Dave Graney mistLY

Recidivist Melbourne rock and roller Dave Graney and multi-instrumentalist Clare Moore have carved out careers as musicians over 4 decades, with The Moodists, Coral Snakes and beyond. “We Need a Champion” is from a recently released live album recorded on a 2017 UK tour where they played with Georgio Valentino on bass and Malcolm Ross (Josef K, Orange Juice) on electric guitar. We all need a champion right now.

Graney and Moore were in Melbourne “garage jazz-punk” band The Moodists from 1978 to 1986. The Moodists also included Mick Turner (subsequently The Dirty Three) and moved to London around the same time as fellow Melbourne band The Birthday Party.

Line-up changes saw Graney and Moore joined by two former Orange Juice members (David McClymont and Malcolm Ross) before The Moodists split, re-grouping as The Coral Snakes in London and back in Melbourne from 1987-1997.

Following the Coral Snakes came the Royal Dave Graney Show and Lurid Yellow Mist, subsequently abbreviated to the mistLY… which brings us up to date, and to this song, “We Need a Champion”, which was originally released on the 2012 Dave Graney & the MistLY album “You’ve Been In My Mind”.

[As an aside, Ross and Moore here also appear in Kylie Minogue’s band on Australian TV when she was promoting her “Impossible Princess” album. They play on this clip of the Kylie-does-“Madchester”-“Baggy” single “Some Kind of Bliss”]

Keep listening after “We Need a Champion” for a version of the classic louche lounge rock of “Night of the Wolverine” too, the stone-cold fair-dinkum Coral Snakes’ classic Australian rock’n’roll song. Graney’s a storyteller and an entertainer, his songs often inhabited with characters and detailed retelling of incidents, imaginary or true.

Another more recent favourite is “Everything was Legendary With Robert” (from his 2014 “Fearful Wiggings” album) introduced with the warning “It’s got nothing to do with Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens OK. I don’t want to hear anything more about them, alright?”

Graney and Moore are working musicians, frequently on the road, playing here there and everywhere. The COVID19 pandemic has clipped their wings, but they have managed to maintain a live schedule of sorts with performances every Thursday 8pm AEST via Stageit.com