The Pogues: live in Melbourne, 2012 (review)

Venue: Festival Hall

Date: 04/04

If there’s one holiday Australian’s truly get behind with gusto, it’s the celebration of St Patrick’s Day, and so having Celtic punk legends The Pogues in town was excuse enough for a mini-reprise of the festivities. Oversized green leprechaun hats, Irish sport shirts, endless shamrocks and the guff of whiskey breath fills Festival hall, along with the general rowdiness of your local watering hole near closing time.
 

Being a Pogues gig – their first in Australia for 22 years – mass alcohol consumption is a given. The only question yet to be answered is who will be the most pissed; the fans or the band’s renowned lead singer, Shane MacGowan. Pogues concerts have never adopted the official warning; ‘show may conclude early depending on Shane’s ability to remain standing’, yet it is a real possibility as their touring history will support. Tonight we are treated firstly to the original eight-piece line-up who take to the stage as the sound of The Clash’s Straight To Hell fades over the PA, and finally an unhurried, slightly wobbly MacGowan, who emerges to a welcoming roar.
 

Before a note of music is even played, the man who has done nothing to remove the stereotype of the Irish drunk, is shouting erratically into his mic. “I can’t fuckin’ believe ish been twenny two fuckin’ yearsh, Melbourne….” He says, followed by some indecipherable mumbling, and finally, “Sorry about all the fuckin’ swearing.” He takes a defiant drag from a cigarette and grins broadly, revealing what little remains of his front teeth as the band burst into life with Streams Of Whiskey. In those 22 years, The Pogues have gone through many changes before arriving here on what is their retirement tour. MacGowan was booted out for his out-of-control behavior, and the band recorded one album without him - which remains their last studio set – before going into hibernation. No new music means of course tonight is all golden-era Pogues anthems, pulled mainly from Rum, Sodomy & The Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God.
 

Despite the ever popular Dirty Old Town and the rousing Fiesta, Australian fans are clearly in favour of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, and begin calling for it not three songs into the set. Shane introduces the boozy sing-a-long classic, but nobody seems sure what he’s actually saying in regards to it, and nor do we care. The chance to link arms with total strangers and sway to its waltzy tempo, shouting the refrain is all that matters now. If you’re not among the great heaving all-in sway, then you’re one of the brave bastards at the front, dodging crowd surfers and angrily moshing, or avoiding the projectile spit drops leaping from MacGowan’s ravaged mouth. The momentum changes dramatically though as Shane suddenly leaves the stage, hurling the microphone onto the floor, leaving more than a few of us wondering, ‘is that it?’.
 

To be fair to MacGowan, he seems to be working hard on stage tonight and is as coherent as can be expected, but a brief exchange between himself and tin-whistle player (and one-time lead-singer) Spider Stacey, ends abruptly. The fray, it turns out was all bluff, yet the show reaches a turning point here. Spider Stacey reprises his one-time role as band leader for Tuesday Morning – the best non-MacGowan Pogues song – and the crowd, perhaps still wondering if Shane’s done a bunk, respond with folded arms. Personally, I love Tuesday Morning, and being the only person shouting his approval and pogoing around - I suddenly feel quite lonely in the packed venue. Thankfully, for the sake of recapturing the all-in atmosphere, MacGowan re-emerges - only this time he’s packing booze. Swigging from a bottle of red – most of which goes down his shirt, on the floor - and on the front row - he receives a bigger applause than his first appearance. It’s as though he’s suddenly complete in people’s eyes. The dribbling and shouting Shane is here at last but it’s hard to ignore the whole pantomime element to the sight. I guess some things are just too intertwined; Iggy Pop wouldn’t dare go on stage in a shirt, just as Pogues fans expect to see a certain amount of drunkenness for their dollar.
 

The playing-up-to-his-image thing is fine, but what surprises me is MacGowan is determined to make the songs sound good and is less concern with getting so smashed, that he sacrifice’s the ability to perform. It’s a big step for the man in my eyes, but maybe a let down for some here who perhaps were looking forward to a good first-hand Shane MacGowan crash and burn story, like what happened in the old days of the band. They’ve all learned a few lessons no doubt, but The Pogues still put on the best rabble at an age where many ‘former-greats’ are cranking out piss-weak covers album or flogging Time Life CD compilations on TV. The sight of a greying accordionist performing a stage-length knee-slide and a banjo being thrashed in the fashion of electric guitar still somehow suits this band of merry makers. It’s as though through playing Celtic-punk, they earn a golden pass to act anyway they please at whatever age. Besides, the encore consisting of Sally MacLennane, Rainy Night In Soho and Fiesta might well be one of the finest ever seen at Festival hall.

lEIGh5

FESTIVAL HALL SETLIST: 04/04/2012

Streams Of Whiskey

If I Should Fall From Grace With God

Broad Majestic Shannon

Greenland Whale Fisheries

A Pair Of Brown Eyes

Tuesday Morning

Kitty

Sunny Side Of The Street

Repeal of the Licensing Laws

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

The Body Of An American

The Boys From County Hell

Thousands Are Sailing

Dirty Old Town

Bottle Of Smoke

Sickbed of Cuchulain

encore:

Sally MacLennane

A Rainy Night In Soho

The Irish Rover

Poor Paddy On The Railway

Fiesta

Jim Sclavunos (Grinderman) interview: 2012

DONE WITH THE GRIND

The news of Grinderman’s unexpected end at Meredith late last year proved shocking enough to overshadow just about the entire event’s proceedings. Nobody outside of the Nick Cave-led garage rock ensemble’s inner circle knew that was to be their final performance, and the reaction to Cave’s brief, understated goodbye spoke volumes about the popularity they had garnered through just two albums. Indeed Grinderman earned the kind of reverence once reserved for new a Bad Seeds record, and so with his eyes focused on the future of that band - his musical home for almost 30 years – Cave shot down what was shaping up to be a full-time project. The question of ‘why’, at least in percussionist Jim Clavunos’ mind is a simple one, “We were finished with what we had to do as Grinderman, so its time to move on.” Yet with life-long collaborator, Mick Harvey’s departure after the last Bad Seeds album, Dig! Lazarus, Dig!! and much renewed interest in Cave through Grinderman, is all as simple he claims?

