Seven Songs: recorded live for Radio ANU, October 1973

 

Seven Songs cover

 

Seven Songs is the first collection from James's new archival release project, Lost Songs from the Rusting Shed of Disappeared Guitars.

These solo acoustic tracks, all original songs, were recorded when James was 20 and were composed between 1970, when a poetry loving high school student decided to learn guitar and write songs, and October 1973 when this collection was taped, during James's final year of a Literature degree at the Australian National University.

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Songs for a Season at Ghost Town Bridge

a CD Book by James Griffin

James Griffin

Through a mix of anecdotal magic realism, love stories, chance meetings and lives travelling off the rails, James has created a meditation that is at once humorous, ironic and serious and which offers a sophisticated, contemporary vision of the wide streets and corrugated iron of rural Australia.

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The CD/Book is available at all James' performances or order direct by email.

 

Black Crow Road

Black Crow Road

'Ever the consummate storyteller, James Griffin knows how to craft a setting and weave a tale. He draws upon life as he has experienced it, spices it with a sense of occasion, and then presents it wrapped within a unique brand of eloquent urban folk...'
Brett Leigh Dicks, Beat Magazine

After four years performing and recording with the Subterraneans, James put that band on hold and recorded Black Crow Road. The aim was to make an intimate, acoustic, almost ambient album woven around vivid lyrical pictures and stories, sung or spoken within simple, catchy and hypnotic musical settings. The music is created from an unusual synthesis of alt- rock, folk and minimalist avant-garde sounds and textures.

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Collaborations

 

The Black Sorrows

Beat Club

This album includes the song Walking Like a Drowning ManBeat Club with lyrics by James & music by Joe Camilleri

CD Album

Mushroom, 1998

 

Lee Kernaghan

Hat Town

The song Changi Banjo, from Lee Kernaghan's Hat Town album is an adaptation by Garth Porter & Lee Kernaghan of a ballad originally written by James. In 1999 Changi Banjo won the Heritage Song of the Year award at the Country Music Awards of Australia (Golden Guitars)

CD Album

ABC Music, 1998

 

The Black Sorrows

Lucky Charm

James wrote lyrics for:Lucky Charm

Snake Skin Shoes
Last One Standing For You
I'm A Stranger
Bone Man

CD Album

Columbia / Sony Music, 1994

 

The Black Sorrows with Jon Stevens

Last One Standing For You

Words by James, music by Camilleri / PolecLast One Standing

CD Single

From The Black Sorrows album, Lucky Charm
Columbia / Sony Music, 1994


The Black Sorrows

Snake Skin Shoes

Words to Snake Skin Shoes by James Griffin, music by Joe CamilleriSnake Skin Shoes

4 Track CD EP

From The Black Sorrows album, Lucky Charm
Columbia / Sony Music, 1994

 

Various

Moon Over Melbourne

A Collection of songs about or relating to the city of Melbourne performed by leading Melbourne based artists.

Moon Over Melbourne Includes performance by Paul Kelly, James Reyne, Jane Clifton, Andrew Pendlebury & Doug De Vries, Bernadette Robinson, Yoni Prior & Barrie Kosky, The Whirling Furphies, Steven Cummings and Vika & Linda Bull performing either their own songs or songs written by the likes of Archie Roach, Roger Hart (Little Heroes), Paul Kelly and Greg Macainsh (Skyhooks).

James wrote the title track and sang the traditional song, Ned Kelly was Born in a Ramshackle Hut.

The project was commissioned by the Melbourne City Council in association with ABC Radio 3LO and was co-ordinated, arranged and produced by James.

CD Album

ABC Music, 1992

 

Various

Going Home

A Collection of traditional and contemporary Australian folk ballads performed by a selection of Australia's leading contemporary artists and arranged, co-ordinated and produced by James Griffin.Going Home

Includes performances from Shane Howard, Doc Neeson, Jon English, Helen Noonan, Paul Kelly, James Reyne, Joe Camilleri, David Bridie, Tommy Emmanuel, Paul Grabowsky, Jean Lewis, Jane Clifton, Peter Coutanche & Bernadette Robinson. The project was commissioned by Sue Howard for her drivetime radio program on ABC FM.

CD Album

ABC Music, 1992



James Griffin

The Land of a Thousand Dances

This two record set contains eighteen stories, four poems and four songs. The songs have already appeared on records by James Griffin & the Subterraneans. They are included here because they were written as part of the same body of work as the stories.They share ideas Land 1000 Dancesand images with some of the stories and form part of the narrative.

Ninety Percent Haircut is the narrator and we also meet Valerie the Love Sculpture, Incredible Wang the Third, Fiona the Dingbat Paramour, The Fat Poet and Kelvin the Ninja. They live in the Dream House, next door to Ralph the Trigger-Happy Neighbour, in the Suburb of Ratville. They play in a band which they only ever refer to as Our Band and often perform in the Hell-Hole-Down-the-Road where people jump from the balcony into the crowd below. Sometimes they drink too much at the Midnight Saloon.

