Heart: What About Love?

This bombastic proclamation of concern by these Canadian Hair-metal vixens is the perfect choice for Brenda, fresh from her entanglement with Geoffrey. A beer-gutted fellow who 'plays by his own rules', and is also an IT consultant for a large Insurgence company. And indeed, is a man who saw employment as a means to an end to subsidize his true passion: The collecting of broadswords, maces and armour from that golden age of chivalry: the Tudor period.

At first she found this an oddly charming, if expensive hobby, augmented by the fact he referred to her as 'mu' lady', and once quite unnecessarily threw his coat into a puddle so that she could walk across it.

But then it began to become irksome, that look on butcher's faces when he asked for a leg of mutton, and the horrible taste of instant coffee when served in a pewter tankard, particularly when he referred to it as mead. The sprinkling of rose petals upon her bed was nice: until she realized that the florist was being paid from her credit card, a fandango she hitherto wasn't aware of, courtesy of his mad computer skillz.

She found hearing about the crusades interesting, at first. Also watching Excalibur lost some of its luster after about the 30th viewing. Ditto his constant referring to his grubby, one bedroom apartment as "Camelot'. 

So where was all the armour? I hear you ask. In a shed at his parent's house, like some ultimate ebay folly gathering dust, like a collection of the most expensive lobster shells in history, albeit with ornate, and frankly over ambitious cod pieces.

The final straw was when he insisted that she wear a chastity belt, and she actually agreed! trying to fit the thing on over her burgeoning thighs like a sort of steel nappy, it was most uncomfortable...with all sorts of nooks and crannies and key locks...the opening and closing of which he held in his possession: a brass key, that he kept in a vial about his neck on a leather string, sequestered under the neckline of his Marillion Tshirt.

          

Juice Newton: Angel Of The Morning

Ah! What complex souls find themselves weaving their way into the SGWB: like Myrtle, the 65 year old permed temporary ceramics teacher at St Albans High School, who indeed chose this country weepy by Juice Newton only because the more emotionally abstruse Stay With me Till Dawn by Judy Tzuke wasn't on the duke box...in fact ideally she'd like to combine the 2 songs into an amalgam called Angel Of The Dawn by an unlikely named singer called Juice Tzuke: but this will have to suffice.

For this is a tale spanning continents and decades, beginning on a kibbutz in 1973, which is where she met the main protagonist: Gideon Leaf ( real name Gregg Belcher) which is fair enough as at the time her assumed name was Willow. Their eyes, and destinies, locked while they were assigned to fix a tractor together, but just got high, and talked about Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet instead.

And thus began a sort of world poverty tour as they aligned themselves with different cults: The Children of God, Shiva Lila, Jonestown ( leaving, luckily, before that whole Kool-Aid 'thing') swamped in enough peyote and LSD infused mantra to drown a herd of nipple time share confused pachyderms.

The exact number of offspring she had sired throughout these experiments is vague: between 3 and 7...maybe 9...the spermicidal causalities are even vaguer: At least 4 gurus for sure (who all seemed  weirdly obsessed with golf) Gregg 2 definitely (maybe?) The Jesus-looking dude with the bent cock, and maybe that ginger-haired guy who lived in a tree?

Whatever, many a volunteer orphan/originator agency case worker was kept busy with the paperwork over the ensuing years. And she regularly revived confirmation or denial documents as regular as tax returns. 

In the meantime Gregg and her had come back to Oz and opened one of those shitty, sort of dusty, sort of really shitty B&B-cum-backpackers-cum-lodge-cum-whatevers in Warburton. One of those multilevel disappointments, that don't quite meet anyone's requirements vis a vis comfort and/or spiritual nourishment. Imagine the Great Northern in The Shining: but without the grandeur, just with the empty spookiness. 

Wherein enters the second protagonist: William ( Gregg's brother) a no-nonsense salt of the earth type, who just tucked in to get this travesty of a business into some sort of reasonable order, and almost immediately found himself (despite being married with children of his own) also tucking in to Myrtle's own ravaged version of Noah's Arc. 

Complicated? wait, it gets better: Enter the 3rd protagonist: Miriam (her 22 year old daughter by bent cock guy) who also rocks up, and proceeds to have an affair with...yes!...her step father!

In Short: Myrtle is now at the centre of the sort of novel Peter Carey used to write when he actually wrote good ones. The host of a vagina with the complications inherent visited back upon it.

How will it all end? Well according to Carey, when he was good: horribly, obviously.                      
 

