I was only interested in two things as a young kid – footy and music. In 1971 for my 9thbirthday I was offered the opportunity to learn any instrument I wanted. Drums, guitar, piano – are there any other instruments worth learning? Peter McKenna had kicked 143 goals in 1970 and was on his way to 134 in 1971. He’d also just released a shocking EP – Things to Remember / Lady oh Lady – but I had a copy and loved it, and so it was guitar by the length of the straight – just like Peter Mac. I owned three albums as well – The Essential Beatles, a Simon and Garfunkel self-titled album, and something by Alison Durban and Johnny Farnham (another shocker). I couldn’t wait for guitar lessons, but my teacher taught me Rock of Ages and similar rubbish. Not a Beatle tune to be seen. Happily we moved house the following year, too far from the guitar teacher to make it worthwhile Mum and Dad continuing to torture me with his guitar lessons. I relied on listening to 3XY and trying to work out songs that I recorded on my tape recorder during Rocktober. In grade 6, a girl I liked said she knew all the words to Angie by the Stones. I told her that wasn’t possible, but she sang the whole thing to me and then never spoke to me again. I worked out the song later myself from one of my bootleg radio recordings, but it was too late by then.
Just one? I’m going to cheat and name two entire albums – Blood on the Tracksand Desire. I was in year 9 and 10 when those two albums came out – I bought Desire, borrowed Blood on the Tracks, and bought myself both songbooks and a third Dylan songbook with everything else he’d recorded since the early 60s, most of which I’d never heard. I spent two years in my bedroom learning every song on both albums, which is basically how I learnt guitar, including how to play and sing at the same time. I rarely played for anyone else – our school had a few decent guitarists but by this time I didn’t even have my own guitar any more. I’d borrowed my mate’s guitar (Paul Barclay of ABC fame) and hung onto it for years until his old man made me give it back. If I have to pick a song, the one that resonates most for me from these two albums is You’re a Big Girl Now. It had a Bm7, a chord I’d never encountered before, and run downs and suspended notes could be worked in to make a proximate likeness to the original, although the vocals were impossible to emulate. Years later when my daughter was born (sharing her birthday with Peter McKenna), in my head that became her song, even though it’s not a father / daughter song. I figured one day she’d grow up and leave me, as all daughters should. I learnt a lot just from that one song. I read in an interview that Dylan had said he could hold his breath (and a note) longer than any other singer, which may or may not have been true, but it was certainly hard to replicate his vocalisations. In that sense I’m a bit of a purist – if I’m going to cover a Dylan song, I’m going to try to hit every note like he did – which tends to limit the number you can successfully cover. I played You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go at my Mum’s funeral and Meet me in the Morning was a staple in a band I played in for years (both from Blood on the Tracks). It’s been interesting to discover in recent years that a lot of the songs on Blood on the Tracks use alternate tunings, so I had a bit of fun re-learning Buckets of Rain in open E tuning down one of my lockdown rabbit holes.
Listening to Dylan, including You’re a Big Girl Now, made me realise that music can be, and should aspire to be, meaningful, not just senseless drivel or mindless beats. I’ve always been drawn to the combination of the lyrics and the music, and at one time aspired to formally study Dylan’s music. I was a literature student at university for years, mainly German, plus English and American, and read but didn’t study a lot of Australian and some Russian literature. I could appreciate the layers in Dylan’s lyric, and later (now) also appreciate both the simplicity and the sophistication of his music. But Dylan hates analysis of his music, so that put me off. Plus I found critical musical writing to be either obsequious or nasty, in the main, or just wrong, and didn’t want to get into that. Robert Forster from the Go Betweens is a great analyst of music, and I’ve just started reading The Philosophy of Modern Song by Dylan. Only read musicians if you want to read about music.
I hadn’t played You’re a Big Girl Now much for a few years before my daughter was born, but it was in my head immediately she arrived. We’d been living in Malaysia for a few years, and Sandra had only previously shared the gender of the baby with her mum, during a visit home about halfway through the pregnancy. I didn’t know we were having a girl until Lauren popped out - if 16 hours labour can be described as “popping out”. She’d made a mess of Sandra on the way out too, so I sat there holding Lauren while the midwife tended to Sandra – shit-scared because suddenly I realised this parenting thing was for life. And that seemed like a long time and a big responsibility. If Lauren was going to be a big girl one day, I was going to have to be a big boy, and fast. ,
I can change, I swear. I do keep trying to be a better person. Song 2 – THIS IS ME - key questions Introduction: How would you describe YOU – your goals, personality, attributes, challenges? Serious. I do take the piss quite a bit, and can see the funny side of most things, just not when it affects me (!). I don’t suffer fools gladly, and I can come across as grumpy, but as a Collingwood supporter, you have to be pretty bloody resilient and optimistic, so there is that. I like music, literature and films that depict the dark underbelly of life – hence my love of Tom Waits and Brecht/Weill cabaret-style songs. Life is a shit-show for an awful lot of people, so if music ignores that, it’s not fair dinkum. But music can lift you up – one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life was a Bach organ concert at the Cologne cathedral. And music is a hell of a lot more fun when played with people. I have busked outdoors in a German winter, played in duets, trios and bands and done a bit of solo stuff and it’s always better when you nail a number playing with other people – it’s more challenging to play with others and therefore more rewarding when it works. At heart I’m a team-player, and much as I like a quiet beer by myself, it’s a bit special to be able to look other people in the eye, raise a glass and say well done.
