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Friday on My Mind –Ring Christmas Bells And Other Carols

Tapestry choir leader Kim Kirkman usually introduces our version of Carol of the Bells by mentioning that it featured in the soundtrack of the 1990 movie, Home Alone. This brought back memories of the parlous times in 1990 when media baron Rupert Murdoch nearly went broke. Yes, he nearly did, back when News Ltd’s total debt was a scary $7.9 billion (this was 1990, remember). What saved Murdoch was an agreement between 146 banks that refinancing was a better solution than the collateral damage from a collapsing global media empire.

The other thing that saved Murdoch was the box office success of the Christmas movie, Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin. Home Alone became the highest grossing Christmas movie of all time (adjusted for inflation) taking $US477 million in box office sales world-wide, against a film budget of $18 million. Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox was the beneficiary of the film’s success. As a recently-employed journalist, I wrote a piece stating just that (News Ltd saved by Home Alone).

The movie spawned four sequels, none of which achieved the heights of the original.

As we all now know, Rupert Murdoch’s foray into film, television and satellite TV paid off. The timely acquisition of 20^th Century Fox in 1986 helped Murdoch achieve more fame and fortune via a then unknown animated show, The Simpsons. Launched modestly in December 1989, The Simpsons is still going strong, 649+ episodes later.

As one of the most popular TV shows on Fox Broadcasting, the creators of The Simpsons repeatedly got away with satirising the Fox Network. Animator David Silverman is said to have based the appearance of Homer’s boss Montgomery Burns on Fox chief Barry Dillon, using the body of a praying mantis as a model. Monty Burns is the fictional owner of Springfield’s nuclear power plant, a greedy tycoon who exploits his workers and can rarely remember their names. Hmmm, as Marge Simpson would say.

The crew of Sunshine Coast radio station Hot91 were asked to rate favourite Christmas movies for a feature in the Sunshine Coast Daily’s Weekend Magazine (also owned by Rupert Murdoch). All three DJs rated Home Alone, along with other candidates including The Grinch, Bad Santa (execrable-Ed.), National Lampoon’s Xmas Vacation, Elf, Santa Clause and Love Actually. The latter is cerebral and worth watching but I remember Home Alone as being deeply silly with some dangerous-looking stunts.

Christmas songs often get written about at this time of year, which is hardly surprising as you rarely hear them between January and November. Last year I ranked my top 12 Christmas songs (only three of which are carols).

The FOMM alt-Christmas playlist

As a member of a choir, you are expected to sing Christmas carols, which almost always lend themselves to harmonies. Our choir Tapestry racked up five performances this month, which is some kind of a record. As a serious chamber choir, we mixed it up a bit, from the ancient (Veni Veni, a Gregorian chant in Latin) to an irreverent piece about Christmas excess (The Banquet Fugue), and a short protest song (‘The Wrong Present’ aka ‘Don’t sing me Christmas Carols anymore’). We did a good job of the Little Drummer Boy and worked an uplifting key change into the last verse of Handel’s Joy to the World.

Thankfully, Kim elected to stay away from the tedious (12 Days of Christmas) and the seasonally irrelevant (White Christmas and Frosty the Snowman), although we did perform Rudolph and We Wish You a Merry Christmas for those who might have been thinking we were being a bit too precious.

This month She Who Sings O Holy Night (that was in Home Alone too), with me in tow attended quite a few Christmas parties where carol books were handed out. I got chatting to a chap who was hovering out in the kitchen (my usual retreat at parties). We discussed why people are so attached to these songs, so many of which are deeply pious, with their references to the Virgin birth, three wise men, the holy infant and home birthing in a stable.

Statistics on religiosity are unreliable; even though the 2016 Census tells us that only 52.1% of Australians identify as Christian, it is an optional question, which 9.1% chose not to answer. Otherwise, 30.1% answered ‘no religion’ and 8.2% nominated a faith other than Christian (including 2.6% or about 630,000 people, who follow Islam).

You will find other surveys which suggest that Christianity is in decline and that Australia is becoming more secular. Which begs the question why people who probably last entered a church for a wedding or funeral will happily sing along with Good King Wenceslas and Oh Come all Ye Faithful. Ah well, it is all about peace, love and goodwill so what’s not to like.

