The one that got away - in 1998, Chapter was going to put out @bluetileloungeband ’s amazing second album Half Cut on vinyl (it was being released on CD by Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth’s label Smell Like Records). I was working at the vinyl pressing factory / record label / distro Corduroy Records in Melbourne, and at the time work was covering the cost of Chapter’s vinyl pressings and getting the money back from distro sales. The album was going to be a double vinyl record in a gatefold sleeve with a debossed logo on the cover, and I think we got to the point of getting art film made before my boss looked at the printing quotes I’d been getting and gently pulled the plug. I couldn’t afford to pay for it out of my own pocket so I sadly had to tell the band it wasn’t going to happen. There’s still an unused Chapter catalogue number that I assigned to the record and never ended up using (CH025).
Of course the album has since been reissued on vinyl by the great @hobbledehoyrec and sounds/looks beautiful, but for many years I would feel pangs of regret and wonder what if…
#bluetileloungeband #bluetilelounge
Footage from nearly 25 years ago of Sleepy Township playing our last show at the @puntersclubfitzroy , before Alison moved to the UK. Someone (who? I forget) custom-made shirts for us and the Sleepy Township Dancers were in attendance. Was during the final week of shows at the Punters Club before it closed in February 2002.
Thanks to old friend Helen Pappas for rescuing this video from an old tape.
Another sweet memory from my early 2000s Japan era, covering Beat Happening's Indian Summer with Tokyo band My Pal Foot Foot, at Penguin House again in December 2003. Thanks to Masato Saito from @pervenche_band for making this video and putting it on a CDR for me 23 years ago!
I just found an old CDR of photos and videos from my time in Japan in the early 2000s. Here's a sweet video of my band Guy=Smiley (was me and friends from the Tokyo band Smiley) playing a song called Spirit Of the Time at Penguin House in Koenji, Tokyo, March 2003.
Masato Saito from @pervenche_band and @clover_records_japan on drums, Michio Kawada on guitar and Iwabuchi on bass (I forget his other name!).
Also on the bill that night was Jeremy Dower @personalcomputermusic and My Pal Foot Foot @dogsnightsong !
Me in my butch factory-hand era, working at Corduroy Records & Detective Agency in the late 90s / early 2000s. In hindsight it was probably the best job in the world. Thanks to bossman Nick Phillips for sending a bunch of these pics today, which also feature Kellie Laing, Andrew Britton and Nick.
“Bluetile Lounge appeared fully formed to me in a vision at the UWA Refectory sometime around mid 1993,” writes @guyblackman .
“I was a 19 year old stripling in Perth, occasionally waking up in time to attend uni lectures, when this friendly guy from my English Lit class told me he was playing in a Battle Of the Bands at the Ref at lunch.
“I went along with no expectations, but then Bluetile Lounge took the stage, playing just two songs in their allotted 20 minutes. They were unassuming in dark flannel shirts and murmured vocals, but possessed a magical twin guitar interplay and performed the most languorous, slowed down country-rock ever heard.”
@bluetileloungeband will play their first show in a quarter century, and their first ever show outside Perth, at Melbourne’s Brunswick Ballroom on Thursday 2 April.
Read Guy’s chat with guitarist and singer Dan Erickson and guitarist Gabrielle Stokes via the link in bio.
I am chuffed about this very sweet introduction to my song Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on @rageabc last night by Lewis from @blackcountrynewroad after I played some records at @merricreektavern in January
I have come out of music journalism retirement to pen a fanboy article for @checkcheckau about Perth slowcore heroes @bluetileloungeband , whom I have loved since seeing them play at the UWA Refectory in 1993. They are playing their first show in 25 years, and their first show ever outside Perth, Thurs April 2 at @brunswick.ballroom .
Article link in bio x
So great to finally see @sachikokanenobu play in Melbourne with @magnetic_dog last night, 20 years after Chapter reissued Sachiko’s incredible 1972 album Misora on CD. Was such a lovely show! Other pics document our previous encounters over the years - Sachiko’s show in Topanga Canyon in 2024, me and Ben visiting her place in Sonoma CA in 2008, and the one web remnant I could find of the show we played together (with @geoffreyoconnor ) in Sonoma in 2007.
On my walks along Merri Creek near my house I always look at these remnant of old buildings scattered along the cliffs and creekbeds as you approach the Heidelberg Rd bridge heading south. Does anyone know how they got there?
It was a huge thrill in 1994, as a 19 year old indie naif in smalltown Perth, Western Australia, to get a letter all the way from the bright lights of Sydney, from Monica Syrette @m.ntr.nth asking if the @halfacowrecords store in Glebe could stock copies of the fanzine Salty & Delicious that I was doing with my friend Richard “Salty” Forster. Monica soon moved to the equally legendary Waterfront Records and started doing their weekly print ads in the street press. By some miracle she held onto this one from The Drum Media, June 1995 with a sweet blurb for issue four of S&D. I’ve added some choice glimpses of that issue for you, including the amazing psychotic cover art by Biljana Vucic (Winky cartoon on back cover by @david_graham_nichols , drawing Nick Drake by @dylanmartorelll )
