Fab Lunchbreak Reading

When you've finished reading my fascinating guff, work your way down to the bottom of this page for a bunch of super culture stories from mags like Time, Reason and The Smithsonian.

The stories are constantly updated by Magportal and cover real interesting stuff.

Now there's links to stories about fashion of the 1590's, Saudi novelists, gaudy Russian architecture and Iranian culture's "unhealthy emphasis on death and martyrdom and defiance of outsiders."

Mick's New Ice Cream Flavour

Mick's New Icecream Flavour, originally uploaded by glennpeters.

"It tastes a bit leathery," the Collingwood Football Club Coach told The Nightwatchman.

Original image from the Collingwood Football Club website.

You Can Can Be A Can Can Dancer!

From my other site, But I Want An Interesting Job.

Flicking through The Age, I find this beauty. The legendary Moulin Rouge in Paris is auditioning “Tall Dancers.” If you are a boy who is at least 185cm/6’1”or a girl at the 175cm/5’8” and you can dance godammit, prove it to the Moulin Rouge’s ballet mistress, Miss Janet Pharaoh.

The audition, conducted by the Moulin Rouge’s ballet mistress, Miss Janet Pharaoh will take place on Monday 24th January at Dance Factory, 442-446 Church St, Richmond.

Impress the mistress and you will be off to Paris to perform in the Moulin Rouge’s brand spanking show, Féerie'. If you don’t get in, at least take photos and send them over here to butiwantaninterestingjob@yahoo.com.


Moulin Rouge website.
Learn to dance.

Alltime Fave Jennifer Aniston Movie?

A bit like the best of Michael Bolton, where the DVD version boasts, "Bonus Less Footage!"

The Nightwatchman: Office Space, The Lego Edition

Office Space, The Lego Edition

cubicles, originally uploaded by glennpeters.

This looks a hell of a lot like the office in my all time fave Jennifer Aniston movie, Office Space

Photo and divine inspiration from Boing Boing.
Manufacturer's website.

Real Restaurant Recipe #1

This is a tasty breakfast dish I picked up from Seville’s cult bistro, El Canario Deslizadizo. Thanks Pedro for letting me publish. I owe you one. Come to think of it, I think you owe me a couple more. Nurse!?

Pedro’s Dirty Chorizo Omlette
Serves one bastardo gordo.

1 chorizo sausage
1 big anchovy or sardine
3 eggs
1 handful of fresh and chopped parsley
red wine vinegar
olive oil
salt & pepper
1 Ween, Chocolate & Cheese album
1 slice of bread (for toast)

Heat pan. Turn on Ween record and return to kitchen. Slice chorizo sausage thick and put into hot, oiled pan. Lightly beat eggs with some of that parsley. Don’t toss too much or you’ll go blind. When Ween start Can’t Put My Finger On It, its time to add a big splash of red wine vinegar and the anchovy or sardine. And when the song finishes add the egg mix and put the toast on. When the toast pops up, hassle the omelette a bit with a blunt implement and then serve on top the toast. Sprinkle more parsley, salt and pepper and put it on a table ready to eat. Go to the record player, switch to Buenas Tardes Amigo and enjoy Pedro’s Dirty Chorizo Omlette!

For ‘clean’ version, omit the fish bits.

Real Restaurant Recipe #1

Interesting Jobs

But I Want an Interesting Job is my new web thingy reviewing some of the more interesting jobs out there on the internet. I'm going to find the strangest, most wonderful job vacancies on the web and the first reader to get a job listed on this site will win a bank cheque for exactly....wait for it...AUD$1.00!!

Sofar you can apply to be a peacebuilder in Sudan or the lucky person who looks after the lab rats at CSIRO's Sydndey based, Molecular Science Laboratory.

I got the idea for this blog a when writing some stuff for World Vision Australia (Yes, keep sending all aid agencies money and more importantly, nag your local politician to spend more on aid). The job vacancies on their internal website are incredible. The first time I looked at it, they were after somebody to work in Sudan as a government lobbyist. Later in my research I found job advertisements on a "business risk consultancy" website for interrogators to work in Iraq. This was only a couple of weeks before the Abu Gharib scandal.

I don't get paid by any employment agencies for But I Want an Interesting Job. I will, however, get paid almost $0.01 if you click on one of the Google ads running on the site. I get that here too, so click away kids! You know you want to give me cents/sense.

