The Recording Diaries part 8: after an eternity, an appearance

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Well, it’s been a while.

A lot has happened since I last updated this blog on a late winter day 10 years ago. Then, I had just started recording a demo of a new song, in the spare room of a house in Footscray I’d moved into a few months prior after two decades in the inner north. I would go on to record more demos in that room, and work some demos into serious recordings that, somehow, I would never finish. Three years on, I had a bucketload of demos (mostly recorded to enter them into songwriting competitions, which I never won but was a finalist or semi-finalist nine times) and a slew of unfinished recordings. I put the partly finished songs I was working on in 2010 for the Over and Over album up on Bandcamp as demos. I’d also finished recording an album with my band The Phosphenes, though it was yet to be released.

An idea from my partner at the time booted my out of my inertia: “Why not make an album out of all those songwriting competition finalists? They’re all great songs, and are already recorded.” So I abandoned the ambitious whole-band arrangements I had been painstakingly recording alone one instrument at a time and went back to those demos – adding a little extra here and there, remixing, and suddenly I had seven songs for an EP! (The other two had been turned into Phosphenes songs and were on our first full-length album recorded a few years before.) I took them around to Adam Dempsey to be expertly mastered and Bridesmaids was born. Finally I had released some solo recordings into the wild.

Two of the songs on Bridesmaids (Simple Song and Poster Boy) were from the abandoned Over and Over sessions, and a third (America) had been intended for the album. (America also appeared in quite a different form on the aforementioned new The Phosphenes’ album Finally, a friendly shore, which finally appeared in 2018.) Because of this, I considered the Over and Over project to be history – so when I returned to the more ambitious songs I’d been working on I envisaged them for a new album, to be titled Songs From the End of the World. But in 2019 we were evicted from our Footscray cottage and work on everything stopped while the herculean task of finding a new house and moving was undertaken.

Late 2019 found me setting up a new studio in the much larger spare room of the house we started renting in West Footscray. Before we knew it, the pandemic was on and with a series of lockdowns happening in 2020 and me being able to continue working my day job from home, I suddenly had a lot more spare time to get recording and writing again. I made pretty good progress, even releasing a dark synth-driven single in late 2020 and putting a bunch of demos for the album up on Bandcamp as a teaser. But then as 2021 unfolded, whole lot of stuff happened that took away my time and energy for continuing the work (though I did manage to record and release another song toward the end of that year). Over the next two years I was involved in a couple of other musical projects and transitioned from my day job to running my own one-person consultancy business, and Songs From the End of the World‘s hiatus continued.

But that’s changed now. My new life has settled, more of my time is my own, and a month or so ago I walked into my studio to recommence work on the project. However, listening back to what I had so far recorded, I distracted myself by also listening to the old Over and Over unfinished recordings – much closer to completion that the 2020 stuff – and decided that I would finish it first before getting back to Songs From the End of the World. I no longer felt that having released a few of the songs on other albums meant they could no longer be included. What’s wrong with having a few different versions of the same song out there? If it is good enough for Paul Kelly, it’s good enough for me.

So a few weeks ago I returned to Like Me. Like all the Over and Over songs, it’s almost finished: bass, guitars, harmonica and guide vocals are all recorded and edited; only drums, final vocals, and any additional instruments need to be recorded and then the whole thing needs to be mixed. I quickly came across one problem – the version of the software I used to record and edit the original recordings (the free open source DAW Ardour) is so old, I can’t reliably open the files with the current version – and when I can, all the edits are lost. But I took this as an opportunity – with fresh ears and more developed skills now, I can re-edit for the original takes. So I did this, using the demo bounces as a reference but only as a guide – I don’t want to necessarily recreate them, just find the best performance of the songs from within the raw material. After re-editing and remixing the song, I created a tempo map so I could make a click track that lines up with the subtle variations in timing in the original recordings. Using that click track, I recorded a drum part. This really brought the song alive! With that down, I did a bit of fine-tuning to the other tracks to correct a little sloppy timing here and there, and doubled the lead guitar part with a different guitar and amp to give it some extra punch. It sounds fantastic.

