Info Req: Roll You to the River (Kieran Halpin)

Subject: Kieran Halpin
From: Raggytash
Date: 11 May 02 - 09:47 PM

In Kieran's song "Roll you to the River" there is a reference to the G F A. The first verse is There is a bushfire south of Sidney a heatwave in old Queensland theres not much in the G F A but a pile of rusty sand. I've looked in my Atlas but cannot find anything that equates to the GFA ...........Help. What is it

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Sorcha
Date: 11 May 02 - 10:42 PM

No clue, raggytash.........we'll have to wait for the Ozzies to wake up, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Hrothgar
Date: 11 May 02 - 11:20 PM

I'm awake, but I haven't heard the song. G F A doesn't ring any bells, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: CapriUni
Date: 12 May 02 - 01:38 AM

Could this be a mondegreen, perhaps?

Just a thought

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 May 02 - 05:50 AM

What pray is a Mondegreen, according to the OED Monde is a world of beautiful people, or the set in which one moves but it has no reference to mondegreen. PS Apologies for spelling Kieran incorrectly, mazing what Guinness is responsible for!

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 May 02 - 06:50 AM

OK found out what a mondegreen is, (a mishearing of songwords for the rest of you good people, who like me, didn't know what one was) but I got the lyrics from the sleeve notes

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 12 May 02 - 08:42 AM

Well,this Aussie is awake - & I don't know either, we need Bob Bolton - where are you, Bob? Bob is my source of info - he knows almost everything (only once have I known some strange little fact he didn't!!)

by-the-by - if the bushfire really is south of "Sidney", that's not my home town, so the G F A might be a typo, too. Much of Australia does contain red sand.

Let's wait for Bob - I'll send this to him in case he hasn't read it.

sandra

........ In Kieran's song "Roll you to the River" there is a reference to the G F A. The first verse is There is a bushfire south of Sidney a heatwave in old Queensland theres not much in the G F A but a pile of rusty sand.

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 12 May 02 - 09:13 AM

G'day Raggytash, Sandra et al,

I'm afraid GFA doesn't ring any bells for me ... orThe Australian dictionary of acronyms & abbreviations (admittedly a 1980 edition ... but area names don't usually vanish in mere decades). We do like our TLAs in Australia, but I don't know anything relevant for GLA.

Sorry I can't help on that one ... I'll get back if some sudden flash hits ... but ...

Regard(les)s,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: allanwill
Date: 12 May 02 - 11:30 AM

Now, I don't know the song and it may help to know what comes after those lines and this explanation may be a little far fetched, but .........

If you think of the Australian outback as being very big, and another way of saying "very big" is "GREAT" and as the outback vitually contains a whole lot of nothing and another way of saying that is "F*CK ALL" then it could read as:

not much in the Great F*ck All but a pile of rusty sand.

Then again, I haven't got a clue.

Allan

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: michaelr
Date: 12 May 02 - 02:15 PM

Allan, I think you got it in one! :-D

Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 12 May 02 - 02:48 PM

General F#cking Area?

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 12 May 02 - 06:00 PM

I could eMail and ask him - I'm on his mailing list for gigs in Germany.

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 12 May 02 - 06:45 PM

No, PLEASE DON'T, Suzanne....

I WANT it to mean the "Great F*ck All", quite frankly! *G*

Nice one, Alinact!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 May 02 - 07:26 PM

I had considered Great **** All, but gave the benefit of the doubt. If Suzanne is on his mailing list I'd be interested to hear Kieran's version. I'll watch this space!

Subject: RE: BS: Keiran Halpin
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 12 May 02 - 08:48 PM

G'day Raggytash,

Without endorsing alinact's inspired guess (it does sum up the Great Sandy Desert, or wherever, but it seems a bit too obscure for a song lyric ... unless there is some earlier reference - and this is the first verse!) I did note that the maps show a lot of regions named "Great" something something.

There's the Great Sandy Desert that I mentioned above, a Great Australian Basin (west of the Great Dividing Range)as well as (ranging a bit wider) the Great Artesian Basin, the Great Australian Bight, The Great Barrier Reef, Great Keppel Island, Great Ocean Road, Great Oyster Bay, Great Sandy Island, Great Victoria Desert, Great Western Tiers ... and the continent was once known as the Great South Land ... (but I must admit that we just can't equal Virginia and North Carolina's Great Dismal Swamp!