Zoinks! Potatoe Typo!

I use a nifty little freeware (but not for long?!) program called MacJournal to write all this stuff. It's a real good program for writing simple text and keeping your writing organised. While it does have a neato spellcheck, like many other text editors, MacJournal doesn't auto-correct common typos. I like typing with me eyes shut and can never be bothered proofing, so this was giving me the dardits until I found the wonderful Spell Catcher. Spell Catcher is a auto-correcting wizard which plugs into many, if not all text editors, chat clients etc on Mac and PC. I might start using it with BBedit too.

If you're like me and you have a thing for text editors, notepads and getting organised, check out text.editor.addicts.txt or the superb 43 Folders. More on 43 Folders later.

My Cousin

Tyson Clugg is my cousin. He runs his own family website. If you look hard you will probably find a photo of me somewhere in there. Whoopee! He works at CSIRO, is the treasurer of Melbourne Wireless and is a red dog. Why am I telling you this? Because he links to this site, that's why.

Readers, Meet Hall

Hall's a bloke I'm working on...

Hall was stuck holding the Totem Pole. The pole faces were stern but kitsch. Not hip kitsch. More hop kotsch, screaming, playful Martin Denny camp and as dangerous as a street juggler's autistic minder.
"You're either with us or against us!" cried the pole faces.
"What? You want me to join you freaks?"
"You must. You're one of us."
Hank Williams' Kawliga and Tennessee Williams' Mitch squeezed to give Hall some room.
Hall, confused, refused.

Murder, Melbourne and Me

Caught up with a mate who works with my most previous next door neighbor. Turns out the bloke who moved into my house in Collingwood when I left was the infamous gangster, author and funny-man, Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read. When I lived there, Chopper only lived in the next street. I would see him regularly at the local milkbar or sitting outside his fave pub, The Leinster Arms.

There is an underworld war going on right now in Melbourne. It is BIG, with more than 25 killings in the past four years. The morning after one of the murders Chopper was interviewed by all Australia's media in the sun outside The Leinster Arms.

I was nearby buying milk. Couldn't help but stare. Who wouldn't? My gob-smacked looking agitated Chopper's burly, hanger-on minders. Even through their prison style Oakleys you could read their thoughts buzzing wisdom. "Who IS this cunt? What's he doing? Is he okay?"

Had to go. Real quick.

"But don't get me wrong, for a one time toe-cutter, knee-capper and killer of 19 men (in my lighter moments), swapping my four ten for a HB2.0 is not without it's price. It could happen someday, that someone asks me for my autograph and while I'm busying myself with the pen, they put a bullet in my head. Not really a desirable outcome for me is it!" From Chopper Read's website.

But that's not my only connection to the Melbourne crime scene....

I have a friend. He killed somebody. It happened when he was doing his work. He didn't mean to kill. An inquest agreed. There was no jail. It was front page news.

It doesn't end there.

The person my friend killed, lived in the house I live now and grew up in. His bedroom was my bedroom.

Casey's Idle Sales Figures

Australian Idol's Casey Donovan's single made it to number one in the charts in its first week. Whoopee! But the real problem is that only a bit over 35,000 copies were sold compared to the 100,000-ish sold last year in the first week by Guy Sebastian.

Here's why.

The song, "Listen With Your Heart" is pure scrotum. Its writer, Diane Warren was responsible for Milli Vanilli's Blame it on the Rain, Cher's If I Could Turn Back Time, Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, DeBarge's Rhythm Of The Night, and almost all the lyrical vomit spewed out by Michael Bolton and Celine Dion.
Everything is bad, cynical and dated about Listen To Your Heart. And no, the song wasn't written exclusively for Idol as claimed earlier. It originally recorded by soul nobody, CeCe Winans in 1998. Listen to it if you dare here.
If you were to release a cover version of a bad song, why not You're So Vain? At least that song was made her own. Oh well, contractual obligations win out every time.

While according to ARIA, the CD single as a format is dying in the arse, the song was available for two weeks on the infamous Casey Donovan website.

Song gets played to death on water torture FM radio. Kids like idol. Kids at school. Kids download. Kids burn. Kids get sick of the song real quick. Kids go back to sniffing liquid paper. I did that once. It hurt my head. At least I didn't die.

