Ahh, I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, VulgarGrad are pretty damned awesome, though that's pretty much the only ska tune they do. They only formed earlier this year and have built up a big cult following in Melbourne amazingly quickly, though unfortunately they're on hiatus for a few months while the lead singer is in Poland. I was lucky enough to pick up the C.D. at their last show. Try to imagine about 100 people crammed into a tiny bar all dancing madly to that tune!
Anyway, for those who are interested here are the track details I compiled - all four and a half pages of it. Feel free to skim!
1) Franz Liszt: "Ave Maria d’Arcadelt"
Phillip Thomson: piano
From
The Complete Piano Music, volume 4 (1995)
In addition to being a great composer, Liszt was also a wonderful arranger of other people’s compositions. – in this instance, of a piece by Jacob Arcadelt, a Dutch composer of the 16th century. Liszt struggled with his Catholicism throughout his life, and in true Romantic fashion expressed his inner turmoil in his art. When I listen (or, indeed, play) this piece of music, it’s as if I can hear Liszt’s struggle to resolve his doubts and anguish, and the result is something truly beautiful.
2) Darren Hanlon: "Hiccups" (Hanlon)
Darren Hanlon: lead vocals, guitar, banjo
Lee Hillam: backing vocals
Geoff Towner: bass guitar
Bree van Reyk: drums, vibraphone
From
Hello Stranger (2002)
Darren Hanlon is one of my favourite singer-songwriters. His wit and love of words – not to mention his seemingly effortless talent for writing simple, catchy melodies – can be clearly heard throughout this song, which is a crowd favourite whenever he performs. He’s also one of the all-too-few Australian artists who sings in his native accent.
3) The Sundays: "Can’t Be Sure" (Gavurin/Wheeler)
Harriet Wheeler: lead vocals
David Gavurin: guitar
Paul Brindley: bass
Patrick Hannan: drums
From
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (1990)
Possibly one of the best pop bands ever – and this song is from what is certainly one of the greatest pop albums. The Sundays virtually defined the modern indie-pop sound way back in 1990 with songs such as this one. A special moment to listen out for is when the drums finally kick in in full and the whole song opens up like a flower.
4) Sam Cooke: "Chain Gang" (Cooke)
Sam Cooke: lead vocals
others unknown
From
One Night Stand: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 (1963)
One of the earliest soul stars, and one of the greatest. Sam Cooke was Otis Redding’s favourite singer, and judging by the reaction of the audience in this recording from a club in Florida in the early ’60s, Redding wasn’t alone in that opinion. Cooke’s studio recordings are generally much more polished affairs – but this is the singer in his element and at his best. Like Redding, Cooke died tragically young: in 1964 he was shot by the manager of a hotel in Los Angeles.
5) Deborah Conway: "Buried Treasure" (Conway)
Deborah Conway: lead vocals, guitar
Willy Zygier: guitar, backing vocals
Bill McDonald: bass
Michael Barker: drums
From
Epic Theatre (Limited edition release with the album
Bitch Epic) (1994)
I’m a sucker for a good live album, and this has long been one of my favourite performances, from one of my favourite albums. Deborah Conway has been around on the Australian music scene since the ’80s, when she was part of the group Do Re Mi. Her tough yet cheeky image is perfectly captured in this song.
6) The Waterboys: "Old England" (Scott)
Mike Scott: lead vocals, electric piano
Anthony Thistlethwaite: tenor saxophone
Steve Wickham: fiddle
Trevor Hutchinson: bass
Dave Ruffy: drums
From
The Live Adventures of the Waterboys (released 1998 – recorded 1986)
Recorded live at the Glastonbury Festival in 1986, when the Waterboys were at the height of their popularity. The Thatcher years in Britain produced a lot of great protest songs, and you could be forgiven for thinking when you first hear the intro on electric piano that this is going to be in the worst tradition of stiff and earnest calls to arms. But then, in a moment of sheer musical brilliance, the drums and the bass enter when you least expect them to, shifting the whole rhythm of the song sideways and making it impossible not dance along. Lyrically this is one of Mike Scott’s strongest songs – particularly the 4th verse, which builds to a damning indictment of English society in the 1980s. This performance is simply amazing.
