Tag: interview

Alex Sloan (this fine lady with a GSOH to my left) interviewed me this morning on ABC Radio Canberra.

Somehow she’d gotten the idea that I was a “die-hard fan”. I had to let her down lightly. Not that I’m not a fan of Bon and AC/DC (I AM!) but I think you have to earn your “die-hard” status.

It takes years and years of dedication, not just six months at the tiller of a leaky blog…

Anyway, I had fun chatting with Alex. Before I came on air, she played Jailbreak. I was sitting in a sound-proof booth in the Perth studio, and WOW! It was like I’d never heard that song before.

Maybe it was the hi-fidelity ABC headphones, or the ungodly early hour of the morning, but Jailbreak brought tears to my eyes.

Jailbreak tells the story of a fella who’s been chucked in the slammer after shooting a man who was “fooling with his lady”:

Bullets started flying everywhere
And people started to scream
Big man lying on the ground
With a hole in his body
Where his life had been

Towards the end of Jailbreak, our anti-hero, the unfortunate victim of injustice, manages to escape from prison. Against the odds, and despite the spotlights and sirens, he makes it out…

At this point, there is a break in the song itself. All goes quiet. It seems like this unbearable silence will never end. One breath, two breaths, three breaths… (Has the song finished? Is the record stuck?)

And then, just when you think it’ll never come back, Bon’s voice bitterly spits out these words:

“…WITH A BULLET IN HIS BACK!.”

Ah, brilliant stuff… As I mentioned to Alex on air, I reckon Johnny Cash himself would have been proud to have written Jailbreak.

Anyhow, if you’d like to listen to the interview, here it is!

(It’s about 15 minutes long, and the file is a 4MB Mp3. For some reason, the volume is a bit low, please let me know if it’s too quiet to hear properly…)