I took a year off blogging because i was sick of talking about myself.

Here’s some other stuff i did

I lived in London for a bit and wrote some tunes for the new record with the mysterious A Ron Cupples

Me on the way to the studio..

Smoked some hash in Amsterdam

so stoned my trademark Dan Kelly hair got all fucked up

Saw Polvo in Berlin

love these guys

Stayed above Swingers Cafe in LA and ate the fuck out of it

great food and the waitresses all call you Baby

Then i got home and hung out up the north coast for six weeks

lots of beautiful stilt walkers up here and some creepy Sydney real estate crew too

Got blazed and played cymbals with the Boredoms……

that's me with the hat on the left.

…also danced under a fig tree in a dress with a head full of rum to this tune by Oud Master John Berberian

strong look John!

I have a new sharehouse in Pascoe Vale Sth with a mega backyard so i spent my remaining 83 bucks on gardening tools

I did however manage to write some bitchin new tunes which i will play at the Tote on December 23. This is the promo bit

http://thetotehotel.oztix.com.au/

come along and give me a Thai massage please or a lawnmower

I was always intrigued by the kind of religious tableaux you would find on the front of Jehovah’s Witness magazines. Man and wild beast would be happily coexisting and frolicking, the bilby lay nestled in the breast of the saltwater croc, with no thought of the realities of the food chain. Even as a child i smelled a rat and wondered if the people writing these magazines were maybe a bit retarded. But they were fascinating nonetheless and always made a trip to the doctors surgery a bit more interesting.

when is this photo shoot over so i can eat this kid?

I also like writing songs about Western Australia. This comes down to a mixture of too many Tim Winton novels and sharing a house with Gaz from the Drones. I feel if you’re gonna make it as a semi literary (literate?) rock poet you need to chance your hand at capturing the wide open red dirt roads and vast beaches of our miner’s paradise over in the west.

That is a picture of Gaz with a tea towel on his head by the way.

So i wrote this song about a guy who goes fishing to escape the drudgery of his middle age in Perth. The cholesterol pills are making him feel old and creaky and he doesn’t get on with his wife much. So he’s out fishing and finds himself in a kind of tableaux with lots of little  native animals, on their furry and scaly last legs after another summer of bushfires and ozone powered face cancer. He empathises and cracks another tinny as he checks the end of the reel. Looking for the nibble of a little ray or jellycatfish or whatever’s left out there.

I think this scene was inspired by Brendan Behan’s novel Borstal Boy when he first sees the sea after being let out of prison on a day trip. Borstal Boy is a fab novel and comes recommended by myself and much smarter folks.

Anyways the guy is out fishing and digging his biblical bogan Behan scene and he is interrupted by a boat full of Somali refugees. They kick back on the beach and pull out their guitars and show him the last African song that Paul Simon hasn’t recorded. He takes this for what it’s worth, not realising he could sell it to Vampire Weekend and make a mint. Like me, he has no head for business. I really put this bit in just so i could bust out a sweet chorused afro guitar jam

I spent most of my twenties trying to sing like an Afro-American woman. But now i just want to play like an African man. It’s always good to have something to aspire to, i’ve found

anyways…

….. the federal police and the press come and everyone gets arrested and his wife sees him on the news and he is busted for taking an unauthorized fishing trip. He goes home to watch the cricket and die slowly in the brutal summer heat of 2017.

And there endeth the song. You can watch it on youtube accompanied by a picture I made of a Naked Allen Ginsberg riding a boat full of refugees through space

West Coast Fishing Incident 2017

WEST COAST FISHING INCIDENT

YONDER LIES THE WESTERN SKY
HERE I WATCH THE CLOUDS ROLL BY
WITH THE SEA A BAND OF BRIGHT BLUE STEEL
ON MY BACK JUST WORKING THE REEL
I WAS DELIVERED BY A DUSTY DIRT ROAD
SPAT FROM THE PIPES OF THE CITY’S COMMODE
WITH A THREE DAY STUBBLE AND A SUNBURNT NOSE
I’M HUNKERING DOWN IN MY REPOSE

