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Could be I just got wise
Just opened my eyes
Say I'm a fool to believe
But I'm catching the breeze
I'ma get where I'm going I'm telling you
C'mon get where you're going let's break on through
Past time to be showing 'em the best we can do
The world is yours
We gotta take it slow
We got a long way to go
We gotta try to be nice
There ain't no reason to fight
I'ma take it as far as it has to go
I'ma catch it not break it, d'you feel me though?
I'm a king in my own backroom studio
The world is yours
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I know you've been waiting a long time
So have I
I can't sleep when I'm in character
And when in character I married her, so wrong?
I can't eat when I'm in character
It might embarrass you to see me clutching on
But I get to see the me that I can't be when I'm in character
Get to be the meaning in the song
I gotta fly
I gotta fly solo
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Half-man half-machine
Snowblind!
Out of control
Blindness can be cured
With an ounce of snow
Do you know what I mean?
I don't suppose you do
So come and have some snow with me
Every hour of every day
Snowblind takes the pain away
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Welcome here tonight, I'd like to thank you all for coming in. Please join me and we'll take some poison.
A three-week trip on the crystal had left our sad young couple writhing like spastic rats. The loss of bowel-control was predictable enough, however the extent of both volume and spread was SPECTACULAR.
It's on the walls.
While the girl stumbled out the boy was dragged like a muddy banana, held up in the middle by a football of waste.
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Some old bullshit
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I, I never thought I'd work hard at something I hate
But I, I just can't bear the look on my sweet lover's face
When she tells me we'll get nothing for free
It's a fine fine luxury
I, I never thought I'd give up on something I'd made
But I, I just couldn't tear myself from my sweet mother's face
When she told me what I couldn't believe
It's a fine fine luxury
It's so fine
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8. |
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I'm just gonna cut up what's left of this half into 1-2-3-
Are you kicking?
WHOA!
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9. |
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Warmongers in suits and ties
Small dongers and dollars in their eyes
Smart bombers in stupid disguise
He can't stop us even though he tries
Johnny!
The sycophantic toad
Makes his money
Watching countries explode
Johnny!
Let's pump his little hole
Johnny!
Dunk his head in the bowl
Johnny!
Little fucker's got no soul
Johnny!
Let's go!
Johnny Howard
#1 cocksucking MOTHER!
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You ask me why?
D.A.N.D.Y. that's why
So don't ask me again baby
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I got me a ticket to the Chautauqua
Cost me 39 cents
I got one for you, one for you, one for you
And one for the lady
Now listen baby
When the Chautauqua comes to town
You better listen REAL good
Cos soon they'll be leaving town
And I'm only gonna say this once
Chautauqua
Hottest ticket in town
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about
"Discretion Assured" – apt title. A theoretical record company. Some invisible releases. One thing any signing could count on was lack of exposure.
Formed in the Adelaide Hills South Australia in 2002 by novice producer Ben W, Cottage Industry Recordings lasted a scant four years, until nominal star W. COQ disappeared at Deddick in Snowy River country in 2006 and the company folded, taking with it a reputed hundred-song archive of unfinished releases, most of them COQ's.
Never a comfortable relationship, the collaboration between COQ and W was all-important. It was COQ who served as unofficial A&R man, introducing the reclusive W to everyone from cheese-rock-party-metal guru Reed "Bleed" Cathcart to scuzz/country rocker Jim (Glenorchy) Dandy, not to mention their sidemen, who'd serve as revolving house-band on subsequent releases.
But if there was magic in this mixture there was also madness. By mid-2005, by W's estimate, there were five COQ-related collaborative projects awaiting release, all incomplete, while COQ's debut solo album "Tightrope Walker" had remained untouched since 2003. Meanwhile COQ was still bitching about the "limited release" (read a few copies for the band) of psychedelic party-band the Chicken Dinners Project’s live-to-eight-track "04/04", despite that the CDP had featured extensively on the earlier "66 Sessions" and demand for a sequel to the seven-minute "Chicken Dinner: The Genesis" can hardly have been extreme. In the end something had to give, and though W compromised with another limited release (the Chautauqua's "3-Phase") for COQ it was too-little too-late.