  

Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse Of The Heart

Heavily tattooed 19 year old Rhiannon (thanks Fleetwood Mac loving mum and dad) discovered this Wagnerian piece of non sequitur longing in one of her older cousin's CD collections, and it has annoyingly taken up residence in her memory: like the name of a tropical fish she has no interest in, or the Mohs scale of hardness rating of granite.

And has floated to the surface as an unexpected consequence of her recent breakup with Milean; aka, The Cooch, a similarly inked lad of the same age, who is as thin as a lamb carcass hanging in a butcher's window. 

They discovered their mutual amorous attraction at her friend Sarah's party, deep in the K-hole, which, for the uninitiated, in a state of body and mind bought on by imbibing horse tranquilizes.

And celebrated their new found love by getting their genitals pierced. Leading to the sticky situation of his cock ring becoming enmeshed in her labial jewelry...the disentanglement of which was rather like the delicate operation of removing surgical objects from an oyster.

The Cooch was all about skateboarding, and getting wasted, and banana sandwiches, and wearing his jeans so low that his boxers puffed above them like a Shakespearean ruffle. On his stomach was an intricately inked image of a skeleton holding 2 hot dogs, with the words Be Reel in a copperplate font above them in a banner. How could she not love this man!

But he was reticent when it came to commitment. Reckoning that 'bitchez is hella' but that no one was going to 'slow his jam'. When she inquired what this actual 'jam' entailed, he responded by breaking a jar of peanut butter with his head, and spray painting Madd Stylz on the fridge: which was unfortunate, as all this occurred in her parent's house, and it was a new fridge.



  



    

ABBA: The Winner Takes It All

It is easily forgotten that among the multitude of fluff in their back catalogue, that these Scandinavian song-smiths did occasionally pack an emotional wallop: and none more so than this love-as-a-poker game analogy.

And so the perfect choice for Meredith, still reeling from the aftershocks of the agonizingly long dissolution of her relationship with bearded pool accessory salesman Thomas.

The trouble was they broke up and got back together so often, that it had become difficult to actually take the breakups seriously. It was a boy and girl who cried wolf scenario: with bags packed and unpacked with such regularity that their bedroom began to resemble an airport terminal.

But it was really over this time. The straw that broke the camel's back was a can opener. She said it was in the bottom drawer, when in fact it was still in the dishwasher. He then questioned why a can opener needed to be washed in the first place? She asked him if he'd ever heard of food poisoning? Suggesting that he then 'look it up in the fukn dictionary yu fukn idiot!'

To which he responded with 'how'd yu get fukn food poisoning opnin a fukn cano tomato fukn soup!' said from the bedroom, where he had retreated with lightning speed, and was packing his suitcase with the expediency and experience of a sock rolling ninja. 

The reality did not dawn on her for about a week, after her numerous texts and phone messages went unanswered. Her immediate fear was that he had met with foul play...until a photo of him showed up at a barbecue on his brother's facebook, wielding tongs, and wearing an apron that said Nice Tits!!! 

So that's it then? she figured. Both saddened and relieved, sort of like finally getting rid of a case of the measles, but also missing the familiarity of the symptoms. 

An so let herself drown in the catharsis of this song, stirring her black russian with a straw, while also eyeing up the taxi driver playing snooker in the corner.  



    

    

 

Barbra Streisand: Send In The Clowns

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Enigma: Sadness

Sometimes at the SGWB it's time to bring out the big guns. Like this abstruse piece of backbeat ambient perv.

And the song of choice for Stephanie, using it as a complex water torture, bringing to mind as it does her recent breakup with hedge fund broker and abseiling aficionado Adrian. Indeed, she had spent many a weekend having him dangle her down a perilous cliff face while he yelled instructions from above.

But it was in the boudoir where Adrian really went to town: no rough and tumble quickie for him, but elaborately orchestrated marathons of Dionysian dysfunction, which more often than not were soundtracked by this song.

And involved enough props to embark on an amateur production of Phantom Of The Opera...beginning when he appeared naked except for the sort of cape favored by 18th Century Highwaymen, wearing a bird mask, and she was bound and costumed like a kidnapped schoolgirl.

Before getting down to business, he would perform an interpretative dance at the foot of the bed, his signature move was to mime scurrying up a rock, using the imaginary suckers on his fingertips like some kind of sex gecko, before wavering in an imaginary wind like a soft length of licorice.

Next he would gravely intone his own made up Latin commandments in a stentorian voice:

Ipso facto desirato! Embarkadum sensalos headjobudum!

Before inserting a lit candle in her anus, and burning pages torn from a copy of The Da Vinci Code, and using the ashes to finger paint what he thought was 'behold the sun dragon as she writhes in ecstasy' on her back in Japanese calligraphy, but which actually translated as 'orange car very nice diarrhea worm'.

