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Book of Life

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Book of Life

De: Deborah Conway
Narrado por: Deborah Conway
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A no-holds-barred memoir that charts the rise and fall—and rise—of one of Australia's most iconic music performers.

You think you know Deborah Conway? You think seeing her striding and scowling down Sydney's back streets in an oversize coat or galavanting around a golf course wearing a close approximation of plus fours means you know who Deborah Conway is? She figures you probably don't know the half of it. And there's a lot to know.

If you have listened to any of Deborah Conway's songs and were half curious about the origins; if you have ever wondered whatever happened to that chick who covered herself in Nutella and was photographed shoveling cream cakes in to her mouth; if you gave a nanosecond of thought to whose bare arse adorned the giant Billboard ads for Bluegrass jeans in the 1980's and how much someone could get paid to do that; if you liked Tracey Mann's vocals in The Takeaways but asked yourself, "did she really sing them?"; if you were a movie buff who thought Running On Empty was a classic BEFORE it became a cult phenomenon and need behind the scenes gossip, now's your chance to find out all this and so much more.

Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of a 1980's post punk band, the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women working inside Australia's music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work.

Book Of Life: the good, the bad, and the ugly of being alive in the 20th and 21st centuries from the vantage point of a music insider (and outsider) with a deep need to tell the truth about it all.

©2023 Deborah Conway (P)2023 Allen & Unwin Pty Limited
Entretenimiento y Celebridades Mujeres Celebridad
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She did it her way - and it's a really good read!

“The Book Of Life” refers to one of the mysteries of Judaism, but the title can also evoke a memoir or even recipe, full of the nuances that make for interesting tales of a well lived existence.

In the case of Deborah Conway’s autobiography it is both.

Flashback to 1980 something, and a younger me was living out my last months as a clerk for EMI Records. In those days, EMI was one of the major record companies that ruled the roost in Australia. The love of music I had then only grew and exists to this day, and I was happy to be unpacking boxes of Virgin titles as EMI had just acquired distributorship of the label in Australia.

Some of my fave bands were on Virgin, and this meant I got inside access to all things Virgin through the newly established Virgin Australia. As Deborah notes in her very well written and performed autobiography, Do Re Mi was one of 3 acts signed to the label but there was already trouble in the Virgin camp: the original head (Moira) had been replaced by a less popular figure (Michael) and something tells me in retrospect that this affected the ongoing management of the local acts.

The fate of Do Re Mi with that label was cursed ultimately, and perhaps with a larger and more experienced company they may have continued with the enormous success of their debut. Selecting the correct sequence of singles from an album – even now a primary means of breaking an act and an album – was an art not many of the 6 main record companies at the time mastered, but Virgin did a particularly miserable job: famously, the era defining Human League hit “Don’t you want me” was the fourth – yes, the fourth – single from Dare. (Poor Beargarden: if Seaside Song was the 3rd single from their later to be dumped debut album instead of Drink drink drink their trajectory would have been different indeed).

The last 3 paragraphs are included to give another perspective of the climate of the era in which Deborah emerged from, which only fortifies how well she managed navigating it, and the inspiring example for other artists to follow suit. A large part of the Deborah Conway story is how she took control of her career and forged her own path so that she could continue to do what she loved without pesky record companies (read: corporations) meddling in the process.

Apart from loving Deborah’s voice and especially the second Do Re Mi album (I only found out weeks before listening to this book from a podcast interview with Helen Carter that a third Do Re Mi album exists, confirmed by Deborah in this book) I loved her performance as Juno in Prospero’s Books but only learned 4 years ago that in fact it was her voice on the Sweet And Sour soundtrack – whose songs I adore. How could I have missed that?

Deborah underplays her contribution to the iconic ABC series, but she provided most of the vocals across the 2 albums of the soundtrack in what is I think a defining moment in Australian music history. (The rights to the series is fraught with legal issues so it has never been released as video, DVD or stream; you can watch it on You Tube as some devoted soul filmed the VHS TV taped recordings and posted them a few years ago).

There is a lot of variety in the tales told in Book Of Life, most of which I did not know. I moved overseas not long after Bitch Epic was released and the independent distribution of Australian acts didn’t reach the HMV store I relied on (pre digital days) for my music. My knowledge of her career dissipated as a result until about a decade ago after moving back to Melbourne someone said she lived here too – I had always thought she was from Sydney and the book fills in how I easily made that mistake.

It is a credit to her writing ability how she lays out her stories: by not opting for a chronological approach, she has crafted good and engaging storytelling that remains fascinating from start to finish. I wondered initially if the inclusion of songs in the telling would interrupt the flow of the biography, but it does not - the opposite occurs in fact.

I am not going to do any spoilers here, and it really behoves the listener to hear the stories read in the authors voice (it does make a difference); but there’s an innovation in reaching audiences in the Summerware story, her artistic directorship of a Queensland music festival, an “eccentric” (we’ll say) father, a Pete Townsend story, and lots of personal relating that frankly most of the other rock autobiographies I have read lately omit.

I don’t think it necessary that an artist reveals absolutely everything personal about themselves, but in sharing so much Deborah Conway has created a truly personal and memorable tome.

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