Cowboy Logic – Garry Gray & Sacred Cowboys (Kasumen Records)
It was 1982 when Sacred Cowboys emerged. It was a time when an Australian music tidal wave sweeping over pubs and clubs full of punters across Sydney from Palm Beach to Darlinghurst to Cronulla, and Melbourne from St Kilda to Frankston to Geelong.
Garry Gray was in his mid-20s and already a veteran of the Melbourne music scene when he formed the Cowboys. He already had street cred with foundations that stretched back to 1975. His influences came from the pages of Creem magazine and life in a blue collar suburb, rubbing shoulders with Sharpie gangs and devotees of AFL footy. He and his mates were discovering The Modern Lovers, the Stooges, the Stones, the Velvets and Alice Cooper, one record at a time.
The Saints and Radio Birdman were starting to play live. By the late-‘70s, Gray had cemented a place in the heart of Melbourne’s St Kilda scene, the Chrystal Ballroom with his band The Negatives.
Mark Ferrie had departed The Models in early 1982 when he and Gray formed Sacred Cowboys. They signed to Michael Gudinski’s White label; the first single “Nothing Grows in Texas” had been a bona fide underground smash and was on rotation at all the cool stations.
The follow-up mini album captured a dark, swampy sound by a blazing rock roll beast. Gray sneers and croons and bellows to claim a crown as one of the best vocalists emerging from Melbourne in the 1980s. The follow-up album, “We Love You” was a patchy collection of covers, but still contained some real gems like the edgy and blistering Beatles cover “I Am The Walrus”.
This anthology picks up the thread on with Gray’s return to Australia from France where he lived for a time in the late 1980s. “Hell Sucks” from the album “Trouble From Providence” opens the collection and it’s a wild ride.
The song nods to the Velvets’ “Loaded” and hits turbo charge. The production is alive and explosive as Gray’s sneer conveys a payload of blood and soul. “Nothing Grows…” has a wild psychobilly country twang, aided and abetted by lively harp playing from the late Chris Wilson. Gray is the travelling Southern tent preacher from the back hills of Alabama who has a hard punk edge after landing in of New York City.
“Trouble From Providence” was on Citadel Records and did not receive the attention it deserved. It was a rock masterpiece that should had elevated the band. Listen to its title song: it’s brooding and intense high drama as Gray chews on and spit out the lyrics.
The collection includes several tracks from the albums “Things To Come” and “Cold Harvest” by which time Spencer P Jones had joined the band. One of the best “feel” players, he added his own swagger and a bar room edge recalling “Exile on Main Street” period Stones, Crazy Horse and Gun Club.
Spencer was a natural to join the Cowboys who had been one of his favourite bands for years. Then, with the addition of the sublime and inventive playing of Penny Ikinger on second guitar, Sacred Cowboys had one of the most biting attacks in the country.
“Cold Harvest” and “Black City” are songs have an underlying darkness and add their own lyrical twists combined with some amazing melodic guitar lines. The snare cuts through with volcanic outbursts. Why these songs did not score high radio rotation and propel the Cowboys to the next level is beyond me. It shows how fickle the Australian music industry was and is, following trends and favouring local bands that fit into overseas trends. The Cowboys continued on down their own road without a sideways glance.
Gary’s “Diamond in the Forehead” album with the Sixth Circle is now almost a decade old. It’s an album of hidden lyrical symbolism. The record featured a band that included Spencer P Jones, Angela Howard, Tex Napalm and Rob Wellington. The anthology features “Cadillac” and the forbidding “Our God Hangs”.
During the dark days of lockdowns and COVID, Garry was contacted by Ed Clayton-Jones (The Wreckery) to work on an album. The result was the critically acclaimed cult classic “We Mainline Dreamers”, a nod to early Eno that was another dark affair.
“The Canonization of Junk” and “Credit Card Christian” are poetic anarchic and cathartic inclusions. They are a departure from the blazing rock roll songs tracked earlier on the CD. They feature some cool guitar playing and an intense musical vision. They leave you with a feeling that Iggy and Bowie’s Berlin albums from the mid- ‘70s left a mark on both men’s souls as teenagers.
