Email to:Jesus I Could Do With A Root: Hear It Now!
*******Free KJ & Big Swifty track a bit further down the thingo – but first, read about the origins of the KJ & Big Swifty Project….And a warning: Adult themes everywhere.
You only need to rub up against one ONE person in life who believes in you – and magic WILL happen. And my ‘one person’ was Big Swifty. I meet Big Swifty in Aldis – we were both stocking up on cut price analgesics. He winced at me and said: I’ve got a migraine so bad I can’t focus but from what I can see – you’re ALL woman and it’d be a mortal sin if we never got the chance to work together. 
That was on August 27th. Three days later, we were in studio (Oh, how I love saying that!) putting down: Jesus I Could Do With A Root (All I Want For Christmas). Big Swifty is back in Australia (which he finds very boring) after 16 years working all over the world with the best in THE BUSINESS (Oh, I guess I’ll get used to saying that!). But he doesn’t go on and on about who and where and when. Modesty is a lovely quality in a Svengali.
So, you’d be a fool unto yourself if you didn’t click on this and dance along to:
JESUS I COULD DO WITH A ROOT (All I Want For Christmas)
Did you have a good listen? Did you have a dance even if it was all by yourself? Let me know what you think (no feel) about Jesus I Could Do With A Root (All I Want For Christmas) because I’d like to do more things with BS if he’s not too busy…… (Great news! BS has just issued a statement – it’s in comments section).
credit: Tracey Trompf
….just click on the ‘comment’ thingo and follow the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the ‘website’ space – not necessary!
Prawn Cutlet Award
November 25th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
KJ,
Thank you for not singing, a choir girl you ain’t. Those St Joseph’s black nuns of Leeton certainly wouldn’t be proud of what you want for Christmas. I’m betting nor would Hec and Gwennie! KJ, I’ve taken note of your publicly declared Xmas wish and I can’t see it coming your way without a great deal of assistance. I’m posting to you immediately something I picked up in a garage sale. Yes, it’s a little plate with Pope John XX111 and JFK depicted on it planting seeds. I want you to rub it often. If your wishes don’t materialise then pass the plate around RN to buy a visitor like so many others in the same situation. Any other ideas to help KJ get her wish?
November 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Meg,
I read your correspondence and immediately felt nauseous and went very red in the face. I AM back in a scorchingly hot classroom at St Joseph’s Primary School, Ash Avenue, Leeton. I have done something bad. I have my two stretched arms out (palms upwards) ready for the cuts, the cane. Sr so-and-so has represented the Riverina in lots of Caning Tests- she is known for having a very long run up to get the momentum going before she does the business. I see Sr so-and-so running towards me, I see her lift the cane, I close my eyes….and it is over until next time.
Tell me Megsy, please tell me Megsy that I have done nothing bad……..
Another little thing….I’m feeling pretty funny about that plate – I fear I may come close to idolatry with JFK. And that’s bad Megsy, that’s very, very bad……
November 25th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
KJ
Magnificent ! Loved your rendition. P Daddy eat your visceral mass.
Jesus I could do with a root/love it.
You & ya bloody mates/has a ring to it.
You’ve got no idea/also rings a bell.
12 bars would have hit the spot with such inspired lyrics.
Please ring Diesel on Bowral 555.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Why thank you bassstraightswell – this is all terribly new to me but if KJ and BS can SPEAK TO just one person in Australia, we have done our job…..
November 26th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Miss KJ
Congratulations!
The lyrics rang a bell from a distant past. Probably before you were a twinkle in Hec’s eye, but you may recall Je t’aime – another groundbreaking and controversial work.
You have taken a French narrative and translated it movingly into the Australian vernacular (altho I think, thanks to Big Swifty, the central idea of your opus will cross boundaries – cultural, geographic and sexual).
I suspect, like all truely great art, your collaboration with Big Swifty will be sadly misunderstood in some quarters.
There will be those who say this type of work has no place on the national broadcaster.
Such people are sadly out of touch.
Others will see its full potential – and I expect it’ll get great play over the Christmas festivities – particularly as a circuit breaker during the always tricky time of Boxing Day afternoon.
Hello there The Man In Grey – as usual, you get it! Je t’aime is CLEARLY my reference point, albeit a subconscious one. When I was in Year 11 at Leeton High School, Radio 2RG in Griffith had a request show every Saturday night. One night, a caller asked for Je t’aime for the youngest of the Ross girls. I was thrilled – and then he said JULIE. Devastation. (Julie third sister, best looking). Don’t know why I told you that – just feeling vulnerable with the new track and all, I guess. KJ
November 26th, 2008 at 8:40 am
A really important exploration of female sexuality. And nice bass playing too!
