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General, Maynard, Retro

Jane Gazzo – Sound As Ever – Australian music 1990-1999

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A new book from longtime music industry insider Jane Gazzo fills in Australian music history from a time before oversharing became endemic. Sound As Ever: A celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music (1990-1999), a book with Andrew P Street covers most things that you should know about the optimistic musical decade that was dashed against the uncaring digital rocks of the 21st century.

Some early 90s CDs from Australian artists.
Early 90s CDs from Australian artists (and The Sultans of Ping FC)

Maynard: With the Australian musical landscape, sadly, experiencing a slight, lack of interesting musical punters, one woman has stepped forward to toot the collective horn of the dark yet simultaneously blindingly colourful decade known as the nineties. Jane Gazzo has done that and been there. From inner city beginnings at Melbourne’s legendary 3RRR to Triple J, Triple M and BBC Radio, through to you seeing her on ABC’s Recovery on a Saturday morning and Channel V and Music Max on Foxtel, you probably know of Jane.

But have you ever shared a flat with her? Well, I haven’t either, but Sharky from The Prodigy and Courtney Love have, and all of them are better people from the experience. She’s written for Q magazine, but more importantly, Dolly magazine. Jane has published a book on John Farnham, but a new epic nineties book Sound As Ever – a celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music, 1990 to 1999, please make welcome my favourite Latrobe University graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in cinema that strangely has not yet won an Academy Award. Talk about robbed! Welcome Jane Gazzo!

Maynard & Jane Gazzo at Triple J 40th staff party 2015
Not at all flattering still of Maynard & Jane Gazzo from Triple J 40th staff party 2015.

Jane Gazzo: Thanks Maynard, you are my favourite purple-suited presenter slash broadcaster.

M: I think you’ll find it’s aubergine. It’s great to be chatting to you once again. We bumped into each other at the Triple J 40th catchup party. That was the last time I think I saw you.

J: Oh, that was sooo long ago Maynard.

M: There was no one documenting that. There was no person from ABC Radio. There was no person from ABC TV. You had staff from 40 years of Triple J all in the one room.

J: It was a crime.

M: Some of those people are no longer with us. I’m glad that you are making your moment with the nineties here. Look, I was talking to a couple of people about this, Glenn A Baker, he reckons the seventies were the greatest decade in Australian music. I mean, you’re ignoring the work of Mother Goose. Even though they are from New Zealand. Richard Wilkins told me that the greatest decade in Australian music was the eighties and you can’t really deny the work of Joe Dolce. He did replace the Pope when he got shot that time, which is even better than an ARIA award in my book, you are ignoring a lot there for the nineties. So you gotta make your case. What’s so great about the nineties, Miss Pineapple-and-Vodka-Drinker?

J: It is a bold statement, I grant you that and yes, look, the eighties were fabulous but for me the nineties was the last decade of innocence. And by that, I mean, we didn’t have camera phones, we didn’t have mobile phones. Record companies had so much money to spend on bands and they pretty much did spend money on bands and the Australian music scene was in a really healthy state. But as the year 2000 progressed, that innocence seemed to dissipate.

M: Do you think the record companies spent their money wisely?

J: There was some flippant signings. I mean, The Sharp, let’s be honest.

M: Look, I will not hear a word against the black skivvy wearing legends from Melbourne.

J: Scratch My Back, baby.

M: Don’t deny Train of Thought.

J: No one remembers Train of Thought Maynard. I think it was an interesting time because you would go to a gig in the nineties and you would notice the A&R men – and they all were men – by the bar, basically seeing who had the fattest cheque book in their pocket.

M: There was something in their pocket, that’s for sure.

J: I’m just saying it was healthy. There was a lot of community, there was a lot of camaraderie.

More Australian Cds from the 90s.
Yet more Australian CDs from the 90s. (Maynard International Studios)

M: You, you did a lot of stuff on recovery of course. So a lot of people were watching you bleary eyed on a Saturday morning and you would’ve been exposed to so many new bands of all varying talent.

You would get a band on (Recovery) and you would never see them or hear from them ever again.

Jane Gazzo

J: Varying talent. Sometimes you would get a band on and you would never see them or hear from them ever again. A band that I remember appearing on recovery was a band called Cool for August. Now they weren’t Australian, they were American, but obviously the record company here were putting in thousands and thousands of dollars to launch them here. They never did anything.

M: What were they called?

J: Cool for August and I only remember that because they had eyeballs on the Recovery set. We used to recreate a lot of the CD single covers. We never heard from them again. Then there was things like Sin Dog Jellyroll out of Adelaide, the most stupidest band name ever. Sin Dog Jellyroll. Where are they now? I should have probably investigated it.

M: One of the things you have got in the book is the Where Are They Now? section, even bands I’d never heard of.

J: You get a mention in the book Maynard, because it was you that introduced me to the artistic delights of Tlot Tlot.

M: Tlot Tlot and Rob Clarkson, I loved championing music on Triple J that wasn’t even on their playlist at the time and Tlot Tlot were a lot of fun. Always good, always up for a joke. My partial nineties list of bands goes a bit like this: Itch-E and Scratch-E, Mr Floppy, The Mavis’s, TISM, Oxo Cubans, Tlot Tlot, Rob Clarkson, Area 7, The Porkers, Caligula, Ratcat, Frente, The Killjoys, The Sharp, Collette, Bjorn Again, Falling Joys, Floyd Vincent, Frank Bennett. There you go.

J: Where’s Things of Stone and Wood in that list?

M: Happy Birthday, Helen… You’ve been probably torturing yourself with nineties music in your head while you’ve been writing this book. Is there one that got stuck in your ear? And you thought “not this again”.

J: It was more of how did I forget this song? I actually fell in love with the Canberra band Sidewinder all over again and their track Titanic Days. I forgot how brilliant it was.

M: One thing you mentioned fairly early on in the book is that the nineties had a real feeling of optimism, that just isn’t happening anymore.

J: I’m so glad you mentioned the optimism Maynard because everywhere there was optimism, certainly after we came out of the recession that we “had to have”. Paul Keating was our new Prime Minister. There was a sense, as I mentioned that the record companies had money and if you formed a band, you could pretty much live off the takings of being a musician. The music scene was so vibrant and so healthy that anything was possible. And a lot of those bands that I interviewed for the book really talk about that optimism and that sense of we can do anything we can get as big as we can. Which is why bands like TISM became so big, bands like Spiderbait and You Am I. There was this optimism.

M: Well, that’s certainly gone now.

J: Yeah, I think it’s wavered somewhat.

M: You’ve got the double whammy of venues disappearing and people not wanting to go out.

