YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME by PAUL WELLER Story by Martina Medica
If we had hours rather than minutes, we would listen to music through the tinny TV speakers, tucked up together under blankets on the mattress, arguing over the best of British.
HEY LITTLE GIRL by ICEHOUSE. Story by Nathan Johnson
Hey Little Girl does not remind me of anybody in particular. But it reminds me of Madrid. It’s what I heard at that moment, when I needed to hear something just like it, when I was between jobs and almost broke.
EVE OF DESTRUCTION by BARRY McGUIRE Story by David Oke
In the blue cloudless sky something caught my eye. At a really high altitude was something - metallic silver. It was glinting in the morning sun and moving very slowly.
A WHITER SHADE OF PALE by PROCUL HARUM Story by Jenny Mitchell
This was Franco’s Spain. The military dictator had brought in laws to limit freedom of association and groups of more than two people were not allowed to gather. We were in constant danger.
UNITED WE STAND by BROTHERHOOD OF MAN Story by Sue O’Brien
By the late 1980s, United We Stand had definitely moved into the extremely daggy category but there was just something about it that got the crowd going at The Candy. During the first verse, Irene would swan through the crowd trying not to strangle patrons along the way with what the girls deemed was the longest microphone cord in the history of the world.
WOULDN’T IT BE NICE by THE BEACH BOYS. Story by Lucia Nardo
We engaged Joie's Mazda 818's unofficial air conditioning—two windows down and eighty kilometres an hour—and raised our voices in chat and song over the wind streaming into the car.
POOR BOY BY SPLIT ENZ Story by Hugh Jones
Here in my city I’m fretting after my father, lost in the aftermath of a stroke and the creeping invasion of inoperable cancer.
ROCK AND ROLL DREAMS COME THROUGH BY JIM STEINMAN Story by Stephen Andrew
This song sounds like Phil Spector has died and is rising to heaven. The track is a religious pop song offering deep gratitude for the divinity that can sometimes find its way into the Top 40. The rest of the album is an abomination.
OH! YOU PRETTY THINGS BY DAVID BOWIE Story by Maria Majsa
The Scottish lads had all lost their front teeth [fighting, falling over drunk] and at some point they loved to flip out their plates so we could appreciate what proper hard men they were. This may or may not have been some form of Celtic foreplay.
Living It Up by Rickie Lee Jones
The pokey terrace in Abbotsford didn't seem so dark when I played the Rickie Lee Jones albums; the trains not so loud, the Hoddle St traffic not so near, the ghostly factory not so empty.