Granite Island Discs: Gareth Lewis
Gareth Lewis, the co-owner and booker of UniBar ADL; co-founder and event director of Beer & BBQ Festival and Director of General Admission Entertainment shares his favourite albums and musical moments.
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What five songs would you take to a desert island?
1. LCD Soundsystem – ‘All My Friends’
2. James – ‘Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)’
3. Gomez – ‘We Haven’t Turned Around’
4. The Drones – ‘Oh My’
5. Amyl and The Sniffers – ‘Security’
On Granite Island, I want to hear songs that I can feel. Songs remind me of the feeling I had when I first heard them, when I played them on repeat for days on end, where I was when I first saw them played live, or for the second time live or the tenth (before I was exiled to the retirement village of Victor Harbor and to live with the penguins).
If you could only pick one, what would it be?
LCD Soundsystem – ‘All My Friends’ (and ‘Dance Yrself Clean’, ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’, ‘I Can Change’, ‘Someone Great’, ‘Pow Pow’, ‘New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’, ‘new body rhumba’, ‘North American Scum’, ‘Home’, Yr City's a Sucker’, ‘x-ray eyes’, ‘Get Innocuous!’, ‘Tribulations’, and all of ‘45:33’).
Yes, it’s cliché for a middle-aged, middle-class, white bloke with a penchant for alternate varietals, mortadella and a lung torpedo to feel man-love for James Murphy. But I wholeheartedly embrace it. He speaks to me, he speaks to a specific time, a specific place, a specific fragility and self-worth. Those who aren’t in that specific demographic may not understand, but it causes this middle-aged man to well up. Every. Single. Time.
What’s your favourite album?
The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow. More clichéd white boy poetry for the post-Jeff Buckley generation. I love albums, I hate singles and I detest the drift away from the LP as the central piece of art. This album does not waste one second of its half-hour and change. It’s a delight from go to whoa – it’s what car stereos were invented for. I know every one of James Mercer’s perfectly obscure words and understand less than half of them. “After all these implements and texts designed by intellects / So vexed to find evidently, there’s still so much that hides”.
What’s your favourite song by an SA artist/band?
TONIX – any and all of their songs (catch them all live on December 14 at UniBar with J-Milla, Alex Hosking & Nathan Hui-Yi). I book South Australian bands every week of the year and there are shedloads of good ones with heaps of good songs. Jongo Bones & The Barefoot Bandits have a bunch of great ones, as does LOLA and My Chérie. Current top of the pops is Brad Chicken & The Bootstraps – ‘I’m Gonna Love You’. Do yourself a favour.
Favourite music-related memory?
Big Day Out. I went to every Adelaide show from 1997 (bar 2000) until working the final iteration in 2014. It shaped my musical taste; Soundgarden as a 14-year-old, The Flaming Lips on the Atrium stage, The Chemical Brothers in the Boiler Room, LCD Soundsystem side stage. It shaped my career and inspired me to work in music and festivals. I’ve travelled the world because of it, and I am privileged to work in a job I love every day. I met my heroes; drinking Wild Turkey with James Murphy in Sydney, hosting Ken West in my bar in Adelaide. And I have lifelong friends that I wouldn’t have without it.
General Admission Entertainment: @generaladmissionentertainment
