The Hills Were Very Alive

(Pic of Alpine Marmot - Mark Hopper)

Synchronicity. He said it was synchronicity, but I’m never sure these days, especially when anything online is involved. But apparently since I published Mark Hopper’s travel tale concerning him taking photos in the Swiss Alps, and since a few people suggested I should have actually accompanied the story with the photos he was taking when his troubles began, apparently Facebook have magically, coincidentally, (even creepily?) chosen to pick this moment to send Mark one of those ‘this is what you were doing thirteen years to this day’ photo montage messages. Yes, you guessed it thirteen years ago he was getting electrocuted in the Swiss Alps. And so yes, when I contacted him he did have the photos at hand. Synchronicity? Hmmm.

But synchronicity versus scurrilous algorithm aside, they are stunning photos. Vivid, romantic, evocative. It immediately puts me in mind of Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp family cavorting in the hills and then crossing borders as stateless refugees in the night (surely some sympathetic country would harbour them? Providing they posed no threat to a beloved monoculture of course). It made me think of that film obviously, but it also made me think of Stephen O’Prey and a tumultuous episode as we hurtled toward the finale of Weddings, Parties, Anything.

Stephen had joined the band a few years previous after finishing up with the Badloves. As we had already done one tour together we knew the person we were hiring. He was precarious, occasionally tiresome but for the most part he was a lot of fun and a really decent player. One of his characteristic, repetitive catch cries as he was winding up for a big night after the show was to operatically break into the opening line of The Hills Are Alive. He would throw his arms wide and below out the words with little regard for the others around him and even less for the tune itself. The thing is, he only ever got as far as the end of the first line - the words ‘with the sound of music’. We all seriously began to doubt if he knew any more of the song than that. But it didn’t stop him. Over and over we heard it coming at volume from the band room after the show signalling he was ‘on’.

The final tour (The Lap of Honour) was a big one and the dates started to blur as we attempted a thorough goodbye to the cities and regions of the country. Somewhere mid tour we played the Golden Vine in Bendigo on a Wednesday night. We were due to fly to Darwin on the Friday, giving us Thursday free. The venue was possibly a little small for the Weds at that point and the show was chaotic. The room was overcrowded and the crowd were an unruly mob. It was bedlam. We played the show and everyone resolved to keep the festivities to a minimum in light of the fact we had the Northern Territory coming up later in the week. Stephen actually said he wasn’t feeling great and so after rifling through the esky in the band room for some supplies to take home, he jumped in his van and with barely a ‘Hills Are Alive’ was gone. We weren’t far behind him. Bendigo is one of those shows that is always a little further than you think and so from memory it was a few quiet beers in the van on the way home and not much else. Darwin here we come!

Next day the phone rang early at my place and everything from that point was complete chaos. It was someone from the hospital, or perhaps someone from Stephen’s family - I can’t remember exactly who. It can’t have been Stephen himself as he was unconscious at this point. It seems he had an abscess on his tooth that he had been ignoring for some time and it had finally gone completely septic. On the way home the poison had leached into his stomach and he had pulled his vehicle over just in time to call an ambulance which had taken him directly to casualty. It was serious. He’d lapsed into unconsciousness and almost died out there on the Calder Highway. He was going to be sedated for days. There would be no ‘Hills Are Alive’ and he wasn’t coming to Darwin.

By the next afternoon Pete Lawler was around at my house going through the repertoire and frantically trying to get his bass guitar chops up to scratch for a nice weekend away in the tope end - filling in for Stephen. We really felt for Stephen as he had a good friend in Darwin he had been looking forward to seeing but the doctors were adamant he was going nowhere. When we were finally able to get him on the phone he was pretty groggy and understandably a little flat. By the next morning Pete Lawler had re-learnt enough of the current songlist for us to feel confident we could play the shows in the Northern Territory and so we set off for Darwin leaving Stephen languishing in his hospital bed in a barely coherent drugged up stupor. The main thing was, he was safe and recuperating steadily ready to pick up the tour the following week.

I’m not sure if we had the idea at the airport, or once we had reached Darwin, but someone had heard of a service called Gorilla-gram For Hire (or something like that) and before you know it we had booked and paid for it over the phone. So someone, possibly an out of work actor, was to appear in a huge gorilla costume unannounced at Stephen’s hospital bedside with clear instructions he was to sing, in full voice, the whole first verse of The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music. Funny? Yes, we hoped it was funny.

Stephen later said he had been sleeping in a pretty abstract state when he looked up to see the giant imitation primate doing his best Julie Andrews impersonation. He said it was confusing and surreal, and I am guessing, only mildly amusing. I think Stephen, especially at that time was pretty forgiving and willing to see all jokes as somehow worthy, but maybe, just maybe it was one of those jokes that was funnier at its conception than its execution. I’ve never been sure. But soon enough Stephen was back with the band as the tour rolled on, to its way too emotional conclusion. Once again the band room was alive with the sound of music. And at the very least he was now able to sing the second line of the song.

And so, for the paid-up subscribers only, in deference to Stephen O’Prey’s operatic pretensions, while you look at Mark Hopper’s wonderful photos I’m actually going to have a crack at the song myself. Yes, terrifying, you read it correctly: Mick Thomas sings Rogers and Hammerstein. I’ll put it on here as an audio file as well but please don’t forget to check out the cinematic masterpiece. Please be kind to me people and then, as Maria Von Trapp says ‘then I won’t feel so bad’. The Top Paddock in the Swiss Alps no less.