Monty Python - Notes from Pig City

Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen: Death’s Dateless Night

Most of us have a song that we’d like played at our funeral. Some of us aim for the transcendent: spiritual songs that, we hope, might say something to those we leave behind about our approach to life. Others who take the exercise (and themselves) less seriously prefer a more mordant strain of philosophy: Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, by Monty Python’s Eric Idle, is a popular choice.

It was while driving to a friend’s funeral with Charlie Owen, one of Australia’s most expressive guitarists, that Paul Kelly had the idea to record an album of such songs. Death’s Dateless Night features 12 bare-bones, intimately recorded tunes, with a cathedral-like ambience that echoes the sparseness of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

This could have been compelling, if only Kelly had a fresh set of songs to fit. He is now 61 and, while he’s not quite staring mortality in the face, he’s had enough brushes with it over the years and certainly farewelled more than his share of friends before their time. If anyone could take a hard look at a topic no one much likes talking about and have something worthwhile to say, you’d hope Kelly might.… Read more..

Sex in a cab? Not on my watch

Miscellaneous / February 7, 2012 / 5 minutes of reading

For about the last 10 years, I’ve been driving a maxi taxi on the weekends. In the early noughties, it funded my first book Pig City; during the GFC, as the freelance commissions dried up, it kept me afloat. These days, I restrict myself mostly to Sunday night shifts only, and although much has changed in the industry in that time, much of it not for the better, one thing hasn’t changed. And that’s The Question.

The Question gets asked in all sorts of ways. Sometimes people come right out with it, but more often than not it feels like I’ve picked up that hapless idiot from Monty Python’s “Candid Photography” sketch – better known as Nudge, Nudge. A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh, eh, knowwotImean?

Say no more!

The question (I’ll put it euphemistically) goes something like this: have I ever picked up in the act of, you know, picking up?

It’s always men who ask it, of course. Never women. Women (at least the nice, polite and proper ones that I mostly seem to meet) don’t generally think to ask such things. Maybe I’m just meeting the wrong ones, at least if the bragging from my colleagues is anything to go by.… Read more..

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