Gee muses

I’m a heretic. The best album by a Seattle band wasn’t recorded by Nirvana. Oh no. Or Pearl Jam. Nup. Soundgarden … sorry. Alice In Chains, never. No, the best album EVER recorded by a Seattle band is Dust by The Screaming Trees. A beautiful insouciant mixture of raw grunge, hard rock, psychedelia and melody driven by the fiercest rhythm section of them all, burnished with guitarist Gary Lee Conner ’s elegant licks and monster riffs and capped by the sublime vocals of Mark Lanegan. Dust was massively under-rated but was Kerrang’s album of the year in 1996.

Just as under-rated but coming out of Cincinnati, Ohio, were the Afghan Whigs, a band whose records embraced a sound that harked back to Phil Spector and delivered it’s soul-licked alt-rock with a vastness that embedded elements of every generation since Phil’s widescreen wonder. By sheer chance they were also the first non-Northwestern band to record for Seattle’s Sub Pop label. And like the Trees, their elegant muse was capped by supreme vocals - in this case those of Greg Dulli.

Turn the clock forward and Dulli and Lanegan are now the Gutter Twins, a pairing that is as perfect as it is a bed of contrasts. It’s step on from their collaborations in Dulli’s post-Wigs outfit, the thoroughly excellent, Twilight Singers, and a chance not only for two of the last 20 years’ finest singers and songwriters to bounce off each other but also for those two marvellous voices to spar with one another. Their debut album, Saturnalia, is splendid, big yet stripped back, bare yet full. Songs such as the epic God’s Children - a wonderful, haunting post-psych atmosphere that just defines rock at its most elegiac, the rumbling, brooding Circle The Fringe, the darkly shimmering I Was In Love With You, and the confessional, salvation seeking, All Misery Flowers, are as fine as anything the two men have delivered. And let’s not forget the strutting idle Hands. The Trees would have devoured this one.

Dulli is in a Los Angeles recording studio where he’s working on the next Twilight Singers album. (more…)

Since the death of  her son, Jeff Buckley, 12 years ago on May 29, Mary Guibert has dedicated much of her life to his legacy – the unreleased work he left behind – and his memory. In her own words, she works hard, travels a lot and loves what she does.

For now that is talking about Jeff and the Legacy Recordings’ latest release, Grace Around The World, which celebrates the 15^th anniversary of the release of his seminal album, Grace, one of the finest records of the 1990s, and a pivotal album in rock music. And, yes, it has been 15 years.

Mary is much like her son. Warm and outgoing, she chats freely. “It’s mind-boggling how quickly time goes,” she says. “It robs you of your sense of reality when it goes by so fast. At the age of 61 it adds meaning to the phrase us older people tend to use ‘young people of today …’”

Grace Around The World revisits and restates Grace by taking providing the same tracklisting except that all the studio tracks are replaced by previously unreleased live versions. And there’s an additional two unreleased tracks added on as a bonus. The CD is accompanied by a DVD which features the videos of all the tracks on the CD – they are drawn from TV performances in the US, UK and Germany. A deluxe version adds a second DVD devoted to the 169-minuted award-winning documentary Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley.

Like all the Buckley releases since his death, it contains a wealth of classic material that will be lapped up by his devoted fans. Buckley, despite the years, has never really faded away and his legacy today, in many ways thanks to the work of his mother and his record company, remains remarkably strong and compelling.

Grace Around The World began life as an act of faith according to Mary. “All we had to start with were boxes of VHS tapes,” she says. “Kids today will probably say what are they? Simply, every time Jeff performed live on TV, because of  the rights involved, the TV station would send the record label a VHS tape of the performance. So they were top performance tapes. As record company employees moved on these were boxes left behind.

“Twelve years later we had to go back to the television stations involved and see if there was an original master tape and people would come back to us.”

In most cases there was and the stations involved and the companies that own them were only too willing to let Mary and team have the tapes. There was the odd exception though.

(more…)

Many years ago, Tom Waits ended his concert twirling an umbrella fast, faster, faster still, as confetti cascaded down from the ceiling. Eventually he just disappeared. It was beautifully choreographed yet random and spontaneous. And that’s the thing about confetti – it draws any number of illusions and allusions depending on the individual.