Initially I misread the title. I thought it was ‘Jesus could do with a root’, which is totally appropriate for Christmas. Maybe this could be your follow up single? I want a cut of the royalties.
Keep up the good work!
November 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Hello PO – you may be interested to know that at the start of our collaboration, Big Swifty described female sexuality as a ‘contested site’ which he said I was already firmly in. Then he challenged me to deconstruct, cross-reference my sexuality. It was then that I knew Svengali was in the house. I was swept along – simultaneously appalled AND inextricably drawn in. Then BS started to talk about ‘framing’ even REPOSITIONING my sexuality. That marked the most difficult period of our project. BS argued that in Europe all collaborators experienced ‘push’ and ‘pull’. At one point I lost it: This is 2008 Big Swifty not WW11! We both said sorry and went back to work……
November 26th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Dear KJ,
Great to hear an original, honest and creative rendition of the experience that speaks for many of our age…may the Christmas spirit lift you from your state of despair and love lift up your skirt where it belongs. Dance like no-one is watching and if they are, dance even harder.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Some people have got it.
Some people have had it.
But some people,……
Some people ARE it!
When I saw KJ myopicalalaly groping her way down the isle at Aldi, it hit me like a couple of Nurofens and a shot of Jack.
This wasn’t just some woman.
This was ALL woman.
I knew I had to act, and act I did.
It was frightening being in the studio, let alone the same building, for the session.
The shatter proof glass between recording booth and control room took a pounding as KJ unleashed her inner beast.
Donning headphone and doffing decorum, she began ripping through Telefunken U47’s, Neumann U87’s, C 12’s, RCA 77B’s,C’s,D’s and DX’s, 58’s, beta 57a’s, RS PZM’s…. you name it, by the end of the session, it lay shattered on the floor.
It was all I could have hoped for.
It was all I had dreamt.
Those in attendance were struck dumb as, at the end of the performance, out of breath and somewhat dishevelled, KJ huskily whispered into the remains of a ‘45 Grampian Dynamic,
“Was that all right Swifty?”
I just smiled.
No need to look to the heavens tonight ladies and gentlemen,
For before your very eyes,
A star is born,
A star is born.
Big Swifty
KJ – ONCE IN A CREATIVE LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY… Big Swifty has agreed to answer your questions about his creative process. Just flip them over in the comments section and BS will get straight to it if he’s not too busy.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
KJ, What’s next? Breakfast at Aldis? And how bout the Magician Beard? Is this an indication you want to be The Girl Who is Sawn in Half? My Intelligence sources tell me that once you were attracted to men who could imitate the mating call of Martin Place pigeons. Ah, the mysterious depths of the female sexual psyche!
This is the most pathetic worldwide appeal since Rwanda or the Tsunami.
If there are critics, and doubtless there will be (I have heard Cardinal Pell has already initiated inquiries) you could plead that you are looking for a route – indeed one that might lead you back to Sister Sadista and the Leeton Black Nuns.
Alternatively, you could like Pythagoras and others, be seeking the Root of All Existence.
Or the Holy Rood.
Your critics are not entitled to leap to conclusions.
On the other hand your rendition could be interpreted as The Worst Case of Female Sexual Frustration in the Postmodern Era.
The Ginger Man is sympathetic.
If you recall at Bletchley Park we trained agents to be parachute into Nazi Germany to disrupt their activities by catering to their most outandish sexual desires.
Without becoming personal, may I suggest that you may be suffering from the Eva Braun Syndrome? Her male companion, according to German military medical records and a Soviet post mortem examination, was indeed MONO in the downstairs department. The wartime song that Hitler had only one nut was true. Hence Eva’s anguish.
Contemplating the Bavarian mountains gave her solace, so perhaps you could consider a trip to the Snowy?
November 26th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Hey KJ – Stevie Nicks, you are not! However, you and Big Swifty have handled the most sensitive of issues with tremendous flair. You have thrown off the shackles of political correctness and have dared speak of the real complexities of a woman’s sexuality. Me and my bloody shelia mates have been bopping around the kitchen to the tune.
I’m a bit worried though KJ…..
I reckon I already know what you’re getting for Xmas. An Excommunication certificate to go with your First Holy Communion certificate.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
You’ d have to be drinking heavily to both produce and enjoy this great track.