J: It was the bloody pokies, wasn’t it? That was introduced in the late nineties that saw really great venues just forfeit the stage for pokies because they realised that they could make more money from them. … I’d say every 20 years there’s a revolution. I’m hoping that with the recent global pandemic, there’ll be a new revolution and we’ll find those protest songs and those bands will start coming out of little tiny warehouses again, and the scene will reinvent itself.

M: I really hope that’s the case, that’s the kind of thing I’d like to see. I just wonder whether a lot of the experts and people with experience have left the industry.

J: They all got out of it during the pandemic because they weren’t making any money and they realised they couldn’t make any money. So they had to change careers had to go into different fields and now there is a real, genuine skill shortage. What are we gonna do about it Maynard?

M: I think if one band can do anything about it, it’s TISM – This Is Serious Mum – and they kick off your book in a pretty major way with a complaint letter from Bruce Ruxton from the RSL Association of Australia to Shock Records complaining about their record.

J: It was so brilliantly done. TISM released a single called Australia, the Lucky C*nt, and wrote that word on their CD single.

M: But also to boot, they had a knock off of a Ken Done koala shooting up heroin on the front cover. So you had copyright infringement as well as offence, which is always a good double banger.

J: But you know, what is so hilarious? I talk about this in the book, that Ken Done didn’t take offence to the fact that TISM copied his koala and his koala had a syringe hanging out of his mouth, he took offence to the fact that they copied his sun, suddenly he was copyrighting the sun. … So Ken Done owned the sun apparently in the nineties.

M: Oh, I guess that’s on most of his tea towels.

J: Yes, Bruce Ruxton. They actually sent a copy of the single to Bruce Ruxton in the hope that he would get his knickers in a knot and low and behold, he walked right into it. He received the CD single with the four letter word on it and wrote a letter which said it should be banned and they used that to get more publicity for themselves.

TISM cover of Australia The Lucky Cunt CD 1993
TISM cover of Australia The Lucky Cunt CD 1993

J: Can we just pray silence please for the sad news of the first lady of music television in Australia, Basia Bonkowski or Rendall as she was known, of course, the host of the wonderful SBS show, a Rock Around the World.

M: Was she the first?

J: Yeah, I think she was the first and Suzanne Dowling was the second. In the media I think they’ve conveniently forgotten Suzanne Dowling who did Rock Arena. That was absolutely equally as brilliant.

M: As far as I know, you’re the only person in nineties media history, who has put me in the book, why?

J: Because you were so omnipresent in the nineties. I used to listen to your show. You were appointment listening, and that’s when radio was really important. I mean, Triple J had literally just gone national when you started and you were such a breath of fresh air on the radio. Still are, I don’t know how your mind works. You just presented really great radio, and it wasn’t just the fact that you brought really cool bands on the radio. I mean, you were the first one to play and break in this country, Irish band from Cork, Sultans of Ping FC. But you used to do this amazing segment with a wonderful woman, American woman “You’ve got the wrong Sinatra”.

M: Millie Sinatra, a lovely lady, and she would solve people’s problems every week on the show.

J: Well, this is the thing, who’s doing that now on Triple J? I don’t hear any of that.

M: Sultans of Ping FC, yeah. Where’s Me Jumper? The film clip just had a jumper flying in the air. I mean, that’s the kinda thing you want. I remember one day the drummer turned up while I was doing Sunday Afternoon Fever, and I couldn’t believe it.

J: Well, it was because of him being on a, just a holiday. And I think he was staying at Bondi or Bronte or somewhere like that. He’d heard you playing Sultans of Ping so he rang up and he said “Hey, I’m Morty McCarthy, the drummer of Sultans of Ping.” Now I heard that and I was on Triple R at the time. So I remember ringing you and saying, “Can you give me Morty McCarthy’s details? I wanna interview him for Triple R.” And I have to actually thank you Maynard, because you may not know this, but Morty is now a very, very dear friend of mine. He lives in Sweden now and works for Radiohead doing merchandise.

M: Classic example of the unknown consequences of doing something nice.

J: See Maynard, you’ve had an effect on my life without you even knowing!

M: Look, we’ve gotta get back to the fact that Mr Floppy gets far too brief a mention. The album of the nineties was The Incredible Lightness of Being a Dickhead and Bruce Ruxton was on that album.

J: Oh my God. As was Peter Russell Clark, as was James Reyne, they just don’t make them like that anymore. I could have done a whole book on Mr Floppy and TISM alone.

The track listing of the legendary album from Mr Floppy.
Track listing of the legendary album from Mr Floppy, The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Dickhead.

M: I also learned a lot about Ratcat as well, having supported the guys more recently, I didn’t know that they had to spend so much of their own money at the behest of the record company to go overseas and do stuff that was a really bad move for them.

J: Yeah, in the middle of mass teen Ratcat hysteria they were told to go to London, to the UK, which makes absolutely no sense. And of course they never truly recovered once they got back because the kids had moved on, they couldn’t reclaim that fan base. Andrew P Street spoke at length to Amr Zaid, who was one of the original members of Ratcat, for the book and Amr had never told his story before. Amr had never talked about his time in Ratcat ever. He was really chuffed to be able to tell his story. I think he’s very proud of what they achieved in that short time.

M: In December, in a packed Enmore Theatre there, people still love them.

J: It’s fair to say it’s probably just Simon Day, these days. I think Amr and Simon haven’t spoken for years and years and years.

M: Being the music industry, and you said that those two haven’t spoken for a while, did you have to be careful who you spoke to and when you did, what you said? If you were talking to someone in a band and you knew that you shouldn’t mention What’s-his-name or The Interview?

J: Oh, put it this way, when I was doing the Where are they now? I had to be very careful with certain members who didn’t like other members, or who were really still nursing a lot of heartbreak from the breakup of their bands. And I had to be really careful with how I wrote about that. I just had to be really careful that someone wasn’t gonna email me and go “why did you mention that?” But I also wanted to get across the story of the person that was broken hearted.

M: Let’s talk about someone that was done wrong by the industry and that’s Tania Lacy.

J: Mmmmm. Again, another woman who has never told her story.

M: I remember being on the phone to her and Mark, because I was asked to host the show for a while. The first thing I did was ring them and they said, no, no, do it. And I didn’t do it because I supported what they were doing. And as she said, her booting off from Countdown Revolution was something her career never has recovered from.

J: It’s true. She had to take writing jobs to support herself, but she was told never to darken the door of the ABC ever again. She was fired by fax. She wasn’t even allowed to go and pick her things up. And the ABC said that the duo were fired for protesting about bands miming on the show, which was so far from the truth. As she puts it, she was protesting the fact – both her and Mark were protesting the fact – that the ABC were taking contra deals from record companies. Reporters were being flown overseas to interview bands, free trips, free prizes, everything that the ABC Charter states not to do, they were doing.

M: Shortly afterwards, the ABC really cracked down on that kind of thing.

