Issue One - September 2011
Editorial - ARIA: The Voting Process
Features - Tom Morello / The Adults
Reviews - Raphael Saadiq, Luke Watt, Daxton & The Sweet Lips
EDITORIAL
ARIA Awards – The Voting Process
We live in a scurrilous society and I work in a scurrilous industry. It is, to quote, a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. I count myself as neither a thief, a pimp nor a good man but I am vigilant and I fly by the seat of my pants and keep a close eye on those around me, for one can never be too careful, one can never be too paranoid for there are foul workings afoot and only a fool or a whore would say otherwise.The machinations of the situation are thus: the scheme is to judge The Best. Those wily cats conniving together to create lists from which invited individuals pick and choose, give us the power and in 18 instances, One is chosen above the rest and they’re lauded and applauded, they’re put on a pedestal for a fleeting time and their art is broken down, numbed and sedated, reduced to a single phrase at a single time in a single place – their art is Dead, save for the ‘recognition’ from a scurrilous industry hell bent on its own demise. And yet, of course, it doesn’t see it like that, it sees it like this is a Good and Just thing, but we know better.
So I sit and I suck on my teeth in frustration, pent up and then some as I Judge and Degrade and Rank and Reduce hard work to little more than a number on a screen. Sometimes it’s easy because sometimes you feel you do know best, and so picking three from ten or 20 or 30 in some cases is like breathing, but in other cases I feel stifled and need air and, indeed, originality, for how can one choose The Best from a list that contains nothing more than puerile rubbish best suited to the sonic graveyard that is a 13-year-old girl’s iPod, never to be heard from again after a week and a half? It’s mind-numbing and it goes against the grain to which I measure myself on a daily basis – and yet I do it anyway.
It takes me a week. A week of listening and reading and sweating and cursing and justifying – to myself – that the decisions I’m making are for the Common Good and that they’re deserved and that I am deserved and this whole thing isn’t a farce, for how can one judge art? You cannot, there are no two ways about it. It is far too subjective. And yet I did it.
So I am a thief. I am a pimp. I am also, most likely, a fool and a whore. I am certainly not a good man. I am a scurrilous member of this cruel and shallow money trench, I roam the plastic hallway and I fuck whoever gets in my way. With the pointy end of a statuette designed to take the Art out of Music, right before our eyes in this very country of ours, democratic to the core. Oh the humanity. I didn’t keep a close enough eye, I was not paranoid enough, and so I deserve to die like the dog that I am.
FEATURES
FOLK, RAGE & ROCK 'N' ROLL
Just because, for the time being, there's no more Rage, TOM MORELLO is no less outraged in solo guise as The Nightwatchman. In Part One of this two-part interview, SAMUEL J. FELL finds there's more to the power of a song than just a Marshall stack.
I’d been talking to Pat Thetic for most of the afternoon, in the lobby bar at the Marriott on Lonsdale Street. We hadn’t been drinking – him because he doesn’t, me because I couldn’t justify to myself spending thirteen dollars on a Carlton Draught stubbie – but just talking about Anti-Flag, the group Thetic has been drumming in for over twenty years. We also talked a bit about the group’s show that evening, opening at Festival Hall for Rage Against The Machine, back in the country as a unit for the first time in almost a decade and a half.
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Pat Thetic |
There was a huge buzz around the whole thing, but Thetic seemed content to hunker down in the corner and not think too much about it, preferring instead to drink coffee and talk; a loner, as he described himself, and which he pegged me as too, asking if I was coming to the show – I wasn’t, who the fuck was able to get tickets to that gig? – and generously calling the band’s manager and getting me a door list spot. A good interview result, methinks.
Cut to five hours later, a good seven or eight pints of Kilkenny to the wind, and I’m leaning against the ‘Reserved Seating’ window outside the venue on Dudley Street in West Melbourne as the clerk thumbs through the remaining envelopes containing guest passes for the show, which by the sound of the crowd inside, is mere seconds away from starting. Once inside, yes, the band have just taken the stage to the utter rapturous delight of all in attendance, and being the consummate professional I am, I head straight for the bar which has, of course, no line. One large plastic cup of beer in, and things are looking good.
