Glenn Richards ‘Deep Demonstrations’ Volumes 1 and 2

Announcing a giant trove of ancient and unreleased material from the songwriter and convener of seminal band Augie March, The Dark Satanic Mills Bros, producer, film composer, mixer, arranger, studio operator and Tasmanian, Glenn Richards.

Both volumes of ‘DEEP DEMONSTRATIONS’ are available to order via Bandcamp. You can listen to excepts from ‘DEEP DEMONSTRATIONS below.

VolUME 1 “Orphans of Commerce”

For some reason or other there’s always far too much time between Augie March releases and naturally many songs I write end up forgotten or wasted later on as virtual b-sides and obscure ‘bonus trax’ for streamers and the like, but that’s no real knock on their soulful goodness or curiosity value. The deleterious effects of time, the inevitable dwindling enthusiasm, that’s what does for these poor orphans who grow too old to be attractive to prospective Album Parents.

The following are mostly deep demos, they’re what the AM band tend to get when I want a track to sound or structure a very specific way. Quality of audio and, well, quality, varies, but there are some gems and even the fake stones can be nice in a certain light. You can listen to excepts below…

VolUME 2 “TV, Film & Other Spec Rejects”

About 85% of commissions I‘ve received over the stretch have been for projects that never get up. As if the songwriter/composer life weren’t fraught enough, you’re usually doing stuff on spec, with no advances and no guarantees of any income at all. This volume, with the rare exception, is made up of deep demonstrations that generally worked well and might have gone on to big boy clothes, were it not for the dissolution of entire productions they were attached to.

Also here are songs written and recorded for charities, other artists, concept albums, and some just plain old ‘rejects’. There are also some alt versions of old songs you’ll probably know recorded for opaque purposes, which are included in both volumes.

Of note are the number of times I’ve been required to write from a female perspective, or have chosen to despite being a man. When you’re shooting for a Hollywood noir musical you dig deep psychic trenches, and brazenly ignore prevailing mores.  I also try my hand, or rather tongue, at some accents. Nobody asked for this but I gave it anyway because of DEEP DEMONSTRATIONS.

In conclusion, and as those guys leaning against cars in Byron Bay who you don’t want to spend any further time with say, “It’s all good…”.  Producers looking for their next off kilter soundtrack or ‘random’ song for their organic TikTok starlet, call me. Please.

BONUS TRACKS

Both volumes of “DEEP DEMONSTRATIONS” are available to order via Bandcamp.

PS

Massively enjoy your bonus film clip for "Everybody's Gotta Die Once”, cut together generously, and with I can only think deliberately wrong lyrics, by the genius Cairnes Bros who made clips for us back in the day and have gone on to make several excellent films which I’ve had the honour of providing much music for.  In this case they were wise not to include my 80’s metal cum psychedelic take on the cheesy James Bond 007 style theme song for their film “Scare Campaign”, but being pigs of rock at heart they could not leave it another languishing orphan.  As I write this they are in LA, deservedly enjoying a cinematic release of their latest “Late Night with the Devil”.  GO SEE IT.

ALL SONGS WRITTEN, PLAYED AND RECORDED BY GAR 

With following exceptions:

“Walgreens Blues” - Slide guitar by Dan Luscombe

“The Weaving Mind" - Piano by Kiernan Box

“16 Silent Mouths” - Chorus Vocal by Jess Cornelius

“One Crowded Hour (Kermit’s Banjax Version)” - Piano and Organ by Scott Targett

"A Strange Bird" - Adapted from the poem by Michael Dransfield

“The Sweet Primeroses” - Trad

“The Streets of Forbes” - Trad

GAR

Hobart, April 24

The first week of January 2020 saw Glenn Richards, on crutches due to a Christmas party cricketing incident, in a Melbourne studio with his Augie March bandmates putting down eleven new tracks for what might end up being the sequel to their acclaimed 2000 debut album Sunset Studies. The plan was for Glenn to complete it at home in Hobart and have it released in time for the band’s 20th anniversary of SS, a tour already booked in major theatres throughout the country. For a couple of months that plan was looking rosy, but we all know the rest. It played out similarly for most people, big plans or not. So, after a stiff coffee, he started on the journey that would lead to a fully self made album, two film clips, and a complete set of lyric clips. Cottage industry indeed.