As you might suspect, however, I prefer Christmas songs that take the piss. This year’s award goes to Keir Nuttall’s classic Christmas Landfill, performed here by Keir and his partner Kate Miller-Heidke. The combination of a sweet Christmas melody and Keir’s satirical lyrics (‘fleeting joy will never decompose’) is just perfect, moreso with the help of superimposed lyrics. This video also includes KMH’s cover of Tim Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun.

I should follow this with a reassurance that I’m not dissing Christmas or the joy it clearly brings so many people. You can tell how serious I am by the inclusion of this video of Tapestry performing The Little Drummer Boy, The women had the melody, so the job for the basses and tenors was to imitate drums (hence heads buried in scores).

I should also clarify my remarks about Christmas carols and religious music in general by observing that the charismatic church Hillsong has produced Australia’s best-selling CD on a fairly regular basis. Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Bernard Zuel harshly but probably accurately described Hillsong’s 2015 Aria winning album Empires as a ‘churchy songbook sung by mostly anonymous faces scrubbed clean of any travails’. Nonetheless, the album sold 7,000 copies in its first week of release, 2,000 more than the debut solo album of former Silverchair songwriter Daniel Johns. Go figure.

Since we exposed you to Tapestry’s version of the Little Drummer Boy, let me leave you with this version by Johnny Cash and Neil Young.)

Merry Christmas from FOMM. Take care on the roads (said he who got a ticket in the mail from NZ).

Re changes at FOMM: Next Friday you will all receive a link to a New Year blog. Thereafter, the weekly email will direct you to the website www.bobwords.com.au. Anyone can subscribe (email link at the top of the page) and of course unsubscribe at any time.

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When desert stars disappear

Outback: No 2 in a six-part series

stars-outback-music — stars – Image of Charleville night sky, June 26 by Laurel Wilson’s Nikon Coolpix

I was going to be cute and headline this piece about stars, ‘Charleville’s starry starry night’, which in one tells you where I am and sneaks in one of those song references for which I am apparently known. Our plan was to visit Charleville’s famous Cosmos Centre, an observatory which takes advantage of the (usual) crisp and clear night air to show the far west’s spectacular night sky.

But you can’t count on the weather. Halfway through our second day in Charleville, 747.3 kms west of Brisbane, the clear blue winter sky began clouding over. By the time we came out of a supermarket expecting to go to dinner and then to an astral show, we found instead rain spots on the windscreen and a voicemail message from Mike at the Cosmos Centre. Tonight’s shows are unfortunately cancelled due to cloud and expected rain, he said. If you are still around tomorrow you can rebook, he added. But the weather forecast was a 90% chance of precipitation, and besides, we had to be in Blackall.

Drat, we said and went off to the RSL for the Barra special.

I was space-mad when I was a kid and so were all my mates. In 1957 (most of us were 9 or 10), the Soviets declared themselves winners of the space race (on account of launching the world’s first satellite station (Sputnik), which orbited for a couple of weeks before running out of battery power. The USA was aghast and immediately ramped up its own space programme, frantically trying to catch up to the USSR. These were the Cold War years, long before perestroika and glasnost. The US and USSR happily spied on each other and played nuclear chicken (the Bay of Pigs crisis). The US arguably won the space race in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Even today you will find conspiracists who say the whole thing was a con, filmed in a studio.

Do you remember Laika, one of Moscow’s stray mutts until the USSR space team captured the dog and sent into orbit? Laika was one of three dogs ‘trained’ to become astronauts. The Soviets coldly admitted that the dog would die in space (and it did), heralding perhaps the birth of the animal rights movement.

Not that me and my Kiwi school friends were thinking about such deep things, but the space race got us interested in the wider world.

Our parents were not too thrilled, though, about experiments with home-made rockets (taking fireworks apart and stuffing the explosives into toilet roll tubes).

