HOW OFTEN DOES FITZROY SHOW UP IN POP MUSIC?
How often is Fitzroy given its dues in the world of song? North Fitzroy certainly doesn’t get mentioned much—but sometimes it does. The Rotunda spoke with two legendary local musicians for whom a sense of place is essential to their songwriting
By Charlie Gill
“New York, New York”. “London Calling”. “Streets of Philadelphia”. The canon of Western music is littered with place names, but when is a song going to bring attention to our little pocket of the world? North Fitzroy, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down.
This state of affairs left The Rotunda so aggrieved that we put a call-out in a local Facebook page for songs referencing the area. Our post reeled in over 90 responses, from classics like “Charcoal Lane” by Archie Roach (Side by side / We walk along / To the end of Gertrude Street) to unexpected tracks like “Slater” by American rap superstar Tyler the Creator (Chips Ahoy, boy, listening to "Cowboy", ay! / Boy, land in Melbourne and skate to Fitzroy, ay!).
Meanwhile, in “The Young Crazed Peeling” by U.S punk rock band The Distillers, Australian-born frontwoman Brody Dalle sings: My name is Brody / I’m from Melbourne / Fitzroy, Melbourne. In the next line, she declares to her huge American audience: I grew up on Bell St, then on Bennett Street. There is no Bennett Street in Fitzroy. SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT OUR BENNETT STREET!
But North Fitzroy rarely seems to get the spotlight. As such, it was heartening to hear that beloved Melbourne band Things of Stone and Wood have released a new album named after the street it was recorded on. Rae Street is their first album in over 20 years.
“Rae Street has a strangely big footprint through music,” says North Fitzroy local Greg Arnold, the band’s songwriter and frontman. “People are like: ‘I swear Red Symons used to live in that house, Angry Anderson used to live in that shop’...But the reason I feel so ‘Fitzroy North’ about this album, in addition to recording it here, is that I lived overseas for eight years.”
Along with his two children and his wife Helen, Greg moved to Switzerland in 2014. Recording the album never quite worked.
“It’s hard to make a record in a band when you’re in different hemispheres. When we started working on Rae Street, you could just go: Ah, this is how it’s meant to be. I felt like I had my perspective back on how things look—from here.”
Things of Stone and Wood’s breakout single was 1992’s “Happy Birthday Helen”, dedicated to Greg’s future wife: Let's not forget last night / Yeah, how we drove along the Yarra. The song’s music video—in which the band walk down city streets with trams passing in the background—was parodied by Rob Sitch and friends on ABC’s Late Show as “No More Melbourne Cliches”.
So, as Greg says: “A sense of place has always loomed large!”
“I remember playing the song in Canada, and obviously they don’t know what the Yarra is, but people translate it into their own experiences. There’s a school of thought in songwriting that you’ve got to keep things general. I think the more specific, the better. People might not know it, but they’ll hear the authenticity of your connection to a place.”
Rae Street reflects that principle. On “Devonport Drive”, Greg proclaims: It’s a cliche / ‘The road is long’ / Words and music are but a song / Whispered to the bustling Fitzroy throng…
"There’s a school of thought in songwriting that you’ve got to keep things general. I think the more specific, the better."
It’s like a crossover between Offspring and The Odyssey: Inner North songsmiths returning to the Fitzroy throng after years lost in parts unknown. For Greg, it was Switzerland. For Marty McDonald—former guitarist and songwriter for prolific indie pop band the Lucksmiths—it was somewhere a lot closer and yet so much further away: the eastern suburbs.
“I spent 18 years living out in Belgrave, in the hills. I've only just moved back to the Inner North,” says Marty over a beer at the Tramway.
Across eight studio albums, the Lucksmiths drew from their surroundings to furnish their lyrical landscape. While Marty was living on Holden Street, their 1997 album A Good Kind of Nervous featured their song “Under the Rotunda”.
It’s already Friday / And soon it’ll be Friday night / And if you’ve got something planned / I suppose I’ll understand / But give me half an hour / And I’ll meet you in the gardens / I’ll probably be waiting under the rotunda if it’s raining / And somewhere near the see-saws if it’s not
“Our whole world was in that little area,” says Marty. “For a lot of the songs around that time, I wrote about me and my friends' lives. I love stuff that has a sense of place, like Monkey Grip by Helen Garner.” And while the song might be the only mention of Edinburgh Gardens in the history of recorded music, Marty’s experience aligns with Greg’s: locally specific songs can still garner international affection.
“If you're writing songs about North Fitzroy and you're playing shows in North Fitzroy, most people are going to get it. But when we toured A Good Kind of Nervous in 1998, we played those songs to audiences in Europe and North America, and I was really struck by how people still responded to them.”
So, between “Under the Rotunda” and “Rushall Station” by indie rock band Underground Lovers—headed by North Fitzroy local Vincent Giarusso—there are a couple songs aside from “Rae Street” by Courtney Barnett (who did not respond to our request for comment) that have made waves overseas. When you turn to Fitzroy, there’s Dan Sultan’s “Old Fitzroy”, Jenny Hval’s “American Coffee” and Mark Seymour’s “Stars of Fitzroy”. So is it just that good songwriters come to live here? Or is there a uniquely inspiring quality in the air?
“You can mention more than London, Paris and New York in songs. You're allowed to have a sense of understanding of where we are.”
“When we moved from the suburbs, the Inner North was like this romantic wonderland of bluestone laneways,” says Greg. “It just had this incredible artistic energy to it.”
But surely the reason the Inner North produces good music is because of the music venues. These days, North Fitzroy’s only proper gig spot is the Tramway. Marty says it's one of his current favourites, along with the Merri Creek Tavern and Shotkickers in Thornbury. Back in the day, they used to play at the Empress on Scotchmer St and, of course, the Punters Club.
“In the nineties there were so many venues around. We used to play like four or five shows a week just in the Inner North, which seems kind of extraordinary now. But I don't want to fall into romanticizing how it was much better back in the day, because Melbourne's been remarkably resilient as a live music city.”
As such, Marty’s new band Last Leaves has recently played a gig at the Tramway, and might return to the re-opened Punters Club when they release their third album later this year. Meanwhile, Things of Stone and Wood are launching The Final Forest—a piano-based twin album to Rae Street—and kicking off their national tour on November 3rd at the Brunswick Ballroom.
“Coming back to Melbourne, you realise what a thriving music scene it is,” says Greg. “And Fitzroy and Fitzroy North are particular stars within that sky.”
So why not reference Fitzroy, and North Fitzroy, in the songs themselves? Greg encourages young songwriters to keep the tradition alive:
“You can mention more than London, Paris and New York in songs,” says Greg. “You’re allowed to have a sense of understanding of where we are.”
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