“FIBATTY!” is a full blooded album, possibly even more ambitious in its instrumentation and thematic reach than your average Augie record, and very far from a typical solo album by a sensitive bloke with an acoustic guitar. While it never stops at any station too long it is maybe best described as a deep, crooked pop album, something that would fit nicely on a playlist with the likes of Split Enz, The Kinks, Deerhunter, Guided By Voices, Richard Davies, The Go Betweens, XTC, Jellyfish, Richard Dawson, or any number of acts past and present who prize vision, quality, humour, genuine feeling and individuality as marks of good music. But above all it is a Glenn Richards album, DIY ground to sky, and hopefully one of many to be released in this fashion. It is also very much a pandemic album, hopefully his only one.

From Glenn : “Well, today’s the day I release my 2020 solo album “FIBATTY!”. The stock has arrived and the online version is now live to order. Along with the album launch I’m pushing out another single and video, “Alive (Until You’re Not)”. There’s little to be gained at this stage waxing about the strange year we’ve all probably had but I made this record for a number of reasons, chief among them being as a way to process the shift in things and the plain awfulness of a few events closer to home that happened to land in the middle of it. At the same time I tried to make something that would be enjoyable to listen to whether superficially, forensically or anywhere between. It has hooks, humour, depth, polish and grime, and as much as is possible in a short album it contains traces of so many of my influences from the proponents of raw four track wizardry to the maestros of the most audacious studio trickery. In the end though it’s just me in my glorified shed in a backyard, isolation within isolation, hopefully a work of some fellowship and joy. I’ll be releasing a track a day with an accompanying lyric video for the next several days for edification purposes.”

The excellent folks at Heart of the Rat Records have seen fit to release my recent solo album on vinyl, which I’m pretty chuffed about. Mastered by the always spot on Joe Carra at Crystal, the tunes shine on the black stuff. Check it and all the other great releases at HOTR. The “FIBATTY!” LP stock is expected to arrive in August/September.

Listen to Glenn’s chat with Zan Rowe on Double J.

Read a review by Bernard Zuel here.

Tracklisting:
1. In the Court of the Cat King
2. Alive (Until You're Not)
3. New Songwriter
4. U R
5. Lake Drive
6. FIBATTY!
7. Last Aid Kit
8. Stalker 1986
9. My Midi Life
10. Backyard Arcana
11. Never Be Your Boy

Released: December 10, 2020

In The Court of the Cat King

Bilious the moon

Swollen on our gloom.

Seems prematurely June,

I’ve yet of May to sing.

A year of plague and penury

How long til it’s a memory?

How long is a piece of string

In the court of the Cat King?

‘As long as I say it is,

As long as I say!’

All of us are prey,

We forget along the way,

Lured by the toxic spring

Along the river to the court of the Cat King…

Along the river of oblivion,

Writ on the waters of oblivion,

Every letter from a father to son,

Every lyric of a love unsung.

All of us are prey,

We forget along the way,

All of us are summer rain

on winter clay.

None of us are free, (but my bird, it flies!)

But imagine it to be, (and my bird, it sings!)

How long will your songbird sing

Until it’s caught in the court of the Kingdom of the Cat King?

‘As long as I say it will,

As long as I say!’

Alive (Until You’re Not)

Troubles in the soul

Drown them in the bowl

Pick a pack of percocet

pep your pan and pickle it

every trouble soon forget

It’s a happenin’ thing

If it’s happenin’ to ya

Today is in the bottle

Tomorrow’s sure shot and the past doesn’t matter

tomorrow’s sure shot, baby what you got? you’re alive

and in motion

Until you’re not

Racin’ verse to verse

Too fast for love I’m gonna break the bridge

and crash into the chorus

like a blind fuckin’ tortoise on speed wearin’ adidas

Now that’s a happenin’ thing if it’s happenin’ to ya

life is its own participation prize

the car’s in the car park the kids don’t really matter

it’s hot in the city hear the pitter patter you’re alive

and in motion

Until you’re not

Pardon me Luther

As I gather up the rope And pray I

remember how to use it

“Everything that is done in this world is done by hope”

Now it’s a happenin’ thing

If it’s happenin’ to ya

sometimes it runs right through ya but

Don’t waste your time away searchin’ for

Don’t waste your time away searchin’

You’re alive and in motion

Until you’re not

New Songwriter

Everybody’s got a guy

Everybody’s got a writer in a room

working late into the dog afternoon

on some slick serenade, some twee teeny toon

but my guy’s not doing so well

He’s drinking all night and sleeping all day

It’s all gone to hell

I’ve been trying to tell him

that’s my job not yours

I’m the face of the franchise

you’re the heartbeat under the boards

Everybody knows the lie

Everybody knows the land and its lay

The grift is much quicker and easier

than the graft today

but my guy seems to’ve figured it out

He’s opened the door

to the attic oh lord

now it’s all arse about!

