ASR – Mar (2)

Dave
Orams magically appears
6.3.06 – I’ve mentioned already that
one of the reasons for going the the Big Day Out was to catch
up with former Bari and the Breakaways bassist, Dave Orams.
Of course, Dave’s done a lot of things since those days, but
he said yesterday at the Willy RSL that it was in Christchurch
back in 1965 that we last met.
Subsequent to the Breakaways, Dave played with a number of
bands, including Quincy Conserve with Bruno Lawrence, whom
he remembers fondly as one of the best drummers he played
with. I saw Bruno playing with Claude Papesch in 1965, and
then Chants’ guitarist Tim Piper joined them both a few years
later in the Electric Heap, who I remember appearing at Berties
in 1968..

Jeez.. Well,
I remember them appearing at Berties all right, but there’s
no way I actually remember those dates – I had to check out
the New Zealand Music website
for those. My chronological memory is even more hopeless than
my actual memory, which is by now totally unreliable (while
entertaining).
And websites can’t be relied on either. Myth gets repeated as
fact, then gets plagiarised holus bolus by some media
history student and and slips into the realm of historical fact.
A case in point: I did an interview with a charming young reporter
last week to publicise the GBYR concert, and in the published
article she quoted some background research she’d dug up to
the effect that I’ll Be Gone ‘topped the charts and
stayed in the No.1 slot for twenty weeks.’ In fact I’ll
Be Gone would’ve been lucky to hold the No.1 slot for twenty
minutes – it may have been in the charts for twenty
weeks. So, you can see how mis-facts can get to be perpetuated
as actual fact.
Anyway, it’s going to be interesting catching up with Dave in
future. In some ways I can detect already that we’ve been leading
very similar lives, but in parallel universes – Dave’s been
in Melbourne since the mid-seventies and I didn’t even know
he was here, and vice-versa. That’s bass players for
you..