Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds: live in Melbourne, 2012 (review)

Venue: The Palais

Date: 31/01



Re-emerging only last year with a new band - The High Flying Birds - and whole new set of songs, the elder of Oasis’ Gallagher brothers, Noel set himself the unenviable task of starting from scratch. Although most of the songs on the High Flying Birds’ album were written in 2008 while Noel was still in Oasis, his writing more than hinted at a severing of old ties. 2011 single, the no-hold’s barred The Death Of You And Me, heralded Noel’s new life as a solo artist, and showed a promising, more purposeful direction than most latter day Oasis. Of the new tracks, which are spread equally throughout ‘the classics’ tonight at his Melbourne Big Day Out sideshow, none can be written off as mere ‘Oasis-lite’ rehashing. Still, expectations for Noel’s solo gig were pretty moderate for me I confess.



Would the shadow of Oasis hang heavily over proceedings, as a half-full arena of disgruntled fans just mark time until Wonderwall? Well as it turns out, not even close. Gallagher is the very picture of the fabled phoenix from the ashes of his old band. Standing before us drenched in red and blue lights, age defiant was a possibly even more cocky Noel than the one who once celebrated a life of ‘cigarette’s and alcohol’. Tonight, he confidently reminds all who had forgotten how brilliant a performer he actually is, and how many bloody good songs he’s written. In place of the geezer trying to relive the glory days I half expected, was a master showman proving you can’t beat experience - fuck knows, nothing has beaten Noel Gallagher.

Following a standing ovation on his arrival, Gallagher kicks off with (It’s Good) To Be Free, and the choice is a master stroke. This old b-side, which has surely taken on new meaning for Gallagher in recent times, gains an immediate reaction from the packed in crowd who seem determined to match Gallagher and his band in volume. Its all the warm up he and his audience need too, as the show’s momentum and crowd response continue to elevate – especially once Gallagher wonders aloud ‘why is everyone sitting down?’ As we all gladly surrender our comfort, the band delivers a run of six tracks from High Flying Birds’ debut, each a triumph of thrilling, edge-of-your-seat rock. If High Flying Birds remind me of Oasis at all, then it’s the best elements of serendipitous sophomore (What’s The Story) Morning Glory and bust-up album, Dig Out Your Soul, which tellingly was recorded at the same time High Flying Birds was taking shape. If I Had A Gun ranks closest to ‘the Oasis sound’, offering a peak into what might have been, and also a ‘last look back’ moment before the brand new as-yet-unreleased, Freaky Teeth.



Midway through, and the electric guitar makes way for an acoustic and Noel’s band depart, leaving only him and keyboardist, Mike Rowe. Tuning up, Noel reads the crowd for a moment and gets a cheer. “Who was Saint Kilda?” He yells, while strumming something familiar. “It’s not in the Bible – I’ve checked.” Out of the laughter, a fan offers; “She was a prostitute!” Noel scoffs in return, “You’re a fucking prostitute, mate.” The laughter soon turns to cheers as Whatever (I’m Free) is suddenly upon us, along with the customary sing-a-long. The already up mood inside the Palais plateaus and Noel draws the moment out with a stunning, stripped back rendition of Supersonic - Oasis’s debut single which although has been ‘re-imagined’ still holds its power as one of the most fun songs Gallagher ever wrote.



We then welcome the rest of the band back on stage for the 'most fun' song High Flying Birds have in their cannon – (I Wanna Live In A Dream In My) Record Machine. Noel’s all about momentum tonight, he’s brought his audience up and is determined to keep us there. The second set seems to fly by, as each carefully chosen song forms a kind of ‘greatest hits’ package. New gems such as Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks meld into unsung classics, Half A World Away and Talk Tonight. The many ex-pat Brits in the audience, hoarse from belting out the words along with Noel, near topple over each other in a bid to shower praise on the man as the triple banger encore comes around. Little By Little, The Importance of Being Idle and closer, Don’t Look Back In Anger made their homes long ago in the hearts of Brit-pop fans at closing time sing-a-longs and blurry-eyed cab rides home. Tonight, Gallagher’s fans share with their idol the fondness each and every one of them hold for these songs. Noel knows to not even bother singing on Don’t Look Back In Anger – the entire audience unite in a roof-raising effort all their own – and Gallagher’s uncharacteristic grin speaks volumes in its own right, as he enjoys a momentous end to a show by one of the classiest come-back's in recent times. Nice one, 'our kid'.



lEIGh5

THE PALAIS SET-LIST, 31/01/2012

(It's Good) To Be Free

Mucky Fingers

Everybody's On The Run

Dream On

If I Had A Gun

The Good Rebel

The Death Of You And Me

Freaky Teeth

Whatever (I'm Free)

Supersonic

(I Wanna Live In A Dream In My) Record Machine

What A Life!

Talk Tonight

Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks

Broken Arrow

Half The World Away

The Wrong Beach

encore:

Little By Little

The Importance of Being Idle

Don't Look Back In Anger

The End of Australian Music Content on Commercial radio?