J: As they should have. Tania Lacy was in her early twenties at the time and was being yelled at by these suits in middle management. What do you do? Where do you go? She was so talented. Cruelly wasn’t allowed to ever appear on air ever again. So she fled to, I think it was Sweden, where her husband was from. She’s back now.

M: She’s in Queensland now.

J: There’s a great article in Rolling Stone which I wrote, again based on the fact that herself and Caroline from Dead Star talked about just what they dealt with in the nineties. And so I put it into an article in this month’s Rolling Stone with The Wiggles on the front cover. To really tell their stories.

M: Another show that fell through the cracks was the one that was just on before Recovery, and that was The Factory, Tania was a powerhouse on that show.

J: I love the characters she used to take off. There was a Nana Mouskouri character. That’s where Tiziana Bouboulini was born of course. And she used to interview artists with the most hilarious of personas.

M: And they just chucked the whole thing away.

J: Yeah, very strange times. And it’s interesting because Countdown Revolution was a precursor to what Recovery would become where anarchy was encouraged. But as soon as they asked Mark and Tania to be as anarchic as possible, they got shut down.

M: Anyone who’s been to a Mark Little standup comedy gig would’ve told you what you’d be getting if you asked for him. At the Adelaide Festival, I think one of the rooms was sponsored by the submarine company and he smashed up the sign one night.

You nailed your nineties there with a list of stuff – in the nineties: Taragos, that was mainly the Toyota way of getting around with bands because the people carriers hadn’t expanded as much as they are.

J: When I went to London and people started talking about people carriers, I did not have any idea what they were talking about because I’d always called it a Tarago. I’d only ever known it as a Tarago.

M: The lists people have made of things that were really big, it’s interesting. Phones just don’t appear on the list. Cameras don’t appear on the list. The vodka and pineapple juice, because there were some wacky connections there. And I think even the vodka and energy drink thing was going on then, at the tail end of the nineties as well.

J: See it was Illusion Shakers for me, which I think were mentioned.

M: Were they blue?

J: They were Midori with lemonade and something else. And they were really big in the clubs in the nineties.

M: But I remember it was part of Sunday Afternoon Fever who had the most expensive Subzero, that lemonade.

J: I loved Subzeros, loved them.

M: And at clubs, they were really expensive. And I remember we found, oh, there was one going for as much as $7 at one time.

And also, at this time, I like mentioning that the import record thing was big. Because you couldn’t just click and download stuff from anywhere around the world. You had to go to a shop like Red Eye or many of the great record shops in Melbourne. If you wanted a CD, it could be as much as $45 in 1993 dollars

J: Weren’t record shops such hubs of community? You could go to a record shop and if the guy behind the counter knew you, he would recommend something that he’d know that you’d like, you’d check out all the musos looking at the musos wanted boards. You could find out about gig that were happening. You could get your import stuff. You’d get your street press while you were there. That’s really lacking in today’s world.

M: Yes, Saturday morning at a place like Central Station, you would have all the DJs turning up and all the important ones like Peewee Ferris and people like that would have their records put aside.

J: There is a fantastic map of old Sydney record stores in the book and some are still hanging on for dear life like Red Eye. We all remember our record shops really fondly.

M: Brunswick Street was the go in Melbourne.

J: Polyester was there, there was Sister Ray for a while. Of course, in the city you had Au GoGo and Missing Link records.

M: Missing Link. I remember getting my copy of 99 by Barbara Feldon there. They also released, I think, Kinky Boots, by the Avengers, which I used to play on the radio as well. And whenever a Kylie record was released in the UK about a month or two ahead of us, I’d go and get the import copy and I’d play it first. I liked doing that.

I ended up setting fire to my own bum. That’s what happens when you’re a trailblazer…

Maynard

J: You were a trailblazer!

M: I ended up setting fire to my own bum. That’s what happens when you set fire to your trail and you blaze it!

J: You opened the doors for the likes of me, Maynard, you opened up the doors for us.

M: You did the request show on Triple J of an evening.

J: After Michael Tunn! Remember Michael Tunn? Tunny had left by the time I took over his shift, I think he got burnt out because remember he was doing the Afternoon Show on ABC TV.

M: He was hosting Big Square Eye as well. He was 16 when he first arrived at Triple J.

J: And he was great! I took over from the Request Best and I changed it to Super Request.

M: I started doing the request show on a Saturday night before Tunny got it and it was a really weird thing because there had been no request show on Triple J before they got me to do it for a couple of months before Tunny took over. And the weird thing was you either got two sorts of songs. People would want something that was ultra commercial, or they’d want something that was really obscure. It’s like the audience didn’t know what to do with a request show on Triple J at first.

Michael Tunn had a really interesting way of broadcasting. He would have an FM radio, just a little transistor radio in the studio, and whenever he went to a song, he would listen to all the other major music stations in Sydney, find out what they were playing and try and better the song that they had on.

J: That’s amazing.

M: It means you’re being reactionary. You’re not leading your reacting, but it’s a way to do it. … And what was the weirdest experience you had doing a request show? The Triple J request show when I was doing it, when Tunny was doing it, when anyone does it is not a normal request show.

J: I’m gonna let you in on a secret Maynard: some nights on Super Request when I was hosting, there were no calls. Which is hard to believe because we were nationwide, but some nights we just didn’t have any talent or, you know, they’d ring up and they’d want a song that we couldn’t play or didn’t want to play. Or it was too daggy, too bad, whatever. I can’t believe I’m telling you this … I had this friend that was really good at putting on voices and accents. When we needed some talent on the air, especially Friday nights, I think Friday nights we struggled because everyone was getting ready to go out and I had this friend, Glen, who would put voices and accents on. Well, I, I loved that Radio Birdman song Aloha Steve and Danno. And I had read in the paper that day, that the guy who actually played Steve, the actor on the actual Hawaii Five O show had passed away.

M: Jack Lord! Our Lord and Saviour, Jack Lord.

J: So it was 1998 and he’d died and so I went, oh well, that’s a great segue into Aloha Steve and Danno. Hey, homage to Jack Lord and Hawaii Five O by Radio Birdman. Why not? Great. I rang Glen and I said, “Mate, can you come on and just mention you, you’re a huge Hawaii Five O fan”. I’d always word him up. Uh, Jack Lord’s passed away. Can I play Radio Birdman? He said “Yep not a problem Jane”. He was used to it, coming on and requesting songs. So he got on air, we’re live on air and Glen put on a Chinese accent.

M: Oh no!

