It’s only rock ’n’ roll, but Raoul Graf likes it. That’s why he will be singing the Rolling Stones’ famous song tonight.
He won’t be alone, though. Celibate Rifles frontman Damien Lovelock will have ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, Jeff Duff is ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and Floyd Vincent is going to ‘Paint it Black’.
The occasion is Let’s Spend the Night Together, a tribute to the best of the Stones being held at Sydney’s The Basement nightclub.
This is no ordinary tribute, however, and has little to do with the rash of tribute bands around Australia who replicate the songs of everyone from INXS to Led Zeppelin as exactly as they can manage. The idea here is to create something new and exciting from the originals.
“It’s not an RSL, Neil Diamond-type thing,” says Martin Contempree, who promotes the shows along with Graf. “It’s about reinterpretation by serious artists. People take an interest in an artist who is doing a cover in an original way.”
The Stones show is the latest in a line over the past three years that have honoured the work of such big names as Neil Young, Van Morrison and Sting, while simultaneously showcasing the talents of new and experienced local artists.
Graf developed the concept with Contempree, who runs Club Acoustica, a project designed to promote acoustic music at small venues around the country. So successful have the tribute nights been that they too are spreading to other cities, including Brisbane and Melbourne.
The closing of venues over noise restrictions and the invasion of the pokies, particularly in Sydney, has prompted a rise in the popularity of acoustic music, where little space or amplification is needed to put on a show.
This prompted Contempree to start Club Acoustica in 1998 and he teamed up with Graf a year later. Many of the acoustic artists who are regulars on the Club Acoustica bills are also involved in the tribute nights.
“Because of the pokies and sound restrictions it was easier to do acoustic shows,” says Contempree. “Now pubs in every city have acoustic nights happening.”
Shows honouring the songs of respected songwriters such as Nick Drake and Tim and Jeff Buckley have attracted audiences of up to 500 people to The Basement. Some tributes have proved so popular that they have been repeated several times over. There have been, for example, eight Van Morrison nights so far.
Up and coming singer-songwriters such as Melanie Horsnell and Kylie Burtland have benefited from both the acoustic nights and the tribute sessions. It’s an opportunity, says Graf, for new artists on the bill to play to a larger audience.
“The tributes are great for those artists who normally play to 30 people, who at these nights get to play to 400, sometimes 500 people. They might be singing someone else’s material, but they can do it as much in their own style as they like. It’s also hard for unsigned artists to get a gig at somewhere like The Basement. We’ve spent three years doing around 65 shows there and from those shows the venue gets to learn who is good.”
That’s one of the reasons the shows are becoming popular with artists as well as the public, so much so that the promoters are having to turn away performers eager to get on the bill.
“We’re actually quite selective about who does it,” says Contempree. “We got to the stage where we were overly generous and putting too many people on the bill, so now we have no more than 10 acts per show.”
Artists at tonight’s show will perform with a house band, although there is room for acoustic performances as well. Either way, Graf believes the tribute concept is an original and legitimate one.
“It’s just one answer to one of the many problems in the industry,” he says. “It’s filling a space.”
Let’s Spend the Night Together at The Basement, tonight. A Tribute to Nick Drake at The Healer, Brisbane, tomorrow night.
Tribute twins: Graf, left, and Contempree.