      

Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive

Oddly enough this quintessential encapsulation of female post breakup emancipation is listened to exclusively by male homosexuals.

So a good thing then that when off duty drag queen Daniel (Diamond) wandered into the SGWB he found this on the duke box, and then headed to the bar where he proceeded to get absolutely hammered on vodka tonics.

The cause of his distress? Steve, a married parking inspector he had been hooking up with. He gave Daniel a ticket, and Daniel gave him his heart...plus lashings of clandestine rumpy-pumpy behind various public monuments throughout the city.

And thought things were getting serious when Steve was eventually coerced into having dinner at his  apartment, an event Daniel prepared for lavishly with Duck a l' orange, expensive French wine, and enough candles to illuminate a cathedral. But got so drunk waiting for him to arrive that when he eventually did he threw the duck at him and tried to stab him with the broken neck of a bottle.

But the straw that broke the camel's back was when Steve, faced with the choice of going on holiday with his family to Florida, or flying with Daniel to Sydney to see Danni Minogue, chose the former. Thus ending the greatest love story never told.    

Kim Wilde: You Just Keep Me Hangin' On

Originally a hit for The Supremes in 1966, this cat and mouse tale of tangled yo-yo heartstrings got a big shoulder padded face lift courtesy of Kim Wilde's 80s version.

And so is the go to tune for Elizabeth, every time she breaks up with Brad. This on again off again affair has been going on for the best part of a decade, starting when she was 31, working in the typing pool at Laubermann & Young Real Estate. Brad was, and still is, the branch manager.

She was immediately impressed by his fancy hi-fi system, on which he used to blast So by Peter Gabriel, and less so by his racing car bed linen, but pressed on regardless, and now has many bittersweet memories of their weekends spent at car shows, and home improvement expos, and various introductory sessions pertaining to dubious financial pyramid schemes.

But the fickle nature of his affections has driven her to distraction, with the latest breakup caused by her less than encouraging attitude towards his desire to purchase a canoe.
 
Now a fuller figured woman, she rocks an ill-fitting two piece polyester like nobody's business, and blasts this tune while doing her nodding pigeon dance, all the while quaffing industrial quantities of sparkling burgundy and puffing on menthol cigarettes.
 

Stevie Nicks: I Can't Wait

Let us not forget that it's not all tears and wine coolers at the Sad Girl Wine Bar...but also restitution, and defiant new beginnings. The Valkyries who lead these tequila soaked battle cries of new found freedom include Pat Benatar, Heart, and the sorceress of crystal visions herself: Stevie Nicks.

Scientists have recently discovered a small nodule in the female brain called the leather fringed handbag praxis that is activated solely upon exposure to this song in public places. The first symptom is that, regardless of hairstyle, the sufferer will attempt to turn it into that of a stripper, mainly by raking at it wildly with their hands, whilst also shaking it vigorously.

And it is this state that we find Tarquin, freshly liberated from her entanglement with long haul trucker and anal sex enthusiast Todd 'the moose' McKinnon, and so dressed to spill in knee high boots with her boobs rustled up to rest like two brooding hens above a leopard print bra that is easily spotted through the unbuttoned neck of her red satin blouse with the whole lot doused in enough Shalimar perfume to render an actual moose unconscious at 100 meters.  

Dido: White Flag

Just as Phil Collins' solo albums are like heroin for recently divorced men of a certain age, so too is Dido for their female counterparts. Part of Dido's appeal of course is that she looks like she works behind the counter at Officeworks, making her an easy-to-relate-to every woman figure...a sort of archetype denuded of the mythic, until all that remains is that friend of your sister who you once sort of half fancied when you were a bit pissed.

But to her target market a veritable goddess of verite, finding Sandra among her recently converted acolytes, courtesy of her marriage to Geoffrey going south for a perpetual winter. That no woman ever has listened to Dido while still in a relationship is borne out by the fact that she had the CD for a full 13 months before even unwrapping it, and then only doing so when Geoffrey bundled up his last socks and threw them into his gym bag, telling her to 'take it sleasy' as his parting remark, thus also taking his famous quickfire wit with him.

This song is what is known in SGWB terms as the 'tour of duty syndrome', a sort of musical post traumatic stress disorder, wherein the narrator recounts a past event as though it is still in the present...all that's missing are the sound of helicopter blades and a fat Marlon Brando face.        

Sinead O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U

When bonkers baldilocks sang this Prince-penned hit, it was heartbreak writ large in a chart-topping form that found individuals blubbing in their cars on the way to work. And epitomizes the SGWB trope known as 'The Tantalus' i.e, to prepare a sumptuous meal of memories which you then push just out of your reach, feeding instead on the stomach-churning waves of resultant regret.