J: It’s awfully racist as well, but he just thought he’d take the piss and put on a Chinese accent live on air. Maynard, I lost it, I start laughing, I can’t hold it together because I know it’s my mate putting on a Chinese accent. My God, I had tears coming down my face. I got him on and I got him off, but Jesus, I was pissing myself, no word of a lie. The next day, someone from the Herald Sun was obviously listening and put in the entertainment section: “Jane Gazzo was so disrespectful to a listener who was talking about the death of Jack Lord, not cool, Jane”. My friend was putting on a friggin’ Chinese accent and someone took me to task and wrote about it, that I was the most disrespectful person in the world, ever!

M: By the way every commercial station does that for sure. Because the problem commercial stations have is not so much people ringing up, but ringing up with the right songs that are on the playlist.

J: Oh my God. I know. Well, you know, you and I have both worked in commercial radio when I worked at, um, a commercial radio that will remain nameless, but is still around today, they did this whole campaign: We’re gonna play the songs you wanna hear! So make sure you get in and, and fill in this thing online and tell us all the songs you wanna hear!

And, of course I got excited as a DJ, I went, oh great, we’re expanding our playlist from the 12 Cold Chisel songs and Guns and Roses songs that we constantly play to maybe 20 songs. And I remember my boss coming into the studio while I was on air, which was a crime in itself, but he goes “Have you got something lined up?” and I said, “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna play Run to the Hills cause everyone loves Run to the Hills and there’s so many requests for it. “No, no, no, no, no, don’t play that, play Garbage.” “But there’s not one request from any male between the ages of 40 to 65 who was requested Garbage.” He’s saying “No, but just ring up someone and get them to ask for it, okay.” And I’m like, “What about Run to the Hills? Cause that’s what people wanna hear?”

M: I know this Chinese guy who really likes Garbage!

J: Such a lie to the audience!

M: The amount of lies in the book that I’ve spotted has been almost zero. The quiz at the end is a good one as well. You’re someone who’s written a few trivia quizzes in your time, Jane Gazzo.

J: Did you get them all right?

M: I actually didn’t do very well in them. Why don’t you throw one out to the listener right now?

J: Who was the host of Creatures of the Spotlight on Triple J on a Monday night? There’s one for you.

M: Peter Castaldi.

J: Correct. And who was his co-host?

M: I’d forgotten there was a co-host.

J: Yeah! Starts with L … Lawrie Zion, you don’t remember Lawrie Zion?

M: Lawrie Zion!

J: Creature of the Spotlight was Pete Castaldi and then Lawrie Zion. I’m sure they worked in tandem together.

M: Now that’s a good question for those nineties Triple J listeners. And I’d like to finish with you making a request on this show and don’t do your Chinese voice again! I’m on to you, Jane. Well, now the radio station would have to hand in its licence. And they’d just dig a large hole there, build a statue of you, then pull the statue down and dig another hole and put the statue in it.

J: It wasn’t me, it was my mate Glen. A request, all right, I’m gonna go Ratcat, That Ain’t Bad because “I love you” – that was the catch cry of the early nineties, and it really for me kickstarted the entire Australian music scene, such a great, great song to go out with.

M: Where can people get the book Sound As Ever: A Celebration of the Greatest Decade in Australian Music (1990-1999)?

J: In all good boutique bookshops, as well as the major chain bookshops, and you can get it online via Melbourne books.

M: I recommend people go along to your website: janegazzo.com and have a good read of what you’ve done, and all little incidents that have gone on. I do like the word that you shared a place with, and you worked for, Courtney Love ‘briefly’.

J: Briefly.

M: So was it the whole day?

J: It was 12 days all up.

M: Would the word ‘mercurial’ be good to use?

J: Batshit crazy is probably better.

M: This book is worth reading, worth having, it’ll settle arguments. Cause that’s one thing, you’ll be at home, you’ll be watching stuff, one person will look at the Wiki, other people will look at YouTube, they won’t have the same answer, they’ll be pushing and shoving, and everyone will be drinking the pineapple and vodka juice, and you can solve the answer by just having this book. Oh, hang on a minute, you supported Hugh Jackman as a DJ?

J: I was his support act.

M: What do you play when you’re supporting Hugh Jackman?

J: Playing stuff from Motown and sixties Soul and eighties stuff. I was having a ball, such a highlight in my life being the support act for Hugh Jackman and on the eighth show when I got off stage for the last time I did a cartwheel down the runway, just cartwheeled all the way back.

M: What song would you finish with?

J: I think I finished with You Can’t Hurry Love by the Supremes.

M: Have you thought of what song we should play for you?

J: Ratcat, That Ain’t Bad.

M: You don’t want to change your answer? You don’t want to phone a friend? Particularly a friend who puts on a fake Chinese accent. I’m not having that guy on the show again!

Jane Gazzo, thank you very much. She’s requested it twice so we have to play it now on the Maynard Request Fest here. Sound As Ever: A celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music (1990-1999) it’s great and so is Jane!

Where to get Sound as Ever: A celebration of the greatest decade in Australian Music (1990-1999)

Sunday Afternoon Fever show 1993 featuring my visit to Mrs Fred Sinatra in Las Vegas.

Triple J 40th birthday staff party 2015
Tania Lacey for The Factory at Triple J launch in Melbourne.
The beginning of that first episode of Countdown Revolution 1990. Mark Little & Tania Lacey
General, Maynard, Retro, The Castanet Club, Video

Watch video – Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance

Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance the video livestream from Maynard International Studios…

Spend quality dance time with Lesley Fountain (Glenn Keenan) & Maynard

Get your pumps on and get dancin’. Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance brings you Petula, Fish, Heather, ONJ, Gene, John and other highly talented dancers that rightfully don’t talk to us.

Amazing Dancing Fountains 1983
The Fabulous Dancing Fountains 1983, Chantal, Fish, Lesley & Bubbles
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Watch last Saturday’s video livestream from Maynard International Studios.

General, Maynard, Retro, Video

Tom Jones Rewind special

Maynard features the mighty Tom Jones in an hour with Tom goodness and Tom voice, and featuring the Tom moves that makes him the legend he is today.

This show has everything: dancing, prancing and panting in the time honoured fashion of everything Tom. Enjoy! (We did.)

Enjoy a power packed hour with Tom Jones and friends.

You’ll see some of Tom’s biggest and most exciting songs as well as friends and collaborators over the years: The Cardigans, Barry Crocker, Talking Heads, even an interview by a slightly confused Molly Meldrum.

Maynard interviews Tom Jones in Australia in 1988 and 1995

Tom Jones official website

Tom Jones dancing on his 1969 set.
Tom Jones busting a move on his 1969 TV special.
Barry Crocker singing on Rewind
Barry Crocker turns up to sing up a storm for you today on Rewind.
A Tom Jones fan from late 1960s just lovin' the show.
A Tom Jones fan from late 1960s just lovin’ the show.
Maynard with underpants thrown at him.
You can’t do a Tom Jones special and not expect some underpants to be thrown.
Bunga Bunga, General, Maynard

Bunga Bunga 70 – Tim Ferguson & Maynard

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This time on the enlightening falsehood that is Bunga Bunga 70, Tim Ferguson and Maynard lead you on a wild goose chase down the rabbit hole of froth and bubble.