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RATM Live |
It’s mid-January, and Festival Hall is little more than a wooden shed, no windows, tiny doors, a death-trap should the place catch fire, and to be honest, it feels like it has – the heat is stifling. Indeed, the only words Zack de la Rocha offers throughout the entire hour and a half set, aside from lyrics, are, “It’s a bit fuckin’ cold in here”, a bit of sarcasm as an aside to the potent and poignant lyrical rhetoric. As such, my beer soon warms and downing the last of it I drop the cup and push forward from the back, sweat already streaking my torso under my shirt, push and shove down to the front where the real action is and I find myself mere metres from Tom Morello, who back in his natural habitat, as it were, is revelling in laying it down once more, his guitar the elixir for a savage breast which refuses to be soothed.
I immerse myself in his technique and quiet aggression, marvelling in what he throws up, a self-taught guitarist, and being a part of this group, one of the most relevant and powerful of our time. I stagger out afterwards, the sound of his distortion-drenched wah thick in my mind and I literally wring my shirt out as I head for the tram back into the city, RATM blasting from my headphones, to another bar where Claire and Pip are awaiting my report, cocaine and cocktails on the menu.
***
A week or so before this, I’d seen Morello in a different environment. Back in 2003, Morello, in an effort to get his own words out there and to provide a vehicle for his tirades against injustice (fuelled in the main by the Bush Administration), had branched off and begun solo work under the moniker, The Nightwatchman. Just him and an acoustic guitar, this was something new and indeed, a different direction for the guitarist of a band people know so well. So it was in this guise that I’d caught him a week before the Festival Hall show, at the Tote in Collingwood. I reviewed the set for Inpress Magazine in Melbourne, and my review read thusly:
At 5:30 on Tuesday evening, a light drizzle misting the air, we sit amongst the madness at Bimbo’s on Brunswick Street and try to convince ourselves that maybe the rest of Rage Against The Machine will turn up to Tom Morello’s Nightwatchman gig at the Tote and we’ll see an acoustic Rage set, which in my head, has already become the gig of the year. We realise we’re being stupid and so try to banish the thought with beer and cheap pizza, but the anticipation stays, sitting in the back of our minds, gleaming slightly, like the wet pavement under our feet as we later stroll down the way towards a scruffy pub concealed in the depths of a rundown suburb which will play host to an international mega-star.
The Darling Downs open proceedings, the gloom of the Tote bandroom their theatre as they cavort and moan to an acoustic backdrop – two older gentlemen they are, not the prettiest of bands to be sure, but with a wealth of experience between them; Kim Salmon’s (Scientists) acoustic guitar and occasional banjo weave patterns of Appalachian delight under Ron Peno’s (Died Pretty) raucous and loose vocal – he consistently yelps into the mic, all the while caressing it like you would a fine woman, and with the odd vocal harmony being tossed into the mix, it’s fair to say this duo have some new fans in the predominantly young audience tonight.
And so now we wait. The vibe builds, and tonight it’s ripe and ready for the eating, juice running down your chin as you grin and try and hold it all in your mouth at once. We’re nestled up against the stage over to the left, a massive speaker to my back, the mic to my left, sweat already building on my brow as the clock above the stage ticks closer to ten-thirty, and then there he is, Tom Morello at the side of the stage. A bouncer helps him up and the crowd comes alive, and what follows is a scene out of the ‘60s, but a scene morphed for the now, an hour and a bit of phrenetically political music, of anger and frustration neatly (or not so) melded into musical form. ‘Whatever it Takes’ is the texta inscription on Morello’s nylon string acoustic, and you know he means it. “I’m the Nightwatchman,” he says first up to a rapturous response, “and this is a One Man Revolution.”
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Tom Morello as The Nightwatchman |
At first, Morello seems almost in disdain of his audience. To be fair, it seems a large part of it are made up of Rage jocks, but as the gig goes on, Morello warms to us and before long is loose and excited, denouncing what he sees as wrong in the world (this includes Chris Cornell to an extent…) and laying the power of his music upon us like a gift from the goddamn rockin’ heavens. It’s all about the lyrics for sure, the guitar is definitely a backing instrument, as is his occasional use of harmonica, but it’s powerful, and the reason it’s so powerful is that he’s so passionate about what he’s singing. ‘One Man Revolution’ kicks off proceedings, followed by a few numbers which really, are just 12-bar blues with political diatribe over the top, which is great. There’s a modernised version of AC/DC’s ‘Dirty Deeds’ with lyrics changed to reflect on the nemesis of nemesis’, George W – a common theme tonight, and of course, there’s an acoustic version of ‘Guerrilla Radio’ which has the place jumping, Morello included, like he’s backed by a stack of Marshalls.
