Mike Rudd/Spectrum/Ariel

I'll Be Gone

I have a song on our latest album called Hits Are The Worst. I can’t say I have ever been bothered or disturbed by having a hit. I have tried! And I try still! I mean, I try to write and record songs that are around three minutes or preferably under. I like to make them exciting packets of sound. Even though I know three minutes became the standard length of a track only because that was what a 78rpm record could take. I prefer to listen to long jazz tracks when at my stereo at home. I love to stretch out on longer pieces with my band. Everybody does. But pop songs are supposed to be short. The Lteer, by the Box Tops clocks in under two minutes!

But Hits Are The Worst is an abstraction, thinking about bands that I like who have had hits and it ooften stops their flow, their creativity. They get identified and earthed and forever expected to manifest that sound or moment. They have to repeat it first as well. The worst!

This film by Chris Franklin was shown at the Brunswick Ballroom venue in Melbourne the same week that I saw Beck play with an orchestra at the Palais and Split Enz play to a full house at Rod Laver Arena. We had just returned to Melbourne after some shows interstate. It was quite a musical week.

The room was packed on a Thursday night. Thats about 400 people, I think.
The film was shown, after an audience gee up by MC Brian Nankervis. Then there was a discussion - led by Brian - with Mike Rudd and the director and also with fellow player and peer Ross Wilson.

Mike Rudd came to Melbourne from Christchurch in New Zealand with the CHANTS R&B. A couple of years after that he was briefly in a band with Ross Wilson called Party Machine

By 1970 they had parted ways. Ross left for London to join a proggish band called Procession. While there, he started to work on some songs, and one in particular. Mike was beginning to refine the songs he was writing.

At some point in 1971 they were both back in Melbourne and both had very successful singles in the charts. Ross was with Daddy Cool and had magicked EAGLE ROCK into being. And Mike Rudd had formed Spectrum and recorded the song that he still has to perform to this day. His motif. His blues. His pop moment. I’ll Be Gone.

This short film by Chris Franklin concentrates on the song I’ll Be Gone in great detail. It was great to see. They were able to speak to the producer and engineer of the day and drummer Mark Kennedy. Mark was 18 at the time of recording the song and they talk of the incredibly simple groove he gave to the song. Some thing that has been played a million times on air needs to have that kind of solid structure. The song has hardly any or no guitar and is mainly identified by the harmonica line.

Mike is a master harmonica player as well as a Strat playing genius. Mark Kennedy passed away in February this year. In the film he talks of how the single came out and nothing really happened with it until eight months after it had been released. He was 18 and impatient so he had left the band. The talk in the film of AM radio being impatient for new songs to air and each state in Australia having stations with independent programming is a glimpse into a real lost world.

There was a great moment in the film which may not have the same effect if watched on a computer. The producer - and Mike - talked of how the single was released in mono and then as stereo and how the widening and extra reverb and separation of the stero track was so apparent. When this was heard from the PA speakers in the venue it was markedly and dramatically different.

The discussion with Mike and Ross Wilson on stage talking of the intrigue and energy of the music scene in the late 60s to early 70s was great! (Spectrum only played in theatres - with a light show - then pubs were opened to music and they changed gears to a more danceable sound with the same band but the name reversed as Indelible Murtceps. Then there was Ariel.

Mike played a set with his current band and it included an epic rendering of the classic We Are Indelible as well as Some Good Advice.

I have seen Mike play as often as I can in recent decades. Clare and I went to see him and bass player Bill Putt return to playing live music with two nylon string guitars at a full Universal Theatre in Fitzroy in 1993. We asked them to open for us at a few shows with Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes at that time. (Bill was a great guy who passed away after the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. When we met him he lived in a permanent house sitting or minding situation and practiced karate and played with Mike, as he had for decades).

At a show last year Mike introduced the song I’ll Be Gone by explaining that he had played it in all kinds of situations, private parties and weddings and football clubs as well as his own gigs. Times when people talked and walked around through the whole gig and as soon as he hit the notes on harmonica for that song he had their full atention and the dance floor would be full and tears would be flowing. He more or less said, “and thats what will happen in a minute when I start this…” And it did!

I am so glad that the film maker caught so much of the information in this mini documentary. I have one criticism. The film mentions people like Manfred Mann and others covering the song. We were sitting at a table with one of those people, Margret Roadknight. She had been interviewed for the film and had also been told - with apologies - that her part had not made the final cut. A pity. Because there are absolutely no women in the film. And more than 50% of the audience in the screening at the Brunswick Ballroom that night would have been women. They live longer and they are also more sociable as they get older. Such a pity they were not shown to be a part of the story.

I have so many albums by the various outfits that Mike Rudd has led. Spectrum , Murtceps and Ariel. I am looking forward to seeing him play with Tim Gaze soon in Melbourne.

Mikes website is full of news about upcoming shows.

https://www.mikeruddbillputt.com/

Upcoming show in Melbourne August 29th at George Lane.