My favourite people are the ones who aren't afraid of the dark. Life is fucked up, and so am I; thank god. We all are at least a little bit and that's what makes us beautiful creatures. It's the so-called 'normal' people who are boring (or in denial).
John Darnielle bared his soul on a stage in a corner bar in Richmond in front of a few hundred people, as he has on countless records, but seeing it live is something else. I realised just how many of his songs are about depression, alcoholism, death, abuse and the strange things people do to get by when their life is truly fucked up - all with an uplifting undertone of love. It was by no means a sombre mood; it was a celebration of making it through, happier and stronger. There's something special and instinctively perverse about a crowd cheerfully singing "I hope we all die". Because we will, and I don't know why so many people think it's 'depressing' or strange to talk about life's only inevitability.
Life begins at the acceptance of death.
Modern existence can so easily feel like a cave, artificially lit by distractions on TV and in shop windows. It's not ideal, but getting out into the sunshine often requires delving the depths of your own darkness. When you're ready to go though, music is an amazing companion.
Maybe we should consider ourselves lucky, those of us that have been forced to expose the darker corners of our mind to give the black dog nowhere to lurk. I admire those who simply do it out of curiosity, a yearning to experience life to the full without the constraint of fear or bitterness.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that so many of the most creative, open, humble, honest, loving and happy minds have stared down demons in their life. I guess that's why I feel so disappointed every time I see Andrew Robb playing petty, superficial politics after his public battle with depression.
These are the people I want to populate my existance with. In a world increasingly full of people and shallow competition for our attention, I'm blessed to have people in my life that inspire me to live it. I'm grateful to the strangers I've connected with on Twitter who are open and honest without being self-absorbed about their own journeys through the darkness. And I'm happy every time I'm in a room full of like-minded people smiling, dancing and singing about how fucked up this life can be - cos it's even more fucked up if you can't face up to it.
Who cares about the people don't get understand and make their misjudgements - there are too many people in the world to give a fuck what they all think. It's awesome to share those unshackled, joyous moments of not giving a fuck about any of that shit with the like-minded; and to show anyone still struggling to look into the darkness how much fun it can be.
(I saw The Mountain Goats at The Corner Hotel in Melbourne on 10 May. It was awesome)
I always wanted to be part of a minority. Think it's tough being different, try being just like most of the people around you, not knowing who to identify with...
But good news! I found my niche. In the great tradition of minority identification, the revelation came via a slur in response to my dismissal of The Voice. But really it's been right under my upturned nose for a long time - I am a music snob.
The term is thrown around endearingly among my own kind. But used against me just because of my stubborn refusal to be herded in the one direction of the masses by the latest commercial karaoke contest, it hurt.
I can see the entertainment value of the show, but I have no interest in its existance whatsoever and would happily avoid it altogether if it weren't being talked about by goddamn everyone. And so I rant.
Surely after ten or more years of reality television scouring the country for the next best voices, we've either drained the talent pool or proven that a lot of people can sing or even play guitar, but few can write a song.
Would Thom Yorke make it onto one of these shows with his lazy eye? Or John Darnielle with his odd voice? Elliott Smith with his gloomy tone? Tim Rogers with his ruggedness and inability to keep his shirt on ... OK, he'd probably do well. Or Paul Kelly? Would Paul Kelly - one of Australia's greatest songwriter's, with his shy, plain looks and everyday voice - make it on any of these shows by singing a few bars of a song, his or someone elses? Record execs have been trying and failing to find talent this way for decades. It's precisely why we have an Indie music scene.
I don't care if you watch it, I really don't. But please, please don't take it too seriously. Because if you're in it for the music, instead of sitting on the couch watching the idiot box, you could be sharing a beer with real people in a local bar, checking out a genuine band playing their own music with no rules and no competition to constrain them. Artists plying their trade on the slow road for the love of it, playing to share a moment with other music lovers, not chasing 15 minutes of fame by making an immediate superficial impression on has-been popstars judges. The Voice's angle is that it's 'blind' judging - presumably removing the superficial visual nature of pre-incarnations. But remember two things: contestants that make it onto the stage have still been carefully chosen in pre-production auditions; and Australian Idol gave us Casey Donovan as a winner - a shy, young, overweight Indigenous girl, refreshingly far from the popstar mould. These shows are as much about manipulating a narrative as looks. They realise we're at least smarter than that. But they don't foster careers. Casey Donovan was a victim of the very supericiality her achievement was supposedly rebuffing.
My problem is: I. Love. Music. As far as art goes, it's the one that speaks to me the most directly, the most powerfully. It can express the whole range of emotions, and capture moments and feelings in a way words can't. It's emotional lifeblood. And I can't watch these shows without wanting to yell at them: for missing the point; for for stripping the music of it's meaning and injecting an ungodly dose of glitz to make it entertain as large an audience as possible; for playing on the genuine premise that there is a lot of undiscovered music talent out there, and then refusing to really look for it; for being so arteficial and contrived; for exploiting naive talent. Emotions and contestants are manipulated. Winners are exploited and often end up worse off.
