Damian Lovelock is dead… “Who the Eff” is Damian Lovelock I hear you say??

Damian was the frontman for the Celibate Rifles. They’re a band out of Sydney

Sort of proto punk, garage, Ramone-ish with a rough edged ancestry dating back to the founding principles of Aussie pub rock. Which curiously enough has nothing to do with chest thumping nationalism, but more piss-take, pissante…..and just straight piss.

He was witty, erudite and loved footy. But I’m afraid not the right kind of footy, that other code played to the north of Wagga, and to the north East of Albury.

They were never successful, because they lacked the neccesscary discipline and committment to be successful. And of course they knew deep down thst success of the commercial kind would destroy their artstic impulse. Music becomes muzak within a heartbeat, if you don’t believe me, talk to Paul Macartney. This of course gave them legendary status and immortality. You would never hear their songs on commercial radio, and if you ever did, you would be instinctively conditioned to smash their records. To be quite honest they weren’t really that good. But being average and having little commercial success makes them stratoshperically famous. And as famously quipped, “More famous-er still now they’re dead”

I own a Celibate Rifles record. It came out in the early eighties and was called “Sideroxylon”. This, (dear reader) suggests an intellectual grasp of native flora that suggested code. Not deep and meaningful, because that would be akin to the torture of listening to Carol King, or worse still… Cat Stevens. The album had a nicely dawn picture of an ironbark. And employing a visual pun, and eye, an all seeing eye was inscribed onto the actual trunk of the tree. Get it. “Eye On Bark”

Anyway, the poor bugger, wrote, sang, indulged in social commentary and enjoyed the capacity to tell a story fully and colourfuly. The poor bugger is dead now. And for todays treat this little stanza from his song. More like doggerel than verse, but pithy in a “Catcher in the Rye” kinda way.  This is a fragment from his “Song of Salvation”…

We’re getting older but no more wise

I’m looking but I don’t believe my eyes

Kids with machine guns selling crack

I’ve never seen a hearse with a luggage rack

One thing baby I know is true

You make it but you can’t take it with you