WIDE OPEN - Kahvas Jute- Wide Open (Aztec Music)
Let’s get the basics out of the way first. Kahvas Jute were a bluesy guitar four-piece, born out the sprawling interconnected Sydney scene of the late '60s. They recorded this in three-and-a-half days at 
Festival Studios in Sydney a few months after they formed. It was released in January 1971 and has been pretty much lost from sight since then, apart from the odd bootleg and one half-assed reissue. One member left soon after the recording, the other three moved overseas in May 1971. End of story, really.
Except that through word of mouth this became a hugely sought after item, a legendary artifact of technically excellent, well produced home grown yet bluesy hard rock. It’s now been remixed repackaged & reissued on CD, with some extra tracks from a 2005 reunion thrown in for good measure. Although this was recorded as an album, so the reissue has only been cleaned up a little, not re-sequenced, so you still get the benefit of the A and B side effect- an extinct concept these days. As part of the ongoing Aztec Music series, it should go without saying that this is a handsome package, heavy with photos and detailed liner notes.
OK, that’s the background. Here’s where we start to go off the map a little, well my map anyway. This predates my musical history by a good few years, and embarrassing as it is to admit, Australian music pre-1977 isn’t a field I’ve explored much. It would perhaps be easier to dismiss this as hippy flotsam than actually make the effort to listen to it. A few cynical cracks about dope and lentils to start maybe, something about beards and kaftans, and maybe a Spinal Tap reference. Hatchet job done, 1000 words filed, and no-one’s the wiser.
Well, that would be a cowardly and stupid thing to do. This is a great record, and if you approach it in good faith you’ll be well repaid.
The opening track, “Free” starts with a circular riff that grows and rises behind Dennis Wilson’s deep vocals. It’s a gentle intro, and may lull you into a false sense of what’s to come, before “Odyssey” kicks off with a dirty squalling blues theme, and has a similar fell to Hendrix’s “ Crosstown Traffic”. “Up There” sneaks in what was probably a fairly bold reference at the time (“Come on up to my place, have a smoke or two…”) “She’s So Hard To Shake” may be about a particularly persistent groupie, or about a bad relationship with Afghan brown, but whatever, it has some deadly fuzz bass under those twin stinging guitar lines.
The LP proper closes with “Parade of Fools”, which runs just over nine minutes on the original release, and around 11 on the live version which is also included. There are long passages of this which wouldn’t sound out of place on “Kick Out the Jams”, and it was this song in particular that prompted me to call Aztec Music, who were kind enough to hook me up with founding member/bass player/good guy Bob Daisley for a chat. He was sharp, friendly, and very frank.
TJH- What did you think when you heard the LP was being reissued?
BD- Well, really, it was our idea to start with. In 1971 Festival- or Infinity Records, but really Festival- put it out and then did nothing with it. We were kind of a cult band, we got decent crowds and were well respected by a lot of people, but Festival, who’d set up Infinity to release this kind of stuff, never tried to break us out. We were very disappointed. Even though, you know, we never did it for fame or money; we expected them to at least get the music out there. and then in 1993 they reissued it on CD, and they did it again- nothing! You know, this is an LP that people want to hear, that sells for hundreds of dollars, and they just stuck a CD out there and did nothing with it. No promotion, nothing. We tried to buy the tapes back from them, but they wouldn’t let us have them. Eventually we convinced them to at least lease them to us, so we could do it properly. We remixed it just a bit, made it a bit warmer and much louder, so you finally hear it the thing.
TJH- How does it feel to have such a piece of work classified as “lost” for so long?
BD- Again, a lot of that is down to Festival- too many people who would’ve liked it just didn’t get to know about it. I remember the Masters Apprentices went over to the UK for their first tour, and when they came back they were interviewed about what was going on overseas, and they basically said- it’s all stuff like Kahvas Jute. When I was playing with Ozzy Osbourne, I ran into Malcolm Young in a New York hotel bar, and he was telling me about how him & Angus used to come see us…so for me, it was never lost, everyone who saw us or heard the album remembered us and seemed to like what they heard.
TJH- How are you finding the reaction so far, now that more people are getting to hear it?
BD- The reviews I’ve seen have been good. Like I say, the more people hear it the better, and most people who are only just getting to hear it seem to like it. You know, my daughters are in their 20s now, and it was always a favorite of theirs. Every so often they’d ask why I couldn’t do more to get it out there…and now I have!
TJH- “Parade Of Fools” was the real kicker for me…
BD- Oh yeah, that was always our showstopper, our big closing jam number that we always changed and stretched out a bit. Of course, it depended on the crowd and whatever fumes we’d been inhaling (laughs) but I always enjoyed going to town with it.
OK. While it’s an excellent record in its own right, it’s also useful as a roadmap of the times. It’s probably an indicator of why Greg Macainsh caused such a fuss when he made a point of writing short locally focused tunes for Skyhooks. It also makes it clear that there was no excuse for early 70s boy band crap like Sherbet. Whether you dig the Drones, or wank to Wolfmother, you probably need to hear this to sketch in some light and shade on Australian guitar rock, but not just as some kinda history lesson- it’s still a very vibrant creature.
If you read this quickly enough, and live in the right country, ABC TV is showing the whole Jute reunion show on September 14th, as part of their “Live From The Basement” series, and with a quick finger on the record button you can probably save yourself the price of a DVD, too.
As far as Aztec goes, they have a reissue of “Lethal Weapons”, in the works The punk/new wave sampler issued by a Mushroom Records catspaw that caused such a bitter split in the emerging Melbourne scene back in 1978…can’t wait. And a big thanks to Lou Risdale for hooking me up with Bob. - TJ Honeysuckle