Don't even start me on Young Talent Time.
I'm not criticising anyone who watches it, really. Did I say I don't care? I'll probably get sucked into Big Brother again when it comes back this year, so what? We can't be intellectual all the time. It just saddens me that a music talent show can draw such an audience and ignore so much genuine artistic, creative talent. Amidst all the flash-in-the-pan popstars - and a couple of persistent B-grade performers who now stoop to tweeting for cash - the only genuine artistic talent I know of to come out of these shows in Australia is Lisa Mitchell, finishing sixth as a 16-year-old in Australian Idol in 2006.
But exploring real talent wouldn't be so popular I guess. The deeper you go with art the more it branches out - we're all moved by and relate to different tones and tunes. It's the beauty of being human, we're all different. So you have to keep it shallow to reach the largest possible audience.
So when friends talk about this music, I just want to tell them how good we have it here in Melbourne - one of the best and easiest places on Earth to explore your taste through countless live music venues, fantastic public radio stations, independent music stores and glorious festivals. These are the places and events supporting and unearthing new music talent, not dramatic TV shows. And I want to share this great thing we have with them, so they can find more good music and share it with me!
I shouldn't care. It should be enough to enjoy it on my own and with the friends who share my passion. But when something bowls you over - whether it's a song, an album, a movie, a book, a poem - it's natural to want to share it, especially in the Facebook age. Maybe we some of us feel the need to share too much and come across like snobs when others - especially those swimming in the mainstream - don't see the beauty of our pristine little tributary. Maybe it betrays a lack of self-belief that I want others' to recognise the value of the music I like?
So I am a snob. Or maybe I'm just seeking validation; a lonely guy who should care less about what other people think. There are enough like me to feel part of a community.
Dismissive, naive, flippant bullshit attitudes at least; maybe even ignorant, closed-minded, shallow and insulting - to the artist and appreciator.
Not everyone has to, can or should like Radiohead, or any particular band/song. Music (as a whole and individual songs) is a subjective experience, heard and enjoyed differently by different people. Maybe if less people liked Radiohead, less people would hate them. And I could see them at a decent, smaller music venue for a reasonable price.
Yes yes, I have been diagnosed with depression. In fact it was at its worst around the time I was getting into Radiohead. And I started on anti-depressants the day after I saw them live in 2004. That's a nice little irony. Be careful about the parallels you draw though; at the earliest onset of my anxiety my favourite singer was Johnny Farnham.
Sure music - like most artistic professions - attracts its fair share of tortured souls (at least those who open up about it). Well, I think it attracts them anyway, rather than making them so. But depression is tragically prevalent and maybe the proportion in sport, for example, isn't so different, just more suppressed.
Humans love to travel and explore places; but we're not so good at looking inward and exploring our own minds and emotions. I think music (art generally) help do that consciously and sub-consciously. Clearly I'm not talking about Justin Bieber or Nickelback here.
Radiohead's popping up on my radar around the time I was in the depths of depression may have been a coincidence; the vigour with which I explored the music was not. I don't know what half the songs are about - it doesn't matter - but their mood resonated. Some of it was angsty, some a little terrifying, some exhausted, some hopeful, some hopeless, some just beautiful. Actually, all beautiful. Things we all feel.
The sounds got into my head, my heart, my psyche, my soul and shook them all up. I connected to it because it reflected things going on in my head that I hadn't figured out yet, let alone been able to express and here it was on my stereo. So I sang along, learnt to play along, danced around my bedroom, exploring it all. It was fucking liberating. I still lose my shit dancing (flailing about) my room to 'I Might Be Wrong'when it gets into me and takes over - it's an amazing release.
I want to share these little gems when I stumble across them or someone is kind enough to share them with me. Not just for the shared listening experience, but also because it helped me feel understood. And I liked to fuck with my poptart-chart loving friends by making them endure 'Fitter Happier', a song I didn't initially like/appreciate myself but actually do now (I think that fairly qualifies me as music snob).
So when someone calls a sweet song like 'No Suprises' the most miserable song ever, it makes me sad. You don't have to like it, and I probably shouldn't need you to understand, but it'd be nice if you'd try.
It exudes a sweet sadness. The world - life - is fucked up sometimes. Ignoring the fact doesn't make you happier, and acknowledging it doesn't have to make you depressed - the opposite really. I'd rather find ways to acknowledge, explore, understand and accept the shit in the world and my head than repress it. It's the only way to move on; Thom Yorke himself talks about using "music to move on, to progress through life".
It's why we play sad music at funerals, right? Ironically, I'd like at least one or two fun songs played at mine. Why be self-indulgent once you're dead?
