There was a song on the Moodists "Thirsty's Calling" album called "Swingy George" . We came from St Kilda to London and put the song down there. Propulsive kind of song we were best at. Bass heavy on one chord with Mick Turner grinding out some crude slabs of slide guitar. No blues except for my style of repeating lines over and over. Nobody ever asked me what lyrics were about in the band. I never made it my thing to separate them out.We had no lyric sheets with our records and the whole experience was a totality. 1984.
Then I got a call the other week from a friend in Mt Gambier. He and his friends, hot rod aficionados and long term potheads had been watching a dvd of the Moodists LIVE IN LONDON (1984).
He said "that song Swingy George- was that about Swingy George?"
We then proceeded to compare notes on this character from our childhoods who had been a presence around the local (east side) childrens playgrounds. He would just sit there in the swings, looking comical because of his adult size. Nothing rotten ever happened, he was just a bit of a bogeyman. "Swingy George". Anyway, it took over 30 years for that song to get heard by a person who could hook into it and KNOW what the fuck I was singing about!
I now realize it was a kind of a folk tune. the post punk scene had this imperative that you write about your own experience and environment. The only thing was, in Melbourne, that we HATED most of our environment and were totally into frequencies from New York or London. Really, why would you be interested in Cold Chisel or the Angels with the Birthday Party or laughing Clowns, Alan Vega/ Suicide, the Fall, the Fore Engines or the Contortions in your head?
I also wrote it with the film "night of the hunter" in my brain. That film was such a touch stone in that scene. 40s movies in general. The word "swingin'" had all the connotations of hanging as well as the goofy musical feel. The Jungle Jim was in every playground. Something for kids to hang off. I liked things to be just a few repetitive lines.
"george was real enough
it didn't take much to make him swing
he was a black coat that we all coloured
yeah something from sleep caught in our light
a bad shape caught in our back yard
we wanted to see him swing
he was hangin around this jungle jim
just a black coat drifting
swingy george
he was a black coat that we all coloured
yeah something from sleep caught in our light
a bad shape caught in our back yard
he was still there when he had gone
we wanted to see him swing
he was hangin around this jungle jim
just a black coat drifting
swingy george"
It inspired Max Harris to pen this poem about the area ....
The Tantanoola Tiger
There in the bracken was the ominous spoor mark,
Huge, splayed, deadly, and quiet as breath,
And all around lay bloodied and dying,
Staring dumbly into their several eternities,
The rams that Mr Morphett loved as sons.
Not only Tantanoola, but at Mount Schanck
The claw welts patterned the saplings
With mysteries terrible as Egypt's demons,
More evil than the blueness of the Lakes,
And less than a mile from the homestead, too.
Sheep died more rapidly than the years
Which the tiger ruled in tooth and talk,
And it padded from Beachport to the Border,
While blood streamed down the minds of the folk
Of Mount Gambier, Tantanoola, of Casterton.
Oh this tiger was seen all right, grinning,
Yellow and gleaming with satin stripes:
Its body arched and undulated through the tea-tree;
In this land of dead volcanoes it was a flame,
It was a brightness, it was the glory of death,
It was fine, this tiger, a sweet shudder
In the heath and everlastings of the Border,
A roc bird up the ghostly ring-barked gums
Of Mingbool Swamp, a roaring fate
Descending on the mindless backs of grazing things.
Childhoods burned with its burning eyes,
Tantanoola was a magic playground word,
It rushed through young dreams like a river
And it had lovers in Mr Morphett and Mr Marks
For the ten long hunting unbelieving years.
Troopers and blacks made safari, Africa-fashion,
Pastoral Quixotes swayed on their ambling mounts,
Lost in invisible trails. The red-faced
Young Lindsay Gordons of the Mount
Tormented their heartbeats in the rustling nights
While the tiger grew bigger and clear as an axe.
'A circus once abandoned a tiger cub.'
This was the creed of the hunters and poets.
'A dingo that's got itself too far south'
The grey old cynics thundered in their beers,
And blows were swapped and friendships broken,
Beauty burst on a loveless and dreary people,
And their moneyed minds broke into singing
A myth; these soured and tasteless settlers
Were Greeks and Trojans, billabong troubadours,
Plucking their themes at the picnic races
Around the kegs in the flapping canvas booths.