I plead my case and implore but

he just dances away

Now I’m the face in the portrait

and he’s a new born Dorian Gray

With great calamity

there comes opportunity

this has been proven to me

every now and then

Now I find myself alone

I shall have to write my own

And how could it go wrong

It’s just a little a song, no?

No

That’s why everybody’s got a guy

Everybody’s got some stiff up in a room

doing the things we don’t know how to do

while we bask in the light of a credit or two

but my guy’s not toeing the line

He says he’s tired of being in prison

and doing somebody else’s time

My guy’s checked out of the Tower of Song

trashed the room left a mess

and no forwarding address

all have is this note on a crumpled up kleenex

“I’ve been trying to tell you

for a very long time

all these liquid emotions

well they’re probably mine

You’re not getting very much younger

and baby you ain’t getting brighter

Perhaps you need to find yourself a new songwriteeeeerup!!

Everybody’s got a guy

Everybody’s got some gimp down in a cage

running the lines til they’re palatable

or just about edgy enough for this age of lies.

U R

You’re a clown, you’re a dandy, you’re a fop…(U R)

You’re a death’s head upon a mop…(U R)

You’re not here, you don’t get to say it…(but U R)

Yesterday I took the bus out to Berriedale,

Turns out I was never there…(but U R)

You’re a scapegrace who’s out of luck…(U R)

You’re a mooncalf baby, you suck…(U R)

You’re not here you don’t get to say it…(but U R)

Often I wonder, when things have me under,

What strange motivations to ends.

Ends that conspire to make me a stranger,

and make enemies of my friends…(U R)

You’re a pong, you’re a poor cologne…(U R)

You’re just sittin’ there all alone…(U R)

Why don’t you give me a call?

Why don’t I give you a call?

Now I am tired and sad and quite wasted

and sat in the dark on my own…(U R)

Most of the time seems like all of the good years

are gone, and I’ve blown them all…

But that’s just silly…(U R)

Lake Drive

It’s a scrambling kind of life,

it could finish any time,

of hard to locate station, a flickering picture kind

of over supply of days, then always exhausted time,

of ambient desperation, a keening wave of sine.

And really baby really, that would probably be fine,

Never sure if what I thought, was a clambering up, a climb

wasn’t a pivot down, wasn’t

a slow decline,

When you’re always scrambling you’re always digging

down into the hungry lime.

The deep moronic base,

The ruthless icing on the cake,

the puling soggy centre,

makes for sentimental paste.

Profane geography does the range of dividing make -

I couldn’t mander the gerry,

I drove my car into the lake.

Nothing made sense anymore…(not that it ever did)

Nothing makes sense anymore…(not that it ever will)

A little early in the piece

To be from my senses released,

A little green for a critical break,

Still, I drove my car into the lake.

When you’re not dying you’re not dying, you’re not really living not really,

the thing you reach out to touch it isn’t much, it’s touchy feely.

It’s a scrambling kind of life, a spanning of barely par,

A scrambling life that isn’t? Well they rarely are.

Heaven has always been on earth, it’s for the bankers and killers,

magnum daddies and their pretties, mercenary gorillas.

It isn’t for me anymore…(not that it ever was)

It’s all just a little bit fake, so I drive my car into the lake…

FIBATTY!

Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.

Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.

Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.

Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.

Last Aid Kit

My mind’s unclear,

I’ve a capital idea,

Full head of steam

on my capitalist dream,

you better let me get to it

or someone else is gonna do it.

If you’re goin’ won’t you wanna know

you can go the way you wanna go?

Instead of sufferin’ through it.

You better let me get to it.

Everybody’s gonna want one,

Everybody’s gonna need one.

Mares eat oats, does eat oats,

little lambs eat ivy.

Preachers get votes on billionaire boats,

eat the little lambs with mint and gravy.

