Dave Graney - The Might of the Wolverine

“What do you think of Corey?”

Dave Graney, he of The Moodists, Dave Graney & The Coral Snakes and, most recently, Dave Graney and Clare Moore, his wife and drummer, is, of course, referring to notorious Narre Warren douchebag Corey Worthington. Graney seems to have nothing but warm fuzzies for the young hoodlum: “I liked the way he stuck it up Channel Nine…all the kid did was throw a party”. From here, I could only assume this interview would not be the run-of-the-mill Q&A I had become accustomed to.

I force myself to steer the conversation to Garney’s latest project; an APRA songwriting seminar. So, what’s the story, morning glory?

“They’re quite enjoyable…well, people who run seminars and talk about music, they’re living in a fantasy land. You know, only prize fighters know what its like to be in a fight, people can talk about and think they know about it, but only the fighters know what its like to take the blows and work on your skill…I don’t think you can really tell anyone how to do anything”.

Dave Graney is, indeed, a prize pugilist: having taken every genre under his wing at some point within his almost three decade career, Graney is long renowned as a cult Australian hero. A charmingly contemptuous soul, he has seen all the trappings of the industry: “There’s a lot of cheering on people to get on board a life of music, but it’s inevitably a bottleneck, because radio is a thing no one will mention, it doesn’t fucking play anything”. I retort that, sure they do, they play a shitload of Veronicas. This becomes less of a joke when Graney admits his fondness for The Veronicas, and his partiality for ‘Hook Me Up’ as a killer pop track. Nice one, Lisa. “I love pop music. The more throwaway it is, the better I like it” Graney affirms on his sundry tastes.

My second faux pas is admitting some people might this information surprising about him. “Who would find that surprising and why should I care about them?” Graney groans back, his caustic defense only intensifying the amalgam of fear and awe I feel towards him.

“People always talk about the fucking Beatles all the time…that’s ok, I personally can’t stand them because you can’t ever escape them…and Bob Dylan, it’s not that their better than anyone else, it’s just they can sell them over and over. Some people deserve respect like Prince or Frank Sinatra. Sinatra invented the idea of an album of songs following the same theme…. Prince is a great business pioneer as well as incredible musician…others are just talked about too much so you can’t approach their music in a simple way” Graney laments on The State of Things; the cycle and recycle of artistry, the burgeoning leap back to olden-day “legends” to match the rapidly decreasing figures of indisputable talent in our own age. This is not to say there is none; no, sir, Graney will be the first to retort on that notion: “There’s a New Zealand band called The Brunettes who I really love and I go to see them whenever they come to Melbourne. Another New Zealand band called Batrider, they’re very good…their live performance is much more thrilling than their recorded things…The Ancients….”. Graney recites various artists of which he immensely approves, but has something of contempt for modern-day punk: “I started out being excited by punk rock music…it was like a flash of a moment in a cultural way, it was beyond groups and records, it was like a mad spark…the current rock music doesn’t have any punk rock in it, it’s like nu-rock”. It’s a fun image: Graney in the heady days of punk, leathered and studded, his fist beating harder than his heart, getting caught in the wave that was the Punk Movement; the revolution. But, back to the now.

I ask Graney if he has ever felt any pressure to be more “mainstream”, more “accessible”, more “marketable”. The answer is a resounding, “I can’t do anything else but what I do, anyway”. I leave it there, because never before have I had such a great, all-encapsulating response to an average question. “I’ve always tried to make my music work in a way that’s…. like, a tempo or a beat or a lyric that jumps out at you, I do all those things that I think music should have, a bit of excitement and a bit of flash, and that’s what I like about music so that’s why I put into it”.

So, Dave, here we are in the age of technology; the digital revolution. Whaddya reckon?

“I think that people like iPods more than they like any bands. They like the technology more than anything. I think the technological age is just isolating people more and more from each other…it’s almost like were living in a horror movie, people are like zombies with white wires sticking out of their ears, angrily looking at other people if they try to talk to them”. I cry out with glee; a man after my own heart; A sufferer of the modern age, the buy-buy-buy reality of a world where not just musical, but artistic integrity is depreciating. This is not meant to sound cataclysmic, not in the least. The fact is, the wider the chasm of superficiality and folly, the easier the true geniuses are to see. I mention the so-called “Death of the Album” the record companies have been crying wolf over since the iRevolution truly took flight, and Dave is suitably…well, Dave Graney-esque in his unaffectedness: “Record companies aren’t intrinsically evil, they’re just stupid”.

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