Word is that Idol runner-up and apprentice jockey Anthony Callea's cover of The Prayer will do much better. Why? Old ladies don't download music. They're too busy looking at sites like this and this. Nurse!

First Posting

Yay!

Welcome to the relaunch of The Nightwatchman. My blog of three-ish years ago was fairly popular with over 1,500 readers. Look down there. Yeah, that was me writing.

Welcome back Kotters!

Grand Final Tickets.

I need 2 grand final tickets.

I've missed 4 games in 9 years.

Go Pies.

Email me at glennpeters@hotmail.com or ring me (03) 8415 0049.

Please.

Update: I didn't get any and we lost.

Malone, Alone.

This is something I wrote for Beat about Gareth Malone. He's brilliant and you can buy or listen to his album at Cavalier Music.

At a bit over six foot, six inches, Canberra based singer songwriter, Gareth Malone could be the tallest working musician on earth. Phoar! But it’s not his height that makes him so fascinating, says long time fan and friend, Glenn Peters.

Gareth’s voice is so pure and can hit heights not even he can reach on tiptoes. Not only that, his songs come from a different place. Nobody knows the latitude, longitude or even altitude of this strange and beautiful place but we’d sure like to visit. If we did visit, we’d probably meet Freddie Mercury, Davie Bowie, Robbie Plant, Paulie Mc Cartney or Benny Harper looking for directions on our way. With his musical passion, rudimentary eating habits (its not unusual for him to eat a few kilos of bananas in a day), and uncanny talent, I regard Gareth as a true to life, rock’n’roll star.

But it’s not just me who fawns over the lightly spoken big bloke. A couple of years ago, reps from Mushroom were so gob smacked by his super theatrical live show, they quickly handed over cash to Gareth to record a demo with big time producer, Lyndsay Gravina (Living End, Spiderbait, Magic Dirt). Let Gareth tell the story. “We’ll have to stoke up the coals a little. Now make sure you’re comfortable. Alright, I was the lead singer in a band called Action and a representative from the Mushroom record company came to see us play. Foolishly enough, she was talked into supplying money for me to record a demo. It was called a demo recording.” Thanks Gareth.

Soon after recording the demo Malone dropped everything and moved to Canberra to go to University, to learn to sing properly. At first, the decision seemed strange to some but when you hear him now, you can really hear an incredible improvement. But the study didn’t last long. The format didn’t suit him so he left to sing with some Canberra based jazz groups to “make a living.”

Later he “had a great lesson with one of the world’s great jazz singers.” I didn’t even know that. Tell us more. “I had a master class and a private lesson with him and it changed things a little.”

And who was this great jazz singer?
“Kurt Elling.”

What did you learn from him?
“He just sorted me out on a few things, helping me understand what I am doing. The interesting thing was the period of research. It wasn’t structured. I would study in my own time and work at it. Where ever I was I would singing and whenever I could I would be listening to repeated tape loops to perfect solos. It wasn’t formal.”

Where are you now?
“I have so much work to do. It’s going to take a long time. Maybe I’ll never finish studying. I’m constantly aware when I’m not working I should keep working on it. You wake up and say that today’s the day I’m going to work on this song.”

Malone is launching his unfathomable debut album, This Is It on Wednesday. Already, ABC and PBS radio DJ’s are raving about it. Why unfathomable? Well, heres a few of the genres I can think of, it crosses: from be-bop to soul, to blues, to rock, to jazz standards, to crazy Greek disco. Yeah, everywhere and nowhere we’ve been before. Far too good. Anyway, let’s get back to Q&A format….

How long did the album take to record? Years?
“It seemed like years. It’s true. Eons. You could trace the earliest bit back to 1998, the majority done in 2000 and the finishing bits were done in 2001. What’s that, God. Four years.”

I remember Super-Real and This Is It on your original demo.
“If you compare the songs with their demo versions, they alter considerably. Their arrangements and overdubbing really made them quite living. While parts of Super-Real were recorded over four years ago, the song was the last song I finished on the album. What an amazing thing. Every year I put an extra sound on it until I felt it was finished.”