So let me get in on this capitalist shit,

bonafide mail order suicide kit.

Everybody’s gonna want one,

Everybody’s gonna need one.

Ain’t that the essence of the game?

Faceless profit on a terminal plain…

Sail on sailor,

frail first mate,

sail between the islands of the church and the state.

Stalker 1986

Last time I was round your house

I needed no invitation

I strolled right through your very open door.

Now it’s full of strangers,

I can’t count the changes,

How things will shift.

It’s different than before.

Now you give to strangers what you once kept just for me,

Now you fan your favours out for free.

Is retiring my nature the fee I have to pay?

I miss you, there’s nothing else to say.

Once I had your ear

and you would prize my conversation,

Once I had permission for your bed.

Now I feel a parasite, now I feel a louse,

It’s the last time I’ll be round your house.

My Midi Life

All dots connect in my midi life

All blocks divinely shift in my midi life, my midi life

It's so easy

My midi life

The life into which I've retreated

Meticulous and Precise

Each day a pattern repeated

I randomise for flavour

Engage the arpeggiator

Up or down it’s mine to decide

All the days of

my midi life

Copy and paste, copy and paste

Copy and paste, copy and paste

All dots connect in my midi life

Upon the sine I drift in my midi life, my midi life

So brilliant

my midi life

The life into which I've retreated

Impossibly clever and bright

And nobody knows that I've cheated

Each day and night

So never not right

Fastened to my rack of light

Purity is all, energy is rife

In my midi life

Copy and paste, copy and paste

Copy and paste, copy and paste

All dots connect in my midi life

In harmony sublime I’m lifted by my midi life, my midi life

I have drawn

The future in

The past is repaired and repeated

There'll be no more pain in my midi life

The life into which I've retreated

Each moment I have selected

And marked to be deleted

I am surgeon with a pretty knife

Cutting the pain

From my midi life

Copy and paste, copy and paste

Copy and paste, SAVE ME….

Backyard Arcana

Buried in the corner of the yard

Only if you listen very hard

I’m always gonna lose

So you’re always gonna lose

In the yard of a house

full of dumb little mouths

singing the same old song

Whether the amount is negligible

Whether the addiction is tamed

I spilt my ink and I've got nothing left to drink

so I let me a pint, to make a fine point

To open up my bloody mind again

Oh words are fire in the right room,

Depend on me for nothing

Gold in the eye of a jaguar

the King gets his iron from Mars

His copper from Venus the Devil has seen us

Milling about, wrestling with doubt

In the backyard of a burning house

Oh words are fire in the right room,

Depend on me for nothing

Why'd you have to bury that toy?

Why do I have to destroy?

The tea tree casts my mind to the past

but I don't think of you, not anymore

Never any more at all.

Never Be Your Boy

Some caramel morning,

Look down on the street,

A little something dawning,

Then a somebody meet.

Are you one that’s going to be

My B A B Why

Baby?

In my triple tracked, vaguely Dylanesque affectation,

I sing…”I’ll never be your boy…”

Did they make you a sucker?

Do you suck all the time?

Well I don’t find it hard to write the next line,

Cos words don’t mean that much to you

When you can get by on just a one or two

phrases in the popular circulation.

That’s why I’ll never be your boy

Now welcome to the eight,

don’t it feel like you invented it?

But it’s only a few bars of space and baby you only rented it,

The tricky part is ending it

While pretending you never meant it.

Sounds like a party,

Like when we were young,

Oh didn’t we do something?

But you never lived here,

this wasn’t your time,

You stole the flavour

and the rhyme…

Now you sing “everything’s gonna be alright!”

don’t ya baby?

And “we’re all in this together!”

don’t say maybe….

That’s why I’ll never be your boy…

Some made up morning,

Some faked up street,

I can’t keep from yawning

shuffling my feet.

Are you the one that’s going to be

My idiotic baby?

Lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)

Tracklisting:
1. Torpor and Spleen
2. Long Pigs
3. Old Love
4. Apple Of My Eye
5. Painter By Numbers
6. Unflappable Man
7. The Drive
8. Turn On You
9. Glimjack Muttering
10. Barfly Prometheus
11. They Hate Us
12. The Love Zoo
13. South Of Heaven
14. Harsh Critic
15. Mengele In Brazil

Read the 'Glimjack' Bio

Released: October 29, 2010

Torpor and Spleen

Born two halves of a mournful whole, like a love that sprung from a murder,

Heaving, howling, pale and green,

One is Torpor and one is Spleen.

