Michael Carlos YHS '66
Bio Rant
I arrived in Sydney with my Dad in July, 1967. Got a gig in an amateur band, the Blues Breakers, the first night I was here, and played with them for about six months. I got a Hammond C3. Soon gave up all pretence about going to university and joined a professional band called Levi Smith’s Clefs. Worked at Whisky a’ Go Go – seven hours a night, six nights a week. It was here that I really learned how to play. The band was an Aussie institution, with members coming and going all the time. Some of the best rock and jazz musicians in the country would join for a while, or sit in for a few nights. I was the youngest and most inexperienced member, and had to learn fast. But nothing beats being surrounded by players that are all better than you.
The rhythm section of the Clefs finally split away and formed our own band, Tully. We were immediately popular and moved quickly into playing in a concert environment instead of bars and dances. The music was a hard-to-describe fusion of free jazz and acid rock. Imagine John Coltrane playing with Vanilla Fudge. Mostly we improvised, there wasn’t much rehearsal. We played at all the big outdoor events. The first of these was called the Ourimbah Festival (after the town where it was held) and this was Australia’s Woodstock. Those of us that were there all feel a special kinship and bond from the experience. It was transcendental. It was the 60’s.
Tully were asked to play the music for the Australian production of Hair in 1969. This was my introduction to theatre, and I loved it. However, the band was not really suited to the task. We were wild and unpredictable and had none of the discipline required for professional theatre. We never played the songs the same way twice. There would be a different tempo here, a different feel there, and the cast nearly went crazy. So we left the show after six months and spent the next few years touring around the country.
Eventually the band sort of imploded like a bad marriage. Some of the original members left but the rest of us stuck it out while it died a slow death. We had become deeply involved in Eastern spirituality, Meher Baba in particular, and this got all confused with the music and just wrecked the band. For example, we became very concerned about our motivation for performing, and decided that making people pay money to see us was bad karma. So we ran a barter system, and would accept basically anything that was offered as admission to our concerts – a frozen chicken, a bunch of bananas, something to smoke. Well, as popular as this was with the surfers of Sydney’s northern beaches, it just didn’t work out. We couldn’t pay our rent with the bananas.
I left the band around 72 and reversed direction completely. I got some really big platform shoes and moved into commercial music direction and production. I went to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for a while to get some "theory", but I only got accepted because a fantastically open-minded woman there bent some entry requirements for me. I had made the mistake of mentioning Sophia University and showing them the grades I got there.
For a while I did jingles, which I hated enormously, but this made the connections for me to move on to other things. I got back into theatre again as the band leader of Jesus Christ Superstar. Here I first met Chrissie, the love of my life, and my partner for the past 25 years. We fell in love during the rehearsals for the second production of Superstar, in 75. She was the choreographer and I was the musical director. We had an idyllic, romantic affair up and down the islands of New Zealand as the show toured that remarkable country. In 76 our beautiful daughter Cassandra was born. She lives in Launceston, Tasmania now, and is of course older than I was when I last saw any of you Warriors.
I went on from musical theatre to film scores, and did the music for several Australian films – Storm Boy, Blue Fin, Dawn, The Odd Angry Shot. One was a little animated political satire called Leisure, that won an Oscar for best animated short in 197… jeez, I forget. It was the 70’s.
Then computers came into my life. I had been into electronic music since 73, when I got one of the first Moog synthesizers in the country. Around 78, a chap showed me the prototype of what eventually became the Fairlight CMI – the first computer based digital sampler and synthesizer. It was built on a pair of Motorola 6800’s, and that was it, I was hooked. At first software was only my hobby, then my obsession, and finally my profession. It just took over. In 1980 I was offered a job developing software for Fairlight. I accepted, and have been doing that ever since. I’m now the software director of our company. Please visit http://www.fairlightesp.com.au/ and have a look. The sound tracks for many of the films and TV shows you see in America are created using our products. All the dialog for Star Trek TNG (the good series, with Capt. Picard) was cut on MFX editors, using my software.
I don’t really know what happened to the 80s and 90s. My daughter grew up. My parents passed on. Before Dad died, however, he had a whole other life. If you knew me at Yamato, then you might remember that my parents were divorced in 65. Dad got married again in 72 to a wonderful Japanese lady named Toshiko, my new stepmother, whom he met when we were still at Tachikawa. They moved to Okinawa and soon had a daughter, Amanda, my new half sister. I’ve had the curious experience of only seeing Amanda about every six years or so, as an infant, as a child, as a teenager, and as a young woman. After returning to Australia for a few years, Dad moved his new family back to the place he grew up, Hood River Oregon. He died there in 85. Amanda now lives in Brooklyn NY.
Now it’s 2000 and the Olympics are about to open not far from where I live. I went to the Olympics in Tokyo in 64, when it was still a sporting event. I’m not going this time. Most Aussies are getting ready to hunker down for a couple of weeks with plenty of beer and watch it all on cable.
Well if you got this far you must have been a friend, or perhaps you had nothing better to do. Either way, thanks for reading. It was fun writing.
Michael Carlos
December 2000 "We had a great Christmas holiday in Tassie with our daughter, Cassie."
Chrissie, Cassie, & me on the beach in Tasmania.
"At work" circa 1975
Here's a picture Alan Hill (Blind Lemon Band - Johnson HS) took when he, Thompson, Zim & I went to see the Beatles in Tokyo. Circa '64
