31/01/2026
So…since a parents passing up onto the astral plane upon NeWYearsEve eve…I have had another bout of grief struck mourning stricken sh*te to process the impact of and scrolled past this post without knowing necessarily what I might have to contribute…yet there is such necessity…
“My wife” Amy Galloway inverted commas because it is a “funny” “humorous” thing to express the absurdism of celebrating a conservative tradition with the fact one has met another Being willing to legally submit to a contractual “obligation” of love and the complex vicissitudes of its complexities - gifted me John Brehm’s anthological book The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude and Reverence for Christmas - at my own request because I know … or knew what future twas imminent…
Whilst having had to negotiate the impact of death, it’s dead and the dying rather increasingly more and more unceasingly as the inevitability of each one of our own approaches - especially with 2 litre dolby’s LEOLO Duncan Mullins tragically premature passing - I have self-indulgently indulged its affective effects whenever necessarily a necessity with whatever means necessary, such as late-night listening sessions, whilst family and neighbourhood tolerates such self-indulgent indulgence.
Sound Like Sunset often invariably inevitably features for as their music popped with a hopeful melancholia; its richly complex sonic layers sublimely drenched with a voluminously aural angst, whose subtlety belied my own negotiations of whatever I believed I had needed to project within their songs, about the complex vicissitudes of life subjected to the complex vicissitudes of love and family.
Back within the late 90’s I twas so pretentiously depressed and depressingly pretentious that the impact of their music became passed over for an obsessive proclivity for either more instrumental pretensions or in contrast ecstatic euphoric rock and roll nostalgia…
Fast forward to the early 2010’s and and I am playing in a band with “my wife” called Tender Bones - watch this space if we ever release our last pre-family wreckordings! - and we have organised capital city launches for the release of our debut extended player and subsequently our only release! I commenced researching bands within each city via internet searches and stalking Facebook friends feeds and there I reacquaint myself with a rekindled exuberant love of adventurous melodic pop that Sounds Like Sunset sublimely perfect.
I cannot hardly believe nor express the anticipatory feelings of anticipation contacting them via email and then a telephone call, like a first date, with reassuring quiet small talk that is always fraught negotiating the music industry’s egos. And then there is the unexpected juxtaposition of personality and interests, within graffiti and soccer, including the complex vicissitudes of life’s complexities subjected to negotiating love and family.
We played within Kings Cross at FBI Social so akwardly humbled to have them and Joseph Liddy’s Skeleton Horse and Deep Space Supergroup have the humility to support - it approached a humiliation except an unforgettable time for me twas had irrespective of audience attendance.
We had the privilege to play together with them again for their We Could Leave Tonight launch at The Old Bar in Melbourne upon a bill that included not only my other band The Electric Guitars whom got to play again within the year 2018 for our SIDEWAYS CHANGELING album launch at the Petersham Bowling Club with The Escapes - but 2 litre Dolby’s Leo Mullins, whom tragically prematurely passed up onto the astral plane a mere year later at the end of September 2019.
Their music twas a soundtrack for the coronavirus pandemic times and it has since become a negotiation of things I prefer to necessarily avoid with David Challinor’s own sudden passing up onto the astral plane. Now with one of my own parents not unexpected passing up onto the astral plane too, I have this Denise Levertov poem Talking To Grief from said Festivus Seasons Greetings gifted anthological book The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude and Reverence from “my wife” compiled by John Brehm
Talking to Grief
Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.
You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.
Now I ask the question of grief to visit me …within my house… a home for it to call its own and make it have its presence known… as if the ghostly spiritual presence haunting Mandy Barron’s sublimely understated melancholic pop song Leave A Light On featured within Seventeen’s Gaggin For It that 2 litre DOLBY’s Leo Mullins played upon with Smudge’s Alison Galloway
https://viasatellitedownloads.bandcamp.com/track/leave-a-light-on
Invisible’s I Still Have Your Picture
Saturday’s It’s So Cold When You Sleep
We Could Leave Tonight’s Open Up My Eyes
Crying tears falling from eyes I realise grief’s gift comprises love’s souvenir …and it is an experience of eternity’s perpetual timelessnes
from the album Gaggin' For It
