| Author | Message | ||
     skulldisco Member Username: Skulldisco Post Number: 481 Registered: 10-2008 |
any of you aus-philes heard a band called tactics? i was looking at simon reynolds blog today and he was recommending a compilation of theirs. he was referring to them as "post punk" http://www.myspace.com/soundofthesound "TACTICS Formed in the late 1970's in Canberra by David Studdert (guitar, vocals, songwriting), Angus Douglas (guitar), Robert Whittle (drums), and Geoff Marsh (bass), Tactics soon moved to Sydney and quickly became known for going against the grain musically, lyrically, and stylistically. Mixing music that someone once described as "sped up [...] frenetic, discordant, full of unusual rhythms..." (but definitely not punk or New Wave), with lyrics that were Australian but never lost sight of the rest of the world, they became legendary in the inner-city Sydney music scene they themselves never quite fitted in to. The lineup changed a bit over the years (Ingrid Spielman ..boards, Garry Manley on bass, etc.) before Tactics finally called it a day in the mid-1980's, but the overall effect remained the same: music and lyrics that have aged a lot better than most of the stuff from that time and place, and a set of releases that decades later still grab and surprise listeners who may never have heard of Tactics before." | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 199 Registered: 03-2007 |
Skulldisco, I picked up both compilations ( The Sound Of The Sound: Volume One; The Sound Of The Sound: Volume Two ) after Randy mentioned them on this board some months ago. The individual compilations are two disc sets and as far as I know contain everything recorded by the band ( 87 tracks in all.) | ||
| skulldisco Member Username: Skulldisco Post Number: 482 Registered: 10-2008 |
went on napster a few hours back and they have both volumes, which means 87 tracks. interesting stuff, the vocalist sounds a bit like david thomas from pere ubu. theres a lot of stuff to take in, and apparently everything they recorded is here so its warts and all. its also got tinny live tracks which kinda get in the way. i reckon there could be some great stuff here though | ||
| Jeff Whiteaker Member Username: Jeff_whiteaker Post Number: 1797 Registered: 10-2004 |
Randy turned me onto the Tactics, and as Hugh acknowledges, I know he's mentioned them on this board more than once. I seem to like some of their mid-80s work the best (the singer toned down his David Thomas vocalisms by that point). It's pretty moody, edgy, and interesting stuff overall. I do not have the compilations, but I do like most of the 12 or so songs of theirs that I have heard. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2178 Registered: 03-2005 |
Kevin, the Tactics were willfully off the radar. Studdert simply never conceded the demands of smoothing out for popular consumption. Except that he thought that he DID smooth out toward the end of their career but his idea of smoothing out was still edgy and demanding. One of my favorite things about this band is that Studdert did not care about consistency. On the first album he explored the jagged herky jerky sound. By the time of the second album he was done with that and now wanted to explore droning psychedelia. (For me personally, that's their least interesting period). By the time of the third album he was on to yet another approach, now with horns. And he wasn't making the changes to try to grow a new audience; he just moved from one concept to the next according to what interested him. The virtue of the live recordings is that they demonstrated that the band were NOT fakers; they could recreate their difficult studio performances on stage. The Tactics must be one of the most purist art-for-art's-sake outfits anywhere. I can't imagine how they were able to build an audience, but they operated at a time when Oz also offered up the Moodists so there must have been some sort of audience for difficult music. There is a Go Betweens connection too. During one of the band's hiatuses, Studdert humped equipment for the Go Bees while they toured Australia. Amanda Brown ended up playing on some of the late Tactics' recordings. I can send you samples of their music if you haven't already gotten it off Napster. | ||
| skulldisco Member Username: Skulldisco Post Number: 483 Registered: 10-2008 |
thanks randy, i have already cherrypicked vol1 of the compilation from napster and downloaded what amounts to the first two albums. i noticed that the compilation does not present these albums in their original running order, the tracks are grouped together but totally out of sequence. i wonder if studdert was unhappy with the original sequence of each album? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2179 Registered: 03-2005 |
