Barry McGloin has been presenting Mystery Train on Valley FM since October 2003. "It's something I always wanted to do. I enjoy playing roots music and it's a pleasure to take the listener with me. What is roots music? Well it is blues, rhythm and blues, gospel, soul, jazz, world and folk. All of those genres have further variations -  World is not a particular sound - African music alone changes from country to country within Africa. Country music incorporates folk, blues and jazz, as in Carter Family, Brakeman Jimmy Rogers, and the Western Swing bands, there's also bluegrass and rockabilly."

"Blues can be acoustic, big band, jazz, electric, boogie and gospel - and these can also vary by style, regional variations etc. The permutations are plentiful and the influence can be heard from 40s jump blues to 50s rhythm and blues to 60s riffs to current rock".

"Roots genres are never passive, never "lift music", they reach out either rhythmically, melodically or lyrically. They often sound spontaneous, raw and instinctive even though they may have taken some studio architecture to achieve this. There is an untapped seam of music out there, it never ceases to amaze, you can dig back and further and still find gold. The advent of the CD has provided a rich source of previously unreleased material, and the remastering now is superb in most cases."

"Ah yes, record stores. I recall my Saturday morning pilgrimage into Sydney town back in the seventies, down the bucket end of Pitt Street, all grime, dust and debris as another building dropped to the ball. Squeezed in there were Ashwoods, Lawsons and Martins, second hand record stores by appointment to collectors, browsers, and those who merely sought human contact, the flotsam and jetsam of humanity from out under rocks, the dispossessed and possessed, classicos, rockers, pinko academics and punks, shoulder to shoulder, bum to bum, riffling the racks for that elusive bargain, to put a smile on yer weekend dial. 

I would wheel my daughter Cara into Ashwoods ( Sat. morning babysitting task),  where in the bump and bustle of the smoky confines (as it was then), one remained alert to the proclivities of the patrons, some of whom were more freeform in their expression than one would hope for  [ "you took me there Dad ???" ]."

" Remember Chuck Berry's Chess hits, the original in the blue cover? A bit scratched, but that's how it should be, the price in pencil on the disc label  - 75 cents!! I bought the Chess 3 CD box set later and thought the CD sound too clean, the remix with the voice marginally to the fore seemed to have lost some power. By comparison the LP production has more of Leonard Chess' big bed of sound, I guess it's who does the remix.  Other Chess remixes, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy, Walter and Sonny Boy, are pretty bloody good."     

Barry comes from a musical family. "My Nan on Mum's side was Yorkshire bred and born, she loved to perform - rhymes and poems and of course songs while accompanying herself on the piano. She was full of life, and her son, my Uncle Norman, led his own jazz band as a drummer when he was in his teens and headed the NCB Kent Colliery Dixieland Jazz Band for many years. He also worked with smaller combinations. Uncle Tom was a drummer as well. My Dad was from Scottish/Irish background, Catholic and a trade unionist. A saintly, gentle and sometimes feisty man, he sang hymns like Bing Crosby and he enjoyed the swing bands. He was a great vocalist on the hymns, the nuns loved him, he charmed them all. My Mum Dot was a Proddie and didn't have much to sing about, so she reckons, what with all us kids, and Dad charming the nuns or down the pit (coal mine), but she played the spoons like a demon, pots and pans as well, and during the war danced the toes off the Allies."

"My cuz, Honky Tonk Snashall, is an umpire, a failed cricketer, who doesn't shirk from bashing the ivories after win or loss. Roll Out The Barrel is a favourite starter, but he fancies Greig and Chopin at home. Of other cousins, John P. refined his virtuoso rock guitar while on Her Majesties holidays, he had a few of them...... Andy McGloin played with and produced Eric Bogle for a while, and more recently accompanied the Screaming Jets singer, and Chris McGloin ran a couple of bands in Adelaide but is now in the deep North, writing songs on his porch and listening to birds. Brother Tony is a stringed instrument virtuoso, about to release a CD, so he told me a year ago...., [ released late 2005 refer What's New ] and sister Imogene is an all rounder on wind, strings, keyboards, bones and bodhrain. Both sons play and write music. Eldest son Brendan fronts a punk band, Final Warning, which currently (April 2005) holds the first five positions on the top 60 MP3 ska charts www.mp3.com.au and is in my opinion the direction of future rock, combining punk, ska and reggae with incisive lyrics, kick ass rhythm, the passion of youth and the threat of extinction. The Boy Jamie is highly intuitive with music and shows great promise. Me? I'm buggered, out of puff and practice, lost my ding-a-ling."