And at the base of the broken boll

a remnant of the father,

In the goo underneath your shoe,

Blueprint for disorder, drawn in

chalk and water.

Violence is king and love is pauper

in the mix of spleen and moral torpor,

and the words will only make you sad.

When the shaggy satan bird, perched upon the haunches of the human herd,

makes a sound,

Will you face the sound, will you turn around,

Or will you turn to water?

Well that river never ends, with many blind eyes and bends,

and you may note that it trends toward Oblivion,

with opposing banks that seem to meet in between,

One is Torpor and one is Spleen.

Long Pigs

How long is any favourite summer?

How long will any heart string hum any song?

How long ago did you leave me?

When did you decide that I was gone?

O I'm so lonely, I'm so lonely I could cry,

Tears so grateful to tip over the edge and spill from my ever thankful weeping eyes.

It's a pleasing, pretty pining,

They've got their myth and I got mine, and

I still walk the other way

From the long pigs on the dirty mile.

They come and congregate in a blind alley,

They herd and aggregate till they're finally fine,

and in style assembly,

making a scene like the Gray St. line.

Every ironic youth holds their own embarrassing truth inside,

And every aching elder, still searching for a cool shelter,

Must've paused and felt a savaged pride.

All you who walked upon a razor's edge, look down it was nothing but a garden hedge,

Your imagination ran away.

So hungry for repeating a feeling,

You never learned how to capture a feeling,

your imagination flew away.

Forever will you stay the long pigs on the dirty mile,

See what comes of hailing style.

Old Love

I don't know where it is, where the old love goes, probably to England.

Or a return to itself, to imagination, vainly, to be born again.

Our numbers will increase but will new love cease to grow old?

No.

In a dream I was having old love came to me

In a measure of a song.

Then a bird, then a roo, then a shaft of light by eucalypt just passing through.

Our numbers will increase but will new love cease to grow old?

It's unpleasant to the touch but it wants you so much

To include it in the passage of intoxicated play,

To be young, so to glory in the best part of the story,

Before it sinks to allegory and the trope of decay.

I don't know what to do with my old love, I can't leave it home alone.

And I don't know what to do with your old love, any more than you do.

Our numbers will increase but will new love cease to grow old?

Old love comes in and the company recedes

Because everybody reads what its company leads to -

A tightness in the chest, the un-pickable lock,

Reverse of metamorphoses, return to a rock,

Till somebody has to say, in the spirit of fair play,

"Old love you cannot stay, just go away"

Till somebody has to say, in the spirit of the day,

"Old love you cannot stay", and it rolls away.

Apple of my Eye

Even under occupation, idle.

Trussed like a lily leg in a Roman sandal.

Even in the throe of invasion I hear the Siren call, your majesty too much for a country boy to handle.

A million sets of eyes fixed upon the prize,

All I ever knew was not to blink when I heard the lies.

No matter who owns you you're ever the apple of my eye.

Did I dream there was cricket at the Punchbowl the night we all got locked in at The Bat and Ball,

The Irish laying into each other after shots of the Fernet Branca?

The fountain at the top of the street ran the colours of the visiting fleet,

In the morning sunshine we dreamt of retreat, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week?

O and how you show it, I could never outgrow it,

Stranger in a stranger's heaven, having the ball and throwing it, no matter who owns you you're always the apple of my eye.

Ask the red headed girl at the bar, ask the pickled poet drowned in his jar, o you don't to travel too far to get to the wonderful place where you are.

Let me never leave it, let me never forget, nothing holds a candle,

Your majesty too much for a country boy to handle...

O and how you show it, I could never outgrow it,

Stranger in a stranger's heaven, having the ball and throwing it, no matter who owns you you're always the apple of my eye.

A million sets of eyes fixed upon the prize,

All I ever knew was not to blink when I heard the lies.

No matter who owns you you're ever the apple of my eye.

Painter By Numbers

O what a mess you're getting me in,

You should stop having so many children,

You breed like a white wedding christian

Who never heard the word that greed was a sin.

And when you talk it's the operator,

If you listen it's the interrogator,

Nothing adds up but you read like a calculator,

You have a gift for blunders,

Painter by numbers.

