20 years ago a little song called I’m So Post Modern managed to finish #72 in triple j’s Hottest 100. I was reunited with Caz Tran on Double J as they replayed the chart last Sunday. Hot off press is this POMO production honouring the Hottest 100, a song formally known as Wingdings and … Nan.
The oddball opus was a frequent on triple j’s Super Request with Rosie Beaton. I’m So Post Modern was featured on this compilation along with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Cows With Guns by Dana Lyons!
The video was classically collided together in the days before it was due to appear on rage by Dan Ilic and myself. We were working for Channel 10’s Ronnie Johns Half Hour. It is possibly the first example of a ‘lyric video.’
The clip was initially taken down from YouTube almost immediately when Dan added ‘MTV’ as a tag (in a bid to increase eyeballs.) Viacom owned MTV and was on a rampage removing pirate content. Meanwhile, several memorable fan videos flash-mobbed into existence (which you can still catch.)
In 2003 I wanted to set the world record for longest continuous performance of Daryl Braithwaite’s The Horses while riding on a horse carousel on Melbourne Cup Day.
So I did. The record was thirty minutes.
I could have gone longer.
The plan was to go for two hours. After half an hour the bloke running the carousel said “that’s enough.”
I think some kids wanted to get on.
It was covered by Triple J and the local Canberra TV news.
Here are some notes about the event from the time:
“I had just finished my world record attempt on the civic horse carousel, the humour of which was questioned by ‘elvis’ on the riot-act.com website (are triple j the only people that find justin heazlewood funny…remember, they broke savage garden.) I was feeling a little damaged and introverted and wondering why someone with the nerves of a marshmallow soaked in chamomile tea would expose themselves to the scourer-like glare of the Canberra media and public.”
Dear Diary,
Today I blanketed the ACT media with a publicity stunt. I got in all the newspapers and on the radio. I was the ‘horsin’ around’ story on the local win news and afterwards the newsreader Peter Leonard said ‘Hmmmm’ and then threw to the weather.
And you know what diary?…in the same news edition they showed that Samuel Johnson secret life of us man riding his unicycle from Sydney to Melbourne to raise money for children’s cancer. And I said to Tim who was on the couch next to me “Oh my, here he is raising awareness for children’s cancer, and here I am raising awareness for my own gig. How shallow and self centred am I?” And Tim said “yes, but people already know about cancer.”
THE ORIGINAL MEDIA RELEASE:
WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT! FIRST AUSTRALIAN TO SING “THE HORSES” FOR AN HOUR ON MELBOURNE CUP DAY
Canberra comedian Justin Heazlewood, (Triple J’s Bedroom Philosopher) will attempt to ride into the history books on Melbourne Cup Day, by setting the world record for continuous guitar and vocal performance of Daryl Braithwaite’s ‘The Horses’ while riding on a horse merry go round.
Justin still has a taste for records, after smashing the world mark for continuous performance of John Farnham’s ‘You’re the voice’ (9 hours) for the Melbourne Comedy Festival in March this year. There, Justin sustained a severe RSI injury.
‘I was really worried it would be my voice that went, but it was my wrist, from all the strumming. Every time I moved it I could feel it creaking. I was allowed breaks in Melbourne for drinks and the toilet, but in Canberra I’m planning to go one unbroken hour. Then there’s balancing the guitar on the horse, that’s going to be risky. I’m wearing a helmet for this one.’
Justin is promoting his Canberra CD Launch, to be held at Toast, on Thursday November 6th, starting at 7pm. Special guests include Fred Smith, Jordan Best, Josh Garden, Pete Lyon with magic by Natrix.
The record attempt will take place at the Civic horse carousal. Melbourne Cup Day, Tuesday 4th November. Between 12pm and 1pm.
Justin is available for interview. His number in Sydney is 02 9559 2108. Email: justinheazlewood@lycos.com He will be in Canberra from the 31st October, contactable on 0413973101
SOME CONTEXT – HERE’S MY COLUMN ABOUT MY ‘YOU’RE THE VOICE’ WORLD RECORD STUNT EARLIER THAT YEAR…
24/4/03
F is for Farnham.
On March 24, 2003, a young man struggled his way onto a Melbourne tram with a guitar, a wire indoors clothes dryer, and a few placards.
He was attempting to break the world record for continuous performance of John Farnham’s seminal 1986 hit ‘You’re The Voice,’ as a means to promote his show in the comedy festival. In the press release he had circulated amongst the Melbourne media, the young man had said he intended to play the song for 12 hours. As one Geelong DJ had said off the air, just before he was going to interview the young man ‘fuckin’ hell, twelve hours?’
