The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

zeitgeist #82/83

(blog commissioned by KN)

boy in 1982 i was somebody else

and i was making my third album

i was a confused little pouting ninny

our 2nd album had done pretty good

but an EP called sing-songs had kinda bombed

so here we are

late 1982 after a tour taking in sweden where i met karin jansson

in australia i was dating that glamorous newsreader

yeah you know who i mean

the heroin years still 8 years ahead of me

angular blah blah blah

living in terrace house with russell in rozelle

lots of people sitting around taking drugs

scruffy young art college types

bonging on and smoking cigs

white wine and negative photos and clothes patterns and demo tapes

open fire me and russell both slightly pyro playing around with it

the phone rings with girls asking for russell

our voices are similar

sometimes they think i am him and its embarrassing

when i say no actually thats my brother...

i got my studio in the front room

i gotta 4 track tape recorder

and im knocking out tunes by the dozen

i go in there and i fire up the equipment

i gotta tr808 drum machine

which is responsible for a lot of the drum patterns on seance

unfortunately

demo-itis had gripped the recording of seance by the balls

the demo versions were too closely adhered to and it was my fault

the songs never got to really blossom and flow like on blurred crusade

and again on heyday

they remain kinda rigid

lyrically i seem to be playing the part of some Byron-esque melancholia addict

reaching through a medium to find my dead fiancee or whatever the fuck its supposed to be

the agony of separation

the romance of death

the triumph of love

puh-lease! spare me…

anyway back in 1982/3 this is where my head was at

total demos

every song sounds just like a well recorded demo

i have 2 great guitarists and a great drummer

but they ended up mostly playing the stuff from the demos

i dunno if i intended it to be this way

but i can see now what a bad idea it actually was

the songs never breathe

locked into these formats i have devised

every instrument plays its counterpoint pattern

everything is made up of little patterns

the drums the bass the guitars the tinkly keyboard bells things

listen to one day made up of interlocking riffs

only at the end of the guitar solo does any freedom happen

the whole thing was totally compounded

when EMI in their wisdom insisted on hot shot wunderkind Nick Launay mixing it

Launay had done some great work with midnight oil and rejuvenated their sound

but his early eighties box of electronica tricks makes the church sound merely dated

i dont blame him

he had his one special sound at that stage and thats what you got him in for

anyway seance ended up sounding boxy and tinny and flat instead of big and soft

i couldnt do anything about it

it was beyond my power to stop it

the whole album is a weird proposition i think

its always the album those old style church fans like

we rarely play anything off it either

its got that great cover picture taken by russells girlfriend kim

its got that ridiculous track travel by thought

‘a stoned jam that never should have made it into the studio let alone out again’

(said someone in melody maker i think)

its got that great joy division influenced track it doesnt change

its got that great opener fly

(the girl dies in the first song so bloody miserable is seance)

theres a few flashes of sunlight but mostly its sad doomed love stuff

4th form poetry and slightly clunky songs

i dunno now its so long ago

i listened to it last night before i wrote this

its ok i guess but a feeling that the bands wings are clipped often pervades

this was the album where i was at the height of my control freak period

i had it all figured out exactly how it should be and i oversaw the whole thing

we were victims of the zeitgeist and there is definitely some dated ideas in there

some underdone songs

and a load of flat singing

flat as a freaking tack jack

one review said that my voice made the one note samba look tuneful

it was a hugely pretentious affair but so fucking what?

i wanted to make a sad but triumphant album

i wanted seance to be a gambit

i knew that somewhere some people in the future would totally dig it

i knew it would probably not do that well at the time of its release

for one glorious week it entered the charts at 13 in australia before falling like lead

in england it managed to go in for one week at 42

its incredible to think it was 35 years ago that we did this record and that people still like it

if you have listened to seance recently please give it a review in the comments

(if you’d care to)

yeah seance 

as one  nasty review said:

close but no sugar lamp

(a commissioned blog for BC)

yeah as you all know i became a veg around 17 years of age

it seemed like good idea at the time and it still does

if i am at all youthful and a survivor of the scourges of drugs

surely it can only be my vegetarianism at the bottom of it all

because vegetarianism is just the right thing to do all the time

dont kill things dont eat their flesh

man its the most lose/lose scenario you can imagine

a devils deal: murder begetting misery

its only obvious

if you humiliate and torture some creature its whole life

if you kill an innocent beast with an axe or a bolt

how can it be that this will not come back upon you?