And so the perfect choice for Sophie, who fed gold coins into the jukebox as though she were feeding a hungry goose, all the while sipping on a campari and soda, preparing herself for a self-inflicted deluge. 

The line that kills her is the one about all the trees he planted for her in the backyard...despite the fact that she and Dale lived in a one room apartment in a concrete bunker next to the airport. Other facts also get lost in the forest of her fond...and fictional...recollections, like that he liked to smoke bongs in bed, chewed his toenails, and often announced the start of his day by playing Sepultura's Roots Bloody Roots at full volume.  

   

Lamb: Gorecki

Named after the Polish contemporary classical composer who wrote, among other pieces, the catchy Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs, this is the SGWB equivalent of T.S Eliot's The Wasteland.

Clocking in at over 6 self-torturing minutes, this song incrementally ups the pain ante, and is a good example of the 'alternate universe' school of SGWB music: a Lord Of The Rings style saga heaps with generous spoonfuls of bittersweet lament as it paints a picture of sexual union as the dynamo around which all of the spheres of the cosmos orbit. It is generally only selected by true breakup experts, who have the requisite accumulation of heartbreak required to enter this maudlin marathon and come out the other side unscathed. Too little and it's like being drown in treacle, too much...and she's probably already been found with an empty bottle of pills and a note scrawled on the mirror in lipstick.

So the ideal candidate would be Helen, 36 year old regional manager of a savings and loans society, who's clocked up 5 aborted lovey dovey scenarios in the last 7 years. And forms a sort of pick'n'mix montage in her mind's eye starring the emotionally abusive Kenneth, the chemically dependent Aaron, Steve the workaholic, Thomas the Scientologist, and most recently Benjamin, who ran off a girl he met at the gym. She bears all of these memories with a stoic countenance, appearing sadly handsome like some French actress in an SBS movie, her face like decorative figure on the bow of a ship as it plunges again into dark and stormy waters.      

Tasmin Archer: Sleeping Satellites

Occasionally a balls-to-the-wall chorale of tears is not required, but something a little more poetically abstract. A sort of cosmic meditation on life and loss that touches upon all of the energies of the universe. So that's why Charlotte put down her glass of red and, and after much consideration, selected this number. It relates to the complexities of her relationship with Gerard, whose father she used to go out with. Things have been difficult between her work at the gallery and his archaeological expeditions to Tunisia. She hopes that things work themselves out. If not there's always her yoga teacher.      

Everything But The Girl: Missing

Sometimes the thing to do with a paper cut is pour on a mix of acid and bleach and then cauterize it with a flamethrower. This was Miriam's thinking as she knowingly programmed this into the play list. Safe in the knowledge that when it came on later that she would be catapulted back into agony regarding the whole Douglas wanting to 'take a break' situation. The song was originally written by Tracy Thorn about her absent overbite.    

Olive: You're Not Alone

This song represents a phenomena peculiar to SGWB music: 'the gatekeeper'...meaning that the heroine watches over proceedings with a supernatural omnipotence, like a kind of sighing Goddess, arranging matter around the mouse who has left her. In this case Gwendolynne imagines it's about her and Kinglsley, that unemployed pottery enthusiast with a toenail infection who got back together with his ex. Note that in 'the gatekeeper' songs that the Goddess is never vengeful...more just sad, content to make milk bottles rattle slightly as he passes.

N'Trance: Set Me Free

This emotional stomper is known in SGWB terms as a 'velvet scorpion'...that is to say that while the music is uplifting, the lyric has the potential to backfire, and envelope the jukebox selector in a cardigan of failure. For the freedom spoken of can only be found in the arms of a bloke...so it's sort of like selling empty drink containers in a desert. A point experienced all too pointedly by Briony, 15 bucks fizzes into her celebration of recent singledom. What did Peter mean when he said that her feet reminded him of a dropped plate of spaghetti bolognese?      

Opus iii: It's A Fine Day

More a precursor to the horror later to unfold. Valerie arrives at the wine bar straight from work. It was a late meeting, and she hasn't eaten anything other than a carrot stick and some cottage cheese at 10.30 that morning. It is now 7.45 pm. Also Roger dumped her 2 weeks ago, citing his new found enthusiasm for homosexuality. She is greeted by her friends waving glasses of champagne, and feels a new found freedom wash over her. The night is young and so is she. Also that guy from accounting who smiles at her is there too. Who knows how this night might end? In new love and laughter? Or in projectile vomiting and tears?