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Homeland Borderland Wasteland

from Then, and Then: a memoir by DATSON

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  • Boxed set Limited edition 2 x CD + Book 64pp ISBN:9780975186206 (pbk.)
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    The album comes with a beautifully packaged book of poetry. The words on the page are satisfying enough, unlike most rock lyrics, but benefit from accompaniment. ... Like any collection of poetry, you can dip in and out, but listening to the story unfold is the way to do it. This is definitely not, as they might say in Star Trek, rock & roll as we know it. It will adjust your set. TOBY CRESWELL

    Includes unlimited streaming of Then, and Then: a memoir via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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about

This was a real place - a deserted servo where kids had set up a hide. The song speaks to those liminal spaces where potential seems to dissipate and swell at the same time. A place where everything and nothing is possible.

lyrics

At the towns edge
a straggle of deluded trees linger
ignored behind the culvert

The local kids hang out there
lolling listless on the gutless sofa
staring vacant into the powerless TV or sprung
laughing from a doorless robe

Halfways ‘tween a tip and a non-place
ideal for sniffing glue
or staging tuneless operas
Cigarettes are smoked
and a stolen bike re-birthed

A grey dishrag flutters wired to the breeze
the once spangled bandana
of some dumb-arsed club
you’d never be in
Old glory indeed

In the archaic sense of the word it’s a common
not beyond rules
but they are unspoken here
and today it’s under threat

Let me reiterate that this
is the most real of real estates
everything and nothing goes on
it’s a buffer zone between us and the future
I decry its passing
and would furthermore claim
it’s gotta lot of inside-out for structure

Wastelands are the birthplace of culture
I did my learning here
A place owned by nobody
furnished me
with the bittersweet community of belonging

Attendance was optional
avoidance impossible
Priceless moments
suspended amongst the pathetic remnants of nature

Hope
kindled along the high tide mark of affluence

credits

from Then, and Then: a memoir, released June 1, 2020
Geoffrey Datson and Annette Hughes, Produced by Geoffrey Datson, Recorded and mixed at Greenroom Studio Cooroy.

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DATSON Australia

GEOFFREY DATSON is a sound artist, combining spoken word, electronica and instrumentation in his recordings. Many poets recite their work to music, but few are also composers. Datson's work is a synthesis of forms of sonic expression in which the voice and the sound field are interdependent. ... more

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