Two fans of 70s Australian rock group, The Triffids, have written books about its lead singer, the late David McComb.<\/p>\n
Vagabond Holes: David McComb<\/em> and the Triffids and Beautiful Waste: Poems<\/em> by David McComb (The Triffids)<\/em> are the result of 3\u00bd years of research by the books’ editors, Curtin University of Technology’s Associate Professor Niall Lucy and University of Melbourne’s Dr Chris Coughran.<\/p>\n Associate Professor Lucy said they were fans of The Triffids, and David was an old friend.<\/p>\n “This year marks the 10th anniversary of David’s death and I still miss him,” he said.<\/p>\n “We felt that he was a music icon in need of greater respect and attention, and set about the task of writing about him.<\/p>\n “However, the challenge was to write about him without reproducing the clich\u00e9s of the standard rock biography.”<\/p>\n Vagabond Holes<\/em> is unique in how it critiques McComb’s life and the Triffids.<\/p>\n “We wanted it to be more than a traditional biography and more than a simple chronological narration,” Associate Professor Lucy said.<\/p>\n “This is one of the reasons why we gathered contributions from a number of people including musician Nick Cave, poet John Kinsella and my sister, comedian Judith Lucy.”<\/p>\n Perth-born David McComb graduated from Curtin with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1981.<\/p>\n Associate Professor Lucy and Dr Coughran were given access to McComb’s literary archive from which they produced a collection of his poetry in Beautiful Waste<\/em>.<\/p>\n The books are published by Fremantle Press.<\/p>\n Associate Professor Lucy is a Research Fellow in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts in Humanities at Curtin. A member of the consultancy board of Derrida Today, his books have been translated into several languages. They include Debating Derrida<\/em> (1995), Postmodern Literary Theory<\/em> (1997), Beyond Semiotics: Text, Culture and Technology<\/em> (2001), A Derrida Dictionary<\/em> (2004) and (with Steve Mickler) The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press<\/em> (2006). His Running On: Essays on Australian Culture, Now<\/em> will be published in 2010.<\/p>\n