Sad songs can be amazingly beautiful, uplifting, sure even life-changing. Sadness is in inextricably tied to happiness. If you can't let yourself be sad, how can you fully appreciate happiness? It's okay to identify at times with Elliott Smith's desperate solitude (difficult as linked performance is, there's a fantastic moment when he sings "give me one good reason not to do it" and someone in the crowds responds "because I love you" - love is the greatest thing we have, yet it's bound up with so many of life's difficulties).
Is 'Good Woman' a pitiful anti-love song or one of the most powerful, beautiful love songs ever written? Obviously, it's probably somewhere in between and I'm just using polarisation for effect.
Lots of people find DirtyThree's instrumental music, or Sigur Ros' foreign language music inpenetrable and boring. Again, not to everyone's taste but putting in the time to feel the message from the music can reap massive rewards.
Music is a subjective experience. Everyone hears in with their own ears, in the context of their own life.
I like these artists and songs because there's no bullshit. It's real human expression of emotions I feel and want to explore at the right times, rather that let them fester at the back of my mind.
It's not for you, that's ok. I think you're missing out on something special. That said, there is plenty I'm missing out on as well. We shouldn't slam something just because we don't understand it.
And try not to judge us Radiohead fans too much, we can be fragile beings.
It's hard to come down from one of the most enjoyable weekends of your life.
Golden Plains and Meredith Music Festival are the two favourites of my year, but this year's GP was special.
What was not to love. A weekend packed with so many of life's golden moments: sweet music in the sun from a couple of Swedish teenagers (ok, one's 22) who should be too young to be so wise; dancing the night away to a funk legend; having your heart tugged at by soaring melancholy; appreciating the music and journey of man who's mere presence is inspiring for anyone who appreciates the struggles of the mind; random interactions with wonderful strangers; chilling out with good friends; all the while enjoying a beer they let you bring yourself in a picteresque natural setting. And so much more.
All my troubles fade away for those two days; all the important things come together to lift me above the meaningless bullshit that permeates and drags on everyday life. Music, environment, good friends, good strangers, beer. The Garden of Eden couldn't have been so glorious, even if it did share the Meredith 'no-dickhead' policy.
And nowhere else have I found such a high ratio of genuine, life-loving, genuine people. Plus it's gotten me into so many amazing bands over the last four years.
I love Golden Plains. It is my sanctuary. They could not have picked a more perfect name.
Last week I saw the worst and best of Melbourne. Appropriately, it was a night experiencing the two sides of the city that we pride ourselves on most - sport and arts (music).
I've been to three hours worth of A-League soccer now and haven't seen a goal.
Melbourne Victory fans show their class
At least last week's match between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne Heart - with the confusing cheers of 'Go Melbourne' - had dramatic edge to it thanks to the new rivalry, even if nothing actually happened (true soccer fans would argue that point). An AFL does leave a certain feeling of emptiness, but only after an eventful and exciting match, which someone has led and someone has evened. Not so with a nil-all soccer match.
Anyway, I like soccer well enough. With cricket turning into a circus I pay it a little more attention through dry sporting summers.
When Melbourne Heart were established I wondered why anyone would switch teams, but last week I saw first hand exactly why. I also saw evidence of the sheer lunacy of those liquor licensing laws we marched against a couple of years ago.
I am a casual Heart fan, simply because I didn't have a strong enough emotional investment to the Victory to stick with them when I first heard about their crowd behaviour towards Melbourne's new team last season, and because one of their players does yoga at the same studio as me. As good reasons as any.
Thinking I knew what the Victory crowd were like - I live in Richmond and see the effect they have on Swan Street, which is worse than the drunks at 2am, with numerous police required to supervise the mob whenever they play at home - I wanted to buy something to show my colours. A mild act of antagonism more than support for my team. I'm glad I didn't. My passionate Victory friend booked seats at the 'Victory end' and I felt like an undercover Nazi in Israel, without the legitimacy behind their hatred. Since when do we segregate general admission supporters?? I reckon it just exacerebates the problem and spite towards those down the other end, which included official-looking scarves that read "FUCK OFF MELBOURNE HEART" and repetitive, mindless chants such as "You're supporters are fucking shit". They abused the one or two Heart supporters (at least those brave enough to wear their colours) as they walked off to the toilet and vicously told them not to come back.
Apparently "THERE'S ONLY ONE TEAM IN MELBOURNE, ONE TEAM IN MELLLLLBOURNE ...". in which case I'd have thought scoring at least one goal in a local derby shouldn't have been to difficult for them.
Excuse my own language but I've never come across a collective at any event that could be so aptly described as cunts. And there wasn't even full strength alcohol available to the crowd.
My friend says its just passion. Well yeah, and I'm pretty passionate at AFL games, but passion isn't so great when it manifests itself in unwarranted abuse.
