Ross Wilson – Concert Review

Ross Wilson is one of the most respected and storied artists in Australian pop and roll and thus it made perfect sense to find him announcing that he would follow his long time compatriot Joe Camilleri into the  (relatively) vast surrounds of the Palais Theatre for a concert celebrating has 45 years in music.

 

Actually the “45 year” occasion is probably a little rubbery so the sub-title of Wilson’s concert “5 Decades of Cool” was probably more apt given that it must be really hard to pick a date and say “it started then”.

 

I’ll wander through the concert in a minute however it’s probably fitting to the most meaningful moment in the whole show came at its conclusion. The final song Loves Journey was drawn from Wilson’s next album, rather than from his back catalogue and the final image on the backdrop actually announced Wilson’s forthcoming national tour that will run from September through December. We may have been there to celebrate Wilson’s past but he has his sights firmly fixed on the future.

 

But there’s nothing wrong with a brief stroll down memory lane is there?

 

Wilson chose to do things largely chronologically, with a couple of exceptions. He actually opened with one of my favorite Wilson songs Bed Of Nails, re-invented in the style of a jazz combo. The lyrical relevance of this was interesting although it may have been lost on some of the crowd. I heard a few murmurings of concern when Eagle Rock made an early appearance, re-jigged as a jug band ditty. Surely the classic song wasn’t going to be dismissed in such a strange way? Of course not.

 

Early guests appropriately were Ross Hannaford and Mike Rudd. They accompanied Wilson through some Pink Finks and Party Machine songs including the rarely heard I Don’t Believe All Your Kids Should Be Virgins. This song, used to illustrate how subversive they were at the time, did its job well, but it also should be left where he found it for future performances!

 

Another obscurity though – which I think went by the name of Woman of The World – should immediately be sent to every pop singer looking for a hit. It was a cracking little song that wouldn’t sound out of place in the Top 40 today. (Um, do they still have a Top 40?)

 

Wilson generously handed the lead singing over to Rudd for a rendition of the Spectrum hit I’ll Be Gone and his strident vocal and wailing harp made this an early highlight.

 

Other great moments in the first set included Come Back Again (such a great song built around such a simple idea), the eternally silly Baby Let Me Bang Your Box and the superb Hi Honey Ho which reminded us what a huge groove Daddy Cool created for a bunch of Australian white boys in the 70’s.

 

Stu Fraser joined the band for a couple of more rockin’ songs and his presence emphasised how important a good guitar player has been to Wilson’s music. He’s had the incomparable Ross Hannaford who showed at this concert that he has lost none of the tasteful dexterity and brilliant touch that he has used to grace so many importany Australian recordings. Later in the night Eric McCusker showed that his more focussed contributions to Mondo Rock songs were equally essential to their success.

 

The set finished with the very significant Living In The Land of Oz (which in retrospect is as much an alternative national anthem as Down Under or Beds Are Burning) and the slinky The Fugitive Kind and Primal Park from the later album, which served to give us a taste of the second half.

 

Part Two commenced, well, badly. While Wilson’s production of the Skyhooks albums Living In The Seventies and Ego Is Not A Dirty Word was an important landmark in Australian contemporary rock music and his part in their success was essential the performances of Horror Movie and Ego were simply lame. The band managed to purge any life out of those subversive, brash songs and Greg Macainsh made the right call by sitting in the audience rather than participating in that part of the show.

 

Fortunately things came good from there. Jimmy Barnes came, saw, bellowed and generally spread the love on a couple of songs showing himself to be a generous performer and likeable house guest before Wilson played a great song called Slave To My Emotions which highlighted what a good harp player he is.

 

After an impressive re-invention of A Touch Of Paradise (and a funny story about the power of Na Na Na’s) we were ready to hit the home straight.

 

A series of Mondo Rock hits followed and they only served to make you wonder why that band didn’t become a huge American pop success. Hearing those songs now you can only be amazed how perfectly they would have fitted American radio formats of the time.

