stephen cummings

Last Night’s RRR Radiothon!

12:11PM Jess McGuire | What an amazing evening of music, and we say that with some degree of objectivity. No, really! We had a stack of pre-recorded genius from wonderful artists who generously donated their time to lay down “tracks” of cover songs – and they were fucking awesome! The atrociously handsome Dan Kelly not only did the world’s best John Butler impression for a station id (we’re trying to get the audio up here as we speak, stay tuned…) but he also performed a stunning and utterly unexpected rendition of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May”! Patrick J Bourke* of Dallas Crane fame offered up a version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, iconic Australian music figure Stephen Cummings gave us Jason Donovan’s “Too Many Broken Hearts”, Lisa Mitchell from last year’s Australian Idol performed a lovely cover of “What I Like About You”, and SPOD worked some magic on Beyonce’s “Check On It”. Dave Graney and Clare Moore got their smooth on in the name of community radio with “Hard Times”, Melbourne’s own The Basics gave us an exclusive live recording of “Ebony and Ivory”, and Little Red moved us all with their a cappella interpretation of “Heal The World”. But that wasn’t where it ended! We also had a host of surprise LIVE performers! The Good Intentions belted out Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumpin”, Ground Components – WITH A PIANO ACCORDION, FOR FUCKS!! – played Dallas Groundies’ grandpa’s song “Louis the Rat” and inspired a massive singalong, the ridiculously talented Sime Nugent crooned “The Greatest Love Of All”, and a supergroup consisting of members from Good Intentions, Eurobeat 3, The Drones, Ground Components – as well as Sime Nugent and Angie Hart – all contributed to a gorgeous take on Dire Straits’ “Walk Of Life”. AND JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOUR HEAD WAS GOING TO EXPLODE? Angie Hart and Dan Luscombe from The Drones did a last minute duet of “Islands In The Stream”. All in all, a marvellous show. Thank you to all who subscribed to RRR during I’d Rather Jack, and if you didn’t? Do it now! On what motherfucking station will you see a line up like that delivering the goods with nothing to gain except perhaps access to a free slab of beer? rrr.org.au is the station, but if you’re not Melbourne based, then we heartily recommend you support your own local community radio station any time of the year… It’s where the magic happens, people. *Also a fellow member (along with Defamer Australia) of hip hop duo The Septics. More »

What Woman Wouldn’t Want To be On The Front Cover Of FHM?

4:59PM Jess McGuire | One of our favourite songwriters – and MySpazz chum – Stephen Cummings recently posted a blog entry on the site in which he recalled his experience working with Melissa Tkautz. It is, to put it bluntly, quite brilliant. “what woman wouldn’t want to be on the front cover of FHM?”“Cumming’s written songs for and toured with a ballet company, and written jingles while dabbling in record production. His last job as a producer was working with soap pop singer Melissa Tkautz, whom he describes as the ideal talent because she spent most of the day shopping and only came into the studio to quickly cut vocal tracks.” Rolling Stone magazine. That’s true. Regrettably, the recordings were never made available. I do have a copy; perhaps I’ll stick it on this site. In essence, Melissa sounds like Kylie. You must recall “Read My Lips” and “Sexy Is The Word”. It was a surreal experience. What was Melissa like? She was stunning; she had incredibly translucent skin. She was really other worldly. Or perhaps that’s because Richard Wilkins accompanied her. Yes him. He was her manager or adviser or Svengali. Melissa’s most memorable quote was, “what woman wouldn’t want to be on the front cover of FHM?” Exactly, or damned straight as you young folk say. Anyway, it was Melissa and the guys from ‘Filthy Lucca’ of “Treaty” fame – Gavin, Paul & Goodgie and myself. We wrote one song and re-arranged some other track. Gavin, who ran many gay clubs round Melbourne took her shopping. Melissa loved his jeans. Anyway, in due course she had to sing and I went in to the studio with only the engineer and tried to coax her through the songs. It was a hard slog. She was very nervous and her voice wasn’t great. That of course was unimportant. Nevertheless, she had to bring some feeling to the track. Richard Wilkins dug his elbow into my ribs, “Do you mind,” he whispered and snapped his finger on the talkback button. He immediately berated and cajoled and sweet-talked and threatened Melissa. I was fascinated and repelled. Would I have to punch this cad? No, as it turned out. The engineer rolled the tape and she sang it with as much emotion as she was capable off and rushed in to get a big hug from her mainman. He did what PC me could never do, and what was more annoying it worked. They racked off to the Como for drinks and we got Kyle’s backing singers in to double everything. She was nice, just very young and very confused and what was she doing with him? Oh yeah, every chemist seems seems to have that Is it fat or is it fluid? slogan plastered across there windows. In my case its fluid. No really. S. Stephen also once described seeing Kylie and Jason with the following wonderfully expressive words. Long ago I was on a plane heading for Sydney, sitting in front of me were, Kyle and Jason. They were both dressed in white and had matching panama hats. When they stood up they looked like melting icecream cones. That’s true. She was very tiny. I realise this recollection is hardly earth shattering. But doesn’t it make you feel good to know I care? Yes it does, Stephen. Yes it does. More »

Your Monday Morning MP3

11:12AM Jess McGuire | There’s no reason why we can’t use the excuse of “It’s the beginning of the working week, for fucks! I need some soothing music!” to download some free tunes in a 100% law abiding manner, now is there? So here’s Defamer Australia’s very first Monday Morning MP3 - Stephen Cummings – “I Want You To Want Me” If you don’t know who Stephen Cummings is, then now is the time to knuckle down and learn a thing or two, young man/lady. - He is very bloody good! - He used to be the frontman for The Sports! - But then he went solo! - He likes to write words on paper a bit too! - He has penned songs for and performed as part of Four Hours Sleep, an almost disturbingly lovely Melbourne music super group! The song “Stick To My Fingers” from their More Of Her album is heartbreakingly perfect, and their 2006 album Love Specifics was probably the most perfect “grown up” pop album of last year! - Bill McDonald, Cummings’ friend and fellow mastermind of the Four Hours Sleep project, once referred to Cummings as follows in a recent MySpazz blog entry – “We don’t like to talk of Stephen, he’s so butch, so square – he’s our Ian Stewart – according to the storyline, Ian Stewart was The Rolling Stones pianist, but he was too ugly to be included in the group. Need I say more? Stephen has trouble expressing his emotions. Tactically, the less said about him the better. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.” - This is a good and pleasing quote because Bill obviously has a dry sense of humour and a clever way with words, and they are chums who allow each other to take the mickey! MOVING AND AMUSING! - The Age apparently described him once as “one of the great voices of Australian rock”! - He’s won ARIAs! Yes! One of those enjoyably pointy things that mean something and Savage Garden have 341 of them! Go forth and learn more about one of Australian music’s quiet-but-brilliant achievers at once. You can (legally) download a few more of Stephen’s tunes from this site. Go on. They’ve made our Monday morning, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get your aural jollies as well. More »