Se press Release hd steve Kilbey (The Church) New Zealand tour July 07
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WC 1212 words PD 9 October 1997 SC DAITEL PG 60
LA English CY (c) 1997 Nationwide News Proprietary Ltd LP CHARLES Thompson - aka Frank Black, aka Black Francis - is apologetic. No, not for killing off what many consider to be the greatest rock band o f all time, but for being three hours late in calling AAA. I was giving my girlfriend a massage, he explains from his home in LA. Its not as hot as it sounds. She wasnt feeling well so I was just lazing around rubbing oil into her back and then we got caught up watching some tabloid TV show. The Black one is on the phone to discuss the release of the new 17-track retrospective, Death To The Pixies. (The set also comes with a bonus 21-track live disc.) Its a surprising subject to be chatting about considering the King Pixie has gone out of his way in recent years to disassociate himself from his already legendary recent past. What can I say? he stumbles when asked to define what his Pixies meant to him. It didnt really work out. It worked out okay I guess. I mean, we made five records, did some successful tours, sold a few T-shirts. TD It was fine. If theres anything I miss, its that I dont do any of those songs any more. I wouldnt have closed the door so much had it not been the perception of that band in the mind of the fan or the rock writer. When I was touring with The Pixies, it was a nightly thing, having hundreds of people down the front singing along to every syllable. That was kind of exciting. I cant deny that. Another thing he cant deny is the pride he feels in having the likes of Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Bob Mould, Thom Yorke, Billy Corgan and Neil Young publicly rate The Pixies as their favourite band. I honestly feel somewhat moved and I feel glad that the club has accepted me so enthusiastically, especially the more popular members of the club. I appreciate it. But Charles is quick to reiterate that he really doesnt think about that band much at all. In fact, with the exception of old friend and guitarist Joey Santiago, he hasnt even seen the other Pixies for ages. But all these years on, has he been able to formulate an opinion on the legacy of The Pixies? Charles struggles to find an answer. We honestly werent about any kind of scene or fashionable sound, he finally concedes. We existed in a pop vacuum about as much as any band could, other than some kind of f...ed up experiment where you make people live in a cave and never hear rock music and then ask them to make rock music. It definitely was our own sound. Im not saying it was the most amazing sound that ever was but it was ours. LIVID '97 lived up to its 11-year-old reputation last Saturday - but not to its title. The mood among the crowd was almost the antithesis of the day's name. Livid crowds are some of the most peaceable to be found. While Saturday promised scorching sun and similar sounds, the sky was mostly overcast, saving many punters from heat-induced intoxication. During the sensational set by New Zealand band Shihad, one of the more incongruous sights of the day occurred. Among the moshers, three giant Australian Republican Movement placards, made from corrugated, plastic-coated cardboard, were being brandished about. They take their crowd surfing very seriously in Queensland. Watching punters flood in through the gates, we wondered why the hell so many of the Livid-devotees were carrying boogie boards. Soon, everything became clear - standing on the boards, supported by a lower tier of fans, they ride the "wave" for as long as they can. It looks a lot of trouble, but for a few seconds you would get one helluva view of the likes of Veruca Salt and Powderfinger. Other highlights from the main stages were Cake, Ben Folds Five and Reef. The Superjesus got the Big Top oval going early in the day, as did Cordrazine on the very small Zoo stage, where a chubby Steve Kilbey and a very relaxed Ed Kuepper did their respective things in the evening. The Sneaker Pimps failed to live up to their excessive hype, as did Ween, who seemed to have forgotten the joke for a moment. Dinosaur Jnr improved on their form in recent Sydney shows. Devo were the headline act, but after 15 years away, they couldn't quite bridge the timewarp. KYLIE Minogue continues her quest for a life outside that carved by publicity machines and tabloid newspapers. With the waifish one's hotly-anticipated new record delayed until January, Kylie has begun formulating plans for hitting the road in true rock 'n' roll style. Minogue's new single, Some Kind Of Bliss, features formerly unheard of hard guitars and Stones-ish piano. Hence her desire to embark on a full-scale tour with a full-on band. "I say these things to my record company and they look at me with dismay," chirped Minogue from London. "I