GOODBYE TO THE CHIRPING OF THE LATEST RING TONES!
ENDLESS CONVERSATIONS BOUT THE BEATLES VS THE STONES
I DROPPED A LAST POST ON TWITTER, SAID ‘PEOPLE I’M GONE…
GOODBYE CYBER PEOPLE I’M GONE…I HOPE IT’S  FOREVER’

WHERE YONDER LIES THE WESTERN SKY
IT BRINGS A TEAR TO A HARD MANS EYE
MY HANDS THEY TINGLE AND MY KNEE BONES SHAKE
AN EYE ON THE CLOUDS AND ONE ON THE BREAK

ALL ALONE BUT  SURROUNDED BY THE NATIVE COMPANY
SCORCHED BY THE SUMMER,THEY’RE FALLING FROM THE TREES
WE POSE LIKE AN OLD JEHOVAH’S WITNESS MAGAZINE
WE SAY ‘CHEESE’,
THERE COMES A NEW COMMOTION FROM THE SEAS
I HEAR THE STRUMMING OF SOMALI REFUGEES

(ENTER SOMALI GUITAR TROUPE FOR 8 BARS)

YONDER LIES THE SINKING SUN
THE COAST GUARD’S HERE WITH THEIR GUNS ON STUN
JUST BEFOrE THE BOAT FOLKS ALL HAVE TO GO
THEY TAUGHT ME A SONG PAUL SIMON DON’T KNOW

NOW IT’S BACK TO THE CLUTCHES OF MY EVIL SECOND WIFE
SHE STABS ME IN THE MIND WITH A TONGUE LIKE A KNIFE
INTERSECTION HEAT,  PANIC ON THE STREETS
IT’S JUST A LIFE, IT’S LEFT ME BEHIND
ONE THING LEFT ON MY MIND AND THAT’S
YONDER LIES THE WESTERN SKY
YONDER LIES THE WESTERN SKY…..

I am the ZEN EAGLE WARRIOR on the road to nowhere.

We went for a big walk up a mountain and i fell over  a lot. But i edited most of that out!

Hold On, I’m Coming On

I stole some sayings from Buddhist stuff and some from Rumi and made some up myself

The hardest bit was turning into an eagle . It was cold but eventually i did it!

Phew

Hard Ons! Not the ones i mean but this is a family blog

this baby is powering my macbook sadly

So Hazelwood is this monstrously polluting coal fire power station in Gippsland. It is the worst in the southern hemisphere. Really old technology and subsidised like crazy. There is so much money in digging up the black  stuff though for middle aged power guys and politicans and the economy in general that no one’s gonna do a thing about changing the power grid until they are essentially forced to.  And its a peaceful democracy so its like who is gonna do that?

I went to a protest about it. Really lovely people there and a lot of  hippies but when you think that the whole planet is dying and all the plants and animals and oceans with it and we are just gonna end up in some Mad Max stylee squabble for resources and water, it was sobering to think that almost no one was there

Brunswick st, the year 2056

I’ve never been in a fight even. My youth was playing cricket against a wall and listening to the Smiths. No gangs at all for me, although the Beenleigh/ Logan city area sure isn’t a place to go wandering about at night.

Mayor of Logan City

But violent upbringing? no.

But when i thought about how those creepy money makers are prepared to fuck us all in the arse to put their demon spawn through Scotch college (so they can future fuck our future children in the future arses) it sure made my blood boil.

So i started to write this musical.

The plot goes vaguely like this

A yuppie dude has an epiphany about Global Warming while shopping in American Apparel

He buys a khaki layered jumpsuit with matching balaclava and sets off on a Honda 250 to blow up a power station

After he becomes a fugitive he decides to hide in an indie rock band (thanks Dave Graney) and they tour about blowing up power stations with special explosive guitar pedals and laser xylophones. Lets call this indie band DEERWOLF VS SQUIRRELFOX

Everytime they do another station it ends the gig as they have no power. So they are frustrated. A frustrated indie band, who ever thought of that?

young and indie but dedicated eco warriors

DEERWOLF VS SQUIRRELFOX are so successful after a Pitchfork feature that they tour until the whole coal industry is on its knees. Unfortunately The Chinese government needs that coal so they invade and harvest everyone’s organs. So the freshly harvested Oz public really hates this indie band.

