Twang welcomes Mousey to the pod for a 121 natter. We discover growing up in New Zealand, being a nerdy piano kid, seeing ELP at Wembley and writing songs for Play School. In a long career as a successful musician our guest is remains refreshingly keen and still got a kick out of walking across the Abbey Road crossing even whilst recording there.
The Afterword #101: The One to Onecast – Mousey
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This is going to be a cracker. I have to do some work in the garden today so I will listen to it then.
It made excellent soundtrack to hard-pruning a strip willow hedge. Long live rock and roll…
A good listen yesterday whilst preparing the usual Sunday full English brekkie….I love the personal family stories these casts always seem to include – well done @Twang and @Mousey (and I always seem to have pronounced that right in my head!).
Really enjoyed the Antipodean musical voyage of your life from childhood Tea Round The Fire to your august career as musician/composer/songwriter. That hour slipped by. How lovely to have bought so much happiness to children and their parents too.
A piano came into my house aged 8 as well and you brought back memories of my young playing. My first teacher was all classical but at 16 I found Jeff, a retired TV musical director who was teaching piano locally. I remember working on Lately by Stevie Wonder with him which had all kinds of complex (to me) chords, but he taught me all the various dim and aug stuff and so I learnt ability to play round a tune if I knew the chords, though I wasn’t up to working them out in the first place out like you did!
Thanks @Carolina. Yeah it’s pretty amazing knowing the reach of those children’s songs.
Really good chat guys – I liked how the story gently unfolded and how Mousey moved from bedroom strummer ( ok tinkler) to fully fledged proper musician. I will check out the piano album ( hey one of us AW lot has played at Abbey fucking Road !)
I know! It’s mega!
I was going to do a Spotify playlist of some of the music I mentioned but the first one I looked for wasn’t there. However it’s on YouTube (of course) and someone’s kindly transcribed the lyrics.
So here’s “Down The Hall On Saturday Night”, written and sung by Peter Cape. Classic New Zealand “folk song”. Listening to it now it sounds SO dated, and kind of objectionable, but in its own way it perfectly depicts 1950’s New Zealand.
I got a new brown sports-coat,
I got a new pair of grey strides,
I got a real Kiwi haircut,
A bit off the top, and short back and sides.
Soon as I’ve tied up me kuri,*
Soon as I’ve swept out the yard,
Soon as I’ve hosed down me gumboots,
I’ll be living it high and hitting it hard.
I’m gonna climb onto me tractor,
Gonna belt ‘er out of the gate,
‘Cause there’s a hop on down at the hall and
She starts sharp somewhere ’bout half past 8.
Look at the sheilas cutting the supper
Look at the kids sliding over the floor
And look at the great big bunch of jokers
Hanging ’round the door.
We’ve got the teacher to bash the piano
And Joe from the store on the drums.
We’re as slick as the Orange** in Auckland
For whooping things up and making them hum.
I had a schottische with the tart from the butchers
Had a waltz with the constable’s wife
Had a beer from the keg on the cream-truck
And the cop had one too, you can bet your life
Yeah, it’s great being out with the jokers
When the jokers are sparking and bright,
And it’s great giving cheek to the sheilas
Down The Hall On Saturday Night
*Maori word for dog
**Famous Auckland night-club
If I have time I’ll still do the Spotify playlist…
I heard Peter Cape’s “Taumarunui on the Main Trunk Line” on the radio the other day. The words he uses on these songs were exactly those used by my (very rural) kiwi father in law. Literally a dying breed.
The lyric puts me in mind of Wal Footrot.
Here’s the Spotify playlist –
From “the early years” – Jimmy Yancey (solo piano), Count Basie trio, Manfred Mann, The Monkees, The Kinks, The Beatles
Then my own music – a couple of tracks of my film music from Peter Jackson’s “Heavenly Creatures, two children’s songs from Justine Clarke and finally the first two tracks from my solo piano album “Songs For Solo Piano”
I can just imagine the kids roaring along to the Dinosaur Roar! Justine has a lovely voice and lots of personality, Unfortunately the last two tracks from your Spotify list Solo Piano CD showed up as not available in this country, but I did find a clip of you on Youtube playing that fabulous piano in Abbey Road. Dedicated to Jimmy Yancey – terrific piece of music and piano playing.
Hey. Sailing close to elements of Chain Lightening there. But that’s a good thing.
And if there is any doubt – when Mousey hit the night spots of Auckland with me, @nickduvet and @mikethep – Mousey was by far the coolest of our group. But you knew that already.
And of course the other three of us set a very high bar…
I listened to this on he drive home last night. Thoroughly enjoyable!
Thanks, that was a lovely listen.
Really good.
The Welsh town is called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The clue in pronunciation is that ‘ll’ = ‘cl’. The place in New Zealand is the name of a hill not a village or town.
Music is logical but musicians often ignore or deliberately break the rules. There’s an apocryphal tale that Mozart’s father used to force him out of bed by playing a scale but missing out the last note. Little Mozart was soon at the piano driven to play that note. I’ve often thought that if Mozart was born as a millenial, he’d be a computer geek. Imagine the code he could write!
In Welsh the pronunciation of ‘ll’ is more like a German-style ‘ch’ with a ‘l’ tacked onto it.
Making a very, very slight error in a piano symphony was how Liberace’s character raised the alarm to Batman that something bad was happening. While listening to the performance on the radio while camping, Bruce Wayne spotted it and told Dick Grayson to get his clothes back on – and they urgently rushed to the Batcave.
Mousey’s radio show, One Size Fits All, can be listened to via the interweb and you won’t have to wait too long to hear some Frank Zappa.
https://eastsidefm.org/onesizefitsall/