dave graney - Moodists-Coral Snakes-mistLY-FEARFUL WIGGINGS

dave graney - Moodists-Coral Snakes-mistLY-FEARFUL WIGGINGS
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About Me

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2023 book THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT (lyrics 1980-2023) 2023 reissue Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Night Of The Wolverine. Double vinyl release. 2023 ROCK album with Clare Moore IN A MISTLY . WORKSHY - 2017 memoir out on Affirm Press. Available at shows or via website. Moodists - Coral Snakes - mistLY. I don’t know what I am and don’t want to know any more than I already know. I aspire, in my music , to 40s B Movie (voice and presence) and wish I could play guitar like Dickey Betts, John Cippolina or Grant Green - but not in this lifetime, I know.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

speaking of a book I wished I'd written...


I was asked to speak at a "women of Letters" book launch. The brief was to write a  letter to , or on , a book you wished you'd written. I spoke  about this book by Richard Stark. the Playwright Hannie Rayson spoke last and slayed everybody by mocking books and speaking about her life as if it was   a series of plays written by playwrights of each period.

I wish I could have written Richard Starks “THE HUNTER” which was made into a movie called “point Blank”. This is also of course,  a kind of death wish, wishing to have been someone else. But Richard Stark was a name and a mask put on by a writer called Donald E Westlake. Donald wrote great books under his own name, kind of light and funny. As Richard Stark he wrote 21 novels about a lone wolf bank robber called “Parker”.

21 books about this world of loner misfits who were outside of the law and the Mob in, generally, Midwest USA of the 60s and 70s.  The books were also pulp paperbacks sold at train stations and in airports, outside any kind of a self-conscious literary scene. The stories were built like the classics of James M Cain, always starting at the end and the going back to unravel the situation, pulling apart the fabric to get to the bare threads it consisted of.
There have been several films made. Westlake refused to let them use the name PARKER unless whoever was producing would commit to a series of films, to tell a longer story over time. The films were always low budget too. One called “The OUTFIT” with Robert Duvall. The greatest is “point Blank” where the character, called WALKER” in the film, was truly brought to life by LEE MARVIN. A John Bormann movie, filmed on location in LA and San Francisco and, memorably, within the walls of the recently vacated ALCATRAZ prison.
Like many classics of that period, it has been remade, with the Australian/ American Mel Gibson in the lead. I couldn’t watch that. Lee Marvin was IT.

John Boorman went on to make DELIVERANCE.

Lee left a career of great performances, though this and his turn in Don Siegel’s “THE KILLERS” remake are my personal favourites.

Richard Starks character seemed to take over him and the story wrote itself. A writers dream- or nightmare? Any other characters coming into the story to leaven up the pulp got energized and powered up as well. Parker turned them all on.
He threw some characters in just to be silly. One was Grofeld, a hardcore actor who joined in on some of the robberies to finance his experimental theatre out in the mid west. For Richard Stark, the USA was a huge place where you could get lost easy and could also bury anything. Donald E Westlake, was of course, buried within Richard Stark and that’s how he got Parker out into the world.

So I love writing where people hide things say out in the open. Writing that’s widely and generally available but fearlessly and boldly contains many hidden treasures. Perhaps like a bag of unmarked bills left at a bus station lock up in a satellite city in a  rust belt state just past the wheat fields. You could just pick it up and head back to your crib deep inside the Canasta Belt.





 dave graney and the mistLY

Friday Nov 9th - the Flying saucer Club. 4 St Georges rd - Elsternwick Vic

click here to book tickets 

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Dave Graney and Clare Moore with Georgio "the dove" Valentino and Malcolm Ross