It's hardly surprising with all this around him that Barry has very eclectic tastes. "I had 40 years of collecting records and latterly Cds which gave the Jan 18 bushfire some wonderful fuel....... imported rarities, box sets, EPs, LPs and singles all reduced to blob, oh and the house as well. That's life. You can either get on with it or wreck yourself thinking about it. One is continually amazed and amused by The Scriptwriters and their efforts to keep the Great Play interesting and er.......diverting, ha ha."

"The support of friends, colleagues and relations was humbling. In the rebuilding of the music collection CDs zoomed in from all directions, and of course there's our wonderful libraries. Also we have some top shops here in Canberra where bargains abound - check out Revolution CD. Such a pity about Impact Records going -  they had a wide variety and were generally well priced - you could snavel a bargain there. I hope JBs will use the same sources. We'll see. I wish to thank in particular for ongoing support my generous  friends and music hounds, Len Hetherington, Alex Plegt and Clint Parker who have assisted with discs, opinions, referrals, jars of honey and buttered toast."

Barry's family migrated in the early 60s from England. "Coming over on the Fairsea liner  the teens often held impromptu record parties poolside. At one of these a sudden gust from the Indian Ocean flipped one of my precious early live Cliff Richard EPs overboard. We looked over the railings and it was down there on a ledge close to a lifeboat. I couldn't lose it could I? So, over the side I went, down the ladder and retrieved the disc. Climbed up and got a right bollocking from a steward. I had no choice mister, did I? I would have made a skinny feed for a desperate shark, probably would have spat me out, me and Cliff, it's all relative, back then we didn't have much".

"In the sixties I sang with an R 'n B band in my home town Nowra. Well an R'n B band might be a little grandiose, more punk garage, ineptitude sprinkled liberally with dissonance and disparate passion. We changed our name for each gig, for reasons you might imagine but our peak was the Narooma skating rink January 1968 when we played as Bill Barnsley's Backyard Blues Band, doing English R ' n B, Stones, Animals, Them, Hendrix, Yardbirds, me sitting cross legged during the extended lead breaks jus shakin mah maracas,man, as ya did. Most of Narooma were there and visitors too all sitting on the hill. A great gig, despite our drummer John McGrath being accosted by bikies -  they were shouting each other schooners in the pub the following morning. Six foot plus skinny McGrath in his polka dot shirt and shoulder length hair, the bikies in leather - different plumage but the same birds really."

In the early seventies cousin Chris McGloin and I played as an acoustic duo for 18 months at the Taverners Bar, Leichhardt, which was part of the Elswick Hotel  -   (the manager was shot dead there recently). Anyway, Chris played harmonica and 12 string [ guitar ]  - it had volume and more strings than even Chris could break in one session. Music though was never an obstacle.... We played some blues, folk, music hall, pop hits, in fact anything, inflicting our stamp on anything we could play reasonably well.

[also refer Music and Food Part 1 for an entertaining account of Chris as Great White Hunter ] 

We had a discrete following....., kids like us with cloth ears (ha ha) who kept the faith for those small but significant triumphs which kept us together.  We inhabited a mobile city commune - shifting gypsies after dark between suburban dwellings, sharing music, food, midnight dreams, ideas and ideals, the sustenance of hippy underground kids with alternate values. Yes well it wasn't as loose as it has been portrayed, and no doubt no different from now. We weren't dispensate from the fumblings, stumblings, the stubbed toenails of youthful vigor and ineptitude.

