“Billie Reid’s music is a volatile hybrid, combining the purebred folk compulsions of bluegrass and rockabilly, infused with Reid’s own punk-influenced approach to songwriting → this street walkin’ cheetah, with a heart-full of napalm, has a lot to say about love, loss, and the state of the world. Put more simply, Billie Reid is a poet and he *****-***** knows it!”
“…. the machine-gun delivery of his words recalls the lyrical fire and brimstone of Bob Dylan, as well as the acerbic energy of Johnny Cash ….”
From Fremantle in Australia, songwriter, poet, Billie Reid offers independent music fans his own unique lyrical and musical vision with his album ‘Ode To The Dudes’. From the first track onwards, Reid breaks out of the blocks with the violence of rap, delivering a stream of barbed couplets and kick-ass lyrical imagery, delivered through the musical forces of alt-punk/pop-rock/Americana. Throughout the album, Reid’s lyrics traverse a range of different topics, both personable and political, which are always delivered through his cocksure lyrical stylings and artistic idiosyncrasies. Put more simply, Reid is a poet and he *****-***** knows it!
Reid’s uncompromising spirit shines through the course of these 14 tracks. This is a man with ambition, a man whose footsteps aim to re-find the path set down by the luminaries of the independent music scene. While the machine-gun delivery of his words recalls the lyrical fire and brimstone of Bob Dylan, as well as the acerbic energy of Johnny Cash, the quick-fire musical vignettes that fill this LP bring to mind punk stalwarts the Wire. Resultantly, Billie Reid’s music is a volatile hybrid, combining the purebred folk compulsions of bluegrass and rockabilly, infused with Reid’s own punk-influenced approach to songwriting. This street walkin’ cheetah, with a heart full of napalm, has a lot to say about love, loss, and the state of the world at large.
On the track ‘Ticket Out Of Dizneyland’, Reid outlines his musical manifesto, singing the strangely infectious central refrain “I ain’t got the time to live in Dizneyland”. He aims to draw a dividing line between his dominion in the independent world, set aside from the cloying copycats resident in the pop scene, content to repeat stale formulas whilst fabricating faux outrages in an ad-nauseam fashion. It’s clear that Reid is firmly camped in the territory of the musical underground in the ongoing ideological battle between pop and the unpopular … both mainstream and the underground. Specifically, ‘Ticket Out Of Dizneyland’ is a strategic rallying cry which calls against the tyranny of pop. Reid reminds us how truly messed up the world in which we live is, when a Miley Cyrus twerk is liable to draw more press coverage and public interest than a drone strike sanctioned by our leaders. The plastic platitudes of the pop world are placed in direct contrast with Reid’s own righteous propaganda of truth.
The album consists of a range of short sketches which, despite their brevity, manage to outline an entire world. When he’s not attacking the world of pop, Reid summons the hypocrisy of our leaders on tracks such as ‘Ode To The Dudes (That Own Their Own Nukes)’, which features some barbed lyrical couplets running against some rugged guitar playing, courtesy of Australian rock god Phil Bradley, whose musical curricular vitae is impressive, having played with The Jackals, Sub Truck and Brutus. Bradley is able to match up with the unfurling lyrical attack of Reid, as Reid aims straight for the jugular, singing “they won’t let us live on the beaches, they won’t let us live in the trees, the bastards just lock us in stables, and sell one another the keys”. The lyrics appear to be born out of a particular brand of anti-capitalistic fervour aroused by the Occupy protests, with a call for an alternative beyond the current dire political outlook of partisan politics and limiting left/right perspectives.
Politics aside, there’s also a gentler, more tender side to Billie Reid’s musical persona which isn’t perhaps as surprising as it might sound, given his status as an idealistic artist. On ‘Honey Skin’ he simultaneously laments and praises a love which he realises he could easily end up taking for granted. Although the subject of the song is clearly a love he cherishes, he soberly realises that the relationship is likely to end one day, which he accepts as a matter of fact. ‘Black Silk Dress’ offers a 360 turn around, putting the listener in lustier lyrical territory, as he sings “Hey pretty lady in the black silk dress. I want a taste of your caress”, to dirty guitar licks and speed-freak rockabilly rhythms.
Reid himself has stated that “I write from heart when the spirit moves me”, and despite his volatile nature and his supremely confident presence throughout the album, it’s clear that Reid’s will is good, as both an artist and a person. Billie Reid’s ‘Ode To The Dudes’ is a trip, providing the perfect antidote to the mediocrities of pop and the recent influx of anodyne cultural products released as a result of a dying music industry. If you like rootsy country-rock/pop-punk, with a touch of activism, romance, and an interest in all issues relative to the human condition, this album is for you.
Liam Allen
Billie Reid is one intriguing cat. I’m hearing a rich hybrid telling me that he’s been absorbing and assimilating for a long time, that he understands the power of words, of poetry even. He’s plainly a rocker at heart but just as plainly there’s a lot going on in his heart and head – from skittering banjo to grinding blues to playful pop. There could even be some whirlygig jugband going on and, dare I say it, a nod or two to “His Bobness” – both Zimmerman (Dylan), and the acerbic Irish Knight Geldof.
One gets the feeling that Billie’s not overly concerned with expectations or categories, that he’s having a whale of a time and if you want to come along for the ride that’s fine by him. How did The Hombres put it all those years ago? …. “Nobody knows what it’s all about. It’s too much man, let it all hang out.” Glenn A. Baker (Music Historian).
