mile after mile burn after burn return
i first met donnette thayer in 1984 in san francisco on tour
4 years later despite both having someone else
we fell into an incredible glamourous decadent collaboration
and called it hex
in fact dt had put a bit of a hex on me
one day after catching up with her in san francisco
i woke up and realised i was totally hooked on this person
i could not think straight
my system had delivered some kind of endorphin hit
and it was screaming out for more
but she lived with a guy who was a lead singer
he was the main man in her group called game theory
who were an eccentric and quite wonderful band
who had absorbed some big star and were incredibly melodic
the songs had strange turns
dt was the other guitar player n sometime vocalist
game theory were doing pretty good they were doing ok in their scene
make no mistake their records had some brilliant bits
anyway i was touring america for almost a year straight
and calling dt for an hour during her lunchtime at the lab
she had a fucking degree in chemistry for christs sake
but eventually she flew out occasionally to where i was playing
and we entered a world of our own conspiring
in strange and luxurious and run down and nondescript hotel rooms
we began to hatch hex i guess
when donnette wasn’t around i stayed in my room and wrote music
i vividly remember certain hotels in certain cities
in tampa florida on a warm night
after the show
i plugged in my sequencer
and i composed the songs that would be on our album
all this pent up confused feeling i had
came out as this music which i diligently crafted into the night
the next day i’d ring her at lunch n play her stuff over the phone
i wrote the music to impress her
it was the best i could do
i was hearing a new sound in my head
electro pop music that would feel like romantic acid
incorporating lots of reverb and howling guitars
incorporating the sampling of voices and re-playing them back in
incorporating weird sad beautiful lyrics
and here was donnette thayer
in some parallel universe she could have been a pop star
to me she was like one of those heroines in forties n fifties movies
she contained many opposites and was of a feline bent
and she oscillated between the sacred and profane
she could be urbane american or goddamn cowgirl from denver
she seemed dedicated to me like an apostle or something
and yet she was tough cynical and resilient
the fact that someone like her thought i was so great impressed me
it was 1988
my life was now in a whirlwind
after a long slog to crack it
we are touring the states incessantly
only interrupted by brief stabs at europe
then back in the usa
so i put a lot of work into the record
as i get insulated from this real world out here
into a strange bubble oh boy
at the end of 1988 dt and i go to nyc where we record hex
we were staying in my managers apt uptown somewhere
it was winter and dark and snowing
at night we worked during peoples off hours
donnette and i worked on the lyrics together
theres some real good things here …some great words
it all kinda started to coalesce for me
i added the guitars and basses and percussion
i played around with different recording tricks and techniques
i think the singing on here is pretty good
it was exactly what was needed
some of the songs on this record suddenly burst through the clouds
and hit ecstatic plateaus
we were influenced by absolutely no one here
this was instant hex
as a labour of love i had conspired these songs
guided by my intuitive instinct for pop
and my intrinsic desire to transcend
the music and the words we summoned out of the ether
because something told us to do it
we bickered a bit and sometimes she rebelled against my meglomania
but she endlessly concentrated on working
she was ready for experimentation
and she usually sang quite in tune
and she could suddenly get very shrill very fast
like cilla black could
go from soft velvety to passionate and edgy in no time
usually i liked this tho dt sometimes had a tendency to overdo it
but mostly i was able to get these great performances as you hear here…
when margot smith heard the last song on hex
she insisted on doing it on the spot
so you will hear it on her album touch
anyway it got some good reviews but generally it sank without much notice
i don’t know why
in 1988 this was quite a futuristic record
the final piece in the hex puzzle was engineer bryce goggin
we met him in new york and he mixed it for nothing
he not only mixed it
but he contributed greatly to the albums sonic wallop
by replacing some of my dodgy sounds with some very cool ones
and then he mixed it and nailed it in a crystal dreamy innovative way
i will always believe this record was a masterpiece
it was just too good to be understood then
the few people who came across it were amazed at the songs herein
we were searching for euphoria
sometimes we goddamn almost find it
vast haloes is a different story
hex was written in a fevered dream a honeymoon period
i had been reborn a star and i had dt as my disciple
if you’ve seen judy davis playing william burroughs wife in naked lunch
you can kinda get the idea of how donnette was
languid sleepy tired sometimes
funny the more tired she looked the more i liked it
she looked good tired i don’t know why
she really knew a lot about guitars and amps
she was a good guitarist too actually
she could actually play
but i was a tyrant
and the purity of hex depended me playing everything
that having been said donnette ran into a guy called jim mcgrath
he was a percussion master
and he played all over this record and added much colour and spice
he added organic energy too
now while hex had been very sparse electro and in some ways restrained
vast haloes took on other genres with varying results
vast haloes has a bigger sound in some ways
a few songs on here are pop masterpieces i have no doubt
recorded in la at various studios including a+m
its a record made on the way down
its high points are maybe higher
its low points a bit lower
over all its still a special record
i played it produced it co-mixed it
i controlled everything
sometimes i lost my judgement
sometimes i came up with fantastic lush stuff like aquamarine
imagine this
a room at the hollywood roosevelt in the dead of winter
dt had her own joint down the road
she wasn’t always there
alone in a wet cold alien winter
i looked out onto the empty blue pool and jacuzzi
smoking new strains of powerful ganja
i came up with this music
dt would come back we’d think up the vocals
we’d get another few days somewhere on the cheap
or as a favour to our manager mike lembo
he never realised hex was actually pretty good
it got a couple rave reviews in england too..but….