The following is a post I made in a forum regarding the CRA's recent whinge about having to play a small percentage of Australian music in their quota. The subject to me is infuriating to say the least, as it represents yet another change for the worse in terms of the ridiculous level of exposure given to cheap and nasty, mostly American, commercial pop. It seems as if the gap between popular music and product pushing is almost completely closed and to me, this is no trivial matter. Australian music is simply less likely to be affiliated with branding and looks likely to suffer as a result in a world where advertisers hold all the cash. The CRA (or Commercial Radio Australia) have long stopped pretending they give a damn about fostering local talent since realising they can get a bigger slice of pie playing overseas artists on labels linked to ad agencies whose jingles for the newest crap-tastic gadget are also the latest singles from Rhianna/Bieber/Maroon 5 etc...

I'd really like to dig my heels into the CRA and say how awful they are for considering such a proposal, but the reality is, they are reflecting a growing public indifference to not just locally produced music, but to some degree an indifference to anything that isn't totally mono-cultural. Not caring about what happens in mainstream, commercial music isn't enough for me. I can't be switched off to it when nearly every resource I access - by no choice of my own - rings with the sight or sound of the latest 'talented new-comer', who always seems to be either American (specifically LA based) or trying so hard to appear that way, its almost impossible to tell the difference. Then there's the subliminal hatred. I feel bad for hating people who lap up, apparently anything deemed 'hot' by the faceless arseholes who apparently have a lot to gain by you buying the latest shitty autotuned wankery. As far as I'm concerned the CRA are just more faceless arseholes with an agenda. What that is can probably be summed up by the complete flat-lining of any real diversity in heavily promoted music. Why risk losing listeners/money/advertisers on some 'weird local shit by some unknown wannabe' when you can get Timomatic and Reece Mastin to dance on command, look damn pretty doing it, AND sound like a combination of Black Eyed P!nk Marooned Beiber, or whatever the kids (apparently) all slurped up by the tonne last year?

Who's world, exactly?

My question is, are the CRA looking to drop all locally produced music from their playlists or just the stuff that wasn't produced, written and rapped on by some bloke in Hollywood called T-Party? In which case, haven't they already achieved their goal?? Creating a vacuum in which only this miniscule measure of success applies to musicians is so destructive in the long term. The apparent glamour (if you're a bogan maybe?) of US-style overnight stardom on the back of some paper thin soulless dance tune is of course hollow, but why then are so many young Australian artists seeing it as something to strive for? You could argue that the end of anything identifiable as Australian on commercial radio is already upon us, but I predict hard times ahead for people like CRA and other supporters of 'shit made in America's gotta be good, it sells like hot muffins'. They drop all Australian content from commercial radio, and eventually just run one long unchanging advertisement/song on an endless loop that gradually becomes a single droning autotuned note, a flat-line, if you like spelling the (by that time) much welcomed death of those withering arseholes who through the power of commercial media, want nothing more than to dull the wit of all who come in contact with them.

May they suffer as much as I do whenever I chance encounter one of their boil in the bag ready-made suck-cess stories flogging me an iPhone from the saftey of a mega-billboard and draining the life force outta me within seconds of hearing their corporate-endorsed shit.

lEIGh5

A MASSIVE PAIR OF TITS

Foster The People: live in Melbourne, 2012 (review)

Venue: The Palace

Date: 30/01

There are way more kicks on offer at a Foster The People gig than the Pumped Up kind, the lads prove at thier Melbourne Big Day Out side-show. In concert, L.A.’s Foster The People run a tight ship, showing great care and precision in each and every song’s delivery. At this stage, their relatively short set must feel deeply familiar following an intense year of touring debut album Torches, yet there are no signs of fatigue or boredom from the guys. It’s easy to see the love for these songs in the band’s faces as much as it is in the packed Palace audience’s. For me, 2011 belonged to Foster The People. I knew looking around at my fellow punters, almost everybody there surely felt that same euphoric joy as I did on first discovering this band. Listening to Torches was a sharp reminder that something quite prominent had been missing from music in a general sense. Here was an album that by-passed any kind of current trend and instead declared a most antiquated purpose: music to bring people together.

Yes, Foster The People with each sample and percussion-heavy track, serve up a big spoonful of Summer of Love - California style. The utmost contemporary, tricked out keyboard/sample pads favoured by, well almost every band and his dog, are somehow sweeter in the hands of Foster and their freelovin’ vibe. Vibe is the key word here though; peel away the layers and lyrically, very few of the bands songs would stand up to scrutiny in the Woodstock poetry tent. Houdini, being a possible exception, reminds us to ‘focus on your ability’ and break out from our ‘shackles’, and tonight as the set opener, is so mood enhancing, it may as well be sold as a prescription drug. There’s more’ happy-power’ in that one song than a Flaming Lips encore, and the metre very rarely dips below ‘stupidly happy’ from then on.



Even the bands few mid-tempo songs (Miss You, Waste) evoke enthused bouncing sing-a-longs, and its on those tracks especially the band allow themselves to really freak out and break from their recorded counterparts. Miss You descends into a wall of percussion, recalling Nine Inch Nails’ March Of The Pigs, boosted by frantic strobing as singer Mark Foster leaps from his seat at the keyboard to batter a huge tom lumped in front of drummer Mark Pontius’ kit. Throughout the whole gig, when the two Mark’s aren’t vibing of each other as duel drummers, Foster is on guitar, fret to fret with bassist Cubbie Fink or head-banging hunched over his sampler. The man doesn’t rest, switching as he does between various instrument duties, all while conducting the audience in sing-a-long. Indeed Mark Foster can add sublime showmanship to his already full bag of tricks, and frankly the determination he displays to connect with all who come to see his band shows up many a live act as detached and lazy.



