Croc Attack (1986-1991) was very different from Road Menace. For a start the sound was a lot more “raw” and perhaps a little bit angry to boot. Not punk by any stretch, but just a bit angry. Because we were a three piece we decided to “muddy” up the guitar sound with phasers, flangers, distortion and other guitar effects as well as beef up the drumming a bit more. I also tried to be a little more “busy” on the bass and EQ’d it to try and make it sound a bit more like a tinny, treble-y sounding bass. I guess at the time I felt that I would have to try and help flesh out the guitar sound and make the bass a little more melodic. I’m not sure if it worked but my bassplaying got a little bit better anyhow. Not that I felt I was that good, but I was adequate.

It didn’t take that long for us to throw a few songs together and eventually we had enough to start playing live shows. We grabbed “Cutt Back” from Road Menace’s set list as it was originally written by Baz and Duncan in the first place before being “stolen” by Road Menace. In my view Croc Attack did the better version of this song by far.

In 1987-88 we recorded a four track demo cassette and started hawking it around shops and venues to get work. The cassette was called “L.C.L.Q.” which stood for Low Cost, Low Quality. We recorded the tracks in the “Blue Room”, where we used to rehearse. Baz and I shared the vocals but, really, we were kinda looking out for someone else to do the vocals. We were also looking for another guitarist (though not very hard I must say) but nothing really came of that. In late 1988 though we did manage to get ourselves a lead vocalist called Erik (real name Richard Millard).

We kept on playing the pub and club scene and writing more songs. I left most of the lyric writing up to Richard and we ended up with some pretty strange stuff. One of the songs we came up with was called “Dementia” and I always loved the line “Dementia, it’s on my mind”. Richard couldn’t quite finish all of the lyrics though so I helped out with writing them. I had no idea until afterwards that the song was about Richard’s own grandmother! Sheese!

In 1989 we went to The Phantom Tollbooth Studios and recorded Dementia as a single, with another original track called “Grunge Swamp”, which was an instrumental, as the B-side. The record was completely self-funded but we did manage to get an independent record company to distribute the record for us. It was cool to go through the whole process of recording, processing, designing, printing and manufacturing and I learned a lot about it. When it came to producing the artwork for our own label, Duo Mondrian, the designer misheard what I said and asked “What? Huey will drown?”. That sounded a lot funnier than Duo Mondrian and so our record label quickly became Huey Will Drown – featuring a “Disney-like” character seemingly holding a slice of toast in each hand? Go figure? The cover of the record is primarily from a college project by my then girlfriend which featured saliva in cling wrap! It kinda looked a bit like some sort of “brain chemistry” and so it made a good image for dementia. The back of the cover features us all standing around a pool at an artists colony called “Montsalvat”. I’m the third from the left.

When I went to pick up the finished records from the pressing plant I could hear someone in the background singing the chorus to Dementia, so that kinda made my day. We ended up pressing 500 vinyl singles and giving out some of them to various radio stations around town. Some of the alternative radio stations gave it some airplay and it was cool to hear something that I’d done on the radio. We didn’t sell a huge amount of copies but we didn’t care!

Unfortunately later that year Duncan was suffering from some type of repetitive strain syndrome in his arms and had to give up playing the drums. We were able to find another cool drummer, Steve Kolakowski, to take on the job for us. His first gig though was very funny, from memory. He was playing all of the songs way too slow and I went over to him and yelled “Faster. Faster”, but he kept on going at exactly the same pace – even though he said “OK, I’ll go faster”

By the end of 1990 the band was kinda stagnating for no apparent reason. I thought it may have been because of the songs themselves so I decided to “prostitute” myself a bit and do a whole lot of research on up and coming alternative bands and then try to come up with some new sounds. Baz and I worked on some really cool new songs – very different from our previous stuff and a lot harder edged – and then we started rehearsing them in the studio with the other guys. It wasn’t enough for Baz though as he had “issues” with Richard and had decided to leave the band. Of course I didn’t realize that he had a problem with Richard until some years later. If I’d known at the time I probably would’ve voted to kick Richard out and keep Baz. Unfortunately for the band though I also decided to leave because my heart really wasn’t into it anymore since the other two original members had left. It seemed like the right decision for me at the time, but I felt bad for getting Steve involved in the band only to disappoint him later on.