They escape to the bush and live in a cave for 50 years, They become incredible xylophone players and adept at swapping instruments. Their floppy hair dreads up and they have to eat insects.

Even the sound engineer had to chow down on the water bugs for brunch satisfaction

Then in 2056 the descended Chinese emo children discover DEERWOLF VS SQUIRRELFOX through some obscure website and they become totally hip.

They come out of the cave and do a national tour put on by Michael Chugg’s Cryogenically Sustained Brain Touring Co

Anyways like i said i’m just the author and not the dude. I think its good to think about what radicalizes people though. Is the law more important than the future of everything? I certainly don’t like the idea of hurting anyone though.

What would Ghandi do?

old ways of powering the lap top

Or John Lennon? In ‘Revolution’ he couldn’t decide whether to say ‘when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out’ or …’ count me in’.

So he says ‘out…in!’

hmmm

getting back on the sauce is one way to deal with ol' Apocalypse dread

THE DECOMMISSIONER

AMERICAN APPAREL  HAD A SPECIAL ON KHAKI
WITH A MATCHING BALACLAVA STITCHED IN NORTHERN ITALY
WELL IT JUST GOT ME THINKING AND I FLASHED MY CREDIT CARD
I MUST ADMIT I MIGHT HAVE BEEN A TRIFLE HARD…

I READ THE WEATHER MAKERS, READ SOME GHANDI TOO
AND I THOUGHT ABOUT THE SPACE THAT DOES EXIST ‘TWEEN ME AND YOU
THEN I STOLE SOME HIGH EXPLOSIVE FROM THE COFFIN CHEATERS CLUB
AND I VANISHED LIKE A NINJA TO THE SCRUB…

I AM THE DE-COMMISSIONER
GUILTY OF THE WORST SEDITION
HELICOPTERS ON MY TRAIL
I’M DANCING LIKE A HARE KRISHNA!

LIKE STEVE MCQUEEN ON MY 250
O-ER THE COMPOUND FENCE!
WELL THE BLOOD HAD LIFTED TO MY HEAD
MY LEGS WERE IN SUSPENSE
THEN I RAMMED A STICK OF JELLY
‘NEATH THE COOLING TOWERS WALL
CRASHED THE BOOM GATE AS THE BRICKS BEGAN TO FALL…

I AM THE DE-COMMISSIONER
TAKING THE EXTREME POSITION
TAUNTING THE POLICE COMMISSIONER!
I AM THE DE-COMMISSIONER
GUILTY OF THE WORST SEDITION
SERVICE STATION CAMERAS CATCH ME
DANCIN’
LIKE A HARE KRISHNA!

(WACKY INSTRUMENTAL HIGH SPEED CHASE THROUGH GIPPSLAND COMMENCES)
ROAD BLOCKS ON ALL THE HIGHWAYS
I SLUNK ALONG THE CREEKS
SOON JOINED BY ANGRY SCIENTISTS
AMD SOME OLD JESUS FREAKS
COLLECTING STRANGE DISCIPLES
WE HATCHED A BRAND NEW PLAN
WE STARTED PRE PRODUCTION
ON A TOURING INDIE BAND!

WE WENT…
UP THE FREEWAY IN OUR BLACK TARAGO
RUN ON SOLAR POWER
DE -COMMISSIONING POWER STATIONS
THE  COPS CLOSE BY THE HOUR
REVIEWERS IN THEIR LEATHER TRENCH COATS
SETTIN UP MY BUZZ
SAY I’LL BE FAMOUS IF I JUST AVOID THE FUZZ!

OH MR POLICE COMMISIONER
LOOK AT IT FROM MY POSITION
A – POCALYPSE IS COMIN’
AND I’M REALLY A CONCERNED PARISHIONER
ACTING ON MY OWN VOLITION
TAKING THE EXTREME POSITION
I’M TIRED OF ALL THIS INDECISION!
BOOM

It seemed to take a long time

I think the next one will be simple Haikus with Jews Harp accompaniment

My new look

I fell off the blog the last couple of months coz i’ve been touring the Bindi single. It’s a blessing and a curse having a song so linked in with celebrity culture. On one hand you can get bogans to sing it in far flung places who wouldn’t usually even look at me without beating me up. And i got John Brumby too sing it too! On the other hand the dudes at MESS AND NOISE have probably lost all respect for me.

