My friend Gina sends an email with the subject line ‘Resident Rogues’, inviting me to see a swing/country/gypsy music band from the US in a little bar called the Merri Creek Tavern. She tells me a story as we wait to see the band.
The song reached in hard and touched me. That night I have a fan moment and purchase three of Corin's CDs during the interval.
Mary Gauthier entered my little world and reinforced the notion that songwriting is a great art form as worthy of any other. To me, she was, until then, an unknown master of songwriting.
Save for the weeds, not much grows in our front yard. The soil is rubbish, almost literally. “What’s the plan?” my neighbour says cheerily, as I'm weeding.
I'm up on top of the house looking at a hole in the roof. A storm is coming. I’m thinking rain, I’m thinking possums, I’m thinking Handyman, wherefore art thou?
Holidays. Family drives. Family songs. Even singalongs. For Darren 'Smokie' Dawson and family one Paul Kelly song rises above them all.
Then, in a most respectful and mournful voice they started singing. It was a song based on a true event from the Easter Uprising of 1916 which marries the personal to the political, the blood of resistance to the marrow of love.
While I loved music and sat in class day-dreaming that the girl sitting in front of me in class was the girl Marc Bolan swooned over in Hot Love, I hated school, a situation reflected in my term reports.
I’m standing at the end of a long queue talking to a complete stranger. We both agree we never do this sort of thing. Myself, I’ve generally abided that warning about meeting your heroes.
The afternoon sun came through the west facing window as I tinkered on some project and the radio was glued to Radio National. The radio has served me well after being rescued from a dumpster.