More Gaz: Photos & Videos @ Changing Lanes Festival 2011

Right, I haven't done this in a while but here's some cool photos I found on Fasterlouder's website of his very last solo show, Gareth Liddiard at this festival over east. These photos are by someone calling themselves Dovers. Then I also found four new videos on YouTube by someone called Prettycrap. The songs, two from his solo album Strange Tourist with that title track and Blondin Makes An Omelette and two classic The Drones songs with Jezebel and Shark Fin Blues. Well, maybe it's not his very last solo show ever but it's the last one before The Drones tour next month, can I call it their comeback tour? Yes I think so, it's been so long. What is after that? I'm hoping for a new The Drones album being recorded after this tour and being released early next year, 2012 but I'm only guessing here. I really wouldn't mind if he did a second solo album too. So this festival is called Changing Lanes Festival in Sydney on the 17th September, it was just last week which looks kind-off cool but Gareth Liddiard is the best thing about it of-course.









Those flashing lights are a bit annoying but I would sit through anything to hear his songs again, again and again.

Here's a bonus track which is really interesting, on the same day it seems Gaz played or just had a really long jam with Damo Suzuki from the Japanese band called Can and the Sydney/Perth band The Holy Soul. The Holy Soul seem to have played with him before when I looked them up, I found at Repressed Record a $7 mp3 for a something called Dead Man Has No 2nd Chance which is a live recording from a few years ago and has Dan Luscombe playing keyboards on it on it too. The songs are A-side: A Stone Of Fortune and the B-side: Strangers In Blue, can you call mp3 downloads A and B sides? I don't think so but I just did, sorry about that anyway god knows what this song is called. It goes for over forty minutes I think it's pretty dam cool but I should warn you it's pretty weird too. By the way your really can't see a thing someone forgot to turn the lights on, maybe just to be even more freaky.

OK, I promise to get back my favorite 100 Aussie albums in my next post but I had to post these photos and videos because they are just too good not to.

More Gaz: Gareth Liddiard on Toumani Diabaté's Kaira

I still haven't got my next part of my 100 Aussie albums yet, this is going take a lot longer that I was thinking. Anyway, I think I'll post this now. So this is the Toumani Diabaté debut album and I found this kind-of review a long time ago, it was for when Matt Groening curated ATP festivals which is The Drones' record label and this can be filed under all my other posts about Gareth Liddiard and The Drones but it's more about well,Toumani Diabaté so I'll let Gaz do the talking because he's better at it than me:

Gareth Liddiard on Toumani Diabaté:
Toumani Diabaté is a, and probably the, master of the Kora. The kora has 21 strings, it's very old and it's very difficult to describe. (Google it. Or Bing it. Don't know what Bing is? Google it.) The sound Toumani makes is one of the most beautiful and moving on God's green earth. It really is extraordinary. His first record Kaira was made in the late '80s when he was about 23 and it's one of my personal all time favorite records (along with "Raw Power", oddly enough. Yay to Matt G and ATP.). Toumani's about the 73rd generation of kora player in his family, which is insane. What are you the 73rd generation of that doesn't somehow involve eating or drinking yourself into an early grave? But, he is the first of his ilk to be influenced by folks like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. This I find really interesting considering that when West African slaves were brought to what is now the centre (not!!! center) of the West they surely left their instruments behind. And you can bet that after being robbed of anything like spare time these new slaves soon forgot the finer points of their musicianship (from the supreme dexterity that comes from playing all day to the studied Moorish overtones that come from living in the African North West). Yet they evidently never lost their love for stringed instruments of the portable, neck bolted onto a hollow wooden body variety. And a direct consequence of that is the existence of folks like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. It wasn't George Washington who invented playing the fuck out of a guitar and therefore invented most of the West's 20th century popular culture. It was in all probability Toumani's great great great granddad. Toumani's music, although it has modern elements, must somehow be close to what African music was before Colonialism dragged it away, beat it up and dumbed it down into the original, pre Robert Johnson style blues. Thus!!!!!!!!! Toumani's music can give anyone interested a new perspective of where and how things sit in a historical and cultural sense. But most importantly, it will blow your mind.

