Record Review - Saskwatch

Published in the Metro section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Sep 7.

Saskwatch

Leave It All Behind

Northside Records / Shock

Channeling the likes of The Menahan Street Band, the Dap-Kings and the mighty Budos Band, Melbourne nine-piece Saskwatch, with debut LP Leave It All Behind, have tapped into a bubbling subterranean seam of hot, steaming new-school funk and soul, laying it bare – raw and real – for all to see.  Their relative young age is a moot point here; this is music that’s poised, considered, fresh, fat and funky… solid, man.

The record weaves through fast-driving, hard-hitting funk instrumentals (opener ‘Delinquent’ and the N’Awlins-esque ‘Kids’, a world away from how Robbie Williams and Kylie  Minogue sang it), melding seamlessly with soul-drenched numbers, all of which combine to make a sugar-sweet debut the likes of which will have you dancing in the aisles.  Melbourne is Funk City at the moment, and Saskwatch are one reason why.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.saskwatch.com.au/Saskwatch/Welcome.html

Record Review - Hat Fitz & Cara

Published in the September issue of Australian Guitar.

Hat Fitz & Cara

Wiley Ways

Independent

Held together with spit, baling twine and a general scruffy bonhomie, Wiley Ways is, with its boisterous blues grooves, its meandering folk lines, its subtle Celtic influence, a record for the ages which crosses continents with consummate ease, as at home in the outback of Australia as it would be in the Emerald Isle or the deep south of the US.

Produced by guitar guru Jeff Lang, there’s a certain, earthy feel running through the recording, easily identifiable in Hat Fitz’s blues picking, his trusty old guitar the foundation for the record, and a platform for Cara Robinson’s soaring, heart-aching, gut-wrenching vocals.  With Wiley Ways, Fitz and Robinson have crafted as genuine a blues record as you can hope to find in this day and age - simple, powerful, full of the inherent realism we've come to expect from these two, a stellar effort.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.hatfitz.net

Comment - ARIA Voting

Around this time last year, I was invited to join the ARIA Voting Academy, and due to my specialising in roots-based music and metal, a handful of the Specialty Judging Schools as well (Blues & Roots, Country, Hard Rock / Metal, and one other I can't recall).

Over 1000 members of the music industry make up the Voting Academy, according to the ARIA Awards webiste (there's supposed to be more information, but the specific pages weren't available at time of writing), and it's their votes which determine the eventual winners over the 29 or so categories (four of which are classified as Artisan Awards, six as Fine Arts Awards).  Further, there are three public-voted categories: Most Popular Australian Artist, Most Popular International Artist and (for the first time in 2011), Most Popular Live Artist.

When I was invited (I have no idea what qualified me, or why last year was 'my time' to be invited), I was quite chuffed - it's a nice bit of recognition, to be sure.  After my initial ego-boost had calmed itself however, and particularly as I was going through the actual process of voting, it struck me that the whole thing was somewhat of a farce.  Reducing the hard work of bands and artists to little more than a sound bite for the purpose of ranking them seemed more and more obscene the further into it I got.

What I guess I was objecting to, was the judging of art.  Yes, it happens every day, but I just felt dirty doing it.  I critique musicians for a living, but when I do it, I'm able to justify why I feel this way, I'm able to expand upon what I see as lacking and I'm able to suggest alternate routes the band or artist in question could have taken, based of course, on my own tastes and experiences - this is what a critic does.  Here however, I had a short bio, a single track to listen to (along with a wealth of physical copy sent to me by record companies who knew that I, as a member of the Academy, would be voting, potentially for one of their charges), and a box to number, or tick, or whatever it was.  It just seemed like I was selling the artist (whether I liked them or not) short, not to mention my own professional credibility.

However, I did it.  Last month, I got the email asking me to register again to vote this year, and I did that too.  When voting opens on September 3rd, I'll got through everything, I'll try and make fair decisions, and I'll vote again.  Why?  Even though I think award ceremonies are pointless drivel, even though I think this particular process lacks any realism or merit or credibility, it still does, on a base level, recognise artists for their art, even if said recognition is buried deep within the gauche and the commercialism and the back-slapping kudos of the Australian music industry, congratulating itself once again on another year well done.

The legendary Jeff Lang

The main reason I'll vote again though, and the reason I'll continue to do so if asked, is because voting for the ARIAs isn't too far removed from voting in a federal election - my single vote may make a crucial difference.  It may be the single vote that gives Jeff Lang a much deserved Best Blues & Roots award, it may be the single vote that secures a win for Jordie Lane or Lanie Lane or Sal Kimber or any number of other deserving acts in any number of the available categories.  For it's those smaller, independent acts that need to be recognised too, even if it is on the 'grand' stage that is the annual ARIA Awards.

For when those small mercies abound, such as when someone like Mia Dyson wins, or Collard, Greens & Gravy, or The Audreys (I am, of course, biasing towards roots music here), it makes the whole process, for me, seem worthwhile and gives me a glow like I'm actually contributing, by recognising that they are contributing, on a plane away from my journalistic pursuits.

Anyway, as I prepare myself to vote once again, I'm reminded of a piece I wrote around this time last year, when initially invited to join the Academy.  I've posted it below, in full, more as a reminder to myself that I am indeed a scum-sucking member of this industry than anything else, but also to remind me that it doesn't have to be like that.  Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining.  Or something to that effect, anyway.