I read up on astronomy and became something of an expert (so I thought) on the planets, their moons and even distant stars. A famous New Zealand radio quiz show (It’s in the Bag) visited our small town so I put my name down to answer questions on my special subject. Genial host Selwyn Toogood found me out, though, on question two or three which was: name the second furthest planet from earth. I said Saturn when the correct answer was Neptune. Selwyn said something like “By hokey, that’s not right, Bobby. But thanks for taking part in the fun.”

‘It’s in the Bag’ offered contestants the choice between keeping answering questions (and being gonged out), and choosing between cash or an unopened bag. Nobody knew what was inside the bag. It could have been a (voucher for) a new fridge or washing machine, or one of the dreaded booby prizes.

You will have to take my account of this episode with a grain of nutmeg as it was long ago (1958?) and these days I’m flat out remembering where I left my keys and phone.

I’ve always been a bit of a stargazer, and you can take that any way you like. When you grow up in a small country Kiwi town, the stars take their proper place in the firmament.

Australia’s outback is the best place to see the night sky. There’s no artificial light and in the winter months the colder nights mostly guarantee a crystal-clear sky.

More than a few songwriters have had a stab at describing the starry starry night, but none as convincingly as Don McLean, in his ballad about Vincent van Gogh. There are others, as I found when plundering my IPod – Dream a Little Dream of Me, Starman (Bowie), And I Love Her (Beatles). More recently Coldplay came up with A Sky Full of Stars. Moon Dance doesn’t qualify but it’s a great tune and Van is undeniably a star.

Music historian Lyn Nuttall (aka Franky’s Dad), found an example from the 1950s (I knew he would). Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes was a hit for Perry Como, but the original was recorded by the writer, Slim Willet. Lyn, who curates the website poparchives, quotes Arnold Rypens of The Originals (this is for my songwriter pals patiently waiting for their APRA cheques), who wrote of this song:

“Slim pulled a gun on Bill McCall (head of 4 Star records & publishing), forced him to walk to the bank and collect an overdue payment for royalties in cash.”

The poets waxed on about stars, to wit the ‘mansions built by nature’s hands’ (Wordsworth). Shakespeare’s Sonnet 14 is often held up as the gold standard. But Gerald Manley Hopkins was more adventurous. He likened stars to the ‘eyes of elves’ or ‘fire folk sitting in the night sky’. Hopkins also described stars as ‘diamonds in dark mines or caves’.

That makes my ‘blazing starry nights’ (last week) seem prosaic.

We went outside at Moonie last week where there was a clear sky. She Who Knows About Such Things pointed out the Southern Cross. We both identified Venus and guessed we were about a week away from a full moon. But, as you might gather, there’s a bit of rain about in the west for the next week or so. Charleville got 10mm overnight after our star gazing was thwarted, making it 173mm for the year to date.

Out west the paddocks are dead brown and parched and we’ve already seen a couple of drovers driving cattle along the ‘long paddock’. So it would be churlish of us grey nomads to complain about a bit of rain, eh.

Next week: further west

Re last week’s episode, Ridley wrote to point out that camper trailers and other camping vehicles (slide-ons, for example), didn’t factor in our stats. Moreover, slide-ons (the camper sits on the tray of a Ute or small truck and can be dismounted), don’t have to be registered. So yes, there’s even more undocumented grey nomads out there.

Little boxes – the genre-fication of music

music-genre-CD — Old-school CD music collection by Mr Shiraz)

Yes I know it’s my fault, but early in the days of turning my music into online MP3s, I accidently chose Christian Rap as a genre for one of my songs. The song I incorrectly categorised is called 53 & Fragile, about a fellow taking stress leave to ponder his future. I guess you could rap to it, in a God-less sort of way. It only took three years to discover this error.

An enterprising blogger (Glenn McDonald) compiled a list of 1,264 micro-genres; they include goa trance, aggrotech, gabba, yellow mellow, happyhardcore, terrorcore, ghost step and Nordic house.

There are many reasons why the recorded music business is in a state of flux but I continue to believe (and I’m not alone), that the industry’s insistence on streaming music into little boxes called genres has robbed many a musician of potential fans.

As Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Bernard Zuel said of a Luke O’Shea album – it is put into a box labelled Country and as a result, a great many people will never open that box. This is likely to be the case, despite someone with Zuel’s acumen identifying all manner of pop, rock and hip hop influences in O’Shea’s music.

