Once in a while, someone who, in another time, might have been a poet or novelist, or even a visionary of sorts, who sees the world in allegorical terms rather than in the particulars of ordinary life, slips into the rock’n’roll scene. All too often, the unforgiving machine will make short work of him. Sometimes he survives.
Michael Smith, writing about Altiyan Childs in 2005
You can imagine my amazement reading those words early in December, when Altiyan Childs had barely resurfaced since The X Factor. The trail actually began when Michael’s review of World on Fire (which doesn’t include the above quote) was published to the music forum FasterLouder by username "Masonia", 23/11/05.
A comment came back, “Shameless plug alert!” to which "Masonia" responded a week later - clearly still buzzed to have a loyal reviewer come down heavily on the right side: “It’s a proud plug alert! No intention to offend .. Thanks for the support.. Woof!” and added a pull quote from the review: “..It’s all too easy to dismiss as pretentious..”
Wowser. I found that in the trawling I did the weekend after The X Factor ended. I tracked down Michael Smith, shamelessly intent on digging up, not dirt, but more gold; and a huge thanks to Michael for coming up with plenty of it.
But first, for those who are still asking: Why didn’t Masonia's album take off? That's really what I wanted to know when I asked Michael if he would agree to answer a few questions by email, as an industry insider who knew Masonia as well as anybody at the time.
According to Michael it’s perfectly straightforward. The industry didn't have a box that Masonia would fit into.
“It was independent, so it was always going to be a battle to get mainstream airplay. It was too well produced to suit Triple J, too “rock” if you will, yet too indie for Triple M.”
And for some band members, that was that. “Having had to bang their collective head against the brick wall of local indifference, the only real alternative was to take the band to Europe, where it would have struck an immediate chord. They knew it but it’s all down to how.”
There had been interest from Europe even before the release of the first single, with invitations to play at the German midyear summer music festivals of 2004.
Germany is considered by many now to be the heartland of rock. The Australian industry is small and isolated, a market that simply will not take risks on development of an outside chance in a world where pop has been the bedrock of the mainstream for so long. The exception, which in this little pond is itself a big fish, is Triple J’s “Unearthed” and similar protocols. If you can’t make it in either of those tight spaces, you just can’t make it.
“In the end, they were beaten by the tyranny of distance, the indifference here, the lack of funds to tackle the longterm effort of cracking a new market, of starting all over again, and whatever personal limitations inevitably arise when you have a band of individuals all reaching for the stars but being dragged down by the everyday realities – work, relationships, everything,” Michael sums up.
The strange twist came when Childs' father and Ronan Keating between them put him in front of the public on The X Factor and asked, What did people think? Perhaps this is the "not quite romantic, not quite bizarre" element of the story that leaves me unable to forget it, even a month and a world away from the event.
I’ll give you here a selection of quotes from those early articles by Michael Smith and the "unknown reviewer" from Access All Areas. I hope you'll enjoy the serendipitous nature of many of the things they wrote in those years as much as I did.
With thanks to Michael Smith, senior Assistant Editor, The Drum Media, Sydney.
A recent sold-out show at the Gaelic Club, the audience split evenly between the sexes, “went off”, with Altijan storming, stalking and attacking like a man possessed – possessed by a passion that starts somewhere in the guts and roars out through the heart. Unknown (Access All Areas).
And then there’s Altijan, described readily by his bandmates as “inspirational” – a whirling dervish both confrontational and beguiling who commands attention by not just delivering the songs he so expertly crafts but dramatically living them out before an often startled audience. Ibid.
“I just explode on stage,” he explains, not entirely sure himself of the nature of the transformation that occurs when he fronts a microphone. Ibid.
(re Altijan’s teenage years) There were Battle of the Bands and serious offers from serious industry figures who, even then, were much taken by the animated kid and songs that seemed to be coming from someone twice his age. Ibid.
Guitarist Kris Petersen: “So I walked in there, turned everything up to full, we hit the first chord and I thought, ‘Yeah, I want in!’ ... I’d seen them a few times and remember walking and thinking, ‘Shit, that’s massive,’ and I couldn’t even comprehend how big it is now. MS 2006
Here, even in the greatest song, it’s obvious that for Altiyan, or the personae he creates in his music, love truly is a battlefield, and never has disappointment and despair sounded so uplifting. Masonia music has the grandeur of the best U2 or Tool with the edginess and, occasionally, raw spleen those bands only display occasionally today ... Ibid.
... But in conversation, Altiyan does tend to make his points as if he was a character created by Nick Cave for his apocalyptic novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel ... When Altiyan invokes the devil, he’s not talking the usual rock’n’roll/blues pact with the devil thing, the obvious sex’n’drugs trip. His writing tends to be heavily metaphorical, and for him, the devil is the chasm of rejection in love. MS 2005
Altiyan: “ These are songs of redemption, songs of hope [World on Fire]. Especially after drinking with the devil, I think we all recognised his face very well and we came out of that, and this record is truly about recovery and forgiveness ...” Ibid.
Altiyan: “ It’s so easy to give in to the beast and become as the world, instead of breaking the laws of nature and being a real man. I had to be struck down by the Female, by the Corporate Man, by the Greedy Man, all these things had to happen to us together. We could have easily gone the road of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, but instead we didn’t even opt for it, it took us towards the light instead of the darkness. Everything, from music to media, was telling you, forget about it, just give in to us and we’ll give you happiness with this drug, with these clothes, so the Plastic Scene really, in our world, has melted, and we’re back.
"We’re back from Hell really, I think.”
Motion into Lyric: Altiyan's Child Blog and Website
World on Fire can be ordered online from JB HiFi.
© Kathy Tuppurainen 2010
