I am going to be Kara Kidmanâs guest on Out of the Box, on Radio FBi Sydney, 12pm Thurs 25 June. Tune in: 94.5 on your FM dial or, if youâre not in Sydney, hear it streamed online via fbiradio.com.
The format for Out of the Box is that the listener chooses a playlist of about ten meaningful songs, plays them, talks about them.
I went through a bunch of different choices before landing on my final list â a list I still thought could have been improved upon as I headed out the door, armed with the discs, to head to the station. One thing that could have been included was âEl Pasoâ by Marty Robbins.
Robbins was a âsinging cowboyâ who specialised in âoutlaw balladsâ and I grew up listening to him because my mother had a K-Tel compilation tape of his greatest hits. âEl Pasoâ is my favourite: a cowboy fancies Salina, a Mexican girl who works in Rosaâs cantina âout in the west Texas town of El Pasoâ (El Paso being Mexican for âThe Passâ â it is, as youâd expect, on the border of Texas and Mexico â and New Mexico, as it happens). In time, the protagonist realises he has a rival for Salinaâs affections, a flash young man who is far more enticing. A gunbattle ensues, the protagonist shooting âthe handsome young strangerâ dead. The protagonist rides out to âthe badlands of New Mexicoâ to evade rightful retribution for his crime But he misses Salina, so brazenly rides back. But thereâs a posse waiting. You can guess how it ends.
Another song I wish Iâd had room for was âYouâre A Good Man Albert Brownâ by the Dukes of Stratosphear â a band I became aware of by stumbling upon the most gorgeous record cover ever, for their first album, 25 OâClock. They were a psychedelic band. A mock psychedelic band, it turned out. They were in fact XTC trying to recreate the psychedelia of their youth. I still didnât know this when, years later, they released their follow up album Psonic Psunspot. The lead single was âYouâre A Good Man Albert Brownâ, a song with the aftermath of World War I as its setting. Lord Kitchener was on the cover.
I didnât know why psychedelia involved Victoriana â vintage army costumes like the ornate ones worn by the Beatles on the cover of Sgt Pepperâs Lonely Hearts Club Band. I do now: apparently amongst the images and sensations unlocked by the drug in the form of hallucinations are memories of youth â it encourages a retreat to childhood. And for many young musicians in the 60s, this entailed memories of Grannyâs house: photos of uncle so-and-so who never managed to return from the Somme, and so forth. Well, thatâs English psychedelia; in the US, it was often cowboys and indians or civil war regalia.
My copy of the âYouâre A Good Man, Albert Brownâ was pressed on âpsychedelicâ-coloured vinyl. Instead of black, it was multicoloured. It looked like vomit, actually. I canât remember when I discovered the Dukes werenât a new band who liked sounding old, but a less-new band who liked sounding older. It didnât really matter. They created that âvintage soundâ quite well. And they gave rise to my own cod-psychedelic band, Psychedelic Spew.
Anyway, neither of these made my list. Hereâs what I went with:
1. âFavourite Pack Of Liesâ â Steve Kilbey, The Slow Crack
I was a late-comer to Sydney band The Church, but I fell in love pretty early with the solo work of their bassist Steve Kilbey, for two reasons â the album The Slow Crack with its elaborate psychedelic cover art, that I stumbled on while filing records away behind the counter at the record shop I worked at â and this song, âFavourite Pack Of Liesâ, that stood out when I put the record on while working back one evening. I was hooked. Eventually I got into the band as well. In fact I worked briefly with Peter Koppes, the lead guitarist of The Church, about 15 years ago. He still invites me to gigs. Awesome local talent, still going strong!
2. âBetween the Devil and the Deep Blue Seaâ â George Harrison, Brainwashed
This really should have been the single from Harrisonâs posthumous album. It should have been included on the recent compilation Let It Roll, and issued as a single. As it is, itâs an excellent, under-rated song that captures George and his love of ukalele. It also betrays a love of âgranny musicâ, an accusation often leveled at Paul McCartney, by John Lennon.
