‘Just as we were amazed to look out at the sea on the Cinque Terre, people must come here and think the same. The view is beautiful,’ offered Claire.
‘I’m sure that’s true,’ I replied instantly, if a little ungenerously.
About 5.30pm on Friday, we’d somehow snaffled a table on the balcony at the Glenelg Surf Club. The waters of Gulf St. Vincent were flat and dazzling and postcardy. To our south the squat jetty swarmed with folks and kids, leaping into the drink, from the pylons. I hoped some had on their best swimming jeans.
Having established a theme, Claire pursued it with relaxed tenacity. ‘If there were tourists staying in the city, I reckon they’d really enjoy it in here. Don’t you think?’
I love a surf club, too. They’re proudly local and chances are your beer will be served by a young, often uncertain, clubbie getting up a few volunteer hours. The prices are decent, the grub’s often excellent and you know your coin’s doing communal good.
We then bought (unsuccessful) tickets in the meat raffle and this was also a petite joy.
To celebrate this tremendous fortune, we had a bag of chips (not my idea, I confess) and then discussed how our British friends are probably wise to call these crisps to differentiate them from their direct-from-the-deep-fryer brethren. It would save us the frequent indignity of this conversation:
Shall we get some chips?
Sure. Hot chips or cold chips?
Cold.
Why don’t we call them crisps in Australia?
Yeah, like the Poms. Would make life easier.
Dunno.
*
Vampire Weekend
After five years, one of my favourite bands dropped (nobody releases music anymore) two new songs, ‘Capricorn’ and ‘Gen-X Cops.’ The former is wonderfully atmospheric and reminiscent of their acclaimed 2013 album Modern Vampires of the City with its introspective lyrics about the past and our fragile hopes. Musically, there’s a lovely piano solo, string accompaniment, and a fetching melody that echoes some of their finest moments on tracks such as ‘Step’ and my desert island certainty, ‘Hannah Hunt.’
Claire and I saw Vampire Weekend at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre as part of their Father of the Bride tour in January 2020. It was magnificent with 27 songs played across nearly three hours. About four songs in that night the stage lost power twice and we feared our night would be unhappily early, but the faceless electricians got the voltage happening and the show went on. On the third attempt, they got through the delightfully named, ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.’
For me their music is literate and fun and smart. It connects to Paul Simon’s Graceland in style and execution. When it’s out in April, just after Easter, I’ll be all over the new album, Only God Was Above Us.
*
Roast Beef
Although it’s February we decided to have a Saturday roast. It’d been months since our last, probably in winter and so we enlisted the appropriately named Beefmaster barbeque and utilized the indirect method (does sound like an unsatisfactory form of contraception).
Is there a more comforting sound than that of a hunk of beef spitting and sizzling in the pan?
Food often lacks an accompanying musical score, so this is always a welcome domesticated commotion. I find the challenge is to just leave it alone and not lift the lid too frequently. I treat the meat like a kind of culinary Schrodinger’s Cat, wanting to peer at it constantly as if it’s slow art, thus lengthening maddeningly, the cooking time. Preparing a roast is best done as a duet with Claire being the gently guiding Dolly to my slightly dazed and doddery Kenny.
It was affirming ye olde fayre with the roasted cauliflower (is it really the poor cousin of broccoli; methinks not) and Belgium’s finest cabbage derivative, brussel sprouts, both emerging as unlikely stars and receiving a sitting/ standing ovation from us.
At 6.37pm on the patio attending to the soothing symphony coming from under the rangehood and nursing a sparkling ale (me) and gin (Claire) all was (briefly) right in our tiny beachy nook.
This cassette came my way when I was twelve. A Christmas gift from Mum and Dad. It made a deep impact upon me, and I’d wanted it for ages. Like a head-banded DK Lillee bowling, or Rick Davies playing footy for Sturt in the ’76 grand final, the pure and impressionable skill with which the gawky blokes of LRB harmonised made me quite starstruck. I imagine even then I was monstrously tone-deaf.
On my little tape player, I had this on repeat and at volume. Hearing it now on vinyl it rushes me back to 1978. Of course, I had no idea what the songs were about other than vague adult notions of love. As Claire noted, the vocal highlight is the dense opening line to ‘Reminiscing’ with their internal rhyme of ‘late’ and ‘gate’ and the exciting urgency. We’ve eighteen syllables following a trochaic (stressed-unstressed) rhythm-
Friday night it was late I was walking you home we got down to the gate And I was dreaming of the night Would it turn out right?
I’ve much gratitude for this gift from my parents and the effortlessly transportive nature of the music. Yes, it’s probably a bit soulless and as smooth as cat poo but it’s forever connected to my childhood.
Among the torrent of music that comes from Alex’s room is jazz and noise rock and the Beatles. I was surprised and secretly thrilled when I recently heard the slick tones of LRB and their deathless harmonies.
I took this during the official ceremony prior to the recent Test at Adelaide Oval. It’s Claire about to perform as the Auslan interpreter for Cricket Australia. I love these moments when the private and the public collide although I generally keep my thoughts in my head.
I was proud and thrilled and would like to have prodded the bucket-hatted bloke next to me in the Members’ and said, “How good is this? She’s very talented, oh, and by the way, I’m her husband.’ What a unique skillset. Other than for a post-match ‘kick and catch’ I’ve not trod on this hallowed turf so well done, Claire!
Utterly impractical and ridiculous. The car or the owner? Good question. I bought it in early 1991. Sadly, the odometer stopped working when it’d done 297,000-something and shortly after I sold it. I imagine, it then went, in an automotive sense, to God. I expect most of these are now in wrecking yards or serving as artificial reefs, home to snapper and sharks.
Commencing a long trip to or from Kimba, I’d often slide in Nevermind by Nirvana and spin the volume knob hard right. It was fun to pilot. I loved the sunroof, but it was noisy on the highway.
Still, it amused me and bemused my friends. I’ve now recovered although I’ll never surrender and own a station wagon, not even a Wagon Queen Family Truckster like the Griswolds on Vacation.
For me, the former wins more than it should. But sometimes disinterest rears up like a startled horse and I make an utterly sensible decision.
In July of 1993 I bought a pair of boots and trudged about in them for decades, across continents. I wore them to work. I wore them to the footy. I wore them everywhere.
During recent years when they began to require frequent repairs, I determined that new soles and patched holes in the leather toes were just steps to guarantee the immortality of my beloved boots.
I’d be buried in them.
But one day in September I drove to an Op Shop on the Broadway, flipped open the collection bin lid, and deposited my boots. They’d become heavy to wear and almost curmudgeonly. I now saw them through different eyes.
Suddenly, we were done, and surgical detachment triumphed. I didn’t stare at them wistfully, shed a lonesome tear or even have a rush of cinematic vision, showing thirty years of life’s high (and low) lights of me in my boots.
I then made my way to the kiosk where I looked at the beach and sipped a cappuccino and relished the cheerful afternoon breeze.
*
Claire’s car is also in its third decade. No mere toiler, it’s a treat to pilot: compact, nippy, and gently joyous. It zips along Anzac Highway like a nimble fawn.
