| about CRIME AND THE CITY SOLUTION | |
SB writes in a email on 6 december 2000 :
„Dear Alain and Sandra,
I have just had a moment to look at your e.mails. That is an unusual fan letter you sent. Rowland’s interview was interesting it’s strange what people remember. It made me think that I have never really explained in any detail what led me to move away to the US and begin making solo records. It certainly wasn’t because I was unhappy
with Crime artistically. For me ‚Paradise Discotheque‘ is still the greatest record I have been involved in
and ‚The Adversary‘ the best single song Crime recorded. Not only was Paradise a great and truly
unique record it was a band record. By this I mean it was greater than the sum total of the people playing
on it. Each member of Crime brought something irreplaceable to the sound which is why ‚The Bride
Ship‘ is by far the weakest of the three studio albums being as Chrislo barely plays on it. As the lyrist I
used to resent the equal sharing of the publishing but in Crime’s case it was appropriate.There were many
reasons why I moved to the US …
[ ]
So as is my habit I moved somewhere new an started again. There are other reasons, I felt that
Paradise Discotheque was as an original and individual a record as could be made yet it was still being
measured against the other projects that the members of Crime were involved with. I began to wonder if
Crime were ever going to be free to exist as an entity unto itself. In retrospect I think the majority of
journalists did view Crime as being it’s own self-contained world but at the time I was focussed on
those journalist who refused to see Crime as an island. Furthermore I think if you look at
-‚Shine‘-‚The BrideShip‘-‚Paradise Discotheque‘ in a historical context they have earned a place to
themselves.
As for the Crime that Rowland was in it was not greater than the sum total of it’s members and it did
not do justice to the talents of the people involved. Rowland was always meant to head his own band and I am
glad for him that he is doing so still. I had not discovered who I was as a singer until I met Alex and
Bronwyn had joined the band. When Alex, Mick, Chrislo, Bronwyn and myself first rehearsed for a one
off performance in Berlin I knew I had found a special band and this led to the formation of the true ‚Crime
and The City Solution‘ and the one that most resembled in approach the very first Crime back in Sydney in
’78. In Crime there were no rules, no limitations only possibilities and everyone was united in pushing the
envelope. Touring and living were another matter all together but in rehearsal and in the studio Crime had
common purpose. At least that’s how I remember it and that’s the story I’m sticking to. Fond best wishes to
all who listened and all who were involved.“
It’s an kind of answer to a interview from Rowland S. Howard that Sandra sended to S.B and which I will put on this page when I will found it again. I’ll promise 🙂
Our hard disk is a reall mess, I can tell you !
Ok, I found it …
from
As a great songwriter, Rowland Howard helped Nick Cave find
fame. Now he’s ditched the drugs and found his own voice. By
STEWART LEE
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/07/09/sticulroc01005.html
„The Cave man’s back
You can recognise a Rowland S Howard guitar lick in seconds. A
quavering, tremulous thing, half anaemic Duane Eddy, half
spaghetti-western soundtrack, permanently hovering on the brink of
collapse. But for the past decade, Howard has been missing in
action, while his one-time bandmate Nick Cave is recognised as one
of the world’s finest songwriters.
Back in mid-1970s Melbourne it was Howard who co-piloted Cave’s
early journeys from thrash punk into more epic territory. But more
than 20 years after he first helped Cave discover his, Howard too has
finally found his own voice.