This song has a two-part instrumental section. The second part has a bluesy harmonica solo, but the first part was not complete – it has a guitar riff underpinning it but was waiting for an unspecified other lead instrument to go over the top. I came up with an idea of building up some layers of a number of different instruments doing different things, to form a slightly out-there crescendo into the bluesy harmonica bit that then goes into the bridge. This was a heap of fun: I spent 45 minutes tuning an autoharp and then recorded some dramatic autoharp chords, some slide guitar runs, a synth line (on a Stylophone!), some chord runs on a tenor guitar and some complementary ones on an emulated Fender Rhodes electric piano.

All that’s left to be done now is to record the lead vocals and some harmonies, and mix it all together. I’ll post that in part 9 when I get to it!

Home recording project part two prologue

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I’m taking three weeks off in September to work some more on my solo album. Yesterday I recorded a demo of one of the songs I’ll be doing. Here it is: http://soundcloud.com/darkdirk/america

An unexpected farewell

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I almost didn't do it, what with the mad rush of it all and the absolute deadline of a 6:30 am taxi pickup; but I took a moment early this morning, just before driving off with the last of my stuff (except the bikes I realised later I'd left behind in the bike shed), to walk around its clean and empty rooms and say farewell to my old house.

It's funny: there was so much that was annoying and uncomfortable about it – and it was dark and crooked and creaky and slowly sinking into the ground – but I think of all my houses, it's the one I have the most love for.

My kids became adults there.

I grew up there too: I feel like I finally stopped treading water and started swimming around. And probably because of that, it's the house where I had the fewest sad times and the most happy ones. Plus I really became a part of the local community – I felt like I belonged, and was not just passing through.

There were times when I thought I might live there forever. Of course the house wouldn't have lasted that long; but that's how I felt.

As it turns out, I'm leaving for all sorts of happy reasons and embarking on a brand new chapter of my life. It's exciting and it's a step up. Still, it was nice to take a few minutes to reflect on how kind this house has been to me and my family (albeit with a bit of tough-love), what a safe place it's been for us (and for my kids' friends: mine was the house they could come to to sober up before going home, and more than a few teenage romances began in that cosy darkish loungeroom), and how handily close it was to anything you needed to do (unless it required a hardware store) and most of my favourite places.

Also, of course, it saw the birth of Echidna Love Train!

My new house is much nicer – it's much less crooked and cracked, full of light, has spacious living areas and a modern (well, 1980s at least) kitchen, a bathroom you can swing a cat in, a garage and workshop, and an owner who actually gives a shit to keep it nice – and I know we'll be happy there. Like I said, it's a real step up in lots of ways. But my old house is like that first half-decent guitar you had that, while not good enough to really take you far, was the bridge between being crap and being good. And you don't stay on the bridge (or you don't get anywhere) but you sure as hell appreciate it for where it got you.

And it was a pretty damn fine bridge.

So long, old house: it's been good to know you.

(Oh yeah I'll be back for the bikes on the weekend.)

 

The big questions

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Paul Kelly asks a heap of questions in his classic song Careless. When my friend Daniel Scoullar asked one of them philosophically on Facebook, I decided to take him at face value and, with a little Googling, figured out exactly how many tears would fit in a gin bottle. At Daniels’s urging, I returned to the song and worked out the answers to all the other questions too. This is what I found…

First, the song:

Now, the answers:

How many cabs in New York City?
Around 13,400
(According to Wikipedia, in September 2012 there were around 6,000 hybrid vehicles in New York’s taxi fleet constituting almost 45% of the entire fleet.)

How many angels on a pin?
Six
(There are six angels named in the Bible*; the Bible was compiled to guide people in relating to God; Jesus said people’s relationship to God is encapsulated by The Lord’s Prayer; Godfrey Lundberg engraved The Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin in 1915.)

How many notes in a saxophone?
45
(Twelve notes to the octave; the two most common saxophones, alto and tenor, each have a range of 3.75 octaves.)

How many tears in a bottle of gin:
1,500
(A tear is approximately 0.5 ml and a gin bottle holds 750 ml**)

How many times did you call my name, knock at the door but you couldn’t get in?
Zero
(I don’t even know Paul Kelly’s address.)

How many stars in the Milky Way?
400 billion
(There are between 200 billion and 600 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy according to Wikipedia; 400 is the midway point of the range.)

How many ways can you lose a friend?
At least 53
(Paul Simon famously wrote about the 50 ways to leave your lover; Okkervil River mentioned the 51st way to leave your lover (“admittedly it doesn’t seem to be as gentle or as kind as all the others”); for every way to leave your lover, for the other person it’s a way to lose their lover; plus there’s one extra way to lose a lover (if they die) ; any way of losing a lover is also a way of losing a friend; plus there’s at least one extra way to lose a friend (if one of you just moves away and you gradually lose touch).)