In front of Flinder’s Street train station, he set up his station, and sticky taped the placards promoting his show to the clothes dryer, and at about 10am started playing.
‘You’re the voice try and understand it. Make a noise and make it clear Woooooooooooooah. Wooooooooooooooooooooooah.’
The first two hours went slowly. The heat was bearing down, and the young man sun screened up, and put on his hat and sunnies. The more he played, the more he realized it was going to be a very long day. As he played he watched the passers by. Some walked past. Some stopped and stared. Some glanced over as they waited at the traffic lights.
But so far, no junkies had come and beat him up, as his mates had joked they would.
Over the course of the day, some interesting characters approached. An old bloke tottered up to him, watched the scene for a while, and then said ‘If Australia was invaded by Indonesia, who would you count on? You should be supporting our troops.’
Later, a blue Wilderness Society Koala came over and excitedly said she had heard the commotion being covered on Triple J, and she wanted to say well done.
Then, Channel 7 and Channel 9 news crews turned up. The young man was rather surprised. He had shot off a few emails to news networks the day before, but did not expect this. After four hours of continuous playing, the thought of promoting his show on national TV filled his heart with dynamite carrots.
Throughout the day his friends drifted in and out to give him much needed potty breaks and bottles of pineapple juice. One such mate, James, said ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like a homeless person playing for a feed.’
After nine hours, the young man stopped. He’d had enough. He tried to think of a fitting conclusion to it all. Oddly, after nine hours he still needed to look at the lyrics. Someone had suggested that he was subconsciously refusing to learn them as a form of self protection.
He booted the clothes horse, with a rockfolk defiance, and thanked a few bored stragglers, still waiting on the Flinder’s street steps.
He was on the Channel seven news, as the one minute odd spot at the end…
Newsreader: (In cheeky newsreader tone) “He discovered he indeed, wasn’t the voice.’ They said he was promoting the comedy festival, but didn’t mention his show.
I CHATTED TO SYLVIE ON 2XX THE DAY AFTER THE HORSES STUNT….
BUSKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE (2003 BMA COLUMN)
I was waiting for my bus, smoking (not trying to sound cool or condone smoking…it hurt my throat, but I was so unsettled I was just sucking the stuff as some kind of cheap medicine) and guzzling pineapple juice (it’s good for your voice) when a kid of about thirteen came up and asked me for money.
‘Do you have a couple of dollars so I can get a drink?’ He said. ‘It’s really hot.’
HAW! I said in my head, like Alf would have. Remember how Alf used to go HAW!?
Maybe one dollar for the bus, or a dollar fifty for a kidney transplant, but two bucks for a drink? Geez I feel guilty enough buying one for myself. Using my Nan’s practicality, I said
‘No mate, I’m really struggling myself, but do you want some pineapple juice?’
He declined.
HAW! Said the nan in my head…he can’t be that thirsty if he’s turning down an offer of free beverages.
I even went as far as to mumble that I didn’t have any diseases, but who’d trust anyone telling them they don’t have diseases?
After watching me for a while with cat like poise, he asked me why I wasn’t busking. I didn’t really have an answer.
‘You should busk,’ he said.
‘Yeah I should,’ I sighed. Opening one of the latches.
‘You could make some money.’
‘Yeah I could.’ This was the last thing I wanted. I’d just escaped from the scorching scrutiny of a Melbourne cup day publicity stunt, and here I was being challenged on the blue steel chair on platform four.
‘Go on,’ he said. He really wanted me to busk. So I did. I opened the case, and farted around on some chords, until committing to playing Kelly the Deli Girl. Within seconds a taller youth with a cap and an optimistic air had rocked along and thrown twenty cents in. By the end of the song, he’d thrown in twelve Winnie blue’s, saying he was trying to quit.
At the end of the song, the youth was impressed and the young kid grinned at him.
‘I told him to busk,’ he said proudly.
‘Do you want to be my manager?’ I asked, and gave him a dollar fifty to get a drink.
There are business opportunities everywhere.
If you can get the capital from your confidence.
The Bedroom Philosopher CD has just reached aluminium status with 100 sales across Australia. It is now available from Impact (look under comedy) and landspeed (look under rock) for $15 or email bev on justinheazlewood@lycos.com
AND HOW DID THE GIG GO IN THE END ANYWAY MATE (Y’NOW THE ONE YOU WERE PROMOTING WITH ALL THAT ‘HORSIN’ AROUND’?)
And then I had my CD launch on the Thursday. It was good. I was having fun, until a funny girl popped out of a birthday cake in my tummy and started running around saying ‘ARE WE RUNNING ON TIME? WHY ARE PEOPLE LEAVING? DON’T LET THE NIGHT GO ON TO LATE OR EVERYONE WILL GO HOME AND NO ONE WILL STAY TO WATCH YOU>>>AAAAGH’ she was unpleasant. But I tried to control her with personal mantras and cigarettes.