I sat in silence throughout the game, genuinely afraid of the reaction should I dare to vocally support my team, in my city. I've been to AAMI stadium in Adelaide in my Essendon jumper, drunkenly but playfully obnoxious and vocal - more towards my own team who lost by 96 points - and actually had a laugh with the Adelaide fans nearby. I've sat in the Fremantle members section in same Essendon jumper, the only on in sight, and treated politely as a welcome guest!
AFL has bad and abusive supporters, people who give me the shits because of how angry they let it make them, and the cheer squads just reflect poorly on society in general. But I've never seen anything like this before, so toxic, spiteful, abusive and threatening just because people followed a different team. So I walked in a Heart supporter with a remembered, if now secondary, allegiance to Victory; I walked out a Heart supporter who dislikes Victory the way I dislike Collingwood. So I have a greater emotional investment in A-League now I guess, but I won't be rushing back to games involving Victory and have no one to go to Heart games with. Whatever. Footy starts soon.
So I trudged off from the game and headed for a bar in Collingwood to see a local band called Immigrant Union, feeling a little disillusioned with my species.
SLAM rally 2010
Reassurance was swift. Having paid $10 entry I met three close friends and 60-odd friendly strangers who all came together in a bar that may not have been able to put on live music under the enforcement of the old liquor licensing laws to enjoy something beautiful, communal and not in the slightest bit divisive. Melbourne's music scene is underrated, especially by the millions who walk past it every day. There is so much happening I don't know how to find the best stuff and suffer choice anxiety. A well-travelled friend says its the best for bands and venues in the world. Probably a patriotic overstatement, but one backed by Dandy Warhols drummer Brent DeBoer who lives here now (he 'liked' the Facebook status saying as much). It doesn't matter anyway, we have something golden here and it needs to be protected.
I might be a music snob. There may have been 20,000 more people at the soccer that night. But I can tell you which of the two events I went to that night contributes more to this city's cherished liveability. And there were a hundred other gigs going on around city and suburbs at the same time. And everyone was there to have fun - with friends and strangers - and celebrate a cultural, artistic, soul-nourishing experience. There were no fights or abuse, but there was alcohol.
And I'm yet to see a fight at any gig I've been to. Sport can bring people together as easily as it divides. My favourite ever AFL moment was jumping up and down hugging and high fiving strangers when Essendon beat Collingwood on 'AnZaharakis Day' (any opportunity). That's why I love going to the footy.
Live music just brings people together. It's almost certain I'll be surrounded by a bunhc of awesome people I will/would genuinely like and get along with at any gig I go to. That's why I love Meredith/Golden Plains so much. That's why I love living in Melbourne.
Amidst an eight-foot corn field stands an evil scarecrow, jack-o-lantern for a head with one of those 360 smiles - where madness takes a smile of happiness beyond the grimace of pain and back into the truly demented realms where a smile is scarier than any expression of anger. He hangs rather than stands, breathing smoke through a glowing mouth and watching over a group of country horror folk musicians, all dressed and face-painted for the occasion. It is Halloween at Melbourne's grand Forum Theatre. This is the one and only Graveyard Train.
The audience is packed with mummies, zombies, murderers, murder victims, witches, ghosts, ghouls and a hipster. On stage a man smashes a chain with a mallet to the beat of a song about werewolves. In some ways, they might seem like a novelty band - and this was their night to play it up - but they are one of the best Melbourne bands going around.
The night finishes with the most sensationally, enjoyably odd of climaxes - a couple of thousand people singing, dancing, stomping, screaming, smiling and celebrating the fact we are all going to die while the band played their unreleased but seminal crowd (and personal absolute) favourite song 'All Will Be Gone'.
Last night was the fourth time I've seen them play this year - with number five lined up at the Meredith Music Festival next month - but that, that, was something else. Ok, the venue was bigger and better than Fitzroy's lovely, cosy Old Bar and certainly the Williamstown RSL, and perfectly suited a Halloween gig with the outdoor ampitheatre feel and gargoyles and roman statues watching you sing and dance. Still, being part of such a raucous celebration of our mortality and general insignificance was just so much goddamn fun and so liberating.
We're not here long. Enjoy it, even (especially!) the dark, scary stuff because then there's really nothing to fear ... and without fear life is so fucking free!
We're all going to die. You, me, everyone you know. And everything you ever saw or conceived of will one day be gone. That's either terrifying or liberating. How does a guy who suffers anxiety enjoy that though? Sometimes I don't. But sometimes you realise life is just so amazing and everything you love is here now, so let go of that fear and damn well enjoy it. What a waste otherwise.
One day Graveyard Train will be gone too. See them.
While I was singing and dancing about death (and therey celebrating life) in Melbourne, just across the Pacific Ocean my sister-in-law was giving birth. My new nephew's name is Dexter. Awesome. Just awesome. What a night.
Do you remember the day your favourite band broke up?
I do - it was today.
REM have been together longer than I've been alive. From the day I first heard them as a ten year old in 1993 they seemed 'old' to me, and the end always just around the corner.
