|
|
| 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 are synonomous with the Australian
music resurgence in the ‘70s and inspired many of today's
popular music icons. Spectrum's national number one hit, I’ll
Be Gone (Someday I'll have money), still features on radio
playlists and inspires crowds to sing along all around the country. In 2001, thirty years after it was a number one hit, I’ll Be Gone was honoured 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 Long Way To The Top tour, which toured the nation in 2002. Since they first got together in 1969, 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 and Milesago, (‘a double album with no fillers’ according to NME), both now re-issued on the Aztec Music label, 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, features musical guest Ross Wilson amongst others. read more |
|
|
| Aztec Music has re-issued
two seminal Spectrum albums, Spectrum Part One and the acclaimed
double album, Milesago, which has reminded '70s afficienados
and music critics alike what an important band Spectrum was in the
Australian rock scene. Most recently the band has embarked on releasing
the Breathing Space series of EPs and are on the point of
releasing the third in the series. The end result of all this recording
activity is that Spectrum's contemporary output has also been embraced
by the Australian record buying public and Spectrum is back in demand
on the national live circuit. And after all, playing live is what Spectrum is all about. Mike and Bill have played together since 1969 (!) and understandably there seems to be some kind of empathetic communication on stage that now 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 the odd 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), and the 2009 Byron Blues Festival. More recently Mike has also enjoyed a parallel solo career with appearances on the ABC's Specks and Specks and SBS' RocKwiz TV shows, the latter with a much talked about duet with Jess Cornelius of the Roy Orbison classic Crying. Mike's also made cameo appearances on the Morning of the Earth stage show (with Ariel guitarist Tim Gaze) and Ross Wilson's Five Decades of Cool show, both culminating with the Byron Blues Festival appearances. Mike's also been involved with a couple of reunions in New Zealand of his first band, Chants R&B, and a documentary is currently being assembled featuring a host of interviews with most of the original members of the band and fans. There's live footage from the 2010 gigs in Christchurch as well as previously unseen footage from the early '60s. 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 |
