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Mike
Rudd and Bill Putt have been around for so long they're considered
part of Australia's musical furniture. Bands such as Spectrum, The
Indelible Murtceps and Ariel illuminated the ‘70s and inspired
many of Australia's popular music icons. Spectrum's enormous ‘70s’
hit, I’ll Be Gone (Someday I'll have money) still inspires
crowds to sing along all over the country. I’ll Be Gone was honoured in 2001 by being included in the APRA’s list of the top Australian songs of the last 75 years (it came in at No.13). I’ll Be Gone was featured in the ABC TV’s A Long Way To The Top series and the band was included on the fabulously successful LWTTT tour, which toured the nation in 2002. During their thirty-eight year career together, Mike and Bill have played alongside such artists as Deep Purple, Manfred Mann, The Kinks, Joan Armatrading, Leo Sayer and Marc Bolan as well as playing all the legendary Sunbury Festivals. Ariel recorded at London’s famous Abbey Road Studios in the ‘70s (Rock & Roll Scars) and artists as diverse as John Williamson and Manfred Mann (see the discography) have recorded versions of Rudd’s I’ll Be Gone. Spectrum and Ariel released numerous albums up until the late ‘70s, including Spectrum Part One, (recently re-issued on the Aztec Music label), Milesago, (‘a double album with no fillers’ according to NME), The Indelible Murtceps’ Warts Up Your Nose, Ariel’s A Strange Fantastic Dream and Rock & Roll Scars – the list goes on. After Ariel’s break-up in 1977, other bands followed, notably Mike Rudd and the Heaters and the ambitious WHY project. WHY, with Rudd on keyboards and a drum machine called Weird Harold, boldly married video projection and live performance, (this in the early ‘80s), and spent some time recording at Klaus Shulze’s (ex-Kraftwerk) I.C. studio in West Germany and travelled round Europe recording their experiences and creating synchronised stage videos. Then, in 1995, after a ten-year hiatus, Mike and Bill re-emerged as a duo with an acoustically skewed new CD, Living on a Volcano (three-times the Herald Sun’s critics’ choice) that saw the pair maturing as songwriters, producers and instrumentalists. Mike and Bill irregularly perform live as a duo (My Crudd & Bilge Pump) at schools, festivals, music workshops and regulation live venues. Later in the ‘90s, Mike and Bill teamed up briefly with the late Paul Hester, another long-time Spectrum fan, which culminated in an appearance on ABC TV’s Hessie’s Shed. Current Spectrum drummer, Peter ‘Robbo’ Robertson joined in 1997, and keyboardist Daryl Roberts joins Spectrum on stage as the fourth member when the occasion warrants it, evoking the original organ-based Spectrum line-up. In 1999, Spectrum released Spill - Spectrum Plays The Blues, a CD that revisits Rudd and Putt’s blues roots. Spill features such famous guests as Men at Work’s Colin Hay, (who says of Rudd and Putt ‘those guys are my heroes’), and Chris Wilson, another unabashed Rudd /Putt fan. The second highly entertaining Spectrum Plays The Blues CD, No Thinking, was released recently guesting Ross Wilson amongst others. The end result is that the Australian record buying public has embraced the blues CDs, and both Spectrum and Spectrum Plays the Blues are back in demand on the live circuit. read more |
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| And playing live
is what Spectrum is all about. Mike and Bill have played together
for more than thirty eight years, and there seems to be some kind
of empathetic communication on stage that even Robbo and Daryl seem
to share, as Spectrum switches seamlessly from blues, to rock, to
almost ambient nylon-string guitar music, without losing focus.Blues
classics like Baby Please Don’t Go and Hoochie
Coochie Man come alive with Bill’s down-tuned nylon-string
slide guitar and Robbo’s amiable groove underpinning Rudd’s
distinctive vocals and harmonica playing. New songs like Rocket
Girl, Silicon Valley and Sensible Shoes slip right into
the eclectic Spectrum-plays-the-blues mix.Then
they’ll treat the audience to a guided tour of Spectrum classics,
including such weird and wonderful tracks as What The World Needs
Is A New Pair Of Socks, Fly Without Its Wings, the Crab Saga,
We Are Indelible and much, much more (never forgetting I’ll
Be Gone of course)Over the past
few years Spectrum has played the Port Fairy Folk Festival, the Goulburn
Blues Festival, the Dandenong Ranges Folk Festival, the Queenscliff
Music Festival, the Sydney Opera House, the Tamworth Country Music
Festival (!), the Healesville Sanctuary Unplugged Concerts, the Arts
Centre Lawn Concerts, the Melbourne Zoo Concerts, the Bridgetown Blues
Festival in WA - as well as gigs in NZ and California. Mike & Bill memorably guested with the late Billy Thorpe playing I’ll Be Gone at the Tsunami Benefit at the Myer Music Bowl, and Spectrum played at the Lobby Loyde benefit, as well as the Melbourne International Music & Blues Festival, the Port Fairy Folk Festival, the Canberra Blues & Rock Festival, and the Thredbo Music Festival. (The two live tracks on the No Thinking CD were recorded at Thredbo). Spectrum continues to tour Australia as well as make the occasional overseas visit. They are enthusiastically received wherever they play and obviously enjoy what they do as much as their audiences. See and hear them - and be inspired! Fiona Orbright |