Aside from playing every track from Torches, they cover Weezer’s Say It Ain’t So; “because I taught Pumped Up Kicks to River from Weezer one night a party, and they started covering it in their shows!” Mark reveals. Naturally it sounds better than the original, thanks to the the addition of the Foster ‘stamp of fun’ but I was more than happy for them to get back to playing their own tunes. Namely, Helena Beat which concludes the main set in grandiose style and damnit all if Mark’s vocals don’t sound so much better live than on the recording. It’s an unusual singing voice he’s packing, with frequent falsetto parts, whistling and near-whispered refrains here and there, he’s nothing if not dynamic. All of these aforementioned stylings of course come together on the highly anticipated encore.



Pumped Up Kicks was the song that gave rise to what began as Mark’s bedroom muck-about project and ultimately landed him global top billing on the festival circuit. Tonight, predicting the reaction to the song, FTP tweak out a couple of extra minutes of ‘sing-it-back’ time from the heaving crowd. Shifting the song’s tempo suddenly from ‘Ministry of Sound club mix’ to ‘Linkin Park earnest head-bang’, they somehow make the whole thing work, while retaining the swagger of the original as the audience continue to shout the refrain long after Mark has stepped back from the mic to take it all in; a rare moment of stillness for the singer, who deftly steps into the front row, held aloft by countless hands where he remains grinning until the houselights switch on and his band exits the stage. He knows it’s been a good gig. He knows he gave his best and the fans were united with him in that. How thrilling it is to see a band so full of confidence in their music, and ability to perform it, yet remain totally devoid of arrogance. Simply brilliant.

lEIGh5

All photos by Narelle Pfitzner.

*

PALACE SET-LIST, 30/01/12:

Houdini

Miss You

Life On The Nickel

I Would Do Anything For You

Broken Jaw

Waste

Call It What You Want

Don't Stop (Colour On The Walls)

Say It Ain't So 

Helena Beat

encore:

Ruby 

Warrant

Pumped Up Kicks

Jim Sclavunos (Grinderman) interview: 2012

DONE WITH THE GRIND

The news of Grinderman’s unexpected end at Meredith late last year proved shocking enough to overshadow just about the entire event’s proceedings. Nobody outside of the Nick Cave-led garage rock ensemble’s inner circle knew that was to be their final performance, and the reaction to Cave’s brief, understated goodbye spoke volumes about the popularity they had garnered through just two albums. Indeed Grinderman earned the kind of reverence once reserved for new a Bad Seeds record, and so with his eyes focused on the future of that band - his musical home for almost 30 years – Cave shot down what was shaping up to be a full-time project. The question of ‘why’, at least in percussionist Jim Clavunos’ mind is a simple one, “We were finished with what we had to do as Grinderman, so its time to move on.” Yet with life-long collaborator, Mick Harvey’s departure after the last Bad Seeds album, Dig! Lazarus, Dig!! and much renewed interest in Cave through Grinderman, is all as simple he claims?

“Well, we were so devastated at losing all three of our nominations at the ARIA awards that we decided to quit altogether!” Laughs Sclavunos, his teeth somewhat gritted at the mention of Grinderman’s final show. The fall-out from Nick Cave’s announcement is down to his band to deal with, and Jim is quick to remind me, “My musical life didn’t begin and end with The Bad Seeds or Grinderman. It (Grinderman) is an important component of my life, or rather was if it’s to be no more, but I think the music we made stands on its own merit.”  The 6ft-7 percussion fiend joined the Bad Seeds in 1994 for the Let Love In campaign playing alongside drummer Thomas Wydler before finally taking a leading role on the stool for a ‘muck-about between sessions’ band that had developed in the ranks. Location and accessibility determined which Bad Seeds members were invited to the Grinderman party, and along with Cave, Warren Ellis and Martyn Casey, Jim was simply available. But this side-project quickly became popular among fans - and non-fans of Cave alike - once their thrilling debut album arrived. The danger of it stealing a lot of thunder from Bad Seed activities became quite real, Jim concedes. ”We did kind of neglected Bad Seeds for a long time, I think. It’s been about four years since we've done anything so I think it’s high time we made some beautiful music together, again.”

Ending on a high, or rather enjoying the brevity of a great musical moment and getting out before it starts to love itself too much is something Jim is very comfortable with. The New Yorker’s musical life outside of ‘Cave Central’ had always been a series of short-term hit ’n’ run projects. Besides briefly drumming for core New York art-rock bands Sonic Youth and The Cramps, he, alongside post-punk siren, Lydia Lunch was directly involved in creating the No Wave movement  – a kind of puritan punk scene, directly in opposition to how commercialised punk had become by the early 1980s. The point of No Wave – keep it short and noisy and don’t expect a greatest hits boxset – was never something Jim took lightly. “The whole ‘no future’ mentality was still very much intact.” To this day he is all about the moment of creation and the passion that comes with playing every gig like it may very well be the last, which was often the case. However the young Sclavunos’ foray into No Wave was motivated less by making music than the chance of getting laid, as any band will deny. 

