Rod Moran: ‘The Yanchep Bonfire Raves’

From: The Yanchep Bonfire Raves

The Yanchep Bonfire Raves arose, over a number of years, from a gathering of poets, philosophers, and assorted other goliards, shooting the breeze around bonfires at Yanchep lagoon, north of Perth.

The Charlie “Bird” Parker Rave
Exiting the High Hat’s clammy bar,
Its air thick with a pepper of gossip,
Bird wandered crying in a moonstruck night,
Blowing Ornithology at the stars,
Diamond-eyed, quetzal-plumed,
His blood-flecked cough an abraded chord:
Miss Heroin hanging from his arm,
The fizz of her kiss on his hungry skin,
The dented moon red as a heated spoon,
Bird hallucinating in the shadows.
The city’s jive shone as Moose the Mooche,
Lizard-eyed pusher to Charlie’s arm,
Sold oranges spiked with a sherbet of dope,
Juice mellow as the cello of Bird’s gold sax.
And all the while Charlie is dying,
A liver soaked too long in the suds of rye,
Miss Heroin’s magic like a welding light,
Burning in his brain like a lethal flame,
Bird craving her lucent riffs and phrases,
Pumping the syringe to sustain a gig,
Bartering royalties for one good shot:
Blue Bird, yard-Bird, dope-fiend, thief,
Shooting in the alleys by the moon’s spiked eye,
Bigamist, con-man, street-corner wise,
Bird blowing music against the rising night.

The Nicki Rose Rave

Nicki, the kaleidoscope of your music
Conjured a mauve sunset on Main Street,
Splendours of cherry blossom outside the pub.
Great music can do that to a landscape –
Vivaldi evoking those four seasons,
Violins like autumn leaves on the wind,
The deep cellos like a rolling storm-front,
Linda Ronstadt turning the bijou blue,
Strauss’s Danube tinted the same hue,
That river in Glenn Miller’s palette, too,
Sibelius creating the deep winder’s snow,
Curlew cries across eerie marshlands,
Cranes and white geese on the river’s flow,
Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue,
A musical landscape for the ages,
Van Morrison’s choreography for the moon.
Nicki, your voice can create a lunar trance,
Gentle as a lagoon full of moonlight,
Mirror-back herring like strobing chords,
A shoal of beauty in a swirl of whitebait,
Your guitar like a magical treble-clef
Inventing luminous chord progressions,
Your bel canto like wind-swept flowers,
A pollen of stars on the indigo night,
Then, a rock anthem down Bow River way,
The hoons on Main Street in awe of the poem.
Nicki, the chemistry of your voice is:
A ballad contoured by Judy Garland
A beautiful rumour of Stevie Nicks,
A tapestry woven by Carole King,
Grace Slick welling a surreal cadence,
The ghost of Etta James in full-flight,
West Coast harmonics from Mama Cass,
An inflection of jazz via Ricky Lee Jones,
But in every case the voice is your own,
Your babes in utero swooning along,
Conceived in the beauty of their mother’s song,
Its aesthetic textures and vibrant tones.
Nicki, your song-book is full of Art and love—
A prismatic and emotive dazzle.

Nicki Rose is a highly respected guitarist and vocalist who has toured on both sides of the continent. She currently performs in Perth.

The Ray Penny Rave

Ray, you left Sydney with an apparition
Of Nat “King” Cole at Penny’s Restaurant,
A musical reprise in your memory,
Dedicated to a life of song like a pledge,
Mona Lisa and all those Autumn Leaves,
Plus, a cascade of afternoon jacarandas
Rolling down to the harbour’s sequined edge,
A play of sunlight on tidal eddies,
The trees like Ferris-wheels in mauve,
cicadas and wharf-side sea-bird codas,
an elemental song-book of the harbour,
the sun-drenched Dreamtime of Sydney Cove.
Later, the bridge across a rising moon,
A luminous hologram in recollection,
Its arch of rivets buoyed on lunar water,
Harmonic guitars and Maori voices,
Walking After Mid-Night in Kings Cross,
Echoes of Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman,
Basin Street Blues via Louis Armstrong,
Ken Slessor’s neon awash on William Street,
The wet asphalt turned to a glowing poem.
You took Route 66 across the desert,
Transcontinental at the Yanchep Inn,
A Blue Moon hovering over Two Rocks,
Lemon-scented eucalypts full of starlight.
You modulate jazz and classic ballads,
A sonorous hit-parade of high Pop-Art,
The local lobster fleet’s suavest crooner,
Invoking the poets of Tin Pan Alley,
The chords of George Gershwin presiding,
Conjuring an aesthetic counter-point
To a crass play-list of the every-day.
I imagine Fred Astaire pulling cane pots,
A soft-shoe shuffle on a pitching deck,
Frank Sinatra in full-flight with Basie,
The elements like a classic orchestration,
With Stormy Weather on a near horizon,
Robyn’s voice sweet as wattle-tree honey,
Finely tuned as a humming-bird’s wing,
Channelling Edith Piaf and Lena Horne,
The pure cadences of Doris Day,
And Under the Milky Way Tonight,
Blue clusters of stars like semi-quavers,
As if the sheet-music sky itself could sing,
The galaxies glowing like chandeliers
Shimmering on the ocean’s majestic curve,
Perry Como catching the falling starlight,
Venus evaporating in the dawn glow,
All that astronomy draining from the pots
As they break the ocean’s bright meniscus,
The mirrorous water falling away,
Your music like a gentle undertow,
Crayfish crackling like radio static,
Primordial wave-lengths from the limestone,
You humming a mellifluous theme
Against the winch’s primal scream,
The lagoon like a lucent Blue Angel
In a heaven of early morning light,
A gentle eddy of brine in the lee,
The shoreline of your musical life in sight,
A fisherman homing to the headland,
The last star setting on a radiant sea.

Rod Moran

Ray Penny is a retired professional fisherman, musician, and writer. His family ran Penny’s Restaurant in Manning Road, Double Bay, Sydney, in the 1950s. From his teen years he recalls crooner Nat “King” Cole and Hollywood star Gregory Peck as guests at various times.