Malcolm Pickup has been making music for over 40 years.
It’s said that his first band, Smashed Executive released the first Wellington punk single in 1979 and later with the new wavey Digits, he helped push the boundaries of what typified the genre in the 80s. One song was called “Greenies On The Carpet But I Caught It On My Hand”.
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His solo project Mary Briefcase, was an outlet for Pickup’s interest in electronic music and involved him playing guitar against a backdrop of alien sounds. Tracks like “It’s Afternoon” and “Reflesta Pictons, that we are premiering below, are beautifully mysterious.
A 12” Jupiter By Ridge the and full length Whisper of the Sheba Dawn both originally released in 1982 on Old Age record are about to be remastered and reissued by Epic Sweep/Lingering records.
We had a chat to Malcolm about his music.
Noisey: There is a sense of Eastern mysticism in the title Whisper of the Sheba Dawn? Where were you coming from musically at the time?
Malcolm Pickup: At the time of Sheba I was listening to the usual suspects, a lot of Kitaro, Eno, Can, and Rupert Hine. The title was really a selection of words that I liked the sound of. I nearly called it Lucid Dreams (Oneironaut’s Revenge). I still have the picture somewhere.
Is that a picture of your home recording?
The photo is of my recording set up at the time of Sheba. The MS20 I made Jupiter with in Wellington. I started Sheba in Napier. My son and I lived there for a year before moving to Auckland, and Sheba was finished there. The Teac, MS50s and 3200 I bought while in Napier. The 3200 was an ex demo machine, the only one brought in here. It cost me $NZ3500 in 1981. The same year I bought a brand new Toyota Corolla for the same amount.
Did Mary Briefcase play live?
I played live as Mary Briefcase in 1982, in Auckland, at the Limbs Dance Company rehearsal space, which burnt down several months later, nothing I trust, due to the music that was played there. My second piece was something I’d recorded with the Auckland Girls Grammar School choir, that I’d multi tracked and treated, and added synths to, and I played my Les Paul through a bunch of effects to the girls singing. The next live outing was 1988, this being the second No Wimps Concert, after the first in 1982. I had a bunch of different gear at this stage, and MIDI’d. At one point I plugged a solid body electric 12-string guitar in to a matrix synthesizer controlled by Robert Davenport. He had a couple of triggering drums also wired in, so that whenever he hit a drum it would warp my guitar sound. And when Robert got manic on the drums my guitar would sound like alien lobsters having a family conference at 100 fathoms. Best reaction of the evening, which surprised us both.
What was the reaction to the recordings in 1982?
Reception here was varied. Small groups of people liked it, Colin Hogg in the Auckland Star called it “open heart surgery sound track music”, which one has to take as a positive. Other people must have thought they were missing some key ingredient in their coffee. It didn’t matter either way to me because, once I’d finished it, Sheba was my favourite record for ages. Now with this re-master I’m playing it quite a bit again.
I’m curious as to what “Greenies On The Carpet But I Caught It On My Hand” was about.
I find that quite funny. No real intent, just words I thought went well together. Tony and I once wrote a song for early Digits called “Lion In The Tree Tops”, but it was too much for the other guys so nothing came of it. Sometimes I’d make up a song title, no connection to the lyric content, just to put people off track, not that the lyrics were that enlightening in the first place.
The Mary Briefcase retrospective (and file versions of it) is available at Lingering.
