s still considering my previous query. It’s nice to be afforded so much respect by someone you respect so greatly yourself. So Nick Cave doesn’t enjoy the outside world, at least not the world he has no control over? Aren’t we all like that?

Are you surprised about the respect that you’re held in? Does it bother you?“I’m not surprised. I think I should be held in respect – if only for a kind of stubbornness and being able to hang in there. I respect artists, even if I don’t like them, if I feel that they’ve stuck by their guns.”Clearly your art has great resonance with a great section of society. “That I don’t know about so much. I had the misfortune of turning on the TV the other night and seeing Tonight With Robbie Williams and he was talking about that you’re only as good as your last song which was a telling thing for him. When someone comes up and says ‘I love your work’, I can’t relate to what they’re saying. The first thought that comes into my head is, ‘It’s all gone, it’s not there, you’re talking about something else entirely’. Those kind of comments make you feel like cringing under the weight of what you’ve already done. I watched a couple of songs from the Robbie Williams thing with my 11-year-old son, and then he said, ‘This is crap’ and I thought, ‘That’s my son!’ [Speaks proudly.] He was right. It was crap.“It really made me think about where the great singers are going, how we’re losing all these great voices that had some sort of resonance…like Johnny Cash, who hasn’t got many records in him left, and when he goes it’s going to be the terrible loss of just one more singer who aren’t being made any more. There is so much in that voice, so much experience and understanding, knowledge, pain and joy – Sinatra, as well – that Robbie Williams is desperately trying to ape. It’s just not there. This bland, meaningless puke.”I have this theory that at any given point the amount of authentic art in the world is at a constant but what happens is the media focus varies. At the moment the media is so bad you don’t get exposed to these people.“The media is too rapid these days, but also rock’n’roll was meant to be disposable, to shine and then die. That was its idea but there has to be some that hang around and tell the full story. There are less and less of these that are allowed to that by the media.”

Time to wrap this up. Let’s finish where we began. With “Babe, I’m On Fire”. Man, what a storming finale! Thanks for your time, Nick. Maybe meet you again in another 24 years…?

On “Nocturama”, you have your centrepiece song at the album’s end…“That was never intended for the record. It was one of those songs that you and me could sit down now and add another 10 verses to. It’s not a difficult song to do. We played it and we really liked it and did a great mix of it. It just seemed to maintain itself for the length. So it got stuck on. It wasn’t the centrepiece.”It’s in the tradition of Nick Cave songs that go on for a long time.“It’s a Jack Russell terrier approach where you get an idea and never let it go. They end, but you’re left with a feeling that they could go on forever.”Are you ever tempted to turn up to a concert and just do one song for the entire show?“We haven’t got into that. We did do a concert length version of ‘Proud Mary’ in Japan. That went incredibly well. I like long songs.”The last time I saw you play live – in Melbourne a couple of years ago – you did a couple of Birthday Party songs on piano. Why?“We did ‘Wild World’. The Bad Seeds don’t do Birthday Party songs, but this was the little band where we are free to do whatever. They were very different versions of the songs due to the nature of the band.”Do you miss the physical interaction of The Birthday Party days? “No. We were just really frustrated. No, I don’t miss that. I’m 45 years old, what am I gonna be doing? Knocking people’s teeth out with a microphone stand? It’s just not dignified. It would be absurd me trying to do that.”

Song of the day (Australia) - 148: The Cannanes

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:38:00 +0000

The debut Cannanes single was the third record that David Nichols brought across to my house in Willesden Green that fateful day in 1985.

I'm not saying that I liked it... but I made it Single Of The Week in the NME, and then formed a record label (Calculus) with my future house-mate Jamie to try and get it a release in the UK. (The distribution company foundered before we could release it, owing us a tidy sum of money - made even tidier by the fact we were both on the dole. Before that happened, we released the debut Dog-Faced Hermans LP and reissued their first single, and put out a seven-inch by The Fizzbombs. Fine times, mostly spent on a coach up to Scotland.)

I don't have the link to the song I want (which I actually covered several years back with guitarist Danya for a tribute album that never appeared), dating from 1985, duh - so I thought I'd link to this instead. I'm sure you can understand why. I guess I could probably repost the cover and the original if anyone shows the remotest amount of interest.

Song of the day (Australia) - 147: Love Of Diagrams

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Day six in this series (give or take a couple of days off, spent playing support to Kate Nash in Melbourne and Sydney).