Nat the magician was excellent. He did a trick where he set a bowl of cigarettes and coffee on fire, then put the lid on, then took it off and made my CD’s appear! Wow it was so magic. The support artists were most excellent. Including Fred Smith who rocked right out. And Bruce my friend did the door the whole night which was truly helpful. He even did a little graph showing the demographics of when people arrived! We got 89 people. And they bought 8 CD’s. I reckon that’s pretty good considering there was the final Kath & Kim and the opening of Matrix to compete with…how poetic…sort of.
I had fun, although I got so worked up I thought I might become totally mentally ill at some point, but I spose that’s what gets the crowds attention. I did a thing where I rolled around on the dancefloor in a breakdancing attempt, then freestyled some lyrics about what I was thinking at the time. It turned into a kind of freeverse poetry theatre experiment and I think people either liked it, or it scared them enough to have to stay.
My songs went well, but as usual the guitar stuffed up early on and I had to use another one. I was unsure of how to end the gig, so after more adlibbing than a Justin Timberlake technical difficulty, I got off the stage and skipped through the crowds singing ‘we’re off to see the wizard..’ and then I got to the door and a girl was standing there with one of my CD’s and she said she was the wizard. I asked her if she knew what happened to my mobile phone and her friend said it was probably in Cashies.
Afterwards, I got horribly negative about everything and felt like crying and wondered why I even bother to go to all this trouble, if I don’t really enjoy it…but then I took off Nan’s ski suit and Tammy told me how good the whole night was and that I was excellent and I felt better. Then we went to the Tradies and drank until a lady was vacuuming around us…whew!
In retrospect dear diary, I’m glad it happened. I always hate being the host of a party, but at least people have a good time.
US comic Sara Schaefer (a person) spoke to The Age about how solitary comedy is:
“A lot of people will say comedy is a family, comedians are family and we have each other’s backs. I’ve always found that to be such a ludicrous statement because comedy is one of the most individualistic artforms. You’re literally up there on stage, it’s just you, you’re your own CEO. Literally, many of us, including me, have our own corporations that we run and we’re president and CEO of them.”
I couldn’t help but think of a Frankie column I wrote in 2009:
“I recently held an annual general meeting in my mind and made a moving speech to myself. I vowed that all these years of self-employed work experience were paying off, and that it was more important than ever to think of my bedroom as an office, and to adopt more stringent nine-to-five hours to my creativity. We decided that the company motto of “sorry” had to go, and that we needed to hold our heads high and ignite a bonfire of pride in our hearts for the ideas farm we’d built from the ground up. The next morning I slept in, fired myself and came home drunk to find my locks changed and an ad up for my position. I reapplied, was promoted CEO and sold the company to pay back the Bank of Mum.”
On March 25, 2003 I set the world record for longest continuous performance of John Farnham’s ‘You’re The Voice.’ It was a stunt to promote my debut show in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival ‘Living on the edge…of my bed.’
How long can we look at each other Down the barrel of a gun?
To say I went all out is an understatement.
I was riding high on my previous dream year in which I’d scored my own weekly songwriting segment on Triple J’s Morning Show. Each Tuesday morning I would sit at home on my sharehouse couch in Belconnen and hear my voice coming through the radio speakers. It was a thrill and a half. With great power came great responsibility. I wasn’t the voice of my generation – but this hard-working, idealistic, witty Christian with an ocean of experience in his backpack took the whole thing very seriously.
I had to Succeed dammit. I had to be a blazing supernova achievement example for all and sundry.
My Melbourne Comedy Festival show came from a dare. My best friend Matt Kelly said “you HAVE to go in the Melbourne Comedy Festival.”
I had my doubts. I saw myself as a musician who happened to be funny. I wasn’t putting comedian on my tax return.
That said, I was impressionable and suggestible and having grown up with TV shows like Double Dare & Who Dares Wins – never one to back down from a challenge.
I decided to go in the Comedy Festival about a week before the deadline. I didn’t even have the $500 registration fee until a mysterious $650 appeared in my account from the ABC.
I remember being in Nan and Pop’s bedroom in Wynyard, Tasmania, nervously ringing the Melbourne Comedy Festival office on a cordless phone. I told them who I was and how I’d been on Triple J a bit and how did I get a show going exactly? They said I’d need a venue – but at this late stage it would be tricky. Fortunately, they’d heard that the Butterfly Club in South Melbourne had a spare time slot at 7. I rang the bloke up. He offered it to me. I took it.
I had a nine show run. I was in. I was Comedy.
