Lucinda Williams

June ’07 – I was given Emmylou Harris’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ for Christmas when it came out in the early-mid ‘90s. I wasn’t sure about the production (Daniel “Turn Up The Reverb” Lanois) but there were some songs on it that I fell completely in love with: ‘Going Back To Harlan’ (my introduction to the McGarrigle sisters) and ‘Sweet Old World’. I had heard Lucinda Williams before and didn’t like the way she sang. She didn’t sing – she chewed. But I had to admit, ‘Sweet Old World’ was one of the saddest and most beautiful songs I had ever heard. Several years later, I gave Lucinda another go with ‘Car Wheels On A Gravel Road’. Same problem; I liked the album, but just wished that Emmylou had been singing it instead. Then, after ten or fifteen years of ambivalence, I bought Lucinda’s first album for $2 (from my local, at the Parramatta end of Glebe Pt Rd) and, after a few listens, finally understood. She is a difficult knot of harshness and sweetness. She brutally undermines her lovely melodies and neat word-plays, not because she wants to make things hard for the listener, but because she is trying, trying, to be honest; hoping that somehow we can accept the way she sees the world; and hoping that we won’t refuse to listen unless she comes back with a sugar-coated version. My favourite on this album ended up being ‘CRESCENT CITY’. I don’t even know exactly why; it captures some happy-sad, looking-back mood, “We used to dance the night away/ Me and my sister, me and my brother/ We used to walk down by the river.” And there is a fantastic, subtle chord change between the verse and chorus, and a melody that just makes me want to sing along at top volume.

Merle Haggard

March ’07 – I was on my way to play a show a few weeks ago and a woman, seeing my guitar, asked me what music I liked. I asked her the same question and she said “Country music, Aboriginal music.” She listed a few singers, including Merle Haggard, so, sometime later, although his conservative politics always bothered me, I got his Best Of down from my shelves and since have been listening to it a lot. I love ‘MAMA TRIED’ – it is a compact little life story, with brief but vivid character sketches, and a chorus so rousing and full of energy that you almost forget the meaning of the words that you’re singing along with: “I turned twenty-one in prison, doing life without parole”. Great guitar riffs, too.

David Blue

February ’07 - One song I listened to about ten times in a row recently was 'HOUSE OF CHANGING FACES', by David Blue. I thought only Townes Van Zandt wrote songs from such desperate places (like Sanitarium Blues, which makes me picture Townes buckled to a bed but still groping for a pencil, then scrawling lyrics on his green hospital gown, saving up the very last of his brain cells for a song). There is not a single wasted word in David Blue's song - “It wasn’t easy when I think about it, living in the house of changing faces. I still have the tracks to remind me what life was like high and wasted, when I wanted to die” - and his guitar, heavy, harsh and twanging, says even more, maybe all the truly awful but undramatic details which just can’t be conveyed by words. His vocals are double-tracked, which I think is often a mistake for really personal songs…but in this case, maybe he needed the moral support of another voice (and it could only be his own).

Prince

January ’07 – For $2, I bought Prince’s ‘Round The World In A Day’. I used to listen to it at a friend’s house when I was fourteen; ‘Raspberry Beret’ was a favourite, for the lines “and if it was warm she wouldn’t wear much more” and also, “the type you find in a second-hand store” (buying berets in second-hand shops was the sort of thing we would do, as was partial nudity). I have liked Prince since I got ‘Purple Rain’ for my twelfth birthday, but not very thoroughly…I loved Love Positions’ version of Kiss (again, the lyrics were so hippie and down-to-earth for someone who has kiss-curls like Michael Jackson) and there was that song about “If I was your girlfriend”. So I was very curious about my second Prince album. And it turned out to be amazing. ‘PAISLEY PARK’ quickly became my song of the moment – it’s so happy that it’s almost creepy! At about the same time I made this purchase, a Mr Whippy van had taken to visiting Arcadia Rd (one day I heard joyful cries as ‘Greensleeves’ approached, and spied two grown-up boy Goths from down the road run out and buy ice-creams), and I thought, “If everyone in the world were like me, in twenty years, all the Mr Whippy vans would shelve ‘Greensleeves’ in favour of ‘Paisley Park’.” Caution, children!