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 CHRISTIE ELIEZER spends some time chatting with fellow Australian music staple DAVID BRIDIE about his latest release, SUCCUMB.
The end of 12 years of John Howard’s conservative rule has been replaced by a more positive vision. The arts are seen as integral to Australia; there is a greater understanding that society should judge itself on its heart and not its balance books; and Australians are seeing themselves as being vibrant members of the Pacific region.
David Bridie’s new album Succumb is a soundtrack to Rudd’s Australia although it doesn’t consciously set out to be. The title track is about the need to create communities, not celebrate the wealth gap.
Bridie admits progress was slow when he started work on the record. “I had anxiety attacks, I just seemed to be rehashing old ground musically.” He put together the core band of Papua New Guinea drummer Airi ingram, Adelaide bassplayer Paul Cartwright and keyboardplayer Chris Scallan who helped him produce. Friends like guitarist Phil Wales, Bart Willoughby, Alan and Stephen Pigram, My Friend The Chocolate Cake’s Helen Mountfort and Rob Craw.
The idea was to make a guitar record — not a sound Bridie is immediately associated with although there’s a great deal of guitar music on his iPod. The album’s first two tracks So Many Lies and Succumb set the tone, with swirling guitars, dirty solos and big pop singalongs. Bridie digs Bob Mould’s Sugar: Going Out With The Enemy has blaring horns and loud guitars cutting through each other while Bridie spits out lines about blindly following America into the hell of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
The record’s keystone track is Raskol Dusty, inspired by how the gangsta raskols of PNG laugh at how they kick up dust when they run from the police. Its musical potency comes from the way it mixes the rock sounds of piano and guitar with use of PNG garamut drums, highland trumpets and snatches of the Soti soti he no meri a folk song sung around campfires in PNG’s Chimbu province.
“To me it was important that the Melanesian flavours were not stuck on as an after-thought. This is part of me, this is who I am.”
The Foreign Correspondent is a dedication to the late filmmaker Mark Worth, a close friend of Bridie who died mysteriously in 2004 a week after his PNG documentary Land Of The Morning Star was released. The lyrics came from eulogies made at his funeral, as they buried him with a bottle of whisky to Velvet Underground music.
Too Much Superstition (Devil) was also inspired by a funeral he attended in PNG. It features vocals from Torres Strait dancer Albert David and women from the village of Luya in the Trobriand Islands.
Bridie’s nine year old daughter Stella is part of the Spensley Street Primary School choir (aged between 8 to 12) which appears on “First Chapter (Hearts Are Heavy)” about the tribes of the First Australians.
What would Bridie do if he became Minister for Indigenous Affairs? The first thing he’d do, he says, is to get music taught in schools and give indigenous kids access to music instruments. “Music is something, like football, that indigenous Australians excel at,” he points out. “The second would be to appoint Pat Dodson as the head of a revitalised ATSIC. “He is an utterly reasonable and trustworthy man with an amazing vision for black and white Australians. Yet the last government just sidelined him.”
Bridie’s passion to get Melanesian music to the rest of the world has seen him become one of the major names behind the Australasian World Music Expo in November. 30 acts from the Pacific region will perform.
Twenty four hours after this interview, Bridie was in Papua New Guinea discussing the setting up of a record label there, and then to undertake judging duties for the Pacific Songwriters Competition.
Succumb is out through Liberation Music.
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