And it had its own hierarchy which despite opposition to the status quo had quite strict standards. A whiff of  "straightness" mate and you could be ostracised. My commitment to the new no boundaries culture was questioned because I attended Mass each Sunday (I had to be forgiven, man.....) but our music gave me status so they didn't throw me out. Didn't pray for me either, hell no -  just grumbled about threats, then forgot about it in the haze of the following day.

My musical partner Cousin Chris was always an entertainer by whatever means, having been known to do the Full Monty to gain the audience attention. He inflicted his scatological irreverent humour on any classics -

"The answer my chum, is tattooed on your bum" was what should have been done to deflate Dylan by someone perhaps with taste, Chris was replete with the lack of it. In fact he revelled in gauche bawdiness, which knew few bounds. Most audiences loved him. Then he was a sort of Jamie Oliver of the blues. He was young, loud and even talented at times. He had a good ear for melody when he wasn't boozed to the cockneys, and wrote some damned fine lines:   

"so let's watch the organ grinder, please play it one more time

and we'll look at the dancing monkey, oh he dance so fine

for I am the monkey and I never spill my wine

so it's dance monkey dance, it's nearly supper time".

Chris and his family moved to Adelaide in the late seventies. Meanwhile I'd been overseas with my girlfriend Denise and we married on return to Oz. While o/s I'd jammed with fellow grape pickers in Bordeaux, some blues loving Madagascans, played folk and blues with fellow travellers and taken in some good music in London.

On return to Oz we were married, then in 1977 came our beautiful daughter Cara, and

wedded bliss in a shoebox in Campsie. But we loved it. Turn around, there was the bed. There was the sink. It was ergonomic heaven, and we were in love.  Reach out the window and snip a flower. Present it to Denise and Campsie was aglow......

Sometime later my jovial sister Imogene and her gnomic Manchunean husband, Homesick Frank started playing Irish music. Shouldn't laugh....he'd look at me and piss himself. "Ya poof ........look at ya".  We were that sort of family. Stupid but jovial. If we had nothing to do of an afternoon we'd sit and look at each other and have a laugh. When I think back we were a happy family, seldom bored. Anyhow, when Frank started playing this music it appealed to some closeted mongrel Irishness within my musical physiology and I started singing Irish rap to myself  - da, de diddle dum de diddle dum de diddle eye doe - gradually becoming confident and getting louder which happily didn't irritate the wife and child. In fact they sang along softly at first then growing in confidence, became quite loud. We were something of a curio on shopping expeditions -  Arabs looking askance in Lakemba and Vietnamese scurrying across the road. Regardless we sang onward lunging as it were for the Irishness within us. "Grab those baked beans love, da de diddle eye de diddle eye...."

The Irishness wouldn't let up and I read the authors, Joyce, O'Casey, Synge, Stephens, Behan and listened to early Chieftains, Planxty. Dubliners, Moving Hearts, De Danaan, Paul Brady, Bothy Band and the emerging Pogues. Our family formed a band -  sister, brother, brother in  law, myself, two Aussies and Tommy Finnegan our token Irishman.

It ended up a six piece called Blackthorn and we practised for 2 years and actually played a few times. Once we were broadcast live by ABCFM at the Rose Shamrock and Thistle - we were quite good on the night, but we' d played better of course. You always have.

In 1983 Denise gave birth to Brendan (after the saint, and Behan the author and raconteur) who now plays and writes punk, and is the father of beautiful Kaya. In 1986 we moved to Canberra where our second son Jamie was born on July 4 1989. A quick birth and he's been blessed since. Musically I continued collecting records and CDs  which were fuel for the bushfire. Didn't play much until 1999 when I wrote about 20 songs and performed some of them, a couple with Brendan - that was something !! I might describe them as the reflection of a scorching subconscious substrata, but most were the inept fumblings of youth which returned to greet me, the rocks and loam of passion, ineptitude and lost lava...ah well at times you're older and boulder heh heh."