The future for you and me is bleak

as long as you keep on keeping on with

painting by numbers, I know it's chic,

But by no means the finer technique.

So many shared thoughts and ideas, so many feelings and fears,

Welling up till your cheeks are wet with tears,

While the Leviathan slumbers,

Painter by numbers.

O what a mess you're getting me in,

You should stop having so many children,

You mate like a martyred muslim

Already on to his 99th virgin.

So many shared masterpieces, but they all share the very same features,

Him begot her begot he begot she,

Are you as stunned as me?

So many shared thoughts and ideas, so many feelings and fears,

Welling up till your cheeks are wet with tears,

While the Leviathan lumbers on,

Painter by numbers.

Unflappable Man

Hell doesn't break loose,

it's not a river that breaches its banks,

a disease that decimates the ranks,

For these kinds of things we may one day give thanks...

But it's something I can't easily understand,

how I'm laughing, the unflappable man.

It isn't all those promises you vow to keep then don't,

it isn't that the world will end but the likelihood that it won't.

O alarm, o wonderful alarm,

Wake me up from remembering...

O I know the drill,

I know the bit to the brain and the old bitter pill,

that moves on the pain and muffles the sound of the kill,

Almond of Mercy...

But it's something I can't easily understand,

how I'm laughing, the unflappable man.

You employ your brightest sparks

to build a city out of light,

And toil while the city sleeps

To put all the wrongs to right...

O subliminal purposes,

beneath the shimmering surfaces,

All agents of forgetfulness

rally to me now -

The Drive

For how long have you believed that you belong?

For a tourist, life is just a tour.

In all of nature, nothing stranger,

Or more natural than the force that drives the hand.

The Drive.

Trophy wife, trophy wife of magnate's only son,

Do you have a view on the murder of the fourth estate?

On civilisation, on the illusion?

The lovely dead mans painting hanging in the magnate's boardroom?

On The Drive

Kiln skulls rising on hot air over writhing beeches where a blue skinned boy soldier makes machine gun love to a barely breasted body met in the copse, while yonder the ocean swells to the spring bells and lo we have breached the badlands border and drive on some coastal el Dorado and the bells are the meek kwarks of urine bleached gulls which circle upside down around a tarnished inverse city, some corroded underworld place whose gate is a plagued up Luna Park face.

Home is a dreamt of thing. We continue to drive...

All alone, I see past the pendulum,

All alone, I conceive the drive,

Then I ask you, "Are you afraid of what I might do?"

But the day I listen to you I cease to be alive, I cease to have The Drive

Turn on You

I'm the dog you tutor for war,

In the pit, bite or bit, there's only one law,

But soon, soon, there'll be two

When I turn on you

I'm the force that through the red wire (ref Dylan Thomas on this line)

Fires light across your eyes

Till you are edified,

But one silent afternoon

I will turn on you.

I'm the soldier who, in his dead hours,

Took the flesh of a horse to make

'Only Joy' then faint in the flowers

To dream of this :

A woman's kiss and of the April showers

Of home, home, never due,

But soon, soon, though as dead as the moon,

I will turn on you,

I will turn on you.

Glimjack Muttering

Maybe I divine you a passage from the darkness to your dreaming home,

And when you cross my palm with a little bit of coin you give a little dog a little bone,

O but could you hardly blame for leading you astray a little while,

When you never stop asking for service with a smile?

If my cup's a little empty, why aren't you filling it up?

Now sleep is a slow undertaker who bides in the bed with Time,

And if the body in the middle is a wellspring, how tense is the coil in mine?

And the anvil, red anvil, pillow for my hammering head,

Slippery and slick with the bulls I've bled.

If the dream is half empty

Why aren't you filling it up?

I am the little flame atop of the candle,

I am the little that I let you see,

And by leading you through these streets at night I made you depend on me.

So where now the smiling faces?

How now the shimmering cup?

It looks a little empty,

Why aren't you filling it up?

Barfly Prometheus

When the wind fell out of my sails where did it go?

A hot wind made of my sails a parchment and don't you know,

I wrote this down in spit, in my own invisible ink.

You breathe your hot wind upon it that you might know what I think.

(When I wake up, when I wake up)

Every morning a new sun rise.

The bead of sweat on my eyelid is a tocsin tear,

It heralds the thing that I did that finds me here.

(When I wake up, when I wake up)

Every morning a new sun rise.

