The Song That Stuck in My Mind, and the Wonders of YouTube

I've recently come across several people travelling to / having just come back from Bali, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I'd heard a song called 'I've Been to Bali Too.'  I couldn't remember who had sung it - although I did remember they were Australian. 

Thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, I found the song and it was by a group called Redgum.  I would never in a million years have remembered their name - although the song had stuck in my memory for nigh on 30 years.  I had no idea how big Redgum seemed to have been back in the day in their native Australia - nor how political they had been - but I know I saw them twice whilst I was at college in Winchester in the early eighties.  I think they played in a pub garden  - which seems a bit of a comedown compared to some of the huge crowds they were playing for in the videos on YouTube - albeit a rather large pub garden if my memory serves me well.  They were fabulous and I bought a tape of their songs - I haven't set eyes on that for many years (wonder what happened to it?)

I've had great fun going through all the Redgum songs on YouTube and remember many of them very well, including a lot of the lyrics.  I'm going see if I can download some of the songs onto my iPod as they are definitely tracks I want to listen to again and again.  One of their songs in particular seems most appropriate for this Armistice Day, I Was Only 19.  It may be about the Vietnam War but the words are still relevant today.

Comments

[Maureen]

I've never heard of Redgum despite being a pretty active anti-Vietnam war demonstrator back in the 70s and into anything even slightly subversive since then so good to listen to them over on Youtube.
Coincidentally Eric Bogle's The Band Played Waltzing Matilda was listed there. We saw him just a couple of weeks ago here in Dunedin on his farewell tour. Great music.
And last week we went to Christchurch to see Leonard Cohen...sublime!!!

[Caroline]

Hi Elizabeth - try www.mp3ify.com - brilliant for converting You Tube vids to MP3s you can put on your ipod - my son uses it all the time!