Tag Archives: Little River Band

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A Waterfall of Chat

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As the wintry afternoon bends across the lawn, we’re on old pavers, each holding a glass of 2024 Grenache. It’s a long-weekend Sunday and Claire and I are at Samuel’s Gorge winery in McLaren Vale.

The world often tends towards complexity and so it’s a surprise to instead find delightfully simple things. Here, today, there’s no bombardment. No pizza or jazz quartets or cheese boards. I like these but also enjoy the twin pleasures of wine and conversation. Just as we did on winery visits last century.

There’re no sliders or other foolishly named foodstuffs.

Standing by a stone wall, we’re staring out at the bushy gorge below us — only half an hour from home. We wonder what the Sicilians, whose island we blissfully visited, would make of this — how a short drive tumbles from rural vineyard to sparkling seas. We live well here, clinging to the edge of the continent by the Great Southern Ocean.

The girl sporting a beret appears with a bottle. She’s attentive but unobtrusive and this is a skill I admire. ‘Are you up to the Tempranillo?’ All the winery staff are friendly yet efficient, brisk. Nodding, we thank her. Splash. In it goes. Her beret bounces off towards the veranda.

We’re both mindful of these blessings. I especially love the intimacy of the two of us being alone among a boisterous, indifferent throng. Nobody can hear our secretive, tumbling waterfall of chat. Everybody ignores us, cheerfully.

Claire mentions Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. From where do these topics come? Not her favourite song. I say, ‘Why do you loathe it?’ She replies that ‘It’s depressing. They’re so whiny. I think we sang it in church.’ I remember iconic Kapunda deli owner Reg Rawady’s baritone booming from the back pews. His big unmistakeable voice erupting from his jockey torso.

‘Don’t you think it’s uplifting?’ I ask. ‘I like the metaphor and hope we can be each other’s bridge over troubled water.’ The sun’s draping us in its rays. The soft blue of the sky encourages delight. Claire says, ‘Okay, this makes more sense.’ We’ve adjusted our views of Bridge over Troubled Water. We’ve moved towards each other a little closer, the way we do when we see something anew. I like when this happens in our marriage.

We skip to Love is a Bridge by the Little River Band. Now this, I say, is an uplifting tune. We laugh at the bridge repetition. Whatever they were, LRB did offer soaring harmonies. Nobody heard them in church. I don’t mention Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. For a funk band it’s a hideously dismal dirge.

An eager winery lieutenant appears again. Our tasting concludes with the 2024 Graciano. Purple gathers in our glasses. Across a warm-hearted hour, we’ve eased gently through a vinous succession. Uncorked some leisurely joy. Before summer arrives, we vow to return to Samuel’s Gorge.

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Photos both exquisite and ridiculous

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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.

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Sausage Roll Review: LRB plays the Dulwich Bakery, Glenelg South

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DB

At noon I remember my quest: to eat this country’s finest sausage roll. The two proximate bakeries offer products of middling quality like Little River Band’s 1978 album Sleeper Catcher which after the hit single “Lady,” falls away dispiritingly.

The Dulwich bakery began in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs (yes, in Dulwich) and has since expanded like the belly of the man who ate all the pies and now there’s one in Glenelg South too.

Heading along Partridge Street I pass a school where it’s also lunchtime and I see all the straw-hatted girls, all eating entitled food, all named Charlotte.

Gliding through the roundabout near the Broadway pub and despite being a modest Korean model, my car issues a little automotive whimper as I cruelly ignore the lure of beer garden refreshment and carry on.

Outside the bakery are shiny nubs of metal tables and chairs while inside are wooden booths, and my sausage roll, having been, “plated up” as Gordon Ramsey might bark, I take a quiet corner.

I have a bite.

Food and memory are coupled. Fish and chips on the breezy foreshore; a bucket of undrinkable coffee in an airport dawn; the languid schnitzel in a wine valley pub.

LRB
Sausage rolls speak of the past. Even if you trot out after reading this and buy one, I reckon you’re time-travelling to your childhood. They live in a black and white era when you were small and the world was unthinkably big. Sausage rolls, home-made with fork marks sealing the pastry, at a primary school birthday, when the fun was unscripted and there was running, lots of aimless, skun-knees running.

Today, the pastry is tasty and of a welcoming texture. It avoids the twin evils of being greasy and soggy or dry and flaky. A bright opening like, “Help Is On Its Way” the first song on Diamantina Cocktail. 1978 was a great year for LRB and for sausage rolls.

The filling is a pleasure: warm, with a suggestion of spice and pepper and showing a brownish, beefy hue unlike the Barbie pink of other sausage rolls loitering within this postcode. Various lunch punters come and go; variously corporate, high-vis, matronly, harried parent.

If I applied the Pitchfork (an alternative music website) album review metric I’d give my sausage roll an 8.3.

And with my lunch now commencing its growling digestive journey I considered my good fortune on this autumnal afternoon. I had the three essentials for a happy existence: something to do; something to look forward to; someone to love.

If peak Little River Band is the full version of, “It’s A Long Way There” the first song from their eponymous album, then while the Dulwich bakery release is excellent, I’ve not yet located the sausage roll equivalent.

My quest continues.

hats