Rowland S. Howard, the wraith's progress.

Particularly around New Years - to coincide with the anniversary of his passing, I suppose - there always seems an upsurge in interest around Rowland. 
A lot of people seem to remember this too-short chat with him from the turn of the century.
So, I'll save it here for posterity - and for those people who like walking amongst bones.

Much Ado About Snuffing

You might not immediately recognize that name beside mine. For Rowland S. Howard usually comes with an almost obligatory weight of brackets behind it, that usually reads something like: '(ex-Birthday Party, ex-Bad Seed, ex Crime & the City Solution)'. For that is he. The man who wrote the strange attraction that is Shivers, a song so wonderful it even survived a Screaming Jets cover of it.

Now Rowland S. has got around to releasing his first ever solo album, basically constructed with longtime cohorts Brian Hooper and a man described on this piece of paper in front of me as the 'ubiquitous' (this probably meaning he has even more brackets after his name) Mick Harvey, under the wonderfully questionable title of Teenage Snuff Film. Now happily resettled in his boyhood home of Melbourne after many years of playing musical nomad, Mr. Howard even considers it the end of one phase of his life, and an attempt to get some spirit of place to whatever comes next.

But just how does he feel about those brackets, and that past that people just have to bring up.

'It is unavoidable,' comes his measured tones down the line, as you hear him lighting what probably isn't his first cigarette of the day. 'My feeling toward it tends to vary. We were promoting the release of a live Birthday Party album a month or so ago, and Mick and I did a couple of days of interviews that really talked about nothing else. So I am a little over it right now.'

But what this is about is his new solo affair. A record he calls "...my best album in 15 years, or maybe 20".

His rationale is straightforward. "It is probably as simple as it being the first record I've done in a long, long time that I can listen to and actually enjoy. It just comes closest to what I intended it to be.

"Even the singing is a hell of a lot better than I've ever done, and the songs are strong. It has a lot of diversity. It just achieves the things I wanted it to..." he elaborates, seeming to digest the thought even as he expresses it. 

And being just his name on it, there is also the freedom to do what he wants. Some of the black-clad constituency will be taken aback to find a cover of Billy Idol's White Wedding among the Snuff.

"I actually suggested doing that song a number of years ago, when I was in These Immortal Souls," Rowland offers, adding another name to those brackets, "And the response from the band was, shall we say, 'less than thrilled'"? There's a snigger, mixed in with a wheeze. 

"But they really had no idea of how I wanted to do the song. Sometimes in bands, ideas are just rejected before people even knew very much about them."

"Of course there is the perversity to it", comes the conspiratorial chuckle, "Half of the reason to do it the absurdity of it. But the other half is that I knew that beneath that absurd machismo, there was a half decent song lurking. It is a love song."

"I admit that I never expected to be sending royalties to Billy, but then, he's probably never expected to get any from me either."

We discover through this conversation that Mr. Howard does have an aridly dry wit often lurking, with many perhaps missing some of the point of the whole thing.

He readily agrees: "The humour in music has to be subtle, or it can become very tiresome, very quickly. But - and it's maybe because of some of the things I have been associated with - people just aren't looking for that lighter side in my music."

"I understand that it is so much easier to write about someone who is larger than life. As much as I said I wouldn't mention it, that's exactly what we did in the Birthday Party. It was a conscious decision to become caricatures, which is fun, but not particularly artistically rewarding."

"The problem there was some of us forgot where the artifice stopped and we began." You can just about hear the shake of the head as he pauses to light another one.

Ed Kuepper: Lost & Found.

By his own count, Lost Cities was Ed Kuepper's 50th album. Under different circumstances, that number might have been a lot higher. Or could have stopped at three.Even as he reached that #50, he wasn’t really expecting the gold watch in recognition of the landmark.

“I’m not even sure ‘the industry’ would even know. But if someone wants to debate the number, I don’t care - I’m the one keeping the books here,” he laughs drily.

From the original Saints, to a myriad of solo work that now includes soundtrack work for the likes of the Last Cab To Darwin movie and that most recent work of new material, Lost Cities – described as ‘solo-orchestral’ in style - it’s quite a catalogue.

