New One - Sorry

[rayc]

Done.
Here're the two versions mastered.
One I added a little delay to the main vocal as well as upping the reverb on the chorus the other is pretty straight.

MST Strangled fran 2.mp3

MST Strangled fran 2 D&R.mp3

This one came to e while I was doing a sound demo yesterday.
I wasn't going to progress with it as it's probably heavily borrowed...
You'll let me know.
BIAB drums.
Tele Clone on the left, Squire Mustang n the right, overdriven bass up the middle.
Bass isn't in the pockets as it was my 1st attempt at it.
The guitars could use a little more of that too.
I may change the last chord in the middle 8 as well.

As seemed necessary I've redone the bass & guitar tracks.
I realized they're a little dark becasue I only used one mic on the cab on this project...seemed easier BUT the 57's the one & it appears dark. If I can't tweak it I'll have to do them again with the Senne mic as well.

STRANGLEDabcdgd.mp3

Based on comments I extended the song by a verse n chorus, retracked the guitars using TWO mics for a little more top end. Place holder solo(?) as well. I generated a longer drum track in BIAB but it seems tonally different which also puts the bass place a little less well in the mix.
I'll have to consider those two issues tomorrow.

StrangledExt2.mp3

Retracked the Teleclone as there were some saddle screw rattles - now it's a weird harmonic.
Replaced the drums becasue there was weird 81Hz boing at the end of the verses.

strangledExt2b.mp3

Any/all thoughts. suggestions and comments welcome.


I decided to opt for a simplistic single event biograph.
It's a recount of the very beginning of a brief flowering a true growth and change in Australian history...just four or so years that have taken the conservatives forty five to unpick and undo though a few things remain and are so settled into our way of life and are the institutional fulcrums of "a fair go" that they'll be hard to erase.
If you're not familiar with the era...perhaps knowing that Nixon, Kissenger along with the CIA and the Royal Family had made it clear that the Oz government must be toppled at any cost. No Desert Storm or money n action squads into South America for this one...it was the concerted effort of the US, the UK and Rupert Murdoch that set the trap and did the dirty. BUT this story is about a beginning not an end.
A national hero, attracting worshippers as well as acolytes, his status is also fun & funny so I mock it & them a little.
If nothing else it'll give Armistice a laugh.

Here's an update. I THINK I've worked out the chorus (am yet to "sing" it properly) and have added a crunchier guitar on one side...

strangledExt2K.mp3

OK, I've redone just about all the vocals - not much melodic content but it moves a little better. Added some audio of the subject matter and it seems to have taken a leap forward...

strangledExt2M.mp3

To Break the Stranglehold

All Gough’s children sat at his knee
Listened of a world beyond the HSC
Learned of new selves that they could be
Where good health and education were for free

He knew where he was going, knew where he’d been
He knew the status quo was obscene
All Gough’s children were just as keen

All Gough’s people stood at his side
Dreams of another world filled them with pride
Revolution would come from inside
Where changes to be made would not divide.

He knew where he was going, knew where he’d been
He wouldn’t be a cog in the machine
All Gough’s people stood to be seen

M8

All Gough’s comrades each woman and man
Speaking as one communicate the plan
To working folk, yes, this time they can
The tide turned, eyes opened, it began.

He knew where he was going, knew where he’d been
He saw the time to disrupt the old routine
All Gough’s comrades, woman and man between

Gough’s Margaret had set his fuse to prime
He and Lance knew the reforms were a steep climb
But failing would be a greater crime
They sprinted for the post as they sang “It’s Time”.

He knew where he was going, knew where he’d been
Bringing soldiers back from the guillotine
All Gough’s children saw the start was clean

[JD01]

Wasn't expecting this to sound like this.
Guitars sound pretty dark and small compared with your recent stuff, Ray.
The bass seems like its a pretty good sound, but I can't hear the attack of the notes very well, so its lacking definition and all blending in.

I wouldn't worry about the chord sequence though, I think it sounds good.

The cymbals are really sizzly on this - that's probably a SoundCloud thing though.

[vomitHatSteve]

Nothing leaps out as not working on a first listen.

[rayc]

Thanks gents...just a 1st draft to suss out if I have Really obviously ripped something off.

[rayc]

1. New mix with retracked guitars n bass in OP.
Reduced the sizzled on the cymbals, added a little brightness to the guitars - Thanks.
2. New extended mix with retracked guitars.

[Alison]

This sounds great to my ears. . . can't wait to hear the lyrics with it. Love the end!

[WhiskeyJack]

Listening to the most recent.

[mention]rayc[/mention] Have you done something different with how you are using BiaB drums? This doesn't sound the same as it usually does. This sounds way better.

[rayc]

Listening to the most recent.
@rayc Have you done something different with how you are using BiaB drums? This doesn't sound the same as it usually does. This sounds way better.

I removed the smidgen of reverb I had on it previously...you like? I'll remember for the future.

[Greg_L]

I removed the smidgen of reverb I had on it previously...you like? I'll remember for the future.

Yeah keep doing the drums like whatever you just did.

I think this is okay for a demo-phase. Sounds pretty cool.