Before playing with Action, I understand you had never really played music in public. The legend has it that you stunned everybody with an impromptu performance. Tell us about it.
“Yeah, this is great. Digging up the old graves. I think it was a performance for friends. I think there was an old piano there and I just started playing a few songs that I had written for a friend and it was quite theatrical. It probably stunned me too.”

And what were you doing artistically and professionally before that fateful night?
“Professionally I was a sound recordist, rocking off to factories and sporting events for news programs, recording different ways people spend their time. Artistically, I was writing my own songs. I had been since I was 22 when I borrowed my brother’s guitar and started trying to write music like I the music I had grown up to.”

And what was that?
“Passionate retellings of older styles. Of course there was 70’s rock’n’roll and jazz and whatever. All the artists I listened to were passionate about what they were doing like Led Zeppelin and Hendrix. They were giving new voice to old styles. By listening to them I could try to understand old styles.”


I’ve heard four or five completely different versions of Super-Real. There was one bit of it I really liked. Its gone now. Do your songs ever have a use by date or are you always working to tinker with them?
“That’s really interesting. That’s what I’m discovering right now. There are some songs that have died a million deaths and you can’t get them out of the grave anymore. They’re gone. And there are some songs, which are unattainable. They change every time you perform them. It hasn’t anything to do with me but more the relationship I have with the song. It’s a living entity.”

Is scatting the air guitar of jazz?
“Yes, spot on. It’s fun and it’s just shredding.”

For the watcher, air guitar can be pretty poor.
“I agree.”

Tell me about the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (one of the great jazz vocal groups) song you do, Cloudburst.
“I heard it on one of their compilations. I heard it when I was in a studio for the first time. At the time I first heard it I had no idea I would make it part of my repertoire. The song rocked me and made me think that singing could be a completely different. I made a tape of it and learnt it off the tape. Its great fun to do and yeah, its like air guitar. It’s so fun to play with the band. We have a ball.”

The first time I heard you sing it was at night near a beach at near Batemans Bay. You killed me. It was like, fucking hell…
“I remember that. Did I shred?”

Yeah, it was like you were singing wheelies all over my front lawn. How can you love singing mad jazz stuff like that while also being a rock pig?
“Hmm… The vocalise, its called a vocalise what Hendricks was doing there, he wrote the words from a horn solo on a song he had grown up listening to. He made his voice sound like a trumpet while trumpet players were trying to make their trumpets sound like singers. I grew up listening to rock guitarists who were trying to make their guitars sound like horn sections or even voices. That’s it. That’s why you can cross over all kinds of music because you are listening to sounds that inspire you. It doesn’t matter what style you are listening to.”

Mayhem. Nobody Got Shot.

Mayhem
Hi Fi Bar & Ballroom

Apart from Collingwood, the ABC and the Detroit Red Wings, I barrack for Black Metal. It’s not like I listen to the stuff religiously. No I don’t kick back by putting on my favourite Bathory record on the stereo and fire up by stabbing to death a couple of poor bass players on Wellington Street. Burning churches isn’t my bag either. But I do like really bloody loud music. I admire guys who scream their guts out on stage. And I especially like my Black Metal to involve pigs heads and blokes to happily swim in blood. It’s all good stuff. I don’t even mind the satan finger sign, all metal kids lurrve. And I love Norway.

Had a Norwegian housemate once. His name was Trond. Trond was a top bloke but Black Metal from his homeland failed to give him any of that famous Norwegian wood. Pity. Me and Trond could have talked for hours about it. We didn’t. Oh well.

Mayhem are the most notorious of Norway’s Black Metal bands. Well, what’s left of them. Mayhem’s is the simple Black Metal story, a story so typical to many indie pop bands I won’t mention. You know the deal: line up changes, suicide, murder, bad bass players, electro music side projects (bad of course), murder, fights, isolation, jail, church burning, Nazi sympathies, blood, acne, domestic cat hunting, corpse paint, blokes called Aarseth, Hellhammer, Dead and Euronymous. Read Lords Of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind to find out more. A top read.