Have you noticed that it's always the slipstream Melbourne bands who sound the most English? I wonder why that is. Anyway, I'm including Love Of Diagrams in this here series despite the fact that a) I'm really not a fan of the music they're obviously fans of, b) I've never seen them live and I do wonder whether this sound would translate, c) they're from Melbourne and having been away from that city for several years I'm far more sensitive to parochial divides than I thought I would be, d) they make me nostalgic for a certain type of music I thought I'd never be nostalgic for... hey, I saw Oasis' debut US show, you know. They were supporting great forgotten (and similar here, musically) NY band Lotion at... damn... forgotten the name of the venue.

This song 'Look Out' is fucking killer, though. And so who gives a fuck about all the above? Plus, I've already featured Beaches on this blog.

Look out.

Song of the day (Australia) - 146: The Saints

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:27:00 +0000

Day five of this series, and this one is an absolute no-brainer.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide to, baby. The Thin Kids played up support to Kate Nash last night in the totally fucking awesome East Brunswick Club in Melbourne, and my head is pounding through lack of sleep and excitement and the cold Victoria air this morning. Three rows of Kate Nash fans sang along with 'You're Not From Queensland' and I got to make my joke about how most bands only half half of an idea and that one's filched from a Led Zeppelin album... AGAIN! Got to say it'd be nice if Ed could have heard me, but I was assured that our splendour was only increased by the shambolic approach. We sold one-and-a-half CDs afterwards, which is approximately one-and-a-half more copies than I sold of my first single. Kate added rather confused vocals to 'You're Not On The Guest List' - fair enough, as I'd only asked her if she wanted to do so five seconds earlier.

Kate played a blinder, incidentally: the second half of the set all centred round that incredible 'Mansion Song', screaming like Kathleen Hanna possessed, not really the prim or coke-addled behaviour you'd expect from your UK pop stars.

Anyway.

It's a coincidence that we moved to Brisbane, home of three of my favourite bands anywhere (forget Australia)... we honestly, true-to-Bangs, stayed there because it was a nice day when we stepped off the plane and we'd already experienced the winter in Melbourne. But Bangs alive, if The Saints weren't one of the greatest fucking punk bands EVER, equal with ANYONE you can name... and I'm absolutely spoilt for choice as to which song I can list here.

I think I'll go with this absolute belter from 1978.

Song of the day (Australia) - 145: Dave Graney And The Coral Snakes

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:45:00 +0000

Charlotte suggested Rolf Harris as the next in this series celebrating the fact we're now Australian.

I'm a big fan of Rolf as well, but... shrugs... I'm not sure folk would think I was taking this too seriously and all. Aside from anything, I think Rolf's probably bigger in the UK then he is here, and maybe folk might resent him for presenting one particular side of Australia above another. I don't know. I've never asked. So of course we discussed the idea of having The Go-Betweens as the next in this series but the problem there is... well, it's a little obvious isn't it? Not that there's anything wrong with that, plus there's the fact The Go-Betweens are one of the very few bands indeed that I've referenced directly in one of my own songs ('Room At The Top') but... shrugs... I want a band that might surprise a couple of folk, or at least turn them onto something they might not be familiar with already.

So my thoughts immediately turned to that proto-Riot Grrrl band from Melbourne that David Nichols (that man again) released some time around the late 80s called Matrimony or something... but there's an immediate problem. 1) still old school and 2) can't trace 'em cos I can't remember their name.

So then of course I start thinking I don't want this entire series to be skewed MALE garage rock, however fucking great all the included are (No Anchor, Witch Hats, Kitchen's Floor, Eddy Current Suppression Ring etc). So then I start thinking I don't want to be repeating myself either, as that's not so interesting for myself, even I love all concerned (Beaches, Bridezilla, Fabulous Diamonds, White Woods, Pikelet, Blank Realm, Songs, The Stress Of Leisure etc).

So. What we got? Nothing from over five years ago, nothing MALE and nothing that's been featured on this blog already. It's good to narrow your options down. If someone had sent me the new Super Wild Horses album, I'd shove a track like that in here like a shot. But they haven't. So I won't.

So I thought I'd throw you a curve ball, and give you some of this. And yes, I know I've broken every single rule I just set myself. Fuck it. This man happens to be one of the other very few I've directly referenced in a song (a new Thin Kids number). And he writes the occasional piece of music criticism like a roasted, simmering demon.

music that i like - july's top 30 songs

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:59:00 +0000

I think a couple of these must be linked to from the outside. If that Bow Wow Wow song keeps reappearing in these charts, it's going to end up as the most popular song of the year.