Having done 435,000 kilometres, I’ve been wondering about the time it’ll need replacement. Looking online at the cost of similar vehicles we may need to up the insurance for it seems to be worth more than I thought. Evaluating the RAV 4’s condition has triggered some introspection and a rediscovery of personal values on longevity and utility.
But I hope we can celebrate the half a million milestone when it should get a signed telegram from the King or at least someone in the Palace who can use a pen.
I now feel refurbished sentimentality for this precious motor and its unswerving everydayness. It could star in its own Little Golden Book.
*
On Boxing Day, the transformative power of objects again grabbed me. By the airport I drove past a sprawling discount shopping centre, sat fat and foolish. Cars were parked chaotically in the creek bed, nose-to-tail on the verges and, if I checked, likely on top of each other too. Instead, I went to Mr. V’s record store on Semaphore Road. He offers no festive discounts.
Exploring vinyl albums is a sentimental experience. I am returned to being a teenager and these artefacts lead to a wholly immersive bliss. While I enjoy flicking through the modern releases, I find a deeper delight at the 70’s and 80’s section where my younger self forever lives. Rationing this indulgence, I ponder purchasing one of these:
The Boys Light Up– Australian Crawl
Straight in a Gay, Gay World– Skyhooks
Place Without a Postcard– Midnight Oil.
Rather I zoom across the Pacific and buy Hotel California. It’s unstoppably captivating and I’ve always surrendered to its narrative power. Kapunda’s a long way from the Hollywood and Beverly Hills setting of these songs but my connection is strong as steel.
Listening is a cheerfully simple, analogue experience. With a crackle the needle descends on The Eagles and I’m again in a boxy Kingswood patrolling the homely streets of Kapunda. It’s the clumsy sway of the last dance at high school socials (formals or proms to some of you). It’s the boyish allure of American cityscapes.
*
What to finally make of dumping my boots, refreshed appreciation for Claire’s car, and the untarnished radiance of an adolescent record? The past is seldom still, but sometimes rushes at us like a rampaging bull and leaves me standing in its dust, bewildered. I’m caught between nostalgia’s gilded cage and reality’s sharpening edges.
I bought my new turntable a house-warming gift yesterday.
Lenny’s Records on Henley Beach Road is near my work and poking through the racks, I contemplated Aja by Steely Dan and Living in the Seventies by Skyhooks before deciding on Bob Dylan’s tour de force, Blood on the Tracks. Nothing says welcome like an iconic album.
Living (mostly) alone decades previously in a farmhouse south of Wudinna, this CD was a Sunday evening ritual. With its warm songs of love and looming heartbreak, Dylan was excellent company, and offered much to ponder every rich listening.
On wintry nights I’d get the fireplace a-roarin’ and his wit and poetry were cantankerous comfort as the acoustic guitar and Minnesotan twang sprung about my big, empty home.
‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’ remains an uplifting song about impending hurt and there’s gleeful despair in the verse
I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.
Given the name’s lyricism, I’d like to visit Ashtabula, Ohio.
*
On Thursday evening with old Kimba friends Bazz and Annie we enjoyed the world’s greatest compilation album which, of course, is Ripper 76. Among its curios is the theme song from everybody’s favourite show, Happy Days.
Over Coopers and pepperoni pizza, we spoke of this, and I mentioned how The Fonz (Henry Winkler to others) is touring Adelaide next year to promote his biography and Claire will be the Auslan interpreter. How great is this? The other day I asked, ‘Happy Days began when we were about ten. Did you ever imagine you’d work with The Fonz?’ I hope she asks who’s his preferred Tuscadero: Leather or Pinky?
*
Having met Paul McCartney, the English singer Noel Gallagher from Oasis was asked how he felt and replied, ‘Macca’s a legend. It were fooking great. I mean my favourite band is Wings.’ Wednesday afternoon I popped on the triple live album, Wings Across America and loved side four’s closing track, ‘Listen to What the Man Said.’
Soldier boy kisses girl
Leaves behind a tragic world
But he won’t mind, he’s in love
And he says love is fine
It’s emblematic of McCartney’s enticing optimism and talent for a likable melody. However, Tom Scott’s soprano saxophone solo is the happy highlight, and I appreciated it soaring out across our summery garden.
My new turntable and I were getting on superbly.
*
I was reassured to read that Neil Diamond was in my top five Spotify artists for 2023 along with Karen Carpenter heir apparent Weyes Blood, Lana Del Ray, The Beatles, and Belle and Sebastian. This is largely founded on Hot August Night being our Friday evening ritual (imposed by me). It’s a splendid, intensely familiar way to farewell the week and muster in the weekend.
So last night on the patio with Christmas lights twinkling and candles flickering I dropped the needle on side three (it’s good to mix it up) and its exquisite ‘Play Me’ with
You are the sun, I am the moon
You are the words, I am the tune
Play me
Of course, on the second verse Diamond sings, ‘Songs you sang to me/Songs you brang to me.’ Brang? Yet again, Claire and I had the conversation during which we agreed passionately that English is a cruel language and yes, the past tense of bring should plainly be brang.
*
Late Sunday in Tanunda for a music festival, Claire and I had a brief chat with Here’s Humphrey star, retired naturopath and former deputy mayor of the Barossa, Patsy Biscoe.
Smiling, Alex returned to the secure fence of the Vines Stage. He’d been backstage meeting one of his adored bands, Bryon Bay’s own, Babe Rainbow. In the mosh-less pit, we’d stood right up the front for their mid-afternoon set and fittingly, the sun had spilled across the parklands for their summery psychedelia.
Inspired by Tame Impala, I loved their songs too and was pleased the bright, swirling music appealed to Alex. His day was already complete although we still had hours ahead of us. And here he was with his shirt signed and photos freshly pinged to his girlfriend Harriet, grinning like a shot fox.
*
An Auslan interpreter, my wife Claire’s working at Harvest Rock, and thanks to her around my neck I had a backstage pass. Walking from the car to the artists’ village I note each portable change room has a name on it by the plain door. Julia Jacklin, Baker Boy, Vera Blue.
I then pass a hunched, shuffling fellow wearing a beige jacket. He nods and I nod back. In the car preparing for the festival, I’d been playing his seminal album Odelay. On CD, of course. How else to return to the glorious, Gen X 90’s? A music icon and perhaps the ultimate Californian. Beck.
Later, I glimpse him alone at a table with a plate of chicken curry.
*
Across the brimming crowd I see Claire on the Auslan stage. American folk rock act The Lemon Twigs is finishing with melodies soaring and guitars blazing. Squeezing through the throng, two girls are pointing at Claire. She’s in black and signing in that remarkable language, expressing lyrics, melody and meaning. One girl says, ‘Isn’t she great?’ Her friend says, ‘Yeah, I love her.’ I smile; an anonymous figure with an undersized Greg Chappell hat atop his oversized head.
