Johnny Ray's Downtown
By Perry Keyes
CD, Laughing Outlaw Records
www.perrykeyes.com, $24.95
The inner Sydney suburb Waterloo is Australia's poorest postcode. Redfern, the suburb nestled beside it has been synonymous with oppression, struggle and rebellion for decades.
Perry Keyes was born in Redfern and raised in Waterloo's tough streets. Most people with talent and spark usually flee to calmer places but Keyes has stayed loyal to the area and has transmuted its hardships into a hard, brittle and beautiful form of music.
In Johnny Ray's Downtown, Keyes memorialises the long list of kids he knew who didn't make it. More than that, he graphically and poetically depicts inner city Sydney, evocatively citing streets and places.
The music is pub-style rock: a strong kick drum, unpretentious guitar with some beautiful keyboards. The lyrical stance is uncompromising — this CD is not for the faint-hearted. To survive in Waterloo, kids have to withstand pressures that no child should ever have to face. Heroin and prostitution are viable life choices produced by the daily heartbreak of poverty.
The astonishing final track, Boxing Day, swirls together images of Sydney's past, including African-American boxer Jack Johnson's 1909 world title victory in Rushcutters Bay, the struggles of waterside workers, and more.
Keyes uses an image of Johnson flying above The Block, Redfern's Aboriginal heart, an image rippling with a poetic force. Hearing it, I suddenly found myself, in memory, standing at Redfern Station on one of those terrible, hot Sydney nights, when the pollution and the humidity stick to your face like an insult, watchfully surveying Lawson Street shadows before shuffling home.
Music that can shift you so strongly in place and time is far too rare. Perry Keyes has produced it masterfully.