Born again to drink the tides,

Born again to tender my sides,

Cruel beak and flaming eye,

The mid-shelf mirror don't ever lie.

From the base of the gullet to the gristle tip of the thigh,

Food for the birds, swollen and scored by the friendly fires.

I gave you light, warmth in your shelter,

Such a pretty prize.

Now do as you will, I feel ill, go and burn the skies.

(When I wake up, when I wake up)

Every morning a new sun rise.

They Hate Us

For all of our middling works all our 'caritas'.

(They hate us)

Fallen on deaf ears all our words to the wise,

(They hate us)

Though wooden, imperious, they seem to guide us,

More good than ill the light on the hill.

They hate us like the heart hates the heroin,

They hate us like the harbinger sun,

They hate us more than the American, than they ever hated him,

And that's saying something.

Maybe it's apple envy for getting the worm?

(They hate us)

But spurn the little snake and see the worm turn.

(They hate us)

Got a hook, got a line, might make you smile or cry.

Might send you up, might send you down.

They hate us like the heart hates the heroin,

They hate us like the popular song,

They hate us more than the sinner hates the sin

When it puts him in a spin, then completes him.

I know hatred, I hate us too.

(It's true)

Every race, every color in this dying island zoo.

(Sad but true)

Every year a little bit less like

Getting to know you.

Nothing new beneath this sun, nothing new.

I hate us like the heart hates the heroin,

I hate us like the harbinger sun,

I hate us more than the farmer hates the field for the disappointing yield,

Being fallow.

They hate us like the heart hates the heroin,

They hate us like the popular song,

They hate us more than the singer hates to sing

Of the very thing that loves him.

The Love Zoo

No question love's dominion,

A bandied word to the power of ten,

But what of love's new livery?

Is nothing ever what it seems to be?

The vanishing tiger, the mad ant, the vicious shrew,

The venomous spider, the happy go lucky curlew,

And the bike riding bear congregate to see what's to do...

In the Love Zoo.

In the Love Zoo nothing goes to script,

So many empty chambers remind of tomb or crypt,

In the Love Zoo no longer any clue to bear out any evidence

We came in two by two by two...

In the Love Zoo.

See within the bamboo stands, some gentle tame orang utans,

You do what Philip Larkin says he did

And break them like meringues.

You have an immunity, you have every new disease.

The Zoo is a battery, you enter on hands and knees.

You bellow for satisfaction and still say please...

In the Love Zoo the hardest thing to find, among all the seething animals, one other of your kind.

In the Love Zoo the perils of the cage, the fever of enclosure, the hurt and heat, and hurt and rage...

In the Love Zoo.

South of Heaven

The road to the silver lake has been closed,

No walking, no horseback, dirt track,

Leave if you know a place you can go that isn't infernal.

A wave will lap, a zephyr will blow, everlasting truths

That some of us know

Who made our beds in the south of heaven that night.

A strange and sinister gardener who'd think

To encourage an element to make like rose

And bloom till it shows all it can be.

But this bright flower has a whole other power

To hold one in thrall while we all of us cower,

Who made our beds in the south of heaven that night.

The road to the silver lake has been closed,

No walking, no horseback.

The road to your house leads to my house,

I dreamed it, saw it,

Stark as a snake, leading up to the lake and into the town.

A wave did lap and a zephyr it blew,

Everlasting truths that some of us knew

Who lay in our beds in the south of heaven that night.

The road to the silver lake has been closed,

No walking, no horseback, dirt track, leave.

Harsh Critic

You hold the glass up to the sunlight,

I hold you in my heart,

You look for ways now to finish me,

I don't remember ever starting.

I need you out of my way, but I don't have the strength to move you.

Just to get up on the shoulder,

Just to ogle on the valley below,

Just to stand for a little while and listen to the singing of the high wind blowing,

Is a miracle, an act of my will,

It isn't palpable the heart beats still,

But you're so empty nothing's ever gonna fill you,

I need your help I need you out of my way, but I don't have the strength to move you.

All the humming drones in the hive,

All the hanging apples in the grove,

All the tender messages that never arrive,

And every temple that the hammer stove.

I get down at the sound of the wind in the trees,

And when I know the strife is coming in threes,

But the curling hand is not a disease,

It's just a sign I need you out of my way, but I don't have the strength to move you.

