All in Music
20. 9th & Hennepin - Tom Waits
So I’d plug in those ubiquitous white headphones on my way back to the train station and put that album on, knowing it was the perfect soundtrack to that time between last drinks and the last train.
It’s a harsh album on first listen, a tired beast borne of carnival touts and bitter polka bands.
The music was – is – unique to my ears, a symphony of history and ancient instruments. The melodies are simple, at first, until you realise he’s playing three different melodies on two instruments, with his raw charcoal voice on another melodic journey.
9. All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
It’s not the same, of course, it never can be. The relentless progress of life and time has seen to that — in ways positive and negative, of course.
But we’re there, in each other’s lives to varying and fluctuating degrees.
There have been 18th’s, 21st’s, engagements, weddings, marriages, kids, dinners, lunches, barbecues, laughs, late nights, too many whisky’s and long phonecalls.
19. Lovesong - Amiel
Your usual love songs have never been terribly interesting to me.
The schmaltzy, boring lyrics and flat vocals all over the radio are just dull. They’re chemically treated to exist without any context, floating away from any significance.
They’re the antithesis of this entire series actually – songs bereft of meaning, with the additional quality of being sonically boring.
17. I Predict a Riot - Kaiser Chiefs
Then you drill down into the lyrics and you realise the boppy tune is all about the dangers of a night out. The thin line between fun and a punch in the face. The risks that the local constabulary could pose when you’ve had a skinful and lost your primary faculties:
8. Christmas Songs
Christmas songs are, generally, terrible.
Drowning in schmaltz, lacking in irony and banging on about snow, reindeer and mistletoe — things about as far from a Melbourne summer as possible.
16. Thunderstruck - AC/DC
My first job was at Hungry Jack’s. It might be the rose-tint of nostalgia, but it remains one of my very favourite jobs.
Work all shift with your mates, in a fairly demanding environment (the local appetite for Hungry Jack’s was, back in 1999, insatiable), giving each other stick and actually working pretty hard.
7. Never Let You Down - Dan Sultan
If you were to go by the images people put out there, starting a business is a never ending parade of success, victories and achievement.
What they don’t show you is the utter grind of the process at times, the crushing disappointment, worries and the stress that gnaws away at your mind at all hours of the day.
18. Wrecking Ball - Bruce Springsteen
The entire crowd is up, waving their arms, clapping - in time now - and stomping in their aisles. It feels like the whole place is shaking.
It’s dark in the stadium, but the glow of the stage lights is bathing the whole crowd in participatory glory.
Under it all is a 1-2 clap beat off the drums, hypnotising the audience into their own rapture. People clapping their hands above their heads, tears, laughing and singing, so much singing.
15. Parts Unknown Theme - Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan
He understood - early on, maybe because his ‘fame’ came later in life - that the key to interviewing is knowing when to shut your mouth.
You need to want to hear what the other person has to say - not just use them as a platform to bounce your own words off.
It wasn’t training, either.
From all appearances, it was simply a pure, human curiosity in the world around him, the people in it and the food they eat.