You’ll encounter manic expansionism, lack of credibility, confused animals, three word headlines and The Brothers Gibb.

Tim insults the young, Paul Livingstone decries Tim’s art, then they announce an art exhibition in June together.

Bernard King's Winter Cookbook cover
Bernard King’s Winter Cookbook cover

“If you are sporting a mullet today, don’t tell me you can’t dress like Boy George tomorrow.”

Tim Ferguson – fashion plate
Face Magazine 1982 cover
The Face with Haircut 100, June 1982.

We hear you peeing, ask which side Tim’s cat is on, bemoan the lack of banana diplomatic representation, find a new job for the Prime Minister, ask who is your favourite Bernard and pose the perennial question “when does ugh boot season officially start?’.

In time travel news: 1982 is back, so learn how to talk all art school. Might come in handy next time you enter the Archibald prize.

Should the next Doctor Who be a cat? Should it have a limp? Are baked desserts part of the ABC News charter?

Bunga Bunga 70 is beguiling yet ribald as Maynard appreciates the subtle use of a Greek fisherman’s cap while Tim still wants to know why you are so ignorant. Don’t even get him started on kale…

“Most young people couldn’t even decide what colour helmet to wear if they went into space.”

Tim Ferguson – magnanimous
Tim's cat Kitler looking miffed
Tim’s cat Kitler looking miffed. Possibly thinking of the Donbas region.

Support Bunga Bunga and Planet Maynard by becoming a Patreon

Tim’s art available by commission

Listen to Bunga Bunga 69

Maynard, Retro, The Castanet Club

The Castanet Club Story story

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Chit Chat von Loopin Stab and Tony Whittaker have made the best (and only) documentary on The Castanet Club. The Castanet Club Story.

Chit Chat drops in to tell Maynard the story behind the Story.

Warren Coleman, Steve Abbott with Chit Chat 2021
Warren Coleman, Steve Abbott with Chit Chat 2021. With photo from 1983.

Just look at what he wrote about us…

What The Castanet Club achieved in their 9 years would impact the landscape of Australian entertainment for the next 20yrs. The rise of Triple J, Sandman and Flacco, Young Einstein, Good News Week, Channel [V], Play School, Sale of the Century, Full Frontal, Happy Feet, Fast Forward, Kath, and Kim and even Mambo T-shirts are in some way connected to this remarkable group of unfashionable humans.

Mikey Robins as Elvis with Glenn Dormand in 80s photo by Maynard
Mikey Robins as Elvis with Glenn Dormand in 80s photo by Maynard

Watch the documentary here

Stories of Our Town site

General, Maynard, The Castanet Club

The show-stopping Nastassja Bassi of The Castanet Club.

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Nastassja Bassi (Jacqueline Amidy) who I haven’t seen for more than 30 years drops into Maynard International Studios to deconstruct and celebrate her time with the Castanet Club 1985 -1990.

Jacqueline Amidy in NY 2004
Jacqueline Amidy in NY 2004

The Castanet Club was more than theatrical, it was cinematic.

Natassja Bassi (Jacqueline Amidy)

For those fancy pants people who like to read, here is a heavily edited transcript of our conversation.

Maynard: One day you’re in your lounge room and you turn around and there’s someone you haven’t seen for 34 years standing at the door. Jacquie. Good to see you.

Jacqueline: How long has it been?

Maynard: 36 years ago. Since I’ve seen you.

Jacqueline: I was born about then. So I don’t know how that works.

Maynard: You are in Maynard International Studios. I’ve the same nervousness with you that I had with when Warren Coleman came over to the studios as well.

Jacqueline: Well, I’m real.

Maynard: Is there something you could point out to people?

Jacqueline: The hell? I’m not sure what to make of this I’m looking at, is that a signed Kylie single? There’s a photo of you and Kylie underneath at the Double Bay hotel. Is that the one that Michael died at? I blame you.

Jacqueline: I like your speakers. Very seventies speakers. So I’m sitting on the seventies lounge. I actually think I’ve sat on this lounge somewhere else. In my past. I’m really loving it. I’m going to use the word juxtaposition of seventies, sixties and fifties.

Maynard: Cross-generational carpets here as well. I’ve only, just recently got the CDs into order. They’re all actually in decades etc.

Jacqueline: I don’t think I have seen CDs for a long time.

Maynard: When I say CDs, people say, what?

Jacqueline: I’ve got a CD player in my 2004 Mercedes Compressor, black, black interior, two door, sexy. I do like cars in the last year I’ve had five cars.

Maynard: You strike me as being a station wagon woman.

Jacqueline: I love a station wagon. That’s what upsets me so much about the coupe. I can’t drive along and pick things up from the side of the road. I like freebies.

Maynard: I’ve got you here because we’ve have the Castanet Club exhibition come up. We’re talking about the Castanet Club time. I was just doing crazy dancing up the back.

Jacqueline: Everybody in the Castanet Club was extremely complex.

Maynard: Is there a great stage memory? Of course, Wuthering Heights was almost a signature piece for you.

Jacqueline: Thinking about it, my role was show stopper. I did all the show-stopping songs, Devil Gate Drive etc. I was in the second coming of the Castanet Club. We really put it together as a theatre show. We got a real director.

Maynard: That’d be Neil Armfield.

Jacqueline: We were in a theatre and a very cool theatre. Belvoir Street was at that stage, I think THE theatre.

Maynard: Yeah.

Jacqueline: An RSL club band in a theatre.

Maynard: That was one of the great things about the Castanet Club. We could do shows at an RSL, and we could go and do a theatre season at the Playhouse or at Belvoir Street and we could make it work.

Jacqueline: Do you remember when we did the tour of the Western suburbs RSL clubs?

Maynard: We did three or four. Way out west? We were driving for two hours.

Jacqueline: I do remember going to Rooty Hill RSL because I did work out that way. I drove past it daily, and every day, every day I had the same memory. Everybody going, who the hell is this band? I remember walking in and they just looked at us like who, the frick are these people?

Maynard: You aren’t thinking about Tweed Heads RSL?

Jacqueline: I think we were very successful there. That was very different. But we did have the people from the old people’s home, who spent the whole time with their fingers in their ears, looking very pained, especially when I sang Wuthering Heights. I do remember that that was a very strange season.

Maynard: We did win over a lot of fans there.

Jacqueline: It’s was kind of coals to Newcastle. Sorry to use that word.

Maynard: What was your favourite gig? Did you have one? Was it at one of the festivals?

Jacqueline: That would’ve been Perth. That festival was my favourite because it was the first time I drank alcohol. That was the outside one? We were playing at the University.

