The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #174534   Message #4232292
Posted By: Tony Rees
29-Nov-25 - 01:11 PM
Thread Name: Obit: Alex Hood (Australia) (1935-2025)
Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) 1935-2025
I never met Alex or saw him perform, but feel I did get to know his work in some way while doing the research for the bulk of the current Wikipedia article on him mentioned above (we did have a telephone conversation about the same at one time and he was very amiable). Writing/improving that article being stimulated by an earlier meeting (encounter) with John Meredith while he was visiting Tasmania in 1987 - a long time back now! At 19 years old, a young Alex was a member of Meredith's influential (original) "Bushwhackers" group in the very early 1950s, before the "younger members (Hood and Chris Kempster) and Meredith apparently "fell out" over musical direction, and never performed together again...

One interesting aside for those who may not know (including myself a while back" - to "bushwhack" being older Australian slang for to "whack" or cut a trail through otherwise trackless country (bush or light scrub), normally implying that the latter is where the protagonist resides (and therefore lives a somewhat basic or primitive existence, away from the "big city"). A companion phrase survives in more general use, when we say that something is "off the beaten track"; also where folks have been said to "beat a path to someone's door", i.e., a route or destination has become popular. Good stuff, language...