NOTES
* The Bible including the Apocrypha, in accordance with Roman Catholic tradition since Paul Kelly’s expressions of spirituality and religion in his music is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.
** At the time the song was written. Nowadays bottles of gin (and most other spirits) are more likely to be 700 ml so there are only 1,400 tears in a modern bottle of gin.

Anyway, if you always wondered about those questions, I hope this post has given you some closure. If you’d like me to find the answers to other hypothetical questions, let me know.

My rant to people who make fun of me for being willing to pay to keep reading The Age

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Recently I decided to subscribe to The Age website. I still haven’t been able to because there’s some glitch on the website that calls an error every time it tries to connect with PayPal. So I complained and whinged and ranted about it a bit on Facebook and Twitter. And people reply, incredulous that I am stupid enough to pay for what I can supposedly just get free from other sources. Many, leading by example, have said the exact same thing: “the Internet is my news feed.”
I agree. The Internet is my news feed too. I have RSS feeds. I follow journos on Twitter. Many of my facebook friends and the people I follow on Twitter and app.net post news and analysis of interest to me. I read the ABC news website. And I read The Age. It’s a part of my whole mosaic of news. And when I tried leaving it out I quickly discovered that it fills a gap that nothing else does.
For all that’s wrong with mainstream media (and there’s a lot), it still does some things very well, including investigative journalism, good analysis of local and national issues, and informative local news. And that’s a reason also for paying for it, because that stuff costs money (which is probably why I’m not getting so much of it from the free news sources).
So yes, the Internet is my news feed too. And I pull all the different bits in that suit my needs. And if none of us pay for the stuff that’s deeper than “this thing just happened”, then eventually it will disappear and we can tick another box on the long list of things that George Orwell thought he saw growing in the debris from the wars of the first half of the 20th century.

Brussels sprouts

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My girlfriend cooked Brussels sprouts; and I liked them

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Posterous is dead. Long live Posterous!

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Three years ago I took long service leave and spent a few weeks home recording for the solo album I’d been intending to make for a decade. It’s still half finished. In fact I’ve just started working on it again.

The important bit, however, is that I documented the process. It started with getting my tremolo pedal repaired, and finished with me putting the final touches on the seventh song. (That should be “‘final’ touches” because most of the recordings are still waiting for drums, backup vocals, final lead vocals and feature instruments to be added.) Along the way I took several photos of my vintage guitars and random recording gear, learned how to use a pro-level digital multitrack recording program (the very fine and pretty-much free open source package called Ardour), figured out microphone placement for different instruments, and learned a hell of a lot (through trial and error) about musical arranging and audio editing and production. And it was all summed up in seven blog posts on Posterous.

A year ago Posterous was bought by Twitter, and a month or so ago they anounced they were closing down their site. This spurred me into action, so today I imported my Posterous posts – which consisted entirely of the seven-part recording diary – into WordPress and now I have a blog. The blog I always meant to write.

On this blog I will crap on about some stuff and rant about other stuff. Those who are connected with me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or app.net will know what to expect. I intend to:

  • rant about politics and economics
  • muse about life in general
  • write about music and books that I find significant or inspiring or interesting
  • talk about software and gadgets that I find useful
  • probably share writings or songs that I am creating while in progress
  • probably other stuff too.

I’m thinking I’ll work up to posting regularly but for now it will probably be a bit random.

Anyway, that’s all for now. The Recording Diaries posts will appear sometime soon, once the import is finished. In the meantime, if you’re interested in checking out the not-quite-completed songs from my home recording efforts, they’re on my music website at deanlombard.com.au.