That's news to me Kevin. Each CD is arranged with an album first and then the bonus tracks come afterwards. I just assumed that the running order for the songs from the albums was the same. Except for the fourth album (on the final CD from Vol.2), which Studdert felt was screwed up by the producer. He included alternative takes instead and--if I remember correctly--was not able to feature every song by that method. I'll bet there was a legal issue with the record label that released that album also. I need to correct something in my entry above. I have too many CDs and so the details tend to get screwed up in the brainpan. It's the 4th album when the horns came in. That doesn't mean things became pop, except in an alternative universe. The third album is the one which holds together the best for me. If I remember correctly, it's the first album on which Studdert felt he had made great concessions to pop tastes. Well, he did--sort of. For example the infamous gated drum sound does show up on some of the tracks, such as "Blue and White Future Whale" which sounds like early Grace Slick-era Jefferson Airplane if they had been a 1980s postpunk band. In fact that might be the appropriate description of them on the third album. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2180 Registered: 03-2005 |
Oops. That last paragraph was unclear. I meant that the third album is the first one on which Studdert felt he made concessions to pop accessibility. The first album had no such concessions except maybe for the single "Second Language." | ||
| david pestorius Member Username: David_pestorius Post Number: 82 Registered: 08-2005 |
It may be of interest to readers of this thread to learn that ten years ago RF, in the course of a discussion of Australian guitarists of the punk/post-punk years, spoke of how Tactics reminded him of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. For the full text of the interview:— http://www.davidpestorius.com/text/AXE_N o14_1999.pdf | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2181 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thanks for that David. I remember reading that interview when you posted it previously but I wouldn't have had a clue who the Tactics were then. Robert's comparison of their early lineup to Young and Crazy Horse is interesting. Too bad he didn't explain it. For me, Young and Crazy Horse were lumbering and the Tactics seem the opposite to that. Now, if he'd compared them to Sky Saxon and the Seeds . . . ! Everybody hears something different in the same thing. | ||
| Jeff Whiteaker Member Username: Jeff_whiteaker Post Number: 1798 Registered: 10-2004 |
Randy, I just can't shake the image of Studdert "humping" the Go-Betweens' gear!  | ||
| skulldisco Member Username: Skulldisco Post Number: 488 Registered: 10-2008 |
i may be a tactics virgin, but if the early line up reminded robert of ny&ch i think he was being a bit naughty, or perhaps at a push playful. | ||
| david pestorius Member Username: David_pestorius Post Number: 83 Registered: 08-2005 |
I only saw Tactics perform on a couple of occasions, circa 1981–82, the time of the first two albums. The guitars were extremely choppy, but there was this amazing rhythmic interaction and understanding between Studdert and Angus Douglas, who was remarkable (he wrote that unforgettable intro to the song 'Buried Country') and it is tragic what became of him. Anyway, the live sound was much fuller and heavier than on record, and I suspect this is what prompted the comparison. | ||
| polly glissom Member Username: Pollygog Post Number: 1 Registered: 12-2009 |
I knew these guys - and well, the funny thing about life and Tactics, is that because the latter didn't quite make it into popular culture (whether they were trying to or not), they seem always to be compared to other people (T. Heads/Thomas from Ubu/etc), and that people couldn't pin them down didn't seem to register that they were in fact originals too. This is a problem for a lot of musicians; that exposure often implies originality, and the rest are copyists, certainly in a 'pop' group sense (but i acknowledge 'originality' isn't everything). Didn't stop them though... I know for a fact Dave never knew anything about Ubu, and i personally never saw any TalkinHeads in them. When Dave & Angus came to town they were imbued with quite a few influences, but they had nothing to do with anything 'contemporary', although they were aware of movements in the air. Angus had a wider listening range, but Dave was too alienated/distracted by listening to too much, he was already on his way. They met each other halfway in stuff like reggae, bluebeat, and you can't hear any of that in the music. The didn't use noise or electronics; really, they were quite a traditional set up - the only thing 'abstracted' were the rhythms, melodies and songs stuctures. I'm so glad people are picking up on them again. |