Merry Go Round - Cold Chisel

I listened to this song every day for about two years.  It gave me a weird addiction to songs with false endings, the determination to try rum (Bundaberg Rum), and a daily blast of rock n roll to get through the day.  

Most of my music was on compilation tapes.  I recorded songs off the radio.  I owned a small number of albums, but C90 TDK tapes were much cheaper.  But I did own a copy of Barking Spiders Live by Cold Chisel.  The opener is Merry Go Round I'm sure I listened to that song every day for two years while getting dressed for school. 

Like Boys of Summer, this is a song not written with teenagers in mind.  It’s about a guy working in a factory in a small country town.  He does the same old shit every week and weekend.  Same old Merry Go Round.  All the same, I understood the frustration of time slipping away while feeling stuck with your lot.

            “I’m 25 and only half alive

the rest has only just been given away”

 I thought hard about that line.  What if that happens to me and I end up being 25 and only half alive? 

Not that I was a terribly philosophical teenager.  I was mad about music though.  I didn’t think (and don’t) I was unique or special in this.  In fact, I went around assuming everyone had a massive collection of music and mix tapes and listened to their favourite albums over and over until the tapes wore out.  Right?

Despite that, Barking Spiders Live and Merry Go round in particular are not songs you would have heard on the radio.  That kind of obscurity gave me a private ownership that brought a comfort in the teenage years.  Yeah yeah, that guy might have an actual girlfriend, and that other guy might have passed all his exams, but none of them have listed to the Barking Spiders Live have they?  Have they? Losers.

Every weekday, time to get dressed, go to school, deal with the world.  Out goes whatever tape I was listening to last night.  In goes Barking Spiders Live, Side A, facing out.  Rewind to the start, play.

           Now every night when the sun goes down

I'm drinking Bundaberg rum at the end of the day

I'm 25 and only half alive, the rest has only just been given away

Give me a ticket, take me to the city hotel

I've had a bellyful of living on the same old merry go round 

In Queensland, there are pubs that serve Bundy and coke on draught, on tap.  People love Bundy,they get a buzz off it.  Too much buzz usually, some people used to call it the fighting juice.  Full of sugar, distilled in such a way that when you sweat the next day, you smell like rum. It’s an acquired taste. 

No doubt there are plenty of rum-lovers who never heard this song.  But I acquired some romantic notion about Bundy from this song that no endless string of rotten sweating, vomiting hangovers could ever really dispel.

The false ending.  The song ends, there is a huge pause and then Barnsey screams 1-2-3-4! And then the band rip into a blasting instrumental.  Mossy goes nuts.  I’m still a sucker for any song, no matter how derivative, twee or just plain awful, that features a false ending.

Every weekday, time to get dressed.  Out goes whatever tape I was listening to last night.  In goes Barking Spiders Live, Side A facing out.  Rewind to the start, play.

Oooh, wah, oooh, goes Barnsey.  And I’m more than half alive, ready to face the day.  

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