“Well, we were so devastated at losing all three of our nominations at the ARIA awards that we decided to quit altogether!” Laughs Sclavunos, his teeth somewhat gritted at the mention of Grinderman’s final show. The fall-out from Nick Cave’s announcement is down to his band to deal with, and Jim is quick to remind me, “My musical life didn’t begin and end with The Bad Seeds or Grinderman. It (Grinderman) is an important component of my life, or rather was if it’s to be no more, but I think the music we made stands on its own merit.”  The 6ft-7 percussion fiend joined the Bad Seeds in 1994 for the Let Love In campaign playing alongside drummer Thomas Wydler before finally taking a leading role on the stool for a ‘muck-about between sessions’ band that had developed in the ranks. Location and accessibility determined which Bad Seeds members were invited to the Grinderman party, and along with Cave, Warren Ellis and Martyn Casey, Jim was simply available. But this side-project quickly became popular among fans - and non-fans of Cave alike - once their thrilling debut album arrived. The danger of it stealing a lot of thunder from Bad Seed activities became quite real, Jim concedes. ”We did kind of neglected Bad Seeds for a long time, I think. It’s been about four years since we've done anything so I think it’s high time we made some beautiful music together, again.”

Ending on a high, or rather enjoying the brevity of a great musical moment and getting out before it starts to love itself too much is something Jim is very comfortable with. The New Yorker’s musical life outside of ‘Cave Central’ had always been a series of short-term hit ’n’ run projects. Besides briefly drumming for core New York art-rock bands Sonic Youth and The Cramps, he, alongside post-punk siren, Lydia Lunch was directly involved in creating the No Wave movement  – a kind of puritan punk scene, directly in opposition to how commercialised punk had become by the early 1980s. The point of No Wave – keep it short and noisy and don’t expect a greatest hits boxset – was never something Jim took lightly. “The whole ‘no future’ mentality was still very much intact.” To this day he is all about the moment of creation and the passion that comes with playing every gig like it may very well be the last, which was often the case. However the young Sclavunos’ foray into No Wave was motivated less by making music than the chance of getting laid, as any band will deny. 

Jim with Lydia Lunch

“That, and getting into gigs for free.” He corrects. “I couldn’t play bass, so when I met Lydia (Lunch) and she asked me join her band - as a bass player - I knew that she wanted to fuck me, and I saw the opportunity to lose my virginity.” He giggles. Lydia Lunch’s infamous caterwauling monologues might have been enough to send most males running for cover, but Jim’s musical life had finally begun, significantly at the very moment his cherry was popped. He never did learn the bass either, but Jim is where he is today because of a natural instinct for what the artists he works with are looking for in a musical accomplice. Making the Bad Seeds his only real full-time band says a lot about both him and the kind of trust afforded to each artist in the service of Mr Cave. Jim was an easy fit for Grinderman, then so it seems relevant to ask was Grinderman an ideal fit for ‘Mr No Wave’ himself?  ”I don’t get sentimental at all about bands that I’ve happened to play in, but Grinderman was such a natural thing when it happened. I guess the end of the band felt just as natural too.” There’s no obvious lamenting over Grinderman for Jim right now though. By the request of artistic director Jonathan Holloway, he is already busy on his next obsession - preparing a contribution to the Perth Festival - a project called The Faustian Pact. Along with musical collaborator Peter Mavrogeorgis, the pair - who perform together under the name The Vanity Set - will construct a live score to the 1926 silent cult film, Faust. 

“Faust is unique in that there is no one definitive version.” Jim explains of his interest in the German noir classic, “It was re-cut several times for different audiences and different regions because of the sensitivity and suspicion people had towards the occult.” Faust director, Friedrich W. Murnau based his film on a story which dated from the 16^th century, and was already a firm favourite in German folklore. The ‘pact with the devil’ plotline has leapt from ancient text, to operas and stage shows over the decades before Faust’s cinematic debut, and proving its enduring appeal, continued its infiltration of popular culture through tales of alleged ill-gotten gifts of musical talent in the blues and rock n’ roll scenes. However Sclavunos’s intrigue with the story lies mainly in how he feels its true meaning was intentionally misrepresented in Murnau’s film so as to appease the so-called god-fearing public. For his part in the Perth festival, Jim plans to correct this. “If people are thinking they’re just going to see the Faust movie as Murnau intended with a live score, they’re going to be bitterly disappointed.” He laughs.

The Devil takes control in Faust

“Every aspect of the Christian ideology and the psychological resonance behind the film has been totally messed with. It kind of transcends the moral and the social and has been whittled down to a more basic study of man rather than a Christian salvation story.” Sclavunos’s re-cut version of Faust will form the back-drop to live performers in costume as well as the band. “It’s going to be part play, part concert and part cinema. I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with what usually happens with live scoring of films; a couple of musicians playing along to what's on screen, but we wanted to approach this in a totally new way.” Jim’s desire to re-cut and re-score Faust is a long-held one, and discussing it is justification for him. “The original film (for me) was a bad influence on my idea.” He laughs, “I liked the aesthetic of the film, but The Faustian Pact is really all about recapturing the story from the original text.” Taking so much care with this story, its clear Jim is in it for preservation purposes, opposed to his own life in music which has been considerably low on preservation. However, the final word he gives on Grinderman hints at a possible first-time feeling of loss over a band in his long career. “I'm sorry there's no big scoop on why Grinderman split up, but what I can tell you is we’ve all really enjoyed having this band, and I am sorry to see it go. It was one of my favourite bands ever to play in, but hey there’s always the possibility of the dreaded come-back tour!”
 

lEIGh5

Jello Biafra interview: 2011

CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN'

Boulder, Colorado-born Eric Boucher began life ‘small-town USA’ style, in front of the television absorbing all the menace and mirth it could spew out into his young mind. Not being the sporty type, he fixated on music, cartoons and news broadcasts in his free time, growing increasingly fascinated - and disgusted - by how atrocious world events were televised and reported on by his country’s media. The anger and bewilderment he experienced, combined with a natural gift for writing and self-expression, ultimately gave rise to Boucher’s notorious - at first on-stage only – persona, Jello Biafra. Whatever life had in store for small-town boy Eric Boucher, it was surely crushed once the mighty Biafra was ‘born’, and to this day, it is the peculiar name of Jello that continues to raise eyebrows, hackles and conservative backs through-out small, big and all-towns-in-between, USA.