But he still wonders if he could have done more: “I might have hit the 50 mark sooner, if things had run smoother at various times - putting records out can get difficult when your label is collapsing underneath you.” Faced with that some years back, Mr Kuepper now runs his own Prince Melon label imprint.

Having got just about everything from history back under this own control, there's now a very handy compilation of his singles from that purple patch of late-'80s to mid-'90s solo work where there sometimes seemed there was new Kuepper product every few months. Not that there was anything wrong with that.

But such control comes with trade-offs: “If people expect me to say that every minute of everything I do as ‘Ed Kuepper, the musician’ is an absolute pleasure - then fuck off, it’s really not the case. There’s a whole bunch of things that are a drag, but I have to do the grinding boring stuff – because I still want to put music out.”

Then again, if things had worked out differently back in the mists of time, none of it may have happened at all. As Kuepper reflects: “Oh I’ve often thought of walking away from it – periods where you think you really should be doing something more sensible.”

“Although it’s probably too late to stop now, but when The Saints first broke up I really did think that was the time to move into something else.” There even was a Plan B: “I had a ton of records, books, comics – and thought I’d just go into the selling of ‘rare stuff’. That lasted for a month or so.” Ed Kuepper, the quiet guy in the corner record shop who used to be in a band?

“Not even that – The Saints weren’t even well-remembered when we broke up. But I decided I was more interested in creating than just collecting. Deciding I might be the worst retailer outside of Black Books also did occur to me. So I started writing songs again.”
So, in the around 50 albums following that epiphany, does Ed Kuepper have favourites - or red-headed stepchildren he’d like to disown?

“It’s the experience of the writing, the making of a record where I find the enjoyment. Once it’s done, you kind of have to step back from it. After doing Lost Cities, there was probably a week where I was playing it four or five times a day. Reassuring myself that the whole process was worth it. But after that, you really do have to let it go.”

“And no, you can’t really disown anything you’ve done,” he concludes firmly. “You have an investment in whatever you do. It would be a bit shoddy and cowardly, really. You have to own your mistakes - you’ve earned them. Although some days, that second hand shop still looks like an attractive option.”

Nick Cave avec piano, dans a large room, sans Ellis. Phew.

Nick Cave Alone At Alexandra Palace

Idiot Prayer
(Awal Recordings)

Those who know me probably know I handed in my ticket as a card-carrying disciple of the church of St Nick a while back. It wasn’t sudden, more a slow drift as Grinderman sometimes sounded to me like that uncle you hoped wouldn’t come to the wedding trying to prove his dick was still operational and he could still scare the kiddies. 

That of course coincided with Warren Ellis’ ascension to de facto musical director of The Bad Seeds, which mostly seemed to default to Wazza’s violin sawing over everything else on every damn song. For godsake man, shut up – if only occasionally.

Horribly, tragically - but somehow almost triumphantly - the near-perfect gothic horror of the loss of one of his twin sons let him channel himself back into the music (sometimes), rather than playing the character of what 'Nick Cave' was supposed to be. 

And now in this year, where we are the most all together alone, this is the cry in the dark.
And oddly, the light in the dark.

Nick in a big empty space. Just voice and what he’s boasted is the most beautiful piano he’d ever played. It may well be. And thankfully (to me, anyway) Ellis nowhere within earshot. The angst is unadorned. The occasional howl of love, loss, grief, or existential is still present, but somehow more heartfelt - rather than just trying to be heard over the cacophony. He can still slip in a dollop of black humour or in joke - Sad Waters happily copping the denouement from Tom Jones' Green Green Grass Of Home straight-faced.
As ever, God and Jesus make regular appearances - sometimes welcomed with open arms, more often with an arched eyebrow asking "So, what the hell are you doing here? And why now?...".

I’ve closed the curtains, had the strong coffee to sip. From my Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds tour mug - it's black, of course (the mug, not the coffee...). I may have felt a tear well up as Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For? echoed around the The Alexandra Palace and my loungeroom. Even the usual most melodramatic set-piece, The Mercy Seat, is quieter - more resigned than raging against the dying of the light as it can sometimes be. And the one-two punch of Into My Arms and The Ship Song has genuinely left me unable to stand. And reminded me of every girl and woman I played them to. Even the shit ones. I'll ponder later if I can take all this with a glass of serviceable shiraz, and the lights low. 