When the Fat Poet discovers the Molotov Cocktail they quickly become notorious. Incredible Wang III seeks refuge in the Northern City of Relentless Sunshine, home of The Slow Kill Turns where parking meter attendants are really androginous store dummies and contain concealed microphones. Ninety Percent Haircut loses his job down at the golf course. The last remaining beatnik, The Lost Girl, returns to The Windy Southern Towns of Restrained Colonialism where artistic pursuits wear suits and take place behind closed doors in winter. Valerie the Love Sculpture wonders why she ever gave up the round-the-continent aeroplane flight she had embarked upon to see how many people she could sleep with en route, excluding aircrew and hostesses. Fiona the Dingbat Paramour continues to scream and Kelvin the Ninja wants to be a Really Big Face in Japan. Stick around and we'll see how it pans out.

Stories

1. The Aftermath of Madness
2. Shopping
3. The Lost Girl
4. Napalming the Audience
5. Ambushed by Visions
6. Speechless with the Grandeur of Collapsing Buildings
7. Fat Luxuries of Messianic Self Regard
8. Sitting in Limbo with a Sympathetic Ear
9. Posterity is a Place not far from Here (some letters)
10.I've got my own camera now & I feel more Aware
11.You're never Alone with a Telephone
12.Napalming the Audience One More Time
13.Snake-Eyes Across the Crowded Room
14.Rehearsal for the Apocalypse
15.Are you Married or are you Happy?
16.Stranded in Limbo with the Fat Poet in Summer Again
17.The Ballad of Innocent Mary & the Nitro Kid
18.Touring Europe with a gun-fighter ballad & doing the Locomotion (with visions of happy endings one more time)

Poems & songs

Strange Days #1
Strange Days #2
The Golden Mile
The Breathing Helmet
The Wild Years
The Blood of the Poet
The Land of a Thousand Dances
Mary & the Kid Leave Town

12" vinyl double LP

Chase Records 1987

 

 

James Griffin

True Love & the Many Meanings of Invisibility

The Whole World is Watching
Sail Away (anyone can be the one)True Love
When the Midnight Comes
Paradise is Calling
The Ballad of Innocent Mary
Remembering World War II
Suburbs of the Heart
Cheap Hotel Fire
The Belle of the Ball
The Last Highway
The Song of Wild Horses

12" Vinyl LP

Chase Records, 1987

 

 

James Griffin & the Subterraneans

No Surrender / A Bridge Like the Wind

No Surrender
A Bridge Like the Wind

7" vinyl single

Chase Records 1986

A Cure for Snakebite

A Cure for SnakebiteA Cure For Snakebite
No Surrender
The Darlinghurst Road
The Road to the Rodeo
I thought it was you on the Boulevard
Death Calls (you got to go)
The Last Highway
Armies of the Night
A Bridge like the Wind
Mary & the Kid Leave Town
I am a Stranger

12" vinyl LP

Chase Records 1986

Blood of the Poet /(Just like) Surf City Blood of the Poet

7" vinyl single

Chase Records 1986

 

 

The Angel Run / My Heart for You (remains the same)

The Angel Run
My Heart for You

7" vinyl single

Chase Records 1985

The Immigrant TangoImmigrant Tango

Wild Years
Surf City
The Blood of the poet
The Angel Run
Sister Sabotage
Land of a Thousand Dances

Features guest appearances from Steven Kilbey & Marty Willson Piper of The Church

12" vinyl mini album

Chase Records, 1985

 

 

James Griffin

Panic (five songs from two radio plays)

The Darling Chorus
Panic
Promise Me the Moon
Never Alone with a Telephone
Miserable EverywherePanic
King Hit

From the Radio Plays, As The Crow Flies & Slogans & Rumours, produced by ABC Radio Drama & Triple J FM respectively.

7" vinyl EP

Radio Records, 1984

 

No Adjustment to the Face

Merciless CinemaNo Adjustments
Manhattan Project
Seven Samurai
Suburbs of the Heart

12" vinyl EP

Hot Records. Venice Beach, 1983

 

7 Samurai 7 Samurai

Seven Samurai
Pictures of You & Me

7" vinyl single

Hot Records. Venice Beach, 1982

 

Merciless CinemaMerciless cinema

Merciless Cinema
Manhattan Project

7" vinyl single, 1981

 

 

Suburbs Of The Heart

Suburbs Of The Heart

Suburbs of the Heart
Night People
Behind the Noise

7" vinyl single, 1980

 

 

James Griffin

Australia's Just a Suburb of the USA
I Smoke Money
I thought it was you on the Boulevard
Too Hip to Stumble James Griffin(& too straight to fall)

7" vinyl EP, 1978