The mushy dessert of his name-sake, an easy to swallow, much loved children’s favorite may have been an ironic choice of pseudonym for the one-time Dead Kennedys' singer, but Biafra has always been an unashamed attention seeker. He knew when he chose his tag, that every kid in the USA would at some time or another been spoon-fed that very thing by a caring parental figure. Perhaps he saw his own high level absorption of crass news media as a rather tasteless kind of ‘spoon-feeding’, and so took a punt that if he was going to have a public forum to unleash his anti-establishment woes, then it was gonna come with a sweet and fluffy handle that nobody would forget!

Biafra’s most noted platform came in the form of punk legends The Dead Kennedys – once more, a name that was certain to stick in the public’s craw in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination – and perhaps for that reason, in their new home of San Francisco, Biafra and his band were treated as a blight on the landscape of a city under the spell of neo-hippie-dom and rising yuppie-dom. However, this didn’t prevent ‘Blight Biafra’ from raising sizable interest in his absurdest campaign to become mayor of San Francisco in 1979, or even prevent The Dead Kennedys from charting with singles like Too Drunk To Fuck and Holiday In Cambodia. Biafra had proved beyond doubt he had enough support to be the voice for a broadening sector of society not content to just ‘suck it up’, and its precisely that voice – one that’s never waned in its convictions despite the trouble it’s bought him and his band - that has earned him a new career as a spoken word performer. The gloves no doubt come off when Jello hits the stage for his Melbourne spoken-word debut in October – they certainly did when it came to answering some of my questions in this rare, but utterly engaging interview.

What can people expect coming to a Jello Biafra spoken word show these days? Well I haven’t done one in a while, so I’m not quite sure what I’m going to discuss at this stage. I’ll just pull it all together at the last minute I’m sure. I mean events and news stories happen so fast these days, and I like my show to be right up to the minute, you know.

Do you see a lot of your – especially political - subject matter as relatable in countries outside of the US?

Yeah, I mean it seems as if nobody is spared the heavy handed moves by the banks and the super rich to step on the gas and ramp up the whole corporate coup, pushing the idea that community is a bad thing, and it doesn’t work. They just want it to be every one for themselves, conditioned to just make more and more money regardless of how and who it affects and that mindset is why you see basic social services suffering. The banks are desperately trying to save their own arses and so its community and environment be damned. I’ve heard rumblings from Australia about a carbon tax, and I’m sure any argument against that would bare more than a passing resemblance to the American Tea Party – a grass roots movement who were actually funded by oil barons and the like. These guys know not to pull out the white hoods, but you can see clearly where their loyalties lie.

The song, Invasion of the Mind Snatchers from your last album, Enhanced Methods of Questioning digs neatly at the US’s problem with insane religious right-wing nutters getting into positions of power, but are people like Fred Phelps and Wolf Blitzer a genuine threat in your opinion?

Well, Fred Phelps hasn’t got a lot of support, but he’s obviously getting money from somewhere. I’ve been to his compound in Kansas, and they’ve taken over an entire block in a residential neighbourhood, apart from two houses whose owners wouldn’t sell, and so excluding them, there’s a gigantic fence around all the Phelps houses, which is floodlit 24 hours a day and it’s covered in the usual ‘god hates fags’ kind of crap, but that compound is really the only place he holds any power in thankfully. He has no political support, in sharp contrast to Blitzer and Sarah Palin, who are just as extreme as Phelps is, the only difference is, they know how to package themselves more cleverly.

What do you get out of spoken word performance that maybe is lacking from fronting a band, such as Dead Kennedys? Well for a start, activism, spoken word and music is all connected for me, but you don’t get the great adrenalin rush doing spoken word as you do playing music live of course, but then touring as a spoken word artist, you can go deeper into ideas and into people’s brains. I mean I never expected spoken word to take off, but I have to thank those fascists at the LAPD and hate-mongers like Tipper Gore who dragged me through court over the Dead Kennedy’s Frankenchrist album. (1985’s Frankenchrist holds the ‘honor’ of being the token reason for banning and censorship of music in the US, resulting in massive legal costs for Biafra and ultimately the end of the ‘Kennedys). That was the first time a charge of ‘distribution of harmful material to minors’ had been brought against a music album in American history.

Frankenchrist - killed the Kennedys?

Are fans encouraged to actively participate in the spoken word shows and enter into a discussion with you?

It all depends; sometimes I have time for questions sometimes not. When people come to see me though, I think they already have some idea of what I’m about and what to expect, and the kinds of things I talk about are what they probably discuss among their friendship groups already. So I’m just offering a viewpoint that can maybe add something to their own conversations. I mean I’m not afraid of being asked questions, but doing just question and answer sessions can quickly turn into a forum for a handful of conspiracy theorists wanting to debate the Roswell space alien or the whole 9/11 inside job thing.

Do you subscribe to any of the popular conspiracy theories yourself?

In my mind, the biggest conspiracy was that America went to war while being governed by Spinal Tap. But in reality, part of the problem was the FBI had all this so-called intelligence and voice recordings in several different languages that nobody in the US government could even understand. Conspiracy theories are great, but I much prefer to make my mind up using logic and fact. 9/11 happened because our (the US’s) powers that be at the time were completely ignorant.

Being in the privileged position of two public forums – spoken word/punk music - do you think you’ve always been successful in expressing your viewpoint?

Well yeah, I mean I’ve encouraged people for all these years to not hate the media, but to become the media. That doesn’t mean living your whole life on Facebook, and sending out little tweets from your phone, it’s about grasping the potential of the new media and saying what we’re being offered isn’t good enough. There’s a lot of people power going to waste on obsessing over pointless celebrity culture. But to answer your question, I’m just one guy and I’m not a mainstream force to be reckoned with, I’m just making a living off my art, and I’ve tried to use my art in a positive way, but now I’m saying it’s up to you to go out and inspire people in the same way I’ve perhaps inspired you.

