From Telethon '93.

..and Brazier, Lyon and Gamble do the country classic 'Sea of Heartbreak'

Here endeth Kiwi Music Month with a couple from Telethon - Herbs' 'Listen'

Kiwi Music day 28 - Straitjacket Fits - Down in Splendour (1990)

Oh Ok, another one from what I call the Burning Train Years.

It's a great song although I have no idea what it is supposed to be about and the pictures don't really help.

Shimmering, atmospheric jangly and slightly melancholy stuff. I'm a sucker for it.

Budgets past...

Both Ele at Home Paddock and Inventory2 at Keeping Stock 

have memories of Budgets past, listening to the radio in the evening.

The first I remember was Bill Rowling's second, and last, Budget as finance minister in 1974.  I was just starting to take an interest in what was in the newspaper and there was a Minhinnick cartoon, the morning of the Budget, of Rowling on the phone and saying 'Good morning, Nordy...'

It was, of course, the first Budget after the First Oil Shock and it was expected to be a tough one. (it wasn't). 'Nordy' was Arnold Nordmeyer, architect of the 1958 'Black Budget'.

It was either that Budget or the next one I was at a dance at the local hall on Budget night, and all the dads - farmers, all - were out the back in the kitchen, listening to the radio as it was being read. 

What hit me at the time was the atmosphere of ... not quite dread, but disquiet.  The economic ground was shifting under our feet and things would never be the same again.  People knew this, even if they weren't up on the detail of economics. A great part of Muldoon's appeal was he seemed so certain - he provided assurance in what was becoming a very uncertain world. 

Whenever I think of Budgets now, I think of that country hall, and that room of worried farmers. 

Kiwi kMusic day 27 - The Bats - Courage (1993)

Love the bass line in this. It just sort of says the whole song's theme.

update,,

Various family health dramas ...stable, I think is the word.  

The horse may have bolted, but things are stable. 

Wind howling like a howly, windy thing outside.  We're in the cloud, we occasionally hear planes try to land at the airport and then get warned off. 

Probably a bad day for the controller to stop sniffing glue. 

Kiwi Music Month day 24.....Split Enz - Sweet Dreams (1976)

...my favourite Split Enz song, by far. Back from the Phil Judd era. There's about five different tunes in this song, the lyrics are all over the show but seem to reflect undergraduate studies in existentialism...

Love the chorus. 'Sweet Dreams, every once in a while....'