Sunday, 31 August 2014

That's Entertainment : Bluejuice


Once in a generation, a band comes along and rocks the house!  It isn't an easy act meshing your influences to create your own sound and style that makes you stand out from the pack.

Bluejuice was such a band.

Now I'm not going all wanky here, saying 'oh, these guys were MY band!' and all that.  Nope.  Bluejuice were a peoples band enjoyed by many in this great land of ours.  They played their fair share of festivals, got Triple J support and did an awful lot in their shortish time as a band.  There'll be no grieving because the memories and the music remain.  Still…bastards!  Go and leaving me like that!  

I first heard of them on a Homebake sampler (first time I'd heard Gotye too) back in 2006.  Vitriol was the song and amongst all the other dross, it twinkled like a beacon.  The film clip is a cack too!  They seemed like fun blokes having a crack and good on 'em.

But don't get me wrong, whilst Bluejuice infuse their music with doses of fun, their is plenty of darkness bubbling underneath.  They were typical Aussies - willing to take the pi$$ out of themselves, willing to give it a go…have a crack, and hit the turps hard and fast all in the name of making you boogie your blues away.

I first saw them supporting We Are Scientists when Lee was pregnant with Alex.  In fact…you'd have to say, that was the first gig Alex ever attended and the first live band Alex ever heard, albeit in utero.  

Anyway, they became a favourite.  Something to cheer you up.  And geez they were infectious.  Ebola?  Nah.  Bluejuice was catchier.  The sing-song shouty vocal, funky organ, the disco electronica and rippin' riffs.  Yep, they covered all bases without really trying.  They sounded familiar, they sounded different.  Being different is the killer because people get caught in their ways.  Bluejuice's fan base knew what they were in for though and never did Bluejuice disappoint.

And after three classic albums - forget your Diesel and Dust or Whispering Jack -  Bluejuice called it a day in August 2014.  Bastards!  Having released the visually and aurally brilliant SOS in late 2013, I had hoped for another LP.  Not to be.  

When it comes to Aussie rock, you can keep your Cold Chisel, your Powderfinger, your Triffids and your Savage Garden.  Give me the lil' bands that could…the ones who slog their guts out to be original, deliver entertaining albums, cram in to the mini-bus to leg it across the country just to put on one hell of a show.  And all done for little financial reward.  Bluejuice were rarely critically acclaimed and only briefly flirted with the mainstream charts despite having more ability than most.  Bluejuice's throwaway is someone else's best of.  

But in the end, who cares?!  Well, maybe their manager and their bank balances do.  That aside, Bluejuice did what they did and bloody well entertained.  The played hard and buggered off.  You can't ask for more!

The Australian musical landscape is littered with bands who could.  We lost a good one when Bluejuice packed it in.  We are the poorer for it.















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Thursday, 7 August 2014

That's Entertainment : Supertramp


By the time I got in Supertramp, the party was over.  For me, I distinctly remember flying Qantas, around March/April 1987, and listening to the inflight entertainment 'rock' channel [on those old school hollow air headsets), and every 90 minutes or so, Dreamer came on.  To say I became enamoured with this song is an understatement.  I sat ticking off the songs in the in-flight magazine, waiting for the next little three and half minute blast of wonder!  

Funnily enough, the band had recently released their 'best of' and it was being constantly advertised on the telly [along with the AIDS grim reaper ad] at my nan's place while we stopped over before heading back overseas, travelling further afield.  Anyway, I pretty much begged my mum for the cassette tape and finally she relented.  With two duelling vocalists [and egos], the best of was the cream of their single releases.  Not a duff track, really.  And the songs I seemed to like most (and still do) was from the singer Roger Hodgson, who had departed the band a few years earlier…all classics.  

And being naive, young, unknowing, I wasn't aware that Supertramp had somehow become 'naff' or 'prog rock sellouts'.  I didn't know, and I didn't particularly care when I did found out either.  These days…any of the songs listed below are classics, staples of the FM radio format.  And despite the efforts of many to tell me Supertramp were 'crap', I have always treasured them like I did ABBA, who seemed to go through the same thing during the 1980's until the mid 1990's.  These days, if Supertramp come on, people my age just instinctively hum along.

And for mine, any day of the week, give me It's Raining Again with it's positive, up-beat lyric for someone coming through a 'bad day'.  The video, directed by Russell Mulcahy, is one that caught the early wave of MTV excitement when big budget video was in it's infancy and both irresistibly naff and fun.  It's a song I will always love and it brought me no end of joy when Alex was 2-3 and he used to ask to have this song played repeatedly on i-tunes.  In fact, it's our FOURTH highest spun track with 132 whirls in 4 years.

Yep, there will always be a special little spot in my heart and ears for a Supertramp song.  Give me an i-pod, a FM station, a karaoke machine, K-mart muzak…I'll be singing along unashamedly...

Dreamer!!!  You know you are a dreamer. Well can you put your hands in your head…oh no!

Ohhhh it's raining again…oh no my love's at an end…

Take a look at my girlfriend, she's the only one I got.  Not much of a girlfriend, never seem to get a lot...

When I was young it seemed that life was so wonderful…a miracle…oh it was beautiful, magical…

So you think you're a Romeo, playing a part in a picture-show.  Take the long way home…take the long way home…

Give a little bit.  Give a little bit of your love to me...


But always back to It's Raining Again with it's sax and bouncy piano and high vocal… 

And because of sheer bastradry, YouTube doesn't have any decent studio clips and I'm not mining live performances, so go to I-tunes and download these songs.

You can at least watch It's Raining Again, which came right towards the end of their productive years in 1982.



It's Raining Again

Dreamer

Give A Little Bit

The Logical Song

Breakfast In America

Take The Long Way Home

Hide In Your Shell

Goodbye Stranger

Bloody Well Right



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