But he’s not, and therein lies the appeal. I’d come here tonight to see Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage, but I left having seen Tom Morello, modern folkie, angry musician, solo artist to the max, and that is how I’ll see him next time, wherever he plays.
I remember that night well, and it strikes me as interesting that seeing him with the band a week or so later, I did indeed see him as a modern folkie, an angry musician and solo artist ‘to the max’, as I put it back then. Therein, as I mentioned, lies the man’s appeal, and this is an appeal that has by no means wilted these three or four years later.
***
"The purpose of RATM is to create moshpits in football stadiums, whereas the purpose of The Nightwatchman, is to create moshpits in your mind."
“Well yeah, there was something from the very first Nightwatchman shows I played, back in 2003, that felt just as intense as anything I’d done with a rock band,” Morello muses when we get a chance to catch up, ostensibly to talk about the third Nightwatchman record, World Wide Rebel Songs. “I guess the thing they both have in common then, is they’re honest. In the lyrics that Zack writes, he believes everything he writes, and that’s certainly one thing I learnt from Rage: tell the truth as you see it and don’t hold anything back.”
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Tom Morello |
We’re talking about the strength of folk music, which is, at a base level, what The Nightwatchman is, and also the concurrent strength of rock music. I’d noted that despite the fact the Tote gig was just him and his acoustic guitar, it was no less intense and passionate than when I saw him a week later with the band. I ask then, if he feels – from folk or rock ‘n’ roll – that one is stronger than the other. “Well, they’re obviously very different,” he reasons. “The purpose of RATM is to create moshpits in football stadiums, whereas the purpose of The Nightwatchman, is to create moshpits in your mind.” This is all he says on the subject, and indeed, probably all he needs to say.
Harking back to something I mentioned earlier, that the Nightwatchman project is folk music, I ask Morello what the appeal is of folk music, because lets face it – on the surface, folk music (as a medium to convey a message) seems far less powerful than using a rock band to the same end. RATM, with their feverous political diatribes delivered via De La Rocha’s searing vocals, got that message across and hammered it home, their first three records going at least 2x Platinum. In comparison, The Nightwatchman records have sold far, far less. So is folk music as powerful as rock ‘n’ roll? Is it as meaningful to the youth of today? For Morello then, what’s the appeal of folk music?
“Well, I’ve always been a fan of heavy music,” he begins, the explanation no doubt brewing in his mind as he speaks. “But it was only about ten years ago that I started getting into stuff like early Johnny Cash and Woodie Guthrie and early Dylan, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska record. And I realised that those records were just as heavy as anything ever recorded. It doesn’t take a Marshall stack.
“Plenty of rock bands have big walls of Marshall amplifiers and are as light as a feather, but you listen to some of the songs on the Bob Dylan record, The Times They Are a-Changin’ (’64) or some of those old Johnny Cash songs, those songs are as heavy as anything Metallica ever came up with,” he goes on, really feeling what he’s talking about, and he’s makes a solid point. It isn’t about the size and the power, it’s about how you use it, and make no mistake about it, The Nightwatchman knows how to use it.
Part Two of this interview will appear in the next issue of Cruel & Unusual.
******
ALL GROWN UP
The brainchild of Shihad frontman, JON TOOGOOD, The Adults are a vehicle for all things different, writes SAMUEL J. FELL.
Both interview and music are addled and strange, full of things you can’t quite comprehend, whether it be because of a lousy connection or because of what was running through Jon Toogood’s mind at the time – again, both during the interview, and the making of this strange, unusual record, the first from a New Zealand collective calling themselves, The Adults. Toogood’s mind is a complicated beast and it moves in many different ways at one time; he slaps his head and things fall from within, his words scatter across international phone lines and his music bumps and grinds and slithers, digitally, and meshes and moans. What does it mean?
