It was the act of empathy itself that shook me there in the back seat of the Kingswood:a long-distance balm encoded via yodelling vocals and sighing pedal steel by one Mike Nesmith,I quickly learned. Yes,the nutty big brother I’d known fromThe Monkees,suddenly revealed as a soul companion bonded through space,time and heartbreak.
To this day it’s impossible to hear that keening pastoral lament without Joanne Young from St Vincent’s Primary repossessing me like a full-body aftershock. Not just the glow of her shiny red hair,her kindness and freckles;but the cruel,stillborn promise of it all.
Joanne made the penny drop. Songs were uniquely magical things,capable of staggering feats of human tenderness and connection. They would be my drug of choice forever.
Mixtape Memories,the Wheeler Centre’s end-of-year celebration of story and song,is destined to explore similarly personal recollections,told by a range of celebrity guests about songs that blew their minds and stayed there – to be covered live,in turn,by a house band and guest performers.
We asked six participating storytellers and musicians about one song they’ll never forget.
Paul Grabowsky,pianist and composer
“When I started to work with Archie[Roach] and Ruby[Hunter],I had a lot to learn about their story,and their story is emblematic of many people’s stories. As a whitefella growing up in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne,our understanding of what had happened to Aboriginal people in Australia was at best vague,at worst,misinformed.
“That whole kind of redemptive project was something that they managed together. And the songs that expressed that relationship were the most powerful songs that I’d ever encountered. For me,Down City Streets was a particularly powerful one.
“Written by Ruby,recorded by Archie onCharcoal Lane… but we also recorded a version of it on the Australian Art Orchestra albumRuby… and what I chose to do in that arrangement was make it much slower and change a couple of the chords to their relative minor and change the tempo so … the song took on slightly more gravitas[to give] that sense of being down and out in a city.
“But of course,likeTook the Children Away,there’s this fantastic transition where the song pivots around to become a song of hope. The last words are ‘Now I know how street kids feel when they’re put down’.
“It’s got a beautiful melody. It has a kind of yearning lyricism,which so much of their music does have. Now it’s become part of my solo piano repertoire,so it’s made a full transition,in my experience,from working with the Art Orchestra,kind of restoring it as a Ruby Hunter vehicle,and then being able to be something that I can express myself through as a solo piano piece.”
Paul Grabowsky is currently touring his solo piano repertoire and preparingDuality,a new show with PNG singer Ngaiire.
June Jones,singer-songwriter
“All the Things She Said is a song by t.A.T.u,a Russian duo of teenage girls that were marketed as being in a relationship together. They put out an album in Russia that got so big that they signed to Interscope and re-released it in the west in English as200 km/h in the Wrong Lane.
“The singles wereAll the Things She Said andNot Gonna Get Us;both sung by these two girls about persecution for their sexuality and the sense of running away from a small town or a mob of people,and that’s communicated in the videos as well.
“When I was 11,I went to England with my father to meet his family … it was this thing that he did with each[sibling around that age]. I remember being in northern England,at one of his friends’ houses,sitting in front of whatever the equivalent ofRage was in the UK,by myself,and I saw the video forAll the Things She Said.
“It was this amazing,dramatic,dystopian video of these two girls in the rain in their schoolgirl uniforms up against a chain-link fence while a mob of people in trench coats,like they’re out ofNineteen Eighty-Four,look on judgingly. The video had that sort of green tint thatThe Matrix had around that time. That whole aesthetic has had a huge impact on me,this sort of gritty[apprehension] about ‘What’s the next millennium going to bring?’”
June Jones is currently preparing to tour her third album,Pop Music for Normal Women.
Rhys Nicholson,comedian
“Unsent Letter is a song that my uncle[Glenn Dormand,aka Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab] wrote when he was in the band Machine Gun Fellatio. When I was in early high school my friends didn’t know Machine Gun Fellatio. I don’t think 12-year-oldsshould know whatMotherf---er on a Motorcycle is … but knowing them myself just automatically made me cooler … I think similar to comedy,music gives you a bit of a path to be a bit of a f---ing weirdo.
“They used to come to our house after gigs in Newcastle. In the middle of the night,the whole band would have showers and hang out. There was this kind of chaos surrounding them ... I didn’t understand just how many drugs there were. Now when I look back at clips and stuff it’s like,‘f---ing hell!’