Luckily we all do, eh?…
PS. I have no idea who all you posters are but judging by the lengthy & highly developed comments on this page I thought it best I keep mine short and sweet n’that.
p.p.s Oh yeah, this was also very reminiscent of ‘The Things’ – an old Sydney band.
KJ: Wow!, not in my wildest dreams did I think that people would start referencing other tracks, other artists – Abigail (Je t’aime) and now THE THINGOS. I picked up the phone last night and a dear Leeton friend said: I’ve only got one thing to say to you KJ: Torvill and Dean: BOLERO!
November 26th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I was stirred – more than a Catholic priest at a pilgrims swingers’ party. Leeton, Oh Luscious Leeton, the aroma of citrus scented diesel. Oh yes Disco Bunnies I spent a month in Leeton one night. Such a track could only be produced from the annals of the cultural Mecca that is lofty Leeton. I bet it’s a blast at the RSL at 10 schooners past 12. I recommend this as Shannon Noll’s next single. My father was from Leeton and this track would surely resurrect his withered corpse.
Dimentagon – wonderful to hear from someone with such fantastic local knowledge. I do hope your dear dad remains at peace. KJ
November 26th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
This is art! Timely, upbeat with an Australian ironic charm that has me grinning from ear to ere – (follow the hand and think Cindy Lauper).
KJ, you’re an original and Big Swifty, what great horns.
Could I order the CD ‘Jesus I could do with a root’ in a gift box with the profound lyrics in not too small a font. I have many a friend who would jig with delight in the kitchen while the turkey’s basting, sipping on champagne and celebrating the drought with a sense of humour. The download just doesn’t have the same effect as the chocolates, or the flowers or the expensive bottle of red or the CD!
I reckon the sequel could have contributions…one of my favorites…how’re they hanging? Just to get the ball rolling, so to speak.
November 27th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Yours are hanging very nicely Ducky…..very nicely indeed! I’ll let you into a little secret: Big Swifty is already talking SEQUEL if he doesn’t have to fly to Monaco to produce the New Year’s Eve cabaret for the Royals – the GrimALDI (amazing, just like the shop) family. He is a genius but Leeton girls know very well that even geniuses have to eat. Ducky, I’ll tell you something else (just you). We already have the title for our next track – a number which explores the contested sites that are Australian family homes on Dec 25th.
It’s: WELL, HE IS YOUR SISTER-IN-LAW’S BLOODY HUSBAND!
November 27th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Dear Miss KJ
There’s a rumour going around that Rolf Harris has been seen at ABC HQ heading in the direction of your office – is there any truth in this at all?
I think we should be told.
The Man in Grey – well, if I must……my diary note says that Mr Harris did approach my desk at 0931 hours, Monday Nov 24. I said: I’ll have to ring Big Swifty before I talk to you. So, I did. BS, who has what I’d describe as a very creative temperament, said: Say nothing, KJ, say nothing. So, I said nothing: just put my finger to my mouth, making a sssh sssh sound. Then I pointed to the door. Later BS said that he had very little respect for expat artists – that’s why he came back. To frame a culture, he said, you have live it, love it, hate it…..KNOW it. There’s one thing I know – if BS had a current passport, under ‘occupation’, there’d only be one word: GENIUS.
Harris,
If you do happen to be in possession of a current passport, I’m willing to negotiate. BS
November 27th, 2008 at 10:24 am
That’s red hot! You need an agent. I volunteer. Good rates.
BIG SWIFTY:
The lady is spoken for.
Off my turf!
Thanks.
KJ: And that ladies and gentlemen is why – even though I’m new to all this – I’m not scared. I AM in good hands….
November 27th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
When I first saw and heard KJ’s satirical hymn to feminine frustration I recalled the author Jane Austen. I realized that the song disclosed feelings that beat so strongly and secretly in that Victorian breast.
Unlike JA, KJ was prepared to open Pandora’s box, albeit in a skitty farcical manner that mocked accepted morality (in a society whose Internet is funded by the visual degradation of women) and when the laughter died in me I began to be afraid for her.
Had she gone a bridge too far? She had addressed the Saviour in her plea for sexual release. She could have said, Lord, carry me on the wings of my desire to the fulfilment of my yearnings. Instead KJ’s song declared, Jesus I Could Do With A Root (All I Want For Christmas).
It’s OK for Mick ‘Mars Bar’ Jagger (actually that story is a furphy put about by males who wanted to degrade Marianne Faithful) to slobber, I can’t GET NO SATISFACTION, or for the Canberra Girls Grammar Choir to sing chastely William Blake’s phallic lyrics, ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire, Bring me my spear.’ MY point is Mick and Blake are MALE.