3. âMy Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mamaâ - Frank Zappa and the Mothers â Weasels Ripped My Flesh
I became a Zappa fan(atic) after someone I worked with in a record shop (it was the late-â80s, we still sold records) told me if I ever see Zappa albums secondhand, I should buy them. They were hard to get. Iâve blogged about this before.
I had a hard time deciding what song to play. Itâs a matter of balancing the humour, the ribaldry and the musical chops. This has the first and third without so much of the second quality.
4. âMy Name Is Nobodyâ â Ennio Morricone, Film Music
One of the really popular CD sets I used to sell when working in music retail was a collection of film themes by Ennio Morricone. One day I found a single-disc compilation that was kind of a âbest ofâ; letâs face it, for the novice, all you really want is âThe Good, The Bad And The Uglyâ and âThe Missionâ; anything else is a bonus. Fist Full Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More⦠either, or, or both, whatever.
So I used to bung this on, listen intently to the opening track â The Good, The Bad And The Ugly â and then let it fade into the background. Sure, Iâd notice it again when âChi Maiâ came on. In the UK, it was the theme to The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, which means nothing to me. In Australia, it was the musical accompaniment to one of those short interstitials that would fill time between shows in the afternoon on the ABC. Maybe it was a hot air balloon, or people ice skating? I donât remember.
Then I discoverd the deliciously dark sitcom Nighty Nighty, written and starring Julia Davis. The theme music seemed so familiar, but just out of my reach. I thought it was maybe the instrumental break of a late-â60s pop song. And then I somehow remembered it was one of the Ennio Morricone themes that I didnât recognise, most likely to a spaghetti western Iâd never seen.
5. âRhubarb Tartâ â John Cleese, â At Last the 1948 Show
At Last the 1948 Show is one of two immediate precursors to Monty Pythonâs Flying Circus.
It featured Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty
Feldman, while Do Not Adjust Your Set featured Eric Idle, Michael
Palin, Terry Jones and, eventually, Terry Gilliam. Both date from 1968.
The following year the six began working together as Monty Python.
âRhubarb
Tartâ is a foolish novelty song set to the tune of one of John Philip
Sousa's marches. It prefigures a lot of Python interests, including the
name-checking of philosophers, artists and Lionel Bart (writer of the
musical Oliver!, among other things). Sousa made a career of
composing marches, one of which was âThe Liberty Bellâ. Which went on
to feature as the theme to Monty Pythonâs Flying Circus. And the âEvery Sperm Is Sacredâ sequence in The Meaning of Life is one of the best parodies of Oliver! ever perpetrated (think: âConsider Yourselfâ.)
6. âFrom Beginning To Endâ â Psychedelic Spew
When I was in Year 8 my English teacher was a cool guy called Steve Green who wore the widest, psychedelic ties and, up until that year, a big handlebar moustache. He looked a bit like Dave Crosby, before Crosby became a walrus. That year, Mr Green set an assignment for students to work together and create a package â writing, artwork, video and recordings if possible â of a band. Some people chose real bands. Some mates and I came up with Psychedelic Spew. We were into the Beatles, and I was particularly into psychedelia (and Steve Greenâs ties).
The first time I created this track, it was with a record (The Beatles RockânâRoll Volume 1; the songâs âTwist & Shoutâ if you havenât guessed) recording onto a blank cassette on a Sharp three-in-one hifi unit. For some reason the tape mechanism was so precise that when paused, there was no slippage at all. I must have pressed pause and then lifted it off just before the very end of the song. The end result sounded impressive. That tape has long since disappeared, and while this re-creation sounds as impressive, thereâs no skill involved in manipulating and cross-fading digital files. The ideaâs still funny.
7. âNo Wucken Furriesâ â Dom Romeo
One
Christmas in the mid- to late-â80s my brother convinced me that we
should convince our parents to invest in a four-track recorder for the
ideal Christmas present. They did. I started work on my âheavy concept
albumâ to be entitled From the Sublime To The Ridiculous â And Back Again! Unfortunately
I ran out of teen angst long before I completed the work. There may be
a bunch of C60 and C90 tapes with the songs on them somewhere in the
house still, but I doubt it. The only one I could lay my hands on was
this, which was written and recorded to serve as the theme to a
derivative, undergraduate, university sketch comedy show, some of which
was actually video taped. The title was someone elseâs suggestion.
