Vale Lemmy

Inimitable frontman for Motorhead and former bass player for Hawkwind, Lemmy has died at age 70 after a short battle with illness.

Lemmy's rock and roll lifestyle has never been up for debate. Indeed, he never hid his vices either. The faster and louder aesthetic was, in a sense, a musical reflection of how he lived. However, he always seemed unflappable. He always seemed as though he was rock solid. Despite the fact he often sang about living in the moment and not giving a shit about tomorrow, it felt like he'd be around forever.

From a musical standpoint, his bass playing was more akin to a rhythm guitar player. Heavily strummed with a pick and played at massive volume, it had its own unique sound. You knew instinctively, as soon as it starts, that it's Motorohead.

The last album Motorhead released, "Bad Magic" was issued in 2015 when Lemmy was 69. It's one of the loudest and heaviest things the band have ever done. There was no signs of slowing down, or even changing the well-worn formula. Age did not weary him.

Vale Lemmy. Thanks for the music.

Vale Stevie Wright

Stevie Wright, aka Little Stevie, vocalist for the Easybeats, has died at the age of 68 on 27th December 2015, due to complications of Pneumonia.

Stevie was born in Leeds, England in 1947 and migrated to Australia at age 9. He joined as the Vocalist of the Easybeats with fellow migrants at the Villawood Migrant Hostel in Sydney when he was 17 (in 1964).

It's remarkable that by the time he was 22, the Easybeats had ceased to exist and he was, for all intents and purposes, a washed-up rock star. He did some theatre work in the form of Jesus Christ Superstar with John English and then had his biggest solo success with the albums "Hard Road" and "Black Eyed Bruiser" in 1974-5 before being dropped by Vanda and Young at Albert Productions for being heavily addicted to narcotics.

Sadly, Stevie's addiction held him down for the better part of two decades. It is well documented elsewhere the depths the addiction took him, the battles with electro-shock therapy moreso, so I don't need to go into them here. The only surprise to most is that he made it this long.

His contribution to Australian music cannot be understated. His charisma was fiery stage presence was of that, of not greater than that of John Lennon, if Molly Meldrum is correct (and I don't doubt it).



Those early Easybeats singles are still visceral and exciting 50 years later. Later tracks like "Evie" and "Guitar Band" crackle with soul. It was a real shame he couldn't go the distance. At one point he was viewed as the likely successor to Bon Scott in AC/DC, but with the addiction...

Vale Stevie. Thanks for the music.

Vale Scott Weiland

Vocalist for the Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver Scott Weiland has passed away at age 48 from an alleged overdose.

Stone Temple Pilots were unfairly derided as third-rate grunge wannabes in the early part of their career, however they hit their straps with their third LP and kept up the pace for the next few until Scott was sacked for his unreliability. He formed Velvet Revolver with some ex members of Guns and Roses for two albums and then maintained a sporadic solo career, occasionally moonlighting in the vocalist seat with the reunited Doors on occasion.

While anyone who dies young is tragic, Scott's problems with substances were well documented and, like many others, I wondered why this hadn't happened earlier. That's not to be negative or morbid, however he spent a great many years dicing with his death via his addictions. While the news is still sad, there was always the feeling that it was a matter of when, rather than if...

Scott had a sonorous voice that didn't necessarily have a wide range, but he elevated those songs into the stratosphere. He sang exactly what was required of the music and never anything more, with equal parts sweetness and grit.

I'm grateful for those handful of albums he made with STP and it is a tragedy that he no longer with us. Vale Scott, you will be missed.

Recovery Revival This Weekend

RAGE on the ABC are having a celebration of all things 90s Indie rock this weekend with repeats of their now-classic Saturday Morning show Recovery.

The show ran from 1996 until sometime in 2000. Why would anyone in 2015 really care about this show?

At the height of the Indie rock boom in the mid-90s came this program on Saturday morning, live to air, commercial free, with live performances, interviews and stories of interest to the Triple J crowd of the time. It gave voice to a series of young people who had very little television experience and a public stage for many bands for whom we might not have been able to see live anywhere else.

Recovery was truly a unique animal. Sure there were crazy variety shows on TV at the time, like Hey Hey It's Saturday, but they were mainstream and had different intentions for their audience. Recovery was completely off the chain, a 3-hour blast of anarchic mayhem where anything that was possible would probably happen, however unlikely. Led by eyebrow-ringed, skate-show wearing host Dylan Lewis, this program was somehow held together with his patience and off-beat personality.



