Colin McLellan was holidaying with me in Golden Bay and we spent an afternoon at Tata beach, near the entrance to the Abel Tasman National Park.
Here we were, lying on an idyllic golden sand, South Pacific beach, while on 'the other side of the world', the desert war was unfolding and all the natural chaos that goes with that entailment.
Colin commented that he hoped it would still be possible to holiday in such a glorious location as the one we were currently enjoying, in the year 2000.
I wrote the song later that evening.
SUBURBIA & SUPERMARKETS
If there was something here for you,
would you then be able to,
as you go, make up some rules without me?
No ones' out to change your mind,
we're only try to help you find,
that there could be another side to living.
Shared opinions by a few,
are subject to their point of view.
Does someone have a point to prove?
Well, maybe.
When you've something more to say,
that's more important anyway,
you'll know what it means to stay here breathing.
A murder happened in my street,
the world outside the window it waits.
Suburbia & supermarkets…I’ve got more important dates.
Issues need to be addressed,
but puppet politicians guess
and choose those that count for less than nothing.
When a memory evokes
different ways and different strokes,
laugh at only half their jokes believing that
they’ve made us strangers in our land,
all our faces washed away.
A hundred tongues from a hundred mouths,
new legislation everyday.
A murder happened in my street,
the world outside the window it waits.
Suburbia & supermarkets…I’ve got more important dates.
(c) Carlton McRae, 1991
HOLIDAY IN THE YEAR 2000
I want to holiday in the year 2000.
Can the sunset last?
Movement through the winter
brought the summer fast.
My frenzy worships springtime.
I said I had desire.
Coloured flags were draped across a television wire.
The desert storm oasis
of nitrogen and sand,
crawls across the border
while we make our summer plans.
(C) Carlton McRae-Colin McLellan, 1991
I spent 1991 in Golden Bay at the top of New Zealand's South Island. It was a place that I'd develop a huge affinity with through the years.
I met some awesome people that year, none more than Mike Rimu and Jason Selby - and Dave Rowe, Paul de Jager, Dale Westerink - a band known as State of It and as infamous to the Bay as the Dead were to San Francisco.
It wasn't long until I had wormed my way into an involvement with the band, which came by as first port of call, because I had a pile of disposable lyrics, some of which were fitted into their lyric-less reggae/ska/beat compositions.
They had another song, written by Jason, called The Intro Song, no words, which was more in your traditional rock style and right up my alley.
I had been working on a poem called Suburbia & Supermarkets, which was reflective of the fact that they were two things that I was most definitely not missing by living in the country.
The murder referred to, had happened five or so years earlier in Roxburgh Street, Mt. Victoria, Wellington, where I was residing at the time.
The song lyrics were about all of that; getting away from city mayhem and opinionated people.
