On Monday, I posted a memorial to my friend and music colleague John Murphy.


As follow up to that memorial, I'm also paying tribute to John's life's work by curating a full day of programs and music clips, reflecting 36 years of John's career. 

As with any artist, I believe his work should speak for itself, without needless commentary.

My gratitude is extended to friends at Network Awesome, and in particular Cory Vielma (who performed with John and me this year at WGT), for featuring this retrospective in their programming.

The stream of programs will remain in the archives at Network Awesome at this link: http://networkawesome.com/2015-10-15​

~Zeena 

PROGRAM GUIDE:

Live Music Show:

SPK - Metal Dance live
John Murphy - My Father of Serpents
Krank / The Grimsel Path "Verdant Hum"
Last Dominion Lost "Towers of Silence"
KnifeLadder: Dervish - Live at Le Zebre de Belleville, Paris 06.10.12
KnifeLadder | Head Of The Serpent
DEATH IN JUNE- Come Before Christ and Murder Love
THE ASSOCIATES - KITES
Die Weisse Rose live at WGT Leipzig 2009 (2)
Recorded at Wave Gotik Treffen Leipzig
Special Guest this Evening : John Murphy on the drums!
Of The Wand And The Moon & John Murphy
NIKOLAS SCHRECK and JOHN MURPHY LIVE - 27. 09. 2014 Tower Transmissions Club Puschkin Dresden
Last Dominion Lost (Shell In The Chamber) on The Network Awesome Show
Zeena Schreck - Ritual Performance WGT 2015
Whitehouse: John Murphy + Konzetrat - Creativisme Clearance.wmv
Featuring John Murphy on percussion.
WHIRLYWIRLD - WINDOW TO THE WORLD (Dogs in Space tribute)
Krang - Quick warp ( 80's Industrial Noise John Murphy )
Last Dominion Lost – Stagma
Whirlybird - Boys of the Badland 
Andrew King with John Murphy: London
Andrew King - A Song for John Murphy (Schmerz) 




Art Film:
​
Beatup - A film about John Murphy in a squat in London 1980 with Nick Cave and Anita Lane. Music by Ollie Olsen. Made by Michael Buckley.


The Network Awesome Show:

John Murphy Taped Live from NK, Berlin.
July 23-27th, 2012
in Episode 7 featuring:
Last Dominion Lost live performance of "Whispers"
http://www.auditionrecords.com/ar072.php

​
Talk Show:

1. KnifeLadder - John Murphy interview from Heathen Harvest

2. John Murphy interview for Melbourne-based Ghost Productions


Documentary

Krautrock The Rebirth of Germany

Krautrock was one of many major influences on John Murphy's music. It is therefore fitting and poetic that John made his final home in Berlin, Germany.


Movie

Dogs in Space

Movie about Melbourne Post Punk scene (with John Murphy cameo credited as Leanne's brother, also seen playing keybord @ timecode 35:30)

This is an interview excerpt with John Murphy and Douglas P. [Death in June] talking about Dogs in Space:

DP:  Following on with that John, when I first visited Melbourne in the mid 1990s, which was probably our first live show with Boyd and yourself as a percussionist, your name and my association with it seemed to arouse a huge amount of curiosity.  What did you do in Australia before leaving for England?
JM:  Slept a lot!  [laughter]  I left on January the 1st, 1980 to go to England, in January 2nd I arrived in London, but I'd been involved since '77 in the local... we'll say the 'alternative music industry' in Melbourne, from mid '77 onwards.   I'd been involved in playing from drums in punk bands through to getting involved in early electronica and stuff with other local musicians and we did reasonably well, but we just thought the grass was greener elsewhere.  We just felt that we could only get so far up and then we hit a brick wall.
DP:  Is that the 10% that you allude to that still continue in music?  You said that 90% of the people you had worked with had fallen by the wayside.  These people like Nick Cave you worked with, and Roland S. Howard, didn't you?
JM:  Well I never actually worked with Nick Cave, but I knew him from '77 onwards, and Roland as well, but basically people like that I'd known from the beginning they'd continued on, but there was a lot of people who just were probably equally as talented in their own way, but just got fed up with literally banging their heads against the wall.  They felt that way and the just fell by the wayside, decided they wanted to go in other areas, but I kept on - I can't say much more than that.  For some reason I was just compelled to keep going, even if I was considered peculiar by a lot of the people back in Melbourne.  I didn't get a lot of appreciation, a lot of people actually were quite antagonistic as times, so at times it was difficult.
DT:  I'd imagine that through your involvement in the music scene, you led into involvement in the film Dogs In Space as well?
JM:  Well, yes, I got involved in that, because I sort of had known the director.  Back in '79 in the punk days, I appeared as an extra in his first ever film.  Then I met him again in '85 or '86 and I heard he was doing this film about the formative years of the late 70's/early 80's in Melbourne, and I heard he roped in this other person I know to do the soundtrack and he was getting all the information wrong, as I remember quite well before I left to go overseas.  So I sort of stuck my foot in the door and demanded to be involved with it, originally just as the musical advisor, but I eventually got to be assistant music director, and I wasn't meaning to be an actor in it.  He basically roped in everyone he could to act as extras, and I just played a few different roles, but he wanted me to play myself as a younger person which I found a bit difficult, and I tore the ligaments on my left knee the second day in the recording studio doing the soundtrack of the thing, so I ended up in the film playing a Hell's Angel on crutches!  [laughter all round]  And I actually was on crutches.. it was an amusing experince!
DT:  I watched it again recently, and I looked out for your name in the credits, and I guess it must have been you listed as "Leanne's brother", as well, and Leanne was Lucio's girlfriend, that fat chick that turned up at the house...
JM:  That was the Hell's Angel character, he was meant to be from the country, with the dorky brother who sort of demands....
DT:  Were you the guy with the beard, were you?
JM:  I was the sort of biker type on the crutches, you know....

Many who worked with John knew he had been struggling with illness for quite a long time. But he concealed exactly how ill he already was. Music was his entire life and it was clear that the thought of retirement, or resting out the illness, was not an option in John's mind. I was therefore very fortunate to have John perform with me earlier this year at WGT. It was a musical ritual invocation to Seth, the ancient Egyptian god who guides safe passage through death to immortality. It was to be John's second to last performance. 

On the night and early morning of John's passing, he was not alone. He was surrounded by a lot of love from his wife, Annie, and a small circle of close friends. I was among them. At his request, and according to his religious beliefs as a Gnostic Christian-Tibetan Buddhist, I conducted the customary Tibetan tantric Buddhist and ancient Gnostic Sethian transference of consciousness rites which bridged his passage from this waking dream reality into the ultimate reality of pure light. It was a peaceful process. John is now liberated from all pain and suffering.