Lewis was also a lightning rod for some of the show's more memorable on-air mishaps. For example, Frenzal Rhomb were interviewed by him while they decided to take an electric razor to his head. Green Day came on for an interview completed off their faces and proceeded to spend most of their interview swearing live to air before kicking the house band off their instruments and launching into two verses of their most recent swear-along anthem "The Grouch".



Along with some memorable performances, it was a program of the sort that just doesn't occur on TV anymore. There's too much at stake for such risk taking these days.

Towards the end of its run the show's format changed, to a shorter show with fewer (and then, in the last few shows, none) live performances as the then Liberal government (with its anti-ABC bias) squeezed the broadcaster's budget.

Above all the show was just damn good fun. For those who think nothing good musically happened after the 80s, take a look at this special on Saturday night...

Vale Cynthis Robinson, Sly and the Family Stone

It would be remiss of any music blog NOT to mark the passing of Cynthia Robinson, co-vocalist and trumpet player in Sly and the Family Stone.



Sly and the Family Stone were one of the first (and only) truly integrated and egalitarian bands to ever exist. They integrated male and female members, people of different races, and made some of the most vibrant and joyous music ever, at the height of the Woodstock era when there the Vietnam War was sapping everybody's faith in humanity.



Cynthia was at the forefront of this, sharing lead vocals with Sly Stone on many of their tracks, such as "I Want To Take You Higher", "Dance to the Music" and "Sing a Simple Song". She was the one exhorting us all do dance or, if you didn't feel like then "All the squares go home!"

She was also a formidable instrumentalist. Her trumpet solo on "I Want to Take You Higher" is a thing of beauty.



After 1970 Sly Stone became heavily addicted to various substances and the music became quite dark at times, however Cynthia's contributions never diminished. After the band imploded in 1975 she went on to play for former Family Stone member Larry Graham's Graham Central Station and with George Clinton.

Her contribution is underrated and deserves more attention. Vale Cynthia, you will be missed.

How did I miss it?

More and more frequently these days, I'm discovering great music from bands who have just recently broken up, having been toiling away for years under the radar for diminishing returns.

It frustrates me because I've missed them when they were active, the first time around. Especially if they were a local band whom I could have seen playing at a venue close to here. 

But why am I missing out? You see it's one thing to be a Gen X or Gen Y kid who has just discovered Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" LP. It's totally another to discover a band last week whose nine year career came to an end 12 months ago. 

My hunch is that this is going to be an ongoing phenomenon for me as the years roll on. My theory as to why is this: 

As you read this right now, whether it is within a day of two of publication or 2 years down the track, at this very moment there is more music available to each of us in the world right now than there is available opportunities to listen to it. At the time of writing, Spotify and iTunes have libraries of 30 million-plus songs, and while they overlap they're not identical. They don't have copies of everything ever recorded (yet). 

There is no way anybody is ever going to be able to listen to all that music.  If you did ever listen to it just once, (factoring in the shortest of Guided by Voices tunes and the longest electric Miles Davis live jams to come up with an average song length of 4.5 minutes) it would take you 256.673 years before you started over at the beginning. 

Couple that with marketing - nobody can possibly be aware of every new release unless one is totally immersing themselves in release schedules and press releases. And even then...

With those statistics, it's almost inevitable I'll miss something along the way. It doesn't mean I'll stop searching for great new music. But it does explain why I will probably continue to have these "why didn't I discover this earlier" moments when it comes to finding new music. 

I just hope the creators of the music don't mind me turning up late to the party...

Newcastle Music #5: v Spy v Spy - "One of a Kind"

Everyone knows and loves the Spies, but not everyone knows they basically formed when bassist Craig Bloxom and guitarist Mike Weiley met as students at Nelson Bay High School in the 1970s. They moved to Sydney, met drummer Cliff Grigg and the rest is history, really. They met and lived in the inner city abandoned buildings of pre-gentrified Sydney in the early 1980s when the band started out. They made a few reggae-fried EPs before signing with Midnight Oil's management and label Powderworks for the "Meet Us Inside" EP, from which this track is taken. After releasing their first LP "Harry's Reasons?" they moved onto WEA records and released 3 albums which are arguably their most famous works: "A.O. Mod. TV Vers", "Xenophobia (Why?)" and "Trash The Planet".

Craig Bloxom is now a commercial chef, but still reforms the band to go out on semi-regular tours. The band have a large following in South America, especially in Brazil.

This clip is filmed on the northside of Newcastle Harbour on Stockton Beach, at the wreck of the Sygna.