The wonders of modern technology last night had me whatsapp'ing my husband as he wandered in the hot city of Bristol yesterday and similarly messaged my best mate in Tasmania as she lay in her fire bath on her property, looking out for the southern lights. I missed them by minutes here, but that's not the point of this post.

Tassie bestie texts me to double check a memory - it was us listening to Mark Gillespie years ago, but she couldnt recall the album or much at all about him..

But Dad and I were listening to the Stones - I'm at the behest of his musical whimsy these days on the evenings he isn't drug addled or pain addled to be the selektor. He was reading the sleeve notes for one of their recent compiliation albums. I'm never keen on their later stuff - but I loved listening to 'Miss You' on his crisp speakers. Those speakers make old songs sound new again.

But it wasn't the Stones, or Dad, that I was listening to in my head.

It was two teenage girls feeling dreamy and listening to Dire Straits and Mark Gillespie, all of 14 years old, early in the '80's. How long ago that was, and how close. My girl had recalled Gillespie only recently - an audio echo from long ago - which set me remembering.

This was the song we loved the most. It took me right back to my parent's loungeroom, in another house, and another time.

It sent me straight to the internet to find out more about him. He dropped out the of the music scene in the 1990's, disillusioned, feeling ripped off and ignored. He'd studied architecture in Melbourne and wrote poetry. The band included Ross Hannaford of Daddy Cool fame, which would only make sense to you if you were Australian. He toured in the 1980s with performers as Tom Waits, Maria Muldaur and Rodriguez - funnily enough Muldaur I'd included in one of my recent three tune Tuesdays.

After visiting Bangledesh, clearly there was a pull toward there as he'd die there in 2019 at the age of 70.

Gillespie returned to Bangladesh as a volunteer worker. In 1992, he briefly returned to Australia to perform again and released his final album, Flame. He gave up the music business thereafter and settled in Bangladesh, at first working in a children's home in Dhaka and then setting up a refuge for vulnerable women and children in Sreepur. He married a local woman named Morium and, according to one former associate, "lived in a typical rural village ... with none of the trappings of western life." After some years of declining health, and a few months after his wife's death, Gillespie died in hospital in Dhaka on 11 November 2021

What a life.

'May Day in Arcadia' I always found beautifully haunting, even if at 14 I was yet to understand the historical and mythical references. It's a poignant picture of the world on the brink of collapse, referring to mythical characters, philosophers, real events (like Pompeii)- a moment of existential crisis and disillusionment. The choral 'mayday in Arcadia' is the cataclysmic end, a lament for a lost paradise.

And the sun’s setting lower
And the wind starts moaning
Who could have known that those red-hot stones’d
Be raining down like flakes of snow
And while they sleep hot death is blown
A fiery curtain is closing the show

Noah’s boat, it can’t even float
He’s on the Royal Telephone
God’s chariots, they can’t even carry it
Can’t even get a dial tone
And it’s mayday in Arcadia
All the rats are leaving home

The album - Only Human - was his debut album and those that loved it still love it, just as I do. For me it's a little nostalgia made all the more beautiful by what I read about the guy. Back then you just had the music, not the back story - and certainly not stretching in time to where we sit in the internet age in 2024. It's kinda sobering. I want time back.

It'd make Dad happy too. As I'm talking to my girlfriend Dad stares at the wall where his guitars hang and says: "I'm wondering how I'm going to sneak them in with me". He's a little fuzzy coz of the oxy, so I am not immediately sure what he's talking about.

"Where, Dad?" I say.

"Well, whereever it is I'm going", he says.

"Oh Dad, they'll have guitars there just for you" I say. I see him sitting there, wherever that is, strumming. He can't now, due to his peripheral neuropathy which makes his fingers tingle.

"Will they?" he says, all quiet and serious like. "Hmmm. Good". Never have I given a better answer to a question.

Mercury's obvious something that appeals to teenage dreamers as they awaken to the prospect of love. Their hearts aren't even broken yet, looking at them through time reading the lyrics on the album sleeves in Dad's record collection.

and with your silence you defeat me
then you take my hands and treat me
say I'm a book, baby can you read me
turn another page, then you free me
mercury

holding you's like holding mercury
baby won't you please come and stay with me
holding you's like holding mercury
baby wont you please come and play with me

If you're interested in this artist, check out this great article obit which recalls seeing him live back then. The author regrets not doing more to promote him. He talks about how much of a fan he was, but how he didn't get the promotion and support he truly deserved.

Thirty years on, two woman are thinking back to how much they loved this album back then. I wonder if Gillespie knew he did have a long lasting fan base after all.