*
I’m back in the artist’s village and a big fella paces by. Built like a boxer, he’s familiar and I know his face. In the gathering twilight he gazes at his feet and then I remember him. Rockwiz. It’s Peter ‘Lucky’ Luscombe who drums in Paul Kelly’s band. He’s clenching the drumsticks that will usher in the second verse of Australia’s favourite seasonal song, ‘How to Make Gravy.’ We’ll all sing along to
I guess the brothers are driving down from Queensland
And Stella’s flying in from the coast
I love how the introduction of Luscombe’s drums and their magnificent energy echoes the family travelling home for Christmas. It also foreshadows the pending drama of their tale. I glance over again at his drumsticks, and these are enchanted. He disappears.
*
I’m up the back of the Harvest Stage. I peer up. Encircling us like ancient guardians, gum trees stretch and wave while above is the cityscape, newly impressive now, and emblematic of Adelaide finally being softly buoyant and sure of itself. Between sets, ‘Ego is Not a Dirty Word’ by Skyhooks surges over the blue sky, continuing the day’s uplifting nostalgia. It’s a Sunday BBQ song and my immersion into the world of the festival has arrived.
*
With the dark having risen up from the trampled grass there’s an earthy thrum. On the Vines Stage, Tash Sultana is coaxing all of her instruments to sultry life: guitar, drums, bass, saxophone, keyboard, flute. It all loops about and entangles us with aural warmth. Over on the Auslan stage and all in black among these compelling atmospherics, Claire is now backlit and silhouetted, still providing insight and accessibility.
I have yet another moment.
*
I’m at the back for Paul Kelly’s set and with my eldest son right by the front our generational handover resumes. Alex’s fifteen is more kaleidoscopic and whole-hearted than my fifteen was and this gladdens me. Heading home, I ask his thoughts on Australia’s most treasured minstrel, and he replies, ‘He was excellent.’ Steering down Anzac Highway I beam.
Massive in its fragility, ‘Deeper Water’ is an immaculate distillation of life. Hearing Paul Kelly’s finest composition always forces hot tears, and this festive lawn hosts the latest episode in my story of this song.
Already the unrelenting enthusiast, Alex pushes against the stage in this blue evening’s swiftly chilling air, and at this very moment our lives unfurl together in soaring splendor, and I hope all those optimistic signs I see in him are perfect predictors, and with this isolated, joyful city as a witness, my time tonight has again come too early and too, too late.
A two-minute squirt towards Victor Harbor from our digs at the Bluff. This rickety eatery on the esplanade was bursting last Thursday with folks like us keen for the wood oven pizza or its slightly surprising culinary cousin, North Indian curry. The service was brisk yet relaxed and we inhaled our pizza.
It was fun dining.
The cafe hosts live music and there’s a history lesson as the walls are busy with mounted posters for the iconic acts that have played across the previous two decades, such as Mental As Anything and Ol 55.
Get in there soon to enjoy a Rogan Josh while listening to the Countdown classic, ‘Looking for an Echo.’ It’d be fantastic on a wintry Sunday.
Willowman
Why aren’t there more novels about cricket?
With Test matches allotted five days there’s rich and natural narrative possibilities. I’ve read novels that mention the sport so was thrilled to learn of Willowman which promised a singular attention to the great game.
Inga Simpson’s recent paperback was on my holiday menu and while the plot and characterisation aren’t especially original, the poetic meditations upon batting, music and the patient craft of fashioning beauty are exquisite. Like this section on the main character and Test cricketer
Harrow was using the old Reader bat for the occasion, a deep divot worn in its face…It was yellowed, a few fine cracks in the face, but still beautiful. Some kind of magic at work that it didn’t really age. In the soft English sun, the bat was golden, containing all the hope and possibilities of the game.
I loved reading a chapter or two mid-afternoon, and then napping!
Soul Music
Since the turn of the century this British series has been offering its simple genius.
The producers at BBC Radio 4 take a piece of music and weave together the stories of about five people. The connection: how a particular song features in their lives and became the soundtrack for personal change. There’s the everyday, the tragic and the wryly comedic centred on the transformative power of music. It’s compelling storytelling and gives insight into some remarkable art.
Last Saturday night Claire and I dragged the beanbags out onto the back lawn and listened to episodes on Nick Cave’s ‘Into My Arms’, U2’s ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and following a stroll around the block, John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’
I was inspired to play the live version from Rattle and Hum which features the Voices of Freedom choir and late in the song Bono and U2 allow them to take over. It’s spinetingling.
The Banshees of Inisherin
Darkly comedic, this is an essay on male friendship and the complex consequences of its failure. Set against the Irish Civil War we, like the main characters, Pádraic and Colm, are vulnerable to their island’s claustrophobia and agoraphobia. It’s a beautiful, terrible place.
It was unsettling and like all great cinema remained with me for the following days as I tried to reconcile its themes. Not for the squeamish, it also has much to say about mortality and art and sacrifice.
After we saw it Claire and I enjoyed exploring it at Patritti wines.
Pirate Life South Coast Pale Ale
Seeing this on tap I invariably feel a pulse of ale frisson. It occupies that select space I call occasion beers. Fresh and redolent of beachside beers gardens (deliberate plural for who only has one beer?) and gentle swimming bays, it’s an afternoon treat.
Once at Alberton watching Glenelg lose to Port the bar was serving a Pirate Life light beer called 0.9 (based on the alcoholic value). I instead wanted the 2007 grand final commemorative beer, Pirate Life 119 but none was available.
And with an incandescent appearance, the Pale Ale looks painterly in a glass as if Monet had captured it by a French field. Not a regular Friday cup, but one to mark a moment, like a festive luncheon.
It was among the multiple victims of the pandemic but finally happened last Wednesday and was wholly exhilarating.
A reliable personal measure of the deep impact of an art experience is if it remains with me days later, and this occurred with my first viewing of Pulp Fiction and when I read Jonathan Franzen’s tour de force, The Corrections.
It has certainly been true for Tame Impala’s Rushium concert. It’s dominated my thoughts since, and I’ve had the Spotify concert list on repeat all weekend.
Alex and I had seats to the left of stage, and we could see over the crowded mosh pit. This attracted him. I then told him how a mate missed a large chunk of a Big Day Out as he was getting stitched up at hospital following a flying elbow in the Wayville mosh. Deciding to stay with me he saw my point which is good. I always have a point.
Kevin Parker’s music is inspired by the psychedelia of the sixties and seventies with its swirling, cosmic guitars and keyboards while there’s also a distinctive science fiction angle. Despite these key elements it’s timeless and seemingly autobiographical.
Like many of my age I was disappointed when on the 2015 album Currents he exchanged the guitar for the keyboard as his major instrument of expression. However, Parker’s sense of melody is peerless, and he builds songs which at once are simple and complex but always compelling.
There were many highlights and ‘Elephant’ was one when the confetti canons burst into dazzling, mesmerising life. I remember first hearing this song at my desk in Singapore and streaming Seattle’s KEXP (local radio remains untreatably dreadful). I was sure John Lennon was singing but the music seemed too modern. I was delighted to hear it back-announced as Tame Impala.