It’s OK for male survivors of World War II going home to their war veterans home in Sydney to tell the taxi driver, ‘Drive me to Dunrootin’ so frequently that nobody remembers the institution’s real name. We all laugh. These are blokey things.
Females? They can read The Song of Solomon by torchlight under the blankets or by daylight read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with its yearnings for the strange male protagonist Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, twenty-six years old.
Did anyone ever attempt to ban P & P? It is a novel of passion, of desire, written by a woman who never married. If it had been called Pride and Prepuce it would have been a male author.
When Austen was twenty a neighbour’s nephew, Tom Lefroy, visited her home for a couple of months. He was on his way to London to train as a barrister. Austen writes in her letters: ‘I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.’ The Lefroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was impractical, as both Lefroy and Austen must have known. Neither had any money, and he was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland to finance his education. A year later Austen was pouring it all into Pride and Prejudice. Its working title was First Impressions.
She did not break the rules, like KJ. Well she did, but in a subtle fashion.
KJ? Well as the saying goes, Tell the Truth and Be Driven Out of Nine Villages.
Male culture seems to gravitate between the concept of women as either chaste, lacking in desire until fanned by the Seed Bearers, or as the Epitome of Temptation. Harlots or God’s Police. Nice girls do not say I need a root.
Men can say I need a root. When a female uses their own language and chucks it back, there could be hell to pay.
Well, outraged moralists, women have desires and they have a sense of satire too. Hey guys, here’s a girl singing like a bloke!
We owe much to satirists and dissidents. It took Euripides to show the Athenians the ludicrous situation of Zeus pouncing on anything female while women were locked away to do the chores, marrying from the age of fifteen. Or Aristophanes to expose the postures of sophists. Even Socrates, who was rightfully convicted of leading youth astray, did not escape his Dionysian wit……
Of course, satire and unfettered inquiry, throwing traditional conventions to the winds, whether in the Renaissance or in the opposition to Victorian propriety (did not Dickens talk about the ‘savage’ within?) may lead to a discreditable licence of morals or an undermining of Church beliefs.
We are not presented with any of this here. We have instead a Spinal Tap send-up in which even the images spoof of popular entertainment, in which a Mature Woman expresses physical desire, and rejects Myers ads for December 25.
The freedom to laugh at our sexuality ought to be in the Charter of Human Rights.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Dear Pandora – I know nought about you but if you have any credentials at all – YOU DESERVE THEM! Art will speak, but who will speak for the artists? Yours is a complex and elegant exposition. Half way through, I had to stop for a little rest. Those little staccato sniffles started, followed by longer breaths (very much in the pattern of what I learned in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation classes), then a couple of rounds of lip biting, climaxed by what everyone would recognise as a good cry. The whole sequence lasted no more than 8-12 minutes but I felt so much better after it. Gifting as post Pandora, gifting as post……I am moved.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Thank you KJ.
I think the last thing left in Pandora’s box was
HOPE.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Big Swifty,
You have agreed to accept questions from the Pit.
Were any brown M&Ms discovered in the bowl after this gig?
November 27th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
YES!
Apparently, someone DID give a shit!
Who woulda thought……
November 27th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
No, no, no Big Swifty. Your legendary Rock memory fails you. It sometimes took ten truckloads of electronic gear – highly dangerous if improperly installed – and not following the contract for the gig was a serious matter. So a clause was inserted (in the fine print right in the middle) saying M&Ms will be provided during the performance, but if brown M&Ms are detected the gig will be immediately cancelled. If the group found the brownies they knew the contract had not been read, and therefore were entitled to call off the gig because they were in the hands of incompetents who could kill them, or at least someone very careless.
November 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Who was it who said?
One thing that separates us from animals is that we are not afraid of vacuum cleaners.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Have you ever had a reply ready, and nobody asks the question ?
Today is the first time in a long while that the phone has not rung from Mumbai with a caller sayng, ‘Good afternoon, Sir, how are you today?’
The reply, packaged and ready to fly, was
‘Never mind, how are YOU today?’
November 27th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Q for Big Swifty…….
AND HOW DO I GET THIS PARTICULAR TRACK ON MY RINGTONE?
November 27th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Another one for Big Swifty:
Technical question. How do I get this downloaded to my Itunes?
November 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Ginger Boy, Ginger Boy, Ginger Boy, you misunderstand…..