In 1996 we had a reunion gig and played to about 400 people in a very hot and sweaty venue. It was an enjoyable show and the three original members were back and playing again – for one night at least! The following songs come from a promotional cassette, called “Purge”, that I put together just prior to the show. It features demo versions recorded at “The Laundrette” where we had our studio set up. Although the versions of Dementia and Grunge Swamp differ to the ones that were on the single I thought I’d put them here instead. Besides, I couldn’t be bothered setting up the record player just yet.

The descriptions of the songs are taken from the “liner notes” on the cassettes.

Mystery Girl – This song marked a change of direction for Croc Attack. Baz and my vocal talents were no longer necessary once Richard joined the band – that was his department. Duncan and Baz came up with the original riffs, while I wrote most of the words. Baz filled in any blank spaces with his lyrics. One strange thing about this song is that although we never released it as a single we did manage to make a music video for it. I have no idea why but it seemed like a good thing to do at the time and it was a lot of fun. We ended up piling about 100 or so people into an old laundrette – where I lived at the time – and filmed a part live/part conceptual video. Then we all partied afterwards!

Grunge Swamp – At the time it seemed to us that we would not be accepted musically in the alternative scene unless we played a specific style. We didn’t know how to write songs that people wanted to hear. At the time we were definitely angry young men, hence Grunge Swamp – our ode to the alternative music scene at the time. No lyrics were necessary – the instruments did all the talking for us.

Dementia – Lyrically a throwback to the old Road Menace days, i.e bizarre! Richard and I wrote the words. I was just making up stuff that rhymed and sounded mysterious, but I think Richard was writing a potted history of his grandmothers’ life. I’m not sure how the music came to be so I can’t comment. This song became our first, last and only record – which meant that we’d finally made it onto radio. The version here, however, is an earlier incarnation.

Cutt Back – One of the Croc Attack songs! Although Road Menace played and recorded it first, Cutt Back was the first collaboration between Baz and Duncan who created it in Baz’s bedroom, alternatively known as the “Icebox”. Baz played it at a Road Menace rehearsal and the band added it to their playlist. Croc Attack’s version is harder and a bit dirtier and, to my mind, is a much better product. This is a later version than the one recorded for L.C.L.Q.

In It’s Own Time – Written by Daniel Jach from Road Menace, and released on his first tape “Sad And Lonely Roads”. I really liked this song and asked Dan if he minded us playing it? He gave us the chords and the lyrics and we gave it an up tempo beat and an extra line in the chorus. Still one of my favorite Croc Attack songs today.

Here’s the songs! Once again please excuse the muddy mixdowns. These ones seem particularly “bassy”

Mystery Girl

Grunge Swamp

Dementia

Cutt Back

In It’s Own Time

Online I’ve been creating a heap of websites for friends and/or for special interests of mine. I had planned to do “100 websites in 100 days” to (a) See if I could do it and (b) Get a lot of sites up very quickly. This didn’t go to plan however — mainly because it’s difficult (well for me anyway) to think of 100 different websites and construct them in such a short time….and the fact that the websites themselves would not exactly be what you would consider as “quality affairs” by any stretch of the imagination. Nonetheless, part way into the exercise I decided to change tack and spend more time on building up the quality of the sites that I was working on rather than increase the quantity. To this end I feel that I’ve been somewhat successful but there’s always room for improvement.

Obviously coding, setting up and writing content takes quite a bit of time and I’d have to say that I’ve found myself being a little “burnt out” at times and having to pull back a bit. In this regard I’ve tended to do a lot more offline activities as well as just chilling out in front of the idiot box. There’s a lot to be said for just sitting back and doing nothing at times like these.

Earlier this year Amy and I caught up with Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer again and we were able to see, first hand, the guitar that we’d made being used on stage during a Posies gig. We’d made the guitar so freaking fast that it wasn’t quite finished when I presented it to Ken way back in December 2000. It was almost done but the top nut needed to be filed and the guitar strung up and tuned etc. (Ken got all of this stuff done in Seattle as far as I know). I’ve talked about the making of the guitar on here before so, if anyone is interested, you can do a search for it in the archives.