The possibility of longevity with integrity was one of many things I learnt from these outstanding artists.
I feel like I've always been just catching up to them.
I got into REM just as they were hitting the peak of their commercial success, not that I knew it at the time. I was in Grade 5 and my oldest brother had just acquired three albums - the newly released Automatic For The People after hearing a few of the songs on the radio and a schoolmate put Murmur and Document onto either side of a casette for him. Those three albums captivated us both. It was my first real experience of albums rather than chart singles. I'd never heard anything like Murmur and Document in particular before.
He later picked up Life's Rich Pageant, Green and Out of Time and I felt like I had all the music I'd ever need access to.
Despite them being one of the biggest bands on the planet, few of my primary school friends seemed to know anything much about them so I had noone else to share the love with.
That is until Year 7 when an REM lyric - "What noisy cats are we?" - on a pencil case was the basis for the first conversation with one of my first, and now one of my best, friends at school. And, incidentally, the biggest influence on my music collection.
After Monster and New Adventures in Hi Fi their commercial popularity was waning, but my enthusiasm for their music only gathered more steam.
In the six months leading up to the release of Up in October 1998 I listened to nothing but REM. Nothing-but-REM. My mate and I made a small festival of it to the bemusement of our friends, me moreso, and I anticipated the release of that album like no other before or since.
With my brother overseas though, I had to buy it myself. I caught the bus from Lower Templestowe to Heidelberg on the day it was released to buy it at JB Hi Fi. I got there about 11am; it wasn't arriving until about noon. So I wandered the streets listening to one of those earlier albums on my walkman. On the bus on the way home I looked at the CD and wondered how many more these guys would put out - they were 40 now, surely they must be just about done!
Up proved to be the definitive album in shaping my music taste, and how I listen to music. I played it for the first time in my bedroom that day, hoping for the 'return to form' (ie. a replica of Automatic For The People) that critics were talking about - and would for the next 13 years. Instead, as I hit play on my CD player in my bedroom, I got Airportman, and a bunch of relatively weird, radio unfriendly tunes. It was far from what I expected. I hated it.
At school on the Monday, my REM buddy was surprised by my reaction and urged me to give it another try. I'd never really considered music as something that grew on you as you listen more, picking up on the nuances and subtleties of the art, as the need for hooks and catchy melodies faded. Heck, I still listened to Fox FM and largely chart pop-music that was easy to digest. A couple of weeks later, away for Melbourne Cup weekend with my parents, I spend the weekend listening to Up and letting it grow on me. From that time on I began seeing music differently.
The albums since Up haven't set my world on fire. They're good, have some great songs, but none of them really stack up against the first 10 or so albums for me. But, while I always felt an anxiety for REM to redeem their commercial standing, it never really mattered.
They made the music they wanted to make. And unlike the Liam Gallaghers and Anton Newcombes, they seem to be a bunch of genuine, decent guys. They believe in something beautiful and shared it through their music. And I respect them as people (from what I have read/heard) not just musicians, making my attachment to the band that little bit more genuine.
As much as I'd have loved another album from them, it's almost a strange relief that they've given it away. Now I can finally catch up and can look at them for their 31 years of greatness, not just what they are 'now' or will be 'tomorrow'. Murmur isn't what REM used to be, it is as much what REM is/was as Around The Sun.
Over the last ten years many other bands captured my imagination more than they did with the new music, but the REM section of my music collection - all 15 albums plus the extras - is the most significant part of it.
Ever find a song encapsulates a moment or period so perfectly that it becomes permanently attached to, and defined by, that experience?
So much so that any time the tune reverberates around your head your internal sensory wiring transcends the present moment and connects to thoughts and feelings familiar and intense, yet distant.
In some ways it’s unfortunate for a song's meaning and enjoyment to be narrowed to a particular connection, but it is a magical way to experience music.
There are a few songs that seem to perpetually reside in certain moments of my past, continually inviting me back when I hear them. They are not necessarily my favourite songs - some I never play - but they all have their place for better or worse, and most of them involve women in my life. That's probably no great surprise.
Self-indulgent as this is, these are a few such songs that have that affect for yours truly:
Reckoner (Radiohead)
In Rainbows came out just before I jetted off overseas by myself for the first time. Sure, I was meeting a range of friends in different places, but I was getting around by myself and, for the first time in a long time, had no-one but myself to worry about.
New albums rarely grab me and establish their own place in my psyche so quickly. I listened to In Rainbows every day for five weeks, in small Canadian towns, large American cities, airport departure lounges and everywhere in between.
It may have just been the right time for something to tap in to my mood at the time – newly single for the first time in six years (and the first time in my adult life), and travelling alone outside of my home country. Compounded with variations of unfamiliarity, new-found freedoms and exploring a new world, this created a unique atmosphere. It wasn’t all good times, but I was experiencing life and beating out a new path. In Rainbows was my soundtrack.
'Reckoner’ was the track that stood up and floored me every time.
