22 Dreams

Saturday 21 November was Songwriters Day at Darling Harbour, Sydney. The event is hosted annually by the Darling Harbour Authority for Australian Music Week, and organised and co-hosted by the SSA, the Songwriting Society of Australia. Of this purely volunteer organisation, it is Ken Stewart of the band Urban Guerillas who does the lion's share of the organising and groundwork, so that's a terrific effort Ken! There's been a heatwave over Sydney during the past three days, and even though temperatures didn't reach quite as high as anticipated on Saturday, it was nonetheless pretty damn hot. It was clammy and humid with no refreshing breeze, but thankfully the event was on the Saturday rather than on the Sunday as the Sunday had become very hot indeed. People came and performed and put on a good show despite the heat, and the sound quality was good, so all were happy with that. This is Pete Scully, president of the Society. He does good work liaising with other son...

(This article will be published in the 'Songsmith'. But it'll need more proofreading & editing before I submit it.) “REVOLUTION is Nick Puñal’s first fully produced album. After several years and many trips to Sound Dog Recording Studio recording a song here and there (with plenty of breaks in between) the album finally came together in 2009.” These are the introductory words to Nick Puñal ’s official blurb & credit sheet for his new album, Revolution . The most striking facet of this album release is that it’s only available to download, through iTunes . Those who prefer the more traditional approach of a CD release would likely frown upon this venture, but a line has to be drawn between what is traditional and that which is practical. No one these days – particularly a self-funded artist – is expected to release his or her music on vinyl. The iTunes release is a crafty and intelligent way of selling and disseminating this music. For those who purchase th...

Pretty flowers bloom in night skies And at season’s end, so they must die Never to breathe their song again Nor sing their charms and wishes Never to live the love that they were  Always eternal requiem… I see the flowers floundering Watching their petals drop in pain Hear their heartbeat run with mine Heart them dance to the war hero’s march tune We shall celebrate their art once more  Always eternal requiem… And as people match and separate In tact they leave their stamp of hate Love is forgotten in the ashes of war And that’s when I blacken my face once more And walk the lonely crematory fields  Always eternal requiem… To congregate and meditate In shadeless stony fields of slate The distant sound of hazy cathedral bells A clear reminder of your own private hell The lowest phase of a star once known  Always etermal requiem…   Words & Music Copyright Ross B c.1990.1997.2006....

Society member Pennie Lennon , along with her partner Bruno Koenig , run a singer-songwriter night right up at the heart of the Blue Mountains, at the old Imperial Hotel in Mount Victoria.   You can’t miss the Imperial, it’s a foreboding white pub/hotel to the right as you’re coming up from the east into Mount Victoria.    More information about the gig and the pub, and contacts, are in Pennie’s words at the bottom of this article.   Mount Victoria is about a fifteen minute drive west of Katoomba and sits at a regal 1000 plus metres above sea level, or 3,500 feet.   Pennie and Bruno, of the duo My Hearts Dezire, run this gig every Tuesday night.   It invariably features a full night of performers and 3 songs are given to each act with more songs given to a feature act for the night.   Most of the performers are local singer-songwriters although occasionally Sydney people come up for the gig, which in this instance, comprised of ZaraMeow and myse...

I've uploaded a freshly recorded track onto MySpace, a song called Secrets that I'd written some six years ago. It's the last of my "production" songs that didn't make my Sea in June album of 2006, partly because I felt that it was too much of a musical and thematic departure from the songs that comprised that album. The other reason for not including Secrets on that album is that it's quite a "big" song, ie quite linear and almost complex, thus deserving in my mind a standing on its own. I plan to put this out on an EP with some other recordings that are subsequent to the album. Pleasingly it only took us about 2 1/2 - 3 days to record this song. I was expecting the recording to take a little longer. I teamed up again with Stewart Havill who recorded and engineered the track at his Sound Dog Recording Studios in Lane Cove. Stewart created the drum track with my assistance, otherwise the track is totally my performance. Stewart again a...

I rarely get around to listening to the radio these days.  However I've recently succumbed to the aural airwaves because the CD player in my car tends to chew out more CDs than it accepts. I enjoy listening to CDs in the car because that's usually the space where I can unobtrusively practice my singing, which I imagine, sounds invariably like a dog barking, or a coyote howling. So with my CD player playing up on me I tune into the radio where I hear what are likely to be new releases, but I'm so out of the loop now I wouldn't know which songs are new or which of those are five or so years old. What annoys me so much is that the songs I hear are hideously stupid. I can't believe that most of the tripe you hear passes off as "music", the lyrics are dumb and so is everything else. Perhaps I set too-high standards, or expect high standards from that which I listen to. The song that is really riling me at the moment is this thing called 'Raise the a...