Bob's Bits 25/8

Bob’s Bits are hoping that they don’t get their Abberleys and Applebys a bit muddled up this coming weekend…

That’s right, 19-year-old James Abberley is set to launch his debut CD, Some Kind Of Relief, while veteran Adelaide drummer John Appleby will be celebrating his 60th birthday with a huge party at which some of the many bands he has played with over his lengthy career will be reforming to add to the festivities.

James Abberley hails from the Adelaide Plains township of Owen from where Steele Hall, a former premier of this state was born (probably in a tin shed considering his name is Steele Hall). Anyway, that’s an obvious digression, so back to young James Abberley who took to venturing down to Adelaide on Wednesday evening’s to take part in the open mic night at the Governor Hindmarsh. He impressed many with his performances and was duly asked to play his own gigs on a Friday night in the front bar to which he attracted many people and subsequently won many followers for his rootsy, folksy music which has been likened to artists such as (please insert names such as Xavier Rudd, Lior, Jose Gonzalez, John Butler and any number of like-minded artists here).

James, who currently cites Gotye as one of his favourite artists and will take off on a six-month trip around Australia following his CD launch, recorded his debut album at Fish Shop Studios down at Pt Adelaide to which Richard Tonkin added a bit of fiddle so it’s likely that Richard will also be playing at James’ launch which will take place in the main room of the Governor Hindmarsh on Fri Aug 26 at which AP D’Antonio will serve as special guest opening act. This will make for a busy night for AP as he’s also playing his rootsy choons in the venue’s front bar that same evening so will very occasionally need to be in two places at once. So it’s lucky he has at least two guitars at his disposal as well as a lap steel.

Veteran Adelaide drummer John Appleby, who will be celebrating his 60th birthday this weekend, first came to my attention back in the ’70s – gee, that’s a long time ago now – when he joined Neon Watermelon, an Adelaide band that a couple of my high school friends, guitarist Alan Powell and piano player Andy Smethurst, were playing in. They were quite unique as they wore make-up (and this was before Skyhooks had suddenly burst onto the music scene) and were managed for a while by Robbie Robertson who is now the venue manager for Thebarton Theatre. For a short time Neon Watermelon, if memory serves me correct, also boasted a Scottish-born singer by the name of Allan Fryer who later went on to sing with metal band Heaven and who was also short-listed to replace Bon Scott in AC/DC. But that’s another story which you can find on that new-fangled internet thing if you have the required time and are signed up to Google.

Anyway, John Appleby went on to drum for many Adelaide bands in the ’70s and ‘80s  including The Joe Hooker Band, The Hounds, Train Set, Safari Set, Perfect Game, The Chris Finnen Blues Band and Kashmir Check along with several others I can’t quite remember the names of.

I don’t know why they were called The Joe Hooker Band but can recall that their singer, John Kenny, used to get asked all the time if he was actually Joe Hooker and which used to displease him greatly. John Kenny then went on to sing with Adelaide band The Hounds, a quintet John Appleby played drums with and which also included guitarist Alan Powell. They enjoyed a bit of success and their song Little Darling was release as a single and was also included on a compilation album of Adelaide bands. And they even made a film clip which you can see here.

If you happen to recognise John Kenny, The Hounds’ singer in the above clip, it’s probably because he later became one of the many singers with Sydney band The Rockmelons – it was he who sang on New Groove and Rhymes along with several others I can’t quite remember the names of. Strangely, I’m now hearing a voice in my head saying, “Well why don’t you Google them?”

Anyway, once again I digress. John Appleby, the veteran Adelaide drummer who most recently was one of two drummers in local band Sympathy Orchestra, is now turning 60 and will celebrate with a big, invite-only party at which The Hounds, Safari Set and Sympathy Orchestra will be playing. He’s also kindly and rather foolishly asked my bad self to serve as the master of ceremonies which leads me on to local person about town and blogger Spoz Spozzington who will be hosting Spozfest at Grenfell St’s Producer’s Bar on Sat Aug 27 for which he has engaged the services of Brisbane band We All Want To and Sydney’s Sam Shinazzi to perform alongside local acts Oh Minor, Quiet In The Lab!, Sincerely, Grizzly and DJ Adam.

And I mention Spoz not only because of Spozfest but because I can recall the first and only time I received a mention in one of his online blogs when the first and only time I’d served as a master of ceremonies. I’d been engaged to MC at a tribute night to Aussie band The Triffids which had taken place at the Grace Emily some years ago at which Melbourne band The Holy Sea had performed Triffids songs alongside a host of local bands. Spoz had taken upon himself to drop and and had later duly noted on his online blog that, ‘the MC for the evening appeared to be even drunker than I was’. And I do believe that somewhere on the U-Toobs there might be some visual evidence of this.

For this week’s edition of Rip It Up, I’d also been asked to interview Sydney’s Sam Shinazzi who, as well as performing at Grote St’s Hotel Metro on Fri Aug 26 alongside Brisbane’s We All Want To, will also be performing at Spozfest on Saturday evening. During the course of the interview, Sam had asked, ‘And just who is this Spoz bloke anyway?’ So I had great pleasure in being able to inform him that Spoz is someone who tends to attend quite a few gigs in one night at which he takes many more photographs than a memory card can take and then writes about it on a website known as Spoz’s Rant.

I’d also had occasion to chat to Felix Riebl for this issue of Rip It Up magazine about the fact he’s coming to town to play the grand piano with is band The Crashing Waters at Grote St’s Promethean on Fri Aug 26 with Ben Salter as special guest to launch his debut solo album, Into The Rain, at which they will certainly be performing this song.

I’d also taken the opportunity to ask Felix, who normally fronts popular Melbourne band The Cat Empire, if that outfit had called it a day due to his solo career.

“No, no, not at all,” Felix had told me. “We’re in a very good spot at the moment. We’ve just came back from a European tour where we did very well and which has been the case for us over there for the last few tours and we’ve just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. So once we decide to do another album, although we’re not sure when that’ll be, we’ll be looking at doing something really new and different.

“And I have a feeling it might reflect my European roots. My family background is Austrian and Czech and my mother is Scottish. But when I say European roots, I think it’s dangerous to identify with any one part. For instance I’ve just come back from Greece where I was involved in the Special Olympics and my grandfather taught Ancient Greek and Latin but listening to the music of Greece – and I’m not at all Greek – there was something very familiar about it. So when I talk of European roots it’s just another place we have inside ourselves that we understand without actually understanding it.

“I could claim to talk about Mozart because of my Austrian background,” Felix had continued, “but I don’t because while I love listening to Mozart and classical music in general, I don’t really know anything or inherently understand anything about Mozart. But having just come back from Greece, I feel there was something with the music that I understood. There was something about the music that spoke to me straight away. So when I talk about my European roots, it has nothing to do with my family heritage. It’s the same thing with Cuban music which was the first point of exploration for The Cat Empire. So thanks for letting me qualify that.”

So thanks for reading thus far if you’ve actually managed to get here. It certainly took me a while.

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