Do you think running for mayor of San Francisco in hindsight, you were in fact much better positioned to make a difference outside of politics altogether? Yeah for sure, but I was never going to be that guy who put on a suit and went door to door telling people a different lie each time just so they’d vote for me. What I was trying to say is politics doesn’t have to be just that one thing, but as an artist I didn’t have to try and change a whole system to get up there and say ‘this is exactly what I believe in, take it or leave it.’ I’m living off my big mouth and bad attitude, yeah, but that’s gotta be better than bullshitting as a career.

Does coming back to Australia fill you with good memories of your last tour here with the Dead Kennedys?

What comes to mind immediately is, after a show in Brisbane one night myself, DH Peligro (Kennedys’ drummer) and members of The Johnnys were having a few drinks out on the street and a police car pulls up and they arrest Peligro basically for drinking while black! They didn’t go after anybody else and so that to me was a first hand experience of the banana republic dictatorship of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Then after a second show in Brisbane, fans were coming and telling me their favourite stories about Bjelke-Petersen, and I think the most outrageous one I heard was about a dude who got arrested in broad daylight for carrying a concealed weapon in a bag of groceries – it was a pineapple! I mean doesn’t Queensland grow like the entire pineapple stock for the rest of the country? You would think they would know the difference between a weapon and a piece of fruit is all I’m saying.

One of your most interesting ‘projects’ was helping launch the music career of Wesley Willis. Australia has a special kind of love for Willis’s brand of laugh out loud, apparently nonsense tributes to his favourite celebrities; Alanis Morrisette, Oprah Winfrey etc..; I wonder, what do you miss most about him? People say ‘oh such-n-such is a larger than life character’, you know, but Wes really was larger than life. I mean, every single person he came in contact with was just blown away by his energy and his wit, but Wes was utterly exhausting as well. I mean, I would be doubled up in fits of laughter and unable to breathe because of some bizarre observation or statement he would make. Like one time I had to get on a plane with him and make sure he was okay getting to where he needed to go, and this was only in a short space of time after 9/11, and we’re in the airport lounge and all of a sudden Wes just yells at the top of his voice, “Hey Jello, do you think if I hijack a plane they’ll put me in jail?”, and I just froze thinking there were going to be all these security dudes come running out and crash-tackle us or something, and I said to Wes, you know, “You gotta keep it down, man you can’t say that stuff!”, and so he went “okay”, and then sure enough ten minutes later, “Hey Jello, do you think if I hijack a plane they’ll put me in jail?”. He was always doing shit like that and that’s what I miss so much about him not being around. I thought a lot about Wes the night Obama was elected and when he got up to do his speech, all I could think of in the back of my mind was how much that moment would’ve meant to him. Wes would’ve been in that crowd at the White House, and even if he was 100 metres back, his booming voice still would have come through, and he would have been singing, “Obama is the greatest, he can really whip Saddam Hussein’s ass! He can really kick a mule’s ass!” That’s how Wesley was man - just a great communicator of emotions. Nobody could sum up the feeling of a moment like Wes.

lEIGh5

Hey Bono, Jello's onto you, you fatuous swine!

Ed Kuepper interview: 2011

KUEPPER'S BREW

As guitarist in the Australian punk legends, The Saints, Ed Kuepper played the withdrawn, thoughtful foil to the rumbling brick shithouse that was Chris Bailey. But however uncharacteristic a thing ‘thoughtful’ may be in punk guitarists circles, as co-songwriter, Kuepper is credited as one of the two men who gave birth to punk in Australia in 1976, with a little sulk about being Stranded (so far from home). Despite the blazing debut of I’m Stranded, unlike Bailey, Kuepper had viewed punk as a mere minor bump in the road along which he was traveling, continually searching for something that moved him. Then in 1980, the German-born Queenslander, committed musical sacrilege - combining jazz with punk – in Laughing Clowns, but this hybrid-flaunting band demonstrated Kuepper’s formidable arranging and songwriting prowess, as well as gaining him widespread respect in his birthplace of Bremen.

It was Ed’s move to making solo records in 1985, beginning with Electrical Storm, that drives our conversation today as Kuepper takes stock of this, and 1986 album Rooms Of The Magnificent, through a series of acoustic performances, and planned re-rearrangements of the albums his punk and jazz roots never saw coming.  The two albums, although not strictly his most prolific work, have gained an almost indescribable significance for Kuepper over time, he begins. “It feels like an odd thing for me to be doing right now, but the material seemed to be calling out for my attention. I recently began to see links between the songs on those albums, as well as on Today Wonder (1990), and I want to get to the core of what those connections are, and why I they were suddenly making themselves known to me. All I really know is I couldn’t ignore them any longer… It’s like psychoanalysis I suppose.” A debut solo album, I propose, can be a frightening concept for a man who walked away from such a ‘sure thing’ as The Saints, and the massive overseas fan-base Laughing Clowns earned. Was the common thread one of self-doubt?

“I would say I was rather more relieved.” He laughs. “Both of those bands ended quite poorly in terms of our friendships, and so I had no trepidation about recording on my own, however those first two records were very rushed affairs, which is why they were so raw and now demanding my urgent attention.” Kuepper, motivated by re-visiting his early solo work, is putting together an entirely new album to be released as a follow up, “I’m wondering if the new record will be informed by what I discover in re-working those older songs.” But his search seems to be based on an ideal, rather than any real dissatisfaction with how those records sounded. “I had forgotten quite a lot of those songs until recently when Mark Dawson (Ed’s drummer, 1985-’95 who is involved in the re-workings project) and I began this process, and hearing them again they seemed so mysterious to me. I’m not expecting any great revelations to occur, but it does feel as though a story was being written and somewhere along the way I lost the thread of that, which is what I’m exploring now in order to move it forward.” Since 1985, Ed has written and arranged 20 solo records, often direct and emotionally raw in tone, so untangling the story of his subconscious is certain keep the artist busy for some time yet. One brief but certainly memorable chapter in Kuepper’s story outside of his personal songwriting, was of course the tense musical partnership he shared with Chris Bailey in The Saints. Ed has on occasion reunited with The Saints for tours, but he understands the only rewarding part of his and Bailey’s union was during the band’s formation.

