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Plunderers: The Blue Tinge
Live in the studio with Michael Levis riding the ‘altered states’ cassette

In August 1989 the Plunderers put on a show at the Lansdowne Hotel in Sydney to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. They played as Hippy Dribble and entertained the 500 delirious punters with sprawling renditions of late 60s songs (from “Open My Eyes” by the Nazz to Donovan’s “Epistle To Dippy”). A year later, on the 25th August 1990, they returned to the Lansdowne, again as Hippy Dribble, but this time playing an all-original set and launching a 12 inch EP called Wild Strawberri, with four songs: “Take A Ride” (one of the first songs Stevie and Nic wrote together in 1994), “Motels On My Mind” (a Stevie song pre-dating the Plunderers from their band Get Set Go) and two new songs “Dog The Bone” and “Hippy Dribble”.

A week later, on Monday 3rd September, the Plunderers booked the upstairs studio at Troy Horse and documented the set list (minus the EP songs, except for ”Take A Ride”) live to tape. Engineer Michael Levis had his hands full: not only did he have to keep a constant check on what was being recorded and adding special effects here and there, he also had to ‘ride’ the ‘altered states’ cassette. This 30 minute tape of psychedelic backwards music and tin whistle that Nic had made on his four track was a feature at all of the Hippy Dribble shows – either played through the PA’s cassette deck or on a portable cassette deck placed on the stage with a microphone swinging back and forth above it.

A few of these songs on The Blue Tinge were re-recorded for the Silver Apples album over the next two years (“Oceans So Deep”, “Just Another Dream”, “That’s Wow”, “People Why’re You Weeping?” and “Spree”), while some of these songs were from the Plunderers’ past (“Take A Ride”, “What’s Her Name”, “Lena Lee” and “Annette”) and others were unique to this recording (“Mermaid”, “Pisces”, “Together All The Time” and ‘Cross That Line”).

The Blue Tinge recorded live to tape on 3rd September 1990 by Michael Levis at Troy Horse Studio, Newtown. Stevie Plunder: guitar, vocals / Nic Dalton: bass, vocals, tin whistle / Geoff Milne: drums / Michael Levis: ‘altered states’ cassette. Mastered by Nic at the Nook 2019.

1, 3 (S. Plunder/N. Dalton) 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15 (S. Plunder/N. Dalton/G. Milne) 4, 6, 13 (N. Dalton) 12 (N. Dalton/P. Velzen) 5, 7 (S. Plunder/S. Higgie/N. Dalton)

P 1990 Plunderers C 1990 Plunderers