When we released our CD, The Last Waterhole, in 2015, it was our first real engagement with online music. After labouring through the online applications (and printing out paper copies), our music was magically turned into MP3s (compressed audio files), and made available for download on CD Baby and subsequently ITunes, Amazon Music, Google Music and more.

We sold the expected number of CDs, but three years later our album has drifted out to sea as thousands of new releases come in with every second wave. Online sales are about as sporadic as our public appearances.

The indie market is cluttered with home-made CDs recorded on a laptop and flogged at markets for $10. Those with loftier ambitions engage a producer and typically spend $6,000 to $10,000, which is all very well if you can sell 500 copies at $20 each. At the high end of the game, production companies spend up to $100,000 on a CD that will jump out of the radio like a rabbit on steroids. But over a long span of time, I suspect, the listening public’s ears are getting tired of it all. There’s way too much of it, no quality control and the harsh, metallic attack of compressed digital music has taken the edge off the listening pleasure.

And, as our producer predicted, the day is coming when people won’t need to own CDs anymore – all they‘ll need is a Bluetooth speaker.

“OK, Google, play The Goodwills.”

“OK, here’s the YouTube channel for the DJ Goodwill.”

The science is imperfect, but it seems to be enough for an alarmingly large group of people, who can buy an OK-quality music-streaming speaker for a few hundred dollars. The latest research estimates the value of the global portable Bluetooth speaker market at over US$4 billion, expected to double by the end of 2025.

A few years back the grand dame of folk and blues Margret RoadKnight posted an article on Facebook from Digital Music News with the droll comment “Why I’m up for House/’Salon’ concerts!!”

The article outlined the industry’s 99 (main) problems, the key one being that musicians and artists are finding it harder to “monetize” what they do, whether performing or selling merchandise.

People have got used to free stuff and now they won’t pay unless they are very drunk and you’re giving away a t-shirt or stubby holder as well.

I asked a 20-something lad why he thought nothing of shelling out $20 for a pizza but he was reluctant to pay $20 for an album.

“Yeh, but I know what a meat lovers’ pizza is like, right? And I get garlic bread.”

“But you only get to eat the pizza once,” I reasoned. “You can play a CD over and over. A pizza won’t make you think about social issues.”

“Meh,” he said.

The Digital Music News article by Paul Resnikoff identifies issues with the method of delivering music. Streaming (subscription services which offer consumers a wide variety of music to listen to in-house but not download), continues to explode, but not enough to compensate for declines in physical CD sales and paid downloads.

We chose not to take up the offer to have our music on Spotify, a subscription streaming service, which in hindsight seems to have been a counter-productive decision. A musician friend Sarah Calderwood recently asked if we were on Spotify as she was compiling a playlist of Australian indie folk music which she planned to put on ‘repeat’.

If you have a Spotify account you can listen to Sarah’s playlist, which includes acts like Gone Molly, The Barleyshakes, Michael Fix, Women in Docs and Mark Cryle.

The independent musician, defined as a musician without financial backing, has to constantly find fresh ways of reaching new ears.

There’s a lot of indie musos around, competing with each other for gigs and CD sales. Increasingly they busk, or play for nothing at ‘walk-up’ venues which ask people to put their name on a blackboard and sing two or three songs. The artist might sell one or two CDs (if he or she is really good at making an impact and the song is up to the task). The alternative is a paid gig playing in a bar or restaurant where people go to eat, drink and talk.

Resnikoff writes that the key issue is that most consumers attribute very little value to the recording itself. They already heard the song on Spotify Soundcloud, Reverbnation, Bandcamp or YouTube.

The fractions of cents paid for streaming plays might add up to dollars eventually, but you need to keep selling ‘merch’ across all platforms.

From a financial point of view, it matters little to me that there are boxes of CDs in the hall cupboard, even if the ego grapples with the notion of relevancy.

It is a different story for people in their 20s and 30s who have decided to make music a full-time career. This involves constant touring, online management of their business and profile and (the thing nobody talks about), singing the same 10 or 12 songs every night, over and over. If you’re going for it, you have to keep churning out new material (thus consigning your older material to the remainder bin).