Jim with Lydia Lunch

“That, and getting into gigs for free.” He corrects. “I couldn’t play bass, so when I met Lydia (Lunch) and she asked me join her band - as a bass player - I knew that she wanted to fuck me, and I saw the opportunity to lose my virginity.” He giggles. Lydia Lunch’s infamous caterwauling monologues might have been enough to send most males running for cover, but Jim’s musical life had finally begun, significantly at the very moment his cherry was popped. He never did learn the bass either, but Jim is where he is today because of a natural instinct for what the artists he works with are looking for in a musical accomplice. Making the Bad Seeds his only real full-time band says a lot about both him and the kind of trust afforded to each artist in the service of Mr Cave. Jim was an easy fit for Grinderman, then so it seems relevant to ask was Grinderman an ideal fit for ‘Mr No Wave’ himself?  ”I don’t get sentimental at all about bands that I’ve happened to play in, but Grinderman was such a natural thing when it happened. I guess the end of the band felt just as natural too.” There’s no obvious lamenting over Grinderman for Jim right now though. By the request of artistic director Jonathan Holloway, he is already busy on his next obsession - preparing a contribution to the Perth Festival - a project called The Faustian Pact. Along with musical collaborator Peter Mavrogeorgis, the pair - who perform together under the name The Vanity Set - will construct a live score to the 1926 silent cult film, Faust. 

“Faust is unique in that there is no one definitive version.” Jim explains of his interest in the German noir classic, “It was re-cut several times for different audiences and different regions because of the sensitivity and suspicion people had towards the occult.” Faust director, Friedrich W. Murnau based his film on a story which dated from the 16^th century, and was already a firm favourite in German folklore. The ‘pact with the devil’ plotline has leapt from ancient text, to operas and stage shows over the decades before Faust’s cinematic debut, and proving its enduring appeal, continued its infiltration of popular culture through tales of alleged ill-gotten gifts of musical talent in the blues and rock n’ roll scenes. However Sclavunos’s intrigue with the story lies mainly in how he feels its true meaning was intentionally misrepresented in Murnau’s film so as to appease the so-called god-fearing public. For his part in the Perth festival, Jim plans to correct this. “If people are thinking they’re just going to see the Faust movie as Murnau intended with a live score, they’re going to be bitterly disappointed.” He laughs.

The Devil takes control in Faust

“Every aspect of the Christian ideology and the psychological resonance behind the film has been totally messed with. It kind of transcends the moral and the social and has been whittled down to a more basic study of man rather than a Christian salvation story.” Sclavunos’s re-cut version of Faust will form the back-drop to live performers in costume as well as the band. “It’s going to be part play, part concert and part cinema. I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with what usually happens with live scoring of films; a couple of musicians playing along to what's on screen, but we wanted to approach this in a totally new way.” Jim’s desire to re-cut and re-score Faust is a long-held one, and discussing it is justification for him. “The original film (for me) was a bad influence on my idea.” He laughs, “I liked the aesthetic of the film, but The Faustian Pact is really all about recapturing the story from the original text.” Taking so much care with this story, its clear Jim is in it for preservation purposes, opposed to his own life in music which has been considerably low on preservation. However, the final word he gives on Grinderman hints at a possible first-time feeling of loss over a band in his long career. “I'm sorry there's no big scoop on why Grinderman split up, but what I can tell you is we’ve all really enjoyed having this band, and I am sorry to see it go. It was one of my favourite bands ever to play in, but hey there’s always the possibility of the dreaded come-back tour!”

 

lEIGh5

Trash McSweeney (The Red Paintings) interview: 2011

THE COLOUR OF MUSIC

Red Paintings singer/composer, Trash McSweeney - every bit as self-effacing as his adopted name – was never a musically gifted child, nor a particularly learned one, but rather his ability for intricate song crafting was one that foisted itself upon him late in his adolescence following a seizure resulting in the ability to visualize complete compositions in full technicolour. The condition Trash developed, known as synesthesia, landed the Geelong-born/L.A.-based artist among a mere handful of songwriters currently living with the neurological disorder world-wide. From this unplanned event, Trash and his Red Paintings cohorts have been guided by an ongoing struggle to make the music match up with the visual patterns McSweeney alone sees, often creating seismic tensions and frustrations alien to all who do not share his ‘insight’. It’s no wonder then, that after twelve years as a band, The Red Paintings are at long last set to release their debut studio album. Titled, The Revolution Is Never Coming, this marks the third year since the album was initially set for release, and in regards to its delay, McSweeney, as a synesthesia sufferer, is afforded free reign of the often cringe-worthy explanation; “the people I was working with just didn’t understand my vision.”