Right now, I think I needed this record. Perhaps more correctly, we needed this record. And maybe even he did too.

Tim Rogers wrote a book. I read it.

Tim Rogers
Detours
(HarperCollins)

Tallying it up, I’ve probably had a dozen-or-so conversations with Tim Rogers. These have ranged from the formal interview in the nice hotel to plug the major label record the band’s heart wasn’t really in, to a chance encounter when I noticed that identifiable artfully dishevelled ‘D-list celebrity’ (his default self-deprecating self-description…) in the checkout queue at the local IGA, after a morning TV appearance where he'd ended up calling Sonia Kruger a racist in the green room after.

Then there was the couple of beers and couple of hours with him and The Hoodoo Gurus’ Dave Faulkner ostensibly to plug their joint tour. It was a terrific chat, ranging over a myriad of subjects – musical and non-musical – which if I’d used much of it, the lawyers may well still be working out the libel damages. Despite some of it, my artistic and otherwise crush on Megan Washington remains, and Mr Faulkner now knows the "...difference between Hunters & Collectors and a moose..." joke.

He probably doesn’t remember - and I’m trying to forget - an afternoon in the courtyard (it was more the back alley…) beside the pre-gentrified Annandale Hotel, where various griefs and an unfortunate attempt at self-medication by pharmaceutical and alcoholic means had me weeping in his arms. I’m hugely embarrassed by that, but at various points through Detours you find that likely wouldn’t be the first or last time that kind of thing happened: the book shows a repeated empathetic need to be comforting, sometimes to the point of over-caring, as one of his recurring character points. For him there always seems a need for contact, a human touch. Any meeting with him always seems to come with  a warm handshake, an awkward man-hug, a clasp on the shoulder as he leaves. It’s kind of old-fashioned, and quite endearing.

But those glancing contacts and foreknowledge maybe let me slip into the book a little easier than some. Detours is absolutely his voice. One moment somewhere between Oscar Wilde and some faded English theatrical luvvie waiting for the knighthood to come through in the next Queen’s honours list, or the one after. The next, he’s the Kalgoorlie footy umpire’s son decrying the ‘$10 pint!’ at another pub where the tiles have been replaced by blonde wood, chrome, and distressed train station signs of the current fashion. Then, with utter candour, he’s the distant dad beating himself up and anxious about the daughter he unashamedly adores. Throw in the bravado – which is obviously sometimes a defence mechanism – where he’s ‘Tim Fucking Rogers, rock star!’ again, although leavening that with memories of waking in shit-stained and/or vomit-flecked hotel beds, and at one point the almost throwaway admission that ‘Meth really isn’t a good idea…’ Gee, ya reckon?

That’s another of his habits. It’s not a deliberate trick or affectation, but a Tim Rogers conversation can be elliptical. It happens all through the book. Dropped mentions of his parents’ apparently still wounded slow-motion breakup get further details five chapters on, and have you circling back the pages to put the fragments together. I play the recording of that back-bar conversation with he and Faulkner, and it’s there too: he expresses an unspecified worry about the now-teenage daughter almost as an aside - but as you try to find the moment to ask if things are alright with her, you’ve already gone onto other subjects: meeting Noel Gallagher, to reading list tips (yes, George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo is that good…), the history of the Stetson hat, the b-side of Question Mark & The Mysterians’ 96 Tears, and ‘…should we have another drink?’ (Answer: Probably not, but you do….)

