STACK #129 Jul 2016

MUSIC

NEWS

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Q1/ Your films document the Punk and Metal scenes in LA in the '80s, and they led to a Hollywood career. But you've held off re-releasing them for a long time, why? I was just going to live my life without movies and go ahead and die and then if my daughter Anna wanted to put the Decline movies out, she could. Four years ago I asked her to come and help me to do various other work, and she said 'I’m not going to do anything with you until we do the Decline DVDs'. I was, like, ‘oh my God, what a nightmare’. None of those extras would’ve been there if Anna didn’t find them, because I didn’t even want to do this. Q2/ So what did you learn going back and revisiting all this? That’s a very deep question! I learned it’s not really about ‘making it’, and it’s not really even about making movies. Life is just all about lessons and if you don’t have a way of helping the world get better, then your life is useless. I don’t really care about the movies anymore, I’ll be honest with you. Q3/ Kickboy, from Slash Magazine, that evolved into Slash Records, is no longer with us. Tell me about him. A very colourful, unique character. I loved him so much. He and his wife, Philly, they were very special people. I think it is important that today’s generation and future hopefully will be able to look at that, and think ‘if we hadn’t shot it, I guess then nobody would know about them.’ Q4/ Part Two: The Metal Years was shot around Los Angeles in 1987 with Aerosmith, Poison, Kiss, etc. In hindsight it's very funny. Did you see it like that at the time? I didn’t want to make the film as funny as it was, and I have to give credit or blame, I’m not sure which, to Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who were the producers. They viewed it as far more comedically entertaining than I did. I went ‘wow, this music is cool’. But yeah, the comedy that came out of that, I think we have to give credit more to John and Val than to me. But on the other hand, that movie was the reason I got the job to direct Wayne’s World. Q5/ A young Pat Smear is seen in Part One, with The Germs. When you see him today in Foo Fighters, how do you feel? I just see the success and life fulfilment he’s had. Unfortunately many of the players didn’t have that. Anna was smart enough to say, when Dave Grohl wanted to borrow some of our footage, 'Well, why don’t you get him to do DVD penelope spheeris Director: The Decline of western civilisation pts 1-3

McCALL CALLS HOME A lthough he's always worked in a relatively quiet way, Australian jazz composer and pianist Barney McCall has worked with some of contemporary music's brightest lights, including Aloe Blacc and Daniel Merriweather. Currently he is Sia's musical director. After returning home to Australia after an extended sojourn in New York City (where he worked with legends Dewey Redman and Fred Wesley), he's made an album whose title specifically invokes the place he grew up – Mooroolbark, Victoria (about 37km east of Melbourne). It's an area with a 50,000-year-old Aboriginal cultural history that's been largely decimated by European settlement. "It was written in New York," McCall tells STACK. "I came back to do the recording, I saw how my old VCA friends had evolved, and that’s when I called it Mooroolbark. It's not necessarily a meditation on Mooroolbark, it's more about coming full circle, saying 'that’s why I’m here'." Working with French percussionist Mino Cinélu, McCall has fashioned an album of quietly riveting melodies

with a slightly Cuban edge. A track like Non Compliance sums up much about Mooroolbark. " It aspires to the unexpected. It reminds me of the sayin that 'good artists spend their time trying to create beauty'. It started a lot more straight ahead." The final track, Mooroolbark 1974, speaks to the idea of both coming full circle and coming home. It features an eight-year-old McCall, playing a piano vamp in 1974. "I found this tape that had 'Barney 1974' scrawled over a Mozart cassette when I went through my stuff in NY. My family remembered it!"

Mooroolbark is out now

via Universal Music

Y ou might have already caught Sydney’s Gang of Youths live, or found yourself enjoying their rightly acclaimed cover of LCD Soundsystem’s All My Friends (it’s a belter, take it from us). Throughout August and September they’re taking their album The Positions out on the road (and expanding to a five- piece for this tour). They’ll be joined by fellow Sydneysiders I Know Leopard, and the new solo project for The Cairos' lead singer Alistair Richardson, which he’s dubbed 'Zefereli'. Gang of youths in position

Gang of Youths tour August 5 to September 19 nationally, venues and dates at www.gangofyouths.com

Who classic gets the classical treatment

E ven at the age of 70, The Who’s Pete Townshend just can’t seem to get rock operas and concept albums out of his system. 1969’s legendary Tommy was infamously made into a film by Ken Russell in 1975, and later became a Broadway musical. The songs from Lifehouse , a concept album about human/ technological interaction through music before

the internet, cropped up on Who and Townshend solo albums for years. And now, Townshend has overseen the adaptation of his possibly most coherent and acclaimed work for a classical audience, in the form of Quadrophenia . Originally a double album that looked back on the mod era of the early ’60s, the album storyline was very successfully adapted as a film in 1979, starring Phil Daniels and Sting. While Townshend has had The Who play the whole album live in concert, this re-work is a fully orchestrated version that’s been recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and London’s Oriana choir. British tenor Alfie Boe (born in 1973, the year the original album was released) features on the album, as does Townshend (on guitar and occasional vocals). The orchestration has been completed by composer and songwriter Rachel Fuller, who is also Townshend’s partner.

commentary for the first Decline ?' And he was awesome when he did it for us. With Pat, I’m very pleased he’s done that: I wish that all of those people could’ve done that. But that’s just not the way the world works.

The Decline of Western Civilisation is out now through Via Vision/Madman

JULY 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.com.au

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