Backstage at Memo with @syd_dolores just before Museum of Inherited Memories show Uprising began. Last night Uprising wove the frayed strands of Holocaust memorial - Yom Hashoah - with Indigenous stories of survival. Archie Roach was the humble flag bearer of endurance, his voice rich with experience. Emily Lubitz declared Lithuania was from where her family ran from, the lucky ones anyway; Paul Kelly played sideman to Archie as well as performing duets with the soaring Jess Hitchcock & a beautiful understated version of The Partisan with Gabriella Cohen; too many highlights to single out but I was so proud of Syd who gave us her Dzia Dzia’s (grandfather) own words from his testimonial in a riveting delivery. After which Syd & Hettie
on piano & bass, joined Willy & I to play Through Your Blood Shall You Live - the true story of their grandparents meeting. The next generation is the sweetest revenge.
Happy New Year to the faithful & the unfaithful, to the movers & the shakers, the sad & lonely, to those who get it done & those who want it done. May you appreciate this is all a gift that one day is taken away and passed on like a baton in a relay that you wish could be held onto just a little bit longer. xx
From 1999 a rarity called Happy New Year. By the time New Year rolled around in 1999/2000 we were in hospital with a one day old baby girl, our third. We briefly wished each other a happy one and then went back to our dreaming.
From Paul Kelly’s self-described ‘mongrel memoir’ ‘How To Make Gravy’ pg 139-140
"Everybody Wants To Touch Me’ is sometimes read as a riff on celebrity. That seems to be Sydney cabaret singer Paul Capsis’s take on it on his album of the same name. Medusa-haired Deborah Conway, Melbourne singer-songwriter and mother of three, knows a little about celebrity and pregnancy both. She fronted a band called Do-Re-Mi in the eighties and had a big hit with a song called ‘Man Overboard’, featuring the memorable lines ‘Your pubic hairs on my pillow, your stubble rings the sink.’ Her shapely posterior was also famous, full-framed and proudly bare on big Bluegrass Jeans billboards nationwide, with the tagline ‘Get yours into Bluegrass’.
Do-Re-Mi functioned as a collective - a shaky construct in pop music at the best of times - and used language such as ‘ideologically unsound’ (the predecessor of ‘politically incorrect’) in their band meetings. Deborah, with her ...
Antarctica, destination of majesty, of mystery, of dreamlike otherworldliness; the air so clear you could see the future. Our nights rocked by the seas, our days filled with light, colour, wildlife, adventure.
And no internet! For 11 whole days the world could not intrude.
Thanks @Chimu & @Intrepid
Back in Australia with almost enough days to recover from jet lag before the next stop - Israel.