Little Birdy’s third album is entitled Confetti and the title track closes the record – an austere, yet glittering atmosphere in which you can hear the chunks of ice being carved, and it also resonates splendidly as a title. Confetti is a collection of very individual pieces that fly around independently yet somehow remain part of the vast – yet pared back – sound the West Australians, now resident in Melbourne, have chosen to offer.

It is Little Birdy’s first shot at producing and it’s a splendid success. Instead of falling for the ‘let’s-throw-everything-in-there’ kind of overkill many virgin producers are drawn to, Little Birdy and engineer, Steven Schram, have gone for what could best be called hi-fi minimalism. Arctic airs, mixed with the warm of breezes of edgy Americana, while the pop is a cool summer’s day and the rock hot but not meltingly so. It is an album that will grow on repeated listening. Deceptively simple but strong.

Lead singer and songwriter, Katy Steele, and drummer, Matt Chequer, have just spent the day together but didn’t realise they were paired for a phoner so when Matt joins the conversation Katy is kind of confused for a few moments.

For Steele, Confetti, production and the songs onboard are a coming of age for a woman who had her doubts about the band coming into the record.

“Before we started the record we weren’t sure where we stood with each other,” Katy says. “I had this time off from the band where I went away on my own and toured supporting Paul Kelly as a solo act. That was me needing to prove myself as a person.
(more…)

They were the brothers Ramone – even though they weren’t actually brothers. They changed the face of music – even though they had no intention of doing anything so formidable. Spanning three decades, their spirit and energy lives on, gloriously, 35 years after they formed in Queens, New York, and 13 years after they split in 1996. Sadly though, eight years later all three founding members Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny were dead, leaving drummers Tommy (1974-78) and Marky (1978-1983, 1987-1996) as sole survivors of arguably the greatest American punk band of all.

Tommy is now playing bluegrass so it’s down to Marky to keep the gabba-gabba-hey-hey alive with his outfit Marky Ramones Blitzkreig and a solid commitment to the spirit of rock’n’roll that made the Ramones Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Famers (2002) and richly celebrated artists. They have a place in the Rolling Stone lists of the 50 Greatest Artists of All Time and 25 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, VH1’s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, and Mojo’s 100 Greatest Albums. Their look was so influential that even now it’s being revisited with Marky about to launch a clothing line of leather jackets, jeans and t-shirts with Hilfiger Denim.

That’s pretty extraordinary if you consider this man - under his real name Mark Bell - drummed in the celebrated US rock/psych outfit, Dust, whose 1971 debut remains a highly sought after album and includes the healthy near-10 minute workout, From A Dry Camel. After a second album Dust became exactly that and Marky gravitated to something even bigger still. As psych faded with hippies, Vietnam and independence in music, punk was blossoming in New York at clubs like Max’s Kansas City and CBGBs. The revolution had begun all over again. And Marky was about to play a major role.

“I met Richard Hell in the bathroom at Max’s Kansas City,” he says. “We decided to put together a band, cut an EP, then the album.” That album was Blank Generation by Richard Hell & The Voidoids - one of the most influential punk albums ever. Its title track was named one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock by music writers in the Rock And Roll Hall Of fame listings. By then it was 1977 and punk was on fire. It was an unforgettable time.

“Richard and I decided to follow The Clash in the UK in 1977,” he says. “When we returned Richard didn’t want to tour anymore and Dee Dee wanted me to join the Ramones as Tommy had quit. The first song I recorded was I Wanna Be Sedated for Road To Ruin [the band's fourth album].” Sedated is, of course, one of the Ramones most loved songs.

“Incredible times, really,” Marky says. “In New York, in 1974/75, we all knew each other. CBGB’s was the focus. There was a camaraderie between us - The Dictators, Dead Boys, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, television, Richard Hell and, then, the Ramones. We represented the New York Sound.

“A lot has been said about the Ramones and its impact, but I guess the band was responsible for a whole wave of music, firstly in America, then England picked it up, then Japan, Europe, Australia. We were happy to see bands counting off songs, playing with the sound, wearing leather, t-shirt and jeans.

