This Song Has Got Me is one of those unusual songs that arrived whole, words and music, who knows from where? Even more uniquely, it arrived unbidden on holiday in Pondicherry, India without access to an instrument and was scrawled down on a scrap of paper to be remembered. Upon return to Australia, and a guitar, it turns out that what was in the mind’s eye was also what rendered itself in the air just as imagined.
The song is a meditation on life as a musician, the relationship of performer to audience, and if such a thing can be said , the “meaning” of music. All in a pop song.
This video was made during the second Melbourne lockdown with two of our daughters, Syd & Hettie.
Now I do this for the money
But I try to get it right
It's been a way to feed the kids
And pull the darkness from the light
It's been a way to fill the void
A way to get applause
A way to keep away the wolves
And a way to bolt the door
love me sweet, love me long
you got me in this song
this song has got me
and you got me in this song
Once I did it for rebellion
For the poet in my soul
For spotlights, for attention
Sex & drugs & rock ’n roll
I did it for redemption
I did it for my needs
I’ll be here til I’m bleeding
I’ll be here when you leave
love me sweet, love me long
you got me in this song
this song has got me
and you got me in this song
this song has got me
and you got me in this song
It’s a way to see perfection
On a road that’s full of flaws
Most times it's all effort
And rarely am I sure
I bumped into an old man
He had been to where I'm going
Gave me a look of pity
‘Cos up ahead was Leonard Cohen
He told me Cohen struggled
He went and shaved his head
He went and served another
- when all those words did him no good
He went to find G-d instead
G-d said
love me sweet, love me long
you got me in this song
this song has got me
and you got me in this song
this song has got me
and you got me in this song
What else would I do if I knew I couldn’t love you?
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.