[stratmonkee]

Hey Ray, I dig the crunch ya got going on with the guitars, I listened to the 3rd mix 1st (ext2b) and thought that sounded real good, then listened to the 1st , which I thought was much inferior to 2b. Sounds like ya have a good solid foundation for the song !

[WhiskeyJack]

Listening to the most recent.
@rayc Have you done something different with how you are using BiaB drums? This doesn't sound the same as it usually does. This sounds way better.

I removed the smidgen of reverb I had on it previously...you like? I'll remember for the future.

I do like. Always do to your BiaB drums whatever you did to these drums. It's the first track you've posted in a long while that fooled me!!! i had to stop and ask myself if this was band in a box or if you subcontracted the percussion. Those settings are keeper settings!! !

[JD01]

Ray - I take it you're gonna dry this one out too?
I'm listening to the latest mix here and I really like this song. This mix is actually pretty good anyway. But if you've got the same problem on this one that you had on your other one, it'll be a huge improvement when you sort it.

[rayc]

Thanks James and Shan,
rather a long way after I know but here's an update. Chorus is worked out but not properly sung yet. Crunch guitar on the side but I'm not sure I like it compared to the two cleaner tones in the previous.
let me know what you think about that aspect please.

strangledExt2K.mp3

[rayc]

Re tracked vocals...

strangledExt2M.mp3

[Alison]

What a statement! I think that's what I listen for more than anything. You could replace "Gough's" with "Trumps"". I love songs with a message and this delivers! It was very easy to listen to even though I have a different style. . .

[rayc]

What a statement! I think that's what I listen for more than anything. You could replace "Gough's" with "Trumps"". I love songs with a message and this delivers! It was very easy to listen to even though I have a different style. . .

Lucky for Australia Gough was a polar opposite to Trump. Medical access for all - for free (based on a 1% tax), free university education, ...massive changes. Sadly nearly all of them have bee reversed by our conservative governments over the last 20 years...much like the Republican/Trump Dogma of erasing all Obama remnants.
Thanks for the kind words.

[Armistice]

Free university education was ended by Labor, ray, not "conservatives". Medicare is still here.

The people of Australia handed Gough Whitlam not one, but two, massive electoral defeats - clearly they disagreed with his vision. You sound like you're still thinking, 45 years later, that this was a mistake and the people were stupid to do so. This is ever the conceit of federal Labor in Australia.

When they learn that, they may start winning again.

Bob Hawke, not Gough Whitlam, was the "great man" of Labor politics. I understand the current circumstances that prompted your hagiographic lyrics ray, I get it, and I happen to agree that The Dismissal was an act of complete political bastardry - but I'm also of the opinion that it didn't matter at all. Whitlam was doomed anyway. And our history would have played out roughly as it has.

The song is coming along well though. I look forward to hearing it finished, but you'll understand if I don't sing along.

[rayc]

Clearly a trigger attempt David but that's OK. I'm not triggered and won't spend much time on this. I'll use the Sydney Morning Herald, that red rag, to do the hard yards.

Keating killed free tertiary...it's not been forgotten, it was his lowest point and showed him to be a snowflake under the vicious wit and snarl that he usedto bully the opposition as well as his own party members. It was entertaining often but just as often unpleasant to watch. he was a conservative within Labor and it was an awful thing to do...his major copybook blotch. Given that each Liberal PM has been mire in the dogma of removing the "socialist" stain Whitlam left I suspect that there're still a few things they'd love to ditch...very Trump v Obama really petty stuff.

David, Without the changes Whitlam made Bob wouldn't have had anything to work with. Hawke did some good stuff...generally he was weak, depressed and overly sensitive but not a complete disaster. Bob was the acceptable face of Labor for non Labor people, gregarious, garrulous, a spiv, and a very, very smart man but self obsessed and bought into the "growth" myth.

Hagiography?- Yes n No: I benefited from Whitlam's legacy directly and at the time where as you've benefited indirectly and quite some time afterward.

My song and lyric are about Whitlam's coming to power and the brief period when he had "the cabinet of two". Nothing about the Dismissal in there, nothing about the Sneddon the Fasier blocking of supply, nothing about the double dissolution. Nothing about Kemlani, Morose, or of Murdoch backing him in 72 but turning nasty when Whitlam refused to "come to dinner" and then RM was all knife in hand, murder on the front pages.

You missed the digs at his 'beatified" status with kids sitting at his knee etc. the "All Gough's ..." is also a little jab at the idolatry as is "..start was clean" given what transpired amongst his cabinet ministers.

