#Rob Hirst

[sluttery-withoutshame]

The drum solo that made me cream my pants at the age of 14.

The sideways glance tho

[saltyground]

girls im so excited

[bbbrianjones]

rob hirst of midnight oil - diesel and dust era (1984-1988)

[longliverockback]

Midnight Oil Earth and Sun and Moon 1993 Columbia ————————————————— Tracks: 01. Feeding Frenzy 02. My Country 03. Renaissance Man 04. Earth and Sun and Moon 05. Truganini 06. Bushfire 07. Drums of Heaven 08. Outbreak of Love 09. In the Valley 10. Tell Me the Truth 11. Now or Never Land —————————————————

Peter Garrett

Bones Hillman

Rob Hirst

Jim Moginie

Martin Rotsey

* Long Live Rock Archive

[sonic-gonzo]

Last night at the Vanguard Newtown NSW Australia - BACKSLIDERS (040223) 

[realindevelopment-returns]

i still think no aussie band has ever rocked more than midnight oil. there have been louder bands, there have been faster bands, there have been much flashier bands, but none rock more than the oils

[drrav3nb]

GET TO KNOW ME MEME: favourite ships [2/10] - Ubbe & Alfred (Vikings)

I do not trust my own noblemen as much as I trust you.

[garadinervi]

Outports, (digital supplement), Longbarrow Press, Sheffield, 2020 (pdf here). Feat. James Caruth, Fay Musselwhite, Matthew Clegg, Alistair Noon, J.R. Carpenter, Rob Hindle, Peter Riley, Andrew Hirst, Kelvin Corcoran, Nancy Gaffield, Mark Goodwin, Pete Green, Angelina D’Roza, Brian Lewis, Chris Jones

[earthandsunandmoon]

Love when I feed myself misinformation during my sleep

[ourshadowstallerthanoursoul]

An audience with... John Paul Jones

(from Uncut, April 2010 - link)

You’re stuck on a deserted island, you have one instrument you can bring. It is: a) piano, b) bass or c) mandolin? (Gary Attersley, Ontario, Canada)

Oh… that’s horrible! I’ll probably get Hugh Manson – the guy who builds all my bass guitars – to build me some monstrous instrument that encapsulated all three! Hugh and his brother Andy Manson once actually designed me a triple-necked guitar with 12-string guitar, six-string guitar and mandolin on it! Andy also designed a triple-necked mandolin. But I guess if it really came down to it on a desert island, it would have to be the piano, because you can do so much on it. You’re a whole band. The bass is not much fun on your own.

John, it’s so good to see you so engaged with today. Any advice for old farts who can’t move on? (Andrew Loog Oldham)

Who are you calling an old fart? I dunno, Andy, you tell me! Ha ha. He’s done a good job of staying up to date. Andrew, of course, gave me the name John Paul Jones. I was John Baldwin, until Andrew saw a poster for the French film version of John Paul Jones. I thought it ’d look great in CinemaScope, as I wanted to do music for films. I imagined it saying “Music By John Paul Jones”, over the whole screen. I never realised then that he was the Horatio Nelson of America!

I know that you’ve been getting heavily into bluegrass lately – who are some of your favourite bluegrass artists of all time? (Ryan Godek, Wilmington, Delaware)

Apart from Bill Monroe, you mean? Oh, there’s loads. I’m friends with the Del McCoury band, I love that style of classic bluegrass. I love Sam Bush’s Newgrass stuff. And of course there’s Nickel Creek, Chris Feely, Mike Marshall. I love it all, really. One thing I like about bluegrass is that you don’t require amplifiers, drums and trucks. You can pull an instrument out of a box and get on with some instant music making. I carry a mandolin around wherever I go. I also like the fact bluegrass musicians play more than one instrument. There’s a tradition of them swapping instruments. In bluegrass bands I swap between double bass, fiddle and banjo.

One Butthole Surfers anecdote, please? (Dave Grohl)

Ha! I was brought in to produce the Butthole Surfers’ 1993 album, Independent Worm Saloon. I guess it was to give it a heavy rock vibe, but it didn’t work like that. They were actually incredibly hard-working in the studio, but I do recall running up a phenomenal bar-bill at the San Rafael studio. And then there was Gibby [Haynes, Butthole Surfers’ frontman] and his… eccentric studio behaviour. Gibby did one vocal take shouting into his guitar. He held it out in front of his face and screamed at it. Ha! He was trying to find out if it picked up through the pick-ups, which it kind of did. And that was pretty good.