 

The Recording Diaries part 7: end of stage one

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After finishing Like Me and Talk To You, a few days passed when I wasn’t able to record (due to my temporary recording studio being re-occupied by its rightful owner, and everything else associated with reintegrating a 15-year-old back into a household and a family). It was actually good having a bit of time away from it. It gave me a chance to listen over anything (making my last.fm profile look a little narcissistic for a time), and I soon realised that the collection was leaning heavily toward relationship-oriented songs.
I think there’s a reason that most pop songs are about love or heartbreak: of all the things we are faced with, matters of the heart are probably the most difficult to understand; and art is so often a search for understanding. But it’s also a mode of communication, and I have plenty more to say than crap on about highlights from my lovelife.
Accordingly, I picked out a few appropriate songs from my considerable repertoire. (I also decided to write at least two new ones, and also record at least one song written by my friend Brianna Schembri).
Poster Boy
I wrote Poster Boy a few years ago. I had just been filmed for the Channel Ten news, as the “man-in-the-street” offering my opinion and thoughts on the rental housing affordability crisis. I told them about my difficulties in finding an affordable house (at the time I had just moved into a dilapidated but expensive house after a three month search); I explained what I though was causing the problem; and I said what I thought the government should do about it. And there I was, on the 6 o’clock news (or whatever time it airs), sharing my wisdom with I guess millions of viewers. Problem was, I wasn’t really a man-in-the-street at all. I was a housing policy expert, working for a community based advocacy organisation that was trying to build public awareness of the problem in order to force governments’ hands to implement much needed reforms. It was all for the noblest of causes (and it worked ??? the State Government made one of their biggest ever investments in public housing and housing support services later that year), but it was propaganda all the same, and I felt bad about having participated in it. Hence Poster Boy.
poster boy rough.mp3
This was pretty straightforward to record. I had previously recorded it with just guitar, vocal, and harmonica, so I already knew what i was doing with it. All I added was acoustic bass guitar. However, my friend Jill Young has subsequently written a cello part for it and hopefully soon I will add that to the mix. Then I think it will be done.
Oxygen
This is about two years old. It’s really cheating, because while the lyric is an observation of a destructive, one-sided relationship, it’s all based on things that one of my exes said about me. I guess you can???t always be the nice guy. Anyway, I literally ran out of time with this song; I recorded a guide vocal and an acoustic guitar part, but just as I was about to record the bass line my darling daughter T came home from school and needed her room back. I hurriedly did a few takes but that is no way to get a good track., so I packed up and am now waiting for some time and space to get back to it. I’ll post it then
The future
For the last two weeks I’ve been back at work. It’s been good to be back among all my brilliant and wonderful colleagues, but even though I’m only working four days a week, combining that with running a household, looking after two teenagers and numerous medical appointments and dramas for one of them (my son J has a mystery Glandular-Fever-type illness, which is playing havoc with the demands of Year 12) has left me with little time to do much at all. Though I have been writing, which is good. Still, I expect things will settle down into a bit of a routine (it’s quite an adjustment going back to work after 7 weeks off), and then I should be able to use my day off and part of the weekend to record in very small steps. Onward and upward.

The Recording Diaries part 6: Rockin’ on

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And a productive week it has been. Just as well, because my darling daughter T returned from SIngapore (school trip) and has promptly moved back into my recording studio (er??? her bedroom). it’s great to have her around again 🙂 But it does limit my time to work. I’m back to setting up after she’s gone to school and packing it away at 3:45