 

“This album was mixed eight different times in eight different studios around the world, and I went to some of the biggest and best studios available but what I kept finding was, people had their own shitty vision for my music.” He begins. During the album’s endless recording sessions, The Red Paintings as a collective came and went depending on either their availability or willingness to follow Trash to yet another studio and join him in sleepless, song-tweaking. “The rest of the band quite reasonably walked out and let me do what I needed to do.” He says, “We spent a lot of time writing down everybody’s parts and getting those right, but in the end it wasn’t financially possible for them to live as I was. We were all broke by that stage; I mean my string section were busking on the streets of Brisbane to make $50 a night while I was in Canada sleeping on studio floors.” Trash’s motivation to create a worthwhile album regardless of personal health or wealth seems largely down to a desire to not disappoint his fans as much as himself. “I didn’t want to put effort into something that my fanbase were going to put on and say, ‘oh the songs are okay, but the production’s pretty shit’, you know?” He confirms. “If I say I’m going to put out something – an album or whatever – then its going to be done to the best of my ability. I didn’t sleep properly for over year because I was consumed by just making these songs work.”



Fellow synesthesiac, Bjork, is a reference for Trash. “I listen to her music in a kind of ecstasy. It’s like what she creates is mathematically thought out, and that’s kind of how I approached making this record.” Trash boasts that there were an average of around 180 tracks to mix per song to get the desired result. “I guess I was trying to create a Da Vinci artwork as a musical composition.” He laughs. It’s not Renaissance painters however that inform The Revolution Is Never Coming, but rather literary giant Lewis Carroll. First single, The Streets Fell Into My Window (which was actually recorded in 2005) is punctuated by quotes from the novel, Alice In Wonderland, which Trash defines as a metaphor for passing from life into death. “I wondered if the trip down the rabbit hole Alice takes in the story was in fact the moment of death when the soul leaves the body.” He muses, “When the Tim Burton film came out, I was surprised he had played it so safe and not delved into the possibility of Wonderland being the afterlife, so when it came time to making the video for that song, I worked with this fantastic young director called Clint Lewis, and we were all about ‘what didn’t Tim Burton do but maybe should have’.” The Red Paintings live shows, which are as much renowned for their dramatic aspects as their musical intensity, reflect the Lewis Carroll theme in their current state.



“The live shows incorporate every kind of art-form; music, poetry, theatre, film, painting and narrative to make one whole performance piece which reflects what our music is about. On the last tour, I came out as the caterpillar, our cellist was the white rabbit, our violinist; the queen of hearts and so on - and that connection is obvious, right - but a while ago we did some Dr Seuss themed shows where each song became a different Dr Seuss book.” Trash describes, “The most bizarre thing had occurred to me, I realised that the themes in all of Dr Seuss’s writing were exactly what I was trying say in my songs.” Further explaining his theory Trash reasons, “Seuss could be taken one of two ways; fun, catchy books for kids, or the work of a highly analytical and complex mind.” Much like his literary idols, Trash McSweeney is an example of what happens when an artist loses all interest in convention and allows himself to push away certainty and comfort. Lead wholly by his synesthesia, Trash’s unusually heightened subconscious calls the shots and his trust in it is unwavering.



“It (synesthesia)’s never been a hindrance to me. The Red Paintings have been shaped by it and I’ve never had to worry about writer’s block. The reason the album has taken so long isn’t because I wasn’t able to write, it’s because the mixing never seemed to be the right colour and shape as I saw it in my head. I basically had to articulate what I was seeing jumping out of the mixing desk again and again in the studio, which sounds fucking ridiculous, I know, and when you’re paying an hourly rate it gets even more absurd, but I won’t stop until I get it right.” So The Revolution Is Never Coming’s long delay means fans will be getting an accurate picture of the sound inside Trash’s head, then? “Definitely. I mean I’m not doing this for any other reason than to give people the music best I can. I’m not creating something to sell records so I can buy a big comfy house, I’m making art here.” He deadpans, “I’ll never own a fucking house anyway. The amount of debt I generated for myself making this album saw to that!”



lEIGh5

Cheryl Wray (Salt-N-Pepa) interview: 2011

THE SPICE GIRL

 

New York native, Cheryl Wray claims her 1986, 17-year-old self, knew instinctively Salt N Pepa were going to be huge. Call it a young woman’s brimming self-confidence if you like, but the lady herself prefers to think, “it may have been a spiritual thing.” But whichever force was at play, the now legendary group’s success was anyone’s guess in the male-dominated hip hop scene. Even Wray’s bravado is in sharp contrast to “the very depressed teenager with no direction” she was, but the sassy global-hit maker she would become as “Salt” in Salt N Pepa, happened only once she began rapping when, “something awakened in me and I felt so alive.” Just as well, as there was “no Plan B”, she explains.



Many international stars had already emerged out of New York’s rap scene in the ‘80s, but prior to Salt N Pepa, rap was a chick-free zone, bar Deborah Harry’s absurd jive about ‘men from Mars’ in Blondie’s hit, Rapture. As for what made Salt N Pepa boldly go where no ladies had gone before, Cheryl surmises, “A group like us was needed - there was a gap in the market for some strong female performers who could sell records on the level of the bigger, more established rap groups…  and that’s exactly what we did.”



Wray, along with high-school friends Sandra “Pepa” Denton and Deidra “Spinderella” Roper, were regular visitors open mic venues around New York in the mid-‘80s, where up-coming stars like Martin Lawrence would perform comedy routines to notoriously rough crowds. Lawrence, as with every other performer, would either “make it or break it”, Cheryl says, as judged entirely on the audience’s reaction. “We were really scared, but when we decided it was time for us to perform in front of a crowd, we rocked it.” She smiles, “We did our song, The Show Stopper – which we wrote in response to Freddy Fresh’s The Show – a massive street level hit at the time - and that ended up becoming our first single out here in America.” Salt N Pepa had gained that all-important acceptance among their peers as hot live performers – the greatest level of respect a rap group could be awarded at the time – fueling their already burning motivation for stardom.