„I went into the studio on the understanding that it was my record
and I had power of veto,“ he says of his first solo album, Teenage
Snuff Film (out now on Cooking Vinyl records). „There was none of
the acrimony you get with a band, of people refusing to surrender
what they had deemed to be their ‚magnificent contributions‘, of
different personalities that inevitably run afoul of each other. This
time it was no problem.“
Nowadays, Howard is eloquent and witty, grown old on just the
wrong side of (ex-) junkie chic, impossibly long of finger and looking
like the St Kilda sun might melt him. But Howard was an elfin-faced
17-year-old when, in 1977, he joined Cave in the Boys Next Door,
bringing with him a cache of more sophisticated songs that clearly
raised the singer’s game. In 1981, reincarnated as the Birthday Party,
they settled in London, where their incendiary live shows became as
talked about as their feral, drug-wracked lifestyle. But Howard’s most
unpleasant memory of London is of Kilburn High Road. „I remember
for months every traffic light was sitting in a hole in the road with
wires trailing out. It was like the Third World.“ Nevertheless, after
the band collapsed, Howard stayed, collaborating with obscure cult
figures on albums only distinguished by glimpses of his distinctive
guitar sound.
He eventually joined the hardy Australian perennials Crime and the
City Solution, but disagreements with the gravel-voiced vocalist
Simon Bonney forced his departure. „I had these absurd arguments
with Simon. He said my guitar and his voice both occupied the same
’sonic frequency‘ and therefore I had to be turned down,“ recalls
Howard with an almost comic disbelief. When he finally got to front
his own band, These Immortal Souls, things fell apart as usual.
„There was a string of extremely unfortunate incidents,“ he says,
darkly. „We went into a studio for weeks and came out with nothing.
The record company was reluctant to let us back in. It kind of killed
the momentum.“
In 1994 Howard took a holiday back home: „Something clicked and I
thought, ‚What am I doing in London?‘ I was utterly miserable there,
and there was nothing to write about because nothing had
happened to me for so long. Also, the musical scene in Melbourne
appeared to be very healthy, where previously there had just been
an enormous proliferation of drugs.“ In a series of acoustic sets in
local clubs, Teenage Snuff Film began to take shape.
Unlike Cave’s more recent songs, which extend the usual
alternative-rock concerns into metaphors about man’s relationship
with God or the creative imagination, Howard is starting from scratch
once more at the simple sex, drugs and death level, but gloriously so
on tracks such as the chillingly sparse Breakdown, or the
shimmering, meditative Autoluminescent. When we start discussing
the album’s take on the 1960s standard She Cried, something is
revealed of the songwriter Howard hopes he is.
„I heard it on a Shangri-Las compilation,“ he recalls. „They had
some amazing writers. Shadow Morton wrote Leader of the Pack
while smoking a cigarette in the shower, on a piece of clear plastic
using three coloured pens to mark out the vocal lines. I like those old
songs that are corny but have an emotional core. I admire people like
Shadow Morton or Lee Hazelwood , who subvert the genre from
within. I fondly like to imagine that Lee Hazelwood can’t tell the
difference between a work of genius like Some Velvet Morning and
something appalling.“
The Howard as would-be Shadow Morton/Lee Hazelwood theory
would go some way to explaining the air of class that surrounds
Teenage Snuff Film. And it shows Howard has grown up. Eighteen
years ago, he and the American performance artist Lydia Lunch
released the second worst recording of Some Velvet Morning ever,
but in his approach to a cover version on his current album, the new,
reformed Howard shows an astonishing maturity. His reading of
Billy Idol’s White Wedding reveals a hidden dignity beneath the
song’s trashy veneer.
If Howard is ready to take a Billy Idol song seriously, then he must
be ready to respect his own talent. „It’s interesting to find something
great in a song that everyone despises,“ he says. „I mean, do we
really need another version of Knockin‘ on Heaven’s Door apart from
Bob Dylan’s? But to do a song by Billy Idol, a man regarded as being
without any redeeming features, a kind of cartoon character, but not
a cartoon character that anyone likes… Excuse me, can you ring me
back later? My bathroom has just flooded.“
A faulty washing machine denies us a glib conclusion. Still, here
goes. The Birthday Party’s first posthumous live album is called It’s
Still Living, a phrase that could equally be applied to the tenacious
Howard himself. Even if he’s having trouble with his domestic
appliances. „
Simon bonney 