Country Town Collective

A couple of weeks ago ABC radio invited me to join Briony Petch for an hour to talk about 3 songs and why they are meaningful to me. (Thanks, ABC!) The first was a song I remember from childhood, the second a song that inspires me and lifts my mood, and the third a song I would recommend.

I didn’t realise how hard it would be to choose just 3 songs! There are so many brilliant songs that are meaningful to me for lots of different reasons, and political correctness kicked in, making me think “I should have at least one song by an Australian songwriter! I should have a local band! I should include an indigenous band! I should include at least one female songwriter!”

Well, I couldn’t do all of that, but I did manage to move away from my initial Euro-centric choices (Penny Lane by the Beatles, Big Time Sensuality by Björk, Lille by Lisa Hannigan). I agonised about whether to include this awesome song by Fiona Apple (Get Him Back) or something by PJ Harvey or Regina Spektor, but in the end let myself be led by the questions and the songs I thought really answered them, and had a story I could tell about them.

So the 3 songs I chose were -

1. Shine on You Crazy Diamond, by Pink Floyd, from Wish You Were Here (1975)

Pink Floyd is my Dad’s favourite band, and I have memories of him listening to this Pink Floyd album literally hundreds of times as I was growing up. My parents had a fantastic record collection, from the Beatles to Joni Mitchell to Black Sabbath, but it was Pink Floyd that my Dad always listened to. He would put it on in the early evening, open a bottle of wine and as the night wore on would talk to me about philosophy and music and the world. I was born in 1977, my parents had been to Sunbury, they were part of the long-haired hippie movement, that was their world. Years later, I was in a band with some other music students at Uni and we covered a bunch of Syd Barrett songs for a Pink Floyd tribute show. I had to transcribe and learn all the keyboard parts of songs from Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I thought about all those times I had heard Shine On You Crazy Diamond on the record player, Roger Waters’ tribute to Syd Barrett, who died in 2006.

2. Blackfella/Whitefella, by the Warumpi Band

I got to know and love this song while working for ATSIC in Port Hedland, WA, as ATSIC had funded the local Aboriginal radio station which was on a lot of the time in the office. I love 80′s rock, I love 80′s Aussie rock, and this is a blazing 80′s rock song with a message… Later when I moved to Darwin I played this song at a “Darwin bands cover Darwin bands” night called Tropical Ear (at the time I didn’t know any songs by local bands, so I wasn’t sure what to play). The chorus is so joyful – “Are you the one who’s gonna stand up and be counted?…”

3. Adventure, from Djan Djan (2010) a collaboration between Mamadou Diabate, Bobby Singh and Jeff Lang

Kim and I went to Womadelaide this year (mostly because Ravi Shankar was billed!) and checked out this newly formed instrumental trio. The Djan Djan album was recorded in one day and features Mamadou Diabate from Mali on the kora (African harp), Bobby Singh of Mumbai, India on the tabla, and Australian rock muso Jeff Lang on slide guitar. The result is gentle, magical, soothing and beautiful! I have heard nothing like it before, and perhaps not many other people have either, so I thought it would be a nice thing to recommend.

What would your three songs be?