Now all I needed was a show (and some jokes). But that’s another story.
Come March I realised there were hundreds of shows in the big smoke and I was some kid from Canberra who’d had a few songs on the radio. At uni, I’d started my own musicians club ‘The Harmonica Lewinski’s.’ I knew a thing or two about self-promotion. I was secretly a bit shy but in the habit of firing up and putting myself out there when it counted.
“You should do a publicity stunt” said Matt (most likely).
As a kid I’d been a fan of the Guinness Book of Records. There were always weird records for longest continuous hair cutting and longest time standing on one leg. I liked the idea of endurance performance.
In 2003 ‘You’re The Voice’ was still pretty daggy and hadn’t been honoured with iconic status in the national consciousness. Everyone was still slightly awkward after saying goodbye to Farnsey on his Last Time tour – only to have him pop back up a couple of years later with more shows.
In terms of promotion I didn’t really know what I was doing but I had a rough idea. Combined with the energy of a 22 year old fame chaser I wasn’t going to let anyone down. I wrote a press release. I bragged. I bluffed. I blew the Melbourne media landscape a big silly kiss.
I might have ordered the Australian Music Industry Directory from APRA to get the email addresses of all the media companies. In my bedroom I rocked out with a keyboard solo.
Melbourne friends tipped me off about Flinders Street Station. I didn’t care for permission or permits – the plan was to rock up with my indoor clothesline, signage, some flyers, my guitar and a generous supply of pineapple juice. I was going to takeover Melbourne, man.
My biggest concern was damaging my voice so close to the opening night of my show. Apparently pineapples held the secrets to longer lasting vocal chords.
Meanwhile, 3AK got back to me! (Y’know, 3AK….now SEN!) I was living in Sydney at the time and did a surreal phone interview at eight in the morning. The day before the stunt both Channel 9 and Channel 7 news rang to say they’d be there to cover it! My crazy lil’ operation seemed to be gathering momentum.
I rocked up to Flinders Street early on Tuesday, March 25. Being a country kid from Tassie, I was still overawed by the highway of people zinging about. All those important looking business types. Real grown-up men in suits.
I was donned in dark grey ski-suit overalls with a yellow ‘happy face’ T-shirt underneath. With the help of my uni friend James I set up my little station. Music stand, indoor clothesline, banners, and a little box sitting on top with flyers for my show.
At 9 o’clock I kicked off. All the hard stuff was out of the way. Now all I had to do was play. The best way to do something mad is barrel on in and do it. I sang for the first hour. I sang for the second hour. I scurried off for a toilet break. I sculled some pineapple juice.
By the third hour I was still relying on the printed lyrics of the song. My brain simply refused to commit them to memory.
Audience response was casual and bemused. My presence didn’t rub anyone up the wrong way. The days most memorable exchanges were with an old lady with crooked teeth who wandered up very close and yelled “ARE YOU CHRISTIAN?”
I nodded.
In the afternoon a girl from the Socialist Alliance with punky hair and scrappy attire got very excited. This was a few years before the song would be adopted as the political catch-cry it obviously is. Years later in 2007 I would help my housemates campaign for the Greens by busting ‘You’re The Voice’ out at the local polling station in Clifton Hill.
One unexpected occurrence was folks slipping money in my flyers box. ‘Ha,’ I thought, ‘they think I’m busking – when actually I’m a promotional mastermind propelling my small business forward.’ Bonus.
We can write what we want to write We gotta make ends meet, before we get much older
Sure enough, a Channel 7 cameraman appeared and captured me in my glory.
My voice was holding up fine. The unforeseen issue was with another part of my body. I didn’t know what RSI was but when I moved my wrist up and down it made a sort of creaking sensation.
In my press release I’d promised (threatened) to play for 12 hours. By 6pm I’d been going for nine hours. Momentum was starting to wane. There wasn’t as much foot traffic. My uni frenemy Toby took over watch. He wasn’t that into it.
“I reckon you’ve done enough,” he said, smirking. “We’re over at the Young & Jackson having drinks.”
Yes well, a chance to return to the normal world. I played the last D chord and ended my stunt at nine hours.
(A record which still stands, by the way).
Every now and then someone mentions they’ve been browsing my bio online and noticed this feat. They usually ask if Guinness were present at all. I tell them no, but I did reach out to them. The record is legitimised by its presence on my Wikipedia page.
They also ask if John Farnham’s people ever got in touch with me. Sadly, (or fortunately), they did not.
That night Channel 7 ran coverage as the odd spot in their bulletin. They said I was promoting the Melbourne Comedy Festival and didn’t mention my show at all.
We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa.