 

Chemistry, Summer of 81, Primitive Love Rites, State Of The Heart, Cool World and Come Said The Boy are all great commercial songs and they drew the concert to a very “smiles on faces” conclusion.

 

Of course the encore included a gang bang on Eagle Rock (in the style to which the audience had become accustomed over the last 40 or so years) and a happy Daddy Who?, Daddy Cool! finale, before the aforementioned Loves Journey pointed us into the future.

 

Did we get everything we paid for? Absolutely. Was there any surprises? Actually there was and you have to commend Wilson for his openness to re-inventing some of his songs and to genre-hop so willingly.

 

While the concert rather randomly marked a point of celebration for Wilson you do get the sense that the audience got more from the exercise than Wilson himself did. I suspect he’s already thinking about the next album, the next show, the next song. And that’s probably why he is who he is.

Stephen Cummings – Writes And Speaks

Stephen Cummings is a Melbourne treasure. He’s notoriously difficult, paranoid and eccentric – and that’s just how he describes himself. He’s also the proud owner of one of the deepest and best catalogues of Australian contemporary pop/rock songs in existence (try arguing with the Sports albums and fifteen, yes, fifteen, solo albums). He’s an engaging live performer, an author of fine fiction, a willing collaborator and a snappy dresser. And to think he may have been lost to us if he hadn’t written the “I Feel Better Now” jingle for Medibank.

 

Stephen Cummings has recently released a wonderful memoir entitled Will It Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy, a delightfully bitter, self deprecating, egocentric, funny, joyous, melancholy and highly selective meander through his life and times. (and those of a few other who have crossed his path)

 

HeyHeyMyMy interrupted him from selecting a tie to wear at a gig at a football match long enough to have the following conversation about his book and issues arising.

 

HHMM : Let me congratulate you on the book – I bought it with my own money, I read it and I enjoyed it.

 

SC : I gave it my best shot. It amused me, I tried to keep it reasonably honest and amusing and things like that….

HHMM : What was the process of writing it? Was it written from beginning to end as one narrative or did you take the individual anecdotes and riff around them?

 

SC : I don’t really have the concentration to do anything too long. Originally I wrote a list of eighteen things that came to mind to write as chapters and then I did them one by one. I figured each one would be between three and five thousand words and that would add up and be enough for a book. I thought that would make it more interesting than a normal rock book. I’ve thought of thousands of things since that I could have written about and maybe I will but I doubt it.

So it was actually really easy – no, not ‘really easy’, shut up Stephen! But it was easier  than writing a novel that’s for sure. I knew what happened and I just tried to keep it light and breezy. I didn’t really have to make anything up, just exaggerate a bit with my tongue in my cheek.

 

HHMM : There has been comments about the book being ‘disarmingly honest’ and people are saying that like its some kind of achievement. But to me I couldn’t see the point of writing a memoir and it not being honest.

 

SC: They say that because people are not used to a writer painting a bad picture of themselves. I read a few before I started because I don’t really read a lot of ‘rock’ books and I found people are less than realistic about their lives. Renee Geyer and Chrissie Amphlett come to mind. Perhaps Barnesy made some stuff up to sound more interesting.

 

HHMM: How do you choose which anecdotes to include and which to leave out?

 

SC: It gave me a chance to write about other things. I wrote about Nick Cave. I wrote about other musical things that interested me like the sudden rise of 10000 girl singers. It was mainly just things that interested me at the time mixed with stories from my life thusfar.

HHMM: I like the way that worked sometimes. For example I enjoyed the juxtaposition of a chapter about Nick Cave and a chapter about Melissa Tzautz.

 

(NB : the chapter about the 90’s soapie starlet turned pop singer and Cummings strange interlude writing a song for her at the request of her erstwhile manager Richard Wilkins is hilarious and slightly disturbing).