Sigh….

I have also been tied up learning photoshop as i couldnt really find anyone desperate or talented enough to do my record cover. So it was down to me an my trusty photographer mate Daniel Campbell.

After a few false starts i decided to borrow my friend Matt Kulesza’s (of Rat Vs Possum) Kaftan

Bratwurst Possum

and sit in a sewerage pipe in Werribee. It was a beautiful day and Werribee South turned out to be much more lovely and less polluted than i’d hoped.

where is this apocalypse then? dammit...

Eventually i found an outlet pipe and proceeded to strike my best camp african guitar poses for the camera. The result is uniquely me, i think.

I only had half that pipe and had to reverse myself and build the whole other side with bits of rock and leaves. Thats why i’m left handed all of a sudden. Then on the inside cover i surrounded myself with a halo of boat people and typhoons while suspended in the air above Mt Buller. That was fun. Now i know photoshop who wants an album cover done?

I specialize in iconic and silly styles.

So yeah it’s all done. I am working on the vinyl master and cover now so that should be out soon too!

Over the next few weeks i’m gonna blog explain all the album tracks. I will start wednesday with ‘The Decommissioner’, which is about blowing up Hazlewood power station with a hard on.

see you all then

x

There are so many factors to pay attention to.

Is the balance of ballads to up beat numbers right?
Do you start with a party and mellow it out during the record? Or vice Versa?
What about the keys of the songs? Can you have more than three songs in a row in the key of E if it’s not a Chicago blues record?
What about the general theme of the record, does it tell a story or is it just a collection of tunes?
How long is too long, and how short is too short?
Do people even care anymore with ipods and iphones and shuffling and single downloads from itunes?
Should the falsetto song be straight out there or hidden on the back stretch?
Is it true what Robert Forster says that the second last song on an album is always the worst?
If so am i jinxing whatever song i put there?
Should i put a Go Betweens cover there?

Robert sniffs out another disappointing second last song

Does the record company/agent/manager have better instincts for a single than the man on the street. or worse?
Or exactly the same?
Will the record reviewers say you’re treading water if the early songs on the list are most like the old ones?
Or will they be reassured?
Should you put the ones Mum likes all together, or force her to work through the record like she’s trapped in IKEA for 48 minutes when she’s just trying to buy a lightbulb?

welcome to my record Mum! sorry...

Should i have segues?
or Skits?
Should the skits mention the year and trap the record forever in the tweens?
Should i fade the songs?
Or perhaps a cunning fade in, or try the old fade out fade in again
How long should the silence be between the tracks?
Is it the right kind of silence?
Legend has it that Johnny Marr had so much coke that he went around sampling different silences until he had the perfect silence between the tracks. The right kind of silence, if you will…

Johnny contemplating the right kind of silence

I have 48 hours to find these answers
Wish me luck!

On completing my retro blog of the recording with the band i figured i could continue retro blogging and never catch up with my own life.

Or hit the MONTAGE button and bring us up to date in a series of mini montage blogs.

I think this is a better option.

What was meant to be 8 more days tracking in Daylesford followed by two weeks mixing in Sydney followed by a blissful christmas period off resting on my laurels turned into a three and a half month trip to the bottom of my soul and to London and back.

I changed studios three times.

I learnt how to use two types of computer based recording programs (protools and logic)

I ran out of time to finish it with Bourke and finished it with A ron Cupples in London

I spent three weeks in a mud brick studio in Brunswick

I rewrote the lyrics to half the record

re-sung every song twice (sometimes thrice)

changed the tempo of half the tracks with the electrical confusion rays of my mind

sang 2 000 vocal harmonies

had a total stress attack that lasted almost three months

went on tour as a three piece with Kitty Daisy and Lewis and felt ridiculously inappropriate, but tried hard

lost 8 kilos (pretty stoked about that one actually)

did a gig that was meant to be a sneak preview of the record but i mostly talked a lot and played old songs

had 4,357 conversations with my manager

bored the shit out of all my friends and ruined my relationship

London has changed me...

and i’m still not finished!

