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The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Four local music legends got together. What happened next is a gift
When we were beautiful and young, there was still time for every little thing,' Mick Harvey sighed on his fifth solo album. His mind was partly on Mutiny In Heaven, the film about his old band The Birthday Party. And partly, as always, on myriad other projects. Another year has flown. Or is it two? He and Adalita, who still leads Magic Dirt when she's not years-deep in a solo record or more transient collaborations, are sitting on a couch in his North Melbourne studio to talk about one they've been holding close until time allowed. Bleak Squad is an elegantly brooding rock quartet that sounds exactly like the sum of its exceptional parts. Guitarist Mick Turner is still best known from Dirty Three, despite sundry other bands. Drummer Marty Brown is from Art of Fighting, as well as countless other gigs and studio productions. We're talking, to cut to the obvious rock'n'roll epithet, about a supergroup. 'No, we're a supper group,' Harvey responds. Adalita smiles. She's probably heard that one before. Whatever they call it, it's a gift. 'I had some bits of songs sitting around; I always have – ideas that didn't fit anywhere else,' she says. 'It was like, finally, I had somewhere to put them. And it was so natural, right from the start. Like we'd been playing together for years.' 'It was very casual. No egos, no expectations,' Harvey says. 'It wasn't burdened with any of that. It was completely open. Marty just said, 'Come in, bring three or four ideas, we'll see what happens'. So that's what we did.' Over four days at Head Gap studios in Preston, the four distinct musical personalities became a band with unexpected ease. 'A song would become so much a [result] of what everyone had contributed that I started forgetting whose music it was in the first place,' Harvey says, still surprised at how readily a whole album began to present itself. Strange Love is due in August. We'd need to find a less cluttered room to draw a map of all the tangled connections that led Brown – a prolific studio operator and artist manager as well as musician – to envisage a smooth, cohesive bond with the three 'living legends'. 'I've worked with them all enough to know that a fast, easy, improvisational kind of music is achievable,' he tells me later, by phone from Ballarat. 'Some people need things to be more rehearsed, or it's like, 'I've written this...' and they might be more demanding about what it could be. 'There was none of that... I knew we could all just relax together and jam some bits. But yeah, I was surprised by how well 'jamming some bits' turned out.' Everything Must Change, the first song unveiled last week, is a portentous illustration. It began with a nebulous handful of chords presented by Turner – overseas as we speak, with his duo Mess Esque ('the Micks are always overseas', Adalita says). Harvey threw in a string of apocalyptic lyrics, then encouraged Adalita to intrude. 'You tapped into something,' he tells her, 'and made it an even more surreal kind of excursion, which was fantastic. It messes with your head. The construction is kind of unfathomable to me. It was like a mystery, in a way.' Loading 'Like a gothic Alice Through the Looking Glass,' Adalita says, still riffing. 'I was just hoping to come up with something. That's always my fear.' She spins a telling metaphor for her writing process: 'like dredging a lake'. Fear, mystery, surreal, gothic, apocalyptic... Bleak Squad isn't all bats and dungeons, but fans of any of its members will recognise a through-line of clamorous gloom, unsettled energy and ghostly beauty, an entrenched darkness of the soul that gives their name just the right touch of gallows humour. 'It's not about any particular style,' Harvey says. 'It's about a kind of attitude and approach to things.' 'It's got that sort of dark, noirish edge,' Adalita says, but 'of course it offers comfort because it's music. Music can be a real companion. It can give people solace.' 'I've been associated with a lot of music that people have declared to be depressing over the years,' says Harvey, 'and I know that fans of that music don't find it depressing at all. They find a release. They find a space where they can feel inspired, to go beyond feeling isolated.' 'A kindred spirit,' Adalita says. They're anything but bleak company, these two. Asked to search their memories for their first formal collaboration, they arrive at the Suburban Mayhem movie soundtrack of 2006. Harvey won an Australian Film Institute award for the score. He asked Adalita to sing songs by Gun Club, Bauhaus and Magic Dirt. 'I was a little bit scared of you then. I'm not any more,' she says, laying her beanie on his black velvet lapel. 'Everyone's scared of me,' Harvey says, blinking. But he's spooked by something else. 'You know we're the only ones still going from that [recording session]?' They count off absent friends. Rowland S. Howard. Spencer P. Jones. Magic Dirt's Dean Turner. Drummer Peter Jones. Producer-engineer Tony Cohen. The thought hangs heavily. 'You do carry all of that stuff,' Harvey says. 'Everybody who you work with, you get something from them. Sometimes I'm not sure which bits [of music] come from me, or from Rowland, or anyone else. They're all in there.' There's no time to dwell. That's the only commodity in scarce supply, Brown acknowledges, as Bleak Squad plan the road ahead. 