It was, yes, a Jim fanatic who led me to visit the grave. We had parted ways in volatile fashion before my trip. He’d expressed a lifelong desire to visit Jim’s grave. I wasn’t sure whether a casual photo of it would be a peace offering, or a taunt. I was, truth be told, quite fine either way.
But I remember watching Sinéad on stage. I remember trying to absorb some of her strength, to physically inhale it across the crowd. That’s how you construct identity, surely?
Congratulations to Stereo Stories writer Rijn Collins on the publication, today, of her debut novel, Fed to Red Birds.
It’s a classic punk song; raw, revelatory and raging. The Guardian claims it’s “one of the best singles ever made by anyone, anywhere, anytime”.
Their own webpage describes them as a cross between Diamanda Galás and The Birthday Party. I tell a friend they are like Bikini Kill mixed with Joy Division. We’re both correct.
Photo by Eric Algra. Geelong Library 2016. Rijn Collins was part of our very first show, at the Williamstown Literary Festival in 2014. But she wasn't there. Laryngitis. A croaky, very croaky, voice rang to apologise. The band, and a fill-in narrator, performed her very dry, very funny travel story about Jackson by [...]
I’ve been so immersed in music before that I’ve forgotten where the knife ends and my body begins. Sometimes I wear scars of songs that move me; a nick on my finger, a burn on my wrist.
I hung out at punk squats with pet rats and drum kits. The black lipstick wasn’t a success, but then, is it ever?
If you can mark your steps in the grooves of your favourite records – and we can, of course – then there will always be those songs that guide you in your leaps of faith until you land, safe and sure footed, on the other side.
With a scowl that could scorch the tops of crème brûlée, I would stalk through the bar to the alleyway to glower outside until the song ended. Even the rotting potato peels and pools of stale beer were preferable to hearing it again.