Back to the metal. Unfortunately I couldn’t see any of the local support bands. Yeah, I was waiting on a mate to come back from a dubious prior engagement. Way after 11pm he pulls out (or should I say wimps out) and I have to go to see Mayhem by myself. Going to gigs without mates can be a bit hard and uninspiring but going out to a metal show can seem like a nightmare. But do you know what? It isn’t. Just like at Cradle of Filth last year, the Mayhem crowd were, while mean lookin’, quite a friendly bunch. I won’t say Mummy’s boys but I will say that quite a few looked like they fold their socks before putting them in the front drawer. There were quite a few black leather clad young ladies and yes, a couple screamed like in the olden days. “Look at Maniac. Nice facepaint. Great body!” Yep, I heard it. There were only a couple of fans who took the trouble to apply face paint. My fave was the guy who painted himself up in full corpse paint with the most incredible of Black Metal frowns I’ve ever seen. He didn’t even crack a grin when Mayhem played the all time fave anthem Pure Fucking Armageddon on encore. Poor guy. There were also a few men without any hair enjoying the show. I was watching one of them shooting out a hand signal which didn’t look too much like a goat’s head. I think it was either a “We need more on the fold back,” or a “He was this tall” symbol. At least he was having fun.

Despite not doing much with the pig’s head (come on, I’ve seen guys fuck those on stage before, lift yer’ game), and not cutting themselves with the barbed wire wrapped around the mike stand, Mayhem rocked. While all members looked like they lacked fitness, they belted out a pretty hard arsed set. Just don’t ask me what they played. I was too busy barracking. Carn’ the Black Metal! Stick it right up ‘em Norway!


- Glenn “I’m Going To Start A Metal Band Called Turetz Sindrome” Peters

Me & Tex Perkins

It was one of the more daunting tasks. Meet Tex Perkins at the Espy to do an interview, late on a Friday afternoon. Shit. The last interview I did with the biggest, coolest bastard of Oz rock went a treat. He phoned my house, called himself Gregory and told some pretty sordid stories about his days in The Beasts Of Bourbon. But for this interview I had little to go by: only an imminent new album; and a recent collaboration with You Am I on the Dirty Deeds soundtrack. I had to wing it and I was nervous. What do I ask him? What do I do? What do I wear? Too many questions.