"I don’t remember it being that hard for us because we were so driven.” Cheryl recalls, “The harder the challenge, the harder we worked to get around it and we never felt like we were failing.” Moving from open mic nights to cutting records, the girl’s next challenge was getting their music heard. Their Show Stopper had worked as a live introduction to the group, and its follow-up single, Tramp was taking off in the clubs, but it was only when DJ’s started flipping the record and dropping its b-side, Push It, that Salt N Pepa became overnight stars. However, the song, a kind of throw-away dance/rap number, suggested the group were more sugar than spice, a fact that became a bone of contention, particularly for Cheryl, as Salt N Pepa continued to grow in popularity. “There were times when I felt like we were just doing what was expected of us when we should have been expressing ourselves.” She acknowledges.



For Cheryl, a far greater victory for Salt N Pepa was using their profile to address issues rap artists had chosen ignore. In the wake of that infamous HIV/AIDS ad campaign, in which a bowling grim reaper had Australia in fear of all things sex and sexuality, Salt N Pepa stepped in with a perfectly timed, realistic suggestion; Let’s Talk About Sex. “That song made us unofficial spokespeople for AIDS awareness.” Cheryl recalls. It was the right track at the right time, but from a group far removed from any reaper-based fear campaigns, yet Australia identified and agreed - intimacy wasn’t dead. Indeed Let’s Talk About Sex went to number one at a time when there were practically no hip hop acts charting locally, and AIDS was crashing into suburban living rooms on a nightly basis, forcing many an awkward dinner conversation. 

“Let’s Talk About Sex was not an irresponsible song, as some people tried to claim,” Cheryl points out, “but you know, as a celebrity, especially in the US, people are always calling you to account over things you say because you’re a public figure. I mean when we were younger, we just wanted to get our songs played and go on tour and that was about it, but I think that we felt a kind of social responsibility as we got a bit older because our profile was getting a lot bigger and nobody was really saying what we thought needed to be said.” Cheryl adds, “As an artist, you wanna express what’s on your mind, and with the whole AIDS thing we never saw it as shameful but as something that urgently needed to be discussed properly. The information going around about it at the time was really that it was a thing of shame or fear, but in our song we talk about taking responsibility for your actions and knowing the risks.” Salt N Pepa’s frankness and big issue-raising is a detail that is often overlooked in place of the ‘Most Successful Female Rap Act Of All-Time’ tagline publicists like to use. Perhaps though, not unlike the statistic-obsessed media, Salt N Pepa’s own families even had difficulty knowing what to make of a girl rap group being taken seriously.



“Because hip hop was still such a new thing when we started, and no females were having success doing hip hop while we were having massive hits, my family and friends were just confused.” Cheryl laughs, “My mum and dad were in shock for a really long time. Whenever we had a platinum selling single, or won and MTV award or whatever, they would just look at me, like ‘who are you?’”. She adds, “My dad was really supportive, but mum was always more concerned that I was gonna start acting like a super star, and she would say like, ‘don’t come up in here acting like no diva. When you come home to your father and me, you’re just Cheryl, okay!’  That really kept me grounded the whole time.” In 2001, following a bankruptcy claim from their label, Cheryl and Sandra found themselves grounded indefinitely as Salt N Pepa. The two then parted ways as Cheryl shockingly revealed that she had been sick for a long time and her friendship with Pepa well and truly was over. 

“Pep and I were not good for a long time before then.  We were young when we started and basically we were no longer communicating at all, and we felt underappreciated by one another, so getting back to performing as Salt N Pepa again, I had to put right a lot of stuff in my mind that had bothered me up to that point and learn to accept our legacy.” The 1994 single, None Of Your Business, finally earned Salt N Pepa the first Grammy award of their career, but Cheryl who later ‘disowned that song for its sexually salacious content’, was at that stage so unwell, that the win was merely a ‘hollow triumph.’ “It was exciting on one level, but all I remember of that time was, I was severely bulimic and caught up in the whole ‘skinny is beautiful’ thing, and I felt so empty when I should have been elated, I suppose.” She adds, “My career was peaking at the same time my personal life was at an all time low. You always think when you’re young that success is measured in these certain terms, but the reality is a Grammy’s never gonna fill the void I felt when I was bulimic.” Cheryl had successfully beaten her illness by the mid-‘00s, and today is a spokesperson for bulimia awareness in American schools. Then in 2007, Pep and Wray finally burned a few old bridges, “we just needed to grow up away from each other for a time”, and Cheryl took the equally important step to rejoining Salt N Pepa; she stopped fighting with her conscience over the songs, and learned to love both the sugar and the spice. 

