There’s nothing quite like return flights between Australia and Europe to addle the brain cells. It’s both time and opposites: the time our flights bounced from Sydney to Singapore to Munich to Stuttgart with a two hour train ride down to reach Friedrichshafen. Opposites: either you are upside down or the moon is upside down. Keep right, not left. I think the water goes down the sink hole the other way. Now back in Sydney I think my brain is going down the sink hole the other way.
Two shows is less work than a full tour, but means you’re whipped back and forward much faster. I think it was the right thing to do – just two special shows.
The Vinyl On Demand festival was for meeting people we haven’t seen for a while and some that we had missed forty years ago. Particularly good to catch up with Graeme Revell, talk of the old days in Australia, the people that didn’t make it, and where we both ended up. Also Frank who ran the Vinyl on Demand label but is now building a museum of the old cassette based underground. I handed over the remaining masters of my Terse Tapes label, including One Stop Shopping, my compilation of Australian underground music made back in 1982.
The London Jazz Cafe was a chance to perform at a ‘serious’ music venue. Well not an opera house, but a place where modern music is treated with respect. Looking at the other people performing there we felt it was an honourable way to most likely end our days.
Both nights went well – we were a bit rusty and my voice no longer hits all the edges – but people seemed to find some genuine happiness in what we were providing.
Now there is time for each of us to pursue the next level – Stewart is organising EMOM Electronic Music Open Mic events. I’m still working at learning amusement parks design. As for the band I have stopped saying never again. I can better say – becoming less likely.
Thanks for the two you tube tracks. Great stuff
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to Frank’s festival (VOD). I would have loved to hear something new from you (or rather, SEVERED HEADS). I hope someone releases an acoustic version of the performance sometime soon. Until then, I’ll have to work my way through the Bandcamp catalog. Best regards from Berlin, Germany. Gerd N. aka Sea Wanton (on behalf of ‘NON TOXIQUE LOST’)
London was a moment of euphoria for me, I’d not had the privilege of being at a Sevs gig before, having missed you in Bristol a few years back due to a family emergency, (but I drove through Bristol on the night of that gig on my way to the frozen North – sigh), and here I was, at what was slated to be your last. Bittersweet but jubilant. Stewart was obviously having a blast, you do yourself a disservice about your voice – neither of us are in our twenties anymore but the goosebumps kept coming with every song. I noticed Mark Moore from S’Express in the after-show throng, which made me smile. Imagine if you had remixed some of his stuff or vice versa. Thank you for doing what you do, and please don’t stop doing it.