When James Reyne first went in to studio to make that first Australian Crawl record in 1979 he says he never thought about the longevity of what they were doing.
‘The Boys Light Up’ album went on to become an Oz Rock classic but at the time James said Australian Crawl were just happy to get a record deal.
“You are young, it’s the first time in a studio and all you think about is ‘wow, we’re in a studio’,” James Reyne tells Noise11.com. “I don’ t think we even thought about if anyone would even buy it, let along the consequence if anyone did. It’s hard to be objective about your own situation. We were vaguely ambitious in that we wanted to make the band as good as we could. We looked up to all the other bands. We never had a sense of what was going on. We were just excited to have a record deal”.
The Boys Light Up came up in 1980, nearly 40 years ago. The Boys Light Up now is as old as what Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ was when Australian Crawl first went into the studio. “I think it’s extraordinary,” he says. “I think the cultural changes and changes in society from 1940 to 1980 and then 1980 to now has accelerated. It’s like quantum acceleration”.
James is continuing to write songs. As for releasing them, well that’s a different story. “I’ve got lots of songs,” he says. “I was in Nashville earlier this year and next around April I will go back and write with other people, maybe for other people. I have lots of songs but I don’t have a record deal. I could get a distribution deal but I pay for making my records and that came get expensive. Someone like me will get a two-week window of opportunity to do press. Radio isn’t going to play a new song from me or my peers. I’m happy to write songs for myself because I like doing it and its what I do. That’s not to say I won’t. I may”.
James will perform on the first Saturday of every month in 2019 at The Palms at Crown in Melbourne.
Dates on sale now are January 5, February 2 and March 2, 2019.
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