“In hindsight, I felt like I was out of my comfort zone promoting songs that I didn’t believe in, but I didn’t say anything at the time, and that’s one of the issues that lead to me leaving, but I’ve made my peace with our legacy now.” Accepting what people love about Salt N Pepa was one of Wray’s biggest challenges, but Cheryl, who spent years distancing herself from what she perceived as the tacky side of Salt N Pepa, now exhibits a softened, almost sentimental approach to past ‘errors of judgment’. “Pep and I were actually talking about bringing out the old chunky leather jackets for fun - you know from the Push It video?” She laughs, “Just the other day my daughter was going through all my old stage clothes and her and her friend decided to dress up as me and Pep as we were in the ‘80s for Halloween!” She adds, “They had the spandex body suits on and everything, and I thought to myself, ‘that’s when you know you’ve made it – when you’re a damned Halloween costume!”



lEIGh5

Jello Biafra interview: 2011

CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN'



Boulder, Colorado-born Eric Boucher began life ‘small-town USA’ style, in front of the television absorbing all the menace and mirth it could spew out into his young mind. Not being the sporty type, he fixated on music, cartoons and news broadcasts in his free time, growing increasingly fascinated - and disgusted - by how atrocious world events were televised and reported on by his country’s media. The anger and bewilderment he experienced, combined with a natural gift for writing and self-expression, ultimately gave rise to Boucher’s notorious - at first on-stage only – persona, Jello Biafra. Whatever life had in store for small-town boy Eric Boucher, it was surely crushed once the mighty Biafra was ‘born’, and to this day, it is the peculiar name of Jello that continues to raise eyebrows, hackles and conservative backs through-out small, big and all-towns-in-between, USA.

The mushy dessert of his name-sake, an easy to swallow, much loved children’s favorite may have been an ironic choice of pseudonym for the one-time Dead Kennedys' singer, but Biafra has always been an unashamed attention seeker. He knew when he chose his tag, that every kid in the USA would at some time or another been spoon-fed that very thing by a caring parental figure. Perhaps he saw his own high level absorption of crass news media as a rather tasteless kind of ‘spoon-feeding’, and so took a punt that if he was going to have a public forum to unleash his anti-establishment woes, then it was gonna come with a sweet and fluffy handle that nobody would forget!

Biafra’s most noted platform came in the form of punk legends The Dead Kennedys – once more, a name that was certain to stick in the public’s craw being a mere decade on from President Kennedy’s assassination – and perhaps for that reason, in their new home of San Francisco, Biafra and his band were treated as a blight on the landscape of a city under the spell of neo-hippie-dom and rising yuppie-dom. However, this didn’t prevent ‘Blight Biafra’ from raising sizable interest in his absurdest campaign to become mayor of San Francisco in 1979, or even prevent The Dead Kennedys from charting with singles like Too Drunk To Fuck and Holiday In Cambodia. Biafra had proved beyond doubt he had enough support to be the voice for a broadening sector of society not content to just ‘suck it up’, and its precisely that voice – one that’s never waned in its convictions despite the trouble it’s bought him and his band - that has earned him a new career as a spoken word performer. The gloves no doubt come off when Jello hits the stage for his Melbourne spoken-word debut in October – they certainly did when it came to answering some of my questions in this rare, but utterly engaging interview.

What can people expect coming to a Jello Biafra spoken word show these days? Well I haven’t done one in a while, so I’m not quite sure what I’m going to discuss at this stage. I’ll just pull it all together at the last minute I’m sure. I mean events and news stories happen so fast these days, and I like my show to be right up to the minute, you know.

Do you see a lot of your – especially political - subject matter as relatable in countries outside of the US?

Yeah, I mean it seems as if nobody is spared the heavy handed moves by the banks and the super rich to step on the gas and ramp up the whole corporate coup, pushing the idea that community is a bad thing, and it doesn’t work. They just want it to be every one for themselves, conditioned to just make more and more money regardless of how and who it affects and that mindset is why you see basic social services suffering. The banks are desperately trying to save their own arses and so its community and environment be damned. I’ve heard rumblings from Australia about a carbon tax, and I’m sure any argument against that would bare more than a passing resemblance to the American Tea Party – a grass roots movement who were actually funded by oil barons and the like. These guys know not to pull out the white hoods, but you can see clearly where their loyalties lie.

The song, Invasion of the Mind Snatchers from your last album, Enhanced Methods of Questioning digs neatly at the US’s problem with insane religious right-wing nutters getting into positions of power, but are people like Fred Phelps and Wolf Blitzer a genuine threat in your opinion?

Well, Fred Phelps hasn’t got a lot of support, but he’s obviously getting money from somewhere. I’ve been to his compound in Kansas, and they’ve taken over an entire block in a residential neighbourhood, apart from two houses whose owners wouldn’t sell, and so excluding them, there’s a gigantic fence around all the Phelps houses, which is floodlit 24 hours a day and it’s covered in the usual ‘god hates fags’ kind of crap, but that compound is really the only place he holds any power in thankfully. He has no political support, in sharp contrast to Blitzer and Sarah Palin, who are just as extreme as Phelps is, the only difference is, they know how to package themselves more cleverly.