So the above photo is Toumani Diabaté with his Kora but I'm not to sure who took this photo so I can't give credit, which I like to do on my blog. The only other things I'd like to include are few details about the recording which Liddiard didn't talk about, if you buy the CD you'll read this yourself but if you just downloaded it you wouldn't be able to read the back and I did Google like Gaz said so here is a few bit and pieces I now know:

This recording was made entirely live and unaccompanied by Toumani Diabate. There is no double tracking and there is no accompaniment by another Kora. Recorded in October 1987, Firehouse Studio, London and was recorded all in one afternoon. Co-produced by Lucy Durán who's a curator at the National Sound Archive, is now a lecturer in African music, BBC's world music programme "World Routes" and Joe Boyd who's other work has been on the debut single from Pink Floyd called Arnold Layne, all three of Nick Drake's albums, a few other classic albums like Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day, R.E.M.'s Fables Of The Reconstruction, Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights plus so much more than I can list here. The album Cover design (which is at the top of the page) derived from Mandkinka cotton robe "Liberia" courtesy of the Museum of Mankind. There are only five songs but they are very long. The whole album is about forty minutes long and it's all instrumental, he's not a singer just a kora player.

One last thing on Gareth Liddiard's solo myspace page he lists Margaret Thatcher as Kora player and as the only other band member. It also says, sounds exactly like the Drones, but less of them and his influences as who cares - well, I do and of course Margaret Thatcher did not play kora on his solo album but my guess is this album by Toumani Diabaté was a huge influence on Strange Tourist, his solo album. So here's a little video clip of him I found on vimeo if you wanted a little more.

TOUMANI DIABATE in series Live At Other Music from Dig For Fire on Vimeo.

Kaira by Toumani Diabaté tracklisting
1. Alla L'aa Ke (7:16)
2. Jarabi (5:06)
3. Kaira (8:09)
4. Konkoba (10:27)
5. Tubaka (9:33)

I really have to get back to my favorite 100 Aussie albums next or it's never going to get done.

More Gaz: The Drones' Penumbra, My favorite YouTube clip

Well, I went looking for The Drones' new DVD called A Thousand Mistakes yesterday because it says on their website it's out September sixteenth but it's not out until next month according to the shops. I did find out it's also going to come out on vinyl in November which is really cool - well, I think it is. It's on Bang Records who did the wicked Gutterville Splendour Six reissue a few months back and another great record from them is called Until.... by Kim Salmon & the guys from Mudhoney which is also only available on vinyl too. I think I'll start buying everything on records now. Bang Records looks like my new favorite label, it's got all these hard to find Aussie bands but the label is in Spain, why? But thank god because Aussie's are too stupid to issue their own stuff and leave it up to someone, somewhere else.

So this below video clip is NOT on that new DVD but it's just my favorite video on youtube which is fan made. It's for the song called Penumbra which is the second last song from the last studio album Havilah and has to be one of my most favorite The Drones tracks ever too. You could call it one of The Drones most depressing songs as well but I totally love it. It sounds like it's only Liddiard on his acoustic guitar and maybe Dan Luscombe making some weird noise but it's got no rhythm section so preempting his solo album which came a couple of years later.

It was written while or after Gareth Liddiard was reading Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (above photo) autobiography but he's written a few books - he's written a total of five books, three of them are autobiography's and two of them are science fiction novels. So I have no idea which one Gaz was reading, or if it was all of them. The books are Return to Earth (1973), Men From Earth (1989) and Magnificent Desolation (2009) also co-authored with John Barnes the science fiction novels Encounter with Tiber (1996) and The Return (2000). Anyway, whatever, this video was made using footage from Apollo 11 landing and moon walking. It's very cleverly made and I don't know how many times I've watched it so I'm now going to post it here on my blog. Here's the lyrics and the video right at the bottom of the page, I hope you like it as much as I do.

Penumbra

Edwin backs into the void
He's not in training now
And the pilot standing 19 feet
From Edwin on the surface
Bleached bone white
Was once a pilot who flew
Sorties in a war

But that don't matter any more
Edwin's three feet from the floor
As the pilot without warning
Takes a piss inside his pants
Hoping his pressure suit don't boil
And Edwin does the same
Charles Darwin's royals
The Eagle too, man's greatest feat
Miraculously intact
All acute angles, knees and elbows
Squats in golden underpants

Much later in the day
Edwin locks the cargo bay
And turns to see the cyclops
Neil Armstrong through the hatch
He's drifting further out of Wednesday
Eye clamped between the ice caps
Then Edwin does the same
They're like two orphans at the window of an aeroplane
It's 200 below zero
The sun's shrieking like an owl
Their footprints crush the bones of fairies
As their grasps are disemboweled

Have I said I really can't wait for that new DVD A Thousand Mistakes yet? But it look like another month to wait!

