Archive for the ‘David McComb’ Category
News Flash!
DAVE MCCOMB FILM BENEFIT
CORNER HOTEL, 57 SWAN ST RICHMOND
SUNDAY JUNE 22
DOORS OPEN 6PM
COME AND HEAR...
Mr. Charles Jenkins
The Diving Bell
The Mime Set, featuring Mr Sean Whelan who will read a Dave poem to music!
The Blackeyed Susans Trio
and MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!
We will be auctioning off LOTS OF GREAT STUFF YOU WILL LOVE….. on the day, to raise money to make the film.
SO: come and drink, see the bands, catch up with you fellow friends/fans, enjoy a superb afternoon evening and help us MAKE OUR FILM.
MORE NEWS AS IT COMES TO HAND!
Reissues
Because I work for a magazine during the day (www.musicaustraliaguide.com) I have been sent the latest series of Triffids re-issues. Now, I’d admit a certain bias given my all encompassing thirst for all things Dave related… but they are exceptional. They look, sound and feel superb…. As many of you will have read, Treeless Plain has been re-created from its original 8 track (8!) masters by the person who created them in the first place, Nick Mainsbridge (who also produced Dave’s Love of Will). I love the powerful , melodic simplicity of the songs, remembering that TP contains bona fide Dave classics in the form of Red Pony and Hell of a Summer. It also contains the glorious My Baby Thinks She’s A Train (with early ’80s Aus music’s coolest guitar hook; open to hearing a slinkier, tighter, cooler one; nice work R McComb) , a song Lynden Barber was enthused about in Sydney back in January. Beautiful Waste should be bought because it contains one of David’s greatest lyrics combined with one of The Triffids’ finest. most fiery performances in the form of Field of Glass. And it’s never been issued on CD before. Amazing in 2008! BW also contains the Lawson Square Infirmary EP with notes on the story of its recording by James Paterson. G Lee has seen fit – happily – to include some of Dave’s scrawls on inspirational films, songs he wanted to flag for reference when they were recording, etc. So, BW sounds like what it is; a note from the past that tells us something about the time and place from whence it came. Also… that big radio station in Sydney… what ’s it called? 
Back in the day they recorded a live Triffids set (before G Lee joined the band, right on the eve of recording Treeless Plain) containing Old Ghost Rider, My Baby ,Hell of a Summer and more. The opening interview/introduction is a cack. The tongue tied and rather ra ra announcer bounces in with ‘we could call you a Sydney band now couldn’t we?’ , fresh as a daisy. Dave responds by saying “Er…No. We can’t quite grant that honour just yet. But, we are IN Sydney. That’s for sure”
His droll refusal to go along with the schtick goes right over the announcer’s head. Gold. The Black Swan is so deep, messy sprawling and downright interesting I will have to post on this super record another time. It won’t take two months this time. Promise
So; wondering where we’d been? Busy little bees. Bees who should have had more time to blog, but busy none the less. In the wake of Sydney , we re-thought a great deal of the film. Now, we’ve completed a 13,000 word documentary treatment on Love in Bright Landscapes, that we’re going to circulate to key people in David’s life this week for their thoughts. I personally will be quite worried if they all say ‘it’s fine’. But I don’t feel they will somehow….! While the treatment has meant several late night sessions up late accompanied by cheap red and endlessly reinvented Dave/Triffids playlists, it’s been so immersive, so intensive that it’s made me think about every frame of every scene. We’re off to visit The Triffids’ former manager Sally Collins very soon before she jets off OS, and we’ll pop in on James Paterson while we’re in Sydney. Just a little note to tell you we’re alive and that the film is alive and well.
As promised I will return to A Secret in the Shape of a Song and recollections from the shoot in due course.
