Sydney-born, Brisbane-grown and now Gold Coast resident and Senior Lecturer in Writing & Publishing at Griffith University (where she also gained her doctorate), Sally Breen has worked in creative writing and the broader arts community for over 20 years.
Sally is the author of 'The Casuals' (2011) and 'Atomic City' (2013). She was associate editor of the Griffith REVIEW from 2006-2008 and her fiction and non-fiction work has appeared in a wide variety of publications and collections: Overland, The Australian, Griffith REVIEW, Asia Literary Review, The Age, Review of Australian Fiction, The Courier Mail, Wet Ink and Media International Australia.
Ahead of her appearance at the inaugural A Writers Rock & Roll Writers Festival in Brisbane this weekend, Sally shares five of her favourite songs from the '90s and memories they each evoke in her.
Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry
Watching 'Rage' at 2am on a TV set that weighs almost as much you do. [The video is] just a mad flicker in a crowded room that only works with one eye closed. Bad '90s blue light and VFX are enough to send you to the moon.The television never makes as much sense as what you’re doing with a six shooter in the dungeon of a ramshackle Queenslander. In a world without selfies the television is something you suspect you might disappear in.
Kool Thing by Sonic Youth
While the girls are doing boys in the carpark next to the smoky, low-roofed club I try to rationalise that standing next to the DJ waiting for free drinks without ever putting out is something Kim Gordon would approve of.It’s a dark, male world and some of the boys we know have gone to jail and some are headed there, but reality is something we try not to think of. No one we like ever likes us back enough. We dance like we’re going to die.
Happy When It Rains by Jesus and Marcy Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain playing on long Saturday, Sunday drives on bright, suburban streets with sunglasses on, tape in the deck, looking for recovery cheeseburgers, soft serve and french fries in lieu of the next party and a rage against something we can’t quite name: middle class inertia or working class walls. Hiding from parents in big houses where nothing seems as bountiful as stolen canapé rounds and the two-door splendour of a rich girl’s fridge.Not My Kind Of Scene by Powderfinger
Not My Kind Of Scene in a Brisbane we know in secret wishing it wasn’t so. Rolling past yuppies in their Country Road and brogues, six deep in a congealed mass outside of Friday's nightclub avoiding the eyes of cops who can arrest more than four of us in a line as a form of protest.Growing up in a paradise never seems as clean when you wake up under the thumb of a dominant regime.
In Bloom by Nirvana
The story of Nirvana unfolding as we grow is like watching a wild cat or a giant whale forced into captivity. All our pretty songs and the commodification of everything we believe is happening in the streets; in the last club we can remember where punters had to be under dressed to get in.Once they name our favourite haunt as the place to be seen in Cosmopolitan, the end of the underground is nigh and the alternative is a doomed thing.
Sally Breen speaks at A Rock & Roll Writers Festival at The Brightside (Brisbane) 2-3 April.