Sharing our excitement during the eighteen-song set I reflected on how music is now truly intergenerational. How great that my fourteen-year-old and I could genuinely enjoy this together and it not be something than one or the other must simply tolerate?
In the 1950’s rock belonged exclusively to the kids with the unrelenting despair of their parents and now music is accessible to all. It’d be easy to attribute this solely to the Internet, but I think it’s probably knottier than this. Either way it’s excellent and I’m also pleased that Alex plays jazz icon Miles Davis when taking his (ridiculously lengthy) showers.
Our night was not just about the music. It was a complete show and a massive lighting rig, like the spacecraft from Close Encounters of The Third Kind was suspended above the band. It was lowered and set spinning in a way that was thrilling and almost menacing too. The scale of the effects with video screen and laser show made the event colossal and cinematic. Alex captured much of it on his phone.
The setlist was sequenced magnificently with tracks from The Slow Rush dominating. I would’ve loved for Innerspeaker to have featured beyond the solitary tune, ‘Runway, Houses, City, Clouds’ with its soaring and extended guitar solo, but I understand that the bulk of the audience were there for the recent releases. The kids can’t be ignored! I especially loved two songs from Lonerism in “Mind Mischief’ and ‘Apocalypse Dreams’ with their spacey vocals and rising rhythms.
It was a great night and I was so jubilant that I bought Alex a t-shirt although I wasn’t sufficiently euphoric to consent to $90 Tame Impala tracky dacks.
My quest for nostalgic albums continues and I swing between Mr V Music of Semaphore and The Record Store in Warradale. Here’s some recent purchases and my meanderings on how these are autobiographically illustrative. That’s surely the purpose of music: to allow for and encourage personal connection.
I had much Billy Joel in my diet when I was young. Mum and Dad’s collection included his album 52nd Street which I enjoyed but The Stranger is his best record and features his finest song, ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.’ Inspired by side two of the Beatles’ Abbey Road and its unbroken suite of songs I love how Billy Joel structures this narrative of doomed lovers Brenda and Eddie within the framing story of the old school friends dining together. There’s nostalgia and romance and Dixieland jazz and a great piano solo. It was among the first long songs (7minutes, 37 seconds) I got to know as well as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 11 minute, ‘I Heard it Through The Grapevine.’ These are wonderful for losing myself in and allowing the narrative possibilities to unfold.
Certain artists are forever associated with particular people growing up and The Beach Boys remind me of Davo, who was in my year at school and lived up the street. He also had the vinyl of Dream Police by Cheap Trick, and we’d play that at huge volume when his folks were out. Claire and I featured, ‘I Can Hear Music’ at our wedding ceremony and many would agree that ‘God Only Knows’ is among the greatest love songs despite it not actually using rhyme but repetition with the second and third verses both having ‘me’ to end each of the eight lines. If I was imprisoned and forced to listen to one of those Pink FM-type radio stations and some cow-eyed poppet came on and wailed eight verse lines in a row that ended with an identical word I’d screech back with unholy bug-eyed salivation but such is the symphonic beauty of Brian Wilson’s melody that we accommodate his lyrical curiosity.
This record evokes my hometown of Kapunda when I was in Year 11. It takes me back to that summer and teenaged parties and driving around town in our old cars. I think of that New Year’s Eve at Stephen’s which, of course, was much anticipated, unlike now when these nights are mostly to be endured, and midnight comes as a relief and at 12.01 one dives enthusiastically into the cot from the bedroom door. ‘It’s Raining Again’ is a sweet song that conjures both sadness and happiness and memories of dear old friends while the record’s finest tune, ‘Bonnie’ is built around an uplifting melody despite the lyrics being about a man stalking a famous actress, so no harm there. I just need a copy of Crime of the Century to complete my Supertramp set along with Crisis. What Crisis, Breakfast in America, and Even in the Quietest Moments.
Paul McCartney is my favourite Beatle and a woman I worked with taught his kids in St John’s Wood at their local school. She was utterly mad, but I like that Paul and Linda didn’t send their offspring to some fox hunting snootery. Again, this record features his boyishly optimistic love song, ‘Listen to What the Man Said’ and we included it our wedding ceremony. The soprano saxophone solo makes it soar with pure joy. It’s redolent of London’s Hyde Park on a cloudless summer day.
One of jazz’s most significant texts, this double album runs for 93 minutes and is at once demanding, beautiful, and dangerous. Urban myth suggests Davis recorded it after being inspired by Hendrix’s famous guitar-on-fire set at Woodstock. It’s not one I often play when Claire’s home, but I have made it part of Alex’s education and happily, he wasn’t horrified by it. One night last week during his daily bathroom residency I heard another Miles Davis album drifting from under the door so it’s good to know my parenting is now complete. Whew! I’m keen to also buy 1959’s Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s saxophonic hymn, A Love Supreme.
In the wonderful High Fidelity the protagonist Rob Gordon and his disturbed employees Barry and Dick trade musical top fives at the record store, Championship Vinyl. Since Alex and myself were gifted a turntable at Christmas I’ve bought a dozen or so second-hand albums and my personal top five follows (from the beginning of 2022).
Of course this is entirely an exercise in yoofy nostalgia so has been limited to music from my adolescence. I’ve decided that if an album’s from a time when I could vote, then I won’t buy it!
On state election day I went to a record fair and wandering about the tables and crates of vinyl I thought, gee what am I doing here? There’s only middle-aged and old blokes here, all nattering about rare B-sides and European pressings of obscure collectables. Then I thought, oh, hang on…
5. On a distant Sunday evening during Countdown Molly once slurred, ‘Boz is the buzz’ or something like this. Great 70’s songs, and it has an intriguing cover with a coquettish Boz on a bench at Casino Point, south of LA avoiding an assertive female mitt. Many of the songs would’ve been played on 5KA and 5AD. I probably tried to record one live from the radio onto my little cassette recorder (when it wasn’t playing the best of Little River Band) and guess that it was, ‘Lido Shuffle.’ No, I still have no idea what this song title means.4. A school mate’s brother had this and as teenagers we’d play it while flat on the floor in his parents’ darkened lounge room, initially mocking its jazzy, beat poetry stylings. Old friend Stephen once said that it only belonged in a ‘peace room.’ And then like kids with glazed-eyes like extras in a horror-film we were lured into its world, for ever (It’s no good Jim, they’re gone). Probably not one to play at a Sunday barbeque though.3. Another album I discovered through an older friend. I knew the artist courtesy of his work in Steely Dan and this was similarly slick with its flawless musicianship and spiky tales about life in that most foreign of lands, America. Driving about dusty Kapunda in a green Gemini we’d play air cowbell to ‘New Frontier’ as I imagine all the cool skinny kids did in the summer of ’83.2. Ahh, Skyhooks. At the time I knew little about Melbourne but liked that there were songs about it. People usually seemed to sing only about New York, California and London, and Skyhooks made me curious about Carlton, Balwyn and Toorak. Living in the 70’s was their debut but I preferred Ego is not a dirty word. I insisted on ‘All My Friends Are Getting Married’ for our own wedding. Yeah, funny. I know.1. Probably the most famous live album and with ample reason. There’s great songs and through the clever sequencing the mood and narrative are beautifully controlled. ‘Play Me’ is a sublime song and, ‘You are the sun, I am the moon/ You are the words, I am the tune / Play me’ are lyrical poignancy. Just before his last tour I thought given that I’d not seen Neil in concert I should get a ticket to his Adelaide Entertainment Centre concert. Within days he announced that due to health concerns he’d be retiring from performing, immediately. Poo. Not just an album but a cultural artefact. Good lord!
