Sometimes, on rare occasions, continents collide.
Stasis and flow
The philosophy of being
Staying true
The science of belief
Sensing almost nothing is
We stare into a dying sun
Shield our eyes from its deceptive light
And hold on to anything
We do not know
Because not knowing
Still holds potential
While knowing
Keeps us always where we are
Not one step further
Down the track.
Words and image are my own.
©2018
(i∂̸ – m) ψ = 0
Two souls/systems/bodies
Interacting for a time
Then moving apart
Though separated by miles
Or even the Universe
Can no longer be described separately
They become a single soul/system/body
It is the most beautiful equation in physics
What happens to one
Continues to affect the other
No matter how distant
quantum mechanics does not recognize a vacuum
There is no emptiness
And If two souls get entangled in a wave
They will remain so
Forever.
Word configuration and image are my own.
©2017
“Songwriting is mysterious to me. I still feel like a total beginner. I don’t feel like I have got it nailed yet.” – Paul Kelly
Australian music is in my blood. Maybe it started when I was a babe in arms. My first sitter – when I was a very wee baby – was a fifteen-year-old pop singer name Patricia Amphlett. Patricia (known as Little Pattie) had just released her first single He’s My Blonde Headed, Stompie Wompie, Real Gone Surfer Boy which was climbing the Sydney charts at the time.
Patricia also happened to be a cousin of that other Amphlett girl, Chrissy, who would storm the world’s charts with her band the Divinyls in the eighties.
This country has been blessed by many stellar talents. In the late 50s and early 60s a wave of immigration from the UK brought an impressive crop of musicians (and actors) to our shores and the resultant bands; the Easybeats, Bee Gees, and later AC/DC (to name just three) all impacted upon the world stage to various degrees of greatness.
Other bands like Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Max Merritt, and Daddy Cool would dominate the local charts through the late 60s and early 70s. Then the Birthday Party came along.
The arrival into the Australian music scene of Nick Cave and his band the Birthday Party (formally the Boys Next Door) seemed to signal a sharp change in the tone of Australian music. This change had already been foreshadowed in the sound of Brisbane band The Saints (and Sydney proto-punk outfit Radio Birdman).
Pre-dating the ‘76 punk explosion, the Saints had received critical interest from the music press for their raw Stooges/MC5 style sound and strong songwriting but received little actual airplay at home.
Despite the Saints playing John the Baptist to their proverbial (anti)Christ, when Cave and co. exploded out of Melbourne’s punk underbelly, Australia was little prepared for the aural and visual assault that was the Birthday Party and had no idea what to make of any of it.
Feeling stymied by the self-limiting minds and imaginations of what then passed for the local culture, the boys from Melbourne took their talents to London (a tradition among Australian bands at the time) where they fast developed a reputation for violent and dramatic gigs that became the main influence for the eighties Goth scene.
The Birthday Party, having inspired a slew of new Goth bands, disintegrated around ’83. A few years later, bassist Tracy Pew died of injuries sustained during an epileptic seizure (of the original Birthday Party line-up, Cave, Mick Harvey, and Phill Calvert survive, Rowland S Howard having succumbed to liver cancer brought on by a Hepatitis C infection in 2009).
From the Ashes of the Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds were born. It was this band that gave Nick Cave the vehicle to truly develop his unique songwriting skills. Cave is often dismissed as some sort of Lord of Goth but that is patently reductive and belies his transcendent writing skills.
My pick for Nick Cave is Fifteen feet of Pure White Snow not because it is my favourite (mine is Are you the one I’ve been waiting for?) but because I think it nicely sums up what latter-day Cave is all about.
Paul Kelly’s songwriting career stretches back as far as Cave’s, though Kelly was certainly the more accomplished in those early years. Kelly eschewed the growing trend towards punk and new wave in the late 70s and early 80s, choosing to focus more on solid songwriting in the folk rock vein.
Like Cave, Kelly is a musical storyteller but unlike Cave, his stories are very Australian. Any country could have produced a Nick Cave, only Australia could have produced Paul Kelly.