As one musician told me, “You have to keep putting new stuff out, even when you know it won’t pay for itself, otherwise you get forgotten about.”

House concerts, and we are long-term supporters, are a sure-fire way of giving musicians a listening audience. Even if only 20 people show up, it’s a better result financially and aesthetically than a rowdy Friday night pub gig. Audiences love the intimacy and the musical and lyrical nuances that are often lost in noisy, amplified venues. We’re hosting our 110^th house concert on June 10: check it out at

And the homemade afternoon tea on offer is guaranteed to be yummier than a meat lovers’ pizza and garlic bread.

Further reading: How Music Got Free, by Stephen Witt.

The FOMM alt-Christmas playlist

The first thing you’ll notice about my carefully curated alt-Christmas playlist is the absence of Six White Boomers and The 12 Days of Christmas. I’ll walk out of the room if someone starts on that tedious epic. I was intending to write a Grinch-like piece this week, but instead decided to share my eclectic view of the world through an alt-Christmas playlist.

What set me off on this tangent, dear reader, was making visits to three different shopping centres in the past three weeks. It wasn’t so much the crowds, the noise, the proliferation of tattoos or the inappropriate wardrobe choices that got me down. It was being assailed, or should that be wassailed on all sides by different streams of Christmas music. It ranged from Bing and that tired old northern hemisphere trope to Jose Feliciano wishing us a merry one from the heart of his bottom.

For someone whose preferred background music is Bach or Riley Lee playing the shakuhachi, it is an assault on the senses. It seemed to me, though, that most people were oblivious to Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman, as they trudged around shopping centres at Carindale, North Lakes and Morayfield. In fact, as their laden trolleys would indicate, they seemed intent upon spending.

A survey this week by finder.com.au reckons Australian shoppers will spend $492 (each) on Christmas gifts alone. Women will apparently spend $58 more than men. Finder’s Bessie Hassan said the 2017 spending estimate was slightly lower than 2016, when Australians spent on average $539 on Christmas presents.

The shopping swarms were probably to be expected, given the 3.6% rise in the consumer confidence index between November and December. The Westpac Melbourne Institute’s Index is 5% above the average for the September quarter, which saw a ‘disturbing’ slump in consumer spending.

While consumer confidence may have bounced back at a critical time for retailers and their landlords, the keepers of the index are circumspect.

“…with ongoing weak income growth, a low savings rate and high debt levels, we cannot be confident that consumers have the capacity to sharply lift spending, despite higher confidence.”

The irony of my three visits to large shopping centres is, had I planned ahead to buy the small but well-chosen gifts, I could have done it online and saved myself the grief.

So to the FOMM alt-Christmas playlist; they’re not all leftie, anti-Christmas rants and there’s a thread of peace and love running through all of them.

There are a couple of genuine carols, a peace anthem or two, some Australian content and more.

My music correspondent Franky’s Dad offered to create a Spotify alt-Christmas play list for me. Until he did that, I had not subscribed to Spotify. (Hands up who else has no idea what ‘Spotify’ is. Ed.) Unlike many list stories you will find on the Internet, these songs are not in order of preference. I happen to like all of them, but feel free to disagree or tell me which alt-Christmas song I should have included instead.

All of the links here are to YouTube videos. Just dip into them as the spirit moves you. For those who have Spotify, here’s the link:

1/ The Little Drummer Boy, interpreted here by my favourite acapella group, Pentatonix. If you like the group and this genre of music, they do a splendid version of Jolene with songwriter Dolly Parton.

2/ River, by Joni Mitchell. Ah, what a wistful, sad song. They’re cutting down trees and putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace. But Joni just wants a river to skate away on (as you do if you live in Canada).

3/ Fairytale of New York, The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, a bawdy anti-Christmas ballad of drunkenness and fractious relationships. I like the bit where the boys from the NYPD sing Galway Bay. A classic.

4/ I’m growing a beard downstairs for Christmas, Kate Miller-Heidke and The Beards. This quirky, M-rated Christmas satire won the best Comedy/Novelty song category in the 2015 International Songwriting Competition.

