Homecoming Blues & Pink Sunsets

On Going Back, Living The Dream & The Mount Lofty Rangers

Returning to our hometowns tends to fill us all with a strange mixture of sentiment and relief to not live there anymore. There’s something freeing about moving away from your roots.

In 1970, just a few short months before she died, Janis Joplin went back to her hometown of Port Arthur, Texas to attend her ten year high school reunion. She was by this time a big star, earning $50k a show and she was rather looking forward to rubbing it in the faces of the kids who had relentlessly called her names, ignored and humiliated her, most often calling her ‘a pig’ and ‘an easy lay’.

Sunday Zest magazine, Aug. 23, 1970:

Did you entertain when you were in high school?

“Only when I walked down the hall, man I was a recluse in high school. I was a painter. Painting keeps it in, man, but since I’ve started singing, I’ve changed. Singing lets it out.”

Were you an eccentric in high school?

“I thought of myself as an eccentric.”

And Port Arthur wasn’t ready for an eccentric?

“Uh…no comment.”

Did you go to football games?

“Uh … no … yes, I guess so. To tell ya the truth, man, I don’t even remember the high school.”

Well, did you go to senior prom?

“Nobody asked me.”

“Aw come on!” Said TJ ’60.

Did you feel different from your classmates?

“I felt apart from them.”

Still feel the same way?

“Uh … no comment. Look, man, I been away for 10 years and most of these people have stayed here, and what that boils down to is different strokes for different folks, right? I been doing one thing, they’ve been doing another. There is still some common ground here somewhere. We can talk about…birds…”

Janis at her high school reunion

My favourite homecoming song is Long Black Limousine, where our prodigal hero - Elvis - is finally reunited with his sweetheart who left the town in search of fancy, finer things… because she comes back in a shiny black hearse …. if you can watch Elvis singing it without tearing up just a little, I’ll send you a dollar.

When you left you know you told me
That some day you'd be returnin'
In a fancy car, all the town to see, oh yeah
Well now everyone is watching you
You finally had your dream, yeah
You're ridin' in a long black limousine

So, I’m writing this on a plane leaving my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia after rolling in yesterday afternoon to play a show last night. I haven’t lived there since I was 12 years old, but it still occupies a special place in my heart. There’s no revenge hometown vibes going on for me.

My parents came of age in the first flowering of bohemia in the late 60s/early 70s there, where likeminded young people were all finding each other and forming a loose knit family of dreamers, artists and rebels. Out of the ashes of Headband, my dad Peter’s progressive rock band, he formed a loose collective called The Mount Lofty Rangers, a place for musicians to come together between gigs and play their original songs together, supporting each other and freedom of creative expression. Over the years, around 200 musicians performed under the banner of Mount Lofty Rangers, including Bon Scott (who went on to join a little band called AC/DC), Robyn Archer AO, Chris Bailey (The Angels/Gang Gajang), Glenn Shorock (Little River Band) and so many other wildly talented people. Whatever you had to give, you gave. Among other feats, they banded together to build an adventure playground for kids, they rode through Adelaide streets in army tanks staging wild fake revolutions that lasted all night and culminated in raising the Mount Lofty Rangers flag and my mother somehow cooking baked beans on toast for 200 people with me presumably biting her ankles under her long hippie skirt. They wrote and staged a musical about a soft-hearted bushranger called Lofty. I still have the sequins I collected from the dressing room floor in a tiny plastic container. It was a vibrant and crazy scene of long-haired troublemakers wanting to disrupt the old ways and forge new ones, and music and art were the glue and the answer.

This footage was filmed by ABC TV for GTK, a national, hugely influential youth culture and music show at what was known as Piggy Lane, an almost mythical country property where the Rangers and their friends and families would gather to jam, fix things, get a little high, pick blackberries, swim naked in the dam. Just living the dream. Right towards the beginning of this footage is little me, fat faced and grinning like the cat that got the cream, just so happy to be around it all soaking it in. The way I still feel today. You can also spot a little Sia in this clip, and my big brother Josh on a raft that he built and a little girl named Freedom, long before that word was co-opted to mean something else.

Everything I learnt from growing up around that scene is what still matters to me today; music, songs, art, creative expression, caring for each other, building cool shit, exploring, experimenting, presenting, eating good food, involving kids in it all.

Last night’s show was at a co-working creative space that shared many of the same ideals and values that I grew up around. The people that ran it had worked hard to make a beautiful, unique and inviting space, with roses and mirrorballs hanging from the ceiling. There was a beautiful pink sunset disappearing into the horizon as I hit the stage. I’m so thrilled that two of the women I grew up around, that I think of as my rock’n’roll aunties, came to my show last night, to cheer me on and because they still love soaking in good music and good vibes too. It was a very nice homecoming.

As my flight begins its descent into Perth, where I plan to visit the hometown statue of their prodigal son and my rock’n’roll ‘uncle’ Bon Scott, I’m going to leave you with another weeper, Miranda Lambert’s ‘The House That Built Me’

Pass the tissues … or the tequila,

Til next week,

Lo x