1 (44) The Runaways - Queens Of Noise
2 (-) The Thin Kids - I Don't Like What You Like/You're Not From Queensland
3 (-) Beyoncé - Crazy In Love
4 (-) Bow Wow Wow - C-30, C-60, C-90, Go!
5 (-) Boo Frog - In The Beginnin'
6 (-) Soda Fountain Rag - I Wanna Be Your Cat
7 (-) Allo Darlin' - I Wanna Be Sedated
8 (-) The Social Icons - Eastwing
8 (-) The Laughing Clowns - Collapse Board
10 (-) Isaac Snazell Thackray - Poppycock Is Nonsense
11 (-) Etta James - I'd Rather Go Blind
12 (-) Liam Bailey - I'd Rather Go Blind
13 (-) David & Jad Fair - Full Sized Candy Bars
14 (-) Pulco - Wearing Down Well
14 (-) Shonen Knife - One Day Of The Factory
16 (-) Lido Pimienta - Mueve
17 (1) Neverever - Coconut Shampoo
18 (-) Town Bike - Bastard Heart
19 (-) Go!Go!7188 - Ruriiro PV
20 (11) Los Saicos - Demolicion
20 (43) Afrirampo - Mirakururakkigaruzu
20 (-) Johnny Cash - Hurt
23 (-) Ouch My Face - Obscena Misdemeanour
23 (-) The Choo Choo Trains - Peppermint Gardener
25 (47) Byron Lee & The Dragonaires - Dumplins
26 (-) Neonates - Gridlock
27 (39) 5 String Drop Out - Go Away
28 (45) Lulu - To Sir With Love
28 (46) Segon Buckner & His Revolution - La La La (Hard Version)
30 (42) The Bobby McGee's - We Never Sleep

Song of the day (Australia) - 144: The Drones

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:44:00 +0000

Day three of my tribute to being Australian, and no surprise here.

I'm aware that I've actually only seen The Drones perform twice, maybe three times, since being here - but man. This band have absolutely blown my head apart. It's never struck me as that difficult to get rock - it's always seemed mind-bogglingly simple to me - but clearly it must be way more difficult than it looks, as so few do. This song I'm linking to here is one of the Greatest Fucking Rock Songs I've heard, period. It's so damn fine.

(Oh, and if you're grooving on this and haven't checked the previous entry in this series, Venom P Stinger - do so right NOW! You will not regret it.)

Here's what I wrote about The Drones a while back for The Guardian.

Everybody's talkin' 'bout the Drones. Damn it. Seems like this Melbourne four-piece is Australia's best bet to reclaim its reputation as a land of great heavy rockers – a reputation that's been tarnished by the presence in recent years of chart-crafted bands like Jet and the Vines. It seems like everyone I know in Brisbane is crazy for their dark, brooding sound: an unsavoury, bloodshot festering of wrenched guitar and strangled vocals. We're talking Nick Cave's early bunch of 70s outcasts, the Boys Next Door; we're talking Dead Boys without the cock rock; we're talking the Saints, of course, and the wanton storytelling of the Triffids – rock that even at this late stage is seen as a tool of the revolutionary. Their sound is distinctively Australian (the deranged title track from 2005 album The Miller's Daughter could be a 'Mercy Seat' for the noughties): taking in small town claustrophobia, wide open spaces and electrical storms without ever bothering with American or UK cliches.

Damn it. The Drones' fourth album – the melancholy, incendiary Havilah – came out a couple of months ago in Australia (it's out worldwide in January), and the hipsters and the diehards, the drunks and the seafarers have been foaming at the mouth ever since. And rightly so. New single, 'The Minotaur', contains the insouciant swagger and intricate guitars that have been so sadly lacking of late from Australian rock. Not for singer Gareth Liddiard the self-serving histrionics of a Daniel Johns or the laddish "charms" of a Powderfinger. He sounds possessed, the way all great rock singers sound possessed, as he beats the shit out of a stray vowel. The song is brutal, brilliant. Drums crack like Lewes firework displays, beats stutter to a halt among bruising repetition. You don't need to understand lyrics to understand emotion.

