So, sports fans, as they say, this afternoon was a rare trio gig with my dear colleagues Ben Robertson and Niko Schauble. Donna Coleman had very kindly arranged for us to perform at the Classic Cinema in Elsternwick, and we did two sets to a small but very attentive and appreciative audience.
I had decided, because these performances are rare and also I like music to mark life events, that we would perform the tunes I wrote with Sally in mind, for the last time. Since she dumped me in November and shows no sign of changing her mind, I feel these pieces can be taken out of the book; the only problem is that I like them so much and will miss playing them. Most of them I treasure for different and distinct reasons. Still, if they’re not current, they probably have to go.
So. We played ‘SJ’, which is the earliest, written one morning in a practice room in the VCA in about 1991 or -2 I think. It hasn’t been recorded for release; it was included on a recital program many years ago – in fact, if I found the tape of that performance that would give the more precise date of its composition. Future project. – and when it was my mum decided that the initials in the title stood for The Society of Jesus. She couldn’t have been wronger. It was good to take this to Ben and Niko because neither of them had seen or heard it before so we sort of premiered it.
Next up came ‘S.S.T.T.’, which opened the first Browne – Haywood – Stevens album King, Dude and Dunce. No-one has ever known what these initials stood for but I broke it today: they are Scholar, scientist, thinker, traveller. I wrote it for Sall when I think she was in Singapore doing some kind of study. She could tell you when that was I guess but I don’t know for sure. It might have been the summer of 1994 or -5. KDD was released in 1996.
‘In angel arms’ followed, another BHS number that appeared on Sudden in a shaft of sunlight. Sall’s arms, my goodness. Angelic.
That took us to ‘Cardigan patrol’, and I was able to explain (as I did elsewhere) that this related to shopping trips in the 1990s: Sportscraft, Witchery, Myer, wherever.
Then came the corker. I knew I was going to lose it when I played ‘Esj”, and sure enough, I did. This piece people find lovely and I’m glad about that but for me the feeling it contains is just epic. I could say it’s a portrait of Sall, and she’s very pretty too, so there may be something in that. I could say it’s a portrait of the way I felt about her when I wrote it, and that feels true too. I can’t be precisely sure what it is. But crying while you’re playing is risky. Anyway we got through it.
And that brought us to ‘The unmistaken’. Because this is no time for secrecy, I told the full story of this piece too. When we were together, Sall and I would be walking along talking about whatever and one of us would notice someone wearing a G-string. Now my idea is that these things are supposed to be invisible – that’s the whole idea. But frequently they aren’t, and they seem even to draw attention to themselves. So when one of us saw one, the words ‘if I’m not mistaken’ would enter the conversation, and that was the tip-off for the other to look around. When I wrote this piece I played it over and over and I really thought I had captured something of Sall’s character. So she is the unmistaken and so is this tune.
‘Most miraculous accident’ wound up the first set, and this to me is the moment I met Sall. I remember seeing her the first time and thinking, fuck what a beauty.
After all that, it felt like we should do some standards, which I have never done with a trio before. So we played ‘You’d be so nice to come home to’, ‘Just friends’, ‘Last night when we were young’, ‘Taking a chance on love’, and ‘Everything happens to me’. This last piece is one of my absolute favourites and I had to recite the lyrics from the last eight because they are so heartbreaking and felt not inappropriate: ‘I telegraphed and phoned, sent an airmail special too, your answer was goodbye, and there was even postage due. I fell in love just once, and it had to be with you – everything happens to me.’
A great pleasure playing with Ben and Niko. Champions both.