Mengele in Brazil

No birthday gifts again this year,

Nor family, well wishers, friends.

I look to have dropped off the branch, or so it seems,

And on seeming depends :

The light that history chooses to shine over deeds maybe done, maybe didn't,

A long flight, a short throw, what is and what really isn't.

I'm half way to treating myself my dear,

Though I never said I was ill,

But they stabbed a poor dark skinned boy last night

Just to see what it is to kill.

Such a curse for a sensitive person,

Hamstrung, hollowed, discursed.

Been given the confine and stalling, and having to see in reverse.

O when did it come so tropical, when did the language shift?

O where is the golden summer of my youth and will this pall ever lift?

I'm half way to the man on the street corner, I know him for what he is, a shill,

But I get no relief with the former, not bottle, nor candle, nor pill.

Hark to ebony angels singing, and down in the centre a celestial ringing,

"All aboard!" shouts the east Indian, off to find my gentle twin.

When everything merges so possible, what I do or just what I don't,

A flint stone, a black crow, what resonates, what won't.

O when did it come to this and that, where are the pleasure and thrill?

"Will I smell the fresh mown lawn of my life?" asks Mengele in Brazil.

While ever the air is breathable, men will ever kill.

O yesterday, tomorrow, find Mengele in Brazil.

Lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)

 By G.A. Richards & The Dark Satanic Mills Brothers

Tracklisting: 
1. I Owe You 
2. Middle of the Road Class War Terra Nullius Blu-Hoos 
3. Narragonia 
4. LJ's Third Summer in Heaven 
5. Bottle Baby 
6. The Making of a Bum 
7. Shithouse is the New Good

I WAS ONLY 19 (2023) 

GR was honoured to be asked to perform Redgum’s defining anthem “I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Green)” for the launch of the RSL’s Anzac Day Appeal in Melbourne in April 2023, and he also managed to record a version at home which is available on streaming services.

HI GENE! (2020)

With a salty salute to Sparks and a neurotic nod to Neu, “Hi Gene!” was written, recorded, mixed, filmed, and edited over three days as an unreasonable challenge Glenn set himself in the first week of the pandemic. As usual, he beat himself soundly.

“Augie had a big year planned and we’re hoping to be able to reschedule our Sunset Studies shows for November, but the virus has meant that a planned album will now take a back seat to something entirely new and, so far, really bloody good. I’m confident we’ll see an excellent GR album this year followed by an extraordinary AM album next year. In the meantime I hope you enjoy this half cut home brew, it harks a little to my early years when I had more brain cells but there were far less chords in music. The gist is we need to be clean with our bodies but our culture in general could use a little more dirt beneath its fingernails. Also, dogs are the best people. Stay safe and spread this ludicrous clip like it’s a vaccine. Xg2020”

Released: May 29, 2020

Compilations

VAST THE ALBUM (2018)

Glenn contributed the track ‘Cossack Tide’

COSSACK TIDE

My brother in law is a miner,

My brother in law is a mixed race man…

Is he conflicted?

Well you could wonder,

He makes his living deep, and under the ground.

My brother in law loves my sister,

and that’s the matter, and all the matter.

There is a tide

in the cares of men,

Mine has gone out,

And it’s not coming back in.

Nothing is in itself curious -

That in itself is not curious -

I could leave most everything more or less

as it’s found.

The points in the sky make me wonder not why,

But why I’m not wondering why I’ve no wonder,

There’s a tide

in the cares of men,

Mine has gone out,

And it’s not coming back in.

Now I live in a place

that sleeps in history,

And only awakens for some

drowsy relations,

Like a drunk, sullen man,

Rousing hard, with roving hand,

Who has only thought of pleasure,

Who is like to understand

There is a limit, there is a ceiling,

There is a shying away from all feeling,

There is a tide

in the cares of men,

Mine has gone out,

And it’s not coming back in.

Lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)

Watch the VAST album trailer:

HE WILL HAVE HIS WAY - THE SONGS OF TIM & NEIL FINN (2010)

 - She Got Body, She Got Soul 

7 WORLDS COLLIDE - THE SUN CAME OUT (2009)

 - Duxton Blues

THE BLACK BALLOON SOUNDTRACK (2008)

 - Fall At Your Feet

SCARED OF HORSES - AN EMPTY FLIGHT (1999)

 - December (Ill At Ease)