Irregular writings
August 2012
The Caravan Music Club is in a street in Oakleigh that is always busy with hidden, suburban entertainment. It’s held in the RSL there; sometimes they also hold shows in the Bowling Club which is a few street numbers away. The area itself has quite a Greek population and Sundays in the mall nearby is a huge day out for the locals eating outside all the Greek restaurants. Peter Foley, who started this Club, began putting on gigs in his house in Oakleigh and then a bowling club and then to this street where it is happening now.
This night I walked past the Bowling Club towards the RSL and there were lots of young people being dropped off at a hall and a reception centre on the other side of the street for their school formals. Their parents were probably dropping them off and then heading to where I was going. This night was going to be an event cooked up by Billy Miller. An exceptional and highly individual player of music in Melbourne for many years. A soldier, an officer and a dude.
Billy Miller usually holds court at the bottom bar of the old George Hotel every Sunday with his band, the Love Brothers. They play on the floor. Callow indie musicians would be killed by the ferocious, close fighting in this red brick room but Billy is highly skilled. Unlike most of his generation he is a pop player rather than a bluesman and can play anything at will and with great conviction. You can sit and marvel as he plays the Kinks and the Stones and Michael Jackson and Free and the Bee Gees, and the entire crowd singing along. Hardly needs a PA!
Billy’s our Alex Chilton. By that I mean he’s always been into songs and pop music and never went down the road of roots and blues. ‘Rootless and toothless’ as he calls that generic dead end. He began playing in the early 70s in a band called Buster Brown that morphed into Rose Tattoo. It’s not like he hasn’t hung with badass types. That band broke up on a trip (by train) to Perth and Billy had to make his fare back by busking Beatles songs. Shit was really real then. Beatle Billy! The Ferrets and Countdown era pop stardom came in time.
I played with him and learned so much, mainly about conviction and how great it is to play with people who are UP for it. No sooks. Tonight he was doing a set of songs based on the first gig he ever went to, Festival Hall in 1968 with Paul Jones (from Manfred Mann), The Small Faces and The Who. I used to turn my nose up at tribute bands years ago, but I then got to respect their hard-core showbiz attitude. It’s different if it’s an ongoing week after week thing. In shows like that, all the weirdness usually gets shaved off and the basics are trotted out. Then there is the phenomenon of bands getting back together. The Who themselves came here in the early 2000s for a car race gig. “The Two” they were derisively called. But this stuff has lasted, it’s worth hearing and people love it! What’s the problem? Ruth Rogers Wright, an English woman living in Melbourne, does an amazing Nina Simone show. It is difficult stuff to inhabit and pull off, for the players and the singer. She does it brilliantly well. Henry Manetta and the Trip did a Sun Ra show, complete with conga line of freaks weaving about the room. Again it was great to hear the music for real, being pushed out into a room by real people. Tex Perkins plays Johnny Cash as well as doing shows of country standards. Who could do that stuff any better – his amazing voice and his really demanding standards for any player who steps on a stage with him? People love it! Those songs are stone tablets!
Billy came on and did the Paul Jones songs first. Bill plays a 1963 Strat that he makes absolutely sing. Battered and worn, he gets the cleanest sounds then power chords and works the tone constantly with the pots on the guitar, very few pedals. His voice is outstanding, getting all those screaming notes and totally controlling it, and mugging all present. They launch in to the Small Faces songs, from “Itchycoo Park” to the amazing “Tin Soldier”. It was beyond great to hear. People were dancing crazily. Antique moves from back in the day. Led by the women first, as always.
For The Who set, a man with a shaved head and quite ordinary suit stood in front of me. As the chords to “Substitute” rang out he began to move violently all by himself in the crowd. The Who’s music talks to men. He was making windmill guitar arm moves and riding the cymbals and clapping in a flamenco style. Stuff as hell. Not drinking at all. Song by song he removed his coat, then tie, then shirt and ended the gig in a drenched old T-shirt. The band played superbly, all the dynamics, harmonies, solos, key changes and other weirdly Who-specific arrangements. People know every note of those songs and Bill sang the hell out of them and made all those licks on the guitar totally happen. Nailed it all. Joy! “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is so full of weird dynamic changes and vamps on a single chord. A song written and recorded by a band in their own world and at its very peak. The edge of their world. It was so exciting to hear. Within these songs you heard all sorts of other musics by people like The Raspberries and Big Star who totally tripped out on the 60s mod style.
Like a recital of music in the classical world, played by modern players who were still close to it. Outstanding experience.
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