7) Underground Lovers: "Dream It Down" (Bennie/Giarrusso)
Maurice Argiro
Glenn Bennie
Vincent Giarrusso
Philippa Nihill
Derek J. Yuen
precise credits unknown
From
Dream It Down (1994)
The title-track from what I think is one of the best Australian albums of the 1990s. The Underground Lovers were a much-loved Melbourne band whose members have since gone on to various solo recording projects and – in one case – even the directing of a feature film.
Vincenzo Bellini: "Ah! Non Credea Mirarti"
Maria Callas: soprano
Nicola Monti: tenor
Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Antonino Votto: conductor
From
La Sonnambula (1957)
I first heard this when I went to see Atlantis, a documentary about marine life by Luc Besson. The majority of that film was scored with god-awful rock/pop songs composed specially for the film – and then, in one scene, out of the mire rises this beautiful music by Bellini. Maria Callas’s singing voice was by no means perfect, but it had a wonderful humanity that leant an extraordinary depth of emotion to whatever she sang. Bellini’s operas are pretty silly, really – La Sonnambula is all about a sleep-walking young woman who is mistaken for a ghost – but he could sure write a lovely melody.
9) Billy Bragg: "Everywhere" (Trooper/Griffin)
Billy Bragg: vocals, guitar
Peter Buck: mandolin
Elliet Mackrell: violin
Cara Tivey: piano
Wiggy: bass
From
Don’t Try This At Home (1991)
You must have known you'd be getting this one! One of those songs that gets you right in the gut. It’s not afraid to be complex about how it deals with war (note the line “I believe to be here is right”), and it’s all the more powerful because of that.
10) David Beniuk: "In Goulburn" (Beniuk)
David Beniuk: vocals, guitar
From
Port (1996)
A terrific singer-songwriter from Wollongong, New South Wales. Goulburn is a country town about 200 kilometres south-east of Sydney, and it’s best known for two things: the Big Merino (a giant concrete statue of a merino ram) – and the Goulburn jail. In the best tradition of protest/folk music, this song manages to elicit the listener’s sympathy for somebody – a prison inmate – who would not normally be given a second thought; in other words, it humanises the character. This is done not only through describing the prisoner’s hardships, but also in revealing how far he’s fallen (at one point in the song the character laments “I played for Parramatta” – referring to the Parramatta Eels, a first-grade rugby league team from the working-class Western Suburbs of Sydney), while never flinching from his flaws (“I’ve got a wife, a girlfriend and three kids”).
11) Billie Holiday: "On the Sentimental Side" (Burke/Monaco)
Billie Holiday: vocals
Buck Clayton: trumpet
Benny Morton: trombone
Lester Young: tenor saxophone
Teddy Wilson: piano
Eddie Durham: guitar
Walter Page: bass
Jo Jones: drums
From
Lady Day – the Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944, disc 4 (released 2001 – recorded 1938)
Not one of her more famous performances, but my absolute favourite. It’s so intimate, with just Holiday accompanied by a guitar (the full band doesn’t come in until right at the end). A special moment is when Benny Morton steps up to the microphone for a beautifully simple trombone solo – it’s not much more than just a run-through of the song’s melody, but just listen to how he plays it! The guitar here is played by Eddie Durham (also a fine trombone player), who was one of the very first musicians to start experimenting with creating electric guitars way back in the ’30s.
12) Iris DeMent: "Our Town" (DeMent)
Iris DeMent: vocals, guitar
Mark Howard: guitar
Stuart Duncan: fiddle
Pete Wasner: piano
Al Perkins: dobro
Roy Husky, Jr.: bass
From
Infamous Angel (1992)
Pure, classic country – real country, that is. I (along with many other people) first heard this song when it was featured in the final episode of Northern Exposure. For the next 10-odd years it resided in my mind as just the merest memory of something beautiful, until earlier this year a throwaway remark in a review of DeMent’s latest album finally answered my question: “Who sang that song?” All this time later, it’s still as perfect as I remember it being.