“The band never intended to change the world - but it did.” I love that. It’s said with no self-aggrandisment, no testosterone or beating of the chest. Not even a strut. “We never changed and we knew that we had to stick to our sound and not change to the whims of record companies. It’s a bit of a fine line - it’s good to have variety but you have to be identifiable and original as well.”

And that is why the Ramones music is still as vital today as it was 30-odd years ago. It’s hard to be original today - there’s more music that’s come and gone. And times have changed, technology has changed and the music industry has changed massively - for the worse. In the Ramones story there is a simple truth: people keep coming back for more. Generation after generation.

“I see it and I’m grateful,” Marky says. “Tommy is grateful. The Ramones have always appealed to youth - the lyrical intent; the energy converged on the audience. It never ends. I think if you analyse it too much it’ll go away. I’m happy to see all the youngsters at our shows.”

One of the things that made the Ramones stand out was their individualism. Each Ramone was a different character - yet each Ramone was the same. “I agree,” Marky says. “We were all different individuals, that’s what made it interesting. We were like cartoon characters in a way but as a unit we worked as a group. We were easily identifiable as was the sound. That wall of sound defined us.”

And here’s a key: punks they may have been, but the Ramones sound is Spectoresque (it’s not surprising he would produce their album, End Of The Century, in 1980) and rooted in pop and r’n'b.
“We liked that kind of music. We listened to ’50s and ’60s doo-wop, early Who and Beatles,” Marky says. “It had a lot to do with the ’60s girl group thing, the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and, of course, Phil Spector. The sound was great. You can’t make records like that today. They are too clean. That was the essence of that music. To play it, it has to be a little dirty, raw and rough around the edges.
“I have a radio show in the US. All I play is punk but a lot of the newer stuff seems too cold and sterile. There’s nothing like that warm analogue sound when you are rock band. But that’s the nature of things, of the world. I find you have to let technology come and then go. Vinyl, for instance, has a sound that’s warmer, the bass is deeper, the treble is higher. CDs are always very mid-rangy. Digital is very cold. There’s no doubt vinyl is the greatest sounding - that big fat sound. That’s one of the things that’s missing today to me.

“You’d think with technology they’d be able to duplicate the warmth of vinyl. I’m still waiting.”

In the meantime, Marky Ramone is doing what he loves best - hammering out 32 Ramones songs a night. Are you ready? 1-2-3-4 … …

The Oils. It’s a proud diminutive. It means so much more.

About 37 years ago, 17-year-old drummer, Rob Hirst, formed an outfit called the Farm along with bassist, Andrew Gifford, and keyboard player/lead guitarist, Jim Moginie. They were joined on lead vocals by a student at the Australian National University in Canberra, Peter Garrett. By 1975 the band could be found up and down the east coast and some time in 1976 it changed its name, by drawing the name out of the hat. So was born one of the greatest rock bands of all-time. I make no apologies, when I say, the mighty Midnight Oil. Sometimes rock deserves hyperbole. This one of those occasions. Along the way Martin Rotsey joined in 1977, Peter Gifford replaced James in 1980 and was in turn replaced by Bones Hillman in 1987. That’s the honour role. Although manager, Gary Morris, an integral part of the Oils, has to be mentioned in dispatches.

Midnight Oil represent everything that is right and great and necessary about antipodean rock music. They are proud Australians. They are committed political activists. And they have never ever sold-out.

On January 29, 2005, at Wave Aid at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Midnight Oil played what really looked like their last gig. They had dissolved two years earlier in December 2002 when Garrett had quit to follow his political career. A warm-up gig at Manly Leagues Club and the fund-raiser seemed the last hurrah, until nature struck twice and fire ripped through Victoria and flood ravaged Queensland. The response is the fund-raiser Sound Relief to be simultaneously held in Melbourne and Sydney. The Oils will play two warm-ups in Canberra, then the Melbourne gig. Will this be the last time? Hirst hedges his bets slightly.

(more…)

Donna Simpson is tired, very tired. The guitarist and vocalist with West Australian folk rockers, The Waifs, has just played three nights in a row in Melbourne, and there have been friends, lots of friends, in attendance. And then there have been after show drinks, maybe a bite to eat, perhaps a few more drinks.