want to have a band and I want to hit the road. I want to run across stages and jump out of cakes. "They say `Minogue, you're not coming out of a cake. You're meant to be a serious artist'. "I say `I know, I know, but I'm still coming out of a cake'." HUMAN Nature's Toby Allen came out of selfimposed exile this week to reject rampant press ramblings about his outfit's over-indulgence in a diet of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. "We're all very faithful to our partners," scowled the Tobster. "The drugs - definitely not. "We occasionally have a big night and I guess people call alcohol a drug but we're not addicted or anything. We just enjoy ourselves. "And rock 'n' roll? I suppose it's more a pop 'n' roll. That sums up what we do." Don't you just want to hug them? Nice boys Human Nature wind up their Australian tour with a gig at the Entertainment Centre on Saturday. Supports include Az Yet and Real McCoy. ANKLE-NOTE: Livid promoter Peter Walsh was rushed to hospital during Devo's closing set. Walsh broke his ankle and elbow after falling off the stage. He was apparently running over to stop a fireworks display that launched prematurely. TOUR NEWS: Pearl Jam has confirmed an Australian tour for the end of February. The shows will coincide with the release of a new album. Indie guitar darlings Teenage Fanclub are also set to return to our shores. The Scots will be here in December. As will soloist Tanya Donelly, she of Throwing Muses, Breeders and Belly fame. On to January ... Prodigy, Black Grape and the Orb have confirmed as some of the headliners for the son-of-Big Day Out festival, Starbait. To be staged in Sydney on Australia Day, a very special venue is currently in negotiation. If it comes through, only 15,000 punters will be allowed in. Won't that cause a rush. TABLE AVAILABLE / NATIONAL TOP TEN. (c) Nationwide News Proprietary Ltd, 1997. NS
GCAT : Political/General News | GENT : Arts/Entertainment RE AUSNZ : Australia and New Zealand | AUSTR : Australia AN Document daitel0020010930dta9000qk HD Riding the waves of success. BY By MARCUS CASEY. WC 1430 words PD 11 October 1997 SN Daily Telegraph SC DAITEL PG 34
LA English CY (c) 1997 Nationwide News Proprietary Ltd LP Australian surf companies dominate a global market worth $5 billion, but you are as likely to find the guys running these firms on a wave, not behind a desk. That's why they get it so right, marketing writer MARCUS CASEY reports There's a boring-looking warehouse in Balmain where a car repair shop shares a wall with an earthy recording studio next door. This second space, owned by Steve Kilbey of The Church, is filled with interesting things. TD
Images of Indian religious deities Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. A photograph of two members of 1980s girl group The Go-Go's. Both are lying naked on a bed and one is the lead singer, today's Miss Goody Two Shoes Belinda Carlisle. A post card from Tibet's "Eden Hashish Center". Moody lampshades, drab carpet decorated with gaffer-tape, a left-over salad sandwich bag, and in the studio proper, Derek Hynde. The former top professional surfer is in faded jeans and a T-shirt. He stands at a microphone, eyes closed. Moody, groove-rock driven by rumbling guitar, thick bass and a wailing blues harp fills Hynde's head space. Every now again he bangs a tambourine to a beat that only he's hearing. Hynde's never been in a band, and the studio engineer probably wouldn't let him. But Hynde enjoys immersing himself in the moment, seizing it and giving it a good eccentric shake. Today he's overseeing the recording of songs only ever heard in a surf film series called The Search, made by Rip Curl, the Torquay-based surf-wear/equipment company. The films are huge around the entire surfing world, but the music has never been released (see separate story) and it's time to get one out. The tambourine was Hynde's idea. You can do that as Rip Curl's Marketing Mechanic, which translates as global/coastal trotting company ambassador. With a Rip Curl pro-surfing demonstration team in tow, he lobs into surfing communities: South Africa, California, Biarritz in France, Seal Rocks - wherever there's a wave. He'll often pitch tents for the entourage to sleep in, then talks to and surfs with the grassiest of the market's roots - hard-core surfers. Hynde takes back what he hears to bosses at HQ. They fine-tune product design and promotion ideas according to what the ocean tribe tells Hynde. Forget about focus groups. This is a tribe, and you earn respect by passing the initiation of credibility - which is practising what you preach with the tribe. Rip Curl's "The Search" (for the ultimate waves and lifestyle) is an overall marketing campaign-cum-company mission statement which traditional marketers have little idea or understanding of. "The Search has been more effective than any campaign we've