Culture To The Bone – Song and a Chat

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Episode #7: Culture To The Bone – (Song at 4:35 & 18:30)

This song is about the concept of us all being swamped, almost overwhelmed by art, music and media from all around the world – at the expense of losing our own arts, and culture.

My song writing buddy, Paul Dredge and I wrote this one. It came about after a mornings fishing. We were feeling very beach-y, by the sound of the groove of the guitar riff and this is one of the most relaxed melodies and vocals I’ve recorded.

So the whole thing is natural. That’s what I like about it. You want to hear my kiwi accent coming through, I’m not trying to be anyone else.

The song talks about the desensitising effect of violent images and themes that are frequently on tv – the media setting up stereotypes and reinforcing the idea, time again, that there is an us and them … The fear. But 90 percent of folks around the world are on the same page: I think We all want to be happy healthy and want to live in peace. These are things I was thinking of, what inspired this song.

The song was written in about 5 minutes. It was an absolute pleasure.

Also this week, the studio version! More polished in some respects, but here’s a pearler : Paul Dredge was using a vegemite jar as a slide for his guitar! How that for real local culture (for folks from o’seas, vegemite is a yeast based sort of protein type spread for toast that divides folks on whether it’s a good thing or just wrong – it ain’t jam! ) It’s very New Zealand and Australian, perfect for the song.

Enjoy.