(but very close now. i’m just working on the track listing and the art)

and the single ‘Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam ‘ is out today

so yay.

more on how all this happened tomorrow…….

D Packard Sax for Hire 555 6969

But i cant really sing after all the celebrating and having a mild flu too, so bed beckons. We are all sleeping in this kind of loft filled with mattresses and bookshelves. If the band had insisted on their own rooms i would have been screwed but thankfully there’s no prima donnas in this group. Burke has his own room but that’s so he can be close to all his groovy recording gear.

The next day i awake feeling ratty but it was a good night so sometimes you just have to wear that. The last song to do before we left Yandoit was ‘Dan Kelly’s Dream’. It is probably the title of the record and one i hold high hopes for, just because of its general spazness and 5/4 beat. Which is a change from my 4/4isms of the last 6 years. I wrote the words for this song in the back of a tour van in 2008 as Paul Kelly, his tour manager Greg Weaver and myself drove over the endless Canadian plains towards Winnipeg.

beautiful Winterpeg

We had started in Austin at SXSW and worked our way up through LA, San Fransisco, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary performing as a duo with Greg on sound and a lovely gent from LA named Patrick Park in support.

Team Kelly in Warmer Times

In Vancouver i had met a very lovely,energetic and slightly intoxicated girl who used to go out with Kurt Cobain back in the day. Somehow in the course of the evening she ended up giving me this amazing crucifix that had belonged to Kurt and that she had worn every day since his death. I didn’t want to take it but she insisted she needed a break from it for a while and it would help me make an amazing record. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. So the next thing i’m scooting across the plains of Canada with Kurts cross on my chest, feeling weird about it but open to anything really.

Kurt liked a lot of cool Australian bands like Cosmic Psychos, Bloodloss etc Would have hated my stuff though :(

Eventually on about the 12th hour of the drive to Winnipeg i got stuck into the left over rider wine and busted out these kind of Eric Burdon ‘Spill the Wine’ stylee lyrics about blowing up coal trains in Vietnam. I had  been on an eco-terrorist trip for a while and was pretty keen to write a few songs just to stir shit up really. Im not a violent chap, but if i can rile up some conservatives and climate deniers then well and good. I swear If i hear another stupid 60 year old English geologist wanking on about solar flares I will blow up his brain with my Electro Harmonix Pog pedal

oops my guitar solo accidentally saved the world!

So anyways i wrote these lyrics and welded them to a little piece that i had written back in The Baker St rock commune days with A ron Cupples and in a hundred ks or so i had a song. Probably my first finished song in about two years at that point so i thanked the universe quietly.

thanks universe!

That night we ate Chinese food in the smallest town in the world, about 300km from Winnipeg and i crashed out  in the hotel room. I awoke at about 3am having these intense heart palpitations and started to freak out. No one was awake and it was negative 15 c outside. Stupidly i looked up the net and of course concluded i was having a heart attack. I went to reception to see if they had any aspirin as it thins your blood, but the guy there didn’t and thought i was strange. My hair was particularly high with the worry.

Drugs for guys in thirties

He directed me to a truck stop pharmacy type place about 2 km up the road. I was in a real panic so i hoofed it out the door in just my jeans, suede boots and hoodie. I was about a k down the road, no houses just endless snow fields and massive semis blasting past, when i realised that i might actually freeze to death before i got there.

bad tour moment

My uncle and Greg the tour manager were asleep oblivious and the guy at reception was doing his best to forget me. It was like Fargo only more pathetic.

I eventually made it there with blue hands and swallowed some aspirin and calmed down a bit and warmed my hands by the coffee machine before attempting the trip back. I was too scared to go back to my room by myself so i sat and watched tv in the lobby for five hours until the team woke up. I got in the tour van feeling very strange and ended up spending 600 bucks on tests at winnipeg medical center that afternoon. It turns out that i was having an allergic reaction to some medication my doctor had put me on to lower my cholesterol a bit (genetics have been kind and cruel to me in equal doses),

avoid this stuff.

but for a while i thought the Kurt cross was jinxing me and i took it off. Now the record has taken three years and i wonder whether i should have worn it more?