run," Hynde said, completing his tambourine experiment which didn't make the final cut. "It's all about being with the grass roots we're not advertising at them, we're out there with them. We're an important part of the whole scene, not just some corporate thing making money off it." This style has created a club-like loyalty for Australian surf companies which all have a profile much lower than their balance books would suggest (they've also made huge inroads into snow sports.) Besides sports equipment, they produce full and functional clothing and accessory ranges and even furniture. They have a casual but increasingly stylish edge, and are marked by elaborate, colourful designs, all done inhouse. (While they would like to make the finished products here, the majority are made in labour-cheap Asian factories.) Rip Curl is one of the big three in Australian surf companies. The other two are the Gold Coast's Billabong and Torquay's Quicksilver, and bubbling under are Mambo, Hot Buttered, Hot Tuna, Ocean and Earth and a host of smaller labels who survive because surfers swear and stick by them. And when they see their favourite top 20 surfer is sponsored by Quicksilver or Rip Curl or Mambo, it adds another credibility dimension other companies can only dream about. "We stay in touch with the market because the people involved at the design, sales and executive levels participate in the sports we market to - surfing, snow and wind surfing," Quicksilver Australia's marketing chief Murray Boyd said. "We sponsor athletes in these sports, and we get an association with credibility through their athletic excellence. "So we may shape what the market perceives to be credible by having association with the athletes." The companies began in the late 1960s and early 1970 as backyard operations catering to an undeveloped sport. While they've grown enormously the principals, all surfers, never left the water. That direct market contact evolved the unique positioning they now have. "I know just about all the guys who own these companies," one industry figure said. "They're big kids in big business and they turn over big money. But they do it with a surfer's soul - there's no Gordon Gecko bullshit going on there." Surfing's tribalism creates an exclusivity, and this has sheltered its industry, particularly clothing and accessories segments, from appearing to be a serious concern in corporate terms. Surfies wearing surfy stuff. It's largely deliberate. Surf companies only sell through their own stores here and overseas, or at retailers like General Pants or Just Jeans. They refuse to distribute in department stores. It's not their image. They strictly control the design of their overseas licensee stores look and what they stock. They don't want to be linked to Joe Blow's world there's no nine to five anything about them in image terms, because it's worked fine that way. Which is kind of funny. Professional body Surfing Australia is updating a 1993 industry survey, and its statistician Keith Curtain estimates the Australian surf market alone is now worth more $1 billion. Around $390 million is spent each year on clothing and accessories, with more than $30 million of that in exports. It employs - from making foam blanks to board shorts to 26 magazines - more than 7000 Australians. And these days you're just as likely to see a Billabong T-shirt and Mambo shorts on a Bourke council road worker as you are at Burleigh Heads or Bondi. "We did the survey to get the first accurate figures on the surf industry," Curtain said. "We needed to have it for various reasons, and from it we put together a learning kit for schools. "But pretty soon we had heaps of market research companies ringing up wanting a copy. Those guys have no idea about this market at all - it's a big mystery to them." Surfing Australia told them to spend their own money on research. Again, that's part of the sport's tribal nature. Those inside are suspicious of outsiders. Which makes them more attractive to many. Although you hear more about the Morrissey Edmistons and Country Roads of the fashion industry, the surf companies, combined, operate on a different level entirely. You can buy gear from them on every continent except Antarctica. Stand-out company is Mambo, established 10 years ago by former independent record label manager Dare Jennings. One comical T-shirt rapidly evolved into a $35 million a year concern with stores around Australia and in Bali, Tokyo, London and Singapore. Jennings saw a niche, and rammed a wedge into it. "I was really disappointed with surfing in the mid-80s because it had become deadly serious, the soul was gone," Jennings said. He believed the established surf companies were partly to blame. They were too hard core and exclusive in their approach. "When we came in we took a satirical approach to the established companies. We take surfing very seriously but it's not a secret club with its own code," he said. Mambo's elaborate and surreal art-work by artists like Reg Mombassa on clothing carried funny slogans - Love Is Crucial, Money Is Everything is one - and satirised itself when criticised for making clothes overseas with labels stating Made Near Australia. Its irreverence has been accepted globally. It sells furniture, surf-boards, rugs, vases, hats, watches, luggage, cups, plates - the whole lot. `When we came in we took a satirical approach to the established companies. We take surfing very seriously, but it's not a secret club with its own code' PHOTOS AND HEADLINES ONLY. (c) Nationwide News Proprietary Ltd, 1997. IN
