Author Archive for Great Southern Steve

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09
Feb
11

Barlinnie Reel and Fishers Hornpipe

By Great Southern Steve Leave a Comment
Categories: clunky folk, Collaborations, GSS Home Studio and Luker and Southern news

These are some Luker and Southern demos I’m putting up so Emma and Jeremy Phillips can have a listen and play along.

They aren’t real hot quality wise, but the songs will get there in time.

Barlinne Reel is about a nutter in jail. It is based on the Glenville Reel I blogged about a few months ago. Harmony in the chorus.

Long Gone Running in Old Barlinnie

Nobody Knows If I’m Lower or Higher

Been Locked Up for Twenty Mississippi

Play Me a Reel and I’ll Set You On Fire

 

Fisher’s Hornpipe (Didn’t Catch a Thing) is kind of about how fishing can be lame because it gives people too much time to talk to each other. It’s to a well known Turlough O’Carolan tune.

19
Dec
10

Heart Like a Steel / Window of Love

By Great Southern Steve 3 Comments
Categories: clunky folk, Collaborations, GSS Home Studio and Posse of Wonderful


Heart Like a Steel

Window of Love

Two mixdowns of a semi-serious recording session with Michael and Louise, a few Sundays back.

The mixes still have alive quality but in with the process was far more careful and procedural than the rather haphazard wine and cheese influenced sessions this group is used to having. Next jam session might be one of that other kind.

Songs, guitar, vocals – Michael H

Bass, Louise, Steve on a later overdub

Banjo, percussion, mixing – Steve

Enjoy all, and Merry Xmas

S.

04
Dec
10

Time’s Up for Howard Devoto

By Great Southern Steve Leave a Comment
Categories: Double Take and Mp3s - Other Artists

A while back I made the mistake of downloading a “rare” previously unreleased Buzzcocks album from 1976, called Time’s Up, dating from when Howard Devoto was still singing for the band.

Why the hell do I do things like this?

Let’s look at the facts:

  • Devoto can’t sing as well as Pete Shelley and I really only like a few songs by his other band, Magazine.
  • The band had only been around for a year or less and the songs are all hasty demos.
  • The band chose to put out all the best stuff from this early period on the Spiral Scratch EP, including better versions of four of these songs.
  • The band chose not to release the rest of this recording, but instead went back into the studio to re-record the same songs from a full length album, with Shelley singing.
  • Howard Devoto left the band saying he was bored of their music

So, bad demos with a bored lead singer from a band who hadn’t really found themselves yet, and which they chose not to release. Obviously the smart thing to do would be to AVOID this record. So naturally I downloaded it and listened to the whole thing.

It is terrible.

Don’t believe me? Try these.

ORGASM ADDICT

LOVE BATTERY

Believe me now?

It’s time to go, Howard Devoto

 

03
Dec
10

Use a Kleenex, Solve World Problems

By Great Southern Steve Leave a Comment
Categories: Double Take, Mp3s - Other Artists and pop punk

OK, so, I admit to liking Billy Idol’s first band, Generation X. They were fun and “punky” and all about the hair, and generally they were not to be taken seriously and there’s a place for that. Their first record (the only one worth a mention) came out in 1979, as the band cheerfully rode that wave of second-rate commercialism that came through after the fist wave of English punk bands had either given up or gone arty. And personally I do not blame them at all. Someone else would have done it, and probably done it much worse. At least Idol can actually sing, his lyrics were kind of funny and cynical and took the piss out of commercialism while also embodying it, and, the band wrote decent power pop tunes to back it up.

They got semi-popular in the UK but never made it in the US or Europe, and although they always feature on those interminable ‘Spirit of Punk’ singles compilations, they are otherwise not referenced that often in the history of the times, probably because they were so utterly inconsequential.

That is, until Green Day started covering their ballad “Kiss Me Deadly” in concerts, and that same song got put on the end of a major summer movie, SLC PUNK.

Now, the U.S. is full of geeky teenagers learning to play that riff on acoustic guitars, and talking about the original Gen X version as “the SLC version”, and getting paid out by “real punks” who still have the thing on vinyl, and can remember when Billy Idol’s sneer hadn’t set and become permanent.

How funny, to think of this cheesy commercial pop-punk band being held up as “old school”, and potential new fans of the band being called poseurs. I wonder if anyone has actually said “I was into Generation X before they were cool!” yet.

Dudes, they were never cool. Just look at them for godsake.

Anyway, I chose not to put Kiss Me Deadly on here, but two other tracks from that record, both in player and mp3. Enjoy.

GENERATION X -From the Heart

GENERATION X –


GENERATION X – Kleenex

What you gonna do next
What you gonna do now
Use a Kleenex!!!

Wipe out sex – Kleenex
Better than love – Kleenex
John Paul George – Kleenex
Governments use Kleenex!!!

Use a Kleenex, solve world problems
Better blow your nose right now!!!

02
Dec
10

Glenville Reel

By Great Southern Steve Leave a Comment
Categories: clunky folk, Double Take, GSS Covers and Mp3s - Other Artists

Now that all my own musical aspirations are focused on various live / jamming projects this blog here can return to our regular “mp3 of bands what I like bulk good” type of blog.

