Biography

Glenn Richards – Glimjack

I've talked to my brother Chris, Dan Luscombe and Mike Noga about doing something together for years and happily we've just done it. To make things easy I'll give a short bio of each member of the cast:

Chris Richards:
Older brother of me by 11 months, was learning the second solo from Metallica's "Orion" out the back of our Kialla block while I was memorising an economical response to Les Murray's "Broad Bean Sermon" and trying to hold down my Weet Bix before my HSC. Knows my tastes better than I do and can imprint them with greater acuity than I can on a song. Loves four track recordings as do I, thinks everything should be recorded so, and that all film should be 8mm, as do I. Plays in Hobart band Dust and wrote and played the music for two The Beautiful Few records among other things. Has two kids, lives in Hobart and is always tired. An invaluable presence on the record.

Mike Noga:
Another Hobart lad, I first saw Mike singing behind a kit and wearing a Carlton jumper at The Arthouse which should have been two reasons to hate him on the spot. But the Tasmanian in me identified with his disability and the mainlander in me just felt sorry for him. Has since gone on to make records as himself, a Gentleman of Fortune, and a globetrotting Drone who had a long breakfast with Crispin Glover. Not afraid of random fills, terrified of toms but will hit them if he has to, thinks time is a magazine, smokes two cigarettes at once, plays like a songwriter because he is one. Perfect drummer.

Ben Bourke:
In one of the trades of the season team Richards managed to offload a substance (beer) abusing guitarist to team Ned Colette in return for a very slightly red headed bass player called Ben Bourke. While team Ned Colette foraged for scraps of gig in Europe Ben laid down some of the tastiest lines we've heard for a while in the arctic space of a Fairfield warehouse. It was at a speakeasy in the same space a couple of months before that Ben and I held forth on the merits of Iron Maiden's Steve Harris. The offers went out the next day and my people got their man in what I think was a coup along the lines of a Judd to Carlton but without the cardboard money chucked in. A rare talent who insisted we pause the recording to watch Gillard's speech. It seemed to me there was a faint cheezel glow in the room, emanating from the bass corner.

Dan Luscombe:
Obviously one of the great talents of a generation Dan is currently another Drone who has done time in countless outfits, chief among them The Black Eyed Susans and whatever 80 piece cacophony Spencer Jones had together early last decade. Ever in demand it's hard to even get a word in to Dan so it was with great relief that I paid off every other songwriter in Melbourne for the Winter to piss off and leave my boy alone. He knows what's good for him anyway. Our first acquaintance was Augie March's roughly 15th gig when we were first up supporting The Church at the Palace. The Susans were main support and after trembling through a forgotten half hour Dan, very politely, remarked to us "That was really...messy." Of course it was meant as a compliment and each time he repeated it during the recording I took it as such.

That should do. Maybe a quick picture of the process - we set up in a warehouse based in Fairfield, the size of a skating rink, rehearsed and recorded 19 songs over a month, although with the many technical hitches I can safely say we probably did 19 in 19, a fair achievement, and not without cost to health and sanity. Due to illness, dust and cold I ended up doing most vocals with the tireless Robin Mai at Woodstock and Sing Sing.

I spent some weeks living at the Chelsea Hotel in NY and mixing up the road in the Village with Victor Van Vugt during the heatwave that had Satan swimming in the dumpster. Anyway, there's longer stories but who cares? It's rough and ready but not without ambition and some finesse. Like most of the Augie stuff it ain't hip, but I hope it's got some legs to out-stroll the sprinting ninnies on Cool Street.

The Songs:
"Torpor and Spleen" hopes to simultaneously force an understanding of the writer's temperament at the time of its writing, and his deep reckoning of the twin evils giving rise to anti-social behaviours in the youth of the West - chroming and Grand Theft Auto.

"Long Pigs" is a cracking of that pubic old chestnut 'style over substance' and alludes secretly to a dream the writer had about Gertrude Street in the 1950's.

"Old Love" worries about elected people banging on about one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country, but also gets a bit sad about a matchbox car which once was a prize possession.

"Apple of My Eye" is musical recreation of a vivid dream about an alternate history Hobart which has been occupied by a mysterious, quite possibly allied force which, in the vein of the Americans commandeering the opulent French glamor ship The Normandy, has aquisitioned the resources and the people of the town, the latter who secretly rebel by regularly getting ripped at lock ins and speakeasies.

"Painter by Numbers" is probably going to earn the writer a fatwah, if only for getting the number of virgins wrong. "Unflappable Man" explores not ancient Greece but ancient Grief and it's pillars of pain which a person can walk face into at the most innocuous and cruelly random of moments. It also seeks to posit the writer's indomitability in the face of any potential fatwah.

"The Drive" was part of a much longer poem written in the back seat of a brown chevy passing through the Dakota Badlands. Gripped by fever and lonesomeness the writer saw fangs of lightning emerge from great dun thunderheads while skeletal horses stood like statues at the gates of such desolate towns as Cotton Tree and Black Hills. Where the magnate's wife came in he cannot say.

"Turn on You" includes a story related to the writer by a fellow musician about the practice of fermenting alcohol from the rotten flesh of dead horse whereby soldiers of the American civil war would get their 'only joy'. Which reminded the writer of a similar practice undertaken by inmates at the Durrengal prison who would hollow out butternut pumpkins, fill them with vegemite and water and bury them in the sheep paddocks which were part of the yards. A potent alcohol would form and the sheep would start to resemble short, permed ladies.

"Barfly Prometheus" can be found in the morning marvelling that he is intact and for all intents alive, and at night being gnawed at by some old crow or wild bush fowl.

"Glimjack Muttering" is a gentle entreaty cum warning from the illusive overseer of the album. He is, somewhat like his Victorian namesake, offering to light you part of the way but with the caveat that you may not like all of the places you're going.

"They Hate Us" is comedy but it comes from a room full of New Zealanders, Americans and English holding forth gleefully on the shortcomings of the modern Australian. Thanks J.Howard.

"South of Heaven" is about Black Saturday.

"The Love Zoo" had to be dusted off and might be traced to Queen's "The Prophet's Song"

"Harsh Critic" owes a bit to Spencer P Jones and goes a long way to explaining the writer's well established on and off stage hissy fits, (of which there have only really been about 12).

"Mengele in Brazil", in the guise of a vet, treated the livestock of the village of Candido Godoi for reproductive issues. So successful was he that the women of the village consented to him treating them likewise and undergoing drug trials. The birthrate of twins in most countries is something like one in every eighty births, but one in five in Candido Godoi. This song is not about that.


Management: Graham Ashton - asho@footstompmusic.com

Promotions: John Zucco - john@therightprofile.com.au

Publicity: Heidi Braithwaite - heidi@riothouse.com.au

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Management: Graham Ashton - asho@footstompmusic.com
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