Monogamy Shbedogamy

Get your collectors item CD of Failing In Love Again HERE 
and help Jan get to NYC to launch her latest book.

The CD has fourteen original songs from the cult hit 80s musical with Jan Cornall and Elizabeth Drake: Idiosyncracies, Spilt Guilt, Limping For Sympathy, Better Than Het,The Vibrator Song and many more!

Listen to the original full version of Monogamy Shbedogamy and other songs here. 

Read the song lyrics here. 

Jan Cornall(background) Elizabeth Drake at The Flying Trapeze Cafe 1980. Photo Ruth Maddison.

The Song's History

I don't remember the exact moment I wrote this song. It must have been some time in 1975. After several months travelling with my buddy Ruth Maddison in Mexico and the USA in '74, I ended up in Eugene, Oregon, planting trees. Ruth had gone home to Oz and I followed a lead given by some women we'd met at a women's festival. In Eugene (the counterculture capital of the world) I found the collective run outfit called the Hoedads who employed anyone with a willingness to scamper across ridiculously steep log strewn slopes in the pouring rain.

 I joined a crew and we headed out into the mountains. Our accomodation was a black plastic tipi where we would hole up when it was snowing and too cold to plant. As luck would have it on the same crew was poet/artist Simone (Paula) Treacy-Croft) and percussionist Scotty. We became best friends and I moved into their house when we got back to Eugene. Scotty was in a reggae band and I wrote some calypso songs for them. There was a vibrant music scene happening in cafes and the legendary WOW Hall and our little house by the freeway became a creative meeting place.

 The sexual revolution was in full swing, the women's movement was taking off, queer and left politics were leading the anti-couple, anti-monogamy, anti-capitalism, anti-everything charge into  a redefinition of the romantic love myth. Against that backdrop this song was born. I used to sing it with three chords on a guitar, as I did for my try out for the all girl latin jazz band Baba Yaga. They were looking for a drummer and I'd just started learning the conga drums. They took me on in good faith that I would improve and my songs added a novel touch. We recorded the original version on our album Baba Yaga, On the Edge.

Listen to the original full song Monogamy Shbedogamy and other songs here.


Get your collector's item Failing In Love Again CD with Jan Cornall and Elizabeth Drake and help Jan launch her latest book in New York City