One chaotic night in Tsim Sha Shui back in 1987 or ’89 – I misremember – your correspondent and fifty or so of his closest friends found themselves in a watering hole y-clept “Ned Kelly’s Last Stand.” Parched by the heat and street dust endemic to that part of the Mysterious Orient, they took it upon themselves to set everything in order, not only because of the salutary effects of measured portions of ale and other strong spirits to the vital organs, but also because thirst is a terrible thing.
So important was this work, and so assiduously did we set about it that our efforts came in time to be noticed by the locals of the establishment, who sought to drown out our increasingly agitated murmurings with a round of song or several. Not ordinarily being of the type and nature to break out into spontaneous harmony, these their actions did we witness with our beetled brows o’ertopping a general, if bleary-eyed expression of low cunning.
Finally working it out that we had been invited into as who should say a kind of competition, we ourselves saw fit to answer with a resounding rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” After the third verse it fell upon your humble scribe to carry the football forward until the next chorus could be joined, for with all his previous attempts notwithstanding yet did those brain cells remain undamaged that were imprinted with the sacred words. And while our hosts did their level best to drown us out with the tale of a gal named “Matilda” somehow managing the consecutive miracles of simultaneously waltzing and squatting by a billabong (under the shade of a coolibah tree), we were in our hoarse multitudes not to be denied, nay not until the last breath:
And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son, and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.(Chorus)
Our hosts observed these our labors with a kind of weary acquiescence, quantity having a quality all its own. Which, rewarding as it might have been precluded us from the kind of cultural exchange that would have informed us who this “Ned Kelly” person was, and what it was he had last stood over. Useful knowledge indeed to provide a layer of context to the news that while hizzoner’s bones are not quite found, yet has his final resting place been discovered.
Nice job working all that into a “tale of the sea service”…
Guess they did not have the live jazz in those days-now you can start at Mes Amis with wine and then move around that 3 block area in fine style.
Ah, the opportunities of the life traveling about the world gives one…better yet when it’s “for work” (using other people’s money).
I had the honor of seeing some guy warming up for a big name early ’70s rock group, either Chicago or BS&Ts, and he, all by himself, had us up and signing along with a song that was catchy and fun to belt out in the Charleston venue…
About 6 months later, while driving home from a day of checking gravity at Monck’s Corner, there was the same song, the one of your tale, issuing forth from the radio….
I will say Don was better than the main act.
Matilda… woman….. I blame Heath Ledger….
Oh man…Paradise Club..ROK, Son-gi-ri, New Years, 1988…that song..sheesh…why does it oftentimes culminate w/ MPs? And always a callsign assigned as a result. Lol…Lex, you sure do raise the ghosts.
Lex, I seem to remember Chilly W singing that one at some bar in Dubai about 10 years later. A bunch of us airwing types were singing along as some others were quickly jotting down the next verse and handing it off to him in time to belt it out. One of my favorite memories of that deployment.
I seem to remember there was a “secret ingredient” on the popcorn at Ned Kelly’s last Stand that resulted in increased consumption of local brew. Rousing good time.
Matilda: “Matilda is an old Teutonic female name meaning ‘mighty battle maid’.” Youse were lucky you did not find that Matilda that night. Wanchai Warriors Unite! http://www.nla.gov.au/epubs/waltzingmatilda/3-Meanings.html
I seem to remember that the ‘Matilda’ was the name given by soldiers in the German army to their greatcoat? There were plenty of German immigrants in Australia in the late 19th century.. Could be an urban myth.
“WALTZING MATILDA The act of carrying the ‘swag’ (an alternate colloquial term is ‘humping the bluey’).
Matilda is an old Teutonic female name meaning ‘mighty battle maid’. This may have informed the use of ‘Matilda’ as a slang term to mean a de facto wife who accompanied a wanderer. In the Australian bush a man’s swag was regarded as a kind of de facto wife, hence his ‘Matilda’. (Letter to Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill, KG from Harry Hastings Pearce, 19 February 1958. Harry Pearce Papers, NLA Manuscript Collection, MS2765)”
from same website above….
Could be that I’m thinking about something else; but, wasn’t there an Australian tank called the Matilda during WWII? Or, maybe it was an old war movie where the troops named their tank “Matilda”.
I think your thinkig about Matilda that rude Babe who took Harry Belafonte’s money and ran away to Venezuela. Best