WHAT COMES TO MIND … KASEY CHAMBERS AS THE WATER AND THE FUEL
- Bernard Zuel
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, a new occasional series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence.
Each time, he will dig out a photo out from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical. It might be short and brutal, long and precise. But it will be inspired by a photo I’ve not seen before, and maybe even unseen by anyone beyond Stuart himself.
This week, a beachside Kasey Chambers.
__________________________
ON THE WALLS in our old place in Ermington – about a five-minute walk across Victoria Road to the not exactly salubrious Ermington Hotel, which we never entered, and sorta halfway between our respective parents/childhood homes, which we still did – we had posters, photographs and prints. Among them was a black-and-white Marilyn Monroe, a colourful prancing cow from New York, a reclining Modigliani, and one photo of the Beatles, a close-up from around 1964/65.
From the time she was about two, I would carry our daughter around looking at all of them: giggling at the cow, turning sideways and stretching out to look at the Modigliani, and each time we stopped at The Beatles I would tell her that’s John and George and Paul and Ringo. Which eventually she would repeat, in some or other fashion at first, then mostly in the right order.
Though bowing or genuflecting never happened – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it – it’s possible the names were said by me in a reverential tone. It’s probable they were among the first words she learnt. After “more” and ‘NO” anyway.
At home and in the car when a Beatles track played I’d tell her, this is The Beatles, and we’d sing along. Drive My Car was a favourite (beep beep beep beep yeah!), Revolution 9 less so, though at least she learnt what came after number 8, so there was that to balance the trauma and nightmares.
Bowie followed, especially anything from Hunky Dory, later some of The Zombies landed well (she still cries today when she hears A Rose For Emily) and when I could I’d sneak in some Joni, like Big Yellow Taxi, to ease her in, Chelsea Morning a bit later (it went by without objection or much response, but I was playing the long game), and she sure did like Beach Boys. Especially because for a while she couldn’t tell when it was Beatles and when it was Beach Boys: they were interchangeable Dad music, and when I asked what we were listening to her default answer was a curious word that was Beatles and Beach Boys mashed up really quickly.
(And don’t’ believe her mother, it wasn’t a test, just a game, ok? There were no repercussions. No that wasn’t a frown on my face if she wasn’t exactly right; it was the glare of the sun making me squint. I was cool with it. Shaddup. I was. Anyway, the point is she still talks to me. Occasionally. Through gritted teeth.)
But her first real love, her first this-is-my-music was Tania Kernaghan. Forget Wiggles, thanks but maybe later to Hi-5, stop right now, thank you very much Spice Girls. On the way to childcare, on the way home from childcare, on the drive to visit the grandparents, or any drive at all, it was Tania. Then some more Tania. NO Beatles Dad, Taniiiiaaaaaa. More.
We got to meet Tania and her sister, the songwriter Fiona, who were and are the loveliest people, and my daughter’s first concert – in my arms, then on my shoulders, to see over the crowd – was Tania playing in a room at Taronga Zoo. This little urban kid, whether she knew it a lot, was becoming a country fan, and it’s not a big leap to figure that her fondness for Saddle Club, on TV and on CD, flowed naturally from this.
All this was fine with me: there was more than enough country music played in this house, she wasn’t drinking shots of whiskey yet, and I was never going to own a ute or shoot her brown dog. Then there was the fact I was always picking up gems and beginning deep dives from recommendations, covers, gigs etc, like discovering the incredible Fred Eaglesmith when I heard Kasey Chambers singing his Water In The Fuel and knew I had to know more.
Not to mention there were worse things she could learn. And yes, I may mean a few years later when she heard The Darkness so much around the house that she ended up regularly singing enthusiastically “get your hands off my woman motherfu ..” – the end of which she would, at least while we were in earshot, merely mumble.
But it wasn’t enough. I had plans and, as you can see with the Joni, was already seeding the ground. So in 2001 when I began making her an end-of-year compilation CD of the songs that she had loved and the songs she had requested through the year – a routine that would go on until playlists nixed the CD compilation - I may or may not have slipped in a few that I thought she should know, that she would with a little bit of exposure be asking for naturally. And who knows, she might even believe it always been her choice.
(Reader, she never did. She might forgive her father a lot, but she’s not stupid, now or then.)
Thus it came to pass that of the 26 songs on Favourite Things 2001, there were seven from Tania Kernaghan and eight from Beatles and Beach Boys, some Felicity Urquhart and Monkees, then scatterings from You Am I, Carla Thomas, Audrey Auld. And in there, primed to take her further, waiting for her whenever she was ready, not a swear word in sight motherfu…, a couple of songs from Kasey Chambers.
It was fuel for a longer journey some day, it was potentially a source of strength or inspiration right now – well, maybe not the piercing - it was easier to remember than John, George, Paul and Ringo. Or was it George, Paul, John and Ringo? More!
SEE MORE
Find more work by Stuart Spence on Instagram @stuart_spence
READ MORE
Comments