Blue Mountain Jam; Live 1999
Push Upstairs
Cups
Pearls Girl
Something Like A Mama
Please Help Me / Cappi Ffuno
6 of 8... Title? Any Clues?
King of Snake
Bruce Lee
What I can remember; version
The Blue Mountains near Sydney Australia were the location Graham Wood chose to shoot the video for Push Upstairs. There were two reasons for this –
1: We were on tour with the Big Day Out Festival
2: We didn’t want to shoot it in a Scottish winter where you wouldn’t see your hand in front of your
face.
The night before, we slept in a ‘very basic’ hostel nearby – woken by birds that made the sound of Sonar. We drove to the location on the edge of a high cliff where Graham had been told the views were legendary & we’d be able to see stuff miles away under a crystal blue sky (there was even a helicopter booked to fly over us & film the amazing views). Well – you’ve seen the video & it’s only my word against yours but that’s really not Scotland. At sunrise we were greeted by semi-apocalyptic weather & views that went on for…well……feet.
We also have vivid memories of the heart-rending sight of Graham Wood soaking wet & lost in a pac-a-mac at the edge of the cliff, staring into the misty abyss, wondering how the hell he was going to get us out’ve this one.
The fact that he did so much more than that is testament to his great talent (come back Graham).
What many people won’t know was that our Malcolm & a team of Australian chippies built a stage out of plywood & sheets of polythene for us to play live on & that a mobile recording truck was brought in to capture the performance & that the outfits for this particular performance followed a direction of function over fashion, as everyone was sent to the nearest outward-bound clothing store to return with 9 pairs of boots, 9 waterproof – over trousers & 9 waterproof jackets with hoods. Whilst the gang were shopping Hyde was wrapped in his favourite Phat Farm winter coat, pulling the hood tight around his face to keep the rain from running down his neck & pushed out in front of the cameras to do the ‘singer-bits’.
Then a geezer dressed like James Bond appeared & jumped through a sheet of sugar-glass & we all went “Oooh!”, but the helicopter didn’t take off till the following day when it wafted Graham & the cameraman through crystal blue skies that went all the way back to Essex. A soggy chippie told us afterwards that had the weather turned out the way Graham wanted the UV would’ve fried us; so, far from wrecking the shoot the dismal (UK?) weather was an upturn in fortunes.
At the end of filming we played a gig & to an audience made entirely from a bedraggled film crew clutching hot mugs of steaming tea all weary & bemused by these unexpected antics at the end of long wet day (By-the-way Jason Kedgley made a short film of it).
That’s all I can remember of that day, but I know I have a photograph somewhere of Graham standing in the fog peering over the edge of that cliff looking like he was about to jump – if I find it I’ll post it here.
KH