I’m not usually superstitious though i avoid eating flake, in the hope that if a shark has to choose between me and another swimmer, he chooses the flake eating guy.

avoid this if you like body surfing at dusk in murky water

DAN KELLY’S DREAM

I FELL ASLEEP ON A TRAM, HARRY POTTER IN HAND

I WOKE UP DROOLING IN THE SOUTH OF VIETNAM

WITH A CONTROVERSIAL HAIRCUT AND OVERSIZED HANDS

IN THE BACK OF A CAFE CALLED ‘MYSTERY TRAN’

I STARTED CYCLING BACKWARD DOWN THE TRIBUTARY

BY THE COCA COLA WATERS,UNDER INSTANT NOODLE TREES

TASTE POLICE GOT ME, THREW ME IN A CELL

LONG NIGHTS PLAYING CARDS WITH THE GUARDS AND SCHAPELLE*

TILL I MADE MY ESCAPE WITH A TRANNIE NAMED MARY

WE HITCHHIKED DOWN THE ROAD

OUR LEGS WERE ALL HAIRY!

SINGING ‘DOO DOO DOO, DOO, DOO, DOO ETC”

ME AND MARY TOOK A TRIP ON A BIPLANE, UP TO THE HIGH PLAINS

LIVIN ON CRUSKITS FISHED FROM THE MAIN DRAIN

KILLING TIME BY DERAILING COAL TRAINS

MADE THE CITY FOLKS ANGRY, THE COULDN’T HEAT THE WATER MAINS!

(HAD TO HAVE COLD SHOWERS, SHIVERIN’ FOR HOURS)

TIL THE AIR FORCES, GROUND FORCES, GREEN BERETS, MERCENARIES

COME DOWN UPON ME LIKE A SWARM OF ANGRY WORKER BEES

I JUMPED IN A FOXHOLE, COME UP IN NEW GUINEA

STOLE AN INDONESIAN GENERALS WATERPROOF HUMVEEE

THEN I CRUISED PAST JAPAN WITH THE TYPHOONS STINGING

UP TO ALASKA, THERE WERE ESKIMO GIRLS SINGING!

DOO DOO DOO, DOO DOO DOO ETC

STUMBLIN ROUND THE NORTH POLE, CHECKING ON MY MAP

IT WAS A POLAR BEARS TRAIL ON A PIECE OF FOOLSCAP

BUT THOSE DAMN CORPORATIONS SET ME A TRAP

A WHOLE POLAR ICE CAP MELTED ON MY LAP!

THEN I SURFED DOWN THE GULFSTREAM TO THE COAST OF CHILE

I WAS THE LAST THING SWIMMIN, THEY MADE A DOCUMENTAY!

I WENT TO THE PREMIERE AT THE LAST WORLD FAIR

SO MANY TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS THERE

RUB TWO IPODS TOGETHER MAKE A FIRE!

PUT CHICKEN WIRE IN FRONT OF YOUR CLOTHES DRYER!

RAISE DRY CHICKENS,

PUT EM OUT IN THE YARD TO COOK A WHILE!

SINGING DOO DOO DOO, DOO DOO DOO ETC

I BUSTED OUT SCREAMING, ADVERTISERS SCREAMING,

GROWN UPS AND CHILDREN LIKE REFUGEES TEEMING

NEON SIGNS SPRUIKING PORN STARS REAMING

THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN I HEARD THE TRAM BRAKES SCREAMING,

THANK THE LORD, IT WAS JUST ANOTHER SONG WHERE THE GUY WAS ONLY DREAMING!

END OF SONG

*i know Schapelle is in Indonesia but hey, anyone ever heard ‘Bangkok’ by Alex Chilton?

We are into the last two days of band recording and it’s time to try a new composition i’ve been working on entitled ‘ Bindi Irwin Undersea Apocalypse Jam’.
I’ve always been a fan of underwater theme songs and underwater tv shows. ‘The Man from Atlantis’ blew my mind as i’d sit in our hot tv room in Port Lincoln as a young lad.