His songs were, and are, a landscape of the Australian psyche and he has been able to move effortlessly through genres taking in and often reconfiguring folk, soul, blues, rock, and (much later) electronica. Kelly is an institution in Australia having passed into the mainstream without dropping a beat credibility wise.
In his searing honesty and self-examination, he reminds me a great deal of Springsteen, though if anything, he is even more earthy and authentic than that great artist.
Paul hails from Adelaide originally but has moved around a great deal over his career. This has given his music a universal feel and allowed him to capture the everyman in his songwriting. He has also worked with many of the luminaries of Australian music and is greatly respected by his peers.
My Paul Kelly choice is Dumb things because, in my opinion, it is one of the finest songs to ever come out of this country.
My final songwriter is Paul Dempsey of the band Something for Kate. There would be plenty of Australian’s in particular that would be outraged that I’ve included him in this company and left out such greats as Robert Forster and Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens, however, I consider Dempsey (a baby at just 40) one of this country’s finest.
Dempsey – another Melbourne boy – has been pumping out fantastic, genre-spanning material for over two decades both with his band and on two masterful solo records.
The thing I love about Dempsey is that he’s no purist, he’s a music enthusiast, with a deep love of all good songs regardless of genre. This has given his own songwriting efforts a fluidity and freedom that is remarkably rare.
Paul, like Springsteen, has suffered bouts of depression (seems to come with the territory when you have Irish blood) and I believe this experience has lent a depth to his songwriting. Added to all this is his phenomenal singing and multi-instrumental skill as a player (He played almost everything on his most recent solo album).
My pick for Dempsey is California because it captures the amazing musicality of the band, Pauls terrific songwriting, and the pop sensibility that has put such an incredibly nuanced band into the mainstream charts.
There you have it, my three favourite Australian songwriters in a nutshell. Many will disagree but I stand by my choices. All three have grown me as a person and provided the soundtrack to my weird little life.
©2016
Thoughts I left home with today
We’re supposed to be moving into summer here
But the mornings just keep getting colder
As if my need to be back in her world
Is changing the weather
Moving me closer to her
By degrees
Perhaps the hemispheres will sync
If only in our dreams
Perhaps I’ll open a door one day
And she’ll be standing there
Her face alight with that smile I love
She’ll drop her coat
Step into my arms
And we’ll just let worlds collide.
©2016
I knew I’d end up doing another of these. I just can’t resist the beauty in music.
Continuing on with my ‘Melbourne bands rule’ theme, my first selection will be fall at your feet by Clare Bowditch. Clare hails from here but the song was written by Neil Finn of Crowded House (Finn is, of course, a New Zealander but Paul Hester and Nick Seymour, his band mates, were Melbourne boys).
You’re hiding from me now
There’s something in the way that you’re talking
Words don’t sound right
But I hear them all moving inside you
Go, I’ll be waiting when you call
Next up is one of my all time favourite tracks what’s going on by the inestimable Marvin Gaye. This song can reduce me to tears, which is a prerequisite for true beauty in my book. Oh, that smooth soul sound.
Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Yeah, what’s going on
Ah, what’s going on
This next track could be the theme song to the movie of Jersey girl’s and my life. Irish child-woman Lisa Hannigan and her gorgeous ditty ocean and a rock have nursed me through many a near breakdown over the past five years.
Thoughts of you warm my bones
I’m on the way, I’m on the phone
Let’s get lost, me and you
An ocean and a rock is nothing to me
Speaking of soundtracks to our story (and Melbourne bands) It’s back to Something for Kate for a song which is just one of the Dempsey compositions that have had me wondering where he hides to spy on our life. Washed out to sea is biographically graphic and anatomically correct in every detail.
Arrival and departures
Yeah, we know them so well
Oh, from sleeping and dreaming
On a baggage carousel
We know every step and every crack
Every scene leading to the final act
Every comic trick circling back, back, back…
I can’t seem to get away from Paul Dempsey today. Here’s a cut off his brand new solo effort Strange Loop. The song’s called True sea (Oceans and seas seem to be a recurring theme in my selections – five out of the ten tracks so far. Ocean = emotion in Jungian symbolism, s0…).
Just get me off of this ocean
Want to move on a true sea
There’s no above or no below, just you
Just you beside me
That’s all I have for you for now. It’s all too beautiful will return…
Did you think it was an idle threat when I said I’d be doing more of these?
