Strikebound Music Credits

Music Declan Affley Additional Music Peter Sullivan Engineered by Roger Savage Industrial Percussion and strange noises Greg Perano Additional Synth. noises Tlm Smoke As might be expected of a director that at the time shot music videos for a living, there's an unusual amount of music in Strikebound, much of it of a traditional folk music kind. Songs included the traditional The Blackleg Miner, sung by Declan Affley, which has its own wiki here, and can be found on YouTube in a variety of performances. There's also the whimsical The Lambton Worm, also sung by Affley, which has a wiki here. And at the end of the film, there's another traditional song sung by Affley, The Miner, lyrics at Folkstream here. The film also celebrates brass band music, both community and Salvation Army: • The Wonthaggi brass band is on hand to unit street marchers to the tune Victoria; • The Dead march from Saul (Handel) is played to accompany the funeral cortege as it makes its way to the cemetery; • The Salvation Army rallies support outside the Toora pub with I Believe we Shall Win; • The community joins in with union leader Idris Williams (Hugh Keays-Byrne) in the traditional song Cockles and Mussels; • The humorous juxtaposition of The Salvation Army singing the Welsh anthem Rhyfelgyrch Gwyr Harlech (Men of Harlech) is up against Welsh union leader Idris Williams speaking next door for the Communist Party. This gives way to another musical feud, with the Sallies singing Onward Christian Soldiers, while the miners next door take up the song The People's Flag is Deepest Red (The Red Flag has a wiki here); • Other traditional music includes a tin whistle perking up the miners' spirits during a football playing break, and an aeolian pipe as Agnes looks in the mirror and wonders whether to wear her hair down. In an interview in Cinema Papers, August 1984, director Richard Lowenstein had said that he had attempted to construct the film in rhythms, though initially it started off as a "no music" concept: I felt it should be a fairly industrial soundtrack, on a wider and more complex scale than most films. It needed thinking through very carefully so that the sound worked with the images and the dramatics of the film. We always thought that there would be no music, and that the sound would have to fulfil that role. For example, in Mad Max 2 all the dramatic points are punctuated by huge symphonic bursts and I am pretty sure that a musical score like that wouldn't have worked on Strikebound. We had to think of ways in which the soundtrack could heighten the dramatic points. We brought Dean (Dean Gawen, sound editor) in pretty early. Given the delays in starting production, we had been talking to him for about six months. So he had a fair amount of time to look at the script and think about the sound. Because he was doing both sound recording and sound editing, Dean was like a sound designer. Dean Gawen: I wanted to do the film for two reasons: because of the editor, and because Richard and I have similar taste in music. I had thought about the sound a lot, but it was very much from a musical point of view. Richard Lowenstein: We tried to structure the film in rhythms. There was the synch sound and there was the music, which we saw as sound effects. We were very influenced by others on the crew and by what we were playing on location, which was a very rhythmical type of soundtrack, a lot of drums and things like that. I think that tied into one of the guys we worked with on the soundtrack, Greg Perang (sic, actually Perano, as in the film's credits), the percussionist from Hunters and Collectors. He gave us a lot of ideas about actual sounds. We spent a bit of time working out how we were going to fill in for the lack of conventional music. A question which is often put to me is, "Who did the music?" We have to explain that we used the sound effects as music. And the quality of Declan Affley's song just blended in. We knew the sort of feel we wanted. Throughout the editing and the track laying, I was trying to bring it down to what I wanted. I was trying a few composers out and talking to a few people and it was always, "No, it's not right." We tried working with a Fairlight but that wasn't right. We ended up coming back to something basically very simple … Here's how the opening and closing works, with interviews, and with music by Declan Affley: Opening: Lines spoken by Wattie and Agnes Doig: Agnes Doig: When I came to Australia, I saw long queues of people waiting for jobs, and that was in 1928. When they couldn't get work in Melbourne, they tried many places. Well, life was pretty grim. I wasn't interested politically … at that period. I did all my severe learning in Korumburra Wattie Doig: Well nobody I think could realise the spirit of defeatism that was in the trade union movement. Err, as I say, the waterfront workers were defeated, the timber workers were defeated, the miners were defeated, and er there was a whole air of pessimism, there wasn't any leader giving any lead anywhere, and plus the fact of course that in the midst of a capitalist crises of over-production nobody just knew what to do about it all ... This segues into a song sung by Declan Affley, without accompaniment, which it seems might be original to him, over shots of poor people during the Australian depression, and then coal miners at work in the time of horses in the pits: For many long years now We've all done our best And we sent out the coal To the north, south and west We heard of the rumours That trouble was due It has all come to pass now Alas they were true Oh farewell to you Sunbeam I know your roads well Your work has been good And your work has been hell It's out of your high spiky gates I will stroll Fare ye well to you Sunbeam You're a dirty old hole … Main title follows, and then the film moves into the coal pit. Closing: At the end of the show after a closing title notes the miners finally won the strike, Declan Affley returns with a song, over shots of miners mounting a big demonstration in the streets, and being filmed by Cinesound's cameras: And so he goes on Day in and day out To toil for his life's daily bread He's off to the mine In the rain, hail or shine That his dear ones at home might be fed With his calico bag and his old flannel shirt Pants with the strap round the knee His boots watertight And his lamp all a-light His crib and his billy of tea ... Agnes Doig: I'm proud to be a member of the working class. They've done heroic things, and they'll do more heroic things … End titles follow. Declan Affley: Declan Affley appears within the film as a Welsh folk singer, which in reality he was. Affley was much appreciated within folk and leftist circles, and has even attracted the gravitas of a biography in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here, reproduced below: Declan James Affley (1939-1985), musician, was born on 8 September 1939 in Cardiff, Wales, son of James Affley, labourer and amateur musician, and his wife Winifred Anne, née Samuel. Declanʼs Catholic working-class parents were both descended from Irish families. He began learning the clarinet when he was 8 years old and later enrolled in the Royal Welsh College of Music. He attended several Catholic schools and maintained that they `caused no permanent damageʼ. Having joined the British merchant navy at the age of 16, Affley arrived in Sydney in 1960. The folk-music movement was just beginning and he sang in what he referred to as `low divesʼ such as the Royal George pub. By this time, he had abandoned the clarinet in favour of the guitar, banjo and tin whistle. In 1967 he started playing the fiddle and in 1970 the Irish (uillean) pipes. Devoted to his craft, Affley is best remembered for his singing and guitar (his `harpʼ) accompaniments. His voice was deep, resonant and powerful. On 11 December 1967 at the office of the government statist, Melbourne, he married Colleen Zeita Burke, a stenographer and poet. Working as a boat-builder, Affley lived (1967-69) in Melbourne and performed at the Dan OʼConnell Hotel and at Frank Traynorʼs folk and jazz club. In 1969 he founded a bush band, `The Wild Colonial Boysʼ, which combined traditional Australian and Irish music. Back in Sydney from 1970, he played at the Troubadour coffee lounge, Edgecliff. His last band was `Lazy Harryʼsʼ. Affley was a regular performer at the Boîtes: concerts featuring Turkish, Greek, Irish and Australian music. He busked on the streets and was occasionally subjected to censorship by council officials for singing left-wing political material, but such suppression encouraged rather than deterred him. Some of the political songs he sang were broadcast on radio by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and performed on concert tours. In 1970 the National Folk Foundation of New Zealand invited him to attend its festival.

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