Honourable mentions- Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne, Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits, and Beggars Banquet (NB- no possessive apostrophe) by the Rolling Stones.
During Saturday’s breakfast on the patio, I popped the needle on Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits.
Instantly, I was six years old and back home in Kapunda. Mum and Dad’s lounge room is again wallpapered, the TV’s black and white and the carpet is burnt orange. It’s winter, and I’ve got on my footy boots. They’ll be on all day.
When Mum and Dad downsized, all the family vinyl came to me and since taking delivery of a retro record player at Christmas I’ve been happily swimming in nostalgia. Some of the albums had been untouched since 1988.
ONJ features prominently on the soundtrack of my childhood.
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The second song on side 1 is, ‘Banks of Ohio’ and this transports me to a still, musty room on Hill Street in Kapunda. I’m still six and strumming a guitar during my weekly lesson, while the massively patient teacher, Deborah, helps my fingers to stretch across the chords. I love the idea of a guitar and singing, but the latter is galaxies beyond me and my gruesome tone deafness.
ONJ does the definitive version of this nineteenth century standard. Her voice and the melody are bouncy, and I always loved the basso backup of celebrated singer Mike Sammes who subterraneously echoes Livvy’s, ‘where the water flowed.’ Sammes also contributes on, ’Let Me Be There’ and ‘If You Love Me (Let Me Know).’
Trying to sing along with Deborah, I’m a little anxious about the lyrics. The narrator declaring that she, ‘held a knife against his breast’ is squirmingly grown-up and I vow to avoid this so-called Ohio River. Bad stuff happens on its distant, murky banks.
Nowadays the tune would come with attendant humourless warnings: adult themes, graphic violence, and persistent mention of a river that enjoys confluence with the Mississippi in Illinois.
The song’s a murder ballad.
*
Sipping coffee out the back and then emerges gently from our turntable the 1975 Grammy winner for Record of the Year. As it plays across the garden we discuss ‘I Honestly Love You’ with Claire suggesting it’s ‘depressing’. I counter that it is certainly pretty although I’d always viewed it as a disposable love song.
On it Livvy’s voice is beautifully warm and pure, but not drenched in palpable sadness. It bathes the listener in sunlight. But as with much music there’s a disconnect between the medium and the message.
Hearing it as Mum played it at home and on the car AM radio, my generation’s all logged many hours in its company. But following breakfast last Saturday we were moved by repeated listens and became profoundly aware of its narrative intensity.
As we learn both characters in the song are trapped by marriage, and unable to be together. The lyrics are by Peter Allen, who at the time of composition, was married to Liza Minelli but had fallen in love with a man who was similarly stuck.
I’m hesitant to see all texts as autobiographical because sometimes stories are just fictional. Not everything is inspired by real life. But there’s a good case here.
The opening verse is disarming: tender, vulnerable, brave. I imagine our main character talking in a café or a park.
Maybe I hang around here
A little more than I should
With this we’re instantly eavesdropping on a private confessional and there’s tension as ONJ sings, ‘I got somewhere else to go’.
While the chorus of, ‘I love you, I honestly love you’ is necessary, the verses and the bridge are superior because these are where she reveals the story. The characters remain ageless, genderless, and timeless.
In the second verse we hear, ‘Maybe it was better left unsaid’ and this second ‘maybe’ confirms our narrator’s nervousness. Her vulnerability is crushing, and we all know a bit about this. The repetition of ‘chance’ in the third verse shows how powerless they both are in this sometimes-cruel universe.
How can I have been unaware of all of this since I was a child?
The way the strings soar in the final verse is stirring while a harp is used sparingly but to great effect. It lifts a tender song to an enhanced fragility. The eternally imponderable is here too in
If we both were born in another place and time
This moment might be ending in a kiss
But there you are with yours and here I am with mine
So, I guess we’ll just be leaving it at this.
The last line is only superficially dismissive of their plight and given the emotional stakes of the story is also deeply ironic. If we view the song as a monologue, it’s dramatic and affecting.
I love rediscovering old music and reaching a new, heightened appreciation.
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Of course, many of ONJ’s songs feature women who’ve relinquished or make no claim on their rightful power. These are females for whom life appears to happen rather than be controlled. ‘Sam’ and ‘Please Mr. Please’ are key examples. Claire suggested that maybe ‘Physical’ was in part ONJ actively promoting a feminist perspective.
Students of ‘I Honestly Love You’ will know that it features in Jaws just prior to Amityville’s second shark attack but I prefer to reference the 90’s indie singer Juliana Hatfield who, in 2018, produced an album of ONJ covers. She remarked that
‘I have never not loved Olivia Newton-John. Her music has bought me so much pure joy throughout my life.’
And I agree when she goes on to say, ‘Listening to her is an escape into a beautiful place.’
Is there much better than a simple lunch on the patio with old friends, and a retro record player?
Claire and I went to Kapunda High with Stephen who’s lived by the river in Brisbane for decades. He and his wife Eleni were in town having visited family and Kangaroo Island.
With an unforced and graceful joy our conversation moved across our extensive history.
Over at the record player I cue up Side 2 of mid- 1970’s compilation Whopper which is glitter-ball, flared-pants glee. It’s irresistible while Side 1 is mostly turgid country ballads. We all giggle at both the name and wild-haired evocations of Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes and their hit, ‘Get Dancin’.
But this is mere entrée for we then play Ripper 76. Everyone has a story about Ripper 76. It’s the finest compilation album in the catalogue of compilation albums.
Eleni tells us how as a young girl she won a copy in a Brisbane radio station phone-in and this persists as immeasurably superior to winning an icy cold can of Coke from a Black Thunder. She talks of the excitement of her mum driving her into the city to collect her vinyl.
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Our focus shifted to the global marriage of music and geography. Stephen spoke. “I had ‘Autobahn’ by Kraftwerk ready to go as soon as we hit the autobahn. Next thing a BMW went past us like we were standing still. Must have been doing 200k.”
I then offered. “When I was in California in 1992, we hired a convertible and driving around Santa Monica, heard The Doors’ ‘LA Woman.’ The sun was shining, and it was such a moment.”
Stephen continued the American theme. “As Eleni and I drove into Nevada we played, ‘Viva Las Vegas’ and now, whenever I hear that song I’m immediately back there. We’ve done similar things in the Black Forest and New York.”
Claire asked a question. “Can you do this in Australia?”
My first memory was instant. “Walking through Treasury Gardens to the MCG I was listening to Triple R and Paul Kelly’s ‘Leaps and Bounds’ came on just as the stadium swam into view. It was early in the footy season so the “clock on the silo” said more than eleven degrees but it was still fantastic.”