Which is not so bad, as I have gotten so accustomed to what I’m doing (it’s been a bit like a job) that I know exactly where everything goes. In fact I have evolved it all into a neat little pod where i can sit on a stool (for playing acoustic guitar) or stand (for everything else) and have everything within reach and sight: computer, audio interface, mouse and keyboard, tuner, and a selection of guitars.
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I realised after I finished the last two songs that it was time for a change. I don’t want this album to be full of quiet, acoustic reflective songs. I think I started with them because it was a bit less daunting to contemplate solo recording those songs than more complex and energetic ones.
I’d also received my “thanks but no thanks” letter from the Darebin Songwriting Award, and was probably feeling like kicking some butt.
I started with a track called Like Me that I wrote early last year. It was a song that I would have brought to the band if we had been active at all at the time (or subsequently). i approached it similar to the others, except that after I had recorded the bass guitar I muted the acoustic guitar track and recorded the electric guitars just against the bass. This helped get it much tighter (as needed for such a track) and later I edited the acoustic guitar track to align it better with the strong rhythms.
like me rough.mp3
After recording Like Me, I went up to Kyneton for a day and a half to hang out with my girlfriend (who has been sorely neglected due to my focus on this project). Had a fantastic time, walking and cooking and op-shopping and the like. Felt like I was on holidays, and I guess I was, as I have been approaching the recording like a job. Then I was back and, with one day left before having to pick up T from the airport, I recorded all the parts for another song, Talk To You, that I had written earlier this year. It was only after picking up T and heading into the weekend that I found the time to edit and mix both the songs.
talk to you rough.mp3
There were a few challenges with these songs. One was the limitations of the room. I need to record at fairly high volume to get the right sound for the guitar and bass, but this made all sorts of things in the room vibrate. A recording studio is designed to be a neutral and clear space, but I have bookcases, desks with knick knacks, and all sorts of other things to contend with. I also have a drum kit and a few amps in the room, with big hollow spaces that love to ring out in harmony with particular notes I might play. in the end I had all these things covered with blankets,and had to angle the amps carefully to minimise setting up standing sound waves; but this still only reduced, not eliminated the problem.
The other challenge was one I’ve mentioned before, but which became more of an issue with these more upbeat and band-type songs: I’ve never really figured out what the different instruments should do. What beats should the bass emphasise? (they will need to fit with the drums later on). What should the rhythm guitar do? How to approach the instrumental? And how to vary the arrangement in the verses so it doesn???t all sound the same? All these things are much easier to figure out in a band ??? with a bunch of people all involved and able to try things out ??? than by yourself, when you have to record each instrument one at a time and you never really hear it all together until it’s all done. In particular, in Talk To You I completely redid the bass line after listening to the first rough mix because although it felt right to play it like that, it sounded all wrong. So the new bass line felt all wrong to play but sounded all right. Bizarre.
The lead guitar was also difficult. In the end I just recorded many takes, trying out different things, and then I mixed and matched them when editing to make something that worked. It feels like cheating, but it’s not a competition: it’s really akin to editing a novel after writing it ??? a distinct but integral part of the creative process.
In the case of Like Me, I decided that I would bring another instrument (maybe sax?) in for the instrumental, so I have left it empty (although on impulse I recorded some harmonica in the second part; I’m not sure if I’ll keep this, but if I do I’ll need to edit the first note cos it comes in a tiny bit late).
All in all, I’m really happy with these songs (especially Talk To You). They definitely need drums, but I am amazed how much they hold together rhythmically without them, and how much it sounds like a band. In fact, I am so happy with Talk To You that I’ve decided I need more than my own mediocre drumming, so I have asked the drummer from my band, John Watson (he’s also a talented photographer) to do the deed. I’m a little disappointed that it means I won???t have played all the main instruments; but I’m happier that it will have excellent drumming.
Now I only have a few days left before I’m back to work (though since my job is only guaranteed for another two weeks, it’s possible that I’ll soon have all the time in the world???), so I expect to record maybe two more songs, bringing the total to eight, before my time is not my own again. I could leave it at that, and do a short album; but I’m more inclined to keep working, recording on weekends and editing on weeknights, until I have twelve or thirteen. I believe in the songs, and I am so happy with the quality of the recordings I’m getting (I know they don’t sound like ‘real’ songs yet but once they’re been mixed and mastered properly by a real sound engineer, they will) that I want to see it right through.

The Recording Diaries part 5: Flying away

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One of the really important parts of this project is listening to music recorded by others. I’ve been quite deliberately listening to a lot of music that has sounds and feels and production values that I like and that I think accords with what I am trying to do. Some of this has been music with prominent acoustic guitar (such as the Indigo Girls and Jakob Dylan’s solo albums), while some of it has been the messy but energetic and exciting rock of artists like Okkervil River and Neil Young.

One album that has been unexpectedly inspirational has been Dan Kelly’s Dream, released this month. I stumbled across it while searching for a CD to give to a friend for his birthday (I bought him Sgt Pepper and snapped up Dan Kelly’s Dream for myself) and discovered that, like me, Dan had recorded the album largely himself (though with a few helpers) and using a weird-arse guitar (in this case a Japanese Fender Jaguar) with an imperfect but idiosyncratic sound. He’s been really creative and bold with is arrangements, and his lyrics are probably more witty and in-your-face than usual. I’ve been listening to it over and over???

???which is how I got the name (that name) for my album. There was a lyric in one of his songs: “how many times must I repeat myself/how many times must I defeat myself”. He was singing about making the same fucked up choices over and over again. I had been thinking the same day how so many of my songs are about the same types of situations, repeated again and again over two and a half decades of my life. Here I was bringing together songs from 1998 and from 2007 lamenting the same foolishness, describing the same heartache. And here I am recording them by myself: first playing the acoustic guitar four times over; then the bass six times over; then singing the lyrics three times over; then playing electric guitar eight times over; then playing it all back 20 times over while I mix and edit and try to get it sounding right. So much repetition. So Over and Over seemed the perfect name for the album.