i stayed there for quite a while in that same room
there was no one on hollywood boulevard it seemed
slightly unhinged by my whole life
its successes and failures
and reacting badly to too many bad things
too bad i didn’t know then what i know now
still theres some stirring moments here
some unusual things some arcane and fabulous moments
after the first records austerity necessitated by time and technology
i crammed everything but the kitchen sink onto this record
in an effort to emulate todd rundgren a la wizard a true star
so theres stuff going on everywhere
sometimes its vulgar and comedic
sometimes its intricate and quite mysterious to me now
how did i ever dream some of this stuff up
yes there is some great transcendent pop music here
the birth of trip hop someone once said
during the making of the first hex one day donnette and i got food poisoning
and we both lay in bed hallucinating in a cold fever
one day i looked in the mirror
there i was gaunt dishevelled tired stoned unshaven
man i was every popstar i ever wanted to be rolled into one
my head was bursting with ideas for music
people in australia were beginning to twig i was drifting off
they would ring me and persuade me to come back
but i didn’t want to
i was in new york city
it was winter
i had a bit of money
it was cafes and restaurants and cabs to the studio
i bent all my focus on the first record
my life was suddenly impossible groovy and alien
i really was a bit of a popstar
we went to bars and we drank a bit and watched comedians
once in the middle of a deadcold winter night
a comedian stopped the show and pointed to dt and said
hey lady you got something going with this guy aint ya?
at christmas time instead of returning to australia
i went to donnettes mothers place in denver colorado
oh man!
a truly extraordinary time!
donnettes mother and boyfriend were quite youngish
they were extremely groovy and turned on hipster types
they made me more than welcome
they also laid on many many special refreshments
my christmas gift was a wonderful refreshment
her mother was an amazing character
madeleine stowe always reminded me of her mother
we used to go to the best mexican restaurants
and we’d drink beer and have a really cool time
these were no byron bay hippies
these were the real deal
travelling all over america
her mother was like a tough pretty funny classic american type
the type i had seen in the movies so much as a young kid
feisty women who chart their own course for reasons known only to them
donnettes sister turned up too
she looked like donnette maybe not so tired
she kinda kept up a mostly good natured string of little jibes at me
i didn’t mind that much
it all seemed like a movie
my first american christmas
i’m in denver colorado
my record is in the charts here in the US
i’m staying in the suburbs of denver
its snowing and all that
sometimes i take a walk with her mother
she remains totally unimpressed by my stoned blather
its a thing i liked about her
we did lots of touristy things with the family
there was another half sister who only lived nocturnally
one did not see much of her
we went skiing we went to the hot water springs on freezing days
we hit the most authentic mexican places a lot
sometimes we would play some new board games at night
but the refreshments were there too
but the atmosphere was very relaxed and warm
it really was like being in a film
eventually of course
rightly or wrongly
i was compelled to return to australia
hex was done
i had no pretext whatsoever to tarry
the brief golden age of hex was already over
the first record represents that on every level
the second record represents hexes glorious fall
on every level
you can download either of these records now from this site
see details on the left about bandcamp