Our lively topic concluded in Europe when I mentioned Claire and I driving across Sweden and hearing the radio announcer say something like, “Just nu är det riktigt kallt här på landsbygden i Sverige och jag hoppas att du har tätt upp Volvos rutor för det kan komma snö. Hur som helst, det var Billy Joel.”
As lovers of both song and travel what wonderful, remindful privilege we shared. How amazing to enjoy those synchronised soundtracks?
People, place, and musical portraiture.
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Stephen and I also reminisce on collecting albums together as teenagers. We didn’t buy ones we knew like 10, 9, 8 by Midnight Oil for these were already in circulation but instead sought records that represented new, slightly dangerous terrain.
With Layla and Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominoes and a Yardbirds double album (on transparent vinyl) we edged into the world of blues. However, we also bought the Animal House soundtrack featuring ‘Shout!’ by Otis Day and the Knights, from surely one of the finest toga party scenes in modern cinematography. Before we were adults (clearly) many of us saw this film dozens of times.
As adolescents we also frequently mocked Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and then one night in someone’s wintry loungeroom as we finally listened to it properly, we came slowly to a realisation. Van’s jazz, blues, folk mysticism was brilliant. This was a humbling moment and I think we were all too embarrassed to confess. For many of us this album’s remained an intriguing, lovable companion.
Back on the summery patio I eased myself out of my chair and put on The Best of the Bee Gees- Volume 1 and pondering my wife and our dear old friends I thought of the divergent yet entangled paths we’d taken since leaving Kapunda.
Much had changed, and in some delightful, fundamental ways, nothing had.
A while back Mum and Dad gave me all of their vinyl records including a couple Beatles’ singles from the early sixties. I tweeted this photo and explained that I’d inherited these because they’d downsized in the Barossa.
A mate replied saying, “Gee, it must be a small house.”
*
Following the year’s first edition of Mystery Pub which was at the Hilton (on South Road) and returned this verdict: spacious; bland; utilitarian; expensive Claire and I decamped to the patio and cranked up the new (retro) record player and enjoyed a dozen or so albums. Here’s our evening’s top three as voted by me alone (hmmm- selfish):
3. Shilo by Neil Diamond.
This is a magnificent compilation and the cover featured a “connect the dots” which Mum completed at the kitchen table. There were 200 dots and such is my still shaky numeracy that I remember being relieved I wasn’t entrusted with the black pen to bring Neil and his guitar neck to life.
Spence Berland of Record World supplied the cover notes and he wrote that Neil’s voice, “is filled with love, beauty and the type of human pain that everyone can identify with.” Yes, but mercifully for Claire I chose not to sing along for her auditory pain would’ve been profound and possibly, incurable. “Kentucky Woman”, “Cherry, Cherry” and “I’m A Believer” are magnificent and while it has a sublime melody the lyrics of “Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon” remain just a little bit creepy.
2. Blow Your Cool by the Hoodoo Gurus
I’m fairly confident that this was bought for my 21st by old school friend Chrisso. He couldn’t confirm this but did share that Woodsy and I gifted him Astral Weeks by Van Morrison for his birthday that year. Of course. I’m quite sure that Woodsy is yet to hear this album.
Many of us curated the music for our own coming-of-age parties and I made four C-90 minute cassettes which were each played twice at the Kapunda Golf Club on that distant June night. I recall Chrisso saying that he sequenced “Good Times” from Blow Your Cool to finish his Kapunda Trotting Club event so people would hear it and agree that, yes, they had had a good time at his party. I’m sure we did. Most of The Bangles, including Susanna Hoffs, provided backup vocals on this track, having just returned from a pedestrian crossing in Cairo.
The hit single, “What’s My Scene” features these fantastic opening lines which take us straight into the middle of a lovers’ tiff-
And another thing I’ve been wondering lately / Oh, baby, tell me, where have you been?
The evening raced by and Claire and I’d drained many cups of tea when we popped on what would be the night’s top selection.
1. Best of The Bee Gees
Another old school friend, Stephen, visited during the week and told us that there’s a statue of the brothers Gibb in Redcliffe, Brisbane where the young Mancunians found themselves in the 1950’s. The unveiling was a mighty affair and Stephen suggested the statue could well rank in the top ten attractions in Redcliffe.
Sadly, the Bee Gees are now The Bee Gee but the album is tremendous with soaring harmonies and superb pop sensibilities. “Massachusetts” might be difficult to spell but is probably a better title for the song than “Punxsutawney.” Other gems are, “I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You” and one of my all time favourites, “To Love Somebody” which I have mercilessly destroyed with shiraz-driven warblings across the decades.
All are excellent examples of pop music, but excuse me for I’m about to drop the needle on Ripper 76.
How could I not enjoy a band named for this iconic leader, a man whose disgraceful 1975 dismissal interrupted Singing and Listening one Tuesday afternoon at Kapunda Primary School? The man whose perfect photo with Percy Jones hangs in the North Fitzroy Arms. I always bow at its altar.
“Gough” is my favourite Whitlams’ song and we played it at our wedding reception. It captures the wide-eyed awe I always felt about the man. I would’ve loved for Gough to, “Come over have dinner with me, we’ll play chess and drink claret.”
I’ve been wondering about other Australian Prime Ministers and how they might connect to music. It follows from a game I like to play when someone says something – generally a snappy, domestic phrase that could, with minor adjustment, be the title of a country music album. For example, Claire might yell out from the shower, “We’ve run out of shampoo!” That’s my cue and I’ll yell back in my terrible American accent,
And the nominations for best Country Album are: (dramatic pause and then I lean into the microphone) Running Out of Shampoo by Claire and The Cactus Girls!
Or I’ll remember that most vital chore as I scramble about Friday morning. The bins! Again, I then put on my imaginary black Stetson and announce to the imaginary music awards auditorium,
And the winner is: (another dramatic pause) Putting Out The Bins by Chester Pink and the Garbage Trucks.
But which other PM moonlights in music?
John Howard and the Horrible Bowling Action for their (unlistenable) record A Dead Ball in Pakistan. We’ve all watched the video of JH harpooning one into the pitch just beyond his (doubtless) sensible fecking shoelaces.
Defending himself he later explained, “They had a ball that was basically the inside of a tennis ball with some white tape around it.” What? Sorry, Little Johnnie but that’s just backyard cricket as millions of us know it! It’s how I spent half a dozen summers with my mate Nick down at his Port Willunga beach shack.
(Bob) Hawkey and Singo – A Beer with Belle du Jour. I’m anticipating a Dolly and Kenny style duet here. The story goes that, back in 2000, Singo hadn’t bought Bob a gift for his 70th so gave him a share in his racehorse, Belle du Jour. The filly then won the Golden Slipper. To celebrate Singo famously shouted the bar at Rosehill. A karaoke hit.
Paul Keating (performs solo; no backing band tolerated) – Flogged with a Warm Lettuce, the follow-up to All Tip and No Iceberg. Its first single is the surprise indie smash, “I Wanna Do You Slowly.”