 

SC: That was a very funny time. She’s had a very interesting life – well not an interesting life – but she’s been through the mill so to speak. She was so naïve but you just knew that tragedy was around the corner for this girl. That whole thing was pretty bizarre and hilarious and seeing Richard work at close range was fabulous. I actually found the master tape recently. I might give it to Joy FM. It’s quite a good song.

 

Cummings is playing some concerts soon where he takes a chapter from the book and turns it into a concert piece, mixing  readings from the book with pertinent songs.

HHMM: How do you then take a chapter from the book and then re-adapt it for a live show?

 

SC: It’s the chapter that has Billy Joel and myself and Michael Gudinski in it and in that seventy minutes I do ten little monologues from that and associated songs from my career. It’s a different thing to do.

 

HHMM: I read on your blog today that your current recording project would be your last. Surely that cant be true, given that on the last page of the book you state “I intend to put out as many albums as I can before I retire or die”

 

SC: Oh, I fixed that today. My partner said it was a really cheap trick saying that so I walked home and cut that bit out of the blog and replaced it with four or five more album names that I made up.

 

HHMM: What would make you seriously think about giving it away?

 

SC: This year has been a big year for me in a lot of ways. When the book came out my mother died really unexpectedly. She suddenly got sick and within six or seven days she was dead. I found that it put quite a dent in my life and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and it made me evaluate everything really. I’m sure that’s quite normal though.

 

HHMM : What is it about the group of artists like yourself and Joe Camilleri, Ross Wilson, James Reyne, Richard Clapton, Steve Kilbey etc that has allowed you all to maintain the desire to persist?

 

SC: It’s weird isn’t it? I guess it’s because we were lucky enough to be around at a time when people liked to hear songs that had just been written and go out to clubs and give things a go. We all got reasonable at it at that time and its let us continue. The whole thing has changed now. It seems like these days music is something that people do for a short while and then drop back to a real life.

But we are not that many when you consider how many did it really. But I don’t think you’ll get that thing again. Its that thing of people’s attention spans being shorter. Even though we’ve all been able to keep going its been pretty hard sometimes. We’ve all had our ups and downs.

 

HHMM: You appear to have embraced the new forms of promotion and distribution though.

 

SC: it can be good and it does work, but I cant help but think that someone’s going to have to pay somewhere along the line. I’ve largely stopped writing blogs now because it occurred to me that I was just giving out free entertainment.

 

HHMM: When you look at it, with the Sports and fifteen or so solo albums you probably have as substantial a body of recorded output as just about anyone in Australia. Do you look at this situation with pride or is it all about the next song?

 

SC: I would have said it was about the next song, but as I said there has been a change in me this year. I’ve done a lot of expressing. There’s about twenty albums and three books and they’ve all been OK. That’s a lot of stuff. Not that many acts get better and better but I think I’ve kept a pretty high standard. I didn’t play the Sports songs for about twenty years and its been really good to get them back in my life. Now I want to do some more songs of mine that I have never really done.

HHMM: Do you think you could have had the same career in any other city?

 

SC: I was stupid. I could have gone to America and pursued a more backroom career as a songwriter, But I just didn’t like America. I like American music and films and all that kind of thing but I just don’t like the country. Too much guns and god for me.

But in Australia, I think of myself as a Melbournian, not an Australian. I’m a “Melbourne act”. That means more to me than saying I’m an Australian. But one of my pet hates is people saying they “gotta get overseas” and doing it because they feel like they need to do that for ‘approval’. That’s really juvenile.

 

HHMM: Would it be fair to say that you still embrace the self description in the book – “a pop singer with hang-ups”

 

SC: Yeak, that’s perfectly me. That’s got me in one. A pop singer with hang-ups, That’s me.

Ross Wilson’s Turn To Celebrate

There must be something about 45th Anniversaries. Just a few weeks afer Joe Camilleri celebrated his 45 years in music with a great concert at the Palais Theatre another of Melbourne and Australia’s musical treasures Ross Wilson is doing the same thing.