Cover Version: Bruce Springsteen's Dream Baby Dream, originally by Suicide + new HTRK one too

Right everyone is banging on about how it's been ten years since September 11 so I'm going to remember it by posting a cover of one of the greatest American songs ever written by a band called Suicide, if you think that is bad taste you haven't heard the song then. How I remember that day well, night it was in the middle of night when it happen in Australia and I was up watching TV and waiting for the doco about The Rumble in the Jungle with Muhammad Ali against George Foreman it's called When We Were Kings. It was just about to be shown and I don't normally wait for a TV show well, I normally never watch TV full stop but then all this really bad filmed stuff and reporters running about not really knowing what is happening started being shown in a very badly done news update but totally unbelievable scenes and I've never seen that footage again because maybe I've not gone looking for it but after a little while we just got the looped plane crashing, building falling and reporters started saying the same thing over and over.

I just wanted to see Muhammad Ali knocking out Foreman which off course it never came on but I went to bed and the world was changed forever. It is also my Dad's birthday today so it's supposed to be a bit of a celebration in my family, happy birthday Dad.

Anyway the greatest Suicide cover has to be by Bruce Springsteen. He and Suicide met for the first time at Power Station studios when Springsteen was recording The River and Suicide recording The Second Album in the late 70's and this cover was from Alan Vega 70th birthday limited edition EP series. "I've liked Suicide for a long time," Springsteen told Mojo in interview. "I met the guys late in the '70s in New York City, when we were in the studio at the same time. You know, if Elvis came back from the dead I think he would sound like Alan Vega. He gets a lot of emotional purity. I came across 'Dream Baby Dream' again because Michael Stipe included it on a compilation and I thought maybe I could do it." He's using only a looping organ figure with a little synthesizer to fill in the cracks, Springsteen keeps his arrangement of 'Dream Baby Dream' true to the spirit of the original.

I found this great video on YouTube which someone has made using the classic old silent film called Sunrise and somehow it's a prefect match. I've never seen the film but I know it's like one of the greatest film ever made.

If you don't know the top image is the front cover image for Bruce Springsteen's 10" vinyl which I wish I bought at the time. Anyway the cover image is by Edward Mapplethorpe who's the brother to Robert Mapplethorpe.

Plus a kind-off bonus track of this one which is really brand new cover version but I'm really lovin' it and is what reminded me of Bruce's. HTRK (pronounced Hate Rock) are from Melbourne and based in London and this is the B-side to the new single/song for the forthcoming album called Work (work, work) which is out very soon if not already out now.
Sweetheart (A. K. A. Love You) [Suicide Cover] by ghostly

OK, I'll get back to my 100 greatest Aussie albums next or it will never get done.

A to Z: 100 Best Australian Albums so "C" is for...

This time I've picked out the Cockatoo or my favorite one the Red tailed Black Cockatoo for the above picture.

OK, on with the albums which there are seven in this post, I'll just write one line on each album or this really is going to take forever.

Cannot Buy My Soul by Kev Carmody/Various Artists
One of the greatest if not the best tribute albums ever made plus all the original songs too on disc two, his songs are like one masterstroke after another.


Cellulite Soul by Witch Hats
A totally wicked and amazing debut album from a few years ago that makes Wolfmother look like The Wiggles.


Charcoal Lane by Archie Roach
This was his unbelievable debut album, he was at the age of 34 at the time of the release which is such a shame that it had taken that long but thanks to Paul Kelly.


Circus Animals by Cold Chisel
My dad's favorite band of all-time which I listened to the most as a kid because he just was always playing them so after a very long time of not wanting to listen to them this one I find the easiest.


Coal by Devastations
This is their second album out of three albums, so far but have been dead quiet since 2007 so I think most people have totally forgotten about this band now. This a prefect classic from the mid-2000's.


Crossing Off The Miles by Chad's Tree
So maybe this should be under "K" for Kerosene which was the one and only great album but this is the reissue with all early recordings/demos, 7" singles/B-sides well, everything they recorded in the 1980's but only released last year.


Cruel, But Fair by Laughing Clowns
Yet another reissue in this list of mine, what Ed Kuepper did after he left The Saints. I think Laughing Clowns are so much better and this is everything they ever recorded too. They are my favorite band from the 80's.


Stay tuned for the letter "D" soon...