On the waist-coats shark's teeth swung in time,
And old eyes, sharply seamed and squinting,
Opened mysteriously in misty musical surprise,
Until the day Jack Heffernan made camp
By a mob of sheep on the far slope of Mount Schanck
And woke to find the tiger on its haunches,
Bigger than a mountain, love, or imagination,
Grinning lazily down on a dying ewe,
And he drew a bead and shot it through the head.
Look down, oh mourners of history, poets,
Look down on the black and breeding volcanic soil,
Lean on your fork in this potato country,
Regard the yellowed fangs and quivering claws
Of a mangy and dying Siberian wolf.
It came as a fable or a natural image
To pace the bars of these sunless minds,
A small and unimpressive common wolf
In desperately poor and cold condition.
It howled to the wattle when it swam ashore
From the wreck of the foundered Helena,
Smelt death and black snakes and tight lips
On every fence-post and slip-rail.
It was three foot six from head to tail.
Centuries will die like swatted blowflies
Before word or wolf will work a tremor
Of tenderness in the crusty knuckles
Around the glasses in the Tantanoola pub
Where its red bead eyes now stare towards the sun.
This song from FEARFUL WIGGINGS mentioned Max Harris and his poem "upon throwing a copy of the New Statesman from the window whilst driving along the Coorong".
Huge, splayed, deadly, and quiet as breath,
And all around lay bloodied and dying,
Staring dumbly into their several eternities,
The rams that Mr Morphett loved as sons.
Not only Tantanoola, but at Mount Schanck
The claw welts patterned the saplings
With mysteries terrible as Egypt's demons,
More evil than the blueness of the Lakes,
And less than a mile from the homestead, too.
Sheep died more rapidly than the years
Which the tiger ruled in tooth and talk,
And it padded from Beachport to the Border,
While blood streamed down the minds of the folk
Of Mount Gambier, Tantanoola, of Casterton.
Oh this tiger was seen all right, grinning,
Yellow and gleaming with satin stripes:
Its body arched and undulated through the tea-tree;
In this land of dead volcanoes it was a flame,
It was a brightness, it was the glory of death,
It was fine, this tiger, a sweet shudder
In the heath and everlastings of the Border,
A roc bird up the ghostly ring-barked gums
Of Mingbool Swamp, a roaring fate
Descending on the mindless backs of grazing things.
Childhoods burned with its burning eyes,
Tantanoola was a magic playground word,
It rushed through young dreams like a river
And it had lovers in Mr Morphett and Mr Marks
For the ten long hunting unbelieving years.
Troopers and blacks made safari, Africa-fashion,
Pastoral Quixotes swayed on their ambling mounts,
Lost in invisible trails. The red-faced
Young Lindsay Gordons of the Mount
Tormented their heartbeats in the rustling nights
While the tiger grew bigger and clear as an axe.
'A circus once abandoned a tiger cub.'
This was the creed of the hunters and poets.
'A dingo that's got itself too far south'
The grey old cynics thundered in their beers,
And blows were swapped and friendships broken,
Beauty burst on a loveless and dreary people,
And their moneyed minds broke into singing
A myth; these soured and tasteless settlers
Were Greeks and Trojans, billabong troubadours,
Plucking their themes at the picnic races
Around the kegs in the flapping canvas booths.
On the waist-coats shark's teeth swung in time,
And old eyes, sharply seamed and squinting,
Opened mysteriously in misty musical surprise,
Until the day Jack Heffernan made camp
By a mob of sheep on the far slope of Mount Schanck
And woke to find the tiger on its haunches,
Bigger than a mountain, love, or imagination,
Grinning lazily down on a dying ewe,
And he drew a bead and shot it through the head.
Look down, oh mourners of history, poets,
Look down on the black and breeding volcanic soil,
Lean on your fork in this potato country,
Regard the yellowed fangs and quivering claws
Of a mangy and dying Siberian wolf.
It came as a fable or a natural image
To pace the bars of these sunless minds,
A small and unimpressive common wolf
In desperately poor and cold condition.
It howled to the wattle when it swam ashore
From the wreck of the foundered Helena,
Smelt death and black snakes and tight lips
On every fence-post and slip-rail.
It was three foot six from head to tail.
Centuries will die like swatted blowflies
Before word or wolf will work a tremor
Of tenderness in the crusty knuckles
Around the glasses in the Tantanoola pub
Where its red bead eyes now stare towards the sun.
This song from FEARFUL WIGGINGS mentioned Max Harris and his poem "upon throwing a copy of the New Statesman from the window whilst driving along the Coorong".
We're playing some shows soon! There's also now a second show at Memo for Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes.