Four years on, listening to this song still gives me an abstract sense of the mental and geographical space I was in at the time, a wandering lamb, uncertain but unafraid, exploring with new eyes.
Heavy Heart (You Am I)
So let’s step back six months - the night the girlfriend and I called it quits on what had been a pretty solid relationship of more than six years.
It was as mutual and amicable a break-up as you're likely to find. I walked out of her apartment relieved that we’d finally done what had been coming for a while, but still it was the end of something comfortable, familiar and, overall, fairly positive.
Suddenly I was alone
I got in my car, put on The Cream and the Crock - The Best of You Am I - an album I'd been thrilled to find a few months earlier as I searched hopelessly for something worth using a Sanity gift card on - and skipped straight to 'Heavy Heart'. I cried. And I then I set off, skipped back to the start of the song and cried again.
A classic case of dangerous driving.
Jezebel (The Drones)
… And then a few months later I was a bitter, bitter man. This girl who’d been my emotional support for six years – and had asked me to stay friends – was gone when I most needed someone close.
I was - largely unfairly - angry. This newly acquired album, in particular 'Jezebel’ which got lots of play-time, tapped into my dark mood and helped me explore what was going on in my head.
We never resumed a friendship in any form, I’ve left behind the bitterness and I still quite like the song. But I don’t listen to it very often.
Just Try (The Dandy Warhols)
September 2008: travelling alone with a broken heart and no music. Is there a worse predicament?!
I should have known better than to a) let myself fall for a friend from another country and b) entrust m music-reliant sanity to a cheap iRiver. Seriously, I spent four days at work filling the fucking thing with music and it freezes on the way to the airport! I couldn’t even turn it off. Eighteen months later I realised the battery must have eventually died and I could charge it and turn it back on (it’s worked fine ever since, not that I give it much attention), but I was so pissed off at the time I left it in Australia.
As for the girl - a Canadian friend who had joined me in visiting a mutual friend from England - a week or so of outrageous fun in London and Southampton was just enough to (again) reignite feelings for her I thought had passed, just as she headed back to Canada.
The prospect of another 20 days tripping around Britain, but now on my own, had lost its lustre. I told her of my feelings and for better or worse, they were unrequited.
I was lonely and miserable. And if I had no-one to talk to or drink with, I damn well needed music
‘Just Try’ must have been floating around my head; in London, in York, in Edinburgh I sought out internet access just to jump on YouTube and listen to it, slumped forward with my elbows on the desks, an expressionless face fallen into my hands so that my limp cheeks pushed up into my eyes while I stared forlornly at the computer screen. And then I'd hit play again.
It was utterly self-pitying and self-indulgent. She was unbelievably cool about the whole thing. In fact it was nowhere near as awkward as it should have been, we're still friends and met up in Canada a year later. I just wanted some answers from someone about all the shit going on in my life.
Still love the song, and it does remind me of her and how I used to feel, but it offers some reflection rather than a sense of sadness.
More Than You Wanted To Know (The Panics)
Moving on.
My job at Dan Murphy’s was the most fun I’ve ever been paid to have by a long way. I left to embark on a professional career at the end of 2005, with unexpected feelings of sadness about a moment I’d been anticipating for 18 months!
I have no idea what this song is really about, but the lyrics just seemed to resonate with my sentimental melancholy of the time: ‘We’re all in line to go sometime / Only lives to tell it like it is / Always more than you wanted to know’, ‘Let go of some you’ve saved / Leave but don’t be no stranger / If you look in the eye of the one you’re beside / Ain’t gonna stop us aging / Are you lonelier?’
I seem to struggle with change, but have learnt it’s never as big or bad as you fear. Five years on I’ve remained friends with a few people I worked with there, and have some sensational, hilarious memories to keep in my bag as I walk on.
The three-parter
So a girl I went out with for six years gets two songs, but one I was friends with for just a few months gets three. That’s life, love and music.
Part One – Read My Mind (The Killers)
I don’t even own Sam’s Town and never really liked any of the songs from it… until one had meaning for me.
Sitting in the Carlton Club with sorting out a messed up situation of mixed messages, mutual feelings and incompatibility she offered me an earphone, explaining ‘This song sums up how I feel’. I still don’t know entirely what she meant by that.
She has exceptional taste in music, so I was a little surprised / disappointed to hear this initially. Lyrically there are a couple of absurdly relevant references, yet the song overall assumed a new character and sound for me. I listened to it a lot in the following days and weeks while spending far too much time contemplating this star-crossed infatuation.
Hearing it now (very rare), depending on my mood it either reminds me of the beauty of those unique connections between two people, or the pain of losing someone for reasons beyond either person’s control.
Part Two – Love Letter (Lisa Mitchell) ‘Take it from me, I’m a disorderly and you’d be off better writing someone else your love letter.’
The sound of the final nail in the heart. So beautifully sad. The reality that, sometimes, life trumps love.
