It’s been a long journey, but I’m happy to say that my most controversial album has been completed! Guru had to help me with various aspects of the psychological side, but that’s because it’s a collection of songs inspired by industry and the office life, titled Songs Inspired By Industry and Office Life: One Woman’s Journey Into the Screaming Darkness of Woodworking Workshops and Water Cooler Conversations, and What She Learned On That Harrowing Road to Perdition.
I had to literally design a new font to fit it all onto the cover (I call it ‘Malnourished Helvetica’) but I think the mechanics open near Bentleigh are going to be super impressed with how I took their trade of tyre replacements and car air conditioning repairs and translated it into musical form. I spent enough time listening at the walls of mechanic shops, being inspired by the roaring and the humming. Although mechanics are generally a friendly sort, and not as intimidating as… well, the others.
The most ambitious track is number eight: Oh Sharon, Tell Me More About How Elsie Keeps Blocking Your Car In and the Nature of Your Relationship With Jared, While We Stand At This Water Dispensary Tower of Dull Social Interaction. To research the piece, I actually had to… I had to dress up like an office person, infiltrate one of them and just listen in. Oh, it was awful – a truly harrowing experience. I’d rather suit up in mechanic’s overalls and tighten hubcaps for a day than spend another five minutes listening to Sharon complain about HR never responding to her emails.
Strike that; I’d rather join an auto electrical workshop. Bentleigh service centres have nothing on Sharon and her repeated quips about how no one should talk to her before she’s had her morning coffee. Mechanics are a lovely bunch, but office dwellers? They are fickle beasts indeed.
-Deirdre