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The Whitlams’ leader is Tim Freedman and his sweetly sung songs of gentle optimism and suburban irony are Sunday barbeque joyous. Their best tunes also include ‘Melbourne’, ‘No Aphrodisiac’ and ‘You Sound Like Louis Burdett’ which was modified among my peers to honour the cult Adelaide oval curator Les Burdett.
At uni I once caught a bit of the Midday Show (probably having just arisen) when the preposterously coifed Ray Martin asked, “Who’s Australia’s greatest living politician?” His guest was Gough and he waited with faultless theatrical effect before replying with his very E. G. Whitlam vowels, “Well, Ray, I can tell you who the second greatest is.”
We’re going to see The Whitlams tonight at The Gov’s early show. They’re on stage at 6.30 so we’ll be home just after sundown for hot chocolate and a (shared) digestive biscuit. As we slide into the weekend I’ll be humming,
Freshly painted like a Cunard ocean liner, the Ramsgate is a big, majestic seaside pub.
It puts me in mind of similarly white-washed beach-front boozers in Brighton, England and St Kilda in Melbourne. It’s Friday evening and Claire and I are about to dine with Nick and his wife, Chris.
Someone once observed that Glenelg’s Moseley Square is for kids and that you graduate to Henley Square as an adult. I’m not sure the demographics are quite this dichotomous, but it’s a curious thought. I feel lucky that we can enjoy both.
The barkeep speaks my language (a local dialect- Friday Night Thirsty), “We’ve imperial pints for $7.” This was welcome news indeed, but it troubles me that in our tiny colony we differentiate between pints (425ml) and imperial pints (568ml). Surely, a pint is a pint. And I, governor, vote for the big one. It’s like we’ve a South Australian minute that only runs for 45 seconds.
We’re shepherded to our table.
Port and the Bulldogs are playing on multiple screens. A few Januarys’ back Nick and I and some chaps booked lunch in the Ramsgate beer garden to watch the Sydney Test, only to discover that it was showing endless UFC fights. Unable to quickly get some neck tatts we slinked off to the front bar and the gentler magnetisms of cricket.
Nick and I’ve been mates since our Kapunda High days when we bonded over Skyhooks and the Stones’ 1981 album Tattoo You (predating UFC). Later came Midnight Oil and Dylan (for his 21st we gave him a book with the entire collected lyrics of his Bobness) and Nick Cave.
There’s sharing of family histories with ships departing from Hamburg mid-1800’s and Polish Hill and the Victorian goldrush. It’s a compelling privilege to hear the remarkable yarns tracing how you all came to be sitting at the same pub table on an August night. The waiter pays us three patient visits before we’ve decided on our tucker, such is the gusto of our yak. It’s a positive metric.
Claire and Chris finish their bubbles, so Nick asks for a Running with the Bulls Grenache, made in the Barossa. The wine’s Spanish narrative, I’m sure, is designed as a point of difference from the largely German motifs of the valley. Initially, it’s a little sharp but then softens, like a 1950’s hospital matron.
Nick and I have the first of our compulsory conversations about the Rolling Stones and again agree that “Gimme Shelter” is their finest song. I mention reading once of its opening being characterised by “apocalyptic dread” while Nick speaks in awe of Merry Clayton’s backing vocals, probably the most revered in music history.
War, children It’s just a shot away It’s just a shot away
Given Charlie Watts’ passing days after our discussion this chat now seems a little haunted.
Claire enjoys her butter chicken while Chris and I each settle upon the lime-infused squid. There’s no audible complaining. Nick’s steak is delayed due to human error, which philosophically, I’d argue, is the only real type of error. Ultimately, he’s pleased with it.
There would seem to be Teal-flavoured human error aplenty on the big screens for at half-time in the footy Port’s only managed a solitary goal. The pub’s front door is shut so we can’t hear the yelping from Alberton.
It’s a prosperous and lively place, this Ramsgate and our night’s replete with conversation, cups and respectable nosh.
Tomorrow night’s a full moon. We stroll up the balmy, windless esplanade for a nightcap.
Here we are at the scene of the crime – the place where I first met Claire and Michael.
It all began on a blisteringly hot day in February 1981, the first morning of the school year – the start of Year 10.
Now, I know what you’re all thinking: 1981?! Surely these good looking, youthful, vital people weren’t even BORN in 1981, let alone starting Year 10 at high school! I can assure you, that I can’t understand it either. It remains one of the Great Cosmic Mathematical Conundrums. Nevertheless…
On that fateful February day, I walked through the school gates in considerable culture shock. I had moved with my family from the city only the day before to our half-built house in a paddock behind Mount Allen – about 10 minutes north of Kapunda. Our electricity was not yet connected. There were sheep, a cow and a horse in our front yard and our house had a moat. And the vintage yellow school bus had just taken me on a 50-minute dirt-road trip to Marrabel-and-back in a cloud of dust you could see from Gundry’s Hill.
Thank goodness I had the good sense to approach Mrs Maloney, the first teacher I saw, and ask her to introduce me to some Year 10 girls. Thank goodness Mrs Maloney introduced me to a group including Claire Louise Morrison.
Starting a new school where the friendship groups have already formed and settled can be tough, but starting a new school in the country, where the kids have all known each other since pre-school, can be especially rugged.
Claire had experienced this, firsthand, the year before, and had magnanimously decided that she would make the transition much easier for any future new girls, should she encounter any. (What a generous and kind decision to have made, Claire. You are a brick.)
Presented with the opportunity on that bright February morning, Claire took the leading role as a one-girl welcoming committee. I remember her smiling at me, stepping forward, shaking my hand and enthusiastically introducing me to Lisa Trotta, Sandra Bell, Cate Dermody, Wendy Fechner and possibly Our-Pam-the-Pastor’s-Daughter. She asked me all about myself, gave me a bit of a run-down on herself and everyone else, and told me where I could meet up with everyone at recess and lunch.
That alone says a lot about Claire and the person she is. But it only hints at the dynamic and direct energy that radiates out of her – her charisma, her sense of humour, the animated way she moves. Well, I knew within two minutes that Claire was lively, generous, outgoing and fun – and an innate leader – and I hoped we would become friends.
Shortly after – possibly that same day – I met Michael Randall. While there was no stepping forward and effusive hand-shaking, I do remember him being one of the only boys who might volunteer helpful information. Aloof. Maybe a little gruff, but at least vaguely sympathetic. I think he saw me going in the wrong direction to find a classroom, and muttered something like, “No, it’s over there.”
Now Mick had met Claire the year before. And, as time has revealed and the Weekend Australian Review can testify, he pretty much fell for Claire on the spot.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: he listened intently to everything Claire said; he laughed at all of her jokes; and, although he did his best to hide it, he pretty much gazed adoringly at her all day.
AND, when he saw that Claire and I were becoming besties, he started talking to me a whole lot more. In fact, as time progressed, I started getting long phone calls from the public phone box outside the Kapunda Post Office.
