{"id":754,"date":"2007-07-06T08:34:52","date_gmt":"2007-07-05T22:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=754"},"modified":"2007-07-07T11:26:47","modified_gmt":"2007-07-07T01:26:47","slug":"this-is-my-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=754","title":{"rendered":"This Is My City!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Women\u2019s Theatre Group was my first direct involvement with the Pram Factory. I think my feminism was heavily influenced by anarchism, Emma Goldman, Alexandra Koll[o]ntai, the 1871 Paris Commune and by Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks<\/em> — about the internalisation of oppression. I like the group creative process; I love nutting things out, listening and talking and moving and I believe really strongly that the group is more than the sum of its parts but I also believe the stronger the people in it, the stronger the group. There was a big anarchist household at 999 Drummond St.; Paul Dixon and Ann, they were the king and queen of the anarchists, if that\u2019s a contradiction in terms, and they moved to the UK, to Brixton. We had the Free Store in Smith St. Collingwood for a while. There was a gang of anarchists and crims who lived there… ~ Robin Laurie, ‘Some recollections of Life in the Australian Performing Group’<\/a><\/p>\n

GREG MACAINSH<\/strong>, Skyhooks<\/a> – ‘The songs had to be authentic, they had to be about places I’d actually been to’<\/p>\n

“When the sun sets over Carlton
\nAnd you’re out to make a deal
\nCheck out who you’re talkin’ to
\nAnd make sure they are real”<\/em>
\n— Carlton (Lygon Street Limbo<\/em>)<\/p>\n

When the sun sets over Elwood, the man who put Melbourne on the songwriting map is at home, studying. Thirty years after the landmark Living In The 70s<\/em> album, Skyhooks songwriter and bass player Greg Macainsh is doing a law degree.<\/p>\n

“Really, the Trade Practices Act<\/em> is just a different form of poetry,” he laughs.<\/p>\n

Billy Pinnell, who has worked in Melbourne radio for 45 years, says Macainsh’s songs exploded the cultural cringe, opening ears to truly Australian songs.<\/p>\n

“He broke down all the barriers,” Pinnell says, “opening the door for Australian rock ‘n’ roll songwriters to write about local places and events. He legitimised Australian songwriting and it meant that Australians became themselves.”<\/p>\n

Macainsh wrote about his native land — the suburbs. His songs described the contemporary Australian experience without the obligatory kangaroo or wattle tree. These were songs about Carlton, not Oodnadatta. And they reflected that most of us were riding around in Valiants, not on brumbies.<\/p>\n

Macainsh, now 54, says he didn’t really know what he was doing. “It just made sense for me to write about the things I knew.”<\/p>\n

Greg Macainsh grew up in Warrandyte. His father had poems published in The Bulletin<\/em>. His mother was a librarian. Macainsh was camping at a boy scouts’ jamboree in Dandenong when he heard The Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There<\/em> on the radio. “It was wild stuff, amazing,” he says. “I lost interest in the scouts and concentrated on music. The little tranny had just hit. I listened to a valve radio at home and then to a crystal radio set I made for my bedroom. 3UZ was the station and Stan Rofe was the man.”<\/p>\n

At Norwood High School in Ringwood, Macainsh was captain of the softball team, “the team for wusses and misfits”. He was almost expelled because of his long hair, but he refused to cut it. He bonded with a fellow student, Freddy Strauks, who became the singer in his first band, Spare Parts, and then the drummer in Skyhooks.<\/p>\n

Macainsh’s first “local” song documented him joining Eltham’s version of the Grateful Dead, Reuben Tice. The song was I Went Down To Eltham To Get Me A Job In A Band<\/em>.<\/p>\n

His songwriting heroes were Chuck Berry, The Kinks’ Ray Davies, and Bob Dylan. “They could all rattle off a place name, like Memphis or Waterloo Sunset or Muswell Hill. It gave their songs great mystique and the listener a sense of place. Later on, I thought I could do it in the Skyhooks, but it had to be real, it couldn’t be twee or folky.<\/p>\n

“The only other ‘Australian’ song I knew at the time was I’ve Been Everywhere<\/em>, which had every Oodnadatta\/Coolangatta\/Wangaratta rhyme. It was a novelty song and I definitely didn’t want to go in that direction.”<\/p>\n