Like Camilleri’s show this concert will feature a huge array of guests from “every facet of his career”. In Wilson’s case this may include his production career – he added this string to his bow in the 70’s with the production of the legendary Skyhooks album Living In The Seventies.

Wilson began his career in 1964 with the band The Pink Finks and in the late 60s he found fame as front man for Daddy Cool where he created such iconic songs such as Eagle Rock and Come Back Again.

Wilson later fronted Mondo Rock, perhaps an under-rated band who had hits including Come Said The Boy, Chemistry, State of The Heart, Summer of ‘81 and Cool World amongst others.

His song Touch Of Paradise was hit for John Farnham so that presents another possible facet of his career to be celebrated.

Tickets are on sale at 9am, July 6th through Ticketmaster.

Friday August 15 – Palais Theatre

Ross Wilson Workin’ On It

Ross Wilson is without doubt one of the most important figures in Australian contemporary music. Without doubt. Whether as an artist with Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock (amongst others) or as the producer of the iconic Living In The 70’s by Skyhooks or as a songwriter whose songs have been covered by many of the greats, he has a legacy that few can match. Not that it’s a competition.

But he aint finished yet. Without doubt.

Wilson and his band the Urban Legends will be playing in several states over the next few months. They’ll be doing everything from clubs to casinos, festivals to wineries, dates with Daryl Braithwaite and dates on their own. If you cant find a gig near you you should think about moving.

Ross himself will be on the television several times. He’s featuring in an up-coming episode of Spicks N Specks, he’s on the Rockwiz from the Bowl episode and he’ll be at Jimmy Barnes new cable show.

And a new album? You betcha. Late last year Wilson reported on his recording on his website. This is what he had to say:

“I arrived in Nashville 6 Sept & will leave on 6 Oct, mission accomplished, having pretty much wrapped up recording a new 12 song album. This project followed the usual rule that if you have a certain amount of time available then said project will fill the allocated time exactly. We cut the band trax on the 4th & 5th days of my month here and, except for 5 days off to dig the very excellent Americana Music Festival, have been at it every day since doing vocals & other overdubs. Dunno when its gonna be mixed. Producer Mark Moffatt will have to do that without me as I gotta get home and do some gigs. This the 1st time in years that I’ve cut an entire album in one go; usually breaking it up into 3 or 4 groups of songs recorded at separate sessions like I did with ‘Tributary’. But that’s when I’m producer & need space to reflect on what I’ve done. With another producer at the controls I can relax more & just let it happen. I guess as the man who’s paying the bills I am Executive Producer. The album doesn’t have a title yet, or even a label, & won’t come out until 2009, but I guarantee it’ll be the best album by a 60 yr old Australian that you’ll hear next year!

Without doubt!

26 February – The Fermented Grape, Blundall Qld
27 February -  Kedron-Wavell Services Club, Chermside South Qld
28 February -  Bribie Island RSL, Bribie Island Qld
1 March  – The Jindi Cheese Harvest of Gippsland Festival, Warragul, Vic
7 March  – Port Fairy Folk Festival, Port Fairy, Vic
8 March – Port Fairy Folk Festival, Port Fairy, Vic
13 March – Yarraville Club,Yarraville Vic
15 March – Mordialloc by the Bay Fine Food, Wine & Music Festival, Peter Scullin Reserve, Beach Road (on the foreshore), Mordialloc Victoria
20 March – Mounties, Mt Pritchard NSW 2170
21 March – A Day On The Green – Bowral, NSW
26 March – Wellers Restaurant, Kangaroo Ground, Vic
28 March – A Day On The Green – Coldstream, Vic
2 April – Cafe Coast, Wannanup WA
3 April – Elmars In The Valley, Henley Brook WA
4 April – The 2009 Skywest Redhill Concert, Geraldton WA
9 April – Chelsea Heights Hotel, Chelsea Heights Vic
11 April – Ferntree Gully Hotel, Ferntree Gully Vic
12 April – Hotel Shoppingtown, Doncaster Vic
30 April – Daveys Bar & Restaurant, Frankston Vic