The first studio CD of this double disc collection is stunning and is drawn from four albums and an EP from 1988-2022. It takes you on a trip with some of Melbourne’s most critically acclaimed and influential music figures who all contributed to Garry Gray’s vision.
The second CD is live recordings from separate shows in the late ‘80s and mid- ‘90s. It’s wilder and captures the chaotic sounds of bad biker’s speed, late-night benders. You can hear the bellowing drunken punters and sense the beers flowing.
One performance comes from the night that Kurt Cobain died, and the band fittingly opens with” Cut Rate Martyr.” The guitars are loud, and Spencer P Jones is in his element with that Fender Jaguar surf twang. Gray has swagger to burn and is directing out front, calling out Fascists and zealots.
“Pay For It In The Next Life”, “Strip Cell” and “Bangkok” are real gems. There is an intensity, looseness and wildness to these live recordings that give them a different edge and we are treated to one blistering ride.
This anthology is essential listening. - Edwin Garland
(and a bottle of the best imported blue label Scotch)
Just when you through it was safe to go back into the corral, those ornery Sacred Cowboys are back on the reservation.
Molly Meldrum once called them the worst band he’d seen in five years and the Cowboys - or more correctly sole constant member Garry Gray - has worn that critique as a badge of honour ever since. And why not? Molly didn’t know his arse from his elbow and wasn’t likely to be converted, and his dissing the band on national TV played right into their ethos of confrontation.
It’s been 16 years since Savage Beat’s “Nailed To The Cross” compilation of Sacred Cowboys material. Presented with an opportunity do another, Gray did not want to go over all the same old coals and that’s why this collection collates some of the band’s studio story on one disc and adds selections from his two more recent projects. 2015’s Garry Gray and the Sixth Circle and the 2022 “We Mainline Dreamers” collaboration with The Wreckery’s Ed Clayton-Jones.
The second CD is live stuff (save for one song) and comes from three different Cowboys line-ups.
For the uninitiated, Garry Gray grew up in the late ‘70s Melbourne punk scene, charting an early punk course before it was fashionable to do so with both The Reals (1975-76) and The Negatives (’77-79), and hanging out with the Boys Next Door. Fate deals strange hands and torch songs have made old mate Nick Cave an international star, Garry Gray, not so much - although you’d never know it from his recordings or stage presence.
Sacred Cowboys came together as a supergroup of sorts, goading audiences through the ‘80s with Gray their chainsaw wielding frontman. Various line-ups have re-surfaced down the years and a new one, built around Gray and co-founder Mark Ferrie, is back playing live and readying to record.
So you know that “Cowboy Logic” isn’t just a Sacred Cowboys collection. The Sixth Circle material is in a similar vein while the “We Mainline Dreamers” is more acoustic, bluesy and effect-laden but not lacking in intensity.
The live disc is really where the rubber hits the bitumen. There’s been some minimal work done to polish the desk tapes but it remains a raw and fearsomely great trip. Six tracks feature the 1988 line-up when the late Spencer P Jones joined and you can hear the paint being stripped from The Espy’s walls.
SPJ is another three with Penny Ikinger, Nick Rischbeith, Ash Wednesday and Stephen Fidduck. Songs like “Hell Sucks”, “Cut Price Martyr” and “Pay For It In The New Life” capture the Sacred Cowboys’ spirit.
Any boxiness on the more recent tracks is offset by the intense playing. There’s a pulsating version of the Stones’ “We Love You” and the cover of “Highway 61” is even more warped than anything His Bobness has dished up on his contemporary Never Ending Tours. An updated 2006 studio recording of Alex Chilton’s “Bangkok” rounds it all off nicely.
If you’ve had trouble getting a handle on the patchwork of labels that have put out Sacred Cowboys music over the years, this is the place to start. - The Barman
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