Songs for a Season at Ghost Town Bridge
a CD Book by James Griffin
Through a mix of anecdotal magic realism, love stories, chance meetings and lives travelling off the rails, James has created a meditation that is at once humorous, ironic and serious and which offers a sophisticated, contemporary vision of the wide streets and corrugated iron of rural Australia.
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listen to songs & poems
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Collaborations
The Black Sorrows
Beat Club
This album includes the song Walking Like a Drowning Man with lyrics by James & music by Joe Camilleri
CD Album
Mushroom, 1998
Lee Kernaghan
Hat Town
The song Changi Banjo, from Lee Kernaghan's Hat Town album is an adaptation by Garth Porter & Lee Kernaghan of a ballad originally written by James. In 1999 Changi Banjo won the Heritage Song of the Year award at the Country Music Awards of Australia (Golden Guitars)
CD Album
ABC Music, 1998
The Black Sorrows
Lucky Charm
James wrote lyrics for:
Snake Skin Shoes
Last One Standing For You
I'm A Stranger
Bone Man
CD Album
Columbia / Sony Music, 1994
The Black Sorrows with Jon Stevens
Last One Standing For You
Words by James, music by Camilleri / Polec
CD Single
From The Black Sorrows album, Lucky
Charm
Columbia / Sony Music, 1994
The Black Sorrows
Snake Skin Shoes
Words to Snake Skin Shoes by James Griffin, music by Joe Camilleri
4 Track CD EP
From The Black Sorrows album, Lucky Charm
Columbia / Sony Music, 1994
Various
Moon Over Melbourne
A Collection of songs about or relating to the city of Melbourne performed by leading Melbourne based artists.
Includes performance by Paul Kelly, James Reyne, Jane Clifton, Andrew Pendlebury & Doug De Vries, Bernadette Robinson, Yoni Prior & Barrie Kosky, The Whirling Furphies, Steven Cummings & Vika & Linda Bull performing either their own songs or songs written by the likes of Archie Roach, Roger Hart (Little Heroes), Paul Kelly & Greg Macainsh (Skyhooks).
James wrote the title track & sang the traditional song, Ned Kelly was Born in a Ramshackle Hut.
The project was commissioned by the Melbourne City Council in association with ABC Radio 3LO & was co-ordinated, arranged & produced by James.
CD Album
ABC Music, 1992
Various
Going Home
A Collection of traditional & contemporary Australian folk
ballads performed by a selection of Australia's leading
contemporary artists & arranged, co-ordinated & produced
by James Griffin.
Includes performances from Shane Howard, Doc Neeson, Jon English,
Helen Noonan, Paul Kelly, James Reyne, Joe Camilleri, David
Bridie, Tommy Emmanuel, Paul Grabowsky, Jean Lewis, Jane Clifton,
Peter Coutanche & Bernadette Robinson. The project was
commissioned by Sue Howard for her drivetime radio program
on ABC FM.
CD Album
ABC Music, 1992
James Griffin
Black Crow Road
Moon Over Melbourne
Voodoo Dreams
A Picture of Phar Lap
Sacred Things
The Days of Muhammad Ali
Black Crow Road
No Requiem for the Shadow Gang
Suburbs of the Heart
Weird Streets of Prayer
CD Album
Windmill Recording Company through MGM Distribution
James Griffin
The Land of a Thousand Dances
This two record set contains eighteen stories, four poems & four songs. The songs have already appeared on records by James Griffin & the Subterraneans. They are included here because they were written as part of the same body of work as the stories. They share ideas & images with some of the stories & form part of the narrative.
Ninety Percent Haircut is the narrator & we also meet Valerie the Love Sculpture, Incredible Wang the Third, Fiona the Dingbat Paramour, The Fat Poet & Kelvin the Ninja. They live in the Dream House, next door to Ralph the Trigger-Happy Neighbour, in the Suburb of Ratville. They play in a band which they only ever refer to as Our Band & often perform in the Hell-Hole-Down-the-Road where people jump from the balcony into the crowd below. Sometimes they drink too much at the Midnight Saloon.
