CHAPTER TWO
Immediately after their 1970 Sydney Town Hall success, Karlin, Dryden and Campbell were greeted backstage by Australian percussionist Robert Lloyd and his American bassist partner, Jim Stanley. The pair had been working with Sydney rock groups and Lloyd's love of World Music , coupled with Stanley's enthusiasm for fresh musical experiences had drawn them into the folk festival environment. Their appreciation for what Extradition had thus far achieved compelled them to speak to the band and suggest that the Lloyd/Stanley approach to percussion and bass would make them ideal band members. The five agreed to meet for an exploratory session and quickly discovered- through the simple expedient of adding bass and drums to the existing repertoire- that each had sufficient interest in the talent and personality of the others to maintain creative working relationships. Thus Extradition entered its second phase.
As the addition of bass and drums opened new routes of creativity to the original acoustic trio so the doors of familiar folk venues began to close. They had already offended the self-styled champions of Australiana , typified by the contemporaneous opinion characterised below, and were now becoming difficult to classify as a ' folk ' group at all .
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The Fourth National or Port Jackson Festival, the article writers asserted, was too well organized, it lacked the spontaneous camaraderie and tribal warmth of the earlier Port Philip and Brisbane festivals. The major problem, or so it was reported, was the overwhelming cultural domination exercised by the anglophiles of the Sydney 'in-crowd'. |
Jim Stanley had no acoustic bass and his amplified instrument required certain changes to the group's dynamics . Robert Lloyd addressed the challenge by dispensing with drumsticks almost entirely and using soft mallets on his full kit instead. The new sound, two complementary acoustic guitars , muted electric bass , softened drums overlaid by the powerful vocals of both Karlin and Dryden was an intriguing sound indeed and the five became immersed in a period of intense musical production, centered on the Short Street address . All references to folksong were abandoned as the group explored improvisation within a framework of Campbell's songwriting. Typical of these were the songs ' Sun come up darkness '- which attempted a coup against the entire blues genre - and ' Colour Clock ' , a four-part musical poem on the theme of light in which all the parts were built upon a strong and recognisable ' signal ' riff which the players used to communicate . The length of this piece varied according to the whim of each player and could last upwards of thirty minutes on a good day, more or less according to an infinity of variables. Visitors to Short Street, arriving mid-session , were captivated by the sheer impudence of such performances which wandered into one-off technical explorations and then came back together to give the impression that the whole thing had been carefully arranged. Whilst none of the members were virtuosos, certainly not masters of their instruments and far from being even technically slick, they had the gift of originality. There were no impromptu cascades of perfect notes, no extemporaneous platforms of thrilling harmony yet their simply-themed improvisations were powerful , sometimes verging upon the magical. Their expression was charged with a primitivism drawn from the magical musical realms of mediaeval Britain in the cases of Dryden and Campbell, Karlin's gypsy heritage, Lloyd's tribal percussion investigations and Stanley's attachments to Southern negro culture. This was Extradition at their peak, a successful blend of musical cultures and personalities but with nowhere to play, no work, no idea of what might come next and no inclination to depart from the ' Now ' in order to find out. The irony was that the band, shunned now by the ' traditional folk music ' establishment , were drawing upon influences which pre-dated the establishment notion of ' traditional folk music ' by centuries.
Amongst Short Street's talented visitors was Graham Lowndes, a respected singer who , like Extradition, fell into the category of ' extraordinary ' and existed on the fringes of the folk world. Along with other frequent listeners his enthusiasm for the band's direction served as encouragement at a time when it was most needed. The Brothers Gillespie, Shayna's good friend Jeannie Lewis, Campbell's brilliant poet friends Vicki Viiddikas and the mystic Bill Beard, artist Gary Greenwood and many other Sydney well-wishers all gave their support at some point and helped create the sense of a progressive community for the group which had made solid progress in just a few months. One such interested party, singer-songwriter Al Head , discovered a venue at which Extradition could appear in public in 'concert' format, a basement theatre in King's Cross which provided some exact requirements- space, seats and a small stage. Some dates were set, Gary Greenwood designed a poster for local distibution ( the memorable CHING ! poster featuring Shayna's finger-cymbals ) and Jim Stanley- in his mode as entrepreneur/technician/roadie - begged , borrowed or stole some elderly amplifiers, microphones and sundries. Colin and Colan taped a couple of flat mics to their guitars and Extradition, if not entirely raised and praised, became Amplified. The series of concerts was moderately successful in that Extradition received warm crits from the one or two underground papers in circulation and also a share of the takings at the door- their first professional income. One concert was notable for Colin Dryden's sudden and total abandonment of any semblance of arrangement or subtlety whilst soloing - to the astonishment and amusement of his bandmates- and another for the final and explosive death of one of Stanley's amplifier acquisitions which took belated leave of this earth as he was coaxing some ' glacial ' sounds from his bass with a violin bow. Supplementary to these moderate successes however, the concerts resulted in an offer of a recording contract for one vinyl 33 r.p.m. L.P. of original material from Sweet Peach Records and , equally excitingly, an invitation from The Arts Council of Australia , under the auspices of the insightful John Cooper , to embark upon a six-week paid tour of New South Wales bush townships as support for an extravagant-and-as-yet-undisclosed Sydney rock ensemble which Rob Lloyd immediately, and correctly, named as Tully.
To be continued
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