Photo at top and graphic design on PR at bottom by Tammy Winter
Cartoons by punters at Bardflys, Friend In Hand Hotel, Glebe, 2003
The next track in my ‘stripped back catalogue’ trilogy In My Day (Nan) – Solo Version is out and about on Bandcamp / YouTube & across streaming platforms and what have you.
To mark the release of Trishine – Solo Version, we hark back to Buddy & Me from The Bedroom Philosopher Diaries – when a certain someone wandered onto the tram…
In November 2010 I was booked by Melbourne Music to perform some shows on the 86 tram (along with a certain Courtney Barnett!). This involved me straddling the gap between two seats, leaning against the back window for support while wearing a radio headset mic hooked up to a small amp. On two occasions I attempted to perform Songs From The 86 Tram in its entirety. The first time the tram rolled out from Docklands to Bundoora – the opposite direction to the album. It was suggested that I could have performed the songs backwards, (reverse order, not phonetically) which was a neat idea. On a blustery Thursday eve a medium coterie of fans turned out, scoring their weekly tickets well in advance. The 86 is a venue that doesn’t need a lot of people to look full.
I banged through the tunes, finding the subtler ones like Sudanese weren’t helped by the grumbling din. Tips for performing on a moving vehicle? Yoga really helps with your sense of balance and core strength when riding the bumps. By Bourke Street the tram was squashy from Friday night revellers, and feeling weird about the stares, I bailed on Trishine. Señor Tram Driver was still running the show, threatening to turn the thing around unless people cleared the backdoor. I tried to capture the moment by starting a sing-along along the lines of “please clear the backdoor” set to three chords. There’s nothing more vulnerable than walking off a tram you’ve just performed a hit and miss improvised song on while teenage punks diss you via the insta-parody “Please, get the fuck off the tram.”
For reasons unknown we had to alight at Brunswick St, cross the road and catch another tram back to Docklands. My headspace was incorrect at this juncture and I politely shutdown. This was guerrilla business. While we had some Melbourne Music staff with us, the plan was no more sophisticated than getting on a streetcar, finding a space between two seats and making a gig happen. For someone who is fussy about having a backstage and affording a sound check, this renegade experiment was like making up a bed in an elevator (at gunpoint.)
In a wonderfully crap freak accident of hilarity, I managed to get my puff-jacket zip caught on the high-E string of my guitar. The string had threaded itself within the teeth mechanism, so the two were completely entwined. There are moments in life when one searches for instructions on how to act; whether this be heavenwards from a maker, or deep within oneself – wisdom hidden like money inside books. This was one such moment. I stood there, head down, attached to my guitar, a friendly passenger working on the string, Melbourne Music staff waiting for me to begin my assigned duties, acutely aware that whence normally some form of instinct or instruction filled my consciousness, now there was only the soft hiss of a blipless radar. I wandered through my bewilderness to a point of submissively maniacal death-mirth. Tonight was offering me a half-cup of ingredients toward a breakdown.
What did I do? As coolsies watched on with half interest I made attempt number three to prize the awful metal fuselages apart. After telling my chest ‘I can’t handle this,’ I removed the offending string completely, which ate up a further five minutes of my life like a charcoal faced digital cherub. Ruing the bruises to my rep. I thrust into New Media, the muscle-strum cleaving through the banality like a passionate pendulum. Then came Northcote, In My Day (Nan) and Old Man At End. For non guitar players, not having the high-E string is like not missing your little finger until it’s removed. I went to do a scissor kick and hit my head on the handle. The pitter patter of applause was soft rain on my caravan. At the end of the performance, the staff asked if I wanted to share a taxi with them back to the city.
“Oh no,” I said, looking around. “I’ll just get the tram.”
I doused my post-gig analytical brain with the milk of human kindness sourced from cute-eyed questions. For what it was, it was perfect – for something else, it was a bit shit – therein lies the flawed logic of comparison and the psyche’s hourly battle to evaluate the status of one’s life and determine whether one deserves any tangible relief from the childhood smear of self-loathing and emotional fallout from daily grievances. I’d given that tram a big ol’ sonic scrapheap and it had kept me safe like a silent robot.
Tramsformers
robots doing their day jobs
The following Monday we organised for Yarra Trams to let us to make one continuous journey over the hour, removing the awkward stopover. Tonight I was primed and organised. There would be only rock star brilliance and world class comedian riding the line between genius and knob. None of that emo waffle. I locked in, buckled down, fired up and folked out. It was, as they say in the industry, all good mate.
Things got real as the tram began its violent left turn from Gertrude into Smith Street. I had just started Tram Inspector, puffing my chest up like a captain of intrigue, when a wry, (chicken) salt of the earth character rocked up in blue checked shirt and cap. Looking weathered and ready for most things, he plonked down in front of me with his back to the stage, effortlessly harbouring the spotlight. A few times he turned around to sum up my predicament, seeming reticent about the evening’s entertainment (and my asexual advances), yet nursing a wild glint in his eye.