I453 : Clothing | ICLT : Clothing/Textiles NS C21 : Output/Production | CCAT : Corporate/Industrial News RE AUSNZ : Australia and New Zealand | AUSTR : Australia AN Document daitel0020010930dtab0018g SE Entertainment Guide HD Tour News BY NICOLE BRADY WC 220 words PD 12 September 1997 SN The Age SC AGEE
PG 3 LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP
ONE OF Melbourne's boldest sons, NICK CAVE, returns later this year with band THE BAD SEEDS for his first national tour since the acclaimed 1996 Big Day Out gigs. The tour is to promote the recent album The Boatman's Call, Cave's most intimate and personal exploration to date. The shows are booked for the suitably exotic Forum Theatre, 21 to 23 November. Tickets on sale Wednesday 24 September. TD
Fresh from a national tour, HENRY ROLLINS is in the spotlight again, this time for a spoken-word tour. For the uninitiated, hardman Rollins is also a noted writer, actor and publisher. His spoken-word performances fit somewhere between storytelling, comedy and performance art. Being Rollins they are, of course, intense. He speaks to the Palais Theatre on 24 October. THE CHURCH, who are heading back to the recording studio next month, are playing shows to try out new material. With the line-up featuring Steve Kilbey, Marty Willson-Piper, Peter Koppes and Tim Powles, the gig with the BLACKEYED SUSANS at the Palace on 24 October should be a blast. New Yorker JIMI TENOR makes modern lounge music with his own blend of jazz and funk. He plays at the Prince of Wales on 2 October and the Evelyn on 3 October. NS
GCAT : Political/General News | GENT : Arts/Entertainment AN Document agee000020011005dt9c00dnb SE Saturday Extra HD Still Counting The Beat BY SHAUN CARNEY WC 1540 words PD 27 December 1997 SN The Age SC AGEE
PG 3 LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP
EVEN as a child, Stephen Cummings had music buzzing around his head. In 1967, in his suburban Melbourne home, he would take refuge with his muse. "When I was 12 or 13, I used to go to the bathroom with a tape recorder and stand in the shower stall and sing my own stuff into the tape recorder,'' he recalls. "But they would always be, like, my interpretation of someone else's songs -Daydream Believer or the Who - so it was inevitable that writing and singing was what I would do.'' Thirty years on, Cummings has written and recorded more than 200 of his own songs. His is a body of work that is, by any standard, outstanding: pop hits such as Who Listens to the Radio and How Come; modern standards - She Set Fire to the House and When Love Comes Back to Haunt You; and one of the longest-lasting advertising jingles of the past 20 years, I Feel Better Now, for Medibank Private. TD
Until recently, Cummings wished he hadn't written two-thirds of them. His songs are intimate examinations of relationships and human foibles, from the tender love poem You're a Dream ("The phone rang, yeah, too f--ing late/ A crack of light was set free/ From day to day I lose my way/ You've made all the difference to me/ You're a dream that I never want to wake up from'') to the self-explanatory urban lament Everybody's Always Pissing in the Pool. His 1989 album A New Kind of Blue stands as a chilling and occasionally amusing document of a domestic arrangement in terminal decline. (Some of the titles are Screwed Up State of Affairs; Your House is Falling; Carrying a Torch For You; Running Away, with its exasperated chorus: "Running away, I wasn't even running away''.) A lot of songwriters would be happy to be able to write just a couple of songs as good, but that's Cummings for you: idiosyncratic, strong-willed, confident of his abilities, but profoundly self-critical; a natural performer who is excruciatingly shy; an artist renowned for doing things his way who produces his best work when he collaborates with other songwriters. The list of artists who have written songs with Cummings is long and distinguished. Among his collaborators are Joe Camilleri, Dave Graney, Ross Wilson, Shane O'Mara, Andrew Pendlebury, Robert Goodge, Steve Kilbey, Bill McDonald, Jeff Burstin and Chris Abrahams. You have to either be an incredibly big-selling artist or possess a unique talent to attract