* Nikola Tesla had a knack of being able to draw printed circuitry in his mind that worked, my forte is being able to totally rehabilitate this entire Planet, every last detail in my mind, all perfectly workable, TRULY Green, revivifying the deserts of the Planet as oasis after oasis producing more food than ten times the current population could use, more water than 100 times the current population could use, non-polluting power production, removal of current pollution and constructive recycling thereof, a Planet where your kids won’t be required to live in rabbit hutches. Billie Reid.
Billie Reid | ‘self, muso, poet, regenerationist extrordinaire, polymathic re-planetarizationist’
i began wandering around Australia, mostly on foot working farms, building sites, gold claims etc, from the south west through the gold fields and northern gold fields, out to the Kimberleys for walks through boab “forests”, into the northern territory (probably my favourite part of any good walk, that 1st glimpse each time of the rocks and “cliffs” before Victoria River as you 1st walk in from west oz) because you know Katherine ain’t “far”, all the while checking out the different facets of the Natural eco-system, how it’s changed since my last walk there in a different season etc, checking out the man-made catchments and dams stretching out around northern wa, etc, etc, et ***, cetera, my goal, to put all of this knowledge, hard won, into developing a plan to put PEOPLES in the “driving seat” of Australia again, which i proceeded to do, and to give y’all these perfectly workable ideas, designed to benefit y’all and your Kids and their Kids ad infinitum … njoi!billie
“Poet, songwriter, Billie Reid eschews the road of rock’n’roll excess and fake outrage”
Some people sell out, they get worn down or just become plain desperate for a payoff or hunger fame, but for others their music and words are non-negotiable. They never do the record company thing and can’t sway from their chosen path, always true to their roots it’s in the DNA of their lyrics and tunes. That’s Billie Reid. Perhaps he knew he would never fit in. Honest and unpretentious with an almost indifferent disregard to what was fashionable and in the charts. He couldn’t and wouldn’t play the music biz game.
But Billie isn’t desperate for fame, he won’t play that game. Reclusive and flying under the radar he eschews the road of rock’n’roll excess and fake outrage, and in his own way his game plan has made him the underdog. It’s a dangerous fickle game that can lead to nowhere, but with this territory comes credibility and I guess this is priceless, and Billie has it by the bucket load.
His songs are here. Give them time and they will slowly seep into your life. All that matters is the moment and the emotion. Simple words, honest musicianship.
Billie Reid | Single Tachyon Extrapolation of Existence | Ode To The Dudes | Youtube
“I’ve always liked Einstein’s theories, they were quite valid, they lead to my own” Billie Reid
my theory is, is that, if you’ve got an instantaneous particle, IT CAN INTERSECT WITH ITSELF, BECAUSE TIME AND SPACE MEAN NOTHING TO IT. Basically, wherever it intersects with itself, it will slow down and ricochet … sooner or later, with enough bumping into itself, you will get something that’s like a “TACHYON SOUP”, WHICH IS THE LIGHTSPEED AND BELOW UNIVERSE, WHERE IT’S TRAVELLING BELOW LIGHTSPEED, where it’s at the same place, next to itself in time, forward or backward in time – whatever time line – IT WILL GIVE THE APPEARANCE OF CONTINUITY and, where it’s in the same TIME – but in different PLACES – next to itself, IT WILL GIVE THE ILLUSION OF MASS. And, basically, say it hits its own “SOUP”, once it’s got to that point, and it’s still intersecting with itself, but it’s intersecting with a LARGER MASS of itself, now a “SOUP” of itself … it’s already at below lightspeed, IT’S GOING TO INSTANTLY LOSE VELOCITY, from instantaneous to below lightspeed, AND THE SPILL IS GOING TO BE LIGHT, right, LIKE A SONIC BOOM IN REVERSE, but faster speed. Like shooting sonics into a bowl of water or something. Like a SPLASH … LIKE A RAINBOW BRIDGE! There’s a lot more to it than that but it’s quite simple … netime!billie
* Footnote: “tachyon”, 4want’v betr word, i.e, instantaneous particle/wave “pixel/bit/packet” … no mass, no volume, “just” infinite velocity.
“…. this is the lightspeed and below universe of our physical senses, the single-particle-theory tachyon soup created as the single tachyon intersects with itself in different places at the same time, and the same place at different times; this may be metaphorically considered as the consciousness of creation, the mind ….“
Just as the cosmos in its physical sense is a totally inter-related manifestation of its component attributes of gravitational and electromagnetic coincidence, so the events/consciousness’s within that cosmos may be seen to be dependent on/connected to everything else that occurs within that same instant (i.e, synchronicity). Accepting this, and being that we can have no real concept of (or existence in) an instantaneous universe, we may extrapolate that for all our intents and purposes a combined continuity of time and space is a prerequisite of our conscious awareness of the reality that we appear to occupy and that therefore, all events throughout time and space are influenced by and influencing all other events within that continuum in a coherent and instantaneous manner regardless of temporal and/or spatial remoteness. This is the lightspeed and below universe of our physical senses, the single-particle-theory tachyon soup created as the single “tachyon” (4want’v betr word, i.e, instantaneous particle/wave “pixel/bit/packet” … no mass, no volume, “just” infinite velocity) intersects with itself in different places at the same time, and the same place at different times; this may be metaphorically considered as the consciousness of creation, the mind. The faster than light realm of the uninterrupted tachyon may be thought of as the subconscious mind of Eternity (as above, so below etc). We have the potential (in our role as an interface between rational/instinctive/emotional consciousness, between physical/spiritual, matter and energy) to challenge the apparent boundaries of our existence, to examine the walls of our cell for loose stones, to grab a can of spray paint and try to tag the invisible as it moves amongst us. Some try…. this is their Lounge … Welcome to the Dawn … “The game is afoot” … Eternity Beware, Oblivion is at hand. LOL.