'It's been quite … hard,' he says, laughing. 'I've been shocked by how busy everyone is, but schedules are worked out so far in advance that we can map out when we're all in the same country, at least.' So far, just four dates are booked for August and October. Harvey says 'we could ramp it up a bit early next year – although Mick Turner's probably madly booking stuff right now for his half-a-dozen projects'. 'We're experienced enough to understand about give and take,' he says. 'Everyone gives space to other people in the musical process, but then you also understand when people aren't available. It's been difficult, but nobody's been getting pissed off.' He turns to remind Adalita of the 'three or four unfinished songs' they really must revisit. 'Ooh, I'd love to hear those tracks,' she enthuses. 'We might have to fill the set out a bit?' Strange Love will be released on August 22. Bleak Squad play Queenscliff Town Hall on Aug 1, Meeniyan Town Hall on August 2, Sydney Recital Hall on Oct 11 and Melbourne Recital Centre on Oct 16. Legends unite Often brilliant, usually brief, sometimes bruising, 'supergroups' are known to form when distinctive talents, famous names and stolen moments collide. Here's a mixed dozen playlist. Cream (1966–1968): The term was coined for blues-rock giants Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, and largely defined by their unsustainable combustion. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1969–2013): Again, the harmony was purely musical but their on-and-off union remains the gold standard. Asia (1981–): Never mind art. Refugees from Yes, King Crimson and ELP turned UK prog into '80s FM gold. Power Station (1984–1985): Robert Palmer, bits of Duran Duran and Chic added up to serious '80 club muscle. The Highwaymen (1985–1995): Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson. Country's Mount Rushmore. Trio (1987–2002): Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt. Is your heart broken yet? Traveling Wilburys (1988–1991): Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne. An old-timers' backyard jam that swallowed the pop charts. Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band (1989–): Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Todd Rundgren, Sheila E., Dr. John, Billy Preston, Colin Hay… scores of stars on an evolving jukebox roadshow with no reason to quit. Monsters of Folk (2004–2009): Conor Oberst, Jim James, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis. Indie-folk's polite Avengers. SuperHeavy (2011): Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Damian Marley, A.R. Rahman and Dave Stewart. What do you mean you never heard of them? Hollywood Vampires (2015–): Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Aerosmith's Joe Perry toast ghosts of rock's past with whatever Beatles, Eagles, Guns or Roses drop by.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Four local music legends got together. What happened next is a gift
When we were beautiful and young, there was still time for every little thing,' Mick Harvey sighed on his fifth solo album. His mind was partly on Mutiny In Heaven, the film about his old band The Birthday Party. And partly, as always, on myriad other projects. Another year has flown. Or is it two? He and Adalita, who still leads Magic Dirt when she's not years-deep in a solo record or more transient collaborations, are sitting on a couch in his North Melbourne studio to talk about one they've been holding close until time allowed. Bleak Squad is an elegantly brooding rock quartet that sounds exactly like the sum of its exceptional parts. Guitarist Mick Turner is still best known from Dirty Three, despite sundry other bands. Drummer Marty Brown is from Art of Fighting, as well as countless other gigs and studio productions. We're talking, to cut to the obvious rock'n'roll epithet, about a supergroup. 'No, we're a supper group,' Harvey responds. Adalita smiles. She's probably heard that one before. Whatever they call it, it's a gift. 'I had some bits of songs sitting around; I always have – ideas that didn't fit anywhere else,' she says. 'It was like, finally, I had somewhere to put them. And it was so natural, right from the start. Like we'd been playing together for years.' 'It was very casual. No egos, no expectations,' Harvey says. 'It wasn't burdened with any of that. It was completely open. Marty just said, 'Come in, bring three or four ideas, we'll see what happens'. So that's what we did.' Over four days at Head Gap studios in Preston, the four distinct musical personalities became a band with unexpected ease. 'A song would become so much a [result] of what everyone had contributed that I started forgetting whose music it was in the first place,' Harvey says, still surprised at how readily a whole album began to present itself. Strange Love is due in August. We'd need to find a less cluttered room to draw a map of all the tangled connections that led Brown – a prolific studio operator and artist manager as well as musician – to envisage a smooth, cohesive bond with the three 'living legends'. 'I've worked with them all enough to know that a fast, easy, improvisational kind of music is achievable,' he tells me later, by phone from Ballarat. 