Even the SMH acknowledged SOME of his achievement...not a comprehensive list but, still, a list made by a conservative journo in a conservative paper owned by mega conservatives :
"● His government extricated Australia from the Vietnam War and abolished conscription. Australia had been fighting in South Vietnam since 1962. T
● Whitlam took the demonology out of foreign policy, recognising China after the Coalition had refused contact with Beijing for 24 years. Whitlam also attempted to redefine the alliance with the US.
● Medibank, the precursor to Medicare, was established.
● Social welfare reforms included the supporting mother's benefit and welfare payment for homeless people. Before 1973 only widows were entitled to pension payments, so other women who were raising children alone faced invidious choices.
● Equal pay for women: One of the first acts of the Whitlam government was to reopen the National Wage and Equal Pay cases at the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.
● The Postmaster-General's Department was replaced by the twin-headed Telecom and Australia Post.
● The Australian Legal Office and Australian Law Reform Commission were set up.
● The death penalty for Commonwealth offences was abolished.
● The Family Law Act providing for a national Family Court was enacted, and simplified, non-punitive divorce laws were introduced.
● The Whitlam government also established needs-based funding for schools (and the D.S.P.)
● A free university education was briefly available to all Australians. In Whitlam's three years of government, participation in higher education increased by 25 per cent, to 276,559 enrolments. The main beneficiaries were women.
● Amid widespread business and union opposition, in 1973 the Australian economy was opened to the world by a 25 per cent cut in tariffs across the board. An early forerunner of the Productivity Commission was established as was the Trade Practices Act and a predecessor of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The Australian Assistance Plan to fund regional councils and employment projects continues in the concepts of "social planning" and "community development".
● The National Sewerage Program connected suburban homes to sewerage. The government spent $330 million on the program before it was cancelled by the Fraser government but in Sydney the backlog of unsewered properties fell from 158,884 in 1973 to 95,505 in 1978. Similarly, in Melbourne, the backlog was reduced from 160,000 in 1972-73, to 88,000 in 1978-79.
● The Whitlam government reduced the voting age to 18 and provided the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory with representation in the Senate.
● It replaced God Save the Queen with Advance Australia Fair as the national anthem.
● Queen Elizabeth became Queen of Australia when she signed her assent to The Royal Style and Titles Act 1973. The legislation also deleted the traditional reference to the Queen as Head of the Church of England by removing "Defender of the Faith" from her Australian titles.
● An Order of Australia replaced the British Honours system.
● The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 conferred rights to equality before the law and bound the Commonwealth and the states to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.
● The Department of Aboriginal Affairs was set up and the first Commonwealth legislation to grant land rights to indigenous people was drafted. The subsequent Malcolm Fraser government passed the legislation.
● Land title deeds were handed to some Gurindji traditional lands owners in the Northern Territory in 1975,
● The Whitlam government also established the National Gallery of Australia, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Heritage Commission. It introduced FM radio, pushed for the setting up of 2JJ, a radio established to support Australian music and connect with young Australians. It set up multicultural radio services – 2EA Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne – and issued licences to community radio stations for the first time.
● The Australian film industry flowered and the Australian Film and Television School, an idea of a previous Coalition prime minister, John Gorton, was opened.
● The reorganisation and modernisation of Labor's policy platform saved the ALP from its past.
● Papua New Guinea became independent on September 16, 1975"

Lots more was done.
Yes, he was doomed from the beginning as he promised to, and actually did, what the Liberal & National parties wouldn't do as well as much that the Libs promised to do but didn't bother with - rather Morrisonesque back then. He lived dangerously by threatening to Close Pine gap, by threatening to out a major US spy in Oz, by opening up dialogue with China, by making it known Nixon was a dud etc.

The thing is, he did all of those things above and more and the entire nation benefited - not just the usual crew.
Hawke and the accord - well, it worked for a while but, as expected, abuses of the situation started and it fell apart.
It lasted long enough to fill the tax coffers and provide an huge pork barrel for John Howard who promptly threw the accord away in his aggressively reactionary Industral relations war...Patricks' Stevedores et al. Then Howard spent the accumulated wealth buying votes much to his treasurer Costello's weak, pathetic chagrine.
Whitlam reduced tariffs by 25% and Keating went further with the dollar etc. - both dangerous and important in opening the nation to the world.

Noel Pearson's farewell speech put a lot of the above in context for those who took the benefits without seeing the effort needed to provide it - rather like non unionists taking the wage rise negotiated by the union.
Your comment "Whitlam was doomed anyway. And our history would have played out roughly as it has.", worries me as it ignores just how little was being done prior to 72 to move Australia into the modern world. I'm a boomer, and as someone who didn't end up a tradie as expected by the government and society, as someone who went to the HSC as part of a large mob of westies and previously dissuaded youth, as someone who benefited from free tertiary training based on ability rather than family bank balance and as some one who saw the changes in schools and society as a result of that brief period I read that comment and felt ashamed that the system had failed you so badly that you believe what you wrote.
it's okay because it's an opinion, it's different to mine and variety is what makes life interesting. I did hope you'd see the humour in the lines but that simply means I didn't communicate it well enough.

The song, yeah, thanks. Had I a proper singer on hand it would've taken on a different lyric. I had to write something I could talk/shout and I had begun that lyric quite some time ago...nothing to do with the Palace Letters, the anniversary of the Dismissal etc but more to do with the early episodes of the ABC podcast as well as my good luck in being where I am now so developed it a little more. It was going to be a Stranglers style song but no singer and disastrous attempts at MIDI organ swirls lead me to do something I could almost do.

[Bubba]

[rayc]

Bubba,
The song, the debate or both?