5/ 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night, Simon & Garfunkel, 1966. Half a century later, this timeless carol’s theme of peace and goodwill is still being drowned out by the negativity of global news.

6/ Suddenly it’s Christmas – Loudon Wainwright III. Yep, it starts with Halloween (forget about Thanksgiving, that’s just a buffet in between). As Loudo sings – it’s not over till it’s over and they throw away the tree.” The Spotify version is a remix, but the impudent tone is still there.

7/ Happy Xmas (War is Over). One of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s many pleas for world peace.

8/ Getting Ready for Christmas Day, Paul Simon. From early in November to the last day of December, he’s got money matter weighing him down. Simon cleverly intersperses the lyric with a 1941 sermon, voiced by black American preacher, Rev J.M Gates.

9/ The Silver Stars, Brisbane Birralee Voices. This is an Australian carol by William James which has also been sung by our Maleny chamber choir, Tapestry.

10/ Little Saint Nick, the Beach Boys. I’ve got Macca from Australia all Over to thank for this as he played this merry tune to close out his show last week. It sounds a bit like a rebadged Little Deuce Coupe, but who’s complaining.

11/ How to Make Gravy, Paul Kelly. Where would we be in Australia without the letter to Dan from Joe, who’ll be spending Christmas in jail? Kiss my kids on Christmas Eve and make sure you add a dollop of tomato sauce to the gravy.

The Christians and the Pagans, Dar Williams. The definitive song about disaffected families and how they come together at Christmas and try to find common ground.

(Our friend Rebecca Wright does a cracker version of this one).

Meanwhile, people, there are only 2+ days more shopping days to spend your quota. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s Money Smart tells us that the average credit card debt after the holiday season is $1,666. While 82% of Australians will pay this off in up to 6 months, 11% will take six to 24 months; 4% will take two years or more and 3% believe they will never pay it off.

If you are worried about waking up with a debt hangover, go here, where you’ll find helpful tips, It’s probably too late for this year, but as Loudon Wainwright observes, of all such holidays, ‘it’s not over till it’s over’.

Season’s Greetings and take care on the roads – Bob and Laurel.

Flashback to Christmas 2015

The autoharp, recorders and other rites of spring

autoharp-spring-recorder — Autoharp player Evan Mathieson at Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival. Photo: Lindsay Maa http://www.evanmathieson.net

As today is ostensibly the first day of Spring, I am cleaning up the music room, starting with a dusty old autoharp. Honestly, I don’t remember where I got it from, I can’t tune it and don’t know how to play the autoharp in the first place. Yet it sits in the bottom of the cupboard, gathering cobwebs. Occasional bursts of enthusiasm about learning to play the instrument have all faded away. Like morning dew, if you will. When I catch up with Queensland folksinger and autoharp-maker Evan Mathieson (above) I might ask him what he thinks of my old relic.

The autoharp belongs to the zither family and in theory it is a cinch to play. Chords are played by pressing down on a felted bar which mutes all but the strings that make up the chord. You then lightly strum with the other hand. Start with a two or three chord-song like Catch the Wind or Banks of the Ohio.

The autoharp, though descended from a line of German instruments, was popularised in the American folk scene and taken up by some who later became pop stars. In 1965, John Sebastian’s band Lovin’ Spoonful had a hit with his song, Do you Believe in Magic. While Sebastian was highly regarded as an auto harpist and often played it on stage, it is not that discernible in this YouTube clip, although you can at least get a sense of how the instrument is played.

Do You Believe In Magic?

You’ll know the tinkling sound of the autoharp, even if you cannot describe the instrument or imagine how it is played. In 1979, the late Randy Vanwarmer’s lonesome ballad, You Left Me Just When I Needed You Most, was best known for its plaintive autoharp instrumental, played by John Sebastian.

I’m told that Queensland folksinger Evan Mathieson was inspired to start making his own instruments after hearing John Sebastian play a Bach piece on an autoharp. Hand-made instruments can be built to create chords not always available on commercially-made autoharps.

You can get caught up watching old (and new) clips on YouTube of people playing the autoharp. Dolly Parton’s there, so too Sheryl Crow, Maybelle Carter, Billy Connolly, Peggy Seeger and many more.