I could cheat on this and just say Patty Griffin’s stolen car, Bowie’s hard to be a saint, and the entire of Pony Face’s brilliant Nebraska tribute. That would, however, make for a very short blog so…
As Springsteen recently acknowledged, just a couple of days after the Starman’s passing, Bowie was a big supporter of Springsteen’s early career. I had written about that in my post which you can read here so it was satisfying to have the Boss confirm it all just a month or so later. I find this cover a little odd, to be honest. It fails to hit the right tone somehow. It has a lot of great elements but somehow they fail to coalesce into a satisfying whole. Bowie must have agreed because it didn’t make it onto Pinups only appearing years later as an extra on the German reissue. It’s still a fun listen, though.
My favourite original song: Ashes to ashes
I love this band and Springsteen actually personally selected them to do this cover. It’s a pretty cool version, let down a little by too much repetition towards the end. This song has been covered by so many people from Pete Yorn to Levon Helm and this won’t be it’s only appearance here in my top 10.
My favourite original song: I hope this whole thing didn’t frighten you
I really like Matt Berninger’s voice and, though this is not one of my favourite Springsteen songs, this version is achingly beautiful (dang, I was saving that line for my number one, ah well). I’ve been a big fan of this band since I first heard I need my girl and this cover was a pleasant surprise when I came across it. Springsteen should definitely get some violin happening on his own live version (he has fantastic violinist Soozie Tyrell in his band after all).
My favourite original song: I need my girl
I had to include this one, it’s such an ambitious solo effort from Something for Kate frontman Dempsey. He messes with the lyrics somewhat (I’m not happy about that) but the guitar playing is amazing, as is his voice, so it’s in.
My favourite original song: Morningless (this week at least)
I only recently discovered this little gem from Irish singer-songwriter Hansard. It’s a very different interpretation of a Springsteen classic and as an added bonus features The Little Big Man himself, Jake Clemons on sax as well as a certain Springsteen fanatic you may know named Eddie Vedder on backing vocals. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it grows on you if you give it a few spins.
You could say this is the version that birthed a Springsteen zealot (hey Jim, see how I appropriated your label there?). It was after hearing this cover (not even knowing it was a Springsteen song) that my journey into the ranks of the true fanatics began. Hearing a Melbourne band singing about New Jersey obviously peaked my interest and, after finding out who wrote the song, I was hooked. I now walk around with the entire Springsteen songbook on my Nook tablet. I’d call myself a tramp but I’m pretty sure you have to have been to at least one actual Springsteen concert before you can wear that jacket.
My favourite original song: The Sea and the dunes
This gets my vote for the most original cover of a Springsteen song ever. It’s so different from the original that it almost counts as their own composition. The anger and disgust at the inequalities in this materialistic world are hammered home loud and clear. I personally love this version.
My favourite original song: Killing in the name of
Yep, them again and another big cheat from me. Sorry but I really couldn’t choose between these three. Simply beautiful, all.
And again! This was the first version of this song I ever heard. I fell deeply in love from the opening bar.
This was always going to be the one. Patty took a beautiful song and made it a truly great one. This may well be the most unbearably gorgeous piece of music I’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter. Springsteen must have wept the first time he heard it.
My favourite original song: When it don’t come easy
Honourable mentions; Everything But the Girl Tougher than the rest, Mumford and Sons Atlantic City, Eddie Vedder No surrender
And just for the hell of it, here’s Springsteen covering one of my favourite Australian bands The Saints.
Well, for better or worse, there’s my selection. Any comments or opinions are welcome and encouraged.
©2016
This one’s for you Jersey girl.
Something for Kate, Leave your Soul to Science (released: September 28, 2012)
It’s not all about America.
Sucked out of the airlock
Cornered like a rat in a crowded city square
Lowered into volcanoes
Bound up back to back in smart matching chairs
Then she tells you, then she tells you oh oh oh
Then she tells you you’re not home.
Paul Dempsey, Out the Airlock.
Yes, I write about love.
