By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [1]
When I was optimistic, I used to mark the passing summers by the hit songs that were playing on the radio as I sweated away at jobs that paid me the money I badly needed.
“She loves you” was the summer of 1964 for me; “Summer in the City” [2] was 1966. “Nutbush City Limits” [3] was 1973. Ten years later, in the summer of 1983, “Nutbush” was the backing theme for radio programmes I produced for Claudia Wright in Melbourne – the last time she was allowed to broadcast on an Australian radio station. In 1995, though it seems to have been earlier, there was “If God was one of us [4]”.
In this wartime the lyrics can’t mean what they used to. Now it’s not a good idea to be sentimental when the job is to scribble until Labor Day.