I keep saying to myself ‘nah, write up that story when you’re at home and have lots of time’. I have decided, however, that I’m not going to have time ever again so here’s the story now.
Last weekend I went shopping with my Ma at the southern suburbs’ fave shopping destination, the mighty Collonades. I have never been able to spell that word, and hence I have never called Collonades central management. After wandering around said shopping complex we were leaving by way of the banks and post office area. It was cold and rainy and quarter to five, so there weren’t very many people around. There was, however, a huge bunch of noise.
The noise was being made by two little boys spruiking at people who were walking very quickly in the opposite direction. As we got closer to the boys they turned their salesmanship on us, claiming that if we gave them fifty cents they would sing us “any song in the world, including the hits of the 80s and 90s” (I think it was good of them to categorise this for us. Being a library person, categorisation is a very important thing to me). So. Mum and I both shelled out the fifty cents and being wise ladies, asked not for a song, but instead “whatever song you’re best at”. “Oh,” the noisiest of the two boys said, “…we’re really good at this one song but we only know the first couple of lines.”
Mum and I decided that would do and listened to a very passable rendition of ‘I swear’ by whomever that song is by. The boys sang the first line wrong, and that kind of tripped them up for the second line, which meant the last line really flopped, but they did have good voices. They could probably do with a bit less of the old singing-eight-notes-where-one-would-do-RnB-ballady-type-thing-pick-a-harmony we-can’t-all-take-the-improv-line-you-know, but they were good nonetheless.
They said they were practicing for Australian Idol. I’ve often said Australian Idol is evil cause it makes kids think they can’t make music for themselves, and makes them think that all they need to do is learn how to sing, they don’t need to learn to write songs or play instruments, but here was at least an example of Australian Idol making little boys get out there and hassle people for fifty cents in a more entertaining way than simply saying “oi, give us fifty cents”. So at least they’re understanding the ‘entertainment’ part of music making, and they obviously feel empowered enough to give it a go themselves.
In other musical news, that day I also bought Egg-Nog The Ipod. Denni keeps referring to him as Ice Coffee, but his name is Egg-Nog and he is revolutionalising (revolutionalling?)the way I use, acquire and think about music. I’d like to start a discussion along the lines of Robbie Buck’s ‘is this the death of the album’ question. I thought I would use my Ipod to buy Mp3s online, but I’m finding I’m buying way more CDs now and uploading them on to Egg-Nog. What is everyone else doing?
xo leighstardustÂ
If you have a look at the ‘Gigs’ page on this here
