Andrew Muecke – Stories
| “Lost Along The Way” Album (2024) | Stobie Pole (2024) | “Thoughts Of Empathy” Album (2008) | Solo – Live |
| Stories | Other Material |
Here are some stories associated with the early years prior to the formation of At Random, as well as stories about solo works through the years.
A Gentle Stream (from the Lost Along The Way album)
Published: 18 August 2024
A Gentle Stream is track four from the instrumental compilation album: Lost Along The Way 2007 – 2022, released August 2024.
Being a musician rather than a lyricist/vocalist, I approach the concept of writing songs through using instruments rather than words and vocal melody. This has had a significant effect on the type of music I compose.
And as I write this, I realise that it has always been that way.
When I first started out, my instrument of choice was the bass guitar. I very quickly realised that I did not like my voice – to the extent (rightly or wrongly?) that I decided that I was not even going to try and work on it.
So, following the bouncing ball approach of learning the bass guitar, with no voice to accompany it, is without question, dull, and was not what I was looking for. That made me want to try and mix things up a bit and to attempt to be as creative as I could be on the bass guitar (it didn’t hurt that the music I loved growing up featured bass prominently, so I didn’t have to look too far for inspiration).
The reason I mention that is because it is a philosophy which started on the bass and has also very much influenced and permeated my approach to songwriting. And is where “A Gentle Stream” began.
The song was intended for The Quiet Room second album “Manuscript”. The approach that Matt and I were taking with the album was for it to be immersed with ambience.
With the computer-based music recording systems (I use Pro-Tools) you open a NEW session when you are starting a new composition – so effectively you are looking at essentially a blank sheet – and the question is, “how are you going to fill it up”.
With this track I did have a firm idea of where I wanted it to start – my mind was thinking about how much I love the sustain that you hear when someone hits a chord on a piano whilst depressing the sustain pedals. But I wanted to see if I could record that but lose the “hit” itself, and just capture the sustain that comes afterwards – and then build a song based around that concept.
So that is what you hear on its own in the first section of this track. I used variations of that progression to guide the design of the rest of the song – which is effectively four differing progressions or sections.
This one almost made the album, it had a full complete vocal which I thought gave it a particular emotional resonance – but nonetheless, it was not to be.
Lift My Heart (from the Lost Along The Way album)
Published: 4 August 2024
Lift My Heart is the lead song from “Lost Along The Way 2007 – 2022”.
This song for me has a series of stories which makes it personally significant.
In the first instance, it is the story about the guitar which features heavily in the track.
One Saturday morning in late 2020, I went to my regular ‘musical instrument’ store where I was going to get them to do some maintenance on my main bass guitar. Whilst waiting for the technician to become available, I wondered over to the guitar racks, and my eyes were drawn to a nice-looking Fender Stratocaster – which as it turned out, was not a Fender, but its entry level version which is called a “Squire”. This is the cheap version that can be useful when you are just starting out (both to keep costs down, and to not have spent too much if a few months later you find that you aren’t playing it anymore!).
Regardless, with its black body and white scratch plate, I was compelled to pick it up – and when I did, it felt really good – and then I started to play it (it wasn’t plugged in) and I realised that it felt like it was made for me – I absolutely adored how nice the neck felt and how easy it was to play.
So, I walked up the counter and said, what do I have to pay you to take this guitar and a guitar stand with me, right now. After paying $330AUS, I walked out with a brand-new guitar!
After having a little bit to eat for lunch, I thought that I needed to give it a run through. My amplifier equipment to play “out loud” is for a bass guitar, so I thought it best to plug it into my recording environment and hear it through headphones.
I set up a drum loop to help me have something to play to, and off I went. In fact, I was so excited with how nice the guitar was sounding that I started to record it. Over the next hour or two, I recorded a range of guitar pieces over the top of each other, then once I had that done, added bass and some piano.
After having some dinner, I returned to it and spent a couple of hours creating/arranging the instrumental bed track – and that is exactly what you hear in this recording now. There have been no embellishments to the track since that day.
I will never pretend to be a guitar virtuoso, I am obviously far from it, but I will always be proud of this track – I feel like it was gifted to me for taking a chance and buying something where others may never venture – I genuinely believe that the guitar sounds amazing and that it would be virtually impossible to identify it as being anything other than the real deal. Maybe a reminder (or at least for me!) that it is more than just the $ cost of something that determines its worth.
Additionally, the song also facilitated my collaboration with pedal steel/drummer/vocalist Andy Rasheed. Andy had mentioned earlier about the idea of working together, and when I realised that this song had a different feel to what I had been doing on my other projects (like The Quiet Room and Happy Ghosts), I ended up sending it to him for his consideration.
Fortunately, it resonated with him and it was the track that started us on our collaboration journey. However, whilst we developed the track to a certain level of completion, it didn’t go through those development phases as we ended up deciding to remove it from the final album (the project, Fundamental Shift and resulting album, “If Seven Were a Number” will be released in the coming months).