Have no doubt, I made sure the infamous ‘M&M clause’ was firmly (yet surreptitiously) inserted right in the guts of the Standard Legendary Rock Recording Session Contractual Agreement (just near where you’d normally stick a stamp) and handed it over to be duly perused, poked, prodded and sniffed at by various brown suits.
They leerily smiled at each other and limply shook my hand.
I smelt a rat.
Sure enough, halfway through the session, as I reached down to grab yet another handful of M&M’s from the ABC standard issue burnt-orange melamine bowl, there it was, brown as Moses, adrift in a river of red, yellow, green, blue….a single, solitary, brown M&M!
Instinctively, I reached for the stop button…..but no, wait on Swifty, there’s more to this than meets the moustache….my finger quivered….I licked my lips…..
Censorship is such a harsh term.
The slightest illusion that it may have somehow escaped extermination; that a keen eye can sight it, scurrying from crack to corner through Aunty’s hallowed halls is enough to turn a brown suit purple….yet it cannot be denied that there were certain ‘rumblings’ coming from deep within Aunty’s bowels when this project was first mooted…was ‘this the sort of thing’ that could really be condoned by the national broadcaster?…
The tape was still rolling….I felt suits keenly watching as I warily eyed the offending sugary treat….tape still rolling…KJ oblivious to the predicament I was in….can’t risk breaking the creative flow….just one brown one….tape still rolling….could it be……tape rolling….of course!
It hit me like a short black and the first fag of the day.
Sabotage!
What better way to scuttle a project than to purposely exploit the ‘M&M’ clause?!
One brown M&M, and the whole sorry affair is over…….
The sheer mind-numbingly brilliant conivance…who woulda thought!?!
There was but one honorable course of action…I licked my lips, scoffed the brown M&M, and, as is the creed of the Guild of Legendary Rock Producers, let the tape roll on.
And smiled.
There was no stopping KJ anyway, not without risk of serious injury, she was on fire….
And so yet another hendrixificant moment in the history of unbridled, unfettered, unhinged, and uncensored self-expression was captured, printed, documented, and run up the pole for collective awe-struck-ning.
And just by the bubbler stood a possie of brown suits, no longer smiling, just looking.
Leerily.
So yes Ginger, SOMEONE did give a shit…….
BS
P.S. As far as the vacum cleaner question goes, my advice is to let Google be your friend.
KJ: Gee, I didn’t even know there were ructions behind the scenes. And Big Swifty shielded me from what sounds like very bad tensions. He quickly put a dragnet around my creative process. How he managed that I do not know. What I DO know is this: just another example of why Big Swifty is always IN STUDIO while you’re all just sitting there on your bums reading about it.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
In this jungle we need people like you.
Jungle Diary Day 57:
We arrived at Madete at 4 P.M. yesterday evening, minus two donkeys. Following complaints of loneliness from the men I was obliged to send Farquhar off on my own riding-ass to the village of Mpwapwa, five miles off to employ the services of a fondler. He returned some hours later with a course-handed Welshman named Secombe.
Robert causing consternation amongst the local women again, monkeys still too quiet, something is afoot. Damn this jungle Carruthers, damn this jungle.
Greetings Alan – I ask myself: abject vulgarity or art? And I won’t be the last…….KJ
November 28th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Hey there Surprised, Mrs T and all the rest…….
Currently, I am talking to the world about distribution. Watch this space……
Ringtones? – I’m currently in negotiation with Telstra, it might take a while…
BS
November 28th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Spend my two dollars wisely KJ & Swifty or my auditors will be in Leeton pronto with the rubber glove and dencorub. Never let it be said that Dimentagon does not support the artistic endeavours of my regional cultural brethren. The drought is over – its raining Zen. Hallelujah! I’m getting a root for Christmas! I haven’t been this excited since Mel Gibson’s little drunken racist episode driving home from The Passion Of Christ after party. Bugger the Big Banana – visit Leeton’s new cultural kitschy cool THE BIG SWIFTY. Reinventing the regional rural economy.
Hello Dimentagon – how amazing – the man with the local knowledge reports in again! I don’t remember anyone at Leeton High called Dimentagon: but (in the interests of personal safety) you were probably Darrell or Brad between 9-3:30pm. You are so obviously an arts lover. Were you ever a contestant in the Leeton Eisteddford still held every year in the beautiful Roxy Theatre? KJ and 8 mates (total: 9 girls on stage) always targetted the No More Than 10 Voices Unaccompanied category with The Campbells Are Coming Ho-Ro, Ho-Ro, The Campbells Are Coming Ho-Ro, Ho-Ro……NO prizes but Leeton’s small – but very influential Scottish community – was always pretty chuffed. That was thanks enough…..
