Emails. Easy to read. Harder to read into. Some make your heart leap, others make them sink. And, happily, some make you think. They’re the best ones. Off to Sydney this weekend to visit one Sally Collins, former Triffids manager. Stay tuned for reports…
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!
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.
This week a small treasure trove arrived: original pictures of The Triffids from the early ’80s, a copy of Son of Dungeon Tape, original fliers, old press clippings and even gig runsheets from old venues with The Triffids and other bands of the era included on them, featuring special requests such as this gem.
“James Baker is not to be paralytic before 8.30 pm” Johnny Topper , The Pelaco Brothers.
All this came courtesy of Neil Rogers from Triple R’s ‘Australian Mood’ programme. Click on link above to see Neil’s page on the RRR website. I think the fliers could maybe work together as floating montage that are assembled onscreen together like a slowly forming jigsaw puzzle over voiceover/similar.
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.
For those readers wanting more on the Sydney Shows : I am beavering on some other work related to the film; normal transmission will be resumed shortly.
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.
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
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