“Billie Reid 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 → 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”
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.
Like so many before him, Billie honed his craft busking on the streets of Fremantle, Western Australia. At the heart of his songwriting I feel he is a poet. This may sound trite and perhaps clichéd, in this present age of tortured sensitive artistes, but in essence I believe this is the truth.
Perhaps those like myself who have somehow stumbled across his small cache of songs have found some connection that defies the hype of what is trendy and shallow. We live in an age where packaging is everything and often the promised magic is a sad illusion of what we want it to be.
Yet nothing stays the same and ultimately this small cluster of songs are a hurried snapshot that captures the innocence and promise of what could and what might have been. Some songs can and do have a second coming, and perhaps with the benefit of distance they can be revisited and appreciated with more clarity. I feel that Billie’s time has now come ’round and is worthy of a prolonged revisit.
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.
John Young (Musicologist)
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
“… 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!
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.