As my boyish giggles rippled through my droll funk veneer, some in the crowd were also shaking, fingers over their mouths like draw-bridges. This juxtaposition of skinny retrosexual and bogile unit was too much. During Tram Inspector’s outro, at my happiest, I declared “Old mate solo.”
Hardest thing about performing on a tram? Making eye contact with your audience, normally masked by the lights. My pupils roamed like ladybirds.
Next up was the spoken word of Man On A Tram. My new friend sprang to life, fishing his wallet from his pocket and showing me a Medicare card. Analysing my code of ethics, I was cautious to engage him. I fixed my gaze to the middle distance and finished the tune. Throwing caution to the air conditioning, I beamed.
“Hello sir just letting you know I’m doing some life-changing musical comedy for you tonight.”
He had his wallet out again. Holding up his I.D. as if I were a bouncer.
“That’s me name, Buddy.”
He’d picked up on my ‘old mate’ quip and was setting the record straight.
“Oh right, okay, Buddy. Do you have any requests?”
A bloke who’d been filming chipped in to ask him if he could sign a release form.
“Sure, as long as it’s not going on Crime Stoppers,” he grinned.
“Well, you’ll soon be wanted for stealing attention from this gig.” I returned, mock icily.
Who am I?
While some in the crowd (including my manager) were wary of the dynamic, (knowing my temper and the fact I can snap any man), my Bogar, developed from a lifetime in Burnie confirmed the situation. Buddy was a good egg.
I continued on, suffering headset problems and subsequently throwing a ‘tramtrum’. I flung the infernal gadget onto the cushion and tried to belt out In My day a cappella, which is like trying to sing an opera through a didgeridoo. Precious micrograms of gig momentum escaping from the rupture in my mood, I whipped the headset back on and tried New Media, but sensing exhausted levels of commitment, I aborted all. At this moment two things occurred to me:
While I’d performed the album in order thus far, I’d forgotten to play Trishine.
Buddy was about to get off the tram.
“Buddy, I’ve got a song for you.”
“This is my stop mate.”
“You should miss a few stops. Stay to the end of the gig. It’ll be cool.”
“But the bottle shop’s back there!”
“Ah, well ok. Anyway, this is a love song.”
To my delight, Buddy sat back down, propped himself against the window and had his first real chuckle of the night.
Words can get fucked, they can’t explain my love for you / Feelings and shit and that and yeah nah and so forth / My heart’s been kicked out of bounds on the full.
The ballad sailed over its namesake chorus.
Oh Trishine / I’m the ute and you’re the diesel
Buddy’s face changed from a smile to a wistful gaze, as he went somewhere deep in his mind.
Unbeknownst to me, he reached his arm into his shirt and removed a piece of sticky white paper. It was his nicotine patch. As the song neared its finish, he stood up in a daze and headed toward the doors. I sped up, keen to preserve the poetic harmony of the moment. Buddy looked at me, his blue eyes swimming in the neon light, and like a tree in a hurry to grow, raised a hand to wave and stepped into the night.
I had finished my hour’s performance and stood, heart pounding. The cameraman came up to me for an interview and assured me that he had gotten the entire incident on video.
“That was him,” I told the camera, blood and time crawling “That was the Trishine guy!”
In a Beat interview I’d joked at the idea of the corresponding characters getting on the tram like a live film clip, but I couldn’t have foreseen anything so poignant. For those few minutes, art and life had combined, parody sitting comfortably next to tribute as the moons of satire and society slipping beneath each other, creating a humour eclipse more graceful than blinding. The 86 had sent a representative, on behalf of the people I had dwelled within for these past two years – a spirit guide with grey goatee and jeans – a solid father figure to acknowledge my daydream dedication.
“You’re all right mate.”
I felt more blessed than I did during ten years of religion.
Artwork by Leigh Rigozzi
TRISHINE – SOLO VERSION IS OUT NOW ON NAN & POP RECORDS. THE BEDROOM PHILOSOPHER DIARIES EBOOK IS AVAILABLE IN THE SHOP.
Yeah all good. So to celebrate I’ve penned a column repurposing the original ‘Buddy & Me’ chapter from The Bedroom Philosopher Diaries. Meantime, the track is flat out on Nan & Pop Records. Sympathise a scruffy scrapper’s poleaxed syntax. Totes devo!
I’m so lonely (my song that is)
is
released
(again) more or less <full stop>
It’s a paired back
version
best
described as the musical
equivalent of a fixed gear bicycle.
