Augie March

Righteous darlings of the coffee house music set and craftspeople of some of the most finely wrought music at the close of the millenium, Augie March head back to Sydney for a series of headline shows on Thursday and Friday of this week at the Hopetoun Hotel with Bluebottle Kiss. Even singer Glenn Richards' answers to these rather simple questions make you scratch your head.

First song you can remember?

The animated ABC filler clip for the Butterfly Ball haunted my early youth. While Iron Maiden's self-titled and Motley Crue's Too Fast For Love were the defining isolated country male pockmarks, the Butterfly Ball and its visual nightmare made a truer mark. Years later I found out it was Ronnie James Dio singing.

Song which especially reminds you of school?

Advance Australia Fair on a hot asphalt quadrangle. Endless shifting of feet on gravel, moaning boys in grey stubbies and flatland girls with melting piggy tails. Then they got the prisoners from Darrengul low security to build sleeper beds and plant shade shrubs.

You bust up with the love of your life, you get home, what goes on the stereo?

Cheesy question. Probably Big Star's Take Care. Then I'd do sincerely the opposite.

The song you wanna hear when you get back drunk from the pub?

Poor Napoleon by Elvis Costello. All the best things about him and the Attractions amplified by tons of piss and centuries of unnecessary jabber. And the sexiest female backing vocals ever. There are levels in this song, like a half built apartment block, to curl up in and falter.

Song that inspired you to pursue your art?

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats. And maybe Iron Maiden's The Trooper. No song, just a set of coinciding boredoms disguised as urges. 39 by Queen? Crow's Liloing album. Yes, that's the song. Anyway, we've all taken over art haven't we?

What song should be played at your funeral?

Lazarus Linger by The Dark Satanic Mills followed by The Good Gardiner by Augie March. Anything with a tuba.

What's on your stereo presently?

Gilliam Welch's Hell Among The Yearlings. It's said that a civilisation in rapid decline is always characterised by a deluded will toward anything musically 'new' under the sun. But in all that dry ruptured earth there are still those tilling for truth. Arriving at simplicity is after all a much longer journey than the fashion walk.

What's gonna be on everyone's stereo in a year's time?

In some parts of the world, in some corners they huddle and speak in fearful tones of what the Hebrew might mean backwards. In...

 

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