Similarly, subjects jumps from chapter to chapter sometimes seem like almost manic-depressive mood swings. But at some places, one will build on another. The minutiae of constructing the daughter’s first birthday party since he and the wife separated is his well-documented anxiety problems dripped onto a page. The picking of those scabs interrupted by the ex’s second guessing of everything including the corn chips menu coming like nailbombs thrown on what’s already a dumpster fire. A couple of pages later, a still acne-scarred young Timmy is expressing his hero worship for an early mentor, Box The Jesuit’s Goose. The Sydney cult-figure’s declining health and increasing frailty recalled with a young man’s regret of finding your heroes are mortal. It’s genuinely heartbreaking. Get through that, and Tim’s back in his natural environment, on a stage in Canada, although it’s a fairly desultory gig for a tour-weary band. That Rogers then matter-of-factly recalls walking offstage and quite deliberately tears open his forearm with a broken beer bottle hits you just like one of those Lionel Rose uppercuts he celebrated in song. The reader is horrified, but somehow not shocked.

You might have gathered this is not the typical ‘hookers-&-blow’ rock guy autobiography. Although the latter is certainly present. If anything, "The band that kept me alive..." You Am I are almost peripheral players – although there is obvious affection for drummer Rusty Hopkinson’s encyclopaedic and sometimes esoteric enthusiasm and knowledge for all sorts of music, and Rogers’ evolved relationship with ‘young’ Davey Lane. The ‘second guitarist’ having gone from raw kid in an almost sensei/apprentice arrangement, to Uncle Tim now looking at the junior member as a quite extraordinary musician and human in his own right. They’re a family, with an absolute caring often expressed as just an offhand ‘...You OK, mate?’ aside in the fine Australian manner. But in the context of the book, the band that made his name and ‘saved his life’ are equal billed with a knockabout Aussie Rules teams of middle-aged blokes that kick around a sometimes waterlogged ball, and almost accidentally sometimes solve one another’s problems; and she who is known as The Hurricane: an extraordinary, mercurial, gloriously big personality who can handle his with as much wit, style, and sheer bloody-mindedness as he can conjure. He may have met his match. Based on the loving portrait of her painted in this, I just want to buy her a bottle of bloody good Shiraz, genuflect, and kiss her hand.

Tim Rogers is an expansively flawed character. You might have known that. He does. He’s absolutely blunt about it in what is hopefully only his first literary tome. I don’t think he’s after our forgiveness, but he’ll take your understanding.

Edwyn Collins: The possibilities actually are endless.

Still Juiced

For Edwyn Collins, the struggle was not so much when the band broke up, but later when his body broke down.

A scan through Edwyn Collins’ musical history splits it pretty much into three parts. In the 1980s, it was as leader of Orange Juice - a band that just about defined the influential Scottish indie music of the time. A ‘90s solo career was centred by A Girl Like You, one of those songs everyone seems to know enough to regularly defile at karaoke evenings. Part three is more problematic, but inspiring. The time Wikipedia fairly bluntly refers to as ‘Cerebral hemorrhage and after.’

Portrait of the artist as a younger man.

In 2005, Collins fell ill at a radio interview and two days later was in intensive care. He woke from a coma his right side mostly paralysed, and only able to speak four phrases: ‘Yes’, ‘no’, the more remarkable ‘The possibilities are endless’, and ‘Grace Maxwell’ – the name of his wife and manager, who is still by his side - and on the line with him as he haltingly but determinedly gets his words out. She encourages, cajoles, adds necessary details, and even occasionally takes the piss (“Edwyn! Get back to the point and stop talking about yourself!”).
Collins doesn’t shy from his condition, most of his answers actually starting with “Since my stroke…” and a matter-of-fact Scots tone about some of his achievements. For while his speech often seems frustrated that he can’t quite get the thoughts behind out quick enough, some other of his neural paths appear untouched. When he sings, the voice has all the deep timbre of ever and just flows out. Perhaps even more remarkably, in 2008 he suddenly found himself able to write songs again: “Yes, it was like a switch,” he slowly confirms, “But different – the choruses are the easy part. The verses, trying to tell a story, that’s harder now."

Those beautiful Scottish boys, now with added life experience.
L. to R: Mr R. Frame, Mr E. Collins

He made it the long way back. His second post-stroke record, the maybe ironically-titled Understated – even on his own AED label. The respect from generations of Scottish musicians revealed by some of the names helping out on these later albums: Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame, various of The Cribs, and particularly Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos – who narrated a BBC documentary of Collins’ story. Collins and Grace are now settled in their own bespoke home and studio – Clashnarrow, a timber and zinc-clad piece of modern sculpture overlooking a suitably dramatic vista of the North Sea. His latest work, Badbea – named for a deserted town a couple of k.’s from his front door, done at this beautiful bolthole, and celebrated on the album cover.