13) Miles Davis Quintet: "Bye Bye Blackbird" (M. Dixon/R. Henderson)
Miles Davis: trumpet
John Coltrane: tenor saxophone
Red Garland: piano
Paul Chambers: bass
“Philly” Joe Jones: drums
From
’Round About Midnight (1956)
This is the perfect jazz performance, from one of the great jazz groups of all time. This, the first Miles Davis Quintet, was together for barely a year, yet in that time they managed to record no less than six albums. This tune is from their final album, and is – in my opinion – the pinnacle of their output. This was the most perfectly balanced and contrasted of bands: the most famous aspect of it is the partnership between the introspective yet self-confident Davis and the extroverted yet still slightly uncertain Coltrane; but (as with all great bands) the foundation lies in the brilliant rhythm-section. Garland, Chambers, and Jones function as a perfectly integrated unit, and yet all three players – indeed, all five players – have distinctive musical personalities. For me, a (lapsed) piano player, the highlight of this recording comes after Davis and Coltrane have taken their solos, when Garland plays what is my favourite piano solo in all of jazz.
14) Elle Osborne: "Still I Love Him" (Trad. arr. Osborne/additional words Osborne)
Elle Osborne: vocals, fiddle
From
Testimony (1999)
Proof that not all folk music is deadly earnest! As with David Beniuk, I first saw Elle Osborne when she performed at the National Folk Festival in Canberra about five years ago. She’s an English folk musician who, on stage at least, plays fiddle and sings simultaneously – no mean feat! The enjoyment she so clearly gets from reviving old folk songs is infectious. And it’s pronounced “Elly”!
15) X: "The World’s a Mess; It’s In My Kiss" (Doe/Cervenka)
John Doe: vocals, bass
Exene Cervenka: vocals
Billy Zoom: guitar
D.J. Bonebrake: drums
Ray Manzarek: organ
From
Los AngelesBack when they made real punks on the West Coast! X were one of the classic bands from the original punk era, documenting life on the fringes of Los Angeles, their adopted home town: this song comes from their debut album, which over the course of nine tracks covers topics as diverse as date-rape, suburbia, and the gay cruising scene. The album was produced by Ray Manzarek of the Doors fame, who was a great champion of the band in its early days and who even played organ on a couple of their tracks – including this one.
16) Desmond Dekker: "Get Up Edina" (Dekker)
Desmond Dekker: vocals
others unknown
From
Israelites: Anthology 1963-1999 (released 2001 – recorded 1963)
The King of Ska. Dekker became friends with Bob Marley while both were working at Standard Engineering in Kingston – but with or without youthful links to Marley, Dekker’s work stands on its own. His most famous song is probably Israelites; Get Up Edina is not one of his better-known performances but it’s a highlight for me.
17) VulgarGrad: "Anarchy is Our Mother" (Tsoy)
Jacek Koman: vocals
Andrew Tanner: bass balalaika, backing vocals
Svetlana Bunic: MIDI organ, backing vocals
Renato Vacirca: drums, backing vocals
Ros Jones: trombone, trumpet, backing vocals
Nara Demasson: guitar, backing vocals
From
VulgarGrad: Popular Songs of the Russian Underclass (2005)
A little taste of the Melbourne music scene for you. VulgarGrad are a local band who formed earlier this year and have quickly built up a sizeable cult following. The singer is a well-known actor of Polish origin; and the trombone-player and the drummer are both friends of mine! This song describes how a soldier, walking home one night, happens upon a group of young men drinking and swearing and generally carrying on. On demanding to know who their mother is, they reply: “Anarchy is our mother, and our father is a glass of port!”
18) The Four Tops: "I Got a Feeling" (Holland/Dozier/Holland)
Levi Stubbs: lead vocals
Renaldo “Obie” Benson: backing vocals
Lawrence Payton: backing vocals
Abdul “Duke” Fakir: backing vocals
others unknown
From
On Top (1966)
Forget the Temtations, forget the Supremes – for me, the best group at Motown was “the Tops”. Levi Stubbs’ voice simply oozes soul, and the group never underwent a line-up change or had to deal with an out-of-control ego. Amazingly, “I Got a Feeling” wasn’t released as a single, making it only to the b-side of “Bernadette”, a single off the next album. One of the great lost treasures of the Motown library.