Simple. Difficult. Worth it.
The lyrics are featured in the poetry anthology Admissions by Upswell Publishing. Happy mental health week (Oct 9-17).
MEANWHILE…
Nothing says ‘the entire bottom has fallen out of the music business but we’re all keeping up appearances in this Orwellian nightmare lest it get awkward’ like PRE-SAVE. To think, once, we hustled valiantly for audiences to part ways with hard earned money in exchange for a CD single. Now, it’s a dogfight just to squirrel away a thimble of attention from the content battery farm we hedge our bets in.
Having said that – what kind of self-respecting indie entrepreneur would I be if I didn’t pass along this link to my new single? (A stripped back version of a 13 year old track which fits in beautifully with the sentiments of Mental Health Week). No existential crisis here – only a dogged belief in the power of art and truth as an antidote to the algorithmic corruption and malaise of a post-myspace world. (That, and I found some demos lying around and I have to fill in the weekends.)
Yours, forever and a day. Beddy Phil a.k.a king of communication.
pps just to reiterate, there is nothing to buy here, or largely even see, (officer) – but can you please PRE-SAVE (my career). *sings* Don’t you, forget about me…
My first feature interview on Triple J’s Morning Show, 2002.
(Or, the Guru Josh appreciation society give a tape trove tour).
OH, AND…
⚡ My 1st ⚡ Album is ⚡ BACK ⚡
Yep Yep Yep Yep >>
out now brown cow
Lead single GENERATION ABC and full album are now kicking on bandcamp and streaming services.
Living On The Edge…Of My Bed is the sound of 2002 – back when I was just a nice young boy. Feat. Generation ABC, Kelly The Deli Girl and Golden Gaytime 1.0.
At the manufacturing plant my girlfriend at the time convinced me it would be funny to change the track listing last minute. So, I let her pick the order. (The running list I considered was on the back.)
This meant radio DJs (and, God forbid, fans who paid $20 cash money) couldn’t ever find the song they wanted, and a career was born.
Incidentally, I stayed ‘on brand’ with the next album. On the spine to ‘In Bed With my Doona’ I had “PLAY ME! PLAY ME! PLAY ME!” – as a joke, so the CD would stand out on shelves and speak to people in the room al la Grover in ‘The Monster At The End Of This Book.’ At one stage Richard Kingsmill gave the album a plug but called it, you guessed it, ‘play me play me play me.’
(Oh, also I’m so Post Modern was written entirely in wingdings in the first run of CDs and so again, DJs couldn’t find the song to play it. If I had a movie biopic it would be older me as a ghost travelling back in time to key events al la ‘Sliding Doors’ and yelling at my naive self to not be so silly, but no-one would hear me and then it would be a cross of Never Ending Story / Groundhog Day except with Margaret Qualley as my love interest even though she announced her engagement this week so I will be depressed for the rest of the year.)
Please find a recap of all the nostalgia laden posts I’ve been making in the leadup to the rerelease. For starters, I’ve written a new column about my love of 80s kids shows on the ABC!
MEANWHILE…(PREVIOUSLY…)
When I hit the air there was no social media or even a website. Listeners had to ring up the station or take to ‘Reddit 1.0’ in the form of the Triple J message boards. The real question was ‘Who is Justine Hazelwood?’
One of my first songwriting efforts for the ABC was to collaborate with Aqua and sing about Dr Karl. It was presented to him by Vicki Kerrigan on 12th April 2002. Gee it was deep. Boy was he surprised. It inspired a radio segue the equivalent of jumping twenty buses on a motorbike.
Big Brother has started up again. How exciting for everyone. 20 years ago I was Christian and contemplating my place in youth culture. I’d just started my segment on Triple J’s Morning Show and it was my way of making sense of things.
BP History
I came out of the gates with my own national radio segment when I was twenny one. It was the back to front trajectory of a reality show winner – my equivalent was winning ABC radio doco comp. Heywire in 2001. This led to some accidentally-on-purpose hustle that got my bum in the door at Triple J.
The rest is internet history. Please enjoy an off-license j-file of how it went down. Featuring interviews by Jenny at Joy FM, Richard Fidler, Lee-Anne Scott, David Kilby & Chris Uhlmann (!)
LIVING ON THE EDGE…OF MY BED is available from streaming services and Bandcamp from June 3.
It’s 20 years since my first ‘hit’ busted out on the airwaves of Triple J. Within my six months songwriting blitz on The Morning Show – the first track to resonate with listeners was my ode to the memories of the amazing cache of programming brilliance we were adorned with as children of the 80s in Australia.
Voltron, Sooty, Ulysses 31, The Red And The Blue, Don Spencer Folk Explosion… You know what I’m talking about.