                                                                    ***

Originally published as the editorial in Issue One of Cruel & Unusual magazine, September 2011.

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 of 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.

Samuel J. Fell

For more information on the 2012 ARIA Awards, see the website here.

Record Review - Chris Robinson Brotherhood

Published in the September issue of Rhythms.

Chris Robinson Brotherhood

The Magic Door

Warner

From the same sessions that yielded CRB’s debut LP, Big Moon Ritual (reviewed in last month’s issue by Marty Jones), comes the companion piece, The Magic Door, a big pot of psych sludge that bubbles with a slow, menacing intensity, belching up steaming clouds of ‘70s country/rock, continuing along the same ‘big, booming soundscape’ tangent its predecessor mastered with consummate ease.

A bit shorter and sharper than Big Moon Ritual however (aside from the 14 minute ‘Vibration And Light Suite’), The Magic Door eases back into the late ‘60s a tad more – you’ve got slightly slower Creedence-esque numbers (opener, ‘Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go’ for example); moog-drenched tunes in which Robinson channels the Lizard King himself (you can feel the sweat flying from his brow, he’s probably naked as he sings), soaring guitars which cut and burn as they lumber along like a herd of wooly mammoths running in slow motion.

Elsewhere, the aforementioned ‘Vibration And Light Suite’ almost touches upon disco with it’s understated funky guitar riffage, whereas ‘Appaloosa’ pulls it back and the band settle in to the country-ish mode they obviously feel more than comfortable in.  And then there’s the band’s version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.  Ingredients: a band with instruments, a packet of Rizzlas, a bag of the mellowest bud you can lay your hands on.  Method: roll bud in Rizzlas and smoke, play an Elvis cover.  Feeds: everyone.  Awesome.

Jimmy Reed’s ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ finishes proceedings, a luxurious mix of stoner blues and Doors’ ‘Riders On The Storm’ piano lethargy, a sugar-sweet end to a record which sees a band eschewing the New and the Now and getting high on sounds which epitomised the analogue, the warm, the real and the earthiness of a time and place we here at Rhythms wish was still prevalent today.  Epic is one word to describe this release, but it’s a word that doesn’t carry nearly enough strength.

Samuel J. Fell

http://chrisrobinsonbrotherhood.com/crb_120309.html

Feature - Tim Rogers

Published in the September issue of Rhythms.  Excerpt below.

Interpreting the music of American songwriter Shel Rogerstein, is where we find the perennial doer of things, Tim Rogers.

The question one should ask whenever rock ‘n’ roll raconteur Tim Rogers arises in conversation, is, ‘What, exactly, is this man up to now?’  And a valid question that would be, for if there’s anyone on our scene as chameleonic as Mr. Rogers, I’ve yet to come across them, and if I took the time to search, by the time I found anyone, our Tim would have gone off and done three other things.  Such is his penchant for creating, messing around, causing trouble and generally oozing his way further and further into our collective musical psyche.

Over the course of his long and colourful career, Rogers has fronted seminal Australian group You Am I, led The Temperance Union all over the place, jumped in bed (literally, actually, I was there to see it) with Tex Perkins, headed out alone, written songs for movie scores, collaborated with all and sundry, and most recently, dabbled in film and theatre.  There’s little Rogers has not done, and you can bet by the time you finish reading this, he’ll at least have thought about doing some of those things.  Probably all of them.

Where we find the man now, is immersed in a project inspired by a friendship which has endured for years.  We also find him immersed in creating off his own bat, for his own means, for the first time in a while.  The friendship is between him and American songwriter, Shel Rogerstein.  The project is a little gem of a record called Rogers Sings Rogerstein.  And the self-creation comes because this is the first record Rogers has released since The Luxury Of Hysteria in 2007 (solo), and You Am I in 2010, with, naturally, You Am I.

This being Tim Rogers of course, you can bet there’s a back story, and a long, rambly one at that.  “Shel and I have actually known each other for longer than I can remember,” Rogers relates on his friendship with a man he admires ardently, but who few others have actually heard of.  “He’s kinda like the smarter, more considered version of me.  We’ve got a lot of similar things going on… but he’s more interested in crafting songs.  I’ve got a little bit of interest in that, but I’ve got no attention.

“So I’ve dropped in on him in Cleveland in the past year, and we hang out and watch baseball and go tango dancing and things, and then we correspond, we write letters… it’s an intriguing relationship.  And it’s very cute, with the names, and I’m aware that people think I’m bullshitting, but half the time my response is, ‘You want truth from a guy who sings in a rock band?’, come on.  But it’s a really important relationship to me.

“Hanging out with the Lil’ Band O’ Gold guys last month, and Cold Chisel last year, there’s something about being in the company of men your age or a little older, they still have a real spirit, they want to work, they’re not just doing it to pay off the mortgage, they’re just buzzing.  And Shel’s a bit like that – I mean, he lives an extremely quiet life, but you know, when the drums start, something happens, like some sort of… werewolf.”

There’s very little information floating around the electronic ether on Shel Rogerstein.  If you’re to believe Rogers, the pair met on a train in France, bonding over mutual loves of cheese and baseball, amongst other things, but as Rogers himself has said, why would you believe someone who fronts a rock ‘n’ roll band?  Regardless, the 'pair' have co-written a slew of tunes, and these, along with an obvious respect for one another as artists thinking outside the box, are what fill Rogers Sings Rogerstein.

...

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.timrogers.com.au