Any Australian readers may remember the TV show ‘A Long Way to the Top; tracing the modern history of Australian music. Apart from some truly hilarious (for right and wrong reasons) moments involving The Models, it also contains Dave’s last interview. The fragility of his health is apparent, but his humour is still some what intact. Paste the below into your browser or click on the title of this post to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6vpV2Jah0k&feature=related
A footnote regarding The Models. A few years ago now, Melbourne radio announcer Tony Biggs (of Triple R) had some health issues and a benefit concert was held at the Espy in St Kilda. A variation of The Models line up played the show. I was in the middle of a catch up with Rob Snarski. As we tried to make ourselves heard over the aerobics lesson whining out of their synthesisers, Rob turned to me and said “You know, I just don’t think I can do this”, turned on his heel, and left.
Pause.
Dave died 9 years ago on Feb 2. I listened to Eric B and Rakim , drank some wine, and then listened to Save What You Can and Too Hot Too Move Too Hot to Think. It then occured to me that barring listening to Paid in Full , I do this most days anyway. So I started reading Tim Winton’s Dirt Music instead. The combination of Dave and Winton’s world finds me immersed in a WA that I am not sure exists outside the imagination.
Thursday January 17
Yesterday we had a bright idea. We know we’re going to get several Australia voices and perspectives on Dave in our film. It’s a given. But given Europe’s apparent infatuation with the Triffids/Dave we’re going to need plenty of those persectives too. We’re asking Fergus Linehan from Sydney Fest, but the guy’s just opened his event; he’s going to be just a tad busy. Then I remember a name: Lynden Barber. I knew Lynden for several years because I used to plug DVDs for a living, and he reviewed them in The Australian newspaper. I kept him well stocked in Hong Kong cinema among other things. Lynden was the director of the Sydney Film Festival for a time, but in a previous life, was a journalist on the Melody Maker and the N.M.E.
Yes: he was agent for the scurrilious agents of villiainy that fuel the UK MUSIC PRESS. But, we forgive him this ; he was one of the first scribes to recognise the sheer greatness of Dave’s songs, and as he put it, the ‘vim’ of the The Triffids. Out of the blue we rang Lynden, and asked if we could pop around and chat to him about his recollections of speaking to the band at their dilapdated London flat in about 1984. I was rather delighted when he said yes.
So, here I am in a back st of Paddington, one of my favourite parts of Sydney. But, they grow VERY big mosquitoes here. Mutant ones. They’ve been to the Lucas Heights reactor for drinks and bloated to the size of winged tennis balls , and now they’re biting me. Anymore of this and I’ll be in what Dave used to call Club Sickup. I hate these bastards. Don’t react well to them. After a minor heart attack caused by a non existent cab Ms Dan arrives camera on back to capture the thoughts of Barber on Dave. LB invites us in ; he’’s got his Born Sandy Devotional vinyl out. I tell him the re-master is well worth his time. (get it if you haven’t already). Outside in Lynden’s back garden we mike him up. And suddenly a little moment arrives. The very first shots of our film on Dave McComb. Oooh. This is… a time to take a wee breath and get on with it. Important people are waiting! Lynden does have some genuinely riveting insights into Dave’s manner; and particularly the advancement of the band’s stagecraft between their 1982 selves and their brocked up 1984 UK press darling rock star selves. Well, they moved a bit more and had better shirts. Lynden also unwittingly provides a superb DVD extra/outtake by telling us about being on a plane with a journalist who was flying back from Elizabeth Taylor’s funeral. I momentarily considered pedantically telling him Liz is still with us (at least in body), but knew it would ruin a moment; this proved correct as he twigged a minute later, realising the funeral must have been for one of Elizabeth’s numerous husbands. Lynden had some quite unique comparisons to make: Echo and the Bunnymen I was expecting. But Julian Cope and the Teardrop explodes? Interesting one… He also made it clear; in no uncertain terms, that the Triffs, Gobies and Cave and his Birthday Circus truly DID create a real wave of interest and inspiration to the moribund UK music scene in the early ’80s. All I had to do by way of thanks was help Lynden move his ancient old telly out into the street. And with that, the first interview for Love and Bright Landscapes, is in the can.