That show was a long way from the desert of 1970′s  South Australia, even tho it was a fishing town i was in. That Port Lincoln house provided the earliest dreams i can remember, particularly this one where cows would climb in through my window, stand up on their hind legs. wrap their forelegs around me and squeeze  milk out of me. I would wake up screaming.
What does that mean? Is it Freudian? Any dream analysts feel free to write in.
But i digress…..
my favourite underwater song of all time is Jimi Hendrix’s “1983…a Merman i shall turn to be”. In this epic tune Jimi runs ‘away from a world that’s battered and torn’ to the sea where he lives out his days in safety. The imagery is just the right side of hippie coz 60′s or not, Jimi was a righteous motherfucker and funny too.
Octopus’s Garden by the Beatles is another significant underwater tune for me too. it’s hard to overstate how great Beatles records  are when your a kid . Even stuff like ‘Obli DI Obli Da’ is magical until you hit 12 or 13. Thats why music critics drive me up the wall in their endless Lennon vs Macartney wank.  It really doesn’t matter.

Ringo on being informed he is in a Dan Kelly song

UK Music Critic trying to 'get the vibe'

As our uncle Morrissey says …
‘A sad fact widely known
the most impassionate song
to a lonely soul
Is so easily outgrown
But don’t forget the songs that made you smile
and the songs that made you cry
When you lay in awe
On the bedroom floor
and said “oh, oh, smother me Mother…’

not that he was talking about Obli di Oh blah dah of course, i’m just trying to say that we weren’t all always indie hipsters.

but i digress….
I had this jam that i worked up with A ron Cupples a couple of years ago in Dalston that i was keen to turn into something. It had a kind of spacious Ibiza feel from the get go.

One day lapping away in the Fitzroy pool i somehow accidentally and horrifically composed a scenario where i would escape the coming apocalypse by following Jimi’s footsteps and heading underwater. Knowing my awful sense of direction i figured i would need a tour guide, and before i could stop the thought, Bindi Irwin was in the song.

the one and only

I spent the next three months trying to write her out, but sometimes you just can’t run away from a particular lyric that has attached itself to the music, no matter how hard you try.
Fearing a Tabloid backlash i then set about trying to make the song not creepy in any way, a hard task considering she is underage and most of my songs have a somewhat risque edge to them. Eventually i realized that if i got her mother Terri to chaperone her through the verses, that would take some of the edge off of it. I also wrote in a middle 8
“It’s not appropriate to share our beds
even though human kind’s hanging by a thread
I will hang with the mermaids instead..”
Now  i needed some more companions to live out my days underwater, so feeling guilty about ripping off  their two great songs somewhat , i invited Jimi and Ringo star into the picture. And naturally we had to jam. And then the Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam was born.

We spend the rest of eternity, shielded from the UV rays by the cover of the Great Eastern Trash, a continent sized pile of plastic that is covering most of the north pacific.

its hard to joke about this stuff. but otherwise i would have killed myself long ago

A word on Bindi Irwin. Now of course the whole mega oz/americana child star franchise horror is unsettling. But as modern stars go, a young girl in Khaki who saves all the animals from extinction is a pretty  cool by me.
I told the band and they were slightly freaked, then i played them the instrumental demo and it just sounds like an underwater jam with Bindi. So off we went.
Even Burke went for it, and you would not find a guy who would run further from cute novelty music if you tried.
So it came to be that the iron sculptures watching over our little cottage in Yandoit came to resonate with undersea Irwin frequencies through the night……

THE FORCES OF COOL MAY SHOUT ME DOWN
BUT HERE IS SOME GOLD FROM YE OLDE BRAIN TOWN
I WAS  BUSTING SOME LAPS ACROSS THE POND
BENDING MY THOUGHTS TO A WORLD GONE WRONG
THINKING  i WILL RETIRE TO BE UNDER THE SEA
JUST RINGO AND TERRI
BINDI AND ME
AND JIMI’S THERE TOO
LAYING IT DOWN
BIG BUBBLES OF SOUND
SO WE ALL DON’T DROWN!

