in 1993 living in surry hills on albion st

a 3 story terrace house complete with recording studio

a doctor on the gear

a dominatrix

and an assorted cast of musicians , junkies , flunkies n fools

grant mclennan and i reassembled jacques frost as he called it

lowdown mean n dirty ok alright

i had a huge habit n grantley wasnt all that far behind

actually some days he abstained and went thru that torment

occasionally we couldnt get any n we both played on thru the suffering

fucking gives ya an edge i tell ya going thru opiate withdrawals

life is right there in yer face right there !

other times i stumbled over to jason n rhondas place

what a fucking rigmarole

you could never just turn up

you had to make an appointment in code

telling em what you wanted

monday meant a fifty

tuesday meant a hundred

wednesday was a half

and the weekend was a gram

the good weekend! the junky doctor used to say to em down the phone

they took ages solemnly weighing up this ridiculous powder

i mean have you ever seen how much ya get for 300 bucks?

like half a teaspoonful or something

anyway a load of other famous actors n singers n dancers frequented the joint

jason n rhonda were such philistines

they didnt realise  that skinny guy with all the black hair was a goth god

they didnt realise that boyish geeza was one of our top actors

anyway im digressing

grant and i were obsessed by the gear n all its many rituals

the whole fucking box n dice

i had more money at the time than grant

and sometimes oh i was so kind laying it on him gratis

othertimes i was a right fuckin’ bastard

i dole him out a tiny little bit

and then get loaded myself outrageously

we had a stupid jokes

we had our stupid codes

heroin was our girlfriend our only girlfriend

we bitched about her we praised her

we despaired of her

and when i saw more of her than grant

he got fucking very jealous

the record was engineered by my brother russell

and tim powles played on it quite brilliantly

grant n i watched a doco on the mamas n papas

we both fell in love with michelle phillips

and we both determined to get some of their interweaving harmonies

listen to running from the body

a complex typical grant story about a murder

“what about them bones in the orchard wall”

we let our guitars rip

grant n i wandered about permanently strapped up

because inspiration was striking us at all hours

on hot city nights we’d hang on the steps outside

me smokin’ dope with opium

grant smokin’ peter stuyvos

we’d strike up conversations with passers by

or i’d try n embarrass him if any females went by

we were on a pretty busy street albion street

a mecca at the time for intellectuals, prostitutes, drug dealers, gays, winos, punks

adolf hitler woulda hated the places to smithereens

i’d sing streets of your town to passing bints

grant’d protest oh steven steven no no stop …

back in the house i had a 24 track n all the latest stuff

i had a big leather lounge just like the pros

i had a glass bit between the control n recording rooms

i had a piano n a load of guitars

i had loads of gadgets n i didnt even know what they all did

grant and i would chuck on guitars and plug in n start up

we were raw we were visceral

the songs on this album are disturbing

they are sad songs songs of despair and triumphant hopelessnesses

grant played bass sometimes and i played lead guitar

together we overdubbed loads of other guitars

we always had an idea for some more guitars

i bash away on the piano

tim pounds the drums

its a brutal sound in some places

sometimes grant would drink a bottle of red wine

i might even have a slurp

our muses collided and lurched all over the place

we knocked the stuff out effortlessly

hell i wasnt even trying

you can tell that thats for sure

jesus tho its pretty good

like 2 crazy songwriters on drugs doing whatever they liked

grant surprisingly liked to rock out with a guitar

theres plenty of rocking out

polinski gave it a good mix

tim does some mixing too

it says i produced it

this was my idea of a brilliant production move

hey russell how long is that piece of tape?

its got 2 minutes one second on it

ok lets do a song that lasts 2 minutes one second and let the tape run out

you can hear it on shakedown

the picture inside is me nodded off

ooh i’m lovely when i’m comatose

grants got sunglasses on he looks quite macho

meanwhile the record is angry passionate disillusioned

grants great faith in love seems to have failed him here

i’m in there playing a lot of the instruments

some of the tracks i played everything

i was kinda on a roll too

i was making music constantly

except when i was asleep on the couch

or waiting for the white holden commodore

one of my other dealers

yeah i’d be standing out front waiting for that car

unlike grant i couldnt really play if i was junk-sick

oh god if youve never felt it

like a terrible anguishing aching painful absence

the worst fucking feeling you could never imagine till you felt it

when the endorphins had been shut down n the opiates turned off

you were burning you were freezing you were so down you hurt so bad

sweating shaking sleepless miserable time elongated out to centuries

a nightmare oh you would not believe

dont ever try heroin youll wish you never been born

so there i am spending hundreds of bucks a day to feel normal

i never overdosed once

i lived on custard and sweet soft milky types of things

i had all these silk shirts i bought in thailand

all the same but a different colour

i swapped the very last one with merrick one day in stockholm

he had an amazing shirt i coverted

grant smoked n drank took drugs n rocknrolled

i mean we were such a cliche pair

squabbling over the white lady

n then laying back strumming keith-like riffs

me with a spliff

grant with cig

tim sitting there trying to figure out

which lunatic was supposed to be in charge

it was not pretty n i was not proud of it

we argued over money n drugs

and we fell in n out with each other

i was a panicky when i had run out

i was blase when i was on it

grant was no angel n he was often rude to everyone else

tho usually he was not rude to me

he destroyed me with clever quick quips which might quote me him or dylan

grant n i both loved dylan but i deferred to grant who claimed to love him more

we loved to play dylan songs

we were always doing that bit

“they say i shot a man named gray n took his wife to italy”

we loved to imitate dylan

we dissected his songs

we conspired to secretly rip him off (even more)

all the lyrics are snatches of lives

hard lives sad lives good lives gone wrong

i just wanna know

how long you gonna keep me locked out of your empire?

we were interested in production too

n fooling round with stuff

theres some sophisticated bits amongst the brutality too

wow they were strange times

what was i thinking?

i was reading books by angela carter

oh she is so up my alley

and then i found out she’d been dead awhile…i hadnt realised

grant n i knocked out this song for her

she lives in her own world …we sing optimistically

theres some nice chord progressions

grant n i were across that stuff too

jacks of all trades

we bickered n squabbled n giggled n stormed off

we created we got loaded we felt withdrawals nasty fangs

its all here

its all on this record snow job

grant hated the cover

thought it was too sexy or something

he was a bit of an old fashioned gent when it came to that kinda thing

very courtly romantic sort of sentimental bloke

its in the lyrics too

he cries out against the fickleness of the female

the white lady

the girl hes kinda might be “seeing”

he really wanted to believe in “love”

whatever that means grant was all for it

except these modern girls hadnt read those 19th century books

the ones grant musta had for breakfast during his country days

so he was often telling some faithless loveless woman off or something

boy he could get hurt n jealous of a certain old flame of his too

any mention of her latest news would get him writing a thousand songs

its all there

its all here still in these grooves

i have unearthed the final cache of these cds

about 20 or 30 left in this universe and thats it

send me 25 bucks on paypal (mention snow job) n i’ll send ya one

including postage i guess

yep hes hawking his stuff on his blog folks

shame shame shame

each one will be fabulously auto-graphed by me

(or with a dedication should you desire)

anyway if you wanna own this record

its definitely your last chance

also definitely coming soon

premium sk ; first release DAVID NEIL THE WILDERNESS YEARS

goodnight