Maynard: A big deal was made of the fact that you were having a drink for the first time.

Jacqueline: I was on the piss mate. I was only on the piss because we were playing in a quadrangle and they kept telling us that it was a Shakespearian theatre, but in fact it was just a quadrangle of the University. Well, it was so packed. It was so packed. They were hanging off the rafters. Backstage wasn’t really a green room, it had nothing.

They only had beer and champagne and no water and nothing else that I could drink. I’m the singer in the band and I’m just going, “can we just get like a mineral water or something?” They couldn’t can’t get from the stage to the bar. There were so many people at that gig. There’s pink champagne though.

Maynard: So you thought pink champagne, what harm can that do?

Jacqueline: I started drinking it, and instantly I fell in love with it, and I got drunk. Then we were going to a party which was the Festival party. I think Glen was driving. We got to the party.The funniest thing of the party was, at that time, Kate Ceberano and I, people always got us mixed up.

People would think when we went out in those festivals, people would always think I was Kate Ceberano. I don’t know why, cause I don’t have tits and I’m all skinny. She had huge tits, huge everything. I wasn’t huge at all, but we were both kind of dark and swarthy I suppose. People thought she was me.

I do remember meeting her because she was a good Christian woman.

Maynard: Scientologist.

Jacqueline: Same thing.

Maynard: Don’t say that to a Catholic, that’ll start a fight.

Jacqueline: I am a Catholic. Anyway, I remember meeting her and we were kind of, “it’s you”, we started a conversation now I was trashed and this was my first time I had alcohol. I told Kate “I’m going to the toilet, stay here”. Well, I went to the toilet. I realised that when you get drunk things shift, so I’m sitting on the toilet and it was all swirling around my head.

Then I came back and she’d gone. I’m thinking what happened? That was my first experience with alcohol.

Maynard:I’m sure Kate Ceberano remembers that night.

Jacqueline: I’m sure she does. There were some incredible times. There were many, like when we’re at Belvoir Street, one of the first shows I ever played. They started the show without me. I’m out talking to somebody and they start Devil Gate Drive and I’m still at the bar.

I got to the stage, I ran to the front of the stage. Onto my knees and slid to the front of the stage and grabbed the microphone.

Who would start the show without the singer? That was great, but the most incredible time I ever had oh, which was at Balmain RSL Club.

Maynard: A great venue, a big cavernous venue with a huge stage, plenty of room for all the Castanets.

Jacqueline:It was around the corner from the Bijou . Where Betty Blockbuster had been. That’s where Reg Livermore did that big show.

That theatre was one of the first theatres closed down because of the people who’d moved when it was gentrified. They moved in and they made them close the theatre down.

And it was just around the corner from the RSL, which was a fabulous venue. I loved playing Balmain, but I remember one night and nobody will remember this, but I had a transcendental experience on stage, truly.

Maynard: You always were quite spiritual about your singing in the first place. So it doesn’t surprise me that you had this transcendental experience. What song were you singing and was it a particular part of the song? What happened?

Jacqueline: (long pause and intake of breath…) I’m a very serious singer. I take what I do very seriously. When I sing, I always put everything into a song. That was a beautiful thing about the Castanet Club, though there was this crazy shit happening. I mean, you know, I was this diva up the front, and behind me, people were pulling their pants down and running around like fucking idiots.

I remember this night and I think maybe it was Work Song.

Maynard: Work Song, which is on the album.

Jacqueline: I was in the middle of the stage and they were packed to the rafters. When we played, it’s really hard to explain what a Castanet Club audience was like, because the Castanet club audience was the show. We were the ancillary to the audience.

I remember this night we were playing Work Song and I really deeply got into it. It used every part of my range, I was like the biggest show off diva.

It was incredibly taxing to sing this song and a really hard song to sing. I always wanted to sing it at the absolute max. Every time I wanted to do it better and to show off a little bit more. So I remember I would do a lot.

On the stage it was always very quiet at the start. Then it built as a song and as the sax solo built, everybody went fricken crazy on the stage.

I can remember I closed my eyes and I know it sounds weird, and I wasn’t on drugs or drinking, but I left my body. This really happened. I think it a rarely, rarely happens in anyone’s life, but I actually left my body.

I’m floating outside my body looking down at us on stage because I think I was singing so beautifully that night. I’d gotten myself to another level of singing and I moved out of my body.

I’m sitting there, I’m watching, I mean, oh my God! Oh my God! I’m having this experience. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I was probably hyperventilating.

Maynard: I’m suggesting medically perhaps it was a minor oxygen deprivation going on.

Jacqueline: Of course, I know that NOW. In retrospect it was, but at that time it was transcendental. Then I came back into my body….

I remember opening my eyes and I’m thinking “what the F did anybody see that?” And you all had your pants down and were running around like crazy people around me. Nobody even fucking noticed that I was out of my body and floating around.

I was in another time zone and you’re all doing your own shit and going about knocking things over and bumming each other or whatever you were doing, it was crazy. That was a moment of knowing I’m truly alone on this stage. Really like, look at me with these bunch of idiots. I’m truly alone on this stage.

Maynard: Another thing you did in the band, you, were one of the main bass players.

Jacqueline: Well, I was the funky ass bass player Maynard. Let’s get that correct.

Maynard: What songs were you laying down the funk to?

Jacqueline: Every song I played mate. I love the bass. I’ve said to my students over the many years, if you want to be sexy, you play the bass.

Maynard: Because you’d have the evening gown and you’d be playing the bass. The fez too.

Jacqueline: Castanets is why I started playing bass. Did I ever tell you how I joined the Castanet Club.

Maynard: No.

Jacqueline: Well, I was a special guest, so I used to come along as special guest with my piano player, Vince. We would come and do my version of many songs, jazz songs and that’s where I started Wuthering Heights with him. Whenever we played, it went off.

So you guys, when you were going to the Edinburgh Festival in 1984, who is your bass player? Pete

Maynard:Pete Mahony, otherwise known as Mr Urstwhile.

Jacqueline: Urstwhile had decided he wasn’t going to go. He decided he wasn’t going to be in the Castanet Club anymore.

He left the band momentarily. You guys contacted me. And you said, because I played guitar because I’d been a singer around town and I played guitar quite well, They asked if I played bass? I said, ah, okay, Yes, I can play bass. I mean, it’s just a four string guitar after all….

Maynard: Which for anybody in the entertainment game, that is exactly the answer you always give. Can you juggle and ride a unicycle? Sure! Because you get more work that way.

Jacqueline: So they said, we’ll find you a bass so you can learn all the songs. They found me a bass from Bart Fox.

Maynard: Bass player with Musical Flags and first Castanet Club bass player.