I don’t know and I’m still undecided as to whether or not I like this record, its hodge-podge fodder for full-blown derision and scorn, and yet it seems to go a lot deeper than that, it’s more visceral than that, it bristles with something, and I don’t know if I’ve yet identified what that something is… does Jon Toogood know? Do any of the myriad collaborators on this record know? Fuck it, who cares? This is music, the most primal of languages, of beings and states of mind, and so as it grew and morphed and postulated and cringed and whatever the hell else it did, it became music and ended up here, the baby of Shihad frontman, Jon Toogood – never, might I add, as you’ve seen nor heard him before.
“Oh, without a doubt,” he enthuses, for Jon Toogood never does anything unenthusiastically, whether it be writing his music, performing his music or talking about his music; this is a man you can certainly not accuse of being blasé. “I mean, the whole thing is an experiment of throwing people together into different situations and music that they wouldn’t usually do.”
The Adults, through the vehicle that is the collective’s eponymous debut, have created something that is, to put it lightly, not of the norm. Amongst the kiwi luminaries Toogood has rounded up are the legendary Shayne Carter (Straightjacket Fits, Dimmer), all ‘round musical extraordinaire Tiki Taane (Salmonella Dub, Shapeshifter), hip hop soulster Ladi6 and Julia Deans (Fur Patrol) and yet you won’t find any deep dub on here, you won’t find any art rock, you won’t find any reggae or hip hop or metal or rock ‘n’ roll. Although, and herein lies the hidden kicker, perhaps you’ll find them all, rolled into one ball of sonic sludge which has then been lovingly and abstractly re-moulded into something different. Something electronic. Something fuckin’ tectonic in its unstable condition which may or may not cause catastrophic results upstairs.
And, as do most things that raise eyebrows and cause heated discussion, it began as something quite different to how it ended up. “Originally the idea was that I just had a surplus of music that I’d been writing by myself and I thought some of it would be good,” Toogood explains, “and I [originally] just wanted to get some of my friends to jam on it and see where it would go. But I quickly discovered that writing something from scratch with these people – because they’re all smart as – was actually way more interesting. So I don’t think I used one single thing that I’d written.
"The whole thing is an experiment of throwing people together into different situations and music that they wouldn’t usually do."
“So as soon as I got a taste of this collaboration thing, it was like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t sound like you either, it sounds like something new’,” he goes on. “I could hear some magic going on and I don’t quite know how it’s happening, so I just wanted to keep going. It sorta reminded me of how I first started writing with Shihad; how the hell did that happen? But it was good. You know? So I just wanted to keep the ball rolling like that… so as soon as I got a taste for it, it was a collaboration the whole way. I emailed and texted everyone and said, ‘You know how I want you to jam on my songs? Fuckin’ forget about it, we’re gonna write from scratch’.”
The Adults is a project which had been simmering away in Toogood’s mind for some time, albeit in a different fashion to how it’s come out. I venture that once the worm turned, once he realised it was taking on a life of its own and veering off the path he’d mapped out in his head, it would have been an intoxicating experience, the opportunity to present not only something new, but something hitherto unthought of, a fresh start from a man we know so well. “It was, it was really exciting,” Toogood confirms.
“And I thought at the time, ‘This is gonna be a big change for me’, and it was man,” he goes on. “I mean, I’m a fan of Dimmer, so to have Shayne Carter there, how the hell did he get here? So for me, it was like finding music – ‘Oh, so that’s how you do that’. It was like a music fan’s insight into how these people do what they do… it was really cathartic.”
Shihad’s last record was Ignite, released in September last year, and it’s fair to say it was a return to form for one of New Zealand’s longest serving heavy bands, a return to the raw power they exhibited back in the pre-Pacifier days. It was also the group’s eighth studio record in a career spanning over two decades, so it seems a record like The Adults was always destined to happen for Toogood, a step away from the relative safety of a well-known four-piece into the realm of not only solo work, but work of a different nature entirely.
“To me, it sounds like music I’d listen to as a 40-year-old guy, it really is,” he muses. “It sounds like me, it really does. And there’s a reason why I wrote the list of people to be on the record because… they were people I felt at least comfortable enough to be able to write music around. And it was scary, but I thought if I’m around people that I like and that felt comfortable around me, they’d open up themselves and give this the best chance possible.