“There was focus, and the kind of fighting between us that was very good for creating music, but not for creating dear friends.” He recalls. “Chris was much happier after I left so he could get on with doing his campy vaudeville act… that’s his thing, but it was never really for me.” The last Saints reunion tour in 2009 coincided with the news that Mick Harvey was leaving The Bad Seeds after 30 years in the service of Mr Cave. As a long-time associate and peer of the band - The Birthday Party’s deceased guitarist, Tracey Pew had briefly joined Laughing Clowns – Ed was approached to step into Harvey’s place. But if his role extends to writing the next album with Cave, he’s unsure. “Oh look, we haven’t discussed those finer details, but I would imagine just being in the studio with the band we would work out the songs as a unit, but being involved as a songwriter is not an issue. I think Nick writes most of the lyrics, and I certainly wouldn’t knock back the chance to write together, but I’m still ‘the new guy’ in a lot of ways, which is nice.” He laughs. “I haven’t been the new anything for a long time!”

lEIGh5

Jon King (Gang Of Four) interview: 2011

ALL WE MAKE IS 'ENTERTAINMENT!'

Any self respecting punk historian will delight in telling you, while fingering their well-worn vinyl copy of Entertainment!, Gang Of Four were one of the most important bands there at the birth of the scene. But that album, their debut, was for me an image long before being an aural experience, like the many albums you discover are worshiped long before you actually discover them for yourself. The bright crimson sleeve, slightly cynical exclamation point and the name itself; Gang Of Four, all suggested a cautious approach.

The band's founder, Jon King is on the phone today from his home in Leeds, and every bit aware of the reverence/caution he invites. "All I can hope for is that I might have encouraged and stimulated people to be creative. That's all I would want for." Certainly countless artists have rarely stopped singing Gang Of Four's praises, but now Jon, along with original co-founder Andy Gill, are back with their first new album since 1995, all the man cares about now is getting a few of their famously brutal shows over and done with.

"It's a bit out of the ordinary for us to be touring at all, so I suppose I should be a bit more excited about it." King laughs, "I'd much rather be doing the one-off festival appearances, like we are in Australia. The road rat way of living I've never found to be very rewarding, you know what I mean?" Taking 16 years to record a new album…? The last tour must've been total sensory obliteration, Jon? "Not at all, you just have to be a lot more organised than I am to make much in the way of quality music while on tour. I’m sure it must be nice to be Damon Albarn sitting in a hotel room between shows making his next album on an iPad, but not me mate." Indeed the long wait for any new Gang Of Four material is simply a matter of fact. Bar actually asking why they like to take years off between records, I wonder when the last time Jon felt he was under any pressure to get an album done and released.
 

"Not since our first record, mate." He laughs, "I remember when we were finishing Entertainment!, we were a just couple of songs short of a full album and so we took ourselves to a farm in Wales and stayed there for a couple of months to write, and Andy (Gill) and I came up with Return The Gift down there, so it was obviously worth our time getting out of the studio. But I think very interesting things happen within a band when you've got a deadline. I think all creative people to some degree need someone indirectly involved intelligently managing time for them. I'm like the painter who stands around all week looking at the walls and then on Friday at 5pm works frantically throughout the weekend to get it all done in time." Gang Of Four's notable influence and reverence arguably sprung from a filthy sordid affair between prog rock, New York punk and reggae. They pre-dated the ska-punk movement and unlike many of the late '70s punk bands, Gang Of Four didn't discount prog's musical merit. Punk's a title they still happily own, but Jon’s willing to use a much dirtier word to describe his music.

"I always say - though it’s probably quite wrong - what we do is kind of like jazz, you know where you improvise and try and push things." He says provocatively, "Just take a song like He’d Send In The Army for example (from their second album, Solid Gold), that one is always completely different whenever we play it live. I mean, Andy and I might not play anything at all for a few minutes just to see how long we can stand it before we're compelled to drop in again, which could only work on a song with so many stops and starts." He adds, "Songs that have so many trigger points telling the artists where to come in and what to do next aren't terribly interesting to me." Plenty of "musically deconstructive" acts have declared Gang Of Four as an influence – Bloc Party, The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand – so it's not surprising, Jon took his lead from the original demolition man. He explains.

"When I see artists who I admire, like Bob Dylan, they don't respect their own material." He claims, "Dylan when he plays, will change the melody line, the chords, the whole phrasing of his songs and often not care much about getting the words right either. I think that to me, even beyond his natural ability as a performer, is the most entertaining thing about his shows. We're not quite like that, in the sense we try and keep true to the essence of the songs… what I mean is there's no point in playing a song about aggression in a kind of pussy like way, you know what I mean?" He laughs. Whatever the case may be, the band's debut album Entertainment! released in 1979, was hardly the aggressive powerhouse that Never Mind The Bollocks had been. But it oozed with subtle anti-political content, a lot of which would only take on any great meaning in time. Jon discusses.
 

"A song like Anthrax has taken on a life of its own online from people continually remixing it and reworking it into all these different styles. I’m talking about fans here who have taken it upon themselves to do this with no input from us, and I think it's brilliant to be honest. People have taken that song to heart and drawn out so many different meanings. I’ve seen one which is a kind of allegory to the British landscape and other equally fitting ones where it's all very post industrial and dark, so rather than us holding up our record and saying 'this is important!' its out fans who've shown us what a powerful track that was for them." Jon reflects, "I guess it's become our Star Spangled Banner in a way!" He exclaims, referencing Jimi Hendrix's infamous rendering of the US national anthem at his Woodstock appearance.

If Anthrax was the rallying cry for those who never gave up on the ideals of punk, then what has the latest phase of Gang Of Four got to offer its hungry children? The album is called Content, which I can't decide is pronounced/meant as content (filling) or content (happy), to Jon's amusement, "Well I wouldn't say Andy and I are necessarily contented people, so it can be seen as a bit tongue-in-cheek really. On the other hand, you and I are in the same boat - you used to be a journalist and I used to be a musician but now we're called content providers. That term springs from the media creeps who dominate the world and who make a fortune out of other people's work but don't invest a penny in it." By this statement, it's clear the importance of releasing new music for Jon is low. Indeed Gang Of Four have put out only seven albums in 30 years. Instead King firmly sees his band as very much a live act. "I think I could live without recording music." Jon decides, "It’s the emotional experience of playing live that I’m in it for. It's always been about the rough, sweaty carefree performances and being face to face with your audience for us. The kind of instant joy that comes from that never gets old for me. However, long fucking tours…!"