Jacqueline: He had a bass and they gave me his bass. Now I knew nothing about the bass electric guitar at that stage. And I did not realise that the action of a bass electric guitar shouldn’t be five inches from the neck. It was an impossible guitar to play, but I didn’t know.

So I’ll learnt the whole Castanet Club repertoire on this unplayable bass. I must’ve had muscle fingers because I don’t know how I did it. So I learnt the whole repertoire and I went in and they said, “oh, Pete’s changed his mind. He’s going to go”. So I was ousted, but when you came back, he left and then, because I think I’d been such a hit at the club and you wanted to get a female singer in permanently.

I think Glenn approached me and Angela approached me and I asked if I’d want to join. And I did join. So I actually became the bass player.

Maynard: Wearing a full evening dress and playing the bass. It’s not look you see very often outside of a Bryan Ferry clip.

Jacqueline: Thank you. Well, my costumes were made by a friend of mine, John Parks.

I had a costumier.

Maynard: The rest of us just went into second hand places.

Jacqueline: I lived in pyjamas, I only wore pyjamas. I think at that stage in my life, like all of us, we all wore secondhand clothes, but we decided that Nastassja Bassi should be sexy and slinky and gorgeous.

We had long conversations about how I would look. It was like Madonna, but not. I don’t know if anybody noticed it, but you obviously did. I wore the pillbox hat, the fez hats, the square pillbox hat.

Maynard: Everyone had their own different style. Yours was certainly there.

Jacqueline: I got every bit of la’me from every second hand shop in Newcastle I could find. John went on to lecture at Edith Cowan, Western Australia. He’s still an artist, still does work.

Maynard: That’s the thing with the Castanet Club that has been pointed out. A lot of people are still working as artists even now.

You’ve got a great singing career. You’re working on a PhD. You’ve had some really interesting success in Germany.

Jacqueline: I went to art school. The thing about the Castanet Club, I think it was that perfect apex of the underbelly of Newcastle. We had the theatre and the music and we knew so many people from art school was Jodi and me and Therese and Michael.

It was a perfect fusion of the incredible and exciting things that happened in Newcastle.

Maynard: That group of people would use words like “signifier”, I only found out what that meant last week.

Jacqueline: I’m using that in my PhD, actually. I did film at university. I don’t know if you remember. I used to make all the super eight films for the Castanet Club.

Maynard: Did you do The Last Milkshake In Town?

Jacqueline: The very first film we made. I’ve got a couple of people to help me because I was in it. We used to start every show with a super eight film.

Maynard: That’s right. It would have us all jumbling up the letters of Castanet Club or running around. Remember the one where we’re all diving off the blocks at Merewether Baths?

Jacqueline: Recently, when the documentary for the Castanet exhibition Glen Dormand was saying to me, he thinks that the band was very theatrical. I said, actually, I believe that the Castanet Club was cinematic because I think we were all influenced by the Saturday afternoon movies we watched.

Maynard: We all had our own movie going on in our heads.

Jacqueline: It definitely did. It was the Busby Berkeley kind of “let’s put on a show”, Judy Garland and that was the thing. I mean, it was. Let’s put on a show, you know, it did come across perhaps as musical, but I think more than anything, we were cinematic. We viewed ourselves in a cinematic way. We’d started every half with the super eight film. I did an animation where we all went to the moon. So I had all the little characters and we got into the rocket and I did it in stop motion.

I did it in the fireplace at Dulwich Hill, Bowling Man went to the moon. I did that stuff.

I’ve gone on and done my own thing. Cabaret shows by myself with piano players. And I ended up in Berlin in the late eighties.

Maynard ; Just like the Hoff

Jacqueline: Just like the Hoff. They kept saying to me, you got to come to Berlin. They’ll really get you in Berlin. They’ll love you.

Maynard: There is something incredibly Weimar Republic about you. Here’s your cabaret, but I will kill you.

Jacqueline: Thank you for that. Ah, yeah. Very Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Wile, I was a bit obsessed with German cabaret when I was a kid.

I didn’t have any idea what they were saying, but I just loved the emotion of it. Weimar cabaret.

Maynard: By the way, if you are watching the movie Cabaret, stop the movie after Money Makes The World Go Around. The movie’s over after that, because you don’t want to get to “tomorrow belongs to us”. It gets sad after Money Makes The World Go Around, you might be tempted to watch more of the film. Don’t.

Jacqueline: In the little brief clip I saw from the documentary on the Castanet Club, Stephen makes the comment that we were Punk. But we were Weimar Cabaret. Which is what we were in that kind of strange post Whitlam Liberal government era, which was shit when they were bringing fees back in for education, all that stuff.

Maynard: We were concerned with the fact that we’d be killed in a nuclear war, which makes Global Warming a bit lame in some ways.

Jacqueline: Yeah. This was an industrial city. So every day you’d go out and you’d cough up a bucket load of coal. You’d hang out, you’re washing in Newcastle and you knew where the breeze was blowing from depending on what colour the washing was when you brought it in.

Maynard: In some ways the environment in Newcastle has got better.

Jacqueline: Yeah, it definitely has. And there’s that constant hum from Kooragang Island that I hear.

Maynard: I love it when the guy leans on the boat horn at three in the morning. What the hell are you doing? Do you need to wake up everyone in Newcastle?

Jacqueline: We moved to Sydney. I think that changed all our lives.

Maynard: It did. It certainly changed my life for the better forever. I remember how we used to rehearse on a regular basis. A number of times a week in Redfern.

Jacqueline: Because we were on a retainer. We would go there every day and it was like a job. Every day we’d work out bits and we’d sit around drinking coffee.

Maynard: Out of that came a lot of great things. And also we were attempting to earn for each other $250 a week, which you were able to live on then in Sydney.

Jacqueline: It was a retainer and we were a cooperative and I’ve been in lots of cooperative things since. That idea that we are all equal. She says, did you see me rolling my eyes? All equal in the eyes of God. Did you see me rolling my eyes? That way we could actually pay ourselves a living wage as performers as we rehearsed in Redfern.

Maynard: Our gigs at the Harold Park Hotel were was a great time. There was just so many of us crammed on stage there. Audiences often looked very surprised as when we were going off, doing a number like Work Song or when an Angela and Glen Keenan would do their dancing.

They would take up the whole stage with their great forties dancing. There’s just moments where they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Believe you me listener. It was amazing to be part of a group that can do that to an audience.

Jacqueline: This was what I found. Like somebody like Stephen, who I worked with post Castanets, I’m still on a stage with a guy doing the same shit he’s been doing for 30 years. But it doesn’t really matter because I find him mesmerising. Next to brilliance, as far as I’m concerned, Warren and Stephen are genius. I think the essence of the second coming of the Castanet Club, the one that I was a part of, Stephen and Warren, were this kind of genius force in the middle, because they were freaky, freaky as.

