DAVE GRANEY (with the Coral Snakes, and The Dave Graney Show)

Dave Graney has grown into one of the most eccentric figures of Australian music, evolving a narcissistic sardonic persona which spills into his eclectic soundscape.

He started on his path in music in 1978 with The Slunks, a punk band in far-flung isolated Mr.Gambier, South Australia. At a party in metropolitan Adelaide he met drummer and wife-to-be Clare Moore and formed Sputnicks. In 1980 they moved to Melbourne with The Moodists, contemporaries of Birthday Party, compared to the Go-Betweens. In October 1983 the Moodists did what a lot of the 'in tune' bands of that time did, and relocated to London.

The Dave Graney name moved to the front of his bands after the Moodists broke up. While Clare continued to play music Dave seriously considered quitting. In the process he listened to a lot of very diverse music, the music which would shift Dave's personal musical focus from the Moodists' punk ethic to the grab-bag of influences which would shape Dave's musical output from now on. In late 1987, just as Dave and Clare were starting to establish their new band, the Coral Snakes, British Immigration authorities ordered the two Australian musicians out of the country. They had to borrow money to comply.

Back in Melbourne, with every intention of returning to London as quickly as possible, Dave and Clare founded another band with which to play, just for the hell of it. To match his new musical orientation Graney had grown a big curled moustache and goatee a la Wild Bill Hickock and dressed in cowboy-style light brown suede and snake skin. The band, Dave Graney and the White Buffalos, was named after a seventies western novel. In May 1989 when the Moodists' London record company offered to record them the White Buffalos recorded an album, 'My Life On The Plains' in 11 days. A four track live EP, 'Codine' followed.

In June 1990, Dave, Clare, and one member of the White Buffalos returned to London to reunite with the rest of the Coral Snakes and record a new album. Recording and mixing lasted four weeks. The record didn't come out for two years. Dave Graney found himself caught up in his record company going into receivership. Waiting for the record's release the band toured, and then at the end of the year returned to Melbourne. By the time 'I Was The Hunter .. and I Was The Prey' was released in 1992, the White Buffalos had transformed into the new Coral Snakes line-up which went on to record an independently released live album, 'Lure Of The Tropics'.

In 1992 Dave Graney stepped into the mainstream music world with a song publishing deal with Polygram Music. He used the advance to record 'Night Of The Wolverines'. It wasn't a big advance. On December 20, the band recorded nine songs, two more over the next two days - Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes' mainstream debut. More significant was what the album revealed, the fertile imagination of its primary songwriter, shedding the cowboy clothes for the mysteriously elusive character of the 'Wolverine'. The album is one of the classic records of Australian music, Graney dipping into his own past as well as literature and film for inspiration. The album's contents, and high profile tours with Hunters And Collectors and Cruel Sea, set Dave Graney up to become a firm favourite with Australian music critics.

'Night Of The Wolverine' had been written and recorded without a conscious plan of attack. It just was. Going into the next album Dave Graney knew that he had everything going for him - critics, the audience and the record company. He could reinvent himself in line with the expectation, and did, changing into the larger-than-life satin-suited rock and roll hustler that's been associated with the Dave Graney name ever since. The next album 'You Wanna Be There But You Don't Wanna Travel' reached the national album charts, the band toured extensively, did a lot of television, and at the end of the year the industry put its seal of approval on the transition by naming Graney Best Male Vocalist at the annual ARIA awards. Dave Graney preferred to refer to himself as the King Of Pop. Ha ha.

'The Soft'N'Sexy Sound' was the companion album, Graney inventing songs and sounds to match his new status and self appointed identity. The record sold well again, but the joke went over most people's heads. In the meantime Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes had become an international act again and promoted the release of their records in the UK and Europe. When they returned to put the finishing touches to the next album, the record company demanded a song radio could play. Initially stunned, Dave took up the challenge and came up with 'Feelin' Kinda Sporty'. The band also agreed to have the tracks for 'The Devil Drives' mixed to suit what the record company was looking for. The record company thought it got what it wanted, but somewhere along the line everyone had lost the plot. Dave and Clare decided they had taken the Coral Snakes as far as they could. It had been ten years. Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes did their last shows at the Continental Cafe in Melbourne on the 20th and 21st of December 1997. It was time to start over with another set of musicians. It would also be time to find new record company support.

This was the beginning of The Dave Graney Show - Dave, Clare and friends deliberately turning themselves into a cottage business inside the rampant dog-eat-dog record industry. Same quality songs recorded on low budgets in modest home studios, back to making music for the hell of it, focussed on a world-wide following, room in August 2001 for Clare Moore to finally release an album of her own, 'The Third Woman'.

During 2003 Dave and Clair reformed the Moodists in support of a double CD of the group's recorded work, 'Double Fisted Art'.