Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Bat Cave

Sometimes great ideas don't come in a flash of insight, but insinuate themselves into place until you simply can't ignore them anymore.

So the 'new' show on Yarra Valley FM 99.1 each Monday from 9 pm has been a slow but sure process that has grown into existance over the last few months. Dom Troughton, Greg Carrick and Dave Ashworth have been steering the Folk/Roots/Blues show into a new direction mainly without even a solid plan in place.

'The Bat Cave' will still start from the base of Roots/ Folk/Blues music, and, as usual, will probably get hijacked and taken to strange and new territory within the first hour! The culprits for this may range from Iggy Pop, to Lou Reed, to some obscure Reggae artist... but the ride is always worth it.

We will also be trying hard to kidnap some unsuspecting local muso and grill them in The Bat Cave, forcing them to play live for us and tell their life story. We've recently had DYKO, before he gets on the plane for Germany, Jesse Mitchell, and Carolyn Oates who played songs featured on her latest cd.

Coming up will be: April 18, Madeleine Mei; April 25 Buffy Sainte-Marie interview; May 2 Simeon; May 9 Emilea-Jayde; May 16, Katie Harder.
Above: Buffy Sainte-Marie signed our Bat Cave signature guitar 
and posed for a photo after the interview.

So tune in to YVFM 99.1 or get it streamed live from the station website every Monday night from 9 pm. If you are a local muso who would like to come in and play, then email me at gcarrick@gmail.com

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

"I eat up at the Logan"

Just back from a weekend at the Logan Pub. Logan is near St Arnaud, Victoria. In Logan, apart from the pub, there is.... nothing! 

So why go there? A friend of mine, Jim (pictured below) has this strange hobby where he likes to play music through a thumping big sound system, and he needs to find places remote enough to crank it up... so Logan Pub is perfect. The Pub is also famous in its own right, being quirky enough to win the Best Aussie Pub award at least once.

So we go there and set up two stacks of speakers, powered by a bank of three to five 1000W amps.
 

The weekend was actually a Bike Show, and we went up to provide music. Quite a range of bikers turned up, so there were nice sleek modern German numbers...
 

 ..to marvellous British machines from the past.

This triumph was pretty much all original, and looked and sounded great.

Some dude started playing honky tonk jazz on the piano in the pub, but I never did get his name...

Among the 'shop-bought' machines was this home made chopper, with a Yamaha engine, very minimalist.

Of course, you have to have a bunch of Harley's at a bike event, so there was a good range.

This is what they think of car drivers...

A lot of the riders brought their swags with them for overnight.

There's a lot more drinking room outside the Pub than in.

This Harley was one monster of a bike, huge, heavy and powerful.

Here's the Logan Pub, where the meals are worthy of a song:
"I eat up at the Logan
the meals are really big,
you don't get any health food,
Just Bacon, Pork and Pig"

Very Australian.

Jim and I, during our 12 hour marathon of playing lots of LOUD music for the crowd.

The bikers set up their swags wherever they parked their bikes.

This Harley was ridden by a biker lady called 'Crackers', whose standard response to things was to calmly take a penny bunger from her pocket, light it up from her fag, and toss it at you.

This Easy Rider mural was set up behind the stack of amps, and although it looked pretty cool in the daylight, at night it was lit by ultra violet lights, and turned very trippy.

I was trialling a new camera, with a 36X zoom. This is it at the widest angle...
 ..and from the same spot at it's greatest zoom. I really should have used a tripod, but didn't bring one.

Here's the mural at night.

All in all a great weekend. Everyone behaved and had a ball. I recommend dropping in at the Logan next time you're anywhere near, it's quite an experience.