Richard Clapton - Best Years Of Our Lives

MINE

Another Aussie name that's indelibly etched on my teenage years, Richard Clapton (or Dick Clap as the less-mature of my friends would have it) is probably our answer to the wave of West Coast sound that washed over us in the late 70s.  

It gave us the feeling we could compete on that stage - with the same lazy-sounding but effortlessly-executed riffs, and lyrics that told us of our East Coast mentality, name-checking Sydney's Palm Beach Road, Bondi Lifesaver and Oxford Street - along with the Tropic of Capricorn, which slices through the top third of our wide brown land.  You see, we share the same Pacific Ocean as the US - just seen from a few thousand miles in the other direction.  We had the same surf culture and the music - and for the first time I think we were starting to understand that despite our British roots, the colonials Down Under had a lot more in common with California than Cornwall.

Richard Clapton's notoriously shy, hiding behind those dark shades in every public appearance, but he's a well-deserved Hall of Famer in the Australian music scene.  And he has a warm, rich voice, that hasn't faded a bit, 40 years down the track.  I'd go and see him perform tomorrow, if I could.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP down in the lucky country

YOURZ

First of all, another big confession: I am not an Eric Clapton fan.  Cream was cool but Clapton's solo work has never done impressed me.  Oh, sure, I acknowledge his ability as a guitarist is without doubt but I find most of his songs to be fairly boring, with notable exceptions, of course.

But Australia has its own Clapton, an artist I much prefer and a man responsible for writing some of our finest songs, including Capricorn Dancer, Deep Water, Lucky Country, I Am An Island and Girls On The Avenue.  Allegedly taking his stage name by combining names of his two favourite artists, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton, his reputation is well deserved.

While growing up in the 70s in the same hometown as Clapton (this being Sydney), his face and music were one of the regular, few Australian constants in a market place saturated with overseas acts.  And while the boy I was then had little appreciation for his songwriting skills, as I've aged, so have my tastes.  The songwriter in me knows brilliance when he hears it.  And age hasn't diminished Clapton's abilities either.  A recent live performance on a local television show only confirms this as he is still as vibrant and dynamic a writer and performer as he ever was.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP 

For further information go to http://www.richardclapton.com

Mark Gillespie - Flame

YOURZ

Mark Gillespie is an Australian artist I know nothing about.  There is very little information about him online too.  He must be a pretty nice bloke though, because it seems he's spent more time in his life focussed on helping those less fortunate than him. 

However, his musical legacy is why we're here.  I guess the best way to describe Gillespie is like an antipodean Eric Clapton but without the chops.  If he were playing other people's songs, the sound would be the sort found on any Friday or Saturday night in any suburban pub still capable of putting on a live band.  The sort of places I avoid. 

However, he is playing original compositions.  Pretty bog standard, white blues songs with touches of soul, country and reggae. And really bad, tinny synth horns... *shudder*

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

MINE

In 1992, when Flame was released, I had a habit of going out dancing on a Friday and Saturday night.  Before I left, at about 11 pm or so, I'd set the video recorder (remember them?) to record rage, the all-night music TV show, for me to watch when I got home.  Fridays is new music night and Saturday features a guest programmer.  And that's where I saw the video for Flame (the song) and became obsessed.

The video of that song got played over and over, and eventually I tracked down the album, to play the song itself over and over.  And putting the CD on the other day brought that feeling back to me.  It's a startling song, opening with  I heard you had a bad disease/ that you picked up overseas.  Not your usual pretty pop song and his voice is low, sleazy and sardonic, with some really interesting guitar-picking lines.  But then the rest of the album kicked in, and I remembered why this CD's been consigned to the "don't play" list.

The other songs are nothing like the title track.  They're just - ordinary.  A bit like this video that I found on YouTube from 1979.  Apparently he has a kind of a cult following here in Australia, but I'm not one of them.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

For more information: this has a brief history