BILAMBIL CALLING : THOUGHTS FROM DAVE ' THE BLOKE' OVENDEN

Little Richard…

Hey…Wooh…Let me slow down a bit, and peel my mind pages over, to way back then, at Waratah…It was a Sunday, and the summer time sun was already beating on down, in the morning, I knew it was gunna be a hot one, and I would have to wear a big dagy straw hat, or find a shady spot in the arvo, if I was gunna go surfin' with the mob…

Anyhow, there they are, honking the horn of that old Holden, with the surf boards ocky strapped on top, and from the wound down windows, me mates was shouting… ‘Hey OVO…Come on lets go, were off to Stockton beach’…

I then responded, and replied without thinking, some crazy words that instantly fell from my mouth…

 ‘Hey…Ah… Jee Wiz’…

‘I’m gunna listen to the wireless today, I wanna grab a Little Richard song called Baby Face’…

Well, with all the boo’s and the hissers, coming from the front seat…and, from the ruckus in the back seat, this Sheila, who I honestly thought was keen on me, shouted out, ‘You're nothing but a silly fucked up musician, with an ego as big as a truck load of watermelons’…

Ah…Well…I made the call for self, and I was to suffer that little humiliation, as they zoomed off, on they’re Sunday surfing trip to that long, deserted Stockton beach…

Where them white capping waves roll in and sweep up caressing the sandy shoreline, while seagull birds hover in the breeze…

Ok…So then I settled in to an all day radio programmed top 40 song set, not like these days, where it’s all talk back… Back then, it was one song after the other, radio was a musical thing at that time in the nineteen swinging sixties…

I heard em toot the horn as they motored up the hill, and as I stepped inside, the fly screen door banged shut behind me…It was kind of dark in the hall way as I sat at the wireless and twiddled with the dial…

Mum was in the kitchen playing patience, Dad was playing bowls with his mates, and big sis was somewhere else on this particular Sunday afternoon as I listened to them tunes, and waited long, for that song, with Little Richard rocking on, pounding an upright piano, and shouting out; Umm Baby Face…

Well the hours slid by slowly, as I sat, somewhat tethered too, the sounds flowing from that little wireless speaker…Song after song, came and went, top 40 hits, one after the other, then the weather report blurted out…It’s a sunny Sunday arvo, and a lovely swell is rolling at Stockton beach…

Then, without warning, the southerly buster came blowing in, flapping the curtains an shaking the blinds; maybe a storm is brewing…It didn’t mater to me…I sat close to the sounds, waiting to hear that song, with Little Richard rocking it along…

Well they played song after song all day long, all through the morning, and well into the afternoon, I listened closely to lots of other songs, some I liked some I didn’t, but I hadn’t heard the one I wanted to hear…So I sat there listening…

News report just in…Two surfboards broke loose from a speeding car, and smashed through the front window of a little suburban house, nearly impaling grandpa sitting there smoking his pipe…

I immediately thought of Garry Whipitt an the mob on their way back from Stockton, and as I sat there glued to the sounds, waiting for that song…I heard Mum's voice, faintly from the kitchen shouting through an Easybeats song blasting from the radio…

‘Hurry up and set the table, I’m about to dish up’…

‘Yea mum, soon as they play my song’

‘And go wash your hands, you’ve been picking your nose and scratching your bum’…

‘Yea mum, I think I got worms’…

Anyhow to cut a long story short, we had chops ‘n’ gravy, mashed potatoes ‘n’ greens on the plate…

I wound down the sound from the wireless, an tucked in, while I wondered, are they ever gunna play that song Baby Face by Little Richard…

Forty-five years later I heard that song while driving through the green hills of Ireland…