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Graham Lewis and Colin Newman (Wire) interview: 2011

(L-R) Newman & Lewis

VITAL CONNECTION

London's Wire in some form or another have existed now for 37 years. But the band mostly associated with punk and experimental albums Pink Flag, 154 and Chairs Missing, have seemingly stood at the cusp of dissolve for most of their musical life. They rarely communicate, and spend more time on solo or side projects than 'doing' Wire, and yet have seen many of their peers rise and fall around them. Talking with the two core members of this seminal band - Graham Lewis and Colin Newman – it's difficult to draw any parallels at all with the pair, (who insisted on being interviewed separately), except that neither one sees any good reason to quit.

Both artists discuss their 37 year career – in and outside of Wire – as though strolling through a continually collapsing then self-repairing city, and the fact they are back with a new album and tour basically means the dust has momentarily settled in Wire world. In interview, Colin (guitars and vocals) takes the roll of the articulater, while Graham (bass and vocals) flips between surrealism (when he gets bored) and bluntness (when he doesn't like the question). Both however, are disarmingly personable and, in Graham's case, much more interested in what book I'm reading now than promoting Wire's twelfth album, Red Barked Tree.

It's Colin Newman then who helpfully gives an overview of working on Wire's latest release. "After many years of making records in a kind of patch it up as we go kind of method, this time I thought it'd be nice to try actually sitting down with an acoustic guitar and writing songs." Newman sniffs, "I took them to Graham and he wrote the words for some and I wrote words for others, and it was like what I imagine being in a normal band was like." He laughs, "So then the others learned the songs then we recorded everything in either first or second take, which is something we hadn't really done since the late '70s." Graham Lewis, from his adopted home in Sweden, confirms Wire's renowned recording method. "You can walk through a door over and over again, and each time you'll do it slightly different to last… but it's never going to be as natural as your first entrance." In their long history, it can easily be said that Wire have never fully attempted to gain popularity through their music Their occasional brushes with success were more often down to "misleadingly commercial" singles lifted from albums filled with bizarre noise experiments. Their concerts are usually remembered for the total re-interpretations of songs from across their catalogue, often ignoring fan favourites. Yet music-obsessive's, and particularly musicians from all walks, regard Wire as inspirational.


"I never have an idea of how people are going to react to our music when we're making it and that to me is the most exciting thing." Newman retorts on the topic of Wire's live shows, "We work with the basic shape of a song and after we all kind of grasp that, we feel as though it should be able to be added to or altered however the four of us want. The band as I see it is kind of in two halves right, and that's why you get punk songs with jazz arrangements or virtually one-take demos with loads of post production on them." Newman adds excitedly, One of the new songs, Now Was could have been taken a million different ways for example, but the magic thing is, and it's something I've always tried to maintain with Wire or with any music I do, is the best result comes when you forget you're a musician with so many years experience and just play like you're still learning." Colin as well as Graham have used Wire as a meeting place for much of the band's existence, while exploring a plethora of side-projects. While on a break from Wire in the early '80s, Graham produced and helped launch a then unknown young London artist, Matt Johnson's early recordings effectively giving rise to cult icons, The The. Meanwhile Colin arranged music for Virgin Prunes, Hawkwind and Dead Man Ray as well as recording solo albums. Graham's commitment to only one aspect of music, he says, was never a thought he entertained. Instead the point of Wire, or writing/producing any music, for him was always to remain creatively stimulated.
 

"Different activities always produce different results, you see." He offers, "I find walking or taking a bath to be more stimulating to me as a writer than sitting in a studio or being on tour." Graham explains, "I like to swim as well, which is a very sculptural expression – not much to do with writing I know, but I've found a lot of my music comes from not being around anything involved with music. I read feverishly and that is my most direct doorway into writing music, but again it doesn't really relate to music except for the way in which printed text is generally quite lyrical." While Graham seeks inspiration through avoidance, Colin by contrast can't help but sound structuralist in his description of making music. "How I think we get the best out of this band, is that we have a high level of discipline." He states "To me writing songs should be about completely separating 'life' from music. You have to create something that can't just be spoken or otherwise, what's the point?" Flipping between Graham and Colin's interviews, it's clear why they wanted individual appointments. They speak well of the each other, but like a punk Lennon and McCartney, theirs is a marriage of convenience rounded out by a need for opposition.

"The four of us in Wire belong to no tradition apart from our own." Colin confides, "Wire is honest in what it is… but what it is, is anyone's guess." He laughs. Graham Lewis on the other hand, considers an unusual childhood introduction to music most of us don't share as being an indicator of what exactly did give rise to Wire. "I remember being 11 years old and living in Suffolk, and it wasn't until years later I understood what impression it made on me, but at that time you would hear these broadcasts from offshore pirate radio stations played through very large speakers along the coastline, and depending on where you stood, you would hear very different records playing at the same time over the top of each other. So you might get Helter Skelter playing over a symphony orchestra, just blasting out of the sky." He grins at the memory, "I guess you could draw the conclusion that that bizarre mashing of records was where the idea for a band like Wire was born."

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Bryce Avary (The Rocket Summer) interview: 2011

SATELLITE OF LOVE

The festively named Rocket Summer is one-man band Bryce Avary's pop-punk vehicle, which has over the last 11 years, earned the young Texan an obsessive, although mostly US, fanbase. The obvious contradiction in Avary's music – a somewhat grown-up, joyful take on the emo/screamo movement – created a small, but steadily growing shift away from the more self-absorbed facets typical of the genre. His songs, much like the man himself, lean towards tentative optimism and taking responsibility for oneself, all with a gleam of building resistance to life's nasty bits. 

