Tag: ABC

Geraldine Spins Some Bawdy Bon

mr squiggle in the abc

Besides the amusing experience of being grilled by Richard Stubbs, my favourite radio interview about the Bon Scott Blog was on Geraldine Mellet’s show on ABC Perth.

(The above photo is not me – prematurely aged by too much ear-blistering rock – but Norman Hetherington, creator of the legendary children’s TV show Mr Squiggle, having a chat with Geraldine. It’s just that I forgot to take a photo of myself in the studio, so this picture I found on the ABC’s website is the next-best-thing. Imagine! I got to sit in the same chair as Mr Squiggle!)

On Friday afternoons Geraldine does a programme called “The Vault” which is a concentrated half-hour focussing on one particular musician or group. So, in keeping with the Bon Scott frenzy, she decided to spent some time talkin’ AC/DC.
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(Not) Peter Russell Clarke

At ABC Radio National, Jasmin, Cecilia and I sat for a radio interview with Amanda Smith. It was broadcast yesterday, and here is a podcast of it! Personally, I don’t think I come across as particularly entertaining in this one. I dunno, maybe all my energy was consumed by the pint-size ocker chef we had just thrillingly encountered…

But it’s worth listening to, if only for the pieces of audio heritage that Amanda has managed to dig up: Bon singing with Fraternity, and a sound grab from an interview he did in the late 1970s… You’ll note that the podcast is currently a long audio file featuring other interviews besides our one about Bon (including a short and worthy homage to the recently deceased art legend Robert Rauschenberg…) scroll to about half way through to hear our bit…

(Sooner or later, that audio file will be removed from the ABC page. When that happens, try listening to it here instead…)

Oh, and thanks to the ever-vigilant Jon for this oddball one – your chance to vote for Bon as “hottest of the hot” Aussie Blokes… (Although it looks like simply being alive has helped Hugh Jackman surge ahead of Bon for the moment…)

And finally, cheers and thanks to everyone who read and emailed me about the article, Bon To Rule by Iain Shedden, in the Australian Newspaper over the weekend. The blog-as-art is getting a good outing these past few weeks eh!

ABC Jailbreak

Alex SloanAlex Sloan (this fine lady with a GSOH to my left) interviewed me this morning on ABC Radio Canberra.

Somehow she’d gotten the idea that I was a “die-hard fan”. I had to let her down lightly. Not that I’m not a fan of Bon and AC/DC (I AM!) but I think you have to earn your “die-hard” status.

It takes years and years of dedication, not just six months at the tiller of a leaky blog…

Anyway, I had fun chatting with Alex. Before I came on air, she played Jailbreak. I was sitting in a sound-proof booth in the Perth studio, and WOW! It was like I’d never heard that song before.

Maybe it was the hi-fidelity ABC headphones, or the ungodly early hour of the morning, but Jailbreak brought tears to my eyes.

Jailbreak tells the story of a fella who’s been chucked in the slammer after shooting a man who was “fooling with his lady”:

Bullets started flying everywhere
And people started to scream
Big man lying on the ground
With a hole in his body
Where his life had been

Towards the end of Jailbreak, our anti-hero, the unfortunate victim of injustice, manages to escape from prison. Against the odds, and despite the spotlights and sirens, he makes it out…

At this point, there is a break in the song itself. All goes quiet. It seems like this unbearable silence will never end. One breath, two breaths, three breaths… (Has the song finished? Is the record stuck?)

And then, just when you think it’ll never come back, Bon’s voice bitterly spits out these words:

“…WITH A BULLET IN HIS BACK!.”

Ah, brilliant stuff… As I mentioned to Alex on air, I reckon Johnny Cash himself would have been proud to have written Jailbreak.

Anyhow, if you’d like to listen to the interview, here it is!

(It’s about 15 minutes long, and the file is a 4MB Mp3. For some reason, the volume is a bit low, please let me know if it’s too quiet to hear properly…)