It has been some time since I last wrote here - and I cant pretend it isnt hard bringing myself to it now after all these months. I have hermited myself away since we toured to the US in August/Sept 09. Necessarily so - It was fun but I had reached my saturation point after such a prolonged bout of the self promotion that goes hand in hand with live performance. My retarded social skills mean I exhaust myself easily and long to crawl back to my hole and hide. I cant even be bothered putting a photo up as there’s nothing to see - but imagine me grumpy, fat and balding, wedged in the doorway of my igloo.
but for those who care, I have been happy enough beavering away on a new King Curly album of songs - along with my co-writer Dan and the rest of the band. and I will mix it all down with my old collaborator Greg Walker in the next month or so. Money, as usual is nowhere to be seen so I am hoping for a benefactor in the old style of de vinci etc. (this is not a joke please email)
So - expect some kind of re-entry when we launch this new album into the world about mid year I guess. I have asked other people to sing some of the songs this time
On our way to Water Valley, Mississippi. The Southern States of America are my favourite part of the USA - despite a brooding violence that seems to come with the territory.
What is it that makes this part of the world such a hotbed of weird-good stuff like UFO sightings, Leprechaun spotting, extreme Jesus lovin’ etc? I dunno, we just dont have enough of it back home (excepting the virgin-Mary fence post at Coogee beach). Interestingly, this is the same part of the world which has those massive tornadoes we see ripping little towns apart on tv. Our own tour vehicle only narrowly escaped one (see frightening video footage below)
You begin to see now how people around here might become accustomed to strange things (cows etc) dropping out of the sky. With all this in mind I ask you now to watch carefully this news report of southern folks gathered around a tree - possibly with a Leprechaun in it. I especially like the man with the gun - gleefully preparing himself in case the Leprechaun turns nasty.
We rehearsed and performed this special dance one afternoon to thank ourhouse hosts Tara & Brent who put us up in their 1866 built home in Media, PennysylvanniaThey seemed pleased with the dance.Posted on Behalf ofKing Curly
Our tour driver Alec has turned out to be an interesting person (and a nice gentle guy). He lived on the street for 10 years and another 5 working in various new age communities so he has seen some things.
So far we have stayed at in his trailer home in Scranton PA 2 times since it is free and has been in the path of our crisscrossing travels.
We’ve found it very comfortable indeed.
With my special interest in the shower-heads of the world you can imagine my excitement when Alec showed me his bathroom ‘Rainmaker’ - I can tell you now, that it delivers water in such unashamed quantities and over such a large area, that it feels like you are in a rain storm!!
Such a contrast from the rotten little ‘Pixie 500′ I found a few years ago in an Adelaide home we stayed at (no reflection, of course, on the Good Folks who put us up).
We stopped in at Woodstock one day for lunch because Alec had always
dreamed of going there. Pretty country but otherwise a very tedious Byron
Bayesque tourist trap.
It is safe to say that many Americans expect a super-sized helping of emotion in their songs just like they do with their food portions. They like it so much that that they are prepared to overlook the authenticity of it. Evidence for this wild generalisation can be found by watching American movies/tv and listening to their music.
Extreme Reverb has been taken up most keenly as a way of super-sizing the emotional content of any given song. To stay in the game we have learnt to find the amount of reverb we are comfortable with - and then to triple it
for the performance.
The nodding of heads and closing of eyes in the audience tells me we are in the ballpark.
Everything is big here as you have heard. The meals served are impossible to finish. We have also wondered at the huge number of cars on the road - disproportionate with the employment levels in the country -so where are
they going if not to work? John suggests American’s might think driving counts as exercise (petrol is very cheap).
But we can match the Americans when we feel like it. A couple of days ago we visited the Harry Houdini Museum in Scranton PA He is a great hero of mine but I was disappointed to hear that he was only able to hold his breath for 4mins 16 seconds. When I was at my peak I could swim underwater the full length of a 50 metre pool. As part of our tour the guide asked the crowd to test themselves against Houdini and Zoe caused a great sensation by winning with a relaxed 3 minutes something (see photo).Like our most famous racehorse Pharlap, Zoe has the advantage of massively super sized internal organs.
Lots of good shows since last I wrote. Notably at Spikehill in Brooklyn NY where we had an enthusiastic crowd whichincluded people who actually already were fans reminding us what a massive population lives there.
It is a struggle for me to keep up my blog obligations at present - now 5 days into the whirlwind of our first proper US tour.
I am beginning to understand the gasps of terror from more seasoned performers on seeing our itinerary.
And I am yet to fully find my sea legs but not long now.We have left the stages of our first 3 triumphant performances in flames- though sadly there were only about 10 people to see it happen at our very first show off the rank- in Danbury, Connecticut.
But I have grown to love the ugly sadism of reality and the next two shows in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were well attended in recompense.
