IT’S long been known that the hit songs of Australian Crawl and James Reyne have a tendency to get stuck in the heads of listeners.
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Hearing songs such as The Boys Light Up, Reckless, Beautiful People, Lakeside, Fall Of Rome, Hammerhead, and Motor’s Too Fast can not only transport a listener back to a time and place, they get us singing along.
Well, at least singing along to what we think the lyrics are. (Reyne’s diction, after all, has always been, err, distinctive and challenging.)
What we didn’t know is Reyne has an awkward relationship with some of those songs.
Some even seem to live inside him, emerging on cue in concert, almost as an out-of-body experience.
“I don’t have an objective relationship with [the songs],” Reyne said.
“With some of them, I’ll get to the end of the song and I’ll think ‘Did I just sing that?’ and at other times I’ll get to the third verse and think ‘I don’t remember getting here’.”
Reyne reckons it’s probably some sub-conscious function at work.
“Then there are other times when I’m deeply in the moment.”
Reyne is on the Day in the Sun Tour, with support act Moving Pictures.
It’s a greatest hits tour which arrives at Doyalson-Wyee RSL Club on Friday, January 29.
With Australian Crawl, Reyne released four studio albums in five frenetic years in the 1980s.
Reyne has gone on to release 12 albums as a solo artists, and he considers his new work to be the best he’s ever done.
But his new work is not what this tour is about.
“This tour is specifically and very purposefully all the hits,” Reyne said.
“This is about going out to where the people are, and giving them what they want.”
Reyne likens it to Michael Caine’s approach to making movies: You make a blockbuster film to make enough money to enable you to do the smaller independent projects.
“We’re doing an hour and a half, essentially of all the Crawl hits and my solo hits, all of the songs that people know and get played on the radio.”
And Reyne and his rocking band won’t meddle with your memories.
They’re committed to playing the hits just as you remember them. No embellishment. No extended mixes. No tampering.
“If I go to see a band I like, and I go to hear the songs I originally liked them for, I don’t want to hear some really weird swing, jazz version of a song,” Reyne said.
The old hits are mostly like old friends for Reyne. But even old friendships can be tested.
“There are a couple of songs I’m not a big fan of,” Reyne concedes. “But all of the ones that we’re doing [on this tour] I can handle doing, and I quite like.”
He said punters are invariably surprised to discover that his concerts these days are sounding better than at any time in his history. Their surprise always surprises Reyne.
“I’m older, wiser, I’ve practiced my craft for a lot longer. I know my strengths. I know my weaknesses,” he said.
“And I’m a better singer. I can sing now. The first few years I couldn’t really sing – it was barely controlled yelling, really.
“And because my band is a great, great band, and I’ve played with them for many years, everybody knows what they’re doing.
“If you practice your craft, and you’re healthily self-critical, you can only get better.”
Tickets for the Day in the Sun concert, featuring Moving Pictures and James Reyne, at The Doylo cost $55 for members and visitors. It is reserved table seating.
Doors open at 8pm with Moving Pictures on stage from 8.30pm.
Phone 4390 0622.