SINGING OO WEE OO WEE
BINDI AND ME BINDI AND ME
OO WEE OO WEE
APOCALYPSE JAM UNDER THE SEA

I’M NOT LOOKING FOR LOVE, JUST COMPANY
AND SHE CAN EXPLAIN THE WORLD TO ME
FROM THE LITTORAL ZONES TO THE DOCK OF THE BAY
WE CAN AVOID THE WOES OF THE DAY
I DO DESIRE TO BE UNDER THE SEA
RINGO AND TERRY, BINDI AND ME
I’M GONNA LET IT RING OUT
ON MY  CORAL KAZOO
IT’S AN UNDERSEA JAM
WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?

OO WEE OO WEE
BINDI AND ME BINDI AND ME
OO WEE OO WEE
APOCALYPSE JAM UNDER THE SEA

IT’S NOT APPROPRIATE TO SHARE OUR BEDS
ALTHOUGH HUMANKIND’S HANGIN BY A THREAD
I WILL HANG WITH THE MERMAIDS INSTEAD
AND TOGETHER WE WILL RIDE OUT THE CRASH
UNDER THE COVER OF THE EASTERN TRASH
DANCING ALL NIGHT BY THE COAST OF MAURITIOUS
UNDER THE LIGHTS OF THE DEEP SEA FISHES

UNDERWATER GUITAR SOLO

DIARY ENTRY 603
ANOTHER DULL DAY IN OUR CORAL SANCTUARY
RINGO’S MESSED UP ON JELLYFISH TEA
AND BINDI’S BAD Fashion  IS GETTING TO ME
ONCE i desireD to be under the sea
AND I WILL LET THAT BE A LESSON TO ME
I WILL SWIM TO THE SURFACE
CLIMB A DEAD TREE
AND LET  THE TORNADOS
TAKE CARE OF ME!

OO WEE OO WEE
BINDI AND ME BINDI AND ME
OO WEE OO WEE
APOCALYPSE JAM UNDER THE SEA
ETCETERA

What i look like mid week two

A mild flu and fear of swallowing a bandaid has meant i have given up my morning struggle through the murk of ye olde castlemaine pool. Unfortunately that leaves more energy to turn inward onto my brain.  This kind of redirected sport energy may go a ways to explaining why a 60s country jam like Catholic Leader will end up with a metal versus ukelele solo in it, accompanied by latin percussion and cheering children. If i exercised more i suspect my songs would be simpler as my brain would be relaxed and content.

Writing songs after a swim!

instead up cluttered up with non exercised free radical nano thoughts….

writing songs after not exercising. Planning more harmonized solos,,,,,

A word on the cheering children. When i was starting to write and demo songs again, after a good two years of nothing, i discovered a sound effect on Garageband which consisted of a big group of kids saying YAY!.  These kids gave me confidence and i preceded to put them on every demo .Whenever i do a guitar solo or bust  a funny lyric the kids are there to cheer me on. So i have decided to put them either overtly or hidden onto every track of the new record. As a way of thanking them for their tireless enthusiasm. May i’ll get them a deal and they can do their own record thru K TEL. Burke does not know about this plan yet .

Here they are so you can dig them too. YAY!

And so we track on into the next couple of days. I dress up like Roy Orbison for the remake of CATHOLIC LEADERand we nail it the second time round. We struggle with BULLSEYE JONES, THE MAN IN MENTONE as i am asking Dave to play a really particular and silly drum pattern. I can be pretty anal with tracking, and strangely enough it really comes to the fore on songs where i’m trying to sound all happy go lucky . Irritating for drummers I am. But Dave soldiers on and eventually that is tracked and ready to sing falsetto all over. My love of falsetto started with a Skip James song ‘ Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’ that my uncle Paul sang for me one queensland christmas when i was 14. He was taught the song by Spencer Jones.   It is a haunting magical song and it blew my mind after a day of swimming and backyard cricket and gorging myself and freaking on my Joshua Tree tape that my american relatives had sent over. I have continued to wail away a the top of my range ever since.

Here is Skip doing another fabulous tune ‘Devil Got My Woman’. This was when he was rediscovered after 30 years and played Newport. People try to cover this song and always screw it up.

this is better than John Mayer

Talking falsetto I also like Curtis Mayfield, Desmond Dekker and ‘Emotional Rescue’ by the Rolling Stones .

Ultimate Dan Kelly song

anyways thats my retro blog for today.

Tomorrow..Bindi Irwin!