on every single level that something can affect you

spirit

body

mind

chemical

karma

meat is bad medicine my friends

that decaying flesh decomposing from the minute that creature dies

chopped up in some nightmarish gory filthy abattoir

its grisly remains are hacked into bits and packaged up

the ugly work of a world gone wrong

it is perversion to eat this rotten rubbish when its unnecessary

people wake up to the fucking truth

meat is killing our planet along with a few other stupid things

that carcass hitting your guts and travelling round in your intestines

your intestines long n winding road

and with weak digestive juice

that bit of corpse in your guts for up to three days going off

your stomach aint no freezer

put a piece of meat in a glass on a table with some weak acid

see what happens

the things we are meant to eat dont rot in the same way

veggies and fruit dont rot like meat

nothing rots like meat

this flesh full of adrenaline and fear

are we not men so high and moral

with all our art and medicine and science and all the rest?

so how come we are butchering and shooting and trapping and murdering

all the other residents of this planet

torturing em

testing soap and cigarette smoke on em

sawing their heads off

skinning em alive

tell me my friend

how would you like to be strapped down

and some bastard cut off your ears

and pull out your teeth or your nails with pliers

put ya in a cage where cannae fucking even move

if you have children they are dragged from you screaming at birth

youre stuck in a black stinking place

surrounded by other wretched beasts each unmoving in their pen

all you know is hatred and scorn and pain and savagery

didnt your god who made you make that pig or that chicken too?

news flash tho

scientists only a few years back are saying hello! animals have feelings now

that they feel pain and love their young

well no fucking kidding thank god for that

gee here i was all these years thinking its fucking obvious that of course they do

of course they dont wanna be treated how we are treating them

we are idiots with cunning brains and opposable thumbs

and we have made everything elses life on this earth a fucking misery

humanity ruining things as usual

not to mention what humanity does to humans

who cares

at least thats our business more than this huge evil conspiracy of killing

imagine explaining it to some aliens who turn up here

yeah well yeah we kill those creatures and eat them

we breed them in squalor and agony

and at the end of their pathetic existences

they are cruelly despatched by some cruel numbzombie who gets paid to kill em

yeah hell on earth

could hell even rival the slaughterhouse and its hidden pain and horrors..?

the blood and the shit and the piss and the guts

the disembodied heads

the hides and skin ripped off

the eyes and the feet and the torsos

jesus christ oh my people wake up to ya selves

do not ever eat this foul poison again

eat vegetarian for everythings sake

youll be healthier better cooler nicer

you’ll be a real man or real woman

a real human

raise your kids as vegetarians i did

they are all vegetarian

refuse it

abhor it

take to the streets and social media and declaim it

study the animal men who eat lots and lots of meat

coarsened and ugly and becoming animals themselves

their hideous carnivorous aura radiating bad fucking vibes

what do you expect?

you are what you eat

you eat bacon and pork no wonder youre a repulsive pig yourself

your mind unable to perceive subtle vibrations and the earths emanations

becoming what you hate because surely you must hate animals to be part of this killing

the pig eater becomes the pig why its as plain as the handsome nose on my face!

dont eat meat you selfish greedy idiots full of bloodlust

do something for this planet and all your co inhabitants

and get off the evil excuse for food that meat is!

evil rotten stupid habit

oh my doctor says i need vitamin b 13

where the fuck are the elephants and gorillas getting their b 13 from, i ask you?

they live on grass and fruits

why dont you ever meet an anaemic gorilla who needs some sirloin to rescue it..?

its all bullshit!

the proof is in the pudding

despite all the stupid things i have prevailed only because of vegetarianism

my songs are vegetarian songs

my words are vegetarian words

my mind and body are vegetarian

i pity the carnivores

they are taking on so much cosmic sludge and so much death

with every nasty little bite

instant karma as yer blood pressure goes up

your chance of heart attack and stroke and cancer

im sure at the bottom of almost every disease there is something to do with meat

think about it for one minute

the amount of unnecessary killing going on every day

all those souls in torment

that cloud of negativity surrounding our planet like a dirty smog

people join with me now in a vegetarian league

dont eat meat

dont be part of it

become cleansed of the muck

and tell everyone you meet

DONT EAT MEAT!

oh and enjoy yer prosciutto you hypocrite!