Song for the Road

Song for the Road – Various

When I picked up a book that contained the touring tales of 24 of Australia’s singer-songwriters naturally I felt that this would be a debauched romp through the darker hours on the tour bus. To a degree this was the case, there were a couple of acid trippy tales, however I was pleasantly surprised to find that for the most part what these celebrities value in their travels are much the same as the rest of us plebs. A particular favourite of mine was Murray Cook’s (aka the Red Wiggle) contribution, his was a love affair with New York, his first visit and the subsequent trips he took as the Wiggles went from being a family based group to one of Australia’s most recognisable exports.

The majority of these stories were well written, however I found some to be the type of pointless retelling that so many of us have when we get home ‘first I went here, then I did this, then we went to bed, then I got up and did it all over again’.  This was the fine line ‘Song for the Road’ trod, between being an entertaining romp through other peoples travels, and being a boring recounting of the same trips many of us had taken. This is also what made this book so enjoyable and accessible, that I could relate to these stories and see my own in them.