November 28th, 2008 at 10:00 am
BS, There’s always something new here.
We can have An Imaginary Enemy!
So we are never truly alone.
TGM
November 28th, 2008 at 10:24 am
great song love it
November 28th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I love your Blog KJ. Alas, I am far from local. In fact, my father ran screaming from Leeton in the 50’s and raised us in Sydney where he met Mum. He did take us back there and I have passed though on tour a few times and let’s just say – with no disrespect intended to any of your alumni involved in that fine eisteddford – I am eternally grateful to him.
I am a terminal city boy although I am currently based in Bowral, a kind of Double Bay version of country life for aspiring Pitt street farmers with tax deductable acreage. The only regional produce here are Lattés and tours of all things Bradman. I’ve just returned from a 2 year stint in a cultural jail on the north coast called Coffs Harbour, a quaint little town augmented by double bogies rolling through the main drag 24/7. I saved them the trouble of running me out of town.
I ran the local news service so was invited as media to the pinnacle of the Coffs cultural calendar, a local exhibition of Gleason. After a few social lubricating liquid refreshments, I engaged a very cute but very green local reporter who was on hunt for something actually taking place in Coffs. She decided to interview me, silly girl. With Art Nazi arrogance and blatant examples to illustrate my point, I dared to suggest Gleason was in fact a repressed homosexual with a violence fixation. I blurted out that he was a third rate fake-assed Whiteley with little cultural value. I added that he did the art trader culture vultures a favour by dying to inflate his artistic retail importance.
To the horror of art starved people his art was apparently above critique because it costs 180 G. I closed the studio three days later and, like my father before me, ran screaming in the direction of Sydney. See this is why I need to be moderated and edited.
Regards, the just a little bit country. (I won the busking comp at Tamworth one year).
Dimentagon.
Dimentagon…..sometimes I have to take a dear correspondent aside and have a private little chat. I hate doing it…..but, like all site moderators at the ABC, I have been trained to spot the likes of you. Apparently, my job is to make sure you continue to feel valued in your chosen cyber community while offering advice where needed. So here it it is Mr Dimentagon. For most people, WHERE they live is as important as life itself…..it is where they test the boundaries of love, sport, friendship, raffles – and yes, ennui. KJ always says: She doesn’t know where home is – she FEELS where Leeton is. Dimentagon I feel that you have yet to FEEL home. But, I know that one day you will. And, trust me, that’s when you’ll be able to say whatever you like about the Don or Kingsford-Smith or even Grace Cossington-Smith and you will get away with it!
God bless you Dimentagon.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Bloody Good One! It is beyond Rodney Rude, was past Kevin Bloody Wilson, but towards the Awesome Category!
The song bloody rocks!
KJ: Thank you Rita – MORE references to other artists, other works! So far, Abigail (Je t’aime), Torvill & Dean (Bolero), underground Sydney band The Thingos – and now these two CONTEMPORARY greats. Not in my wildest dreams……
November 29th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Radio National – a world of ideas – how ironic.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:09 am
erroll – I was wondering where you were………welcome back!
November 29th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
BS, thank you for clearing up the Mystery of the Brown M&M.
Ah, the wonders of a sweetie.
I recall at Bletchley Park as part of our anti-Nazi operations we launched
J (for Jaffa) Force.
The Operation actually was designed by a flight sergeant originally from Leeton, Australia.
In civilian life he had run the local cinema.
The idea behind Operation Jaffa was to disrupt Nazi cinema.
Intelligence reported that no matter how much we bombed Jerry he was still crowding into screenings of Alles Leben ist Kampf, The Eternal Jew, Der Marsch zum Führer or Festliches Nürnberg.
That’s until we began parachuting sacks of Jaffas, a chocolate ball covered by fire brigade red candy and about the size of grapeshot, into Berlin so that our agents could roll them down the aisles at critical moments of the film, particularly at the climax of speeches by Der Führer.
It all went very well until our scientists discovered that hyperglycemic Germans were better able to resist stress from bomardment, and Bomber Harris gave the kibosh to the operation.
Forgive me for the anecdote, but I had to mention Leeton’s small but important contribution towards the defeat of the Hun.
