“You’re not going to go to connect with Billie Reid if new sounds are your thing. His music is timeless, steeped in Americana. He infuses his own concerns, his own hurt. Songs like ‘Black Silk Dress’, ‘Hard Hard Woman’ and ‘Love Song 612’ have compact clarity, but they also connect emotionally in ways that linger well beyond their duration“
“A song that feels real when it’s about the love that never quite connected between people is always going to find a place in my heart. It’s a theme he returns to frequently, and convincingly. The fact that he does it with such brevity is the surprise”
A few years back, when I was living on the other side of town, I knew a group of guys who shared a place. Some of them were on the way to places that they’ve since made it too. Others are caught up in the same routines that troubled them back then, and I can see resentment in their eyes and hear excuses in their voices when I run into them. I was one of their visitors, and I like to feel I was pretty welcome. And then there was Baz.
Baz would roll up to the apartment with his guitar, and sing his heart out while he thrashed out a few tunes. He assumed people liked what he was doing, but he was wrong about that. His influences were as obvious as his desire to tuck into some of the guys’ food when they were preparing some. I still have occasional contact with Baz. He remembers those days fondly, asks about the other guys, who I have to find excuses not to hook him up with, because they’d not be keen for me to do so.
We all have our role models, people who shape our lives in one way and another. It was pretty clear who Baz’s were. The problem wasn’t that he had them, we all do. It was that they overwhelmed any sense of who Baz himself was. In the same way that he’d changed overnight from a football and beer kind of guy to a festi-goer complete with dreadlocks, Baz sought to embrace someone else’s identity because he was unsure of his own.
In his mind, Baz was like singer Billie Reid. But there’s a world of difference between soaking up influences and expressing your own feelings and thoughts through them, and what Baz was doing when he sang borrowed protest songs and cadged snacks in someone else’s front room.
Let’s be clear, you’re not going to connect with Billie Reid if new sounds are your thing. His music is timeless, steeped in Americana. You’ve heard this kind of thing before – and he does it very well. He infuses his own concerns, his own hurt, into compact songs that have echoes of Green On Red, William Elliot Whitmore, even Husker Du and Joe Strummer at times.
All of those influences come together on ‘Ode To The Dudes’, and you can tell that he’s listened and learned. In just under half an hour, Billie Reid delivers 14 short but un-hurried songs. Over a dozen musical bullets in the time it takes some acts to hit their stride.
It’s maybe in the compact size of the songs that you can tell Billie isn’t American himself. He’s Australian, and has listened to a whole bunch of music and digested what makes it work that players who are part of the tradition might not get. Others dawdle, do overlong solos, meander. Billie is in and out with two minute songs that have all the ups and downs and pathos and insight of six minuters by many other artists.
There’s a nod to more Australian sounds in there too, a hint of Midnight Oil in some of the more politically-charged numbers. And I get a sense he’d be a great live performer. There’s perhaps a bit too much polish to the production for my tastes, and I suspect on stage the extra energy he’d bring to the proceedings would make up for any fluffed notes and tuning problems.
In these days of digital downloads and dance mixes, it’s hard to be sure there’s a place for someone with Billie Reid’s talents. I’d like to think there is. A song that feels real when it’s about the love that never quite connected between people is always going to find a place in my heart. It’s a theme he returns to frequently, and convincingly. The fact that he does it with such brevity is the surprise.
Oddball art-rockers The Residents released ‘Commercial Album’ in 1980. It featured forty songs, each lasting one minute, each comprising an intro, verse, and refrain or chorus. Liner notes suggested each track should be listened to three times consecutively, to make a pop song. Billie Reid has done something of that sort here, only without the annoying whimsy of The Residents. Songs like ‘Black Silk Dress’, ‘Hard Hard Woman’ and ‘Love Song 612’ have compact clarity, but they also connect emotionally in ways that linger well beyond their duration.
Charlie Reynolds
“Tombstones and a cheating heart … a dark reading on a timeless theme” | Demon Street | Billie Reid
Modern technology gives us a chance to explore Billie Reid’s “alt” version of ‘Demon Street’. Sneering ‘Clash’ inspired chords, college-art backing, and snarling lyrics that bite. Tombstones and a cheating heart … “I ain’t got no time for lies” … this isn’t trendy art but a dark reading on a timeless theme. There’s darkness and a sense of desperation that pulls you in. ‘Demon Street’, don’t go there, but if you do, I wish you luck because this song has no room for sensitive types. It’s a bitter tirade lamenting loss, yet there’s no sense of introspection or poignant reflection from the safety of distance. Self pity isn’t in Billie’s emotional vocabulary. ‘Demon Street’ is hard edged, razor-sharp, and word perfect. Perhaps only those who have been hurt will connect.
‘Demon Street’ captures Australian axeman Phil Bradley at his fiery best, locked in a brutal Strummer-esque guitar-attack with the track’s stomping percussion, whilst Reid relays a tale of love and loss with the bile and poetic fervour of a punk troubadour. He presents the listener with the fiery sound of defiance .… “I’m not about to waste my life on someone else’s whim” …. mixing up a bitter brew of betrayal, torment and regret, whipped up into song form. Anger, he reminds us, is an energy after all. When your world falls down, it’s better to feel something rather than nothing at all.
‘Demon Street’ is sure to provide an ideal swig of Dutch courage for anyone undergoing a painful, messy breakup. Why mope around when you could, like Billie Reid, count your losses and continue to kick ass! Liam Allen.
“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.
“… put more simply, Billie Reid is a poet and he **** **** knows it!”
“… 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 unfurling lyrical attack of Reid as he 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.
Reid’s uncompromising spirit shines through the course of this album. This is 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. Put more simply, Billie Reid is a poet and he **** **** knows it!
* 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
Billie Reid | Single Tachyon Extrapolation of Existence | Ode To The Dudes | Youtube
“…. 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.