How’s the violin coming along? (Sean, Berkshire)

I started about three years ago. With the guitar, or the piano, you can sound OK quite quickly. With the violin, it takes much longer. Once you get past the first six months of scraping, of muttering to yourself, “What is this fucking horrible noise on my shoulder?” you get the odd musical bit, and you think, ‘Oh, this is starting to get good.’ And you continue with it for a while. I’m getting into country fiddle playing, Celtic folk songs, a bit of swing. Basic stuff, but very satisfying.

Why not record a second ‘Automatic For The People’ with REM? (Franz Greul, Austria)

They haven’t asked me! But doing the string arrangements for that album was a great experience, actually. They sent me the demos of their songs, and we went into a studio in Atlanta, with members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. They were great songs, something you can really get your teeth into as an arranger. And I’ve been good friends with them ever since.

How did you first meet Josh Homme? And is he still a notorious party monster? (Rob Hirst, Kippax, Leeds)

Well, I think we’ve all calmed down rather a lot. Dave introduced me to Josh at his 40th birthday party. It was a ridiculous themed place where they have jousting with knights. As Dave said, it was like somewhere you’d have your 14th birthday party. Or maybe even your 4th. Anyway, Dave sat Josh and I together for a blind date. Which was reasonably embarrassing for both of us, surrounded by people going “prithee this” and challenging each other to duels. But we survived the trauma and went into the studio the next day, and just started jamming. And I knew immediately it was going to be something special.

If Them Crooked Vultures had Spice Girls-like nicknames what would they be? (Paul Jones, Liverpool)

Dave would be Smiley Vulture. He can’t stop grinning. Josh would be Slinky Vulture. He’s a slinky kinda guy. And I’d be Speedy, I guess. Or Jumpy. So there you go. Smiley, Slinky and Speedy. Or does that sound more like the dwarfs?

I remember you being a pretty funky bass genius back in the day! What memories do you have of those sessions? (Donovan)

The sessions with Don and Mickie Most were great, because we were given a free hand. I usually got leeway, because I was the sort of Motown/Stax specialist, so producers in the mid ’60s would get me in for cover versions of American records, and none of them could write bass parts convincingly enough, so I was London’s answer to James Jamerson, I guess! And I was certainly encouraged to get kinda… funky when I worked with Donovan.

How did it feel to see Jimmy Page and Robert Plant venture off in their own project in the ‘90s without mentioning a word of it to you? (Danny Luscombe, Hull)

Oh yeah, I was pissed off about it. The surprise was in not being told. It’s ancient history now, but it was a bit annoying to find out about it while reading the papers. It came just after Robert and I had been discussing the idea of doing an Unplugged project. Then I’m on tour in Germany with Diamanda Galás, I turn on the TV and see Robert and Jimmy doing it, with someone else playing all my parts! I was pissed off at the time. You would be, woudn’t you? But… it’s all in the past, isn’t it?

Did you listen to much work by Josh Homme or Dave Grohl before you were contacted in relation to joining Them Crooked Vultures, and if so, how did you honestly rate it? (Ralph Ryan, Lisronagh, County Tipperary)

I did like the Foo Fighters and Queens Of The Stone Age, before I’d met either of them. There’s a tendency for people – especially musicians from my generation – to say that there has been this terrible decline in musicianship, that today’s bands haven’t got the chops, blah blah blah. But that’s not true at all. There’s always some people for whom technique on an instrument isn’t necessary. They can get their ideas across without being able to have the chops. But Josh really does have the chops, he just doesn’t feel the need to flash them about all the time. In fact, there were a few riffs he gave me that I had to simplify, because they were bloody difficult to play. I really had to work at it, where he could just flick it off. He is an astonishing musician.

Were you serious when you told Peter Grant that you wanted to jack it in to become choirmaster at Winchester Cathedral? (Brian Fisher, Manchester)

Ha! That was a tongue-in-cheek joke, although I was serious about leaving Led Zeppelin in 1973 unless things changed. But Peter did sort things out pretty quickly. What kind of choirmaster would I have made? A bloody good one! Listen, any way that they’ll pay you for making music is just the best situation in the world. I’d do it for nothing. I don’t care what music it is. I just love it all. The rubbing of notes together. I love it all. I would be very passionate about whatever I decided to do.