After the war, traces of Jaffas were found in Hitler’s Bunker. Significance of this is still a matter of conjecture.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Thanks for that great piece of cyber advice KJ. It was both poignant and mostly relevant. Way cheaper than therapy. May I complement Aunty on your excellent moderator training – you do RN proud. You have made me feel both important and loved, akin to having had a Dear Dolly letter published.
Throughout my life, I have travelled the World extensively on a personal quest for home, music, love, food, sport, spirituality beer and beer spirituality. I guess in the words of the great 20th Century philosopher Lene Lovich: ‘Home is where the heart is, home is so remote, home is just emotion sticking in my throat….’
I would never be so presumptuous as to start hanging shit on someone’s home town. In some parts of America’s Deep South and Dubbo such arrogance will most certainly lead to you learning first hand the existence of an after life. However, in my extensive anthropological observations I have never encountered a place quite like Coffs Harbour. It’s just a challenge. Coffs is a veritable transit lounge for people on their way to find all the things you so rightly pointed out as important to a meaningful existence. The cloud of perpetual negatively that engulfs that town sucks the ability to feel anything from your very existence.
I am positive that Leeton or Bowral (for that matter) is no such place. In fact, I am sure Leeton is a place where you can most certainly feel the love. Life is a raffle and maybe I just won the assortment of choko pickles, all the while aspiring to the monster seafood tray. Soon, I will move back to Newtown. I “feel it” constantly and should stop or I will go blind.
Bugger me if I’m not dancing on the inside after taking delivery of my copy of that fantastic piece of Australiana that is ‘Jesus I feel like a root’ now highly rotating on my Ipod. I am in fact feeling the cyber love from luscious Leeton and this blog cyber community (Who thinks up these terms? Sounds like a colony of robots with a nasty infection).
You and Swifty are resurrecting the dying corpse of fun in music and providing some balance. An admirable undertaking when there are legions of confused 12 yr old girls running aound singing: ‘I kissed a girl and I think I like it’.
PS you sound a lot like Judith Lucy on that recording.
Sincerely feeling it,
Dimentagon
KJ: Well done you Mr Dimentagon! You are not going to be just ’so so’ -you about to do YOUR BEST WORK EVER! You must NOT hold onto Coffs – as Coffs did NOT hold onto you…. You’re among those rarest of Australian men – ready to look into your very soul and attend to not only the ‘iffy’ but the the ’sus’ as well. I knew I was dealing with A Lover not a Hater. I WILL be recommending you for the job of Leeton Community Arts Officer which, for many years, has been subject to a very high turnover. Word is they want an experienced multi-media artist willing to push the boundaries of long-grain rice.
November 29th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Leeton Community Arts Officer – KJ, I am flattered and honoured.
The cultural possibilities of long-grain rice have no boundaries, it just takes ingenuity and cultural framing, I can assure you that to the best of my knowledge I’m completely GM free. I went to a public school and not a Catholic boarding school so I am Gay Molestation free. How about “Jesus I could do with a root” as the jingle for rice wine alcopops perhaps? A Christmas gift pack for the single with a nativity scene built entirely from long grain. I know! Get a bloody grant from the Australia council and import one of those cleaver buggers to write all the lyrics to “Jesus I could do with a root” on a single long grain to sell on the KJ and Big Swifty Chinese cultural exchange tour. I really feel Leeton is up for it to get down to it.
Feeling Leeton
Dimentagon
November 30th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Dear Ms KJ,
Perhaps you have a strange convert to your cause. Hold the front page of The Catholic Weekly for a comment from one of its board members and I don’t mean Johno Johnson.
It’s none other than Miranda Devine, the conservative Sydney Morning Herald columnist.
Miranda writes in today’s SMH:
Middle age used to be a respite for women, somewhere between the frenetically social 20s and the downhill run of the 60s, a time of gently letting go of youth and learning to be comfortable in their own skin.
But alas, no more, thanks to the tyranny of the ‘yummy mummy’, or as it is in its less genteel form, the MILF: the Mother I’d Like to F—.
The Mother I’d Like to F— ?
Miranda! Please go immediately to the office of Sister Sadista. I am calling your parents!
Please do not introduce Miranda to Big Swifty.
What’s the next track?
Miranda and the Devines singing: The Mother I’d Like to F— ?
December 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am
Gingerbread Man said: ‘Please do not introduce Miranda to Big Swifty.
What’s the next track? Miranda and the Devines singing: The Mother I’d Like to F— ?’
