Sunday, June 8, 2014

Monogamy Shbedogamy



Get your collectors item CD of Failing In Love Again HERE 
and help Jan get to NYC to launch her latest book.

The CD has fourteen original songs from the cult hit 80s musical with Jan Cornall and Elizabeth Drake: Idiosyncracies, Spilt Guilt, Limping For Sympathy, Better Than Het,The Vibrator Song and many more!

Listen to the original full version of Monogamy Shbedogamy and other songs here. 

Read the song lyrics here. 

Jan Cornall(background) Elizabeth Drake at The Flying Trapeze Cafe 1980. Photo Ruth Maddison.


The Song's History

I don't remember the exact moment I wrote this song. It must have been some time in 1975. After several months travelling with my buddy Ruth Maddison in Mexico and the USA in '74, I ended up in Eugene, Oregon, planting trees. Ruth had gone home to Oz and I followed a lead given by some women we'd met at a women's festival. In Eugene (the counterculture capital of the world) I found the collective run outfit called the Hoedads who employed anyone with a willingness to scamper across ridiculously steep log strewn slopes in the pouring rain.


 I joined a crew and we headed out into the mountains. Our accomodation was a black plastic tipi where we would hole up when it was snowing and too cold to plant. As luck would have it on the same crew was poet/artist Simone (Paula) Treacy-Croft) and percussionist Scotty. We became best friends and I moved into their house when we got back to Eugene. Scotty was in a reggae band and I wrote some calypso songs for them. There was a vibrant music scene happening in cafes and the legendary WOW Hall and our little house by the freeway became a creative meeting place.



 The sexual revolution was in full swing, the women's movement was taking off, queer and left politics were leading the anti-couple, anti-monogamy, anti-capitalism, anti-everything charge into  a redefinition of the romantic love myth. Against that backdrop this song was born. I used to sing it with three chords on a guitar, as I did for my try out for the all girl latin jazz band Baba Yaga. They were looking for a drummer and I'd just started learning the conga drums. They took me on in good faith that I would improve and my songs added a novel touch. We recorded the original version on our album Baba Yaga, On the Edge.

Listen to the original full song Monogamy Shbedogamy and other songs here.


Get your collector's item Failing In Love Again CD with Jan Cornall and Elizabeth Drake and help Jan launch her latest book in New York City

The Cassette and CD

In early 1980 Johnny Allen of Cabaret Conspiracy invited Elizabeth Drake and I to perform at Palms Cabaret, an underground bar on Oxford St, Darlinghurst. The baby grand stood on a perspex disco dance floor and our punk-cabaret personas shimmered in the mirrored walls behind us. Palms was one of the venues the Cabaret Conspiracy crew used, along with Garibaldis and the fabulous Liverpool St flats with the central courtyard where many of them lived.

Poster by Bob Daly


Palms was packed every night, word of our show spread like wild fire and we were soon invited by Sue Hill to take a late night spot at the Downstairs Nimrod (now Belvoir St Theatre) in Surry Hills.


Later that year we were invited to take part in the First Australian Cabaret Festival at Garibaldis performing alongside Los Trios Ringbarkus, Fifi Lamour and Boom Boom La Bern, the Lobotomy Brothers, Funny Stories and many more.


Around the same time we were spotted by Roz Cheney at ABC Radio and asked to record for the Coming Out Show. How lucky for us that we were able to record all the songs from the show for without it we would have absolutely no existing record. They were happy for us to duplicate some cassettes to sell at our shows and we asked Lucyfoil Collective to design a screen print cover and poster.


Cassette cover by Lucyfoil Collective.

I often bump into people who tell me they still have their cassette and miraculously it still plays! Others wore theirs out long ago.  It was a request from one such person who had never seen the show but played the tape incessantly while working outback on a desert community. Years later he found me on Facebook and asked if I had it on CD. With the help of a techi friend I had managed to transfer it but only had a couple of copies.



To fill his order I got a few more printed which is how I come to have them on hand today to offer as an incentive in my Indiegogo New York Launch Campaign. 

The CD alone or the CD plus the original cassette are available for a limited time.

It's a limited edition collectors item offer and will go towards helping me launch my latest book and cabaret, Archipelagogo - Love Songs to Indonesia at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.


LISTEN TO SOME TRACKS FROM FAILING IN LOVE AGAIN HERE

GET YOUR COLLECTORS ITEM FAILING IN LOVE AGAIN CASSETTE AND CD HERE


Read more about the history of the musical Failing In Love Again here.

