A mixed tape of an episode that takes in The Saints and New Order at the Seaview Ballroom in 1982 Melbourne, writes a song about a closed cemetery in rainy Paris in 1989, nicks a guitar pick from the INXS stage, and reads a lot of Dick Francis.

After the last two interview episodes with special guests, this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast brings Jenny and Tracy back together, to read from our own diaries, on the theme of NOTES.

We set the same theme for a Bad Diaries Salon in Melbourne in May this year – our first Melbourne salon since 2019 – and it got us thinking (as our salon themes always do) about the different ways to interpret NOTES. We riff on notes we write, notes to ourselves and to others, musical notes on the page and on the voice and in the ear. Love notes, lists (of books read, of spaghetti marinara eaten); notes that have fallen out of place, and notes that remain where they belong.

Both of our readings, though, focus on music. Tracy reads from her travel journals, from a few days in Paris in 1989 that she later turned into song lyrics. Jenny reads from 1982 and her music-soaked Melbourne, nights catching INXS and No Nonsense, The Saints and New Order, Night Moves on the telly.

To note is to observe, to notice, and we notice the value of notes, lists, ephemera. As Jenny says, “we might be thinking this is a podcast about diaries … all this other surrounding stuff – the notes, the scraps, the ticket stubs, the postcards … in some ways maybe gives more detail than the diaries themselves.”

Find full show notes for this episode on the Bad Diaries Salon website baddiariessalon.com, or get in touch via Instagram or Facebook – we're @baddiariessalon everywhere.

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Bad Diaries Podcast is recorded and produced in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation; and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.