I must make special mention of our ‘House Concert’ in the home of Don & Jan Slepian in the foothills of the Appalachians. A wonderful night of real hospitality. Don is a spectacularly talented musician himself and began the evening with a bell and then a stirring performance of one of his own compositions (made extra noteworthy because over the course of it he employed every sample available on his synthesizer keyboard). My hyperactive imagination couldn’t shake the feeling that we were in the midst of an occult gathering of some kind. There was a dog and also a fine cat named Fiddle which could talk.
After our concert Jan told me grimly that she thought I could be the soul-twin of her brother, the resemblance being so strong - and I was then obliged to pose alongside framed photos as proof. It was fantastically strange in the happy way that all great things are in America or anywhere for that matter.
But now I must go and do some laps of a pool or something….KC
The first leg of the grand tour is over. Adelaide or Radelaide as we have come to call it, is a good place to be (though frightening at night time). It seems as though we have lots of friends there now.
We played for the first time at Trinity Church in Clarence Park. Great sound and auspicious also in that it was here Sister Janet Meade launched ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ with her ‘rock’ band sometime in the 70’s. Dave Graney & Clare Moore got married there too. so the vibes are intense.
The church we played in Mcclaren Vale had animals inside (pictured). It was nice for us to be able to rest there awhile and show our support for them.
I am writing from Singapore as King Curly prepare to depart on their
second American tour. It is hot and well-behaved here; the few pitfalls for
the unwary involve being skinned by unscrupulous merchants.
Immediately prior to my departure I took a few photos of King Curly
rehearsing new material for a forthcoming album to be released in early
2010. These rehearsals took place at an undisclosed location not too far
from Sydney and over the course of several days. Mr Steve Appel, Ms Zoe
Hauptmann , Mr James Hauptmann, Mr John Hibbard and Mr Elmo Reed were all in attendance.
Here are few photos from these sessions; if you’d like to see them all, go here. To see other photos by Mr Creighton, click here.
this piece of strange but happy news has just been forwarded to us and I choose to consider it a mighty triumph!
The blurb within promises that it is a painstaking and involved process to compile THE FIRST WORLD TOP 40 LIST!
“It is a list of THE BEST MUSIC LIST IN THE WORLD!!! (And hardest to get on!)”
“Week after week the 16 year old art and media zine MUSEA scours myspace and youtube for the very best in music from every corner of the world for the world’s first list of new great music. Culled from thousands, here are the world’s best.!”
So there you go
Best regards
KC
PS Thankyou very much to the gentleman (and his son) who baked muffins for us - and had them delivered backstage at our JSPAC show yesterday. they were very good!
King Curly making an old style cylinder recording of ‘The Bumblebee Hs No Home ‘ in Memphis.CLICK TO PLAY
As a postmortem of our trip to the USA I will touch on the interesting fact that over there we were regarded as a ‘wild’ and ‘weiiiiiird’ musical act. Once it became clear that this was a good thing we basked in the glory of it while of course feeling it was ridiculous. So how could they have mistaken us for wild!?
I believe it was simply because relative to much of whats around, King Curly is kind of loose in its presentation of music - mainly because it sounds better that way but also because it provides more excitement for us to not over-rehearse (or even to rehearse at all)
This is in contrast with a new musical movement I have been watching hatch with horror over recent years. And it has now slid from its monstrous spotted egg. Nowadays many performers in music and acting have been schooled in the art of what I can only describe as choreographed emotion. The intention no doubt is to exhibit an impossible spectrum of hyper-emotions within the limited stage time. In America I saw a musician REMOVE HIS GLASSES AND POCKET THEM AT THE SAME MOMENT MID-SONG IN THREE SEPERATE PERFORMANCES! Once I had gotten over my amazement that he could do that and play the guitar at the same time, it dawned on me that this was a planned device to show he looked good with them both on and off. I also saw many ‘jenuine’ tears of both sorrow and joy shed and it made me feel most uncomfortable - but to my relief the audience looked nonplussed, reinforcing my conviction that the perfect forgery is yet to be made.
As usual we can probably blame it on tv, and shows like ‘Idol’. (which I often watch) but it has now become a serious impediment for artists everywhere. I read somewhere about Clint Eastwood lamenting the fact that fame had meant loosing touch with regular folks and having to rely on his fading memory of what normal life was like in order to create his characters. Many Hollywood actors nowadays learn their craft by watching old movies and tv and so like Chinese whispers, it soon
must become unclear what a primary emotion should look like. Actors like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise just cant go outside anymore and that’s why they don’t seem so great in movies anymore. THEYVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO ACT NORMAL. Most of the billboards in West Hollywood feature Australian actors. Hollywood producers have realised they must outsource if they want those old-time primitive emotions.
Hugh Jackman hosting the Oscars was like watching like a panther in a room full of pigeons. He was terrifyingly, magnificently ‘wild’ as he turned it on for the petrified Hollywood elite. We were watching from our Super 8 Hotel in Memphis - swollen with pride and dirty Dominoes pizza.
We are going back to North America in the later part of this year to do something like a proper tour from Canada to Tennessee over 5 weeks.