What was the worst session you ever did as a jobbing session player? (Adam Burns, Castleford, West Yorkshire)

I generally have fun memories of that time. I’d criss-cross London playing two or three sessions a day, going between Trident and Olympic and Abbey Road and Philips in Marble Arch, you know. You’d be backing Shirley Bassey, Cat Stevens, Lulu, whoever was paying you. The worst experience was a Muzak session. With Muzak sessions, the music was deliberately boring. I distinctly remember one session where I embellished the bass part a little bit, just so that it wasn’t so boring for me to play. They said, “No, you can’t do that. Any interest in the music will distract people’s attention from when they’re meant to be eating.” Or standing in a fucking lift. For fuck’s sake! So I was like, “OK, thanks, bye!”

[saltyground]

I don't think I ever zoomed in on this image before. 🤔

[bbbrianjones]

rob hirst of midnight oil - blue sky mining era (1990-1991)

part 2 + bonus :

[longliverockback]

Midnight Oil Diesel and Dust 1987 CBS ————————————————— Tracks: 01. Beds Are Burning 02. Put down That Weapon 03. Dreamworld 04. Arctic World 05. Warakurna 06. The Dead Heart 07. Whoah 08. Bullroarer 09. Sell My Soul 10. Sometimes —————————————————

Peter Garrett

Peter Gifford

Rob Hirst

Jim Moginie

Martin Rotsey

* Long Live Rock Archive

[fingerspitzengefuhl2]

Rob Hirst from Midnight Oil, perhaps one of the world most underrated drummers

[realindevelopment-returns]

blast from the past day, saw the 1990s cinema moofie classic speed staring keanu reeves pre matrix, sanda bulloch pre almost everything and a scene stealing dennis hopper. suspension of disbelief from the moment this starts, the credits look horribly dated but everything else stood the test of time.

arrived straight from work, had an hour to kill and the moofie was on at the casino... rather than a drink or a spin i spent the time continuing reading my latest rawk n roll autobiog, midnight oil's drummer rob hirst's tour diary of the oils in post 9/11 u s of a willy's bar and grill. this is a fun read, the paranoia of the times, the searches, a band that's on it's way down and playing their gigs to smaller crowds than the last time, a rock n roll hall of fame visit to find their autobiog on the database hasn't been updated since 1993, cops wanting to see the tall, bald guy, the acoustic set at the local radio stations, the meet and greet afterwards. the internet era. a tremendous read so far.

a happy monday

[indelibleevidence]

Positive 3x05 thoughts:

Everyone's performances were great, but especially the guys this episode. Sully must have known what Kurt's mid-season twist was - at least in the ballpark - because you can just see the words on the tip of his tongue. And Rob's portrayal of Reade's defensive denial was fantastic.

I wonder if Reade would have been so quick to deny Hirst was dirty, if Zapata hadn't hit him with the 'I saw your little illegal meeting with West' earlier that day. Then again, Tasha is CIA and Patterson has been teaming up with Rich for illegal hacks, so I can kind of see why he's less inclined to trust them these days.

Speaking of denial, I like the way Jane is just like, 'nope, this has to be fake news' about her adoption records. Right there with ya, Jane, I didn't want to believe it, either. XD

Locker room Jeller again. ❤

Everyone disparaging Weitz is great, and Weitz being Weitz is also great. Hmmm, I wonder why HE wasn't at Jeller's wedding? 🙄 The only thing I find a stretch is Weitz being able to manage a delicate diplomatic situation with a volatile foreign power, without offending everybody and causing a war. But then, I also find it a stretch that he's made Hirst's replacement. (Not that I don't love later-seasons Weitz, because I do.)

Patterson and Zapata being sneaky spies is a really fun dynamic.

Jane kicking through a car windshield is awesome and badass. Vanya complimenting Jeller on their badassnesa, and Reade joking that it will go to their heads is a nice little moment, too.

The way Roman describes how he and Remi searched for baby Avery makes me feel so bad for both of them. I bet poor teenage Roman didn't know who to blame when his sister ran off to join the military - Remi, or Shepherd.