Tea has the right of it, Time. I was a dedicated Dave Warner fan in the late Seventies. I saw the band live maybe six or seven times, bought the "official bootleg" tapes, the whole deal. I still have a lapel button.
Now you won't need reminding of this, but some of our temporally and/or geographically challenged members will. Back in '76 and '77, Dave Warner's From the Suburbs was an underground phenomenon. Great crowds everywhere they went, rave reviews ... and no record contract. Not one single record company was game to sign them. This wasn't the usual "I don't think these guys will sell enough records", nor even "what if they spit on the producer and trash the studio?" it was that no record company was brave enough to sign a band that openly despised TV shows like
GTK and
Countdown, and played no-holds-barred music with a lyrical content that was, not to put too fine a point on it, profane, irreverant, libelous, and (worst of all) very true.
I mean, what do you make of the following little gem:
Girls wank
So do the interviewers at GTK
They yank
They tug the best years of their lives away
(various and assorted other slander follows)
"Ahem... There, Mr Warner, goes our last chance of ever promoting you on TV" (says the record company executive).
Anyway, the band eventually recorded themselves live at a couple of Perth pubs and made the tapes available as "official bootlegs". Cassette tape or nuffin - there were no CDs in those days. I bought the three tapes and treasured them. I don't think I have ever heard such raw energy and such an extraordinary mix of talents. And this was
not your mindless Sex Pistols/MC5 sort of brain-dead aggro-thrash. No: it was loud, it was rough, but it had structure and intelligence, and you could always hear Dave's incisive, irreverant words, stripping away the pretensions of the beautiful people.
Years later, in a press interview, he said: "The key element that rock'n'roll performances have, when they are working well, is this huge exchange of energy between the audience and the band. This raw energy you are putting out provokes an incredible response from the audience, and they start to go off their heads, which in turned spurs you to greater heights."
He should know: live those guys were awesome. Yes, boring old Tannin has been off his head at Dave Warner concerts several times. And those dreadful official bootleg tapes captured the whole experience wonderfully. Dreadful sound quality, but an immediacy you could cut with a knife.
Alas, some years later I'd taken them to work and some bastard broke into my locker and stole them. By this time they had toned down a little, or perhaps the music industry had grown up a bit and society had become more tolerant, and Mushroom Records had signed them to a contract. (Same record company that signed the Hooks, by the way: by this time Mushroom were swimming in Skyhooks money and were
the power in Australian music. They could pretty much do as they liked.) This meant two things: (a) you could now buy
Mug's Game on proper vinyl at any ordinary record shop, and (b) the bootleg tapes were no longer available. I bought
Mug's Game, of course, but it had nothing like the power of the bootlegs. Most of it was studio recorded, and this was one band that just
had to be live to work.
It's been years since I thought about Dave Warner's music now, but you have reminded me, Time. (Or was it Tea that brought Dave Warner up? Whatever.) At lunchtime just now I disd a search and turned up
www.davewarner.com.au Whats more, they have a double CD that claims to be more or less the original bootleg tapes! Hoolie Doolie! I wrote a cheque for $50 on the spot. Guess I'll get it in the mail next week sometime.
I wonder if, 25 years after the event, I'll still like it?
Watch this space.
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