Recollections from The Shows Part 1 - Jan 16 2008
Today I walked into the Metro Theatre in George St Sydney, and there playing onstage, were The Triffids. Or more accurately, the remaining Triffids, but it was a moment; of course intellectually I had known – and been very excited – by the prospect of hearing those mighty songs in their natural, fully heated and explosive life. Equally I had known that David had died in 1999. But knowing something in your mind is nothing to feeling something intangible and unexpected. Walking in , hearing the bassline for Hell of a Summer, lyrics in the care of Australia’s finest vocalist Rob Snarski (if you think I’m exaggerating, listen to a Blackeyed Susans album, then tell me your argument) , caught me at an unguarded moment. I’ve been listening to Dave sing in my head for two years every day as I ran over his life and this film in my mind ;and I felt his absence very keenly. Not as his fellow musicians would have done, of course; but I had just had to sit for a minute and take it in, and to be quite honest it more difficult than I expected. Oh well poor me; ha – I’m just the guy trying to make the film , Dave wasn’t in MY band for over a decade, it’s these fellas (of both genders) who’ll really be feeling it. If things were different he’d still have stone classic songs falling out of his head and writing his superbly entertaining tour diaries, keeping his bandmates up at night watching late night movies on their hotel rooms’ ‘brocked up colour viewers’ . and all manner of other things. But I feel we must tread carefully.
Two things occur to me at odd moments. 1) Dave might have enjoyed blogging; he was nut for lists, diaries, and screeds of correspondence. 2) He would have loved the tv show Black Books.
5pm
Soundcheck continues. They’re all rolling out of the speakers. Red Pony, Save What You Can, Bury Me Deep in Love … it’s all moderately surreal. Rob McComb – Dave’s brother and the Triffids’ guitarist – has begun to express a cautious interest. After politely and gently drilling me on why I was interested and who Danielle and I have spoken to, he’s being very supportive, introducing us to people to whom he thinks we should speak. G Lee is as enigmatic as ever, directing operations behind his pedal steel , he’s solely focused on the show, as you’d expect. I think if you look up the word ‘inscrutable’ in the dictionary you see a picture of Graham. David used to call him Ted, as in Teddy Bear. His other more widely known nickname is ‘evil’, because he’s not. Evil Teddy Bear. I feel a DVD extra coming on already.
My old radio friends The Blackeyed Susans arrive. Not we’ve ever done radio shows together, more that I’ve had them on to talk about their records and shows more than any other band over 14 years with Triple R (Melbourne’s independent broadcaster - http://www.rrr.org.au) ; Phil Kakulas and Rob Snarski formed the BES with Dave as a kind of holiday band in the late ’80s and despite Dave leaving in 1994 , the band have powered on with a series of acclaimed records. One of my fave Australian acts of all time (s!)
Tornado Alley Productions (that’s me, your correspondent, Jonathan Alley – and my very intrepid co-producer Danielle Karulas) have just completed our first phase of interviews and collection of initial footage , collected over three days in Sydney Australia. The remaining Triffids have just completed their tribute shows to David McComb (1962-1999) in a triumphant series of gigs entitled ‘The Secret in the Shape of a Song’ (taken from the song Suntrapper on the album In the Pines (1986). ))
This series of remarkable concerts, with guests The Blackeyed Susans, Chris Abrahams, Melanie Oxley. Toby Martin and Steve Kilbey among others, have done a great deal to cement David’s body of work as one of the world’s great ‘canons of song’. Dare we say the greatest? Within Australia; assuredly. The Triffids rehearsed 44 songs (including Blackeyed Susans and solo work) and they aren’t any duds. The flowers adorning the stage and the images of Dave from his childhood only accentuated his absence.
The shows , whilst partially the brainchild of Fergus Lineham of the Sydney Festival who’s an admirer of David’s work, were largely produced, curated and organised by The Triffids’ Graham Lee, whose choice of songs and guest artists to interpret them reflected his thorough and intuitive knowledge of David’s musical legacy. Graham, whose work is also reflected in the quality of the Triffids’ reissues series, maintains The Triffids’ website at www.thetriffids.com
Posted in David McComb, Gigs, Tornado Alley | Comments (0)