My 1983

Got the Sunlander back to Brisbane earlier than normal with a grab of new songs written on keyboard. One of them had such an odd chord progression that I still need to write it down before I can play it again. Greg wanted to record a few of the ones we'd demo-ed before the break in 8-track. He'd been inspired by witnessing This Five Minutes record there over the holidays. We kept in touch via letters. Try doing that now. 

Also, he was going to go to Sydney with Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums. It had only been two months but I'd never heard of this band that featured both Wadley brothers. That's probably not true as it would've been mentioned in despatches. Anyway, in a development that would never cause a problem now (or even a few months later) Ian had just started a job at the Public Service and couldn't go. I was asked to stand in on guitar for the Sydney gigs. 

Practices for days learning both the Dum Dums set and the Gatekeepers songs for Basement. Exhausting but exciting. Basement was like a daydream breaking into reality. The recording quality was astounding to me, better than I imagined it could be. Some lessons: don't record guitars with reverb going in; if you think you have a choral vocal arrangement listen very hard to the practice tapes before wasting studio time on an embarrassingly bad recording. We redid Keeper of the Gate twice, the third time got it right ... ish.

After a fine suburban dinner, we packed into the van to get us to Sydney. A non-fatal drive. We checked into the Burnley in Kings Cross, feeling like veterans o' the punk wars. Walking around the Cross zapped our little minds with its surround sound music, arrays of sex workers and unsleeping street life. The first gig at the Southern Cross had a blowout by the support band so we, minus Greg Perkins, went on as the Gatekeepers in our first live show. We played big venues like the Trade Union and smaller cooler ones like Stranded with acts like The Johnnies, Hoodoo Gurus and The Scientists. Sydney audiences loved Greg Perkins in a way that none dared love anyone on stage in Brisbane. That was a window to the future. What a week and a bit that was.

I don't remember being expected to stay in the band but at the time Uni was more important to me than playing in a band whose music I wasn't a fan of, so when I was dropped off back in Brisbane at Griffith Uni in the middle of O-week, I felt nary a conflict. What I did have was a tape of the four songs we'd done at Basement and an academic year to get done.

Getting back home was good as I found out that my brother and his difficult family had decamped to Townsville so he could do his hospital internship. For the whole year. It was just me and Stephen who'd come down to finish his law degree. That gave me another problem but one disaster at a time. Unpacking that evening was like floating in an oxygen enhanced meditation chamber and being allowed to scream.

Third year was fine, really. Most of us had binged on the attractive film electives and were left only with history and politics electives. That was a slog but there was still a bunch of good stuff to do and discover. I liked Uni and I was good at it. Bob Hawke had led Labor to victory in the Federal election which was a blast after almost a decade of coalition bullshit. Closer to home, the Nationals won the State election in their own right and, for all we knew, would be in power until the end of time. Bummer.

Before he left for Sydney with the Dum Dums, Greg had put the song Susan Burn on to a cart at 4ZZZ and I woke one morning with it blaring on my clock radio. Living the holy Mangrovian dream, my friends. People I didn't know knew that song. After a few months, Greg returned to Brisbane. This had been announced in Time Off with a captioned photo that said he was coming back to join the Gatekeppers (sic). 

We started gigging and hit a steep learning curve about practicing and playing our instruments properly. After some yucky gigs we got better (enough for one uni crony who had seen one of the bad ones to approach me after a good one with a grin and, "well, Pete, ya did good"). This led to more recording, at the 8-track home studio of a friend of the Wadleys. This, plus a live track, made up what would be our Cosmic St cassette album (don't scoff, it was normal in that scene and, besides, however much of an exaggeration it might have been, it did get into the RAM independent top 10 ... for a week).

The band didn't impinge on study to my memory. Both seemed balanced, even with the busier social calendar that the former brought. I kept writing new stuff and at one point rigged up a pair of cassette players to do some primitive multitracking.

I finished up the year and the B.A. quite easily, without the rush of the disrupted previous year and far more confidence that I'd ever had of emerging with some decent results (I was that dick that would whinge loudly in the common room if he only got a pass). So, at some point in November of 1983. I took the bus back to the city and another to Auchenflower for the last time. At breakup drinks (Queens Hotel, the big one with the high ceilings) I thought I was having an acid flashback but was most likely just very pissed. Whatever we were feeling about it, we'd all got through three years of university at least a little the wiser but more importantly, the more fortunate for the free education of the time, for the post punk ethic of openness to exploration and bags of daydreams we'd need to grow out of.

But this summary should be about the music of the time. It's gone on longer than usual this time as I was making music as well as listening to it. So here are the singles I recall:

The big one was Blue Monday. The galloping drum machine intro and delayed entrance of the vocal with a great filling electronics made it both a dance-stravaganza and a troubling accusatory song that some thought was about the Falklands War and others a Swedish student suicide pact. You could dance and grieve at the same time. Australiana was a comedy bit that heralded a rash of other comedy records. I didn't love it but liked the idea of that charting. I and friends ridiculed Redgum's Vietnam song I was Only 19 little suspecting how genuinely affecting we would find it decades later. Prince continued on the scene with the iconic 1999 which, like almost everything else he released, interested not me. She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby annoyed me. Human League's Fascination had a great chorus and a goofy verse. Soweto was infectious and glorious until you thought about the by line and had to wince. The Eurythmics came out of the cocoon of their old power pop origins to fly high with a triumph of electro pop that resonates down the decades. The Clash were disintegrating fast and Rock the Casbah was proof. Kajagoogoo's Too shy was meant to be sexy but sounded more like the Blitz version of Playschool. Rio by Druan Duran had them push through to stadium star status and well beyond my interest. Wall of Voodoo burst out of the margins with another one for the ages with the propelled Mexican Radio. Tears for Fears gave us a emotive chunk of greatness with Mad World (yes, the original is still better than the movies version). UB40 covered Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine and made it into a poignant mini drama. The Cutter by Echo and the Bunnymen ruled its niche and influenced all. The Call released their hit The Walls Came Down which featured a wannabe David Byrne vocal and a wordless sung hook that ran up and down a major third. The Violent Femmes brought out the spare and impressive Gone Daddy Gone which won them fans. Madness ditched the ska beat for a '60s cover It Must be Love which was ok. Culture Club's boring Do You Really Want to Hurt Me was followed by the far superior Church of the Poisoned Mind. The Stray Cats' Stray Cat Strut was and is a jazzy marvel. INXS came out with The One Thing which was a variation on Subterranean Homesick Blues and took them further from their quirky origins closer to the big rooms. And that's all I recall. No, wait, there's one more.

The song I love possibly the most of anything that came out in 1983 was one that people mostly seemed to revile. There are people born decades after its release that have inherited their parents' distaste for the track. When I heard the opening riff of Safety Dance gleaming out of a car radio, with its bold modal tonality and fun vocals I had found the song of the year for me. I still adore it.

So that's it for then.  Happy News Year to Youse.