Please I beg of you: Can I shoot that video? With Miranda lustfully pushing a stroller around Woollies in a pink thong, Swifty’s stylish moustache. It would be a shoe-in for Tropfest or at least Dorrigo.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:38 am
Though fame precludes my attendance of cinemas and other such public spaces, rest assured next time Baz turns up on my doorstep clutching dvds and a “need some advice” look on his face, I’ll be handing him a box of Jaffas and a link to this blog.
He can work out Real Australian Cultural Significance on his own time.
This is right up there with the super-ocular enhancing qualities of the humble carrot to cover the invention of radar in planes subterfuge – I think Jaffa rolling should be an official part of the next rememberance day rituals.
AND, a Leeton connection!
Dimentagon, jaffas, it’s all getting too much!
Maybe KJ’s right.
Maybe Leeton really is the centre of the known universe.
*Cue scary music….very scary music*
I bid ye all a temporary adieu, as I am deep in pre-production for the next smash-hit single which should be available before Christmas. So till then, try not fall off the edge of your seats.
And lastly, should the opportunty arrise, please take The Ginger Man’s advice and do not introduce Miranda Devine to me.
BS
December 1st, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Big Swifty is all right but he is no Tex Hodge.
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:52 am
Jesus Miss KJ
When you’re hot, you’re hot.
I say this because of what happened when I bumped into one of Leonard Cohen’s people over a quiet drink late last night.
As you may know Ole Lenny’s out here early 09 and apparently he’s heard about your work with Big Swifty and “is really keen to hook up with you”.
While it’s true Lenny’s been a bit down since someone shot through with most of his dough – the thought of adapting some of his old classics -
Suzanne – Like a Bird On the Wire… and giving them the “Leeton treatment” has got the old boy really excited.
His man started making notes on the back of an envelope along the lines of:
KJ takes you down
to her place by the river
she gives you tea and apricots
that come all the way from ….
I’m hearing it now…
…probably, as you’ve got a talented cultural fixer there,
lives in Bowral
Early 09.
Can’t wait.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
comin’ right back at you Mr Man-In-Grey!
We canned them on the nightshift,
The two fruits deep and warm….
My hair net on the process line,
Like a sleepy golden storm…….
Yes, many canned before us – I know we are not new,
At Letona and Monbulk
They canned like me and you………
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I think your song is appalling and whoever wrote it is:
Abhorrent, boring, crass, disgusting, embarrassing, foolish, grotesque, half-witted, irrelevant, juvenile, kruddy, lacklustre, pitiful, mendacious, nauseating, Off, perverted, questionable, revolting, stupid, tasteless, unappealing, vacuous, windbag, xenoidiot (made that up just for you), yabberer, zymosis.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Well, that’s very interesting Joanne and Barry.
Let me just call my PA,
“Rebecca.”
“Yes MR Swifty,” she answers in her signature nasal twang.
“Could you just read out some of the feedback we’ve been recieving from the International Guild of Rock Journalists, Reviewers and Deal Makers?”
Popping away the latest edition of Word Magazine and flipping open her PDA, she begins without hesitation,
“Admirable, amazing, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring, awesome, brilliant, cool, divine, dynamite, enjoyable, excellent, fabulous, fantastic, fine, groovy, incredible, magnificent, marvelous, miraculous, outstanding, peachy, phenomenal, pleasant, pleasing, prime, remarkable, sensational, something else, staggering, startling, strange, stupendous, super, superb, surprising, swell, terrific, too much, tremendous, unheard-of, wondrous….
“Oh, do I HAVE to keep reading this out Mr Swifty?” she finally whines.
“No, that’s fine Rebecca, you’ve done enough, you’ve done enough.”
BS
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Joanne and Barry Pace said:
I think your song is appalling and whoever wrote it is:
Abhorrent, boring, crass, disgusting…………
They forgot close to the bone.
Swifty, if ever someone needed a copy for Christmas Jo and Barry are contenders. Have your PA send em the “adult only” box set version with the matching long grain edible thongs.
Feeling Leeton
Dimentagon
December 5th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Hi KJ, now that I have seen your face I’m surprised you have a problem finding……
By the way: some men do find cottontails VERY SEXY! I thought you might like to know……
KJ: Ah yes, the cottontails set – I’ve always argued they’re ‘Buy Australian’ zealots more than anything else….
December 18th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I thought Michael Hutchence was dead and Miranda Otto is showing her age……
December 18th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Well Mr Marmaduke Pickthall…I thought YOU were dead! Welcome back!
Just you wait till you hear our new Christmas track – it’s just up – called ‘They’re Your Bloody Family!’ Just can’t wait to find out what you think of it…..