Anyhow, the verdict: I simply could not see how all of the sounds that Ken squeezed from that guitar actually came to be — I was simply blown away by the stuff he was doing and I was hugely impressed — and relieved — that the instrument sounded so good, as I really had no idea beforehand what it would sound like. I had employed a few methods and ideas that I hadn’t done before in making an instrument so it was good to know that it all went together well. Ken had told me, via email, that the guitar was his single-most treasured worldly possession — which was great for that ego of mine I must add — but I just had no idea of how it sounded in real life. I also couldn’t believe the energy I saw on the stage that night. It was just fantastic though, at one stage, I thought to myself “how the hell is that guitar staying together?” before realizing that if it did begin to spectacularly unravel on stage and spontaneously combust then we could just assemble a new “team” and make a brand new guitar, no probs….

…Speaking of which we still need to do just that for Jon some time.

After the show we partied with the guys for a while afterwards at a club run by Wally Meanie, which was pretty cool. Late into the night — actually it was the morning really — we said goodnight and went on our way.

It’s probably not the best time to call it quits for this post as there’s a heck of a lot of stuff I haven’t mentioned, however I’ll do so now so as I’ll have something to talk about for the next post (hopefully tomorrow).

Until then….

I had considered remastering them from scratch but that sounded like too much hard work and I don’t really have the enthusiasm for that nowadays…..not like I did in days past where I would be at a mixing desk almost 24/7 and forgetting about food, drink, sex and sleep. Nope, around about 1991-92 I basically stopped creating music and threw my artistic talents (artistic being subjective of course) into other arenas.

At one stage during my musical life I think I was in about three or four bands at once? A “poppy” alternative jangle guitar band, a grungy guitary three piece, a goth band and a classic standards soul type band. It was a lot of work! At the same time though it was a lot of fun and I got to play with some really cool musicians. At various times I was able to play live on stage and in pubs and clubs in front of people, rehearse and record in studios, make records and tapes and video clips and even hear my stuff on the radio. I never made it “big”, but that wasn’t the issue. Creating the music in the first place was.

I also did solo stuff, on and off. Since my primary instrument was the bass guitar I had to learn other instruments to help fill out the sound of the musical pieces I was working on. It was the “electronic age” though so, in many ways, it was easy enough to do this. On some of my solo work though I ended up playing guitar, bass, piano, drums, keyboards and do the programming for drum machines and sequencers as well as any “special effects” that I wanted to add. Plus any vocals of course. It was fun but the results were mixed. Still, I managed to get certain things out of my system so it was good from that point of view.

Rather than put all of my stuff up at once I might spread a sample of it out a bit over the next few weeks or months. Today I’m putting up some tracks from one of the last bands I was in – the poppy alternative jangle guitar band called The Tide.

The Tide (1986-1989) had already been a working band by the time I joined them. They consisted of Rick Chandler (vocals, guitars), Bill Jurkovic (vocals, guitars), and Bill’s brother David (on drums). Their bass guitarist, Ivan James, had left and so they were essentially bassless The thing that sold me on wanting to join them was the music itself. It was poppy, well written jangly guitar and just what I was into at the time. I think the thing that sold them on me was the fact that I worked for Australia’s largest guitar manufacturer! We weren’t together for that long (I can’t remember really? Maybe 8 months? A year possibly?) but it was fun and definitely a good experience for me. Of course I spent quite a bit of money in rehearsal and recording studios but what the hell!

The Tide had already released a single before I joined them and it had done quite well on the alternative charts here. We had a tentative deal with Rubber Records to make an E.P. (in vinyl folks! Remember those?) so we went through a lot of songs to get the “mix” just right. That in itself was a bit annoying for me because I would start off having to learn maybe 6 or 8 new songs during each rehearsal only to have half of them thrown out and discarded by the next rehearsal. In short I was learning songs I was probably never going to play again! That was more than a little frustrating.