What do you get out of spoken word performance that maybe is lacking from fronting a band, such as Dead Kennedys? Well for a start, activism, spoken word and music is all connected for me, but you don’t get the great adrenalin rush doing spoken word as you do playing music live of course, but then touring as a spoken word artist, you can go deeper into ideas and into people’s brains. I mean I never expected spoken word to take off, but I have to thank those fascists at the LAPD and hate-mongers like Tipper Gore who dragged me through court over the Dead Kennedy’s Frankenchrist album. (1985’s Frankenchrist holds the ‘honor’ of being the token reason for banning and censorship of music in the US, resulting in massive legal costs for Biafra and ultimately the end of the ‘Kennedys). That was the first time a charge of ‘distribution of harmful material to minors’ had been brought against a music album in American history.

Frankenchrist - killed the Kennedys?

Are fans encouraged to actively participate in the spoken word shows and enter into a discussion with you?

It all depends; sometimes I have time for questions sometimes not. When people come to see me though, I think they already have some idea of what I’m about and what to expect, and the kinds of things I talk about are what they probably discuss among their friendship groups already. So I’m just offering a viewpoint that can maybe add something to their own conversations. I mean I’m not afraid of being asked questions, but doing just question and answer sessions can quickly turn into a forum for a handful of conspiracy theorists wanting to debate the Roswell space alien or the whole 9/11 inside job thing.

Do you subscribe to any of the popular conspiracy theories yourself?

In my mind, the biggest conspiracy was that America went to war while being governed by Spinal Tap. But in reality, part of the problem was the FBI had all this so-called intelligence and voice recordings in several different languages that nobody in the US government could even understand. Conspiracy theories are great, but I much prefer to make my mind up using logic and fact. 9/11 happened because our (the US’s) powers that be at the time were completely ignorant.

Being in the privileged position of two public forums – spoken word/punk music - do you think you’ve always been successful in expressing your viewpoint?

Well yeah, I mean I’ve encouraged people for all these years to not hate the media, but to become the media. That doesn’t mean living your whole life on Facebook, and sending out little tweets from your phone, it’s about grasping the potential of the new media and saying what we’re being offered isn’t good enough. There’s a lot of people power going to waste on obsessing over pointless celebrity culture. But to answer your question, I’m just one guy and I’m not a mainstream force to be reckoned with, I’m just making a living off my art, and I’ve tried to use my art in a positive way, but now I’m saying it’s up to you to go out and inspire people in the same way I’ve perhaps inspired you.

Do you think running for mayor of San Francisco in hindsight, you were in fact much better positioned to make a difference outside of politics altogether? Yeah for sure, but I was never going to be that guy who put on a suit and went door to door telling people a different lie each time just so they’d vote for me. What I was trying to say is politics doesn’t have to be just that one thing, but as an artist I didn’t have to try and change a whole system to get up there and say ‘this is exactly what I believe in, take it or leave it.’ I’m living off my big mouth and bad attitude, yeah, but that’s gotta be better than bullshitting as a career.

Does coming back to Australia fill you with good memories of your last tour here with the Dead Kennedys?

What comes to mind immediately is, after a show in Brisbane one night myself, DH Peligro (Kennedys’ drummer) and members of The Johnnys were having a few drinks out on the street and a police car pulls up and they arrest Peligro basically for drinking while black! They didn’t go after anybody else and so that to me was a first hand experience of the banana republic dictatorship of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Then after a second show in Brisbane, fans were coming and telling me their favourite stories about Bjelke-Petersen, and I think the most outrageous one I heard was about a dude who got arrested in broad daylight for carrying a concealed weapon in a bag of groceries – it was a pineapple! I mean doesn’t Queensland grow like the entire pineapple stock for the rest of the country? You would think they would know the difference between a weapon and a piece of fruit is all I’m saying.

One of your most interesting ‘projects’ was helping launch the music career of Wesley Willis. Australia has a special kind of love for Willis’s brand of laugh out loud, apparently nonsense tributes to his favourite celebrities; Alanis Morrisette, Oprah Winfrey etc..; I wonder, what do you miss most about him? People say ‘oh such-n-such is a larger than life character’, you know, but Wes really was larger than life. I mean, every single person he came in contact with was just blown away by his energy and his wit, but Wes was utterly exhausting as well. I mean, I would be doubled up in fits of laughter and unable to breathe because of some bizarre observation or statement he would make. Like one time I had to get on a plane with him and make sure he was okay getting to where he needed to go, and this was only in a short space of time after 9/11, and we’re in the airport lounge and all of a sudden Wes just yells at the top of his voice, “Hey Jello, do you think if I hijack a plane they’ll put me in jail?”, and I just froze thinking there were going to be all these security dudes come running out and crash-tackle us or something, and I said to Wes, you know, “You gotta keep it down, man you can’t say that stuff!”, and so he went “okay”, and then sure enough ten minutes later, “Hey Jello, do you think if I hijack a plane they’ll put me in jail?”. He was always doing shit like that and that’s what I miss so much about him not being around. I thought a lot about Wes the night Obama was elected and when he got up to do his speech, all I could think of in the back of my mind was how much that moment would’ve meant to him. Wes would’ve been in that crowd at the White House, and even if he was 100 metres back, his booming voice still would have come through, and he would have been singing, “Obama is the greatest, he can really whip Saddam Hussein’s ass! He can really kick a mule’s ass!” That’s how Wesley was man - just a great communicator of emotions. Nobody could sum up the feeling of a moment like Wes.

lEIGh5

Hey Bono, Jello's onto you, you fatuous swine!