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.

Stephen Cummings Book Comes To Life Musically

Stephen Cummings recently released a wonderful, strange, disarmingly honest, probably actionable and extremely readable book called Will It Still Be Funny Tomorrow Billy. It’s a travelogue through Cummings career and music but more so a random journey through the states of mind that accompanied that career.

And they are an intriguing collection of states of mind – if you can, in fact, collect states of mind!

Cummings is not content to spew his thoughts forth on the page – now he has taken a chapter from the book and turned it into a musical. The narrative involves a trip across America when for a few weeks The Sports were hot shit. The cast includes, Billy Joel, Michael Gudinski and men wrestling at Niagara Falls.

A must see event one might suggest.

Thursday 20th – Saturday 22nd August

The Butterfly Club, South Melbourne VIC

Thursday 27th August

The Republic Bar,  Hobart TAS

Saturday 29th August

Kingston City Banquet Hall, Moorabbin VIC

Sunday 30th August

The Toff In Town, Melbourne VIC

Thursday 3rd September

Notes Live, Enmore

Friday 4th September

Lizottes Newcastle

Sat 5th September

Clarendon Guesthouse, Katoomba

Joe Camilleri

Joe Camilleri has had a remarkable career and he’s reached a point that he is willing to look back on it – for one night only. On Saturday May 9 Camilleri will be performing at the venerable Palais Theatre at what has been billed as a celebration of his 45th Anniversary in music. I’m not sure exactly how that is calculated but it seems likes a good excuse for a great show.

Now the fact is there is ample opportunity to see Joe Camilleri in action – he performs around 150 shows per year – but few shows offer the circumstances featured at the Palais. Firstly it’s the venue itself  – I’ve rarely found a live act that hasn’t benefited from the atmosphere provided by the grand old concert hall.

Secondly there’s no doubt that the format of the show, with Camilleri being joined by various representatives of all of his musical incarnations with be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Camilleri has been involved in a remarkable series of bands commencing with the Pelaco Brothers (which included the likes of Steve Cummings, Johnny Topper and Peter Lilley) through to The Falcons, the Black Sorrows, the Revelators and Bakelite Radio.

Each of these bands will be represented on a set list which Camilleri admits is proving very difficult to finalise.

“I’m half doing it for the people who have played with me and I think that’s a nice thing”, says Camilleri, explaining the motivation for the show. “I’ve been a leader of a band but I’ve had to learn on the job. You’ve got guys playing in the trenches with you and you need these guys. While we are all alive I thought it would be god to do something that shows the journey that we’ve been able to make. Part of it is pride to show that I’m more than one-dimensional and I’ve done different things”

There’s no doubting Camilleri’s credentials when it comes to versatility. He’s played the length and breadth of the country and in just about every format imaginable. He’s had hit records – at one time he had three albums in the Top 100 and one of those Harley And Rose was selling 67000 copies in a week. He’s also had stages where he was pressing his own vinyl and selling it out the back of his car.

“Half the time I feel like I’m in the game and I could have a hit record but most of the time I feel like I’m not in that game”, he considers. “ But I feel like I’ve got enough credits to play. What I’ve ended up with is people who come to see me not just to hear Harley And Rose or to hear Chained To The Wheel, but they just come to see what is going to happen.

“Every time I do a gig, I’ve come to play – that goes without saying. But it’s about something else too. It’s not about trying to prove anything, its about the feeling that music gives you, whether its my song or someone else’s song. It’s about playing with people that you like to stand next to on stage and looking out for them.”

Camilleri claims that “I’m fighting for my life every time I play”, but there is no disguising the fact that the passion to create still burns within him. He’s one of those musicians who recognises that music is his job, and he does his best to go about it in a business-like way but at the same time cant deny that as jobs go he’s got one of the better ones.

In a way he is in a great position. He’s had enough success that he is a household name and hence able to continue to work knowing that there will be an audience. But he’s never had a such big hits that they have become millstones around his neck.

This is born out by the fact that one of the central parts of the 45th Anniversary show will be the music of the Falcons. They had some great songs and a few smaller hits but they are remembered with a greater affection than thir commercial standing would suggest. The Falcons will re-unite in their entirety for the Palais concert.

“The Falcons were a much bigger band Than I ever thought they were – in the hearts and minds of a lot of people even though we only had minimal success. It really was about the music in the Falcons – there wasn’t any beauties in the band! People came to see the band and other bands loved that band.

“They gave me that first taste of hearing good musicians play the songs and be able to ad-lib. We were a band of a time and we were an R&B band when that was out of step. It was a treat to see people like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker also being out of step.

“For the few years we were together as a band, it was a real band . I say that the Falcons was the only real band I’ve been in. There was no-one going big and if  one didn’t play, nobody played.”

Talking to Joe Camilleri you sense that he still has unfinished business to take care of. As Sony Music head Denis handlin once said to him “there is no finish line for you Joe” He’s continually working on new songs with his long time collaborator Nick Smith and he releases a surprisingly large number of albums through his Head label, including a number of jazz artists.

He contemplates the notion that there is an increasing acceptance of performers of his era as still being relevant and capable of releasing their best music. Artists like his contemporaries Stephen Cummings and Ross Wilson are still at the height of their powers both as live performers and recording artists.

And typically Camilleri has worked out that there is a DIY ethic that is best suited for sustaining a career.

“You’ve got to become your own shop front”, he explains. “You sell two or three thousand copies through the stores and that’s considered a lot of records these days. But I can sell that amount myself at shows in a few months.

“These days you spend more time signing CD’s and doing photos. People will gladly give you money to buy the CD, to get the photo. Then you’re hoping that they will go home and play the friggin’ CD. Sometimes you will then get an email saying that they did play it and  it was worth the 25 bucks. That’s all you can hope for”

Between The Bays Festival Returns

In its fourth year the Between The Bays Festival is on again providing a late summer highlight for Victorian gig goers.

The date this year is Saturday 21st March and the line-up is impressive:

DIESEL & BAND

JOE CAMILLERI & THE BLACK SORROWS

DEBORAH CONWAY & WILLY ZYGIER

NICK BARKER

STEPHEN CUMMINGS

REBECCA BARNARD

LISA MILLER

GOOD FIGHT

Between the Bays happens at Penbank, located at the end of Rickards Road in Moorooduc, Mornington Peninsula (Mel Ref 146 G8) approximately 1 hour south of Melbourne on a  37 acre property five minutes from Mornington, which has many different accommodation options.

Between the Bays is also a food festival and attendees will be treated to a variable feast of local gourmet food stalls offering a wide range of tastes and smells. Food stalls include the Flying Calamari Brothers, The Moroccan Spice Kitchen, Wood Fired Pizzas, Specialty Cheese Platters, Chorizo Sausage, Salad Cones, Mango Licks and even a Lolly Shop for the kids! Not to mention the amazing assortment of homemade cakes, slices and jams available to enjoy with your freshly brewed latte or cappuccino!

Between the Bays has a great patronage of local wineries that attend the festival. including Barmah Park, Tuck’s Ridge and T’Gallant to sip try and buy whilst lying back on the lawn enjoying the festival sights and sounds. If wine is not your thing, then you may be interested in sampling a few different local beers handcrafted by the famous Red Hill Brewery. Beers include Golden Ale, Wheat Beer and Scotch Ale.