I’d had a burnt copy of Lisa Mitchell’s Wonder for a few months, in preparation for seeing her at Splendour in the Grass, and enjoyed it well enough; but again, it took a real-life situation that aligned closely with this song for me to fully appreciate it. After a few months of back-and-forth, being pushed away and pulled closer, it was determined for the second or third time that it wasn't working.
'Love Letter' has been one of my most-listened-to songs of the last six months. On the morning after she told me she had to walk away because I was her 'weakness' (another message I never fully comprehended) I sat at the kitchen table before work, listened to it twice, and cried. I cried for what could have been, what was lost, with someone who’d inspired me like no-one else, cemented in me the self-confidence to take steps like starting this blog, and reaffirmed my place in the world.
Deride my manhood, but this is a tragically beautiful piece of music and lyricism.
It also now represents for me a time in my life that hurt like hell, but I never wish to forget, so I think I’ll always be fond of it.
Although, someone later informed me that Lisa Mitchell had been a contestant on Australian Idol. This almost ruined her music for me.
Part Three - Home (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros)
This is a band she got me into. ‘Moats and boats and waterfalls’ was a favourite phrase of hers when referring to her small circle of close friends (her ‘family’).
Love the song, but can’t shake the connection to the girl. Not such a bad thing. At a broader level it stirs up some of those wonderful, promising feelings of security and comfort you find in a person every once in a while, and I had for a fleeting moment with her.
In recent weeks my reaction to this song has been ‘Get it off that damned ad for that stupid TV show!
Beautiful Day (U2)
All That You Can’t Leave Behind must have been released towards the end of my final year at school. I loved the album for a while and it got a lot of spin-time in my CD player while I studied for exams, as well as being all over commercial FM radio. ‘Beautiful Day’ was my anthem for the time, as I looked forward to a new, exciting, terrifying, beautiful life ahead.
I’ve hardly listened to the album in ten years. I recently rediscovered a couple of gems on it that I adore (‘When I Look At The World’ and ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’), but the rest of the album can stay in my past – we shared some good (and stressful!) times, but we no longer talk. And that’s okay.
Still, you can’t avoid hearing ‘Beautiful Day’ every now and then, and I guess that’s cool too.
Cotton Eye Joe (Rednex)
Let's finish with something upbeat then, shall we?
Definitely not one of my favourite songs, and I’m quite happy not to hear this one too often but we sure did play it loud and proud and incessantly for five days in Rye while celebrating the end of school back in 2000.
It was a bit of a party anthem for a bunch of 18 year olds for a while, but the novelty wore off pretty quick. It still gets a spin at a house party once every couple of years, and if a cover band play it in some shitty pub we’ll get into it jumping around singing along loudly like we did in November 2000, but that’s plenty enough.
One song I’m quite happy to enjoy purely for the memories I associate with it.
music videos dont do much for me, but i fucking love this one
is it dark? you bet your hellbound arse it is.
is it depressing? not to me. i guarantee many people would think so though.
a grim-looking 'country-horror' band singing of death and hell to a miserable, all-but-lifeless congregation of 'zombies' in a beautifully sunlit, adorable little chapel. its already a fucking bundle of visual contradictions, and then enter an innocent young girl, blonde and sweet, in a white dress dancing and smiling the way through, despite some fruitless attempts to 'wake the dead'.
(i'll say here, i've recently fallen in love with this local - Melbourne-based - band, who's song 'all will be gone' - with its delightfully persistent reminder of everyones mortality is a personal favourite just cos its so damn fun!)
darkness isnt hard to find in life - some of us are more familiar than others - and avoidance of seemingly unsettling facts is futile. you are going to die. shit things will happen to you. its all basic nessecity of life - indeed a good life. it imposes perspective and value.
this clip - truth and beauty and love and life. all light and dark. smiles of an innocent girl in a white dress, dancing joyously to a country horror band in a warmly sunlit white church amongst a zombie-like congregation. it sums up for me the argument about whether dark music is depressing.
fight fear off and itll hold you tighter. accept it and understand it, and you'll feel like dancing. allow yourself to explore darkness, confront fears, open your mind, accept truth and the shadows have nothing on you. happiness penetrates.
or dodge it, narrow your mind to the light and fluffy, listen to Justin Bieber and enjoy a superficial existance (over the top, sure). so much beauty comes from those shadows though.
dark music isn't necessarily depressing. if i relate to it, it helps me accept, express and manage my emotions rather than suppressing them or dwelling on whats going on. it soothes and/or energises my soul. if i dont relate to it, thats cool, someone else no doubt does.
for those of us who enjoy music as art, not just entertainment, some of the best, most timeless, has a dark edge to it, and has something to say about true life.
life is often fucked up. just accept it. experience it. explore it and learn from it. get perspective on it. you know what - greater happiness and enlightenment will probably be the result. i dont know if music taught me this, but it helped me realise.