I’m aware that, in this brave new world, that is almost a subversive act. In the Era of mass data collection and Big Brother surveillance, people are becoming understandably more circumspect as regards what information they are willing to share online. I can fully appreciate that, it is a very scary thing to know that your most private interactions may be being monitored and transcribed at any given moment.
And yet, here am I laying bare my soul day after day. Am I mad? Perhaps, but I honestly believe that if we let a bunch of faceless bureaucrats & apparatchiks dictate how we live in our own world we may as well not be living at all.
In a world of seemingly endless consumerism and easy sex, it feels as if love is being sucked out the airlock. The simple kiss has lost currency and I can’t remember the last time I saw a couple walking hand in hand. And so, I feel compelled to write about what is real to me, not reality TV real, but true emotions; raw and electric.
Human feelings are a deep well, but a crack has developed and levels are dropping (I strongly suspect post-modernist ‘frackers’ may be the culprits). It falls to those of us who still feel intensely to express our truth at every opportunity.
Love is humanity’s great achievement; it both dwarfs the pyramids of Egypt and soars higher than our highest orbital satellites. When expressed with sincerity, clarity, and passion it can tear down walls and build bridges.
Sex can be great of course, but without love, it is merely OK. The nihilists who have infested and infected our culture would have us believe that we have moved beyond the need for love (particularly romantic love), but the singular truth is we’ve never needed it more.
So yes, I write about love; beautiful, fragile, passionate, and deeply subversive love.
And here you are reading about it, so I guess you’re a subversive too…
©2016
For pretty much the whole of our relationship there has really been just one band providing the soundtrack.
Before we’d even begun to admit our feelings for each other, I introduced Jersey girl to Melbourne band Something for Kate. This band and their charismatic singer/songwriter Paul Dempsey have somehow managed to ‘narrate’ some of the most intimate moments of our story without ever having met us.
Or to put it more accurately, the thoughts and emotions that run powerfully through Dempsey’s songs have somehow always perfectly captured the way we were experiencing our relationship. I can only assume that he and we are all travelling along the same empathetic wavelength.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Something for Kate several times, the first being when they supported David Bowie on his last ever tour. I know Bowie was impressed by the young band and sang their praises often to the audiences at the shows.
They were great in that large arena, but it is in the smaller, more intimate, shows where they truly shine. Dempsey is funny, personable and laconic. When he engages with the audience there is always good-natured banter back and forth. He has the ability to make you feel like the band up there on the stage are your friends just having a go at being rock stars for a laugh.
When the music thunders into life, however, there’s no question that this is a killer band. Dempsey has a vocal power few can match and his guitar chops are a seamless blend of every guitarist you ever loved. This is also a band who refuses to be tied down to a single genre (something they have in common with their avowed idol Bowie).
They also have the courage to make music that doesn’t try to be edgy all the time. Dempsey is much more interested in telling his stories and listening carefully to how the music wants to be expressed. The band make being radio friendly work which has earned them a large and fiercely loyal following at home and abroad. It has also earned them some scorn from the musical condescendi who believe that the definition of a lesser band is one that gets played widely.
Putting all that aside, I’d like to share some of the music and lyrics that have so endeared this amazing group to the two of us over these past several years (you can click on the titles to hear the songs).
So I keep watch
And you keep breaking
Breaking formation to become
Someone else
And your eyes become corridors
Where I wander with a candle
Calling out to youAnd you only hide because you know I’ll find you
This beautiful composition seduced us both immediately. Dempsey here seems to intuit something deeply primal in relationships between women and men – the need for rescue, the need to feel important enough to another to warrant the effort – and also the fragility of the human heart. It recounts that rare kind of love where it feels safe to fall apart in the certainty that the other will stay; will search for you in your chaos and pull you back out.
Light at the end of the tunnel
Sometimes, anything just breaks your heart and
You hold out your arms to keep day and night apart so
This is never ending, nothing is ending
You turn back the clock ’til the clock is no more now
Time means nothing, time can’t touch you
It’s nowhere to the start and, nowhere to the end
But tomorrow somehow finds its way to us again andWhen all the sunlight in your eyes, feels forgotten
Is there light at the end of this tunnel?