Crikey, they say even The Dude plays autoharp, though Jeff Bridges apparently prefers playing his Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar when performing with his band, The Abiders.

American virtuoso Bryan Bowers (he’s in the Autoharp Hall of Fame), is credited with introducing the instrument to new generations of musicians. Lakes of Pontchartrain.

I’d love to say someone played autoharp on Song of the old Rake, from Paul Kelly’s Foggy Highway. Programme notes archived by the late lamented Lonely Planet, alas, inform us that Kelly’s band, the Stormwater Boys, used highly-tuned guitars to mimic the autoharp sound. They did it very well.

There are quite a few rock bands and recording artists who use autoharp in their arrangements, but none as effectively as PJ Harvey.

This is an unusual clip in that it starts with PJ alone in a room rehearsing The Words that Maketh Murder, then cuts back and forth between the band version and PJ alone in her room. The lyrics in this anti-war song (from Let England Shake) are brutal, so if you’re the sensitive type, don’t go there.

Evan Mathieson has made a life study of the instrument and also makes autoharps, complete with the signature ‘map of Australia’ sound hole. The instrument suits Evan’s strong baritone and is ideal for a solo act performing folk songs. I’m told he’s leading a shanty session at the Maleny Music Festival on Saturday night.

The music room in our house doubles as the collective home office in which many great decisions are made, petty arguments thrashed out (and where many of the 173 FOMMs were conceived). I believe there will be no argument from She Who is Also Spring Cleaning should I decided to give the autoharp away (SWiASP found a website for the Australian Children’s Music Foundation, which provides free instruments and lessons to disadvantaged children).

Hot cross buns, anyone?

Most homes harbour at least one musical instrument, upon which lessons were learnt and quickly forgotten. Recorders, harmonicas, ukuleles, tin whistles and guitars are the instruments most likely to have been bought on a whim and discarded once lessons got harder.

Most children have a stab at learning an instrument at school – usually a recorder as they are relatively easy to learn and affordable. Any parent who has endured the period where their child struggled to play the recorder without making the infamous ‘squeak’ might want to check out recordings by Maurice Steger. The world champion recorder player has taken on compositions by Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel and baroque music composed for the recorder.

As Steger told ABC Classic FM: “In its heart of hearts the recorder is an incredibly simple instrument and yet it is so hard to make it sound beautiful. That is what makes it so fascinating.”

So before your kids get bored playing ‘Hot Cross Buns’ and decide to pack the recorder away with the jigsaws and board games, get them to check out Steger’s amazing performance of Vivaldi’s Recorder Concerto RV 443.

Recorders are much favoured by schools as they can be bought for less than $10 and immediately give teachers some idea if the pupil has musical aptitude. They are also much-loved by musicians who form early music ensembles (typically using tenor, alto, bass and contrabass recorders). Like the clarinet, the recorder can sound dire in the hands of someone who has no aptitude and/or no inclination to practice.

You may notice how I have digressed from the opening paragraph which claimed I was spring-cleaning the music room. Actually it’s not all that bad – a few years ago I threw out old capos, out of tune harmonicas, a rusty tin whistle, and mailed a parcel of used guitar strings to a charity that sends them to people who can’t afford to replace their guitar strings. There’s still a lot of stuff in the cupboards: boxes of (unsold) CDs, boxes full of demo and rehearsal CDs and cassettes. I always meant to go through the cassettes and convert them to digital files (MP3s). The problem with that is the process happens in real time. So we’re talking not about hours or even days, but more like months of drudgery. So much easier just to take it all to the tip.

I found a commercial cassette – the first Spot the Dog album. After converting it to CD, I asked if anyone wanted the cassette. Not even Mark Cryle (and it was his band’s first recording), took up the offer. He told me he already had a few sitting around at home.

As for the autoharp, after a fitful hour or two grappling with the tuning key and an electronic guitar tuner, I concluded the real issue is it needs new strings. I looked up prices at juststrings.com and figured that at $100+ I’ll just give it a vacuum and put it back in the cupboard.

It’s still not in tune.