Doing it again
So I returned to Fly Away, the song that just wouldn???t come together last time. the acoustic guitar was ordinary. The electric rhythm guitar was out of tune. The electric lead guitar needed something??? it just need more presence or something. The acoustic bass guitar didn’t seem to anchor it properly. The vocal was OK though, and the guitar solos were sort of alright. What to do?

1) new bass guitar
I put the acoustic bass guitar away and grabbed the electric. Unfortunately this is my crappiest guitar. It’s a functional but elementary low-end bass I originally bought for my daughter T when she was learning at school. It’s actually pretty OK, but I’ve spent enough time as a professional musician and using professional grade equipment to be quite unsatisfied with it. I hoped (correctly it turned out) that my rather excellent bass amp and speaker cabinet would turn  this sow’s ear into at least a polyester purse.

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I’m recording the bass using a direct line as well as an economical but quite good quality dynamic microphone designed to record a bass drum. It works brilliantly! It’s really helped by the amp and cabinet combination. The amp has a valve pre-amp, a six-band graphic equaliser and a built-in compressor; the cabinet weighs a ton (actually 23 kg) and has four 10″ speakers and a 5″ tweeter. Altogether this gives a punchy and round sound with some delicate highs but a fat bottom end. I’m amazed I can get such a great sound from a $300 bass guitar. And my guess was right: the smooth, more consistent and incredibly punchy bass is perfect for the song.

2) The guitar parts
After recording the new bass line I muted all the tracks except the bass and the vocal and recorded a new acoustic guitar track. Much better. I then re-recorded the rhythm guitar with the instrument in tune. Marvellous! This left me with the lead guitar part to deal with. I’d pretty much figured out that at least part of the track ??? these little half chords that ring out in between the verses ??? needed more sustain. This suggests using a solid-body electric guitar (I had so far only used the semi-acoustic L-202), so I bought a set of guitar strings and dragged my old Maton Mastersound MS-500 out from under my bed.

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This used to be my main guitar before I bought the L-202 last year. In many ways it’s a better guitar: it has a fuller sound, a better neck, no buzzes and it stays in tune for more than one song. i prefer the L-202 for its very distinctive retro sound, but the Mastersound is really a workhorse guitar. With a rear single coil pickup and a front humbucker that can be switched to single coil, it can emulate the most common guitar sounds (the Les Paul, the Telecaster and the Stratocaster) readily. If I played in a cover band this would be my top choice of guitar ??? you can go from Jimmy Page to Jimi Hendrix with the flick of two switches.

I was right about it, too. it was the perfect guitar for Fly Away.  And the song was really improved by having a greater difference in tone and feel among the electric guitar parts. I decided there and then to use both guitars in future recordings as a matter of course, rather than playing different parts on the same instrument.

Fly Away
It was done then. it still lacks something (apart from drums, which all the songs are lacking so far), a different instrument altogether for the instrumental break and probably a bit of noodling around in other places too. Perhaps piano accordion (by now I had written but not recorded the piano accordion part for Sleep All Day, and thinking of using it in a few other songs as well); though I may have a stab at synthesiser, or perhaps just do a harmonica solo. But whichever way it will go, I now have a rough mix of Fly Away to share with the world (or at least the part of the world that is reading this blog)

fly away rough.mp3

Life intrudes
Following the completion of Fly Away I became quite preoccupied and busy thanks to the looming federal election. I had sort of accidentally volunteered to coordinate volunteers on election day for GetUp!, handing out “scorecards” at my local polling booth showing where the three major parties stand on a number of policy issues relating to social justice.

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Had a fantastic time! We had more volunteers than all the political parties combined at our polling booth. And I was pretty pleased to discover that in our electorate, the safest seat in the country (held by Labor with a 27% margin), 25% of first preference voted went to the progressive Greens party. At the end of the day Labor won the seat of course, but their margin was down to 16%. That???s quite an achievement I reckon, and a sign I think that Australian voters are more actively rejecting the two-party system (reflected of course in the overall election result in which neither major party gained a majority of seats).

Enough for now! Another chapter coming soon with two more songs.