“I’m older now, I can’t party like I used to,” she says. “I could say I’ve really been exerting myself on stage that would sound better. You know, Leonard Cohen is 75 and his shows have been going three hours and 50 minutes. He does have short intermissions though. Our show has been about two-and-a-half hours. It was last night, so it’s pretty long.

“We’ve been playing lots of old stuff by request and there is so much material to choose from …”

It has been 17 years.

“Seventeen fucking years,” Donna exclaims.” You get less for murder.” And laughs. She also says that none of it – the whole rise and rise of the Waifs – was ever planned. It all just kind of happened and they just added the detail.

Born and bred in Albany, WA, the Simpson sisters, Donna and Vikki (now Vikki Thorn), were touring as a duo called Colours when they met guitarist Josh Cunningham while playing in Broome. Everybody got along and a year later, in 1992, the band changed its name to The Waifs a year later and began fulfilling their ambition of touring Australia-wide.
(more…)

Nick Cave

It was dubbed the festival for people who hate festivals. It was much more. All Tomorrows Parties, curated by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, brought to Australia a laidback, devilishly cool, trippy day out in an almost perfect venue with extraordinarily good sound on all four stages and an exquisite line-up. Not a snotty little faux rapper, pop teen or kiddy punk in sight, this was really music for adults only - and it was celebrated with such flair and brilliance. There were no bad acts at All Tomorrows Parties, only good, gooder and goodest. The latter two words, of course, don’t exist but I’m saving the superlatives.

To the bands then: Young duo (augmented to a four-piece) Hunter Dienna opened proceedings. They need to relax. All earnest sombreness. It’s okay to smile guys. Their dark music is a little predictable but they are young and growing.

The Stabs are a knockout. The Melbourne garage fuzz quartet rocked hard and offered a keen sense of humour. Easy to see why Detroit likes them.

Sydney mostly girl quintet, Bridezilla, were a revelations. Still not out of their teens, this little lot are so obscenely talented it’s scary. They even got legendary actor Jack Thompson to play harp on one song. Their music is a beautiful cascade of equal parts folk, jazz, and edgy pop driven by a sax/violin frontline. They jam, they groove, the vocals are sublime. They are Kate Bush in the fifth dimension.

The five women who make up Melbourne’s Beaches are well into their 30s (I think) and their roots show. L7 meets The Dandy Warhols and Sonic Youth. Fun.

Joel Silbersher’s hard rocking Melbourne outfit, Hoss, delivered good old-fashioned Australian pub rock. And got an A+ for crowd banter.

Dead Meadow, the LA-based Washington trio, were one of the bands of the day. A stunning mix of 60s psychedelia and boogie and ’90s grunge. Awesome. Could have been San Francisco circa ‘68/’69. Ground control to …
(more…)

Okay, I take some of it back. Oasis are not washed up old Britpop has-beens. While 2005’s Don’t Believe The Truth had white-limbed little Pommy critics bouncing up and down in their bedsits proclaiming the return of the Gallaghers, some of us were less convinced. Okay, it wasn’t quite the tub of lard most of their recorded work since the brilliant (What’s The Story) Morning Glory had been - stodgy, gormless, piss-driven and unimaginative. It at least had legs and and some sort of fitness and life about the songs. Basically, it was b-grade rock. Pleasant but no nutcracker.

Enter stage right Dig Out Your Soul, the first Oasis album in three years and an absolute corker. Somewhere the Gallagher boys and their current compatriots have discovered what made them compelling a decade and a half ago. The songs are sometimes quasi-psychedelic, sometimes bluesy, occasionally Beatlesque, mostly rock hard and imaginative. There are moments when you seriously want to examine the album cover to check this really is an Oasis record. Noel has his writing mojo back, his six songs are standouts, no more so than on the utterly gorgeous, swirling, Falling Down, but the biggest surprise is saved for the album ending Soldier On, a mood piece that expands the Oasis world dramatically. Elsewhere, Liam’s Lennonesque, I’m Outta Time, is so convincing you could believe the ex-Beatle was reincarnated for the sessions and then there’s a beautiful piece of Gallagher driftwood called The Turning that is just a great song. But it’s the sprawling, brawling, slightly weary, punchy rock (check out Bag It Up and Waiting For The Rapture) that dominates the rest of Dig Out Your Soul that says here is a band that has done what the title suggests. What a surprise.