I’m going to pick a song that exemplifies an attitude to music and a performance when I heard that song for the first time that changed my ideas about playing guitar. In 1985 I was studying in Germany – actually I was drinking a lot, eating badly and studying a bit. I did complete a course in Berlin in the 1920s and another one on the theatre of Bertolt Brecht, so I managed to imbibe a bit of local culture and history, but the highlight of the semester was all the live music I saw with my college friends. We saw Screaming Blue Messiahs, INXS, Style Council and a bunch of other solo artists and bands I can’t remember any more. But the life-changing experience was seeing Billy Bragg in a dingy disco-cum-pub near where we lived. My British mate, also studying in Germany and with whom I’m still great friends, told me I had to see this bloke – he was like no one else I’d ever see again, according to Andy. And from the first song I was blown away – he played guitar like it was a weapon, which given his love of Woody Guthrie (this machine kills fascists) shouldn’t have been surprising. Songs like The Busy Girl Buys Beauty, Richard, From a Vauxhall Velox and Strange Things Happen were an assault, and I’d never seen anyone play like that before. The song I most identified with, and one which I think does capture some of my approach to life and attitudes about the way the world is, was It says here – a song critical of right-wing press, and the suppression of facts in order to tell one side of the story and denigrate the other. Basically about using power to bully or intimidate. BB was entertaining, funny, angry, rabidly anti-Thatcher and anti-Tory, singing poignant but powerful songs that mixed love and politics like no one else. He ticked every box on my list of criteria for great music, and summed up my own politics at the time. When I got home from my year overseas I bought an electric guitar and an amp, learnt every song from Spy vs Spy and Brewing up with Billy Bragg and did some angry solo gigs. Not exactly background music for those particular functions, but a lot of fun for me.
Thank you for asking, comrade. Anger at injustice and prejudice. But BB’s broader catalogue has humour, love, human mistakes, which probably describes me more accurately.
Spending a semester in Germany in the mid-80s with a bunch of UK students, who were all anti-Thatcher, was a perfect environment in which to be exposed to Billy Bragg. All we needed was the wall to come down.
When you wake up to the fact That your paper is Tory Just remember, there are two sides to every story Song 3 – SHEDDING THE BLUES ( Connecting, Collaborating, Creating ) - key questions
Introduction: How did you come to be involved with Shedding the Blues? We’d moved to PL during COVID, having had the house since 2008. I’d always wanted to make the move, COVID provided the opportunity, although not under great circumstances. We have friends here who had heard of StB, and suggested it to me, knowing I’d played in bands.
I’m going with the first song I brought to a Live at the L session: Ingrid Bergman.
2019 had been a tough year. One of my best mates and band mate, Greg, had died early in the year, suddenly in his sleep - cause of death Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS). Didn’t even know that was a thing. Then in the middle of the same year my dad died, fell off his bike and broke his neck – single bike accident. No one knows how he managed to fall off. Then 2020 brought COVID and it felt like the world was ending. When I arrived at StB in the second half of 2021, it seemed to be just what I needed – gentle, no expectations, no pressure. I wanted the first song I brought to the group to be something that reflected that. Ingrid Bergman was a song Greg and I had done at Xmas parties as a duet, and later as a trio with our bass player friend Mike when we finally fessed up that we had a side hussle in Xmas gigs. It’s actually a song written but never recorded by Woody Guthrie, and brought to the world by Billy Bragg as part of the Mermaid Avenuealbums. It’s gentle, a bit funny and a bit raunchy – a kind of musical stalking, 1950s style. It was a long way from loud and heavy music I played in my previous band, and reflected where I was at with a lot of things at that particular time.
It’s a song about the time Ingrid Bergman left her husband and went off to Italy to be with film director Roberto Rossellini (Isabella Rossellini was their daughter) when they made the film Stromboli. Her pregnancy prior to their marriage created a scandal in the US which almost destroyed her career there. So the link to StB should be obvious.
This old mountain it's been waiting All its life for you to work it (The next line is censored)
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Shedding the blues:The Three Song Project Archives
April 2023
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