'Some people need things to be more rehearsed, or it's like, 'I've written this...' and they might be more demanding about what it could be. 'There was none of that... I knew we could all just relax together and jam some bits. But yeah, I was surprised by how well 'jamming some bits' turned out.' Everything Must Change, the first song unveiled last week, is a portentous illustration. It began with a nebulous handful of chords presented by Turner – overseas as we speak, with his duo Mess Esque ('the Micks are always overseas', Adalita says). Harvey threw in a string of apocalyptic lyrics, then encouraged Adalita to intrude. 'You tapped into something,' he tells her, 'and made it an even more surreal kind of excursion, which was fantastic. It messes with your head. The construction is kind of unfathomable to me. It was like a mystery, in a way.' Loading 'Like a gothic Alice Through the Looking Glass,' Adalita says, still riffing. 'I was just hoping to come up with something. That's always my fear.' She spins a telling metaphor for her writing process: 'like dredging a lake'. Fear, mystery, surreal, gothic, apocalyptic... Bleak Squad isn't all bats and dungeons, but fans of any of its members will recognise a through-line of clamorous gloom, unsettled energy and ghostly beauty, an entrenched darkness of the soul that gives their name just the right touch of gallows humour. 'It's not about any particular style,' Harvey says. 'It's about a kind of attitude and approach to things.' 'It's got that sort of dark, noirish edge,' Adalita says, but 'of course it offers comfort because it's music. Music can be a real companion. It can give people solace.' 'I've been associated with a lot of music that people have declared to be depressing over the years,' says Harvey, 'and I know that fans of that music don't find it depressing at all. They find a release. They find a space where they can feel inspired, to go beyond feeling isolated.' 'A kindred spirit,' Adalita says. They're anything but bleak company, these two. Asked to search their memories for their first formal collaboration, they arrive at the Suburban Mayhem movie soundtrack of 2006. Harvey won an Australian Film Institute award for the score. He asked Adalita to sing songs by Gun Club, Bauhaus and Magic Dirt. 'I was a little bit scared of you then. I'm not any more,' she says, laying her beanie on his black velvet lapel. 'Everyone's scared of me,' Harvey says, blinking. But he's spooked by something else. 'You know we're the only ones still going from that [recording session]?' They count off absent friends. Rowland S. Howard. Spencer P. Jones. Magic Dirt's Dean Turner. Drummer Peter Jones. Producer-engineer Tony Cohen. The thought hangs heavily. 'You do carry all of that stuff,' Harvey says. 'Everybody who you work with, you get something from them. Sometimes I'm not sure which bits [of music] come from me, or from Rowland, or anyone else. They're all in there.' There's no time to dwell. That's the only commodity in scarce supply, Brown acknowledges, as Bleak Squad plan the road ahead. 'It's been quite … hard,' he says, laughing. 'I've been shocked by how busy everyone is, but schedules are worked out so far in advance that we can map out when we're all in the same country, at least.' So far, just four dates are booked for August and October. Harvey says 'we could ramp it up a bit early next year – although Mick Turner's probably madly booking stuff right now for his half-a-dozen projects'. 'We're experienced enough to understand about give and take,' he says. 'Everyone gives space to other people in the musical process, but then you also understand when people aren't available. It's been difficult, but nobody's been getting pissed off.' He turns to remind Adalita of the 'three or four unfinished songs' they really must revisit. 'Ooh, I'd love to hear those tracks,' she enthuses. 'We might have to fill the set out a bit?' Strange Love will be released on August 22. Bleak Squad play Queenscliff Town Hall on Aug 1, Meeniyan Town Hall on August 2, Sydney Recital Hall on Oct 11 and Melbourne Recital Centre on Oct 16. Legends unite Often brilliant, usually brief, sometimes bruising, 'supergroups' are known to form when distinctive talents, famous names and stolen moments collide. Here's a mixed dozen playlist. Cream (1966–1968): The term was coined for blues-rock giants Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, and largely defined by their unsustainable combustion. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1969–2013): Again, the harmony was purely musical but their on-and-off union remains the gold standard. Asia (1981–): Never mind art. Refugees from Yes, King Crimson and ELP turned UK prog into '80s FM gold. Power Station (1984–1985): Robert Palmer, bits of Duran Duran and Chic added up to serious '80 club muscle. The Highwaymen (1985–1995): Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson. Country's Mount Rushmore. Trio (1987–2002): Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt. Is your heart broken yet? Traveling Wilburys (1988–1991): Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne. An old-timers' backyard jam that swallowed the pop charts. Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band (1989–): Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Todd Rundgren, Sheila E., Dr. John, Billy Preston, Colin Hay… scores of stars on an evolving jukebox roadshow with no reason to quit. Monsters of Folk (2004–2009): Conor Oberst, Jim James, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis. Indie-folk's polite Avengers. SuperHeavy (2011): Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Damian Marley, A.R. Rahman and Dave Stewart. What do you mean you never heard of them? Hollywood Vampires (2015–): Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Aerosmith's Joe Perry toast ghosts of rock's past with whatever Beatles, Eagles, Guns or Roses drop by.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Flavor Flav reflects on how he 'reshaped and molded reality TV' with 'Flavor of Love,' 'Strange Love'