“So basically, this comes from me writing music that was totally inappropriate for Shihad,” he then says, veering off the track once more, something he does with aplomb and reckless abandon. “I listen to a lot of electronic music, and of course I’m surrounded by guitar music all the time… [I listen to] lots of music that’s not what we [Shihad] do, so this is music that sounds fresh to me.”It’s certainly fair to say that this is music that’s fresh, it’s not something you’ll hear as you wander aimlessly around the supermarket and it’s not something you’ll hear on Triple J or any other radio station for that matter, and perhaps that is what the aforementioned something is – whether or not you can properly immerse yourself in what it is that Toogood and co. have done here, it’s the fact that it is so different – for the players themselves, as well as listeners – and that it’s such an enthusiastically-embraced departure from anything they’ve done before that makes I bristle and shimmer. The Adults are addled and strange, but they’re different and real, and that’s the hidden kicker.
The Adults is out now through Warner Music New Zealand / Footstomp Records.
REVIEWS
Raphael Saadiq
Stone Rollin’
Sony
Hot damn! Check this out cats and kittens, set yr bangs and grab yr bubblegum, prepare yourselves to worship and fawn, what a dreamboat, Raphael Saadiq we love you, yr tunes are new and alive, this hasn’t been done before, where have we been? Where have you been? Screams and screeching from the girls, cool adulation from the boys, what is this black music that we’ve heard so much about but have been warned off of by our parents, respectable white middle-class people that they are? More screaming and rending of garments, damn!
The desperation in the vocal delivery, it paints vivid pictures of the sex barely concealed beneath the smooth rhythm and blues grooves, oh the primal spirit being unleashed before our very eyes, it liberates and frees you, it’s like nothing that you’ve ever experienced before – makes yr breath come in short gasps, doesn’t it? Make yr very loins tingle, those teenage loins before barely used and yet pondered upon almost religiously, the possibility and the intrigue, the danger and the naughty taboo of it all, all fired just from these songs, these songs about how he loves (he’s talking about you, you know that right?), how he can’t live without you, how he needs and wants you – and it is about you, yr loins are telling you so.
Oh man, the feeling rising within, you can barely contain yourself, you don’t know how to react to the bluesy bounce, to the soul and the velvet smoothness of the whole thing – this is NEW. When yr parents were out dancing at your age, they didn’t have THIS. This has NEVER been done before and so be prepared for the radio to be awash with these sounds, with Saadiq’s mystique, with this INNOVATION and these SONGS… oh man, yr swooning, I can see it happening, how have you ever lived WITHOUT this music?
Samuel J. Fell
Stone Rollin' is available now through Sony Music.
Luke Watt
Hill End Ruin
Independent
It’s blatantly obvious from the very first note of Hill End Ruin that Luke Watt is a disciple of the great Jeff Lang. The shuffle beat courtesy of Danny McKenna (who does, of course, play with Lang regularly), the simply picked National guitar, Watt’s low and distinctive voice, all combine to paint a picture which veritably reeks of Lang’s style and sound – indeed, if not for Watt’s name on the record, one would immediately think this was a Lang offering.
Now, this isn’t a bad thing by any means. But what strikes me, before even listening to the whole record, is that in order for Watt to progress, as he surely will, then he has to find his own unique style – I mean, this is musicianship 101. This thought is backed up as you progress through the record – the vocals on ‘String Theory’ are more than a little reminiscent of any number of ‘roots’ players (Butler, Rudd et al) and the Lang comparisons are rife. Again, none of this is bad, but then you get tracks like ‘Let It All Come To Get Me’ and ‘Davey Delaney’, which seem to be undeniably Luke Watt, and you wonder why he doesn’t carry that style of his own, throughout the entire recording.
Where Watt does shine in his own right though, is in his guitar playing. He’s obviously got the chops, the little trills throughout are evidence enough, but it’s what he doesn’t play that sets him up as better than your average Joe. He keeps it subtle and real, there’s no undue flash or wankery, it’s guitar for the music’s sake, not the ego’s. It’s got the (again) Lang-esque feel to it, and also the subtle class and style of someone like Chris Whitley, whose ‘Ballpeen Hammer’ Watt covers admirably. Overall, Hill End Ruin is a credible record from a young player who has the potential to really take it further – lets hope he does.
Samuel J. Fell
Hill End Ruin is available now independently.
Daxton & the Sweet Lips
Thin Tall Lily
Foghorn
Too much production and studio trickery are the death knell of a record, even if the playing on said record is fine. That is all.
Samuel J. Fell
Thin Tall Lily is available now through Foghorn.
