Beach house records – part 2
Vin Maskell Moggs Creek, Australia, 1983 to 2013 Part 2 of our three-part series about family, a beach house and its record collection: from The Screaming Tribesmen to The Girl From Ipanema.
Music and travel – Backstreet Boys, Joni Mitchell, REM…
For Paul Chai, music and travel are inseparable. A photo might trigger a memory, he writes, but the right song will trigger a feeling.
Have I Told You Lately by Van Morrison
Lucia Nardo Hospital, Melbourne, 2015 There’s only one way to take a diagnosis of cancer in our family. You get on with it. But the day of Martin's surgery, I’m not getting on with it very well.
Dream A Little Dream Of Me by The Mamas and The Papas
When I sang, it was if he flipped the switch of his purring motor to a low level so he could listen to the words properly.
The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan
Nick Gadd London, 11p.m., December 1987 I didn’t have money for new records so I resorted to Peckham Public Library, whose music collection was free of the shoegazing guitar bands I preferred. I was forced to explore other genres .
Pinball Number Count on Sesame Street
Emma Westwood Geelong, 1977 Melbourne, 2014 This 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.
Hymn To Freedom by The Oscar Peterson Trio
Stephen Andrew A funeral parlour Please play Oscar Peterson’s Hymn To Freedom when I’m done. For me. For you. Send it into the silence after all the talk has stopped.
No Longer There by The Cat Empire (A Black Saturday story)
Sam Lawry Kinglake, winter, 2008 And then we were in Kinglake. It was beautiful. The roads followed the hills, through the trees. It was such an achingly typical Australian bush landscape.
Bare Foot Days by Smacka Fitzgibbon
Colin Ritchie Thomas St Noble Park circa 1955 / 1956 At some stage I was taught how to operate the radiogram. From then on I was designated the DJ.
All Or Nothing At All by Vince Jones
Nick Gadd Kitchen, Saronno, Italy, January 1990 I was working as an English teacher at a chewing gum factory, and Lynne had a job at a language school in Milan.