ED Kuepper is one of the greats of what used to be called the Australian “indie” scene.
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For those who don’t know Kuepper too well, here’s a brief history. In 1976, a 20-year-old Kuepper and his mate Chris Bailey pre-empted punk with the thrash anthem (I’m) Stranded. After three brilliant albums, Kuepper left The Saints to Bailey and formed a second seminal Australian band, The Laughing Clowns.
Bailey kept his songs of Irish Catholic confusion going with The Saints, while the German-born Kuepper kept the Teutonic fury going with the The Clowns, who were so bleak at times they made Nick Cave’s bands sound like The Wiggles.
The Clowns disbanded in 1985 and Kuepper released Electrical Storm, the first of more than 20 solo albums recorded with a steadily shifting and evolving cohort of musicians, under such evocative names as The Yard Goes On Forever and Ed Kuepper and the Institute of Nude Wrestling. Other projects included three driving hard rock albums under the name The Aints (geddit?) and a period in the 1990s when a solo Ed was mainstream enough to pick up ARIA nominations, and songs like Everything I’ve Got Belongs To You were all over the radio. By one count, Kuepper has more than 50 albums to his name, but whether it’s choice or necessity, the backing musicians have gradually fallen away, until now, Ed does just about everything.
Live, his solo shows have tended to be him with his guitars and a wooden or cardboard box for a drum, hit with his steadily stomping foot. While this allows for songs to be stripped back to their most basic, it can also mean that lesser songs tend to run into each other, so that it’s hard to differentiate between one number and the next. That not need be a bad thing. As Neil Young loves to say about the work he does with Crazy Horse: “It’s all one song.”
Bu as much as I hate to say it, as I sat there listening to set full of Kuepper classics, interspersed with a handful of songs from his newest album, Lost Cities, I kept wanting to see him put down the electric and pick up the 12-string acoustic that he’s used to record so many of these songs over the years.
The show was promoted as Ed playing in the style of Lost Cities, and I bought a copy of it, and 2014’s The Return of the Mail Order Bridegroom, to bring my Ed collection up to date. Open the Lost Cities CD, and there he is, sitting with his guitar held in the same upright style he played this show: and it’s a 12-string acoustic.
But enough of that. One thing Ed did at this show – and at others in recent times, as a sortie through Google revealed – is talk about his songs and explain their inspirations, often with extended, self-deprecating anecdotes that showed the funny human being under the stern Germanic demeanour.
In this way, he drew us into a set that had a run of Kuepper classics – Horse Under Water, Electrical Storm, Car Headlights, The Way I Made You Feel, Eternally Yours, Messin’ With The Kid and the encore closer, Everything I’ve Got Belongs To You – as well as new songs from Lost Cities, Collapse Board from the Clowns and Rue The Day from Smile Pacific.
He has always been an extraordinary guitarist, full of unusual chords and harmonic repetitions that give him a unique sound. At 60, he has carved his own place in the pantheon of Australian rock gods. And I’ll be back to see him next time he’s in town.
