Just announced… Former Triffids members, Graham Lee and Rob McComb will be playing with The Blackeyed Susans at the Love in Bright Landscapes fundraising gig. And, for the first time since it’s release 20 years ago, they will play the song Blackeyed Susan - never before played live by either The Triffids or Blackeyed Susans. This gig is going to be an absolute ripper.
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!
Herein the Final Post on the Sydney Shows in January 2008
We burl down the hill after discovering an amazing Korean place near the Metro. We feel human again. There is beer. At the bottom of the hill lies a ferris wheel and a Chinese garden. To my consternation we are granted to shoot in both the following day. The idea is to put Marty in the ferris wheel and and interview Alsy in the Chinese garden: get the co-founder’s memories flowing.
We return to the Metro , and snap up a quick backstage interview with a well spoken Toby Martin (Youth Group) who appears to possess the sort of natural, unforced, unearthly charisma that lead vocalists sell their souls to inherit. Toby is proof Dave’s legacy can be enduring, he’s young enough to have never seen or met Dave in any setting but finds the music astoundingly rich. Further, he truly rates him as a vocalist… and listening to soundchecks, its true; the vocalists have really had to work to hit not just the notes, but the phrasing; the real mark of really superb vocalist …. not the what, the how.
And then it’s time for the show.
Those that were there, know.
For those that were not.. Graham asked me what I thought afterwards,the word that sprang to mind was ’spellbinding’ . It truly was: I go to scores of shows every year, and I hear several albums a week.
I confess to being a jaded old bastard. At times.
To hear this canon of songs, the stage decked out in flowers, Dave’s colleagues, friends and family on stage; made them come to life; not that they don’t live on in memory and on the re-masters, but there’s nothing…. nothing, like hearing these stories rendered large before an enthralled audience. Bless John McComb for his readings.
Now, I had maybe 2 or 3 reservations; the odd arrangement I didn’t like, the mix on a couple of early songs, but…so what? In the context of the show, these are meaningless. Anyone who picked these shows apart is incapable of still being made happy by music and is a hereby a WOWSER.
So…. potted highlights.
Rob Snarski singing Hell of a Summer ; like he was always supposed to sing it. He ’sang the fucking song’.
Mick Harvey delivering The Seabirds; perfect for his rather underated singing voice.
Toby Martin doing Save What You Can.
Jill doing Tarilup Bridge: still bloody ghostly after all these years; and it was spookier still live
Melanie Abrahams doing I Want to Conquer You from Love of Will just about stole the whole show.
Then, there was Steve Kilbey.
Now, excuse me…but I don’t really rate him most days. Don’t get me wrong: there are certain Church albums, Sometime Anywhere and Gold Afternoon Fix in particular, that I love and always will. And all the early stuff. BUT…. I’ve never enjoyed him live. Sorry if that ruffles the feathers of Australian Music Orthodoxy That is, I’ve never enjoyed him live…. until tonight. He attacked Lonely Stretch and Wide Open Road to create an atmosphere of tangible drama and tension. then on the hastily changed encore; he sang Field of Glass. The band – and they are a BAND again tonight – patently love this song – ; maybe because they never quite touched the mood Field of Glass achieved again on record. Live, its one of moments I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It’s indescribably, violently, uplifting.
And then, the first evening is over. And there are standing ovations. Of course , the band go backstage and don’t see them. they have to be told 
THE NEXT DAY….
It Rains. Damnably. Locations are out : the Ferris Wheel isn’t running and Marty says he ‘gets vertigo on a doormat’. Daubney Carshot will need to be captured elsewhere. The Chinese Garden is shut.
We do manage, … of course, as one must. and get a laconic but absolutely fascinating hour with Marty.
There’s loads, loads loads… loads more to tell.
But you’ll have to get the film to see and hear more about that. won’t you?
Stay tuned to read more about how it all pans out.
Jan 16 2008
Soundcheck rolls on. On and on, into the night. This band – who have played together once in 19 years and haven’t played to a home audience since 1989 – are so determined to make this all work. This reminds me of theatre: going and going to all hours , until you’re buggered, until it’s RIGHT; working until you can reasonably demand payment from an audience by their means of money and time. Tonight Jill (Birt: Keys) and Alsy (McDonald: drums) filled me a little more on in the threat to The Cliffe, the McComb family home at Peppermint Grove where Dave often brought the band to practice (in fact the pic on the back of their final studio album The Black Swan was taken there). Dave’s parents moved out in 1995. The new owner apparently refuses to entertain its preservation on the original site , although he’s supposedly (?) offering to pay for the removal of the house to another location. A fascinating titbit from Alsy: the house was one of the first made of Jarrah, as opposed to brickwork, in an effort to prove that dwellings in Perth could indeed be built of wood; all apparently in the name of the people that started Bunnings, of all things. So, think of that next time YOU buy a useless father’s day gift ok? The McComb family home helped create that combine…powerdrill… beer brewing, rat killing…implement of destruction you hold in your hand! However …. in all seriousness, we must shoot there before they ruin it all. Mick Harvey is singing The Seabirds. It suits his voice to a T. It is a a song written for storytellers.
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!)
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