Dave Graney and Clare Moore with Robin Casinader - In Concert

ONE MILLION YEARS DC

Starts with a Kinksy groover sketching a 21st century populist tyrant who coasts in power on waves of public resentment at those on the lowest rungs of the ladder (He Was A Sore Winner). Sweeps across a sci fi terrain with nods to songs in the sand at the end of the world (Pop Ruins) and nods to the ties that bind in the underground communities (Comrade Of Pop and Where Did All The Freaks Go?). Songs about intense, long relationships, defunct technology that didn’t answer back, severe social status definition (I’m Not Just Any Nobody), people wandering through your mind as if it was a garage sale, the anxiety of the long running showman (wide open to the elements again) and ends with a song that’s “a little bit Merle Haggard and a little bit Samuel Beckett”. " Edith Grove! Powis Square! 56 Hope Road! Petrie Terrace!.. The Roxy! The Odeon! Apollo! Palais! Olympia! The Whisky! Detroit Grande!” Pop Ruins!"

ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS?

ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? (The title comes from the chorus of “Song Of Life” ) is a classic rock’n’roll album. Classic if you lived through what has become known as ”the classic rock era” as it rolled out new and even broke onto the beachhead and morphed into punk. That’s the direction Dave Graney and Clare Moore have always been coming from. They have spent their lives schooled by and immersed in rock ‘n’ roll culture. Neither attended higher education and they dived in deep and kept swimming. From the Moodists through the Coral Snakes /White Buffaloes to the mistLY This is an album with their band, Dave Graney and the mistLY. Stuart Perera has played guitar with them since 1998 and Stu Thomas on bass since 2004. MARCH 2019 ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? 2019 album out on Compact Disc - available here via mail order...
If you are from outside of Australia and wish to purchase a Compact Disc copy of ZIPPA DEEDOO WHAT IS/WAS THAT/THIS? please use this button (different postage)

LETS GET TIGHT

FEARFUL WIGGINGS

2014 solo album from Dave Graney. *****"If I've learnt anything in my years of writing about music it's that if you are going to do anything of worth in this tough game, you better have your own thing. Today's generic is easily replaced by tomorrow's. And yet you need to be flexible, to follow wherever the songs demand. In the case of this, only the second credited as a solo album among 30 or so Graney releases, it's a curious yet welcoming lane he walks you down, with acoustic guitars, not much percussion, vibes, smooth sounds. At the end of it you feel like you've awoken from a strange yet pleasant summer's dream. As shot by Luis Bunuel. It ranges from off-kilter reveries (A Woman Skinnies Up a Man, The Old Docklands Wheel) through to the softly seductive (How Can You Get Out of London) and the downright arch (Look Into My Shades, Everything Is Great In The Beginning.) This is music that is neither folk, nor blues, nor country, but it's all Graney, somewhere out to the left field beyond Lee Hazlewood's raised eyebrow. It's astringent on the tongue but sweetens in the telling." Noel Mengel Brisbane Courier Mail

you've been in my mind

June 2012 super high energy pop rock album - blazing electric 12 strings - total 70s rock drive. Greatest yet! available via paypal - $20 pp

rock'n'roll is where I hide/- 2011 "vintage classics/ re recordings" on LIBERATION

SUPERMODIFIED - August 2010 remixed/re-sung/re-strung//remastered/replayed comp via PAYPAL

also available as a digital album

Knock yourself (2009)-first ever dg solo set-filthy electro r&b-available via Paypal- $20

available as a digital album too

We Wuz Curious (2008)-blazing R&B jazz pop album available via paypal-$20


UNAVAILABLE-COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!!!
AVAILABLE AS A DIGITAL album

Keepin' It Unreal-(2006)-minimalist/lyrical vibes, bass, 12 string set - CDs sold out - digital only

Hashish and Liquor (2005 double disc by Dave Graney and Clare Moore) available via Paypal $25


UNAVAILABLE-COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!!!
Single album HASHISH available as a digital release

Heroic Blues- "folk soul" set from 2002-Availableas a digital album via BandCamp


UNAVAILABLE ! Completely sold out!

It is written,baby-book released 1997- available $10 via paypal