  

Saturday, June 7, 2014

The story behind the hit musical Failing In Love Again

In late1978 I arrived back in Australia after four years away travelling. I'd spent most of my time in the USA, where I started writing songs and had joined (as percussionist) an all girl latin jazz band called Baba Yaga. I remember sitting in Tamani's Cafe telling Kerry Dwyer all about my US song writing adventures and she suggested I apply for the position of writer in residence at the Pram Factory. I'd been an actor at the Pram before I left in '74 and had slotted right back in joining the Nightshift crew, one of the many groups under the Pram umbrella. I made the short list for the residency and it came down to me and a guy who was writing a full on Trotsky-esque political drama. Luckily for me the feminists had taken over the excecutive committee and I got the gig.

I ended up writing a musical (lyrics and music) called Failing In Love Again for five singers and three musicians. It was performed in November/ December, 1979 ( the last show of the old guard of the Pram). The nameless characters were: a heterosexual man, a heterosexual woman, a gay man, a lesbian and a bisexual woman. All were 'casualties of love' and sang songs like: Sad Masochist, My Mother Wore The Pants, On the Beat, Better Than Het, Gotta Get Outa The Ghetto, Song of A Single Cynic, Split Guilt, and Monogamy Shbedogamy.

The original cast of Failing In Lova Again. Photo: Ruth Maddison

I had no idea right up until opening night if people would like it or not. I was also performing in it, playing the bisexual woman. The poster and set was by Carol Porter, it was directed by Robin Laurie and Nano Nagle, the musical director (also pianist) was Elizabeth Drake with Marnie Shehan on guitar and Cathy Loosely on drums. The other singer/actors were Evelyn Krape, Di Duncombe, Terry Darmody and Robbie McGregor. Costumes were by Laurel Frank. On opening night the house was packed and as we took our final bows, the thunderous applause told us we had a hit on our hands.

Word spread to Sydney especially among the gay community, who even chartered buses to get to Melbourne to see it.  It was full house every night of the four week run. But such success was short lived. No body filmed it, there was an audio recording which was lost and only the wonderful black and white photos by photographer Ruth Maddison remain.

Poster by Bob Daly

There was talk of touring, but it was too expensive and the old guard of the Pram was on its last legs. However Elizabeth Drake and I had the bright idea to take the cabaret version of the musical to the Adelaide Fringe Festival. We tried it out at the Flying Trapeze Cafe in Brunswick St. The pared back show suited our duo dynamic perfectly and another couple of songs were added: The Vibrator Song and Orally Fixated. In Adelaide we peformed at Carclew and wowed the crowds with impromptu performances at the Festival Club.

Jan & Elisabeth at Flying Trapeze Cafe. Photo: Ruth Maddison

It was one of the hits of the festival so we decided to take it on the road: Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Nimbin, Bellingen, Newcastle, Sydney. In Sydney we joined a fabulous network called Cabaret Conspiracy, headed up by Johnny Allen, who launched our show at Palms Cabaret in Oxford St. Word spread and soon we were invited to perform by Sue Hill to perform a season at Downstairs  Nimrod Theatre (now Belvoir) in Surry Hills. There we met production manager Leanne Donnelly who became an integral part of our team. We weer packed out every night and apparently our show was the most financially successful of its era.

Read a review of the Nimrod show here,

We wrote another show soon after called Worse Than Perverse which we launched at Nimrod Downstairs and took to the Adelaide Fringe in 1982. At Troupe theatre we performed both shows back to back to sold out houses.

Jim Sharman with poster of Worse than Perverse

After the festival Elizabeth and I went in  different directions; I developed my one woman shows — Woman On The Run, Aroma Billings, Exotic Artiste Ordinaire and Standing Up Bent. I was invited to take part in the woman's comedy revival at the Trade Union Club in Sydney (set up by Larry Buttrose and Judy Barnsley), performing alongside Wendy Harmer, Gretel Killeen, Mandy Solomon. After having kids I became a playwright and screen writer and didn't come back to performing until 2004 as a spoken and sung word poet at The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali.

Elizabeth went on to compose for theatre and film, becoming the only woman to win an AFI award for her musical score for the film Japanese Story directed by Sue Brooks. She has worked widely composing for theatre and film including a number of theatre productions with playwright/director Jenny Kemp. In 2012 she performed  at Womadelaide with Caroline Almonte. a two piano version of  Canto Ostinato, by Simeon Ten Holt, a stunning piece of highly evocative minimalist music that can be performed in different formats, with different combinations of instruments and venues.  


PURCHASE YOUR  COLLECTORS ITEM FAILING IN LOVE AGAIN CD HERE