Avary is a prodigiously talented musician and genuinely nice guy. But as we talk ahead of his debut Australian tour, he displays a kind of sheltered but verging-on-breaking-out persona. His life as a musician began at the age of 14 yet at 27, his wonder at the world outside of his hometown of Colleyville, Texas seems still largely intact. His recordings – four albums so far – have all been written and produced within Texas and he has undertaken very few overseas tours. The long haul to Australia must seem daunting, I propose, as Bryce sleepily gathers his thoughts on tackling all new terrain.

"It was something that probably should have happened long ago, but the stars just didn't line-up until now." He begins, "I'm super excited about it though, and I know a lot of people have been waiting a long time for me to get down there, so I'm really motivated to play the best possible show for them." He adds, "Australia's going to be getting a pretty well oiled machine because I've had so many years touring in the US, and so I'm confident we can win you guys over. But as far as playing to a new audience goes, I have the feeling I don't need to worry too much about people not knowing my music, because I get a lot of requests on (various social networks) to come down and play." Our conversation is punctuated by the sound of cars on an open road; Bryce tells me he and his touring band are gigging around their home state in warm up mode for Soundwave.
 

"I'm currently driving around Texas in this crappy rented RV, and it's got all of these photos of kinda cheesy all-American families plastered all on it." He laughs, "It's like a travelling billboard for this company called Cruise America!" Bryce's main companion on tour apart from his guitarist, bassist and drummer, is his wife Tara who runs the merchandise stall at the concerts. Although she's not musically involved with his band, Bryce credits Tara as his muse - and quality control expert. "My wife is my musical metre of what's bad and what's good." He confirms, "She always tells when something's crap or not if I'm ever getting too caught up in myself."

Avary as a child took up several instruments including guitar, drums and keyboard and was fluent in each one before he turned 14. He developed early on a love of hard rock – "Iron Maiden, man anyone who plays guitar has gotta love Maiden!" - An influence that's hinted at in even his poppier tracks – but naturally, it was a local favourite Bryce fell hardest for. "Yeah, Pantera are from Dallas, so they were really huge here and were one of the first bands I got totally into." He adds, "Probably my favourite band now though would have to be The Polyphonic Spree, who we actually once had to play directly after at a festival." He exclaims, "I remember thinking, how do you follow a 35 piece vocal band with our little touring quartet? It was a very, very hard act to follow!"

As Bryce prepares for his Australian rock festival debut, thoughts of having to follow a Polyphonic Spree show are soon replaced by ones of sharing a bill with Iron Maiden. Avary continues, "I doubt very much that we'll be on anytime close to Maiden, let alone after them, so it should be okay." He laughs, "We tend to get a much younger audience at our shows, which is great, but that does kind of affect when and where we can play also." Bryce's music, at casual glance, sits somewhere in between power-pop and punk. The Rocket Summer's addition to Soundwave is a testament to the festival's offering of rock acts from all styles, but the less forgiving US metal festivals circuit lead to a toughening up of Bryce's shows, he explains. "When you're competing with much bigger bands who already have a really strong fan base, you can't be too precious about your set list. I want every person that comes to see our show to walk away going, 'that was brilliant'." He smiles, "I don't want them to go away thinking 'it was okay, but I missed MXPX for that', you know!"

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Tom Gabel (Against Me!) interview: 2010

IN-CROWD BLUES

In the 13 years since forming Against Me, singer Tom Gabel has grown his 'baby' from a solo acoustic act to a full blown band of aggressors, moving increasingly in step with the current wave of US punk bands. However Against Me's distinction is in their outspoken criticism of that very scene and Tom - the reluctant spokesman's - apparent fragility. His band's tour to promote current album White Crosses - their fifth - will include Australia but tonight an eloquent Gabel, fresh off stage in Canada is hunkered down in the band's tour bus, fighting back what sounds like flu.

"I love touring in Canada but we always end up playing there in the dead of winter" He sniffs, "It's inevitable we end up getting sick so at least when we get to Australia we can look forward to some sun." Tom explains in before a bout of coughing. "Oh that's just a little after blast from the show, we played about an hour ago you see." He says. Against Me's 2010 release, White Crosses, follows the band's biggest album of their career thus far, New Wave (2007). Both projects have been over seen by star producer Butch Vig, but at what stage in the current album's process did Tom decide the Against Me/Vig combo could turn out another ripper? "We knew pretty soon after we started making the album that we were going to work with Butch again." Tom assures, "The last time, working with him was a fucking magical experience and thankfully, he liked our stuff a lot and actually called us to ask if we wanna do the next record together." 

Tom defines their working relationship as more 'band and older brother' than knob pushing dude behind glass. "Butch is a great guy to hang out with and just drink, you know. He's been in a few bands so he knows how to play hard as well as work hard." Tom smiles knowingly, "Also it's hard to have perspective when you just finish an album, you need a little time to digest how you feel about the songs and even the whole experience of making it." Butch added to his producer role that of objective critic, Tom explains. "It's hard taking criticism from anyone in the band, I mean we all would argue a lot about stuff, but Butch was an outsider and so we kind of automatically accepted his opinion because it never felt like a personal thing." He laughs.

The album's title and title track, White Crosses is a loaded term, conjuring up images of white supremacy in the American south or vast fields of fallen soldier's graves. However Tom's anger, he explains, was not aimed not at the KKK or lives lost in war. "I wrote the majority of the record in St Augustine, in Florida where I recently moved to and just around the corner from my house there's this church and the front lawn is covered in these little white crosses, and behind them there's a piece of text saying each of the crosses is there to represent how many abortions occur in America every day. So the song is in essence a pro-choice song, and seeing those crosses everyday, I fantasised about kicking them down, or driving my car through them. I think there's something to be said for acts like that - it'd be very gratifying, but instead I play music and write about this stuff. That's why I say in the lyric, "I want smash them all down".

Fighting words are never far from Gabel's mouth when it comes his perception of injustices. He's also been very outspoken of his punk peers' use of the genre to raise their own profiles, and generally miss the point. The current album's lead single, I Was A Teenage Anarchist takes careful aim at punk scene posers and prompts the question; has punk completely lost its way? "I think as long as there's passion and enthusiasm for punk music, and people are still doing it for nothing but the right reasons, then it still has meaning." Tom offers. "I think it's about what's personal to the individual - For me, my life has been changed by punk, and so if somebody comes up to me and says, you're not punk or our band's not punk... Punk is this, this and that, it makes me mad because they don't even see that they're putting rules and conditions on something which isn't defined by fashion or haircuts." He continues, "I'm not doing anything original, I mean the bands that I really admired were the ones who were most critical of the snobbery around punk, bands like Crass were saying things like 'anarchy has just become another token cancer, another cross to bare.' That sort of stuff would always effect me the most."