The
best comment itâs had is, âitâs so bad, itâs almost goodâ. I know
things arenât quite in tune, but it was recorded with real instruments,
in real time, long before your basic computer came with all the
instrument pre-sampled and ready to go, indeed, before every computer
was a recording studio. In fact, before most people could afford very
much more than a Commodore 64 or Vic 20.
Actually, the best compliment came from a mate who said it sounded a bit Flaming Lips-ish. Iâll take the compliment.
8. âBroad Lic Nicâ â The Doug Anthony Allstars, DAAS Icon
The Dougs are probably my first real contemporary, local comedy love. They were regulars on The Big Gig, a weekly cabaret comedy show directed by Ted Robinson. They were funny, there were musical, the three-part harmonies â often singing offensive lyrics â were brilliant. For a while, Iâd see every Sydney show I could get to. I interviewed them a few times towards the end; I should find those and put them on my blog!
Choosing a song shouldnât have proved so difficult but I was torn: the popular funny favourite, âKRSNAâ? The gorgeous, tortured ballad, âBottleâ? âThrow Your Arms Around Meâ? In the end I went with the drinking song. Iâm fairly certain thereâs a Scotish phrase â though I donât know its original context; it may be the poetry of Robert Burns! â that goes âitâs a broad licked moonlit nicked tonicketâ. Translated to English, it is in fact âitâs a broad, light, moonlit night tonightâ with all the consonants pronounced. So this song is, âBroad Light Nightâ. Possibly inspired by time spent at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
9. âGummy Bear vs Draculaâ â Joe Romeo
As a kid, my big brother was a bit of a dag â he grew up loving classical music and understanding it and knowing how to compose, arrange and orchestrate it. But he never was allowed to pursue it totally â my fatherâs plans for him were to become a doctor. So now heâs a country doctor with a home studio and when not serving as doctor, psychologist, confessor and everything else a country doctor has to do, he mostly writes and records songs of praise. But heâs started dabbling in electronica. The retro simplicity of this track reminds me of Giorgio Moroderâs stuff in the early â80s, like the soundtrack to Electric Dreams, with a touch of the classic synthesizer tones of Jean Michel Jarre.
10. âSuicide Bomberâ â Tripod, Songs From Self Saucing
Iâm always a bit surprised that Tripod can still divide an audience. There are those who think, âwell, the musicâs sound, why do they have to go and ruin it by trying to be funny?â and likewise the people that would like them better if they were real comedians, and didnât resort to songs. I say, rubbish. If you know anything about music and comedy, youâd see these guys are brilliant exponents of both. Early on, they had to politely tolerate constant comparisons â warranted or not â to the Doug Anthony Allstars. A shallow comparison to make, but not helped when Ted Robinson revived The Big Gig as The Sideshow and Tripod became the musical trio in residence. But if you are not moved by their music and amused by their comedy, only bring up the issue if you want me to yell at you.
Irrespective of all of that, Tripodâs Self Saucing proved that they had moved on to the next step. It is almost objectively clear that the music and the humour was the most effective and clever it had ever been, taking on a wide bunch of topics including the expected geeky take on popular culture, and, in this instance, modern politics. Great stuff.
11. âLady Grinning Soulâ â David Bowie, Aladdin Sane
There arenât many Bowie songs I dislike, but among the
several that I love, this one stands out for his faultless falsetto,
Mike Garsonâs excellent piano, and the flamenco guitar. (I should know
who the guitarist is, but I donât.) A gorgeous song from a faultless â
in my humble opinion â album. Bowie himself quite likes the song, too â
he chose it for a compilation he recently put together called I Select Bowie.
12. âSomewhere Over the Rainbowâ â Israel Kamakawiwoâole, Alone In Iz World
Israel Kamakawiwoâole was a Hawaiian lad with an awesome voice. Unfortunately also an awesome girth. I donât know much more about him other than he died of a respiratory illness related to his obesity. This is one track that you cannot play in a shop or on air without at least one person wanting to know more.