Damn it. I'm such a idiot. I have five of their albums sitting here - five albums! – and I've been given any number of recommendations from besotted Brisbane musicians and still I didn't go down to their gig last Saturday at the Zoo. I wasn't even swayed by the promise of support from My Favourite Brisbane Rock Band, the Gin Club – not swayed by the prospect of catching their drunken sea-shanties and eloquent, nicotine-stained pleas for loving one more time. I let the fact I hadn't slept the previous night (due to interruptions from my three-year-old son Isaac) sway me – and now all I can do is listen to five albums of top-class, energising, "psychedelic/religious/black metal" with the bitter taste of ash in my mouth, having missed out once again. Those wah-wahs! That inclement, fiery wash of feedback! Those vocals given up to the heavens!

Damn it all.

And here's my Plan B interview once more.

The Drones
Words: Everett True

I’d like to take my leave of you now. Flies buzzing round my head, the stench of the feed to come infiltrating every nostril. Hey, narrator. You on your knees wrenching ecstasy and hailstorms out your effect pedals: you at the back hurling your body into a phalanx of cymbals, concussing the drummer with a shimmy of the backbone: you with your refusal to engage in eye-to-eye contact: you, mouthing the words to a tale that’s been recounted millions of times before yet never so cynically. Before I depart the arena for the final time, please: give me a definition of rock’n’roll.
   “Don’t think.”
   “Little bands that move. That’s all that Talking Heads have in common with Chuck Berry and Einstürzende Neubauten. Rock’n’roll is mobile.”
   In the John Wyndham novel, the Triffids are scary walking plants that wander through life, lashing out at unwary passers-by. In Australian rock lore, The Triffids – that grandiose, twisted storytelling band from the 80s – barely exist anymore; certainly not as an influence [1]... everything washed away in the 90s and 00s shitstorms of tepid NME guitar indie and tame Pitchfork country indie.

A few months ago, I was at a barbecue and someone had brought along a ‘best of’ 2008 homemade compilation, full of Arcade Fire this and Jenny Lewis that and dribbles and drabs of bands who think that, just cos they can’t sing with any emotion or play guitar with any passion, if they slow the whole process down they’ll sound soulful. And I was thinking: folk don’t want to process alienation, don’t want to embrace dissent, don’t fancy fucking with loneliness because the in-vogue haircut is always the cheapest is always the most in-vogue. What has Amazon’s limitless marketplace done for us except to limit our choices? [2]
   And I was thinking: what’s so wrong with architecting about dance? [3]
   So that was one front.
   On another, ‘alternative’ Australian music websites like Mess And Noise are still running hate articles, 12 months on, based around the fact I had the nerve to suggest online the Australian critic isn’t all what (s)he could be. That perhaps critics can add to the dialogue, enhance enjoyment and understanding of music, that what they do can still be a craft, an art form, even within a new world order that embraces inclusiveness as a marketing slogan and where any twat with a Twitter can be the next Simon Reynolds.

Why do you play rock’n’roll? [4]
   Gareth Liddiard (vocals, guitar): “It’s easier than everything else.”
   Dan Luscombe (guitar): “It’s the whole fucking ceremony of things.”
   Gareth: “I used to play saxophone and listen to Charlie Parker, and think I’d never be able to do that. And then you hear Hendrix and think, ‘Maybe. Maybe I could be a charlatan.’”
   It’s not a competition.
   “No, it’s not,” the singer agrees, “but it’s a lot of hard work. We play this music because we’re lazy. It’s terrible how everything gets dumbed down. We’re no exception.”
   The Drones are an Australian band. One listen to their current album, the brutal, brittle Havilah, will prove that – these guitars skew and skewer with a horror rarely heard since Rowland S Howard in his prime, the vocals drip with an inclemency and sarcasm and love for dusty cattle tracks rarely witnessed since Dave Graney began torturing Melbourne’s derelict bohemian inner city suburbs with The Moodists in 1980. [5] Also, The Drones have released five studio albums, but they had to leave (and return to) Australia before they began to get respect back home. [6]
   The Drones are an Australian band, but that’s a term of abuse where I come from (Brisbane).
   Gareth: “Yeah, Australia has a problem with that.”
   Dan: “A lot of bands are scared to reference Australia, but equally I don’t like all these twee pop bands that sing about, ‘Sitting on a porch in Brisbane/And I walk through the Valley mall’...”
   There are a lot of nice porches in Brisbane.
   Dan: “You’ve got the NME and Mojo and Rolling Stone from America, that’s the sort of shit that people read in Australia – and then people got the idea that rock’n’roll comes from those two places. Rock’n’roll is an English-speaking music, and it comes from Irish music and folk music, a little bit of African music, some blues scales... Everyone rips everyone else off. Accept that and you can be Australian. You don’t have to be Pete Townsend.”
   I’m assuming it wasn’t deliberate on your part.
   Gareth: “There’s a whole shame about being Australian. It’s stupid. When we go to America people are like, ‘What the fuck is it with all your dudes singing in American accents?’ Americans don’t sing with Australian accents. It makes no fucking sense. It shits me. I just don’t understand it.”
   There’s also something about the guitar sound...
   Gareth: “It all depends what you listen to when you grow up. It was all [Australian] X, Kim Salmon And The Surrealists, The Saints, fucking Rowland Howard and The Birthday Party...”
   You remind me most of The Triffids, the way you construct lyrics. (“Don’t go getting married/You can only change her name,” Gareth spits on ‘The Drifting Housewife’: “Her hair was wet/Her shoes were damp/And as she travelled on the weather licked her like a stamp,”he howls, demented on the epic ‘Nail It Down’ .) You’re from that storytelling tradition, that thunderhead of broken emotions and wayfaring sea shanty dreams...
   Gareth: “There is a way of defining the Australian guitar sound – a broken-down sound, weird ectoplasmic fucked-up-ness, psychedelic bad trip...”

