my music

I've been singing and playing music most of my life in a haphazard kind of way. I play guitar well enough to support my own songs. I also play a couple of chords on piano well enough to support a couple of other people's songs. But it's a bit like masturbation really; it can be a lot of fun but I know I really shouldn't do it in public.

And look, if any of you should ever catch me musically masturbating in public; that is trying to play piano and sing at the same time, I'd consider it a favour if you'd slap my hand away from the keys and shake your head firmly but discreetly at me. Maybe add a sharp 'uh-uh-uh!' if I look reluctant to stop.

My mother had a beautiful dramatic coloratura soprano voice; she was invited to train with a couple of companies when she was young but she suffered with terrible stage fright and couldn't cope. So instead she would sing around the house. We lived in the western suburbs of Sydney, two blocks away from what is now The Villawood Detention Centre. Back then, it was just the The Migrant Hostel, just another part of our neighbourhood and that neighbourhood was used to the sound of a full throated aria in a foreign language rising majestically from among the sheets as Mum hung the washing on the Hills Hoist.

My father was a drover's cook and a jackaroo in western Queensland and the Northern Territory in the forties and fifties and his druthers was hillbilly music. When he was in charge of the record player it was Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie and Slim Dusty.

There was only  one thing he liked better than Orange Blossom Special, it was my mother singing opera. He's one  of those silent bushman type. I hardly saw him crack a smile when I was kid. But he loved to hear my mother sing. He was so proud of her; he really thought he was punching above his weight when he snared her.

Maybe this is why I've never settled to music even though I love making it so much; my formative influences were just so bi-polar. One of the favourite things I did in the last couple of years was work out a rockabilly version Fur Elise on the mandolin; which says it all about me and music really.

Here are a couple of my songs that I've recorded with my friend Laurence Backer who is an amazing musician and a very fun guy.

This first, The Radical Muslim Stomp, one was written in the early days of the Iraq war. I was quite fired up and fairly radicalised by it all for a while. I was  pretty proud when Neil Young linked to it on his Living with War Today site. The original is long since gone from the net but here it is on You Tube.

This one I call The Bi-Polar Song. It's a happy little song really - about learning to live with a manic-depressive disposition.

This one is called Between Love and Loving You -about a guy who is torn between a bad relationship and having a good life. My friends, Laurence backer and Paul Krause recorded it for me.