Mattski No through road on the Surf Coast, Victoria, January 2008 Mildura, inland, a dusty spring, 2008I had hit my mid 20s and was on another no through road. Out of desperation I had picked up an acoustic guitar and tried to teach myself to extract a tone from the gravel and dust of it all.
Brutas Mudcake Fairfield train station, 2007Walking home from Fairfield station not long after Penny called it quits, Josh Pyke’s Private Education came on my iPod.
Brutas Mudcake Pounding the pavement, northern suburbs, Melbourne 2009The hypnotic opening quickly sucks you in like the hypnotic left, right, left, right of runners hitting the footpath. And sometimes it’s only on a long run that you can make sense of life’s many conundrums.
Chris Johnston Christchurch , New Zealand, 1983Last weekend, my older brother handed me a letter I had written to him in 1983 when I was 17. It was strange and lonely to read it; handwritten, large lettering, blue biro, a schoolboy.
Brutas Mudcake Rye foreshore, summer of 1988/89Seven years old, and I’d entered the orbit of popular culture and had an entrée to what was as the epitome of cool, teenager-dom.
Sevana Ohandjanian Berlin, Germany, December, 2012.Grabbing my phone from its position atop the toilet roll dispenser, I find the song. The only song that can turn the shaky breaths smooth, that sucks the trembling out of my fingertips.
Roger Wells, songwriter Pigdon St, Carlton, April 1979I woke my girlfriend Carol and played the song to her. "It's a hit," she said and went back to sleep.
Emma Westwood Geelong, 1977 Melbourne, 2014This kind of almost avant-garde compositional material – that would give the Herbie Hancocks and Frank Zappas of this world a run for their money – was actually created to appeal to children. Call me gob-smacked.
Fiona Price Family room, New Year's Day, January 1987As midnight struck, I stepped onto the patio and breathed in 1987. The tiles were still warm beneath my fourteen-year-old feet, but the New Year's air had the simmering cool of night after a hot summer's day.
Billy Miller Recording studio, 1977The last song I sing at nearly every gig is Joe’s version of Help From My Friends. It nearly kills me, because I, and most of my peers, don’t achieve that beautiful raspy tone of Joe’s easily.