The Re-mains

I hate the fucking Eagles. Hate. Fingernails on a chalk board, a fork being dragged across a plate hate. There's a moment in The Big Lebowski when The Dude gets thrown out of a cab for saying he hates the fucking Eagles, and its my favourite scene in all of filmdom. With their vapid, dead fish-eye Southern California stares and their ability to make James Taylor sound like the Minutemen by comparison, the fucking Eagles represent everything that makes me crazy and frustrated and angst-ridden about modern mainstream country. The crap that country radio has been pumping out for the last thirty years plus has been nothing more than one long extended version of Hotel California. As Mojo Nixon once said, "Don Henley is the anti-Elvis".

Now, picture a world where the fucking Eagles never found each other, never made music for elevators and grocery stores, never defamed country rock by taking both the country and the rock out of music. Nice, isn't it.

The Re-mains are from that alternate world. It's a world where Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones was a mainstream hit, where Townes Van Zandt is a household name, where Uncle Tupelo never split but Son Volt and Wilco still play and record. An alternate universe where every time you turn on the radio you can hear Kris Kristofferson and Corb Lund and John Prine and The Poor Choices and Elliott Brood and Cuff The Duke and Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. Willie P. Bennett is given a state funeral and The Perpetrators are given The Order Of Canada. I will call that world Austin World and I will live there very happily, thank you very much.

The Re-Mains are the bastard children of Keith Richards and Wanda Jackson, of Jeff Tweedy and Bob Dylan. They are the war orphans left behind by Nick Cave's murder ballads, by Johnny Cash's evil seed. They are Willie Nelson's outlaw country taken home and given a cold bath and a warm beer. They are the promise fulfilled by the union of Jack White and Loretta Lynn.

And they are Australian. Of course they're from Australia. A country populated by folk who left Africa 50,000 years ago and hiked halfway around the world in only a couple of generations. A country colonized by criminals and outlaws. A country whose extremes make our extremes look like suburban fantasies provided by Sears. If kick-you-in-the-ass country rock is going to be perfected anywhere, it should be in the land of vegemite and the southern cross.

Rolling Stone Magazine, which gave The Re-Mains' Love's Last Stand four stars, describes them as "Northern NSW country rock & roll hellraisers... combining a rootsy twang with inner-city smarts and genuine affection for rollicking, tumbling hillbilly sounds." Someone else said "Think the Eels after a 10-day binge." I say The Re-Mains will kick you in the ass and leave you wanting more.

Six reasons to line-up to see The Re-Mains:

1) Ballad Of A Wrong 'un - an amazing murder song, violent and mean. With the great line "He always wanted to be a star football player/But the poor guy had a build like Leo Sayer..."

2) The Dirt Farmer's Gavotte. Its just brilliant. Fred Eaglesmith should write a song this good.

3) Othello's P76. "If everybody sang like Pavarotti then we'd all sound just the same/But everybody does their best, beats their chest, and tries and tries again..." Yeah.

4) Days In The Sun. 'cause it is a piece of heaven.

5) They once killed a man. Really. They played for some shearers in the Australian bush who had been a three-day speed and booze powered bender. When The Re-Mains finished their set, the crowd wanted more. And so they kicked into "A Whole Lot Of Rosie" and one of the shearers dropped dead of a heart attack. He was in his mid-twenties.

6) "Imagine a 70's Holden, which has been fanged, hooned, thrashed and cruised from one end of the country to the other, mainly on bad roads, never breaking down but continually having parts replaced as the long distances take their toll." ABC Radio had that to say about The Re-Mains and I don't really know what some of the words mean (it's like the Australians speak in code to keep the rest of the world guessing), but I think a Holden is a car.

And so it goes.

I hate the fucking Eagles. I love The Re-mains.