Macainsh wanted to write about places that had “ethos and an atmosphere”.<\/p>\n

“And the songs had to be authentic, they had to be about places I’d actually been to. I was a bit sceptical about Arkansas Grass<\/em> by Axiom because I’m not sure any of the guys had been to Arkansas. And the song’s about the American Civil War and I was sure they hadn’t been to the war.”<\/p>\n

Carlton, Balwyn and Toorak were the suburbs Macainsh wrote about on Living In The 70s<\/em>. “They were the places I knew something about,” he recalls. “With St Kilda, I hadn’t spent a lot of time there by 1973 and 1974, so I couldn’t really write about that.”<\/p>\n

Skyhooks’ first gig was in Carlton, at St Jude’s Church Hall in 1973. And Macainsh remembers many early-morning trips from Eltham to Johnny’s Green Room in Faraday Street — the only place in Melbourne selling cigarettes at 2am.<\/p>\n

Many people mistakenly thought that Balwyn Calling<\/em> was about Macainsh’s girlfriend, writer Jenny Brown, who grew up in Balwyn.<\/p>\n

“I had another girlfriend from Balwyn, for a brief moment,” Macainsh reveals. “I think the song speaks for itself. One thing you have to remember is that phone calls back then were far more significant than they are now. And not everyone had a phone. You’d ask people, ‘Have you got the phone on?’ So a phone call from someone in Balwyn was significant communication.”<\/p>\n

“Well, she mighta looked like a princess
\nWhy’d you have to give her your address?
\n‘Cause you ain’t safe when you get home
\nShe’s gonna call you on the telephone”<\/em><\/p>\n

Toorak Cowboy<\/em>, meanwhile, which became one of six Living in the 70s<\/em> tracks banned from radio, was written after one of Macainsh’s girlfriends ran off with a guy from Toorak. The song refers to the Trak Cinema’s supper show. “You could see a movie at 10 o’clock on a Friday night; it was a very groovy thing to do,” Macainsh recalls. “And get your hair cut at Marini’s.” — Jeff Jenkins is the author of the Skyhooks’ book Ego Is Not A Dirty Word<\/em> ~ Shaun Carney, ‘Songs of Melbourne’<\/a>, The Age<\/em>, August 28, 2004<\/em>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is my city
\nThis is your city
\nThis is our city now<\/p>\n

Well I’m back in the land of second chances
\nAnd rock ‘n’ roll shows where nobody dances
\nBack in the land of chicken and chips
\nMars Bars and roadside tips<\/p>\n

And if you don’t like it
\nThen that’s too bad
\nCos it’s the only city that we’ve ever had
\nSo when the man says
\nThat you gotta pay
\nYou gotta cancel the cheque and you gotta say…<\/p>\n

Well I’m back in the land of cheap incense
\nWhere the favourite sport is sittin’ on the fence<\/a>
\nBack in the land of pie and sauce
\nDrinkin’ flat beer with no third course<\/p>\n

And if you don’t like it
\nThen you gotta fight it
\nAnd you gotta fight it now
\nAin’t no time
\nFor walkin’ the line
\nSomehow the cream’s gone sour…<\/p>\n

Back in the land of subtle hints
\nWhere the artists are busy painting Picasso prints
\nHere in the land of all time lows
\nYou can make it big and get your own quiz show
\nAnd if you just hate it
\nThen that’s too bad
\nCos it’s the only city that you’ve ever had
\nSo when the cop says
\nGet outta town
\nYou gotta get it together gotta stick around<\/p>\n

This is my city
\nThis is your city
\nThis is our city now<\/p>\n

I got it
\nYou got it
\nWe got it now<\/p>\n

This is my city
\nThis is your city
\nThis is our city now<\/a><\/p>\n

~ From the album Straight in a Gay Gay World<\/em> (Mushroom, 1976)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Women\u2019s Theatre Group was my first direct involvement with the Pram Factory. I think my feminism was heavily influenced by anarchism, Emma Goldman, Alexandra Koll[o]ntai, the 1871 Paris Commune and by Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks — about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-ca","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}