From Public Enemy hype man to U.S. Olympic Water Polo team sponsor, Flavor Fav has blazed a unique path. 'I never dreamed when I was younger that I would be doing this,' Flav, 65, told Yahoo Entertainment. A musical prodigy proficient in 15 instruments, 'I always did want to be famous one day with my music,' which he did alongside Chuck D. 'I just didn't know exactly what part of the field that I was going to come out of. All I did was just live day to day and try. I didn't really imagine that I would be who I am now.' See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Another thing Flav (real name: William Drayton Jr.) tried was reality TV, some 20 years ago. Initially reluctant to appear on the Surreal Life in 2004 — when the genre was new and the stars weren't exactly A-list — he agreed to take part in Season 3 of the VH1 show. It was there that he met Brigitte Nielsen, the actress from Rocky IV and ex-wife of Sylvester Stallone, and their opposites-attract pairing landed them their own spin-off: 2005's Strange Love. 'That was an amazing show and Brigitte Nielsen is one amazing person,' he said. 'She's very lovable, very kind and very sweet. We really had fun doing Strange Love because it was strange. You got a tall Danish blonde that's a model and a movie actor, and then you got the short, Black rapper. I'm 5'7', she's 6'2' [in] bare feet. [But] thanks to Brigitte, we made great television.' Their relationship didn't survive the season. Nielsen went to live with her Italian boyfriend (now husband) Mattia Dessì with whom she had a daughter in 2018 at age 54. As for Flav, VH1 handed him another series, Flavor of Love, a Bachelor-like show that brought the network big viewership for three seasons, from 2006 to 2008. 'I kind of reshaped and molded reality TV. There's been other shows like mine ... but they didn't do as well as mine,' said the perpetual hype man. 'That's because I'm the original. I was the first out the gate. The only one who can ever break my records is Flavor Flav.' He continued, 'What reality TV gave me was the power to be able to bring over 7 million people to my viewership. I've done it once and I can do it again.' There's been talk of a series around him pursuing his high school diploma. There's also a Flavor of Love reboot in the works, though not with him. These days, Flav's about using his fame for good causes. He was at the 2024 Olympics to hype the water polo team after signing a deal to sponsor the team for five years and provide financial support. He's currently looking into sponsoring the U.S. Olympic women's hockey team, saying, 'We're trying to put [a deal] together and get it done.' Last year he paid an athlete's rent when she couldn't. Since January, he's been fundraising for Black families who lost homes in the Los Angeles County wildfires, and recently passed the $150,000 mark. 'I am considered a mouthpiece to the world,' Flav said. 'I'm considered a leader. A lot of people do follow me and I try to do the right thing with my power … and not mislead people with my power.' He takes pride in using his life experience to help others, visiting jails, group homes and schools for many years to share 'the mistakes that I've made through life. … Because everybody makes mistakes,' said the performer, who is four years sober. 'Nobody's perfect. [Life is] going to always be a learning adventure.' Flav's passion for championing other artists is strong too. When asked about being a famous Swiftie — aka a fan of Taylor Swift — he corrects us, 'I am King Swiftie, thank you. And let me tell you, I didn't get that name from Taylor, I got it from the Swifties, [so it's] even more legitimate. The Swifties see how hard I go in for my girl.' He's happy to rattle off his favorite things about the pop songstress, who shouted him out at an 'Eras Tour' stop in Hamburg last year, praising her life-inspired lyrics and marveling at how she caused record-breaking seismic activity ('it hit the Richter scale, baby!'). 'I go in hard for Taylor — and that's because she's real, man,' he said. 'She's one of the most important artists of our time. I'm very proud of her. I'm happy for her with Travis [Kelce] — the whole nine.' He recently hung out with Jason Kelce at the Super Bowl, saying he's 'pretty cool people … he's got mad love for Flav.' Flav is bringing a lot of his signature enthusiasm to a new partnership with 5-Hour Energy timed to the start of daylight saving time on March 9. He helped create a mini bottle, 1-Hour Energy, to give people a boost who are tired from the time change. For the record, Flav only had a half-energy shot before our conversation, he said. 'A full one would have me on my way to Mars. I'm already full of energy,' he said. That he is.