Nice digs, Ed.

There’s also been an Ivor Novella arts award, and a self-illustrated children’s book. Which you might think reasonable for the former commercial artist, until he clarifies one important point: ‘That took a while, I had to learn how to draw again - with my left hand. It was a bit ropey to begin with, but the animals look like the animals they’re supposed to be now.” He laughs at himself. He admits to some holes in memories of his career, “But I think I know most of the words in the songs again now…,” he jokes. And even recalls some fashion notes. The clip for Orange Juice’s biggest hit, Rip It Up, had the band cavorting down wintry Scottish streets in some dangerously loud Hawaiian shirts. “Oh yeah, we did that. In the cold. Stupid. But I still love a bad Hawaiian shirt.” There’s another pause, and another loud chuckle.

If you chose to walk through 80's Glasgow dressed like this,
you're a brave soul on many levels.

                        

Bruce Springsteen live 2017: A memory from the before times.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

Qudos Arena Sydney
Feb 7 2017

You’ve perhaps never heard all of the quote that defined - and nearly crushed - Bruce Springsteen 40 years ago. He wasn’t just ‘the future of rock n roll’, the suggestion being he was representative of its past and present as well. Now, with recent political stupidities in his homeland, The Boss’ strange status as multi-millionaire everyman has him representing those blue collars – even some with slightly red necks – who still believe we’re all in this together, rather than looking for someone brown to blame. He’s even been overtly outspoken in some of the earlier dates of this tour, as the alternative reality of Trump sank in. With a tour ostensibly built around The River – 1980’s sprawling double album of rock revivalism, complete with Bruce sporting Elvis-esque sideburns – maybe these shows are representative of the past, present, and future of Springsteen himself.

The Springsteen live experience remains an extraordinary thing. Each the same and yet different. Finding its own dynamic between the crowd, this so-tight and so-loose band, and events outside the room. After a Melbourne show where he excoriated America’s [then-]new regime between every other song, there’s no straight-up lecturing tonight, but following an opening New York City Serenade, sweeping in on Roy Bittan’s piano cascades and a guest all-female string section - each rewarded with a handshake and thank you from the head man as they clambered off after their one-song appearance – there are some recurring themes: American Land’s immigrant hope, Ties That Bind, No Surrender, the still-lacerating 41 Shots (American Skin) and The Rising’s first responder humanity show there’s still an eye on the country they’re currently not in.

But there’s still room for some traditions that almost verge on hokey. The carefully scrawled cardboard sign requests are almost a competition among the faithful of just how obscure a tune you can throw at a band that seems to have everything in their leader’s catalogue committed to muscle memory. My Love Will Not Let You Down is the deep cut, into the venerable Long Tall Sally, and Hungry Heart’s towering sour bubblegum, which is the first – but certainly not the last – to get the crowd out of their seats. That’s also the cue for himself to go on an excursion around the perimeter of the moshpit, before crowdsurfing back. A trick made a little more complicated these days as so many punters try to hold their mobile in one hand and some portion of Bruce in the other.  Similarly, a later bracket of desperation of Candy’s Room and the entwining heat of I’m On Fire are more straight-up carnal than any 67-year-old man has a right to be. And yet he does, and yet he is.

That the band can follow these mood swings remains magical. Back down to a ‘basic’ nine-piece(!) unit after some editions with added brass sections, singers, various and bells and whistles, E Street is back being the last (and best) gang in town. Stevie Van Zandt is the overseeing eminence gris consigliere; Nils Lofgren can stretch again, after being a bit lost down the guitar pecking order when Tom Morello was in the fold. As above, Bittan is studied and knows when not to play. As drum heartbeat Mighty Max Weinberg just is, while possibly being the whitest drummer alive. Gary Tallent’s bass is also part of the pulse – but his tuba is still side-stage should the man in charge call for a run at Wild Billy’s Circus Story, an oom-pah band oddity from their very first album and never out of the question if the mood hits. And Jake Clemons – given that near-impossible space where his Uncle Clarence used to so fill – is expressing himself more, his sax tone now almost eerily like his forebear.