At the time of writing, CIR is a labyrinth of incomplete recordings by various feuding artists, which, since COQ's disappearance, looks like never being completed. If the current compilation barely scrapes the surface, it does attest to certain verifiable facts: in one form or another, in runs of five to fifty, there were twelve releases in the years 2003-6. With the exception of the first (CIR01: "Twins Teaser", a pre-release sampler of the music/spoken word project "Brothers of the Head", which emerged on the affiliated Cottage Industry Press), each of those releases is represented here, though remixed and edited to new streamlined effect, which purists may find not quite in keeping with the label’s former ethos. W, as always, is unapologetic.
Though partly a homage to his fallen comrade (COQ appears on at least half of these tracks), "Discretion Assured" is, like all the label’s releases, a reflection of W’s tastes. Where COQ preferred his more cerebral work, W casts him variously as positive-affirmation guru ("World is Yours"), sex-mad Neanderthal ("Gauntlet") and hopped-up punk ("Johnny!", a paean to former Australian Prime Minister John Howard). In contrast, W's own presence is shadowy: the archly-impersonal "3x5=15", and "Waitin' in Character", taken from the early W/COQ collaboration "COQ Solo", the exact authorship of which remains disputed.
Meantime Reed Bleed (AKA Sniffy C) plays drums on half the tracks, bass on a few more and a bit of everything on his own "Snowblind & Snowed Under". (Re-edited, its message is still more obscure: "Do you know what I mean? I don’t suppose you do," intones the Cheese in this most baffling of substance-abuse songs.)
Third key-player Dandy belts out the garage-funk self-tribute "D.A.N.D.Y", hypnotises the Southern Baptist Rebellion into subdued late-night mode as Rebellion Off-Duty and sets out with the Chautauqua on a travelling educational show, winding up at Lake Chautauqua, New York State.
Other players? The usual suspects: A. Snowball, DLW (AKA Cobalt Meatus), both CDP mainstays, both demented as usual. Also the reclusive Menu, who never quite gelled with the crew. And last but not least, Paddy Ryan of Greater Northern, guitarist/bassist/sound engineer, who mastered these lo-fi artefacts into something resembling aural warmth.
And me? In September 2001 I stumbled into a COQ Bros gig at the Planet Cafe on Brunswick Street Melbourne and never looked back. At first a fan of W’s, whose introversion I understood, I soon saw that COQ was the true luminary, and briefly became his manager in late 2005, clashing often with W over a "business model" I found increasingly bizarre. Now, twelve years later, I’m nostalgic for W's vision.
True, there are glitches, sonic scars, missed opportunities. But having visited a few of W's various "studios" (Studio 66 Bridgewater SA, Hank's Folly Wapengo NSW, the Ben W Clinic Toolangi Vic), I'm only too familiar with their inadequacies. Borrowed amplifiers, battered drumkits, hastily-annexed corners of rented houses where W would set up the meager tools of his trade: portable Tascam eight-track recorder, cheap Rode condensor microphone, seventies hi-fi speakers and a rotating cast of instruments which, while they improved steadily, could hardly have gotten worse. Added to this, a cast of collaborators who approached each session not as a professional engagement but as a celebration...
"Celebration," I hear you say? Isn't that what's missing in so much of the music of today? Sit back and let COQ and his crew take you to a place where no-one gives a f**k, for real. The truth is, if I could, I'd be there with them today.
M. Brody, Hope Valley UK 2011
credits
released June 6, 2016
Cover art by Future Friendly Design
futurefriendlydesign.com
All tracks produced by Ben W except "Johnny!" recorded by Matt & Chris at Melbourne SAE and mixed by J.T. & Paddy at Rorschach
license