Why the public phone? Because in The Olden Days, there was only one telephone per house. This one telephone was attached to a wall socket, and the curly cord from the phone to the handset would only stretch so far. If you were lucky, you might be able to pull it tight around the corner of a doorframe to gain a bit of privacy, but, generally, your whole family could listen in on your phone conversation, and – worse – call out embarrassing things.
Your parents would regularly tell you to hurry up and get off – because if you hogged the phone for hours, giggling and theorising over who liked who, and what it might have meant when he said this or she said that – no-one else could make or receive a call. And, get this: there was no SMS, no texting, no SnapChat or memes or gifs or social media of any kind. Not even Email!
These were all good reasons for Michael Randall to put 30 cents in his shorts pocket, bid farewell to Lois, Bob, Jill and Sam-the-Tough-Cat, and ride his bike to the Post Office.
His calls to me were long, hilarious and entertaining, and our own friendship grew as he made his thinly veiled attempts to find out more about Claire.
Of course, I spent even more hours giggling and theorising with Claire – on the phone, on our walks with Bonnie by the duckpond, or scoffing mixed lollies from Rawady’s deli in the Morrison’s sunroom. There was no doubt whatsoever, even back then, that she ‘loved’ Michael Randall – but would she ever ‘lerve-love’ him?
In Kapunda at that time, there grew a mighty Love Triangle. Possibly even a Love Dodecahedron. Between the beginning of Year 10 and well beyond the end of Year 12, the Class of ’83 negotiated the grave situation where everybody loved somebody sometime, but they didn’t love you back because they loved somebody who loved somebody else. All those hopeful hormones with nowhere to go!
And as teenagers growing up in a small country town, this was tragic and torturous. There was school and sport and church and Lutheran Youth and Rural Youth and there was the Clare Castle Hotel and parties at friends’ houses. Once we could drive, there were also discos in the Angaston Town Hall, movies at the Tanunda Drive-in, spooky midnight trips to the Reformatory and early drives to Gawler to catch the train to the city for a day at the cricket. And we went to all of these places, on rotation, with PRETTY MUCH THE SAME PEOPLE ALL THE TIME. So there was no escaping the Mighty Love Dodecahedron.
The angst was real. But so was the friendship.
Even after Year 12, when we started making our way into the wider world, we clung together – a tight band of Kapundians. Claire and Mick and I stayed especially close.
After matriculating (another Olden Days word), and a wonderfully long, study-free summer, February 1984 saw the three of us embarking on studies to become teachers. We chose Salisbury Teacher’s College because it was close enough to drive to daily in Michael’s HQ Holden.
(Of course, it was necessary to tease each other mercilessly about our cars. Claire had dubbed Michael’s sensible white HQ sedan ‘the Parent’s Car’. My Hillman Imp was ‘The Wimp’, and Michael also liked to call it ‘The Shitbox’.
Claire’s Mini Minor didn’t have a nickname but was considered miraculous – mostly because Claire and her passengers continued to survive Claire’s death-defying driving – but also because, at one time it had reportedly transported all seven Morrison siblings, plus Fran’s luggage, home from the airport.)
In any case, the Mini and the Wimp were deemed unsuitable for the daily trips to college. Looking back, I wonder if Michael Randall volunteered The Parent’s Car, not because our cars were unroadworthy – which they were – but more because they both lacked something that proved vital over those long miles: a cassette deck.
I promised myself I would only say kind things about Michael today, on this Day of Days, but, during these trips he did force us, against our wills, to listen to the Animal House soundtrack and the Foul Sixties Music. And it was pre-meditated: he had taped these things on cassettes. (That’s another Olden Days thing.) What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and, through this experience, the bond between Michael, Claire and me grew ever more solid.
I think, even then, we all knew we’d be friends for life.
And here we are today, with decades of shared memories.
There have been annual winter pub dinners to co-celebrate our birthdays. Countless catch-ups for drinks and laughs and to share news of life’s triumphs and challenges. Endless discussions on career choices and child-raising and renovations and travel and world events and art and literature and the TV advertisements that Claire can’t stand. Lively debates about music: Michael make your peace with Pink. Weekends away. Picnics and beach walks and barbecues. Meals that Claire has generously finished for us. The yearly spate of heavy Fringe plays at the Holden Street Theatres. All those amateur musicals we made Michael watch us in – and that one time we actually got him up on stage for talent night at a Rural Youth Rally. There are the jokes only the three of us get. The crippling, weeping giggling fits. Speeches we’ve made for each other at milestone events. And the trips we’ve made together – and for each other – to attend a special event, or just be together – when one of us has experienced sadness, loss, loneliness or grief.
We’ve walked different paths with different people, sometimes even in different countries, but we’ve always made time and space to nurture this magical friendship.
We three made our own love triangle – of friendship love. One where the three sides provide unshakable strength and support.
Within this love triangle, we enjoy the insights we get from the male and female perspective, but I can say honestly that gendery things have never, ever divided us.
Claire and I have acknowledged again and again how important Mick’s friendship has been to us. He’s an extraordinary man. He is thoughtful, gentle, kind, deeply respectful, intelligent, fair, well-read – and so very funny. Mick is a true feminist – an equalist – and we both love him for that.
There are so many kinds of love – and love itself can swell or shrink. Love, even enduring love, can evolve and change.
I’ve spoken about Mick’s ongoing love for Claire, but I have also closely witnessed, over many years, Claire’s deep and abiding love and respect for Mick. As we’ve travelled along our own life paths, there have been times when the deep connection between them has almost broken to the surface. For a long, long time they were not free to acknowledge this, even to themselves, much less to each other. They each honoured the commitments they had made elsewhere and devoted their energies to raising their beautiful children.
But, as they say, true love will find a way.
As the other paths they were travelling came to an end, they turned towards each other, as they’ve always done, to offer strength and support. They found so much more. And I found myself, once again, on the end of long phone calls – from both of them. All the what-ifs, and could-bes and what-do-you-think-it-could-means were there again. And you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to know that, one day, we’d end up here, at a wedding. And given that these two are the most sentimental, nostalgic people in the Whole World, you could have placed bets on it taking place in Kapunda.
So, here we are, at the scene of the crime…
This wedding brings together two very dear friends, who, this time, have everything on their side. They have the foundation of a long friendship – all the jokes, all the memories, and all the understanding, compassion and trust that goes with that. They know, love, embrace and enfold each other’s children. They have life experience, past successes and mistakes to learn from and draw on to ensure that they face life’s challenges together with kindness, consideration and empathy. They face their future with optimism and excitement. They see the significance of this second chance. They truly treasure each other, and will do everything in their power to nurture each other and the love that binds them…
Lastly, and most importantly, they share a great love of pubs and all things alcoholic and snack-related. This, I know, will carry them through any dark times.
Claire and Michael – my best friends – I don’t need to wish you happiness together. Instead, I wish you long, healthy lives, so that you can wring every ounce of joy out of this enduring love.
I am so very happy to have been a part of your story to date, and feel honoured to have been invited to share it with your friends and family today. I know we all look forward to sharing in every good thing that is to come.
mickeytales 