Get to the Espy, see Tex in a full booth with band mates, Joel Silbersher and Charlie Owen, not yet finished an interview with The Age’s head music writer, Patrick Donovan. Nightmare. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.
Introduce myself to everyone and join the group. It seems that Donovan’s interview had only started. I had only one choice. Tag along. Wing it. Turn the tape recorder on and away we go.
To settle in, I let Patrick Donovan continue with his questions. I was cool with that. I know his stuff. He knows his stuff. Shouldn’t be a problem. Let The Age guy ask all the essential questions and then swoop in with the money shot question. The perfect plan. Easy.
Already Tex, Joel and Charlie were well into talking about the almost finished new album and had finished telling Donovan about a ‘country folk’ version of Bob Marley’s Concrete Jungle they had recently recorded with local dance diva, Amiel (you remember, the girl who sung on Josh Abrahams’ Addicted to Bass).
Then Donovan asks Tex what goes on, lyrically on the new record and gets the reply, “Everything and nothing.” The Age journo digs in with the hard nosed, newsy bloke question, “Break-ups from years ago?” He’s good, this Donovan. I would never have had the testiculi to ask that one…
“No, definitely not,” says Perkins. “I was thinking about their break-ups. Intentionally, I avoided all that. I’m quite happy with all my situations. This time I was very much conscious not to do it and keep the concept very broad. Elemental. The songs are a little more obscure.”
Silbersher chips in, “Sexy, romantic and late night fun.”
It’s time for me to ask one. Have we found out yet, musically what the new record sounds like?
Tex: “Yes, we said it’s like the Dark Horses album, the last one but with a little more rock in approach. It doesn’t rock so much but it has a rock approach. More crashy bashy with a new drummer.”
Donovan, “So tell us, what’s the drummer situation?” It’s almost like we’re working as a team. Tex answers, “I love Jim Elliot but I’m in another band with him and we wanted a drummer who was prepared to crash and bash a bit more. “
Charlie Owen elaborates: “The first one had a lot of folk elements, the second more constructed and practically electronic in approach, and this one we decided to approach it more like a band would.”
And then Silbersher, “Also the way playing with a drummer you change the way you play to the way he plays and it sounds different because of that. It’s not more aggression or more rock or anything like that it’s…”
“In a different suburb.” I’ve just finished Joel Silbersher’s sentence. Yes, the cheeky, funny bastard behind one of my fave ever, local albums Hoss’s Do You Leave Here Often, is saying some important stuff and I finish his sentence. Excellent.
Charlie and Joel elaborate and I’m getting some of it when, in the background, Tex’s voice booms, “You’ve got to show your shit.” Don’t know what he was talking about when he said this to Donovan, but it was a good quote. Way too good to leave out of this story. Then Tex joins our conversation, further describing the Dark Horses’ new drummer, Skritch, “He’s a Dave Grohl sort of drummer with a dub sensibility.
Joel loves Skritch. “He mixes a lot of bands and is a real rocking sort of drummer. He can play any instrument, is very musical and doesn’t drink which is fantastic.”
Joel’s drink rider quip helps to degenerate the conversation into 10 minutes of drink and drugs related rabble. All very funny at the time but on tape or on the page, it’s just shithouse, incoherent rabble. Amongst the mess, Tex came up with this little treat, “You have to share drugs as a band. You boys have heard the stories where half the band is taking heroin, the other half is drinking beer and two weeks later they split up. The band must all take the same drugs.” Sure, it was enjoyable but I was losing control of the interview. The journo pro, Patrick Donovan makes a save. He asks about Tex’s acting career and we find out about his role doing voices in the animated Canadian/Australian television show, Quads. “I played an alcoholic, has been, rock star.”
Silbersher, the smart arse, “You must have spent a lot of time researching that…”
Perkins, “I just spent and afternoon with Ian Rilen and I was there. It was great fun.” How do you you get that sort of work? “You just be an alcoholic rock star. They put out the call for people and I had to audition. The main character was sponsoring my character in AA.”
Another of Perkins’ roles was that of a dog with Noah Taylor in the short film, Down Rusty Down. “You never saw that? That’s my finest work. It’s kind of got the aesthetic of a cartoon and we are all guys dressed in dog costumes. I was talking to Noah recently and he was saying it was his most known piece of work because it was sold to a cable station and whenever there is a ten minute break in programming, they slot in Down Rusty Down. There are some people in the United States who’ve seen it over 100 times.”
The Age journalist leaves to get a jug and tell Perkins that Tim Rogers claimed him and Tim Hemmensley are the two best singers in the country. Tex is chuffed, “Well, that’s very generous of him. He’s very generous with his praise, Tim. Since I did the Dirty Deeds thing with Tim, I’ve been spending a bit of time with him. We’ve actually been going out for a kick on a regular basis.”
What, a Thursday night kick to kick?
Tex: “Bring a ball, find a paddock, go for a kick…”
No torps?
Tex: “It’s all there. I got him to show me how to do a banana kick the other day. It’s still a mystery to me. He’s a very skilled footballer. He probably could have easily considered a career.”
Does Tim Rogers kick with both feet?
Tex: “His left is better than my left. We’re both right footers.”
I take a deep breath and say, that I saw him Roy and HG and thought he looked a bit daunted. “I looked daunted? I was in my element,” Perkins protests. “It was my greatest moment on television. I was very comfortable. I was not daunted at all. Did I look daunted?”
Alright, what I’m getting at is that while you won’t get any interesting questions asked of you today, you sure won’t get any asked from you on TV.
Tex: “Of course not. It’s just a matter of banter. Doing the TV talk/chat thing is an art in itself. You’ve got to be a little bit pissed. It’s a matter of finding a bit of quick wit.”
He won’t let it lie. “Personally I thought I did quite well on Roy & HG.”
The best bit was when you read the news…
Tex: “Well, I’ve got a good newsreader tone. I think when I get into my 50’s I will get into news reading, voice-overs and that sort of thing with my authoritive voice (Speaking so low, my pot glass smashes), don’t you think?”
From that moment, the afternoon degenerated. We talked a bit about how the new album has mostly been recorded in the Perkins household and that they need to write a couple more songs to complete it. All fascinating stuff but the most interesting Tex Perkins tidbit learnt was that like myself, he has a torn Anterior Cruciate Ligament (shithouse knee). Alright the way we fucked up our knees is slightly different. Two events stuffed Tex’s knee. The ligament first ripped when he was restrained during the infamous post ARIAs brawl a few years ago. Weeks later, flying business class to Paris, Perkins waltzed down the aisle with a couple of champagnes in hand. Doesn’t see a step, falls over and then spends the next few days in a Paris hospital getting water pumped out of his knee. I did my knee at the Bayswater Indoor Soccer Centre. Brilliant.