“I guess it was sort of what showbusiness promised me. It was like a circus arriving. Both my parents are artists so ... as kids we were allowed to hang out at the table a bit longer ... so we got to see a lot of shit and MGF was the pinnacle of that. For my 11th birthday,my uncle got me a signed picture of KK Juggy[Christa Hughes] topless on stage.
“I choseUnsent Letter[co-written by Matt Ford,aka singer Pinky Beecroft] because it’s a good example of how great they were,lyrically. There were seven members and they were all songwriters and they all wanted to be the front person. That’s why the shows were so good. But I’d imagine putting an album together would have been a f---ing nightmare.”
Rhys Nicholson is currently performing stand-up in the US,hoping to return to Australia in 2023 as judge ofRuPaul’s Drag Race Downunder,and as the evil Dr Sarkov in Netflix sci-fi dramaThe Imperfects.
Jess Hitchcock,singer-songwriter
“Is John Mayer cancelled now? I’m not sure. ButThe Heart of Life is definitely one of those songs for me. The other one is a Bob Dylan song calledDon’t Think Twice,It’s All Right. I remember listening to those two songs on repeat,over and over again as a teenager … those formative years.
“They really inspired the way that I write music and songs about heartbreak. All of those little bits of information filter into what I do now,[in terms of] forming stories and helping teenage feelings,you know?
“[The cancellation phenomenon] is strange. Often musicians and creatives talk about how they have this alter ego when they come on stage and when they write music. It’s like they’re a different person,because what they’re portraying in their lyrics;their candour,being emotional and truthful,is so different to the way that they behave in real life.
“I mean,I’m sure there were painters in the Louvre who were total dicks. So are we taking their paintings down? I think music just holds so many places in so many people’s hearts and memories. It would be so sad to see them just erased from culture.”
Jess Hitchcock is about to release her debut albumUnbreakable.
Ben Shewry,chef,record collector and hi-fi enthusiast
“I choseGreen Arrow by Yo La Tengo. There’s a somewhat embarrassing story attached to that song for me. The short version is that I stole somebody else’s art and got found out;got told that I’d done the wrong thing. But then after that,it’s a story of redemption and kindness and empathy. I guess the powerful part of the story that I want to share with people is that no relationship is ever irredeemable.
“It happened for me in my late 20s and it was a timely lesson. Some things that happen change you;change your trajectory,and maybe your mentality and your way of thinking,and this was one of those experiences. I learned that the ability to look at somebody with empathy,even when they are doing the wrong thing to you,is a very powerful position to come from.
“Yo La Tengo are an easy band for me to keep coming back to… There’s something in their ability to not be cynical about the world and to create at a high level constantly,right into their later years. As a younger person especially,but even today,I needed to see that. I need to have people to look to[to see] … ‘This is how you maintain creative priorities’.”
Ben Shewry is currently preparing tonight’s menu at Attica,Ripponlea,since 2010 one of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Mawunyo Gbogbo,journalist and author
“I choseMusic and Me by Nate Dogg. It’s got three separate parts to it. The first part,he’s singing about his love of weed. In the second he talks about his ancestors who were slaves,the importance of music to them and how they brought music to him. And then in the last verse,he moves on to how ‘music and me go together,perfect harmony’.
“The very last time I smoked weed was in New York City at aSource magazine industry party[where Gbogbo was working]. I probably had three drinks. But I had the most potent blunt ever. And I was completely out of it. Ended up at the subway in New York City. I suddenly start thinking about all the things that are wrong with my life and I’m crying my eyes out.
“The cops show up... ‘black,female,intoxicated’,they shoved me in the back of the paddy wagon... I’m sure they intended to take me back to the cop shop. But luckily for me I blacked out in the back of that paddy wagon. So they ended up dropping me off at a hospital in the Bronx … My relatives that I’m staying with aren’t too happy that I was out all night and kick me out. So like,I’m at rock bottom.
“When Nate Dogg sings about smoking weed... I like that it begins there. Because after all that stuff happened in 2001,I finally got my[journalism] degree and I decided that I was never gonna take drugs again. The reason I like that it starts there is because that represents the old me. And it ends with the new me… Yeah. That’s my drug now. Music.”
Mawunyo Gbogbo,author of the 2022 memoirHip Hop and Hymns (Penguin),recently concluded a year as music and pop culture correspondent for Double J.
Mixtape Memories is at Melbourne Recital Centre on December 6,presented by the Wheeler Centre as part of ALWAYS LIVE.
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