Another gorgeous composition from a songwriter who is not afraid to lay himself bare. I know this is a particular favourite of Jersey girls, who has quite frankly been pulled through the ringer in an acrimonious and protracted marriage break up and who has many times searched in vain for that light. Again Dempsey shows his mastery of the human condition and navigates the emotional landscape seemingly effortlessly (but that’s the trick, isn’t it? Making the difficult seem easy).
Don’t listen too hard to the beating of your wings
Or you might fall
You only do what you do ’cause a part of you believes
That you’re here at allBut something reminds you
And sometimes I can hear it tooAnd I don’t wanna be the rain
Falling on this impossible parade
As sure as I can be of anything
I will be so sure about this impossible thing
This song resonates with me, with the part of me that knows the sometimes overwhelming difficulties that a relationship at a distance can face. However, rather than serving to discourage, I find the song’s energy and defiance a real balm for any occasional doubts. Not that I doubt the relationship itself nor our commitment to it, I never have for a moment, but there are times when it can feel like life is conspiring against us and in those moments, this is the song I turn to.
Together in space, together in time
We’re all dressed up, serene and wild eyed
And here of possible worlds is where we might find
A promise kept on day’s departing light
Our spider webs across the skyline
Another moment of genius from Mr. Dempsey, my favorite line is she’s all magnetic storm, out of her mind. This captures the elemental nature of love, the tempestuousness, and the fire. Love is a storm and its own safe harbor. I love the way he never sugarcoats human relationships. There is always Yin and Yang.
She’s out and back
She’s looking for the matches
We built our own logic
And now we scatter its ashes
We dropped a feather from the eighty-first floor
And watched it swing down to the world below
Such a long, slow fallWashed out to sea
Yeah, you’re so far from meArrival and departures
Yeah, we know them so well
Ah, from sleeping and dreaming
On the baggage carouselWe know every step and every crack
Every scene leading to the final act
Every comic trick, circling back, back, back
This is my absolute favourite. The lines arrivals and departures yeah we know them so well, ah from sleeping and dreaming on the baggage carousel give me chills. Could there ever be a more perfect description of the past three years of my life? That was a rhetorical question.
I find myself talking to ghosts
There’s no such thing as a stupid question
But I watch her making so much noise
That she thinks that she can win them over
Win them over
I watch her making so much noise
That she thinks that she can win them over
Win them over
But I have a compass
I watch the sundial
And I defy gravity just to get myself
Back to you
There are a couple of versions of this song and they are both beautiful. It all comes down to those last few lines for us. Those lines perfectly describe the way we both feel. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do to get back together, though the world be crumbling around us. I would defy gravity for this woman, and she for me.
So you, dance and you shuffle, into the eye of the storm
Eyes all on fire as if, you’ve never been here before
And you say it’s all nothing, but tell yourself quietly
But I hear you from my house, breathing differently
And when it all falls downYou won’t just stand there
Looking at the ground.
And holding your breath
Holding outSo you, drive ’til the water, changes from blue to green
And you, wait there until the wind, knocks you out of your body
You can, stay there forever, counting the stars, trying to
Separate yourself from how things are
But you, know you won’t get very far
Until it all falls downSo don’t just stand there
Looking at the ground
And holding your breath
Holding out
This one is just achingly beautiful. Situationally, I suppose it isn’t particularly relevant to our relationship, but it speaks to both of us emotionally and has always been special to us.
The fireball at the end of everything
But the sound of your voice is enough to rescue me from the
Fireball at the end of everything
As long as you sit next to me
We can burn
I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth
As long as you sit next to me
I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth
This song, like no other, speaks to the intensity of true love. For that reason alone, Jersey girl and I will always love it. This may actually be our song.
Obviously, I’ve concentrated here on the songs that resonate with our story. I may write another piece soon giving some of Dempsey’s other excellent music the attention it so richly deserves. In the meantime, here are a few great videos of some of my personal favourites. I hope you enjoy them too.
I’d like to mention here that Steph, the band’s barefoot bass player and Dempsey’s partner, had the good sense to turn down an offer to join Courtney Love’s band, Hole (I respect the hell out of her for that).
Finally, Paul released his new solo single today. As expected, it’s brilliant.
Runaway American Dream 