Gabel's online blog keeps fans up to date with the band's every move as the tour rolls on, however his very personal approach has unearthed some pretty gruesome effects traveling has had on the singer. "We do pretty aggressive, exhausting concerts and I've come pretty close to losing it after shows." Tom reveals, "I write a lot on tour to keep focused, but there's a whole shit storm that goes on around touring and playing in different cities ever other day." He adds "It feels like you're in a submarine going along in trapped in this tiny space, then you surface for a show and then it's back down in the depths and (you're) moving on again. The diet really suffers too, you know." Tom grins, "I think I'm up to day six now without having even seen a vegetable!" 

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Babylon Circus interview (2010)

"It must be a mistake, we aren't actually doing interviews right now, but if you're willing to put up with my bad English, I will talk to you.” David Baruchel - singer/guitarist with nine piece French band, Babylon Circus begins, somewhat confusingly, down the phone from his home in Lyon. In his country and all through Europe, Baruchels’ band are celebrated musical gods, yet their world is only gradually expanding to include international interest. To get a grasp of his expansive band’s music, imagine a heavy rock and reggae base, with the political twist of punk and ska, served with fairground organ, and all sung over in a mix of French and English. However, unlike their music, their message is simple; ‘no fear’. As David settles into surprise interview mode, he begins detailing his commune-style life in a self-confessed ‘band of gypsy’s'".

We have been on the road so many times together now and every time it feels like a big family picnic taking place." He laughs. "What family is about to me is having to spend time with people you don't always have fun with or even get along with, but there are more good reasons than bad reasons to be together." He adds, "Besides we are really cool, yes, we have no big problems with each other because it is a special lifestyle touring in a band and we appreciate our good fortune in being able to do what we love. If you don't like the role of the gypsy then you would be unhappy doing this, but I think we all have in common a love of the road."

One of the many curios in Babylon Circus, is the strong Jamaican accent in co-lead singer Manuel Nectoux's voice on the recordings – quite an oddity for a white Frenchman, non? “Oh well, Manuel spent many years in London in the Jamaican district getting into the Jamaican roots music and he ended up developing this black voice." David laughs "It is good for us though as it gives our band a special international sound, which when playing ska and reggae music is important I think.” He ads “It’s funny because from the very beginning people were asking 'oh where's the black guy'? but they didn't know it was like Manuel was Michael Jackson, you know, a white guy with a black voice." He says, with a cheeky burst of laughter.

Apart from dancehall and punk, Babylon Circus take a literal angle on their albums in having genuine, slightly disturbing, vaudevillian carnival music filtering in through their skank/rock mix. David explains his fascination with all things side-show; "Well my uncle played in a band who were all circus artists as well and I would spend a lot of time with them as a boy, which is what helped form the roots of my band. I remember I really wanted to join their circus then and perform but it was too difficult for me, and so I guess with Babylon I get to have my own circus now." David explains further his notion of circus/family/band correlation, "There is a kind of collective consciousness in our group, which is how I think circus performers and families operate, like we just know what to do when we get together without even thinking about it. We trust each other a lot.” The singer begins to transgress on having to think about his life as a gypsy musician. He’s not really comfortable with explanations, and is perhaps not used to being asked at all. "I don't really think about my life that much, we (the band) just go about doing what we do and I am so used to that, that talking about it is a strange feeling for me."

Asking David if he feels interviews are too intrusive seems a little pointless as he rarely does them, so I ask if he finds the creative process simple. He answer's somewhat strangely;

"It is a funny thing to talk about, after it stops being a decision you make. People go off to work and then come home and it is just what they do, it isn't a thing they discuss and I don't feel we do a lot of contemplating about our lives." The distinction David makes between himself and his band seems unclear. With his collective consciousness theory in mind, I ask him if like a family, a natural hierarchy has developed with in the group.

"Yeah, I'd say me and Manuel play a part-time role as parents, but maybe that is just one of the side effects of singing on stage - both he and I do this but it isn't an issue that goes beyond, say the concert. In the stage of developing the songs, everybody has their little part in that and each is just as important as the others." He ads, "You soon realise you don’t need to organise everybody in the band to do their bit, it just happens naturally from being together a lot of the time."  Sharing a rebellious attitude also helps to drive Babylon Circus collectively it would appear. Stories of police chases and arrests have emerged in the wake of their tours - David joyfully retells a personal highlight; “When we were on tour in Europe last time, the day after a show we decided to do some busking in the street and some people turned up who had seen us at the concert and must have called all their friends because soon there were a lot of people and they brought beer with them, next thing everyone was getting drunk and, I guess it was actually illegal to drink in the street so the police came and saw that we must have started this.” He continues, laughing; “The cops decided to chase after us and so we split up, but they caught our keyboard player in the end. It was one of the funniest times in my life, that day.”
 

Unsurprisingly, Babylon Circus’s five albums are filled with anti-conservative messages, a subject David seems eager to discuss; “In France the government now are trying to make a law for everything, from women having to be covered from head to toe, to drinking and even what you can talk about in public, and to me that is just showing so little respect to people. I feel strongly that this must change, I mean there are more important things than what people wear and having some beers you know?” The singer continues, “We are too far from being in a position to start again, because people share this apathy but (the government) having so many ridiculous rules to try and control every aspect of people’s lives I don’t think should be just accepted.” In his opinion, I wonder if David feels his views are shared by many in France. “Well maybe 50/50, I mean President (Nicolas) Sarkozy was elected by half the population, so you can say at least half the people don’t share my views.” The band’s political content is not a ruling factor in the music, yet remains a constant reference. David explains he’s careful not to over indulge this side of his lyrics; “My songs are not so much to do with governments but with people. I believe in living unafraid and that also means not agreeing with certain laws, but more so I want to encourage people, my neighbours, to aim for a better life with no fear as well.” 

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