It would be overstating it to say that we came to Melbourne because of Vince Jones. But it didn’t hurt that you can find performers of his calibre there.
I’d heard that he might be up this way. Somewhere. ‘Heard that after the band had fallen apart he had headed north. But how far north?
Mike Rudd wanted to turn music on its head; like an abstract artist he wanted to create a new tonal reality, a blueprint for Melbourne’s live music scene to follow.
My workmates were all well and truly on the Razor's Edge in one form or another. Ex druggies, pregnant at 15, split multiple marriages, wild Lebanese girls on the run from strict families in the southern states...
Well before Took The Children Away by Archie Roach was the 1970 song Brown Skin Baby (They Took Me Away) by Bob Randall.
During our correspondence in 1988, the Church’s Starfish LP came out. We both fell in love with it immediately, especially the song, Under The Milky Way.
We didn’t always talk about music as I sensed a history there Stephan was keen to let rest, but it was fun when we did.
This is big sky music, languid yet powerful, like a wedge tail cruising on an updraft. The spirit of the sound echoes the spirit of the land.
It was a typical example of a poky old corner pub with a strong local identity; often, it was packed out on band nights. Usually, we’d play from 8.30 till 11.30 pm, with a couple of small intervals, and the price of entry was $2 – yep, $2!
Before I moved South, the young people I often worked with in remote communities in Central Australia would listen to local Indigenous musos singing in the many languages of the Territory over whitefella stuff any day.