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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Charles Jenkins & The Amateur Historians have crammed a lot of history into just six months: a clutch of superb new songs inspired by Melbourne past and present; two sold-out shows at Fitzroy and Northcote Town Halls; two limited-edition albums; and now a “best of” collection!

    If you weren’t lucky enough to attend one or both of the Amateur Historians’ gigs, then this new release “The Past Is Never Where You Think You Left It” presents an accurate historical record: 14 of the trio’s songs captured in the studio very much as they were performed live with tasty playing, clever but economical arrangements and brilliant, soaring harmonies.

    It’s hard to pick favourites, but “The Melbourne Eye” is an instant Jenkins classic and sets the tone for what follows. Likewise, the melodies and heartfelt lyrics of “Beautiful William” (a love song to escaped convict William Buckley), "Blue Lagoon" (a lament for the long-lost wetlands just west of the city) and “This Is How You Say Goodbye” make them moving and memorable.

    “Dennis” is whimsically romantic, and I love the only-in-Melbourne humour of “Hook Turn”, “Victoria Market” and “Little Audrey”, and the wacky gold rush romp of “The Theatre Royale”.

    Not surprisingly I have a soft spot for “Stephen Street”, a rocking exposé of Melbourne’s dark Victorian underbelly. “Trams of Love” and “Statues of Melbourne” tell tales of petty street crime, and the spoken-word piece “Beneath the Maniacal King” brings the childhood horrors of Luna Park's Giggle Palace flooding back.

    But “Chloe” is truly chilling, the tragedy of the story behind the iconic painting told simply and compellingly, with a bitter edge to the refrain.

    Let’s hope this great selection keeps the wolf from the door while Charles Jenkins, David Andrew Milne and Douglas Lee Robertson regroup for another history-making live performance in the not-too-distant future.

    Stephen Downes
    Touch My History / Batmania, 3RRR-FM

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Past is Never Where You Think You Left It via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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credits

from The Past is Never Where You Think You Left It, released December 12, 2014
Fuckin’ “Rollup rollup” they used to say
You buy the ticket you take the ride
Ah the giggle palace
The place of wonder
The house of pain
Subtly decorated with the skin and blood
Of a thousand weaklings
Because most of us paid a lot more before
We made it to those beautiful
Majestic and hallowed hardwood bumpy slides
Only to find like a lot of other shit later in life
They were just out to get ya

The adrenalin kicked in
The moment that whistle blew
And you knew you were a part of the stampede
Of puppies kitten and lambs

Most of us made it over the crunching steps
Up and down they went
Hungry for exposed fingers and toes
We always lost a few of the littlies on those

Nothing romantic about the swing bridge of chains
That kept biting and pinching again and again
Many a child was left behind lame
Giggle Palace oh that house of pain

Have you ever been smacked in the nose by a hose?
That jungle of rubber held a thousand of those
Me and the young ‘uns who’d somehow got through
Were soft easy targets for the slap happy few
Marksmen like archers marksmen like archers
The evil king’s soldiers with their wicked job to do

“Welcome to the Barrel Come on come on
Onto the Barrel onto the Barrel”
Where boy upon boy crushed bone upon bone
We were screaming for “Mummy I want to go home!”

Imagine yourself in a washing machine
On permanent spin cycle it seems
A blistering battering brutal regime
That keeps turning and turning and turning
And turning and turning and turning

Barely alive I managed to strive
To the ultimate goal the ultimate ride
For which many a young feeble child had died
Or at least that’s how most of us felt at the time

But some of us whom death did deny
Were able to say “I rode the slide”
And we remember the skin and the blood and the bone
And that feeling that we just wanted to go home

And the cries of our comrades left all alone
And the cries of our comrades
And the cries of our comrades

81’s blaze saw the palace burnt down
A smoldering heat a smoldering crown
An unexplained fire a complete mystery
An electrical fault hell don’t look at me

Suffice to say that king and I
Never did see eye to eye
Never did see eye to eye

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Charles Jenkins Melbourne, Australia

Charles Jenkins is a Melbourne songwriter/musician, producer, performer and teacher with more than 30 years experience in the Australian Music Industry.

He has released 21 albums and been nominated for 2 ARIA awards with the Icecream Hands. In 2014 he won the AGE/Music Victoria award for best folk/roots album.

Charles has a Masters In Music and is an Ambassador for APRA/AMCOS.
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