Maynard: Please people have a look at the Castanet Club documentary teaser, and the full length version that is going to be online in coming months. The thing that made me smile the most, cause I’d never seen it, was the photo of Warren Coleman with his Academy Award. I knew he’d won one and I saw him with it and I couldn’t stop smiling. So happy for him. That was my favourite part of the whole documentary.

Jacqueline: How proud of are we Warren? I think it was the youngest person ever taken into NIDA. His comedy was inside out. It was critical thinking, it was sideways, it was roundabout. Blew my fucking head off. Do you remember that Warren grew up thinking he was an alien?

Maynard: Yes, and he ended up playing one on stage.

Jacqueline: He was obsessed with the NASA stuff. He was a NASA expert. I think I remember him saying that he believed that the aliens would come and pick him up one day and that they just popped him with those people who were pretending to be his parents. If you start the Warren Coleman story there, then you get it.

Maynard: If we could finish off with a song, would you like me to play Wuthering Heights? or Work Song? The 24 bit remastered version?

Jacqueline: God play them both. They’re both pretty interesting works. Wuthering Heights, didn’t go on the album and it’s something that still, I don’t understand.

Maynard: The reason is that you could only fit 47 minutes on the vinyl album.

Jacqueline: There were political reasons why it didn’t go on the album. I mean, why would you have somebody doing a cover of Wuthering Heights, and an awesome cover and not put it on the album? When you put other stuff on the album.

Maynard: Me doing the Broadway medley?

Jacqueline: Why do you make an album? You make an album as memorabilia. You make an album as merchandise, or you make an album to do something with. I truly believe that if we put Wuthering Heights on that album, it would have taken the Castanet Club somewhere else. I think it would have been a single, it was great. I listened to it when you put it up the other day, of course, I haven’t heard me sing that. I haven’t heard that. So to hear my voice as a 22 year old kid singing that song in that voice, I blew myself away and I thought, that is fucking awesome. It’s a quintessential version of a song that was already a quintessential.

How could you make it better? It was way too fast. It’s super fast. It’s like, we’re just rushing to get to the end. Work Song was the same, but I listened to it. It’s the poignancy of things that we did.

It’s the poignancy of somebody like Johnny singing those, saddest guys on earth songs that were so heart tugging and gorgeous. How could you not fall in love with it?

It was a beautiful reflection of where we grew up, at the time we grew up, with the culture we grew up with. And to put Wuthering Heights in there, it was incredible to sing. I’m a huge Kate Bush fan. I mean, she changed the world.

The acrobatics of that song are so incredible because nobody had ever heard anybody sing like Kate Bush. There were a few pretenders that came along after that, but it was one of the few times that a record label actually said to a female singer, fuck, you could do whatever you want.

That’s what happens when you say to a female singer of that calibre that you can do whatever you want. So she was signed in as a 17 year old, and that was her first single, you know, I grew up listening to jazz and stuff, but as a singer, there’s nobody like Kate Bush and that changed my life. To then go on and sing it and to be inside that vocal, to be inside the story, to be inside of that female vocal, I never heard anybody sing like that.

Maynard: Let’s have a listen to you using that. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you and to find out what was going on and what has gone on.

Jacqueline: I did a lot of stuff in Germany, I still go to Germany. I’m there a lot, except for COVID. I hate COVID shit.

Maynard: What’s your favourite German phrase?

Jacqueline: Quickly, quickly in your head. It’s East German. I said “cheers big ears”. All my friends laughed, and this guy said, “quickly, quickly in your head’ (in German).

Maynard: Please follow Jacqueline, wherever you can have a look at her Bandcamp, have a look at her Soundcloud.

Jacqueline: Thanks Maynard. It’s really lovely seeing you. Thank you for inviting me over. Why haven’t we been seeing each other more?

The Castanet Club 1985

Maynard: Well, we are on the opening day of the Castanet Club exhibit at the Newcastle Museum, and I’ve been having a really good look around here. We’ve got over 900 photos on three screens. We’ve got every different iteration of the Castanet Club represented, and there are even vinyl, 12 inch albums for sale.

We have Jacqueline. What do you reckon? What’s it like seeing yourself as large as life on the screen there on the stage again?

Jacqueline: I never realised my resolution was so low. I thought I was high resolution, but obviously I’m wrong. The pixel count on that is low.

Maynard: You had the luminous halter neck top on. That was quite a good idea for a sweaty show.

Jacqueline: Really? I had shit hot body didn’t I. But I was 12 at the time. Skin tight as well. I was zipped into them and zipped out of them.

Maynard: As part of the exhibition there’s a recreation of a share house in Cooks Hill, which includes gaffer tape on the sofa and an eighties television with standard resolution, which is currently playing 104 Bull Street, Cooks Hill, the controversial track off Johnny Goodman’s album.

Anything you’ve seen here that you’d forgotten about? I mean, there’s a lot of photos I actually took on the photo walls there, that I’d forgotten I’d taken.

Jacqueline: It’s nice to see the back of the Castanet Club album blown up. I forgot that description of my character. That’s interesting.

Maynard: And nothing’s changed. “Likes to stay up late. Sings like a dream”.

Jacqueline: There you go.

Jane Adam, Jacqueline Amidy film Lance & Maynard for The Last Milkshake in Town 1983
Jane Adam & Jacqueline Amidy film Lance Norton & Maynard for The Last Milkshake in Town, 1983. Newcommon Street, Newcastle.

Jacqueline Amidy at iTunes

Jacqueline on Soundcloud

Jacqueline on Bandcamp

The Castanet Club book cover
Get the Castanet Club book

Watch The Castanet Club Comes to YOU!

General, Maynard, Retro, The Castanet Club, Video

Almost Live From The Castanet Club – Ep 3

Be loud, be proud and prepare ye for the third and final episode of Almost Live from the Castanet Club! from the now closed Castanet Club exhibition.

With current public health orders preventing visitors from experiencing our special exhibition The Castanet Club – An exhibition you can dance to! in person, we’re bringing the fun to you with this limited release variety show.

In true Castanet Club collaborative style, we’ve gathered talented musicians, videographers, sound engineers and visual artists to produce a modern take on a classic Novocastrian attitude: get your friends together, have fun, make art and share it!

We bring you a big finish with Newcastle legends Fish Fry getting us off to a roaring start with 24 Hours from Tulsa. Maynard and Zorica demonstrate Rodney Cambridge MBE’s Lamington Recipe (concluding it’s easier to go to the bakery). Finally, Nastassja Bassi haunts us from 1986 with a beautiful version of Wuthering Heights.

Watch our third and final show from Newcastle Museum.

Watch The Castanet Club Comes to YOU!

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Get your Castanet Club full colour 110 page book with over 200 photos you haven’t seen…