About the only other frustrating thing I can remember was the fact that we spent all the time rehearsing and NOT ACTUALLY playing one gig! None! Nada! Now anyone who has ever been in a band would know that it’s when you play in front of a crowd that you really hone your skills and find out what works and what doesn’t, but any amount of pleading with the guys to play live seemed to fall on deaf ears. The trouble was that the other guys wanted things to be “perfect” before they played in front of people but you really shouldn’t do it that way. You need to go out there and just do it!

It’s not that they hadn’t played live before….in fact I think they played quite a few gigs as The Tide and, before that, The Mynah Birds. I never knew why we didn’t just get out there and play but I knew it was good. With no impetus and no feedback to work from it was only going to be a short while before everything started to stagnate. Once that happened there was no turning back and the band eventually broke up. It was a shame because I felt that, at the time, we could’ve actually got somewhere. It was not to be the case however, though I still had a lot of fun being in the band.

There’s a bit of a “footnote” to all of this though. My “good tape” I had of the band’s recordings I actually gave away to one of the big music promoters here when I met up with R.E.M. in Sydney. This, of course, left me with tapes where the quality/mixing wasn’t so good and that’s still all I have here now. It’s no biggie, but it would’ve been cool to have better mixes of the songs.

What I guess is a little disturbing – though, in truth, I’m not that worried about it (and actually find it quite flattering if it’s true) – is that some six or eight months later a very popular band, who were also managed by by the promoter I gave the tape to, seemed to have a song very similar to one of ours that was on the tape. I don’t think any of the other guys were that worried though as they probably all felt the same way as I did.

I still hear about Bill from time to time. He’s apparently in the film industry now and we have mutual friends. I haven’t seen him since the band broke up but I do have his phone number somewhere so maybe I’ll call him up sometime? I’m not sure what Rick and David are doing but it’s probably something equally creative.

Anyhow, here’s the songs! Once again please excuse the muddy mixdowns.

Yesterday Tomorrow

Before She’s Gone

(I Saw Her) Walking

That’s That Girl

Islands In The Night

RAGE (the best music video show on the entire planet) played some cool stuff last night – Mercury Rev, Bright Eyes, Kings Of Leon, Sonic Youth and more. It’s only shows on Friday and Saturday nights but the cool thing is that it plays all night and into the morning. It’s also good for the indie bands that probably have a hard time nowadays (like when’s that ever changed?). Every Saturday night they have guest programmers – local artists and international. Last nights show was programmed by the Black Keys and I liked it a lot! I wonder if I can hook up something so that Ken Stringfellow can program RAGE when he’s here – that’s if he’s not already done it before? Worth thinking about I guess?

I got a bit emotional before. I went into the library to look for something and found a box of love letters from Amy instead – so I sat down and read a few, reminisced, smiled and shed a tear. Not a great idea if you want to keep functioning continuously. Needless to say I had to take a 10 minute “me time” break to get back to normal again. Mmmmmm, no doubt we’ll talk about Ames at the lunch today? It might not be as much fun as I previously thought?

On the subject of Ames…..I think I’m a little annoyed that her mom or sister haven’t called me “on the sly” as it were. I mean I want to pick their brains as to how it is over there and what’s been happening. All I’m getting is Amy’s side of things and that’s not that helpful since she’s very good at covering up her illness on the telephone. I’m not sure on how the rest of the family are thinking now that Amy’s back with them. Mmmmmm, might see if I can’t chase them up early next week?

Ohh, and in case anyone is wondering…..As far as I know Amy doesn’t read this blog at all – though she is aware of it and happy that I’m finally doing one! I can’t say I’m actually worried about it if she does read it though because the Amy I know and love would be fine with what I’ve said here. She might be a little annoyed by one or two things but she also knows where I’m coming from and won’t hold anything against me……Well, only when she’s ill she will. When she’s well she’s cool about things. Besides, she knows I tell it as I see it and I don’t tend to keep things locked and bottled up inside for very long – if at all. She also knows that I love her very much.

So to both of my mums/moms (neither of which actually reads this), HAPPY MOTHERS DAY !!!