Fauves Interview

The Fauves have a new album out called Footage Missing and true to form, it’s brilliant. I spoke to the band's singer bloke, Andrew Cox....

A Fauves album is usually a journey to far off places. And in Footage Missing you’ve left our shores to Frankfurt, The West Bank, Nairobi, Los Angeles…
“Yeah, this is probably our ex-patriot album even though we are certainly rooted here in Australia. I guess our last few albums have been full of Australian references. I don’t think there was a great plan or anything but it is true that there’s a lot of references to a lot of overseas references on this one.”

There’s a song by Big Star about going to India, drinking “gin and tonic and playing grand piano.” I liked how obviously the band didn’t seem to know where India was. I was reminded of the song with your line, “Jodhpurs clinging to the skin so tight. Quinine, gin and a head so light…”
“There is a bit of that. My existence wouldn’t be the most exciting life going around. It’s a way to take you somewhere more glamorous, mysterious or exotic. I’ve used song writing to do that all my life. It’s the most interesting part of my life. As soon as I put down the guitar, there’s a pile of dishes to do or I have to go out and walk the dog. So yes, I guess it’s a way of living out fantasies.”

On The Fauves website (www.thefauves.com.au) you refer to Collerige’s Byzantium, a poem which speaks of the grand, far off world.
“Yeah, it does indeed. You’ve made a nice little link there. The article’s writing itself.”

You were asked to write a press release, which never made it past the censors for Our First Day on the Run. I was lucky enough to read your obscene piece before it was shredded. Are you going to write anything to herald the new album?
“I have to tone it down. It’s a bit of a vexed issue, the band bio thing. On one level it’s not great to have to talk about yourself but on another level you really want to find somebody you can totally trust to present you the way you want to be presented. I end up writing a lot of that shit but its not a good idea. I couldn’t sit down and write that we are the most important band in the western world, which is what people expect from band bios but I can’t do it, even jokingly. I wish we could only record the album and put it out.”

Doing this interview is daunting because I know you could write this article better than myself or any other of the hacks you are going to speak to in the next few weeks. I remember there was a review in one of the streetpapers that you didn’t agree with so you wrote a review of the reviewer. I got to read that too and it was brilliant.
“Yeah, I remember that. But what was the question?”

What does the album title, Footage Missing come from?
“It’s probably more relevant to us because as you get older someone may be relating a story from the past and suddenly there’s a blank. That happens a lot with us when we are crapping on. Footage Missing refers to that blank spot in your memory. I don’t know where it went.”

And it’s not like they are going to release a DVD of your life and put in all that missing footage.
“(laughs) No. They certainly won’t. You would probably want Andy Warhol making one of those movies like Sleep, putting a camera on someone sleeping in bed for 12 hours. That would be as exciting as a movie of my life could get.”

You’re so self-effacing…
“No, I think I’m great but I’ve just had a boring life.”

I like how Yo Yo Craze talks about the trampolines, Hula Hoops, Rubiks Cubes, and footy cards of growing up in Melbourne in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“It’s a recurring theme in my lyrics. You have to write about something that feels real to you. There are songs in this record that get away from that like we spoke about before but Yo Yo Craze is about something I can relate to.”

The Fauves have been topical in the past but the Doctor has pulled off a move of genius in Right Wing Fag by putting the Liberal Party and One Nation into a love song.
“He is one of the country’s great undiscovered genius’s. What can I say?”

Right Wing Fag is such a fantastic song.
“I love it. We put it last in the album. You know these days how people put their best songs up front. You have no faith that people will get to the end of a record and we’ve always tried to put a song that closed the record out well, not the worse song, at the end. You get hurt a bit by that. I think we have some great last songs on our records. Whenever people call out for them at gigs you know that 90% of the people didn’t get that far into the record. It’s kind of like a bittersweet thing.”

We grew up with vinyl and its two sides….
“That’s right. You get that break. I don’t think its any way passing aspersions on the listener but it is tough to get through 45-50 minutes of music especially on the first listen. With a record you play one side and it might be half an hour before you get around to flipping it over. You come back to it fresh again. I think it really has dictated the way albums are structured now. Now albums are structured in a lot more boring fashion. If the Beatles put out Seargent Peppers now they would have to open it with A Day In The Life because you couldn’t have it last because nobody would have got that far. It’s a shame.”

