Sort of but not exactly
July 2012
An open (fan) letter to Karise Eden, winner of ‘The Voice’
Dear Karise,
I whinged and whinged when members of my household became devoted watchers of ‘The Voice’. “Life’s too short,” I said. “If I die on this couch, do me the dignity of changing the channel before you ring the coroner.” But — shhhh! — I actually liked the show, partly because I don’t get to the footy much these days and it’s therapeutic having something to yell at, but mostly because of you.
As Seal would say, I want to thank you. As a dedicated (if semi-retired) music snob, bless you for being an umbrella in a raging storm of Karaoke. I don’t buy the “you swallowed Janis Joplin” hyperbole but, still, as Joel Madden would say, you killed it out there — and not in the sense that Viktoria Bolonina murdered Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in week whatever. Thank you for wandering lost and confused across the stage, except when you were singing. Thank you for giggling through your every triumph. And thank you for not butchering Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ — that’s higher praise than it sounds — and for transporting me back in time to 1984, when my parents and I flew across the Pacific to spend a year living in Logan, Utah, USA.
Fourteen years old, I fretted constantly that people would notice that I had hair sprouting from everywhere. In the toilet on the flight from L.A. to Salt Lake City, I shaved my smudge of a moustache. I bled, profusely. Things went downhill from there. Dressed in a Vegemite T-shirt, I cowered in my bedroom, petrified of American girls, befuddled by the Mormons who filled my new hometown, besieged at a school where even the nerds were brash and where, before and after gym class, boys strode around the change rooms naked. Naked!
I fought back, best I could. After my first day of school, when I knew I’d made a horrible mistake by wearing fluorescent blue Nikes, I marched Mum to the mall to buy white sneakers. Another time, playing baseball, I nailed a Victor Trumper cover drive – I’d been practising for years – and sprinted all the way to second base. And during one history lesson, I waged a silent (but highly effective) protest against the teacher who told me that the Vietnam War had been a draw.
But the pokey house we moved into remained my refuge. It had an enormous record collection: hundreds of Beethoven discs plus Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. I first listened to Rumours in honour of Stevie Nicks’ shadowed thigh, which adorned the album cover and became my first real girlfriend. I still remember the utter shock I felt when I heard Lindsay Buckingham’s guitar fade-in at the beginning of ‘Monday Morning’. I’d discovered an alien world, sexier than Narnia.
Ah, 1984: the year I first believed that music was better than sport. The year I set out to record the Top 40 every single week on my new tape deck (my collecting fetish having already moved from rocks to stamps to cricket books). The year I was too stunned to speak after I met a man who looked like Billy Joel.
1984 was the mid-point of my career as the Allington in-house clarinettist – a clarinettist who could rote learn ‘Flight of the bumblebee’ but who could no more feel the music than caress Stevie Nick’s thigh; a clarinettist oblivious to jazz; a clarinettist who left puddles of dribble everywhere.
I couldn’t be less interested in the lectures Seal seems so fond of giving the Australian television public about the music industry – just like I don’t understand how my microwave oven works. But I do care that Stevie Nicks (and the clarinet, God help me) is woven deep into the fabric of my life. You reminded me of that. In gratitude, I downloaded your new album this morning.
I’ve bought worse – so much worse – but I look forward to hearing your real debut. I hope you do, too. And I hope we meet one night in some dingy club, you prowling the stage, me propping up the bar and scribbling down your setlist. But I’m not holding my breath. No doubt you’ll eventually escape those Westfield Centre gigs. But how will I ever find my way off the couch?
Patrick Allington
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