So I’m backstage at a rained-on indie festival in Victoria, and I’m breathing in the cleansing fumes of tobacco and beer. The Kooks or is it Mystery Jets or is it Wolf And Cub are onstage being The Kooks or is it Mystery Jets or is it Wolf And Cub doing their whole Kooks or is it Mystery Jets or is is Wolf And Cub thing because that’s what Amazon and two decades of indie mainstream rock has trained us to expect. And everyone seems to love it – everyone except me.
   You see, all I require from my time spent away from my beautiful home in The Gap (at gigs, at festivals, enjoying music) is to ride the Ferris wheel and witness a vigorous re-enactment of Mark E Smith’s three ‘r’s (“Repetition, repetition and repetition”) being tormented and mutated so wantonly that they become the three ‘s’s (“Spontaneity, spontaneity and spontaneity”). THAT’S ALL I WANT.
   I don’t know where you’ve been looking, but doesn’t all great rock’n’roll fall between these two phrases?
   And where am I going to find it? With the amps turned medium-high, perfect sound forever, all elements of chance wiped as the necessity to have the lighting tuned into the fifth drum roll, second encore, obviates everything else? When Coldplay invites Mercury Rev to open for them at Brisbane Arena? Where the ability to grow a beard while you’re still in your twenties outshines everything else? (Women obv need not apply.)
   Quick, turn to The Drones! Those guitars, man – those fucking guitars! Turbulent, sniping, wrenched... Gareth on his knees, hammering several shades of puce out his pedals, solos casually tossed into the humidity, words screamed and discarded, bassist Fiona Kitschin oblivious to the crowd, Michael Noga raging and controlled on drums, Dan stolid and... those guitars!
   I cannot resist the call of the wild.
   And that is why I must take my leave of you now.

What keeps you awake at night?
   Gareth: “Nothing. I sleep well.”
   What’s wrong with you? Are you well-adjusted?
   Gareth: “I just figured that if I’m going to get through life I’m going to fucking sleep and everyone else can get fucked.”
   Dan: “I’m the opposite. I’m a worrier by nature, and there’s nothing more annoying for people like me than people like him. I hate you, Gareth.”
   Gareth: “I hate myself, but I don’t lose sleep over it.”

FOOTNOTES
[1] Actually, they got inducted into the Australian ‘Hall Of Fame’ in 2008, 19 years after they disbanded and nine years after the death of principal songwriter David McComb.
[2] Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail would argue otherwise.
[3] I believe QUT in Brisbane has several post-doctorate students studying precisely this subject.
[4] I’m using the phrase in its basic, most traditional sense (cf, this year’s incredible Trikont compilation Roll Your Moneymaker: Early Black Rock’N’Roll, 1948-1958).
[5] I could equally have mentioned The Scientists, The Go-Betweens, The Laughing Clowns, The Apartments, Weddings Parties Anything, God…
[6] The Drones also live in Melbourne, but originally hail from Perth. No one in their right mind would choose to remain in Perth, same way no one in their right mind would live in Milton Keynes.