It’s worth pointing out that 8 out of the 10 tracks on the Fundamental Shift album were written using that guitar as the foundation!
I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I love my little black guitar!
The Opposite of Life
Published: 7 July 2024
Pursuits of an artistic nature can be borne in so many ways – not all of them completely stem from inspiration alone, but often evolve through a process of osmosis – forming over time as elements come together.
That was certainly the case when I wrote the song and compiled the video for the track “What is the Opposite of Life?”.
When my father passed away in early 2017, I sat down at the recording desk over the next few days and put together a new song.
Maybe there was a certain melancholy that permeated through the track, but my intent was just to go where the song took me. I wasn’t specifically doing it to write a song about my fathers passing but when I completed the music recording, I did feel as though it had an emotional resonance that was empathetic to what had happened – and it remained as it was, untouched for a month or more.
In that time one of my brothers had taken some old film reels that he had just found at my parents’ house, stored in a box, to a business that could transpose it to a digital format.
It was revealed to be footage from my parents wedding in the early 60’s. Certainly something that we had never seen before, and perhaps something we expect our parents had not seen for a number of decades either.
When my brother shared this with me, it occurred to me instantly that I should combine it with the song that I had recorded after dad had died as a sort of homage to them, but encased in the horror of dementia, which is what took away my father’s life.
It had to be a song and video together.
I spoke with my mother about what my intentions were as I wanted to seek her support for doing so. I also asked her about whether she would be ok if we had sat down to have a talk that I would record. We would talk about dad, life and dementia.
I was very impressed that she was comfortable with the idea of doing this – we spoke for about 30 minutes, and I recorded that on my phone. I also recorded her in the chair she was sitting in when she was talking with me so that I could include that in the video.
So, as it turned out this was going to be a record of my mother’s emotions and her experience of her life partner being taken by dementia. I pieced the words mum had shared to the music so that it could tell the story. I then compiled the video to emphasize, where possible, the emotions that she was sharing.
The experience of completing this was a tough one, but very important. I felt that it was the right thing to do, and I was pleased that my mum supported it as she had lived the pain of the whole experience for a long time.
And that is why I called the song “What is the Opposite of Life?”- because I don’t think that the answer is death, I think the answer is Dementia.
I was able to give a copy to Dementia Australia to use as they saw fit, and that made me feel good.
But Dementia also got my mum in early 2023.
Playing Live, Solo
Published: 7 April, 2024
Through the 90’s playing with At Random, I never really thought about the idea of playing a solo gig – it wasn’t in my thinking. Particularly as although I had been composing songs for a long time already, I never approached the idea of singing – I tried it when I was young and was appalled by the sound of my voice. Like really appalled!
Perhaps in time I could have found some semblance of a voice if I had given it a red-hot go (e.g. some lessons!) at that point, but I didn’t, and if anything, the quality of my voice is vastly worse these days!
An opportunity came my way to play a solo show through my future “Happy Ghosts” band mate, Ashley Starkey, who mentioned to me about the opening of a new art gallery called Evolution Art in Adelaide city. They were wanting to put on a huge opening night and were looking to have some live performances throughout the evening (both performance art as well as music). I made contact with them and was given the go-ahead to be part of the show (this was Friday 2nd August 2002).
My idea was that I would accompany instrumental backing tracks of 4IIGO and Andrissa songs with either bass or guitar to embellish the overall sound. I toyed around the idea of using the vocal versions, but instead just used the instrumental tracks – I thought people might find it a bit weird with vocals coming out, with no vocalist in sight.
The gallery itself had three levels (four if you count another basement area – I was very lucky to be given the opening slot (7:30) on the entry level, although there was music being presented on each floor simultaneously.
Most of the people that came in were friendly to the point of a nod of the head to me as they came through and moved further into the gallery. I got through my ½ hour set and even had a couple of people stop to watch the full performance, It felt good to be part of this night of art and I was very pleased with my first ever live solo show!
There was quite a good turn out of people overall, and the gallery did well with their promotions to make people aware of the opening. A masterstroke was getting sponsorship from some beer and wine companies, so that they were able to offer free drinks (as well as some food too) – those that know Adelaide would know that there is an amazing vibe in the city on a Friday night (before, like most cities it gets a little bit loose later in the evening). People were coming in and out all night.
I had been told earlier in the evening that there was a Congo’s player that was doing a show in the basement and was being encouraged to hook up with him to do another performance later in the evening.
As the evening was coming to a close (with no more music on offer), and after I had met up with the Congo player, we thought, yep, let’s do it – bass and Congo’s.
For whatever reasons, we really connected from the very first moment and took off on a performance that was complete improvisation and lasted for about 40 minutes. What kept us going was that people just kept on streaming into the gallery – and there was dancing everywhere – on the stairwell, out the front, in every available spot.