Guitarist Gem Archer is having a cuppa , elevenses as they say, and bemoaning the unplanned tour break forced on the band after a stage incident involving Noel.

“Basically, this guy got on stage and pushed Noel,” Gem says, “and because of that he has three broken ribs. Five gigs have been cancelled, Hopefully, there won’t be any more. Noel’s in a lot of pain and the ribs aren’t a great injury to deal with. They heal slowly. It’s like a broken nose - not much you can do for it. But it’s one of those freak little things you can’t predict. I actually thought he’d got the injury from falling on the monitor but it was the impact of the guy.”

(more…)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Metro Theatre, Sydney
29/07/08

Famously, a reviewer once declared he’d touched God at a Radiohead concert. I didn’t at The Polyphonic Spree but I went so close it didn’t matter. This was the best concert of 2008. An extraordinary celebration of everything that is great about rock music; uplifting, deeply moving at times, thunderous symphonic rock, contrasted by great delicacy and shade, performed by a group of 23 musicians and singers. So good was this amazing performance – and I’m not prone to waxing lyrical and tossing out superlatives left, right and centre but I’m going to here - that I’d put it up there with greatest shows I’ve seen over the past 40 years: Led Zeppelin in 1972, AC/DC (1974 and ’76), Frank Zappa (1976), Radio Birdman (1977), Tom Waits (1978), The Cure (1981 and 2000), Bob Dylan (2001), Brian Wilson (2004), to name a few … revered company, indeed.

What made this concert special though was the pure inescapable joy that lies at the core of the Texans’ distinctly un-American’s music. They reach for the sky – physically and spiritually, and this audience was drawn in. The result was that incredible energy that surges back and forth between the two. Everywhere people smiled; for the whole two hours, they embraced, danced, sang, punched the air, moshed – nobody who was there will ever forget the cover of Nirvana’s Lithium that had the entire Metro moshing as one! Couples pashed, several people were heard telling their partner they loved them; the audience parted – like the proverbial Red Sea - when the band shucked off its black army fatigues for the original white smocks and returned to the stage via the back of the Metro and down the stairs through the crowd. People hustled just to high-five a member or get close. It all sounds religious, cultish, dangerously close to overkill but, you know what, it was simply glorious.

Led by founder and lead vocalist, Tim DeLaughter, who has an extraordinary amount of energy and a marvellous voice, the six back-up singers, two drummers, two violinists, one cellist, one harpist (yes, a harp), three brass players, a flautist, three guitarists, bass guitarist, and two keyboardists, simply soared. It was extravagant, poetic, humbling. People even cried with joy. It even blew The Arcade Fire away – and anybody who saw its January shows will know just how good they were. This was a massive triumph, a masterpiece, more reasons to believe than you dare to dream. I’m still smiling 24 hours later.

Who would have believed that out of the ruins of US indie psych popsters, Tripping Daisy, a band born of a different time and place and respirited in the ‘90s, would come the all singing, all dancing, quite remarkable entity that is the currently 23-strong The Polyphonic Spree?

And who would have thought a stage full of, initially, people in robes looking a bit like a mass breakout from some nearby cathedral or church, now dressed in black army fatigues and looking like they mean business, would be both viable in the economically challenged early 21st century and last longer than it took for the initial novelty to wear off?

Well, brothers and sisters, happily there have been us believers around the place since the beginning. Now, we could get all religious here but let’s not. There are no Tom Cruises in this story. Eight years after the Spree first formed and five since its first album, The Beginning Stages Of, it is now established as one of the world’s finest live acts and is buoyed by a cult following that is strong enough to keep this massive ark afloat.

Founder, lead singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Tim DeLaughter, is baking in hometown Dallas, Texas, where the temperature is well over the old 100F (38C). “We’re frying, like little hot tomatoes. It’s a cliché but you really could fry an egg on the concrete out there,” he says.

DeLaughter is one of the smarter people I’ve come across in this business. A veteran of nearly two decades as a musician, he’s nudging into his mid-40s but his enthusiasm isn’t diminishing with age. With Tim, it’s matter of how much conversation you can fit in the time limit rather than trying to find enough conversation to get to the finishing line.
(more…)