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'Most Memorable DP Song' contest winners:

In 1991, I was 18... legally allowed to drink and legally allowed to get into pubs. More importantly I could get into pubs to see bands that, up until that point, I really only had to access to on my stereo.

In 1991, Died Pretty released Doughboy Hollow. It wasn't the first time that I had heard the band but it was the first time that I had really been moved and subsequently affected, to this day, by one recording... start to finish.

I can't really separate Doused, Disaster and Satisfied as my favoured tracks on the record and, for what it's worth, I think two of the single releases (DC and Sweetheart) were probably the weakest tracks on the album. Please don't draw any inference that they were "weak" songs... just my testament to the absolute quality of the record on a whole that, in my opinion, these songs had to drop a few rungs for others.

BUT with all that aside, I would have to say that "Doused" is the DP song that changed my life as once I got my hands on Doughboy and heard the introducing crackles on the vinyl which ran into the elegant pluckings of Brett's Stratocaster into the frenzy and power that draws the songs to its end... that first time... that first time.

Suddenly it is 2002....a decade on and DP decided to call it a day. I have a young family now but had to go and wave the band off into the sunset. Got there just in time to grab a beverage and shimmy my way up to the front. They made their way to the stage and I wondered what it was going to be first? "Doused" of course and one thing that will never leave me is the vision of the band in their resplendence doing what they do best... Ron possessed by the tune...Brett's beautifully distant melody.. Robbie looking down at the fret board of the bass with authority... John's angelic keys and Simons' complementing rim shots. ..the last time... the last time.

So my fondest memories of "Doused" is the first time I heard it ever and the last time I heard it live. 11 years between the two versions and still affected exactly the same way.

Cheers
Matthew Bell


 

Good grief! How do you narrow down just one Died Pretty song as special? It’s like trying to name your ten favourite all time songs and ending up with twenty! I can relate songs to many times in my life – some good, some bad, some happy, some sad. But the song that means probably the most, in terms of experience – its mood, its sentiments – would be Everybody Moves.

Why? When? Where?

Well, in no particular order, the melancholic feel of the song, for starters. It’s a song you listen to while driving on the freeway at night, illuminated only by fast lights; or seated in front of a fire on a winter’s evening – the haunting rhythms accompany the ghosts of once friends as they wander, the cold and the shadows as they disappear. At points in my life, everybody did move, everybody did change. Best friends move interstate and get married; romantic ones that got away move to other places and other lovers. They were all moving and changing – not just from me, but all the time I was staying the same.

I decided it was time for me to move and change. I went to England for two years; I needed to live on the other side of the world. Not to “find myself”, but just to see what happened. They were the best two years of my life. Of course, I took my Died Pretty collection with me; the music reminded me of home, not the land down under of vegemite sandwiches and kangaroos hopping down the street – Died Pretty has never been so gaudily Australian as that – but a link to the place I come from. Living in another country, I enjoyed being in a foreign land, but still needed a sense of place; while I had changed and moved away, I could not do without a connection to my roots.

So now I could hum Everybody Moves in my head while walking through the brightly lit streets and chaos of bitterly cold London, as the rain fizzed against streetlights, as the freezing mist rose up from the Thames. I could feel sorry for those poor people who had never heard of Died Pretty. I could help a few – I made tape collections for friends (guys, please don’t sue me for copyright breaches – how else will they hear you?). Flatmates would say “Hey I really like that Died Pretty!” as I blasted songs in my portable stereo in the living room, the volume turned up to 11! Everybody Moves was a much played song, and seemed to feature on every collection I made. Like a lot of Died Pretty songs, it made me happy and sad at the same time. A sense of loneliness, isolation and homesickness coupled with the euphoric joy that wanderlust can bring. I had finally moved and changed. Maybe someone else could relate to the song; maybe I could pass it on.

And now I’m back home. After making lots of friends, after making memories of what would be two of the best years of my life, it’s time to move and change again. In Sydney, in a melancholy mood, with a few drinks under my belt (not a whole bottle of port, mind you), I listen to the song while studying an atlas map of London and Europe – places where I met great people, places where they were born; or I gaze at photos of them, or my house, or the street in the town I lived. Once again, Everybody Moves is there to haunt me; it makes me laugh, it makes me cry. It brings a wistful, bittersweet rush to my head, but it also reassures me. After all, we’re all moving and changing, aren’t we?

Brian May

 



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