Yo Yo Craze also contains one of the greatest lines you’ve ever written, “Oh, the rusty springs are laughing.”
“(cacks himself) I’ve never pulled that line out of context but on its own, you’re right it sounds Shakespearean or something. You can see some bearded guy on a balcony bellowing it out to the stalls. (gets himself together) It’s a very un-rock’n’roll line, that one.”

I’ve heard some touching duets in my time but tell me about your duet in One Of The Girls.
“Ah, the one with me and Terry. That call and answer thing is out of Beverley Hills Cop. Eddie is in the strip club with the two straight policemen and they see two guys casing the joint. Eddie makes a pre-emptive strike and pretends to be a pissed dude, trying to put the guys off guard. That’s what it’s from. I thought it would be good to sample it from the movie but I thought there would be some legal problems. So I convinced Terry to play Axel Foley and I decided to play the uneasy criminal. Terry took a lot of coaxing to get into character but when he did, he really embraced it.”

I thought the album’s title, Footage Missing came from you guys annoying your record company with unfeasible ‘I’m on a mountain’ video clip ideas.
“That’s a more interesting interpretation of the title than I gave so I might use for interviews from now on. A lot of our ideas have bitten the dust. We usually have to scale our ambitions down. When we were on Polydor we found after awhile the bigger the concept, the more chance you have of getting them up. In Sunbury 97 we chartered a helicopter to Sunbury. We just threw the concept at them as a joke and the next thing we know we’re at Essendon Airport getting into this chopper. The next clip for Surf City Limits we joked about it being shot on Rene Rifkin’s yacht on the harbour and the next thing you know, we are! It’s so much about bluff.”

The line, “Royal Lanciers, pidgeon fanciers, pants men, croupiers, walking cancers,” scares me.
“I feel good that that line has never been used in the history of popular song. To me that’s an achievement. You have to take the victories when you get them. I wanted it to be a bit abrasive. There’s enough sensitive songs in the Fauves’ catalogue to set everyone right. It was time for something to ruffle a few feathers. I wanted to be a bit obnoxious. Once again, I was just wanting to be something that I’m not. That’s what music’s about for me.’

C.W. Rapp and George Rapp were the architects who designed the wonderful Melbourne venue, The Forum. With its imitation of night sky ceiling and ornate reproductions of Homer, Aesop and many other Greek poofs, The Forum really brings out the best in the performer. I've seen incredible sets by The Dirty Three, Beck, Primal Scream, Ryan Adams and The Dandy Warhols at the Forum and boy, do I love the place.

The Rapp brothers also designed many theatres in the US. The Riveria in Chicago is said to be an exact replica of The Forum. Anyway George Rapp saw theatre design in a totally different way to the dunderheads responsible for the multiplexes we have to endure today.

Here's George's idea of the perfect venue from the Ringling Brothers website.

"Watch the eyes of a child as it enters the portals of our great theatres and treads the pathway into fairyland. Watch the bright light in the eyes of the tired shopgirl who hurries noiselessly over carpets and sighs with satisfaction as she walks amid furnishings that once delighted the hearts of queens. See the toil-worn father whose dreams have never come true, and look inside his heart as he finds strength and rest within the theatre. There you have the answer to why motion picture theatres are so palatial. Here is a shrine to democracy where there are no privileged patrons. The wealthy rub elbows with the poor -- and are better for this contact. Do not wonder, then, at the touches of Italian Renaissance, executed in glazed polychrome terra cotta, or at the lobbies and foyers adorned with replicas of precious masterpieces of another world. or at the imported marble wainscoting or the richly ornamented ceilings with motifs copied from master touches of Germany, France, and Italy, or at the carved niches, the cloisetered arcades, the depthless mirrors, and the great sweeping staircases. These are not impractical attempts at showing off. These are part of a celestial city -- cavern of many-colored jewels, where iridescent lights and luxurious fittings heighten the expectations of pleasure. It is richness unabashed, but richness with a reason."

Here here!

I did an interview with Tim Rogers of You Am I. Read it here. It's only up for a week so hurry!