And people just kept on piling in – it was just an amazing experience of pure joy. There was at least 100 people, and everyone was so close, you could see their faces, and everyone seemed really happy. One thing I will never forget is the diversity of people there in that moment – seemingly from all different walks of life – but sharing a happy time together. It felt special.
Once we stopped (the performance that we didn’t know we were going to do), I felt on top of the world, full of joy.
Wow, maybe it doesn’t get better than that?
Where did it all start? The UK.
Published: February 12, 2024
Although there were quite a lot of little signals here and there in the preceding years, it was 1985, when I was 17, that playing music started to become an obsession.
I was working as a PE teacher at a school in Bristol, in the UK. That was a time of amazing experiences mixed in with plenty of poor decision making by me. One decision I made, which was not poor, was to start playing music with some of the students from the school.
This began from realising that we all loved to listen to music – and the fact that we could chat for hours on end about “what was good” and “what was not” – like so many have done before us. It moved from there, perhaps naturally to wanting to give this music thing a go ourselves. DIY!
We were starting from a relative position of strength. Our guitarist was Michael Partington – a very talented guitarist – though, up until that point, he had only ever played classical guitar, but at a high level of proficiency. Even to the extent, that the school allowed his finger picking “nails” to remain extra long to enable him to play his best.
The drummer, Jimmy Rankin, was the other player in the band, an accomplished drummer himself, with several years playing already under his belt.
Then there was me. The bass player, the novice – but with plenty of enthusiasm! We also had the benefit of three different vocalists (Mark Pankhurst and Andy Valencia).
We used to practice on a Sunday afternoon which was perfect – it was all about just having fun, but we started to sound ok. We got excitable and decided that we would have to find a way to play a performance before the end of the school year, and before I returned to Australia.
We called ourselves “The Psychotic Negatives” – which is a name I had stolen from The Clash – by all accounts, it was one of the names that they were considering, then dropped, when they formed.
What was also amazing was that we did the performance in the underground crypt of a church in Clifton! Someone did film the night and I have a VHS copy of our performance – unfortunately the quality is very, very low (both audio and visual).
Here is the set list as best as I can recall it (with a few gaps):
U2 – I Will Follow
The Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant
Bauhaus – Of Lillies and Remains
The Cure – The Subway Song
Japan – Adolescent Sex
Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead
The Troggs – Wild Thing
The Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the UK
Bauhaus – Kick in the Eye
The Sex Pistols – Gold Save the Queen
At the end of the school year, I did return to Australia. Looking back, I realise that this is one of those “sliding doors” moments for me. In retrospect, I realise that plenty of successful bands have had a lessor start than that. I wonder what could have been if we had kept it going. I was starting to compose songs (on the bass) at this time, as was Michael who was starting to play like he was born with an electric guitar in his hands (I believe he ended up playing guitar for the band Shriekback a few years later). Of course, nothing eventuated, we all just moved on, it was never going to be any different…but I wonder?
At the very least, when I got back to Australia, I said to my brother Jono, “hey, I have been playing the bass guitar”….and here I still am, er, many years later!
It’s not all beer and skittles – so those horror stories are true PART ONE!
Published: January 2, 2024
I am sure like in other artistic pursuits, when you look to following a particular journey, people who have also done that, often share stories about the many horrible things that can happen to you. I have found over these years that with music, many of them are sadly true.
For my brother Jono and I, we had one dealt to us in one of our very first gigs.
We were offered the amazing opportunity to be the support act for a band that was playing at the ANU (Australian National University) as part of orientation week festivities (that is the week before official university studies begin and is effectively party time for those involved).
We were very excited, as the gig was in the Uni refectory, and there would be hundreds of people in attendance. We were well rehearsed to present our all originals show – everything was planned and agreed to, and we were even given the opportunity to do a soundcheck. We had an excellent singer in Jenny Curtis, great keyboard player (Gowrie Waterhouse) and strong drummer (Chris Ferrara) as part of the band and our confidence for a good gig was high as it was sounding really strong on stage!
That is, until about 15 minutes from start time, when we were getting everything finalised and ready, then realised that the sound guys and the main band had all disappeared. On purpose.
We had no alternative but to go on – to find out that only the two vocal microphones were turned on and going through the desk (and therefore the PA system). Everything else had been turned off. This meant that the sound coming from the guitar, bass, keyboard and drums would only be the minuscule sound coming from the stage – with the Uni refectory being effectively a 50m by 25m space, we were about to die by a 1000 cuts. And be made to look spectacularly amatuerish.
Although we had people do their best to help us, nothing was able to be done at such “last minute”. It still remains, by far, the worst 45 minutes of my musical life. There were a lot of friends and associates there – it was utter humiliation. Nasty stuff.
I can genuinely say that I have no memory of what that band was called, I think I blanked them out very early on – and I am very thankful for that!
Our band (called “Them and Their Instruments” for some reason!) ended up playing a small number of other gigs around the Uni and Canberra over the next few years (88 – 89). I am pleased to say that we had no more experiences like that, and in fact, they all turned out to be good shows. Phew!