This song has a special place in boomer memories for me, because I was traveling at night with a fellow sailor who happened to be from Finley and happened to be a family friend of my girlfriend He had a jet black ‘76 Torana and a booming sound system, we had to get from Finley N.S.W. to H.M.A.S. Cerberus Vic. It was a good four hour drive and we listened to the cassette of Back in Black four times and made it back to base before midnight. That would have been the end of the September holidays, I was still 17, she was still sixteen and it was the last weekend we saw each other… It really shook me.

I was never a big fan of Mondo Rock, but I knew a girl who was, I was in HSC back at Sale High and down in Melbourne for a movie marathon weekend when I ran into Deb, she was going to the music bowl to see a bunch of Australian bands and Ross Wilson’s Mondo Rock was headlining, I looked at her bewildered when she told me, but went out and bought the single, just to find out what she heard in him.

Ah, the piss take, as australian as Kookaburra cricket gear and smashed avo and vegemite on toast. I do like this little ditty, its even got the expression for ‘calling Ruth’ and when we took the Americas Cup off the Yanks, you’d have to be a mongrel if ya sacked a bloke for singin’ this instead of turnin’ up to work.

January rain is all about the sadness of spending your summer in St Kilda, even though it was established as a gettaway for the upper middle class of Melbourne of 100 years ago, it had fallen into a bit of disrepute and the bottom bar of the Espy was where the locals came to hide, drink beer and complain about tourists and the heat, it seems like 100 years ago now, but I did love it there.

footnote, I did meet Mark Seymore back in 1984 when I was interviewing him for a potential magazine I was working on, he put our name on the door at the Seaview Ballroom so we could take pictures of the gig. Thats all I’ve got.

So, this came out before the above mentioned song but comes after because she headlined the St Kilda Festival after Hunters and collectors, I always thought the song was about Mark Seymour, or at least thats who I imagined in the lead male role, I was living in Fitzroy still, when I heard this and it did mean that I invested in her string of pearls when I hit St Kilda.

Nick Cave sings In th Ghetto with a band called the Bad Seeds, I remember watching the Bad Seed when I was about 7, I had a crush on the main character, I don’t know what that says about me, but I do like this song.

Don’t Change is my favorite INXS song, because of the drums, but I lost it in a move on. I send a message was really a turning point for the band, I remember the japanese film clip and thought this is not bad, and it wasn’t.

So, I was at a dinner party at the end of 1989 when one of the other guests bemoaned that they had to get up and go to work the next morning. I begrudgingly asked why and they informed me that the problem was that they were working the summer holidays at ticketec and when she got to the register Tickets for the first ever australian Kylie Minogue concert in her home town of Melbourne were going on sale. I thought for a moment and then asked if hypothetically she tapped out two tickets for somebody they would be in the front row, she said possibly, but that everyone would be doing it at the same time and it was computerised and she would be somewhere in the cue. anyway she got there late and we ended up in the 5th row, but we could see Michael at the side of the stage, It smelt like tween spirit but Kylie was Divine.