But the thing I realised about all these "Greats" is that they don't get abbreviated to TLAs: I might have worked for the SMA (Snowy Mts Authority) and the HEC (Hydro Electric Commission) or travelled down to the MIA (Murrimbidgee Irrigation Area), passing through the ACT (Australian Capital Territory ... [is that what al is in?]) but there is something about the first word "Great" that stops you abbreviating the following words.

I don't know if a full text for the song would help explain (... Raggytash?), but then, if it did we would not need this thread.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: allanwill
Date: 13 May 02 - 10:09 AM

Bon Bolton

Yes - ACT.

Allan

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: allanwill
Date: 13 May 02 - 11:12 AM

Sorry Bob - I've turned you into the AC/DC of folkies!

Allan

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 14 May 02 - 12:07 AM

G'day Allan,

C'est bon (Er... sory about that, but we had Auprès de ma blonde in the tune sets for the Heritage Ball, in Parramatta a few weeks ago and I have been puzzling over why the (official?) lyrics are at such odds with the general impression one has of its enthusiastic singing by service personnel!

Regards,

Bob Bolton (Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon ...

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 14 May 02 - 12:16 AM

G'day again Allan,

Damn! It's all those people telling me to play my squeezeboxes quietly ... the fingers don't always press hard enough on the odd vital key! That should have read:

C'est bon (Er... sorry about that, but we had Auprès de ma blonde in the tune sets for the Heritage Ball, in Parramatta a few weeks ago and I have been puzzling over why the (official?) lyrics are at such odds with the general impression one gets from its enthusiastic singing by service personnel!

Regards,

Bob Bolton (Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon ...)

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Raggytash
Date: 16 May 02 - 03:05 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 17 May 02 - 12:36 AM

G'day Raggytash,

"Refresh" indeed! Can you drop in a few more of the lyrics from Kieran's Roll you to the River? There may be some other clue in the context ... otherwise we only have SFA ... which, surprisingly, does not stand for what we latterly believe!

It really does stand for Sweet Fanny Adams. Frances Adams was murdered around 1870 and her boddy disposed of, cut up into small peices. Her name became wryly eponymous with Navy issue tinned bully beef, then reduced to the acronym SFA ... and later, well after her memory faded, the other supposed derivation was imposed by a process of 'folk etymology'. (I should have mentioned that one in side issue ... spelled "Thread Drift" ... on the Parody Legalities thread!)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 12 Jun 02 - 08:07 PM

OK - relax, all of you! This is what I got from Kieran a couple of days ago:
"The "G. F. A." does in fact mean the great fuck all. It is what the white man (or those I met in Brisbane) calls the Outback in Australia. Basically they have no idea how to live as the Aborigonals do in the Outback so they disregard it in this way. It is more a joke than serious."

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 12:13 AM

G'day Susanne,

Thank's for pinning Keiran down to an explanation! What I had been trying to get was a larger sample of the song, so that I could judge the 'tone' of it ... indeed, whether the great fuck all was a possible reading. I just couldn't tell from what was given.

I must say that I have never struck that particular usage ... or any similar expression for antipathy to the Outback ... but I probably don't know the sort of blokes Keiran was talking to (and, anyway, they're Queenslanders ...!).

Regards,

Bo Bolton

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 02:31 PM

Bob B, Sorry for not coming back to you, we've been on holiday and since then my good lady has bben ill, the mudcat went by the board for a while. Suzanne thanks for the info I'll now learn the song properly and in the correct context

Thanks to all for their imput

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: GUEST,SoundMan
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 05:22 AM

Does anyone know why Kieran uses a P.A. system wound up to distortion level even in a small folk club room?

He and Maartin Allcock visited our club fairly recently, and the performance was seriously marred by his lack of sensitivity to the needs of his audience...

I can understand the use of P.A. for reasons of sound balance, but why so bloody loud?

Subject: RE: Keiran Halpin
From: GUEST,Dita (at work)
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 01:54 PM

I don't know why he does it, but it is deliberate. His instructions to the soundman last time I saw him was - "Keep pushing it up 'till you see my ears bleed - then you'll know it right"
love, john.