You've Got the Gun

Sherbet on the radio

“You got me on the run…”

When I was at school in the 1970s every girl I knew LOVED Sherbet. They were their ultimate pinups as they delivered one song after another for the radio. Perhaps strangely, Skyhooks were more the band for the boys as well as any misfits and deviants into ‘other’ music.

Over time I have come to appreciate Sherbet more and more as the great pop band they always were. News today of singer Daryl Braithwaite’s retirement from live performing due to an illness that constricts his breathing is already bringing out a plethora of love and praise.

There’s always been a bit of an infantile war in Australia between pop and rock, the latter tending to be the dominant measure of authenticity and how we value our musical past.

These last few years especially I have found myself listening to Sherbet tracks like ‘You’ve Got the Gun’ and ‘Summer Love’ and being sent back through time, some kinda sonic radio that flies you to a teenage self.

I can see me and my friends on pushbikes, a radio hanging from a handlebar, the volume cranked up as the local station plays all kind of songs. We cut off a main road to cycle down a path by a stormwater drain and finally just dump out bikes and hide out in the long grasses like a a wall between us and the rest of the world.

There we sat and talked and conspired and spoke of girls and our lives. Cigarettes were smoked and the wind blew around us in a circle to confirm a green eye in the grass where we rested. Hit songs like ‘You’ve Got the Gun’ defining who we were without us even knowing it.

M