I’ve never been a ‘runner’ as such. I love playing sport, and am competitive as seagulls after a chip. Throw a ball out in front of me and I’ll chase it mindlessly like a dog, but put me on a running track and I’d just ask ‘Why?’
I tried a few times over the years, got up and ran around the block at Mum and Dad’s – maybe a kilometre at most – once or twice. Problem is, I get out there and my mind is immediately tracking way ahead of my feet. I’m prone to thinking too much, and running in itself didn’t distract me enough. I’d constantly just feel like stopping and walking – what was my reason to keep going? Yeah, fitness, but I mean short term. It was bullshit, boring exercise.
Yet playing sport, basketball or a casual kick of the footy in particular, and you couldn’t stop me. I’d wear myself out, and then instinctively tear away after the ball or an opponent in a 20 metre dash. My focus was purely on my target; with some thoughts maybe on trying to impress others with my ability, though often failing.
I moved to Richmond a few years ago and started heading to the Tan – the 3.8km running track around Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens. With the part jog, part walk to and from the Tan it’s 7km all up.
Starting the Tan run at the Anderson Street hill climb and heading around clockwise, my initial efforts left me panting and buggered about 300 metres into the run, where I’d stop for a drink at the Moonlight Cinema entrance.
My expectations were, from then, naturally low. I tried to run a little further each time, and eventually got to the point where I could run about a third, then walk a third, and run the final third. I can’t remember why I started doing this, maybe I’d stacked on a few kilos, but I was uncharacteristically committed to it, despite my intense dislike of running, and made it a new years resolution for 2010 to run a full lap.
Around the same time I was standing near the bar at Transport one night, watching the footy while I waited to meet some friends, and I got talking to a couple of girls. Again, I don’t really know how we got talking and it’s rather unusual for me to find myself in such conversations. We got onto running and I talked about my inability to run the Tan.
‘Sure you can,’ one of the girls said, ‘it’s all about your breathing.’
She didn’t give me any specific instructions on how I should be breathing but I thought about that the next time I went out onto the track, breathing slower and deeper.
Just a few weeks into 2010, with this in mind, I ran past my previous furthest point and kept going. See how far you can go, I thought. I made it through the section I usually walked and to where I would start running again. By that point I was thinking, well you’ve come this far, just keep pushing.
I finished. A goal for the year ticked off just a few weeks in! Now I knew I could do it I had no reason to stop and walk.
I started listening to music and found it spurred me on a bit, took my mind away from the boredom of running, and even helped reduce my times a little.
Later in the year I discovered yoga. This revolutionised the way I thought, or at least dealt with those tiny, distracting anxieties that pop into your head and grow with a watering of attention. It also flowed into my running. Thinking too much when I run properly drains my energy and is painful. I too often get stuck dwelling on such thoughts, and previously they’d probably be enough to stop me in my tracks. But I was learning to give them all the attention they deserved – none; because it was too difficult while running.
So my runs became a form of meditation where I could clear my mind and narrow my focus. Afterwards I feel not only better physically, but mentally too. Sometimes, if you need to find energy, you have to exert a little first.
Recently I’ve been forced to run without music. The earphones I have won’t stay in my ears while running – heck they barely stay in while I sit at my desk. But that was kind of a relief. I’d been using the music as a distraction to keep my mind from slowing me down. I feel strong enough now that I not only don’t need that distraction – but I’m stronger without it.
My good times are around 18 minutes. In October a friend and I raced each other. It was a friendly affair, and a few others came to watch – and celebrate afterwards. While there would be no bitterness either way, we both wanted to win. He’d never run the Tan before so I had a mild advantage. He took the hill hard early, leaving me behind and a little nervous about gaining the ground back, but I just ran my own lap, making sure he didn’t get too far ahead. I gradually gained on him and we entered the final stretch neck and neck. I won by about two seconds, at a time of 16 minutes 4 seconds, about a minute and a half better for both of us than our previous bests over the same distance.
I did have music that day, but I barely remember what songs played. Most of the time I could hear it but I wasn’t listening. I was purely focused on the path directly in front of me, and the pair of shoes pounding it that I wanted to catch.
I used to hate running. Now I’d almost say I love it. I can certainly say I love what I get out of it, and that’s enough; and I can’t go two days without some form of exercise. Eighteen months ago I’d have struggled to motivate myself to go two days in a row with exercise.
Ten songs for running, or ‘Songs that get inside me and make me move about’ (no order)
‘Abel’ – The National
‘No Cars Go’ – Arcade Fire
‘Feel It’ – The Brian Jonestown Massacre
‘So Alive’ – Ryan Adams
‘Too Young To Love’ – The Big Pink
‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’ – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
‘Tomorrow’ (live) – James
‘Superconnected’ – Broken Social Scene
‘Stale Thoughts’ – Ground Components
‘Gunslingers’ – You Am I (dedicated to my friend and rival)