And there’s still room for those big set-pieces. There’s not been a time that opening mournful harmonica as that ‘...screen door slams [and] Mary’s dress waves’ in Thunder Road doesn’t provoke some Pavlovian response in your guts and puts something in your eye. Also more welcoming, there’s now half-a-dozen 'Courtneys' invited up onstage to shimmy as Dancing In The Dark unfurls. And still it’s not over. Jungleland is a neon-lit opera out on the New Jersey turnpike. It’s huge, emotional, and somehow real – although outside most of our experience. Tenth Avenue Freezeout honks and swings as it should.

It shouldn’t be possible for a band this long-serving to be finding new things, and even better balances in their work, but this sweat-soaked guy in the check shirt manages it. This is nothing more or less than the shit that keeps me alive. You have to see this spectacle at least once, if only to give yourself a yardstick.

St Vincent Live: The art of performance as performance art.

St Vincent

Carriageworks

Jun 17 2018

Much like Goldfrapp’s equivalent Vivid Festival show here the year before, there’s an element among the crowd more intent on just being seen, rather than knowing a damn thing about the artist they were witnessing. They’re still out by the food trucks, arguing about the Arts Council grant for their experimental documentary. Their loss.

For Annie Clark in her St Vincent guise is making pop music as performance art. Her live show now a mix of technology and humanity, topped with a Day-Glo cartoon fantasy erotica that’s alluring, uncomfortable, and maybe mocking all at once.

Lights go down, a corner of the stage curtains opened and all hot pink latex and matching thigh-boots, she is amongst us. The first part of this, er, ‘performance’ – it’s not really an orthodox gig or concert as Clark is alone onstage, playing over and around backing tapes, but with enough room left for her often quite extraordinary guitar playing – cherry-picks from her back catalogue. The awkward Marry Me, through the angles of Digital Witness, and the gleefully blunt and insistent Birth In Reverse all little set-pieces as the artist finds spaces in the drapes, shadows, and lights of the stage. She’s somehow tiny and huge at once. She exchanges one of her beautifully balanced self-designed guitars for another between almost every song. Even that simple act comes with a twist – delivered by an anonymous masked roadie, or a Helmut Newton-esque S&M Valkyrie in buttock-baring pants. As you do.

But it doesn’t really fly until Act Two. A few moments of darkness, and the whole stage is revealed: cinema-sized video screen drenching this frayed industrial building with colour. And now it’s slinky silver miniskirt and matching shiny ankle boots to deliver a track-by-track recital of the gloriously sprawling Masseduction album.
Each song comes with visual backdrop – sometimes revealing, sometimes ironic, sometimes just ‘What the fuck?’ surreal imagery. St Vincent teeters on her heels, shuffles, then splays into full guitar hero pose and shreds, funks, howls, attacks her instrument. She’s unarguably sexy and sexual, yes. It’s still more arty than merely voyeuristic, twisting the conventions – but are we in on the joke or not?

There’s layers in the songs: some real human heartbreak in Los Ageless - even as she sneers at the nip-and-tuck culture. Happy Birthday Johnny is plaintive, the screen blank until the song’s payoff line ‘Of course I blame me…’ is projected on it. Then it just cuts to black.

There’s even some space for some messing with some showbiz conventions. The melancholy beauty of New York first offered scatty jazz-style, with some “Hello Springfield!”-type hokey Sydney references thrown in. St Vincent then stops it, and pulls it back into line as the aching keen of longing of it is made into a crowd clapalong like something rumbling up from the eponymous city’s subway. Slow Disco comes in its original, er, slow form. “Hope everyone has someone to love tonight…” the suddenly vulnerable Annie offers. She appears to mean it.

Smoking Section is the end of the album, and the show. The big screen tells us so. The curtains close, the lights come on. Most everyone - including the scenester crowd - pause for a moment to get their breath back, then move towards the doors.