Just a note

for James Cruickshank

I have three albums by the late James Cruikshank. All on Compact Disc and none available - as far as I can see - on any streaming services.

But if you ever tarry in a record store and flick through the CDs I would recommend the music that he put down on these recordings.

He has a wikipedia page and it lists these three albums “Cruickshank released three solo albums through Vitamin Records, Hymn for Her (2003), Hello Human (2007) and Note to Self (2011)..”

His singing on the latter album , Note To Self, is stellar. He had a great little break or burr in his voice that he learned to trick and he could really control it beautifully. His vocal work on the recordings is unique. Some songs being just a crazy simple beat with percussion and then its all voices. Very bold work. His guitar playing was good enough to make a place for himself in the music world. Just a really inventive music man. A great team player. He would pitch in and play things to get a song happening. Hey, I never worked with him in a studio or on stage but I can tell that by listening.

He joined the Cruel Sea last. They were a group with rich power clusters and alternate leaders. Danny and Jim and Ken together for years and then Tex joining after doing lights for them and then jumping up to sing because he enjoyed it all so much. Then apparently James did the same, jumping up in 1989 to play some keys. Eventually they were a solid five piece and James was playing guitar as well as keys and singing. He continued to be the fluid player who moved between all the other moving parts in that band.

I dont want to try and tell the inner story of the Cruel Sea though, I’m not the guy for that.

I must have met or at least seen James in the Widdershins in the 80s period, though we were in the UK for most of it and bands in those days did their best to keep their distance from each other.

I am also not here to say I was James’s best friend though he was a very friendly fellow and open to whatever and whomever was on the scene at that particular moment. He had many friends.

I loved seeing his solo shows. He was fearless with instruments and tech. He grabbed handfuls of the shit. Loops and samples, guitars and percussion and all manner of old keyboards. His shows were chaotic and he loved that.

When the Cruel Sea broke big in 1993 they won a swag of ARIAS for The Honeymoon Is Over and then had to continue working with a whole lot of business pressure as to what would happen next. James spent some of his winnings on an old Valiant and promptly totalled it and almost tore off one of his feet in the accident.

In 1995 we were just putting out The Soft n Sexy Sound and we were to do a long tour with the Cruel Sea who had gotten together a great, ragged rock album called Three Legged Dog. The first gig was in Alice Springs which was a place I’d never been to before. Clare Moore and I were doing the show with an acoustic guitar and a tambourine. James came down to the hotel reception where I was sitting and asked “does it get any easier when you get older, Dave?” I didn’t really see myself as any sort of veteran but allowed that he was probably a little younger than I was.
(We played the rest of the tour with the Coral Snakes. I think we may have done three tours of Australia with the Cruel Sea between 1993 and 1998. I always enjoyed seeing them play. I must have seen more or just as many of their gigs as I have for the Boys Next Door/ Birthday Party/ Bad Seeds).

James was very open to the world and experience, as I said. He said yes to things. I also remember him saying at another time that he loved being in “The Rock’n’Roll Olympics”.
At another time, much later, he said that it was frustrating that one thing didn’t lead onto another, better thing like it did just a bunch of years previously. Then you would play a show that went off and word would spread and so would fire but that only seemed to happen once. He was good to talk openly about those kinds of embarrassing, elusive things. Moments that seemed crazy as you put them into words.

I think he played a regular Sunday gig in the Byron Bay / Bangalow area for a church group. He accompanied them on piano.

I did a solo show in Berlin in 2014 and James was living there. He lent me an acoustic guitar to do the show ( I was there playing bass with Harry Howard and the NDE). We went on a walk around Berlin and he took us to a Russian monument for the soldiers who had died taking the city. James pointed to the massive statue of Mother Russia and then the soldier with sword in hand and with the Nazi symbol underfoot. We had walked across a huge asphalt square - underneath which lay thousands of dead people.

It was a very poignant walk.

James passed away the next year.

Matt Walker released a song with his wonderful band The Lost Ragas in tribute to James called Where James Once Played.

Matt later joined a reformed Cruel Sea to play songs James had played on and also to record a new album.

Its great to see that the late Conway Savages music has been made available on streaming services. Bravo! Start with the last one on Bandcamp , PUSSYS BOW.

CONWAY SAVAGE AT SPOTIFY.

Just need someone to get the late songwriter Bruce Begleys work in some sort of available situations for people to hear.