Number 8 - On the home stretch now!

Weddings Parties Anything – For A Short Time (1997)

When a song makes you cry the first time you hear it then there is a good chance that it will take a special place in your heart. I don’t know if this is Mick Thomas’ best song but I cannot ignore it for the emotional impact it has every time I hear it. I first heard it at the Metro in Sydney and it must have been ’97 because the album was just being released.

Thomas is a storyteller in his songs and, almost as importantly, in his introductions. He sets the scene for each of his new songs. He lays out the bones of the story so that the listeners can build their own understanding of the lyrics. This has always appealed to my forensic nature. I am not one to ponder hidden meanings.

The story he told on that night affected many because we could see ourselves in it. The band had met an Aussie girl while they were touring in Canada. They had spent a drunken evening together and as they were all heading to Holland had organised to catch up there. The girl had not shown up and they had just assumed she had made other plans. They returned to Australia and on a subsequent tour had played in Newcastle, the girl’s hometown, where they were handed a letter. It was from the girl’s family. She had been killed not long after meeting them and her last communication with her family was all about how she had met the Weddoes and how excited she was.

Which of us couldn’t imagine ourselves playing pool with Mick and Wally in Halifax or Calgary and then ringing our mates and family back home to tell of the tale? Maybe, for us in the audience, it was some sort of notice that despite the feelings of invincibility that you have in your 20s fate could play a hand? A decade on and now my emotions are driven by thoughts of what her family must have gone through. Mick’s lyrics:

Tell me how long is a short time, is it longer than two hours,
Or a bit less than a weekend. Is it shorter than a year?
Is it the time it takes to not complete your business with a person,
With a friend you make in transit,
To a daughter held so dear.

I knew I would struggle to fully express how this song affects me. Somehow it touches a bit of my soul that I don’t have the abilities to describe. Perhaps to fully understand you would have to be standing there beside me at one of Mick’s gigs. A part of the choir of Weddoes tragics. I’d even teach you the extra chorus that’s not on the original recording. I’ll be the big bloke with a tear in my eye.