“…. I was born to this planet, alive and unarmed, I was thrown into structures more easily farmed. With doctors and lawyers ‘n’ labourers ‘n’ sheep, ‘N’ cattle and businessmen, all in a heap. On the planet I’m born on the bastards ‘ll tell ya, that slavery’s banned, while they package and sell ya. They won’t let us live on the beaches ‘n’ trees, while they breakfast at Maxim’s and brunch in Los Angeles ….”
The more of his music I hear the less of a fix I get on Billie Reid. And that’s so refreshing. In an age where a slick branded image and press release says all you need to know or want to know about an artist Billie’s reckless refusal of categorisation has appeal.
Nobody else could have come up with this song. There’s roots rebel in ‘Ode To The Dudes’, wearily angry at the way our planet is being despoiled. But it’s not like Billie to settle for a familiar way of delivery. Even across the course of a couplet he goes from what feels like a classic folk song in his words and delivery before a collision with Dorothy Parker’s acerbic wit: “They won’t let us live on the beaches ‘n’ trees, while they breakfast at Maxim’s and brunch in Los Angeles“. In a flash Billie does with 19 words something akin to what Kubrick did with his classic cut from a neanderthal throwing a bone at the sky to a spaceship floating above the Earth in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.
That kind of writing talent is rare, and helps explain why on his best days Billie Reid has been compared to Bob Dylan. Those kind of comparisons really don’t help, not least for artists determined to make their own mark. And for Billie influences include rock and roll through to Johnny Cash-style country, taking in numerous flavours of roots music, punk, and hiphop. The singer is relaxed in his skin, his songs wearing whatever clothes the muse piles by his bed.
The musical setting for Billie’s words in ‘Ode To The Dudes’ helps pain the picture still more. Yes, pain not paint. The production runs the gamut from epic rock soundscaping with undercurrents that subvert the potential for cheesy bombast, and there’s a kick-ass remix built around a dubstep structure that still works with Billie’s vocals. For that to work a writer’s words need a special knack: the ability for a listener to wrap their own feelings around someone else’s insights.
Having a song with nine words in its title isn’t something for everyone. It works as ‘Ode To The Dudes’ but the flipflop in the second half makes clear which gents he’s referring to. ‘Ode To The Dudes That Own Their Own Nukes’ brings to mind Peter Thiel, Richard Branson, Elon Musk and the space adventures they’re planning to undertake with our money. Undertake is a grimly appropriate word at this apocalyptic point, and Billie’s lyrics could be its theme song. There’s a pretty cool mash-up video out there already. And I’m reminded to of another classic Kubrick image: the crazed general riding an atom bomb in ‘Doctor Strangelove’. I heard a couple of dudes working in a local store talking about it the other week, and the geniality of two minimum-wage guys shooting the breeze about a gleefully macabre film sequence is a snapshot Billie would relish.
Charlie Reynolds
“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 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).
“… 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.