When the Fat Poet discovers the Molotov Cocktail they quickly become notorious. Incredible Wang III seeks refuge in the Northern City of Relentless Sunshine, home of The Slow Kill Turns where parking meter attendants are really androginous store dummies & contain concealed microphones. Ninety Percent Haircut loses his job down at the golf course. The last remaining beatnik, The Lost Girl, returns to The Windy Southern Towns of Restrained Colonialism where artistic pursuits wear suits & take place behind closed doors in winter. Valerie the Love Sculpture wonders why she ever gave up the round-the-continent aeroplane flight she had embarked upon to see how many people she could sleep with en route, excluding aircrew & hostesses. Fiona the Dingbat Paramour continues to scream & Kelvin the Ninja wants to be a Really Big Face in Japan. Stick around & we'll see how it pans out.
Stories:
1. The Aftermath of Madness
2. Shopping
3. The Lost Girl
4. Napalming the Audience
5. Ambushed by Visions
6. Speechless with the Grandeur of Collapsing Buildings
7. Fat Luxuries of Messianic Self Regard
8. Sitting in Limbo with a Sympathetic Ear
9. Posterity is a Place not far from Here (some letters)
10.I've got my own camera now & I feel more Aware
11.You're never Alone with a Telephone
12.Napalming the Audience One More Time
13.Snake-Eyes Across the Crowded Room
14.Rehearsal for the Apocalypse
15.Are you Married or are you Happy?
16.Stranded in Limbo with the Fat Poet in Summer Again
17.The Ballad of Innocent Mary & the Nitro Kid
18.Touring Europe with a gun-fighter ballad & doing the
Locomotion (with visions of happy endings one more time)
Poems & songs:
Strange Days #1
Strange Days #2
The Golden Mile
The Breathing Helmet
The Wild Years
The Blood of the Poet
The Land of a Thousand Dances
Mary & the Kid Leave Town
12" vinyl double LP
Chase Records 1987
James Griffin
True Love & the Many Meanings of Invisibility
The Whole World is Watching
Sail Away (anyone can be the one)
When the Midnight Comes
Paradise is Calling
The Ballad of Innocent Mary
Remembering World War II
Suburbs of the Heart
Cheap Hotel Fire
The Belle of the Ball
The Last Highway
The Song of Wild Horses
12" Vinyl LP
Chase Records, 1987
James Griffin & the Subterraneans
No Surrender / A Bridge Like the Wind
No Surrender
A Bridge Like the Wind
7" vinyl single
Chase Records 1986
James Griffin & the Subterraneans
A Cure for Snakebite
A Cure for Snakebite
No Surrender
The Darlinghurst Road
The Road to the Rodeo
I thought it was you on the Boulevard
Death Calls (you got to go)
The Last Highway
Armies of the Night
A Bridge like the Wind
Mary & the Kid Leave Town
I am a Stranger
12" vinyl LP
Chase Records 1986
James Griffin & the Subterraneans
Blood of the poet / (Just like) Surf City
Blood of the poet
(Just like) Surf City
7" vinyl single
Chase Records 1986
James Griffin & the Subterraneans
The Angel Run / My Heart for You (remains the same)
The Angel Run
My Heart for You
7" vinyl single
Chase Records 1985
James Griffin & the Subterraneans
The Immigrant Tango
Wild Years
Surf City
The Blood of the poet
The Angel Run
Sister Sabotage
Land of a Thousand Dances
Features guest appearances from Steven Kilbey & Marty Willson Piper of The Church
12" vinyl mini album
Chase Records, 1985
James Griffin
Panic (five songs from two radio plays)
The Darling Chorus
Panic
Promise Me the Moon
Never Alone with a Telephone
Miserable Everywhere
King Hit
From the Radio Plays, As The Crow Flies & Slogans & Rumours, produced by ABC Radio Drama & Triple J FM respectively.
7" vinyl EP
Radio Records, 1984
The Agents
No Adjustment to the Face
Merciless Cinema
Manhattan Project
Seven Samurai
Suburbs of the Heart.
12" vinyl EP
Hot Records. Venice Beach, 1983
The Agents
7 Samurai
Seven Samurai
Pictures of You & Me
7" vinyl single
Hot Records. Venice Beach, 1982
The Agents
Merciless Cinema
Merciless Cinema
Manhattan Project
7" vinyl single, 1981
The Agents
Suburbs Of The Heart
Suburbs of the Heart
Night People
Behind the Noise
7" vinyl single, 1980
James Griffin
James Griffin
Australia's Just a Suburb of the USA
I Smoke Money
I thought it was you on the Boulevard
Too Hip to Stumble (& too straight to fall)
7" vinyl EP, 1978