Thing is, in grade twelve the internet was still a baby, and there was no culture of running off to youtube to look up that particular show you were trying to remember. So for me it started with lunchtime conversations at Hellyer College where Ruby Taylor would go “what was that show with the gold condor?” and eight sets of eyes would light up and I would nominate myself as captain remembrance, diligently informing everyone that it was indeed ‘The Mysterious Cities Of Gold.’
Anyway, third year uni I was a journalist for the University Of Canberra’s magazine Curio. I figured we could go to town creating a feature article rating every show I could think of that we grew up with on the ABC. In conjunction with graphic designer Anthony Calvert we launched the mythical gold condor of our imagination, memory and wonderment with a sprawling tribute.
Justin ringing some 0055 number to find out the correct name of the nemesis in Astro Boy. Was it Atlas or Titus? Anyway, go-go gadget awesomeness. (I like how Penny’s computer book was basically an iphone in 1986).
As I prepare to rerelease the original Generation ABC anthem for the first time, I figured republishing the article in full would be a fitting warm up.
Bear in mind – (I hope it’s sooty) much of this hard hitting journalism was done wracking the moist spongy files of the collective consciousness of a few drunken students down at the uni bar.
I have since gone on to rewatch all of Ulysses 31 which is my absolute pick of the kids show that has dated the best. (A Japanese / French coproduction pitting Greek myths in future outer space. Basically very abstract, haunting and beautiful).
I should also mention Chocky. Like Ulysses 31, I was very young when it first aired, perhaps about five or six – and so my memories of it are especially dreamy. I recall there being something utterly transfixing about it. I rewatched all of Chocky recently and must say, it is a truly memorable experience.
(Do they make kids shows with haunting synths and overtones of schizophrenia these days? I hope so.)
Honourable mentions will always go to Voltron (when I watched the robot forming sequence on the Dreamworks reboot I teared up), How much do you think Voltron meant to me as a kid?
MY VOLTRON TRILOGY IN CRAYON AND TEXTA, 1985
Mysterious Cities Of Gold (Esteban is actually on a quest to find his Dad! No wonder I was glued to it), The Red and the Blue and ‘That line guy.’
Occasionally after a Bedroom Philosopher gig a reserved, skinny man would sidle up and inform me “ah, that show, it’s actually called La Linea.”
Damn right.
Here’s to ‘The Line!’ (The one you can draw underneath the greatest era of children’s TV programming in the history of the universe).
——————————————————————–
Yep yep yep yep yep yep yep uh-huh, uh-huh.
“AND NOW HERE’S SOMETHING WE HOPE YOU REALLY LIKE!”
KIDS TV, 2001, UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA’s CURIO by Justin Heazlewood & Anthony Calvert
(Apologies in advance for the use of the term ‘mexican wave.’ I remember when I went to New York in 2010 and casually dropped that in. There was a ‘pause.’ We’re all trying to move on.)
The piece was well received – but not without angry letters and amendements. This supplementary article appeared in the next issue:
Since then, my life has taken me in dazzling directions – my own T-Bag style quest (or perhaps The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a more fitting metaphor where Dot pulls back the curtain to find the wizard is some sketchy bloke running a small business), the manner of which allowed me to reach out to Peter Combe on myspace and pitch myself to be the perfect support act for his gloriously random comeback reunion tour of ’07.
Which song do you reckon I sent him as a reference? Actually, he really dug Golden Gaytime and said something along the lines of “very clever chords in the chorus, you don’t see the A minor coming.”
Ah, now I can retire.
Supporting Peter Combe at the Corner Hotel in Richmond infront of a 700 kidults electric with joy and kitted in newspaper hats and toffee apples is an easy career high and honestly – a taste of genuine Beatlemania for this Burnie nerd.
Not long after I formed a band with The Awkwardstra and we kicked Gen ABC up a notch!
LIVING ON THE EDGE…OF MY BED featuring Generation ABC will be released first on Bandcamp and then all streaming services from June 3. Check out more about the album here.
Everybody’s Got The Same Insecurities As You (Original)
The Coughs Single Handedly Saved Rock N Roll
mearD drieW
Dr Karl
Ian Thorpe Was Bored (Original)
The Ballad Of The Wacky Tobaccy
Anthem For The Year 2002
George Bush Was The School Bully
Quarter Life Crisis
Theme (demo)
My Nan Really Likes Radiohead
Golden Gaytime (Original)
Reimagined tracklist for 2022 digital rerelease.
All tracks originally aired on Triple J’s Morning Show and Weekend Breakfast between April-December 2002.
Written by Justin Heazlewood.
Produced by Jim Trail at ABC Studios, ACT.
Design: Tambourine Design.
