STREET TALK TOMORROW THE WORLD

Rip It Up, Issue 20, 1 March 1979, Page 8

STREET TALK TOMORROW THE WORLD

John Malloy

Street* Talk: Mike Caen, Jim Lawrie, Andy McDonald, Stuart Pearce and Hammond Gamble.

If the old blues maxim about paying your dues still holds true, Street Talk are in the black for sure. They have survived numerous personnel changes (eighteen musicians in all) and years of gigging on the pub circuit. They started out at fifty dollars a night as a three piece blues band at the Windsor, and within weeks were a cult with Auckland's blues'n'booze freaks. Not too long ago I was watching them at a Northland pub when a particularly obnoxious drunk walked into the room and fired an empty bottle their way. Such are the joys of a musician's life around here.

So I guess that being discovered by Kim Fowley is OK by Hammond Gamble, singer, guitarist, writer and founder-member of Street Talk. We sat around the living room of his Ponsonby home, took in a sunny Auckland evening, and talked about it over a cold beer. "He's just an incredible producer. He's light years ahead of anybody I've ever been associated with. He really did some amazing things with us as far as getting us to work at speed, and he got things co-ordinated really well. He has an incredible ear." Longtime member and bassist, Andy McDonald was equally impressed. "He's quite capable of having his mind on two or three things at once. He'd be listening and jotting down lyrics in his mind on what would fit the tunes. The studio is his thing. He thrives on it." According to Hammond, he keeps typical rock'n'roll hours as well. "We got four tracks down in the first night. We were finished at five in the morning, and we didn't start till four or five in the afternoon. Kim's wide awake at seven o'clock in the morning after being in there for fifteen or sixteen hours. Glyn Tucker engineered it all really well, while Kim sort of directed, arranged, and produced the whole thing, and promoted it, along with WEA". Although three or four of Hammond's songs were complete before they recorded, much of

the album was cowritten in the studio by Fowley, Mike Caen, and Hammond. "Kim either patched up lyrics and wrote whole verses, or he wrote the whole lot, so what we did was put music around his lyrics, with his direction." The band are very happy with the finished product, and unconcerned about the possibility of alienating some of their diehard blues fans. Hammond: "I think the album has really strong blues overtones. In America you get loads of people who play this sort of music or that sort of music, and people would rather pay more money to see 8.8. King or someone like that, but they're not going to pay to see the likes of me play blues. And that's fair enough. "There's more blues in that album than anything else, apart from rock'n'roll. It's not full of guitar breaks but guitar solos are more of a live thing. Half the time, doing a guitar solo in the studio is not going to come off with a good feel. This last ten or twelve years people have had guitar solos up to their necks." There's no doubt that the blues feel is there, but a close listen to Street Talk reveals a solid rock'n'roll basis to the songs, with the bass and drums right up front in the mix. Andy: "The idea of this album is accessibility. As Kim said, at this stage, no-one outside of Auckland knows you. You've got to put down something that is the essence of what Street Talk is, but that a wide range of people are likely to listen to. Lets face it, you've gotta have airplay before you can sell records and create an audience for yourself." Apart from the obvious importance to the band, Street Talk is a milestone in New Zealand recording history in that it has the full backing of a record company with international connections. That it takes an L.A. producer to bring this about is less important than the fact that it's happening. It has already been released in Japan, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong (at the instigation of WEA head Tim Murdoch, who pushed the album very hard at a recent Kuala Lumpur conference). Fowley is pushing for release in the USA, UK, and Europe. With all that muscle behind them, I wondered if the band felt in danger of being hyped in the same way as Springsteen was with the 'Future of rock'n'roll' tag. Andy doesn't think so.

"Its not hype. Its only a continuation of the kind of level that he (Kim Fowley) tried to take things up to. New Zealand is a very low key place, and so is Australia, but its not like that in the Northern Hemisphere. If you compare that (the WEA press release) with press releases say, in America, it wouldn't appear as hype." Nor does the band lose a lot of sleep over the suggestion that one or two songs are Springsteen influenced. Hammond: "Bruce Springsteen hasn't been a big influence on me, and I don't believe he's been a big influence on Andy or Jimmy or Mike or Stuart. "Street Music" is a song that Kim wrote with me and Mike Caen. Kim had a pile of lyrics real American type lyrics. I sang it in a way that made sense with the lyrics. What it's all to do with is the phrasing’ of the lyrics." What knocks you over at the first listening to this album is the sheer professionalism of the playing and the recording. The more you hear it, though, the more songs sink in. The first four songs could all be singles, with good hooks, ace musicianship and Jim Lawrie's powerful drumming. My favourites are "Poison Letters", a comment on the more mercenary aspects of divorce, and "Lazy Pauline", a Hammond Gamble song that's more NZ than DB Lager or mediocre politicians. Andy got the last word in. "As time goes by, there's a demand for a certain style, and people can market almost virtual crap and feed it to the people if that's particularly what they want. They'll buy it. Music's got to that stage. We're trying to retain our artistic integrity, but we don't wanna starve. You gotta balance it up. There's a market out there as well as an audience."