First one up isn’t a band per se but a singer song-writer by the name of Loudon Wainwright III who I was introduced to back in 1992. My housemate Hickey produced this battered old 2 dollar LP from 1971, with a funny looking geezer on the cover, and we listened to it about once a day for about six months. I think I was particularly entranced by the guy’s voice. Back then he sang in this high-pitched anxious, slightly pathetic wail, that makes him sound not feminine but definitely not masculine and almost like he belongs to some separate third gender of angsty singer-songwriter. I late found out he was married to a McGarrigle and Rufus Wainwright is his son, so maybe this is why.

I got a hold of it recently and realized I had forgotten all but three tunes – Baby in the House (which is good but formulaic), Motel Room Blues (which I used to cover), and, the 3-part medley ending in Glenville Reel. I had forgotten the other two parts of this but always remembered the end of Glenville Reel:

Take off her clothes and throw ‘em in the river

Wash her body and stick it in the sun

Give that gal everything that you can give her

You can give her the bullets if you can give her the gun

Great song. I don’t know why it’s called Glenville Reel, though. Glenville is in West Virginia and Loudon isn’t from there, and it sure isn’t a traditional song so I got no clue. Maybe he just wrote it while he was there.

Anyway I have lately been working on my own version, Glenside Reel, which takes its name from an Adelaide mental hospital. I’ll post a demo on the L and S site sometime in the next few months, maybe, and those who listen to both will be able to hear the resemblance.

MOTEL ROOM BLUES

MEDLEY – UNHAPPY / SUICIDE / GLENVILLE REEL

I’m trying out the audio player, just for this post.

17
Nov
10

Luker and Southern album is finished

By Great Southern Steve 3 Comments
Categories: clunky folk, GSS Home Studio and Luker and Southern news

Actually it  has been for some time now.

Mp3s are available at the Luker and Southern site.

Go there to find out more, including album art, gig dates and so on.

15
Nov
10

Tony Gill / The Love in Your Heart

By Great Southern Steve Leave a Comment
Categories: clunky folk, GSS Home Studio, Luker and Southern news and Single Tracks

Yo Emma,

What are the defining features of a demo version?

  • Instruments out of tune
  • Hastily played
  • Singer has a cold
  • Pieced together out of stray bits of audio
  • Lyrics still subject to change

Ahem. Without further ado may I present the demo version of a new Luker and Southern number pending your veto:

Tony’s Tune / The Love in Your Heart (Luker / McKenzie).

Plenty of room for you to practice violiny bits and an intended reprise of the tune at the end.

Have fun.

S.

 

 

14
Nov
10

Posse of Awesome

By Great Southern Steve 4 Comments
Categories: Collaborations, GSS Home Studio and Posse of Wonderful

Myself and Louise and Jeremy Phillips and Michael Heim had a jam a few weeks back and there are recordings which are not for public consumption owing to their brain melting brilliance. Only those in the know get the hyperlinks.For the time being.

Jeremy has suggested that the name for this outfit be called Posse of Awesome and I do not have a better name.

There is apparently some a video of us on Facebook singing a very drunk version of Anarchy in the UK in waltz time. I am not on Facebook so haven’t seen it.

So, that’s a new band thing I am in now.

Steve.

23
Oct
10

Broken Arrow

By Great Southern Steve 4 Comments
Categories: GSS Home Studio, Single Tracks and Unbeknownst Recordings

The song Broken Arrow has been around since about 2006 I think. I did a very jazzy recording of it when we were living in the Solomon Islands for Lee to sing, but we never finished that series, so it remains as an instrumental version.

I recorded this much simpler acoustic demo version yesterday, for use in an ensemble featuring my wife Louise Kleinig, Michael Heim, and Jeremy Phillps, and old mate from back in the day.

Here it is, with chords for all you chordy folks.

BROKEN ARROW mp3

Intro: Emin – G – Emin – G

Verse: Emin – G – Emin – G x 2

Chorus:

C – C7

Bflat – Bflat maj7

F – Fmaj7 (possibly with a minor 3rd)

C – Cmaj7

Emin – G – Emin G

 

You’ll pick it up.

 

 

15
Oct
10

Unbeknownst Recordings is now an online drug store.

By Great Southern Steve 2 Comments
Categories: Unbeknownst Recordings

http://Unbeknownstrecordings.com

Skeezy fucking assholes nicked my old website.

Seriously. As soon as I let the domain slip becuase I’m not using it at the moment, some fucking robot is in there registering it and using it to sell viagra.

So now if I want that domain back again I have to buy the thing.

It’s not like there would even be any traffic in it for them. There were never that many hits on that site.

Dickheads.

I hste the internet, some days.

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Southern Steve is…

...the online alter ego of S.J. (Steve) McKenzie.

I am an Australian guy who likes and plays lots of different styles of music, mostly for kicks.

There's samples of my own stuff here as well as lots of mp3 goodies from other bands I love; folk, punk, jazz and just whatever sounds like it has its own thing going on.

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