that roll-call. Cummings doesn't sell a lot, but he does have two albums out, compilations of his best songs since 1977 - a solo best-of, Puppet Pauper Pirate Poet Pawn & King, and a two-CD set of his old band, the Sports, This is Really Something. They show that Cummings' considerable output has been as consistently good as any other Australian rock singer or songwriter. Dave Graney, now one of the most garlanded rock performers in the country, credits Cummings with the revival of his career in the early '90s. In his recently-published book of lyrics, It Is Written, Baby, Graney recalled: "(In 1992, when) any idea of being a recording artist was a cruel delusion, I started to think about a future as a songwriter. I saw Stephen Cummings on television talking about wanting to make a record of 'weird' songs. Knowing him kind of vaguely, I got his number and rang him up, saying: 'You want weird songs, I got a suitcase full of 'em. I'm not gonna be needing 'em ... I needed to learn some discipline and get some fresh air. Stephen's tenacity and soulful, subterranean perspective got me back into some sort of fighting shape.'' Cummings, 43, is now in better shape personally and artistically than for several years. Ten years ago, he was frustrated and occasionally bitter about the difficulties of trying to carve out a career as a solo singer. With a second child due in the autumn and his second novel, Stay Away From Lightning, to be published early next year, he has settled into a routine of daytime solitude in his Caulfield home, in the knowledge that if you want to make modern music your own way, multi-platinum success should be seen as a bonus, not a right. Indeed, so comfortable is he with life as a songwriter that he doesn't even think about it any more. "I just regard it as something I do. I have a work room in my garage and I go out to my garage every day and I'm just sitting around there and I just have a computer and I have a guitar and I have a four-track and when I think of something, I just put it down. "Most of the songs have a beginning, a middle and an end. That's because I'd get confused otherwise: I know where I am and this is how you do it. It comes from the classic period of songwriting in the late '60s, early '70s and it's just how I have learnt to do it. For some other things, I like working with other people because I spend so much time by myself that I find it drives me a bit batty and I get too introspective and thinking about everything. Music works best as something that's bouncing off other people and it's still a joyful sort of thing for me. I remember when my Escapist album came out last year and some guy from Who magazine said to me: 'That's a hell of a lot of songs' and I was like, 'Well, yeah, there were the Sports and some other things and my solo records, so it must come out at like 200 songs.' I found that depressing and I thought: 'Gee, I wish it was maybe 70. If I'd taken more care, it would have been 70.' "But now, with the Sports album and the solo compilation, I feel good about it this year because it seems to me that it was something more to be ... not proud of, but I hadn't been as slack as I thought.'' Cummings' decision to become a songwriter was a straightforward one, made early in life. "Basically, I got into this because I was a really big music fan ... I was totally obsessed by it. I went to art school because I thought that's where groups got together and where the groups came from. "I've always been a fan, always listened a lot and thought what does it mean and not just something to go out somewhere or as an aid to other activities. It's been a central thing to me. Even though every two weeks I think to myself I wish I had some other job, I don't. I'm still doing it because I do really like music.'' Despite his obsession with music, Cummings has only rudimentary skills with a guitar. Listening to his favorite albums as a teenager, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, anything by Bob Dylan or Van Morrison, he figured he could make his voice his instrument. He smiles. "I could always do it. I always knew I could sound good. That sounds vain.'' Directory: files -> 2008 2008 -> Preparedness for the Health Consequences of Climate Change as a Potential Influence on Public Health Law and Policy 2008 -> Darryl Heller Dissertation Proposal Draft April 7, 2008 Law, Labor, and Politics: Street Railways in Brooklyn and New York, 1884-1904 2008 -> Anna Palladino Professor Calvert 2008 -> Jails replace schools in the mountain region of guerrero 2008 -> University of Arkansas at Little Rock Plan No 2008 -> This is a list of search engines we (Polson Enterprises) have found helpful from time to time 2008 -> Rnib centre for Accessible Information (cai) Literature review #2 2008 -> Anne louise cohen 2008 -> Time race# Download 1.73 Mb. 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