Song of the day (Australia) - 143: Venom P. Stinger

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:52:00 +0000

OK. Day two of my tribute to becoming Australian, and this group have significance for me.

I'm sure my pal David Nichols can remind me of this, but when he found himself at a loose end for those crucial 12 hours in London on a stopover back from Olympia, WA to Melbourne in 1985, and hence randomly decided to take a tube to my house in Willesden Green to pay me a visit, someone he only knew as someone someone else wanted to know - and I happened to be in - he didn't just drop off one record with me, as has been reported elsewhere.

It was the debut Beat Happening album, the one with the cat on the spaceship on the front - and I loved it so much, I decided to play it to my friends at Rough Trade Records who'd been so good to me, and they loved it so much they ended up releasing the second Beat Happening album in the UK, thus precipitating Beat Happening's one and only tour over there. It also set in sequence another chain of events that I guess culminated in - for example - me being given back my Daniel Johnston T-shirt by Courtney Love in the summer of 1994, but that's another story. And it also set in sequence, in a roundabout way, my current recording and performing career - something I'd given up upon until David, with Julian Teakle, suggested making an album in Melbourne, 2000.

Back to the original plot. David actually gave me a handful of records, and the second among them was Venom P. Stinger's first single 'Walking About'. It blew my head off. It was the first new, underground, Australian rock I'd encountered since Prince Melon Records and Boys Next Door a few years earlier... and I was like, man, this is fucking PUNK ROCK! I didn't make the connection with The Moodists (who I saw play London's Rock Garden on my 21st birthday) or one drunken escapade in mainland Europe in the mid-90s where I nearly died, straight up, after drinking two pints of vodka right before The Dirty Three took the stage... I didn't make that connection until I saw this video about two or three weeks back.

(Then I was like, sound of hand hitting forehead extremely hard... D'OH!)

So I guess it's time to finally pay tribute to something I should have paid tribute to over 20 years back. Ladies and gentlemen, as I'm sure you're already aware, Australia has one hell of a tradition of killer punk-ass garage music... and these were some of its finest proponents. Venom P. fucking Stinger.

Song of the day (Australia) - 142: The Laughing Clowns

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:31:00 +0000

To celebrate the fact we became Australian last night, I'm going to be posting songs from 10 of my favourite Australian bands over the next week or so.

Ridiculously small number, I know - but 10 is a number that has significance for us in this context, as it's the number of years it's taken us to actually become Australian citizens. It was a moving enough ceremony at South Bank's Entertainment Centre last night, bearing in mind we were just three (plus Daniel) of the 995 being given our shiny new Australian Citizen certificates and tree to plant. It was sweet, queuing up among so many different cultures for our certificates. The politicians kept their blah to the minimum, the house navy band was nicely cheesy and the Aborigines created fire from wood and grass. Isaac and Daniel loved the streamers and music. And 'Advance Australia Fair' is a fuck of a nicer song to sing than bloody 'God Save Some Rich And Over-privileged...'.

Could have done without the "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant that started up and the clenched fist salutes that greeted it, and being singled out as atheists when we were asked to make our affirmation but. Yeah sure. I feel proud to be Australian. It's my choice, and it's been quite a turbulent journey to get to this point.

Anyway. Here's the first song.

Song of the day - 141: Neonates

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:58:00 +0000

Some more crazy-ass great female shit, recommendation courtesy of one of my favourite cult pop stars, this dude.

Give their MySpace page even the most cursory of listens and I'm sure you'll see why I'm digging Neoneates' minimalist groove so much. It's all scratchy and human, like Stef Petticoat (who, for a woman who released just one single that anyone knows about - I have more - sure exerts a major hold over much of the music I'm grooving on today). It's all brief and funky, like Trash Kit. It's not swamped in reverb. It judders and jars and jiggles in all the places I like, and a few I wasn't even aware I liked until a couple of minutes ago. It knows who Ludus are. It comes out on cassette-only, something even I'm unable to play these days (although my son Isaac still can). It's not Etta James. (You do appreciate what I'm doing here, right? Just because I say I like something because it's not something else doesn't mean I don't like that something else as well.) It's probably down with that Wounded Wave (or whatever hell post-punk Germanic music called itself in the late 70s) that we hepcats all love so much. It's female (like, duh). Oh, and of course it reminds me of my London sweethearts, Wet Dog.

Oh, you need the link to the MySpace page. Here it is.

I'd recommend 'Gridlock', but they're all so fine. So fine.