Everyone has a playlist of pain, the songs that bring the sometimes forgotten, partly processed pieces of our past to come rushing to the surface, raw, to be felt again.
When I’d be driving, and one of ‘our songs’ came on schmaltzy radio station 2CH, I’d crank it up, sing along and think of you. I’d flash back to moments in our childhood – just the good times – imagining you in the passenger seat, singing too.
Music and mourning meet in our latest collection, The Grieving Stories. Twenty tributes to mothers, fathers, friends, siblings, teachers, colleagues.
At home and still in my funereal black, I do the obligatory YouTube search for the track. The internet soon shepherds me away from The King’s back-catalogue to a tear-invoking power-ballad from a band I’d followed since the 1990s.
You can tell by the catch in Neil Finn's voice that it was a tough gig to play and sing this song for his former band mate.
As a Bowie aficionado Jack couldn’t hold a candle to Dennis, but this track burns deep at the best of times, and obliterates him in the worst. Such as now.
In a clandestine operation my wife had left me and took everything but my beloved stereo system in the lounge room (including 500 or so records and a CD collection that was rapidly catching up) and, in the spare room, a single bed.
Rick Kane Perth, April 2006Someone asked, “Where’s the music?” This would be the cathartic moment. This would be where the pain flowed out as the love poured in.
Vin Maskell Geelong, 1971, Melbourne 1974My eldest brother didn’t own many records.If my memory serves me well, the albums he listened to were by The Beatles, a rebel country songwriter, some Dylan and Clapton, a little art rock, and some English pop by a red-headed protégé of Elton John.
Laura Grace Weldon Ohio living room,1970Supervising little kids’ baths was one of my dad's chores in the parental division of duties, so he’d sit on the toilet lid singing and strumming the guitar while we played in the tub.