My Songs

So far my recording output hasn't caught up with my songwriting output so here's a time line that I hope to eventually fill out with actual recordings!

[Updated 2 July 2013]

1959 - 1979
I wrote my first 2 songs in about 1959 but didn't really begin songwriting in earnest until July 1964.  Between 1964 and 1966 I wrote about 65 songs but burned most of them a few years later so only a dozen or so remain.  Then I had another songwriting spurt from 1967 to about 1974.

I recorded most of the early songs, along with other songs I wrote between 1967 and 1973, for a demo tape entitled Nothing To Say.

Robert Childs - Nothing To Say


I had a creative drought until 1978 when I finally found my inspiration again - it was a tree which inspired the song Tree!  I wrote more songs in 1979 and I recorded many of these late seventies efforts plus a couple of earlier songs for my second demo tape entitled Living In An Old Farmhouse.

Robert Childs - Living In An Old Farmhouse


I've since discovered a dozen or so other songs written between (about) 1965 and 1979, only one of which I've performed and have a (live) recording off.  The rest remain unrecorded as yet.

In total I completed about 41 songs (plus the 55 or so that I destroyed) between 1959 and 1979.

1980 - 1989
The early eighties were quite productive for my songwriting.  I completed 42 songs up to the end of 1984. It was about then that I decided I needed to start recording my songs and commenced recording the demo tapes mentioned above.  However most of these early eighties songs remain unrecorded so far.

I wrote a further 30 songs between 1985 and 1989.  As just mentioned, I was recording my songs as demos from 1984 to 1986 and then late in 1987 I started SCALA (Songwriters, Composers And Lyricists Association) so with a full time job and a family I didn't have a lot of spare time!

I started to perform some of these songs at SCALA's various venues and eventually a few were recorded in a studio.

1990 - 1999
My total output during the nineties was a paltry 26 completed songs.  However, I was very fortunate to have a band form around me (Robert Childs Elastic Band) and to meet sound engineer Geoff Prideaux. This happened only due to SCALA.  In 1992 I commenced recording songs at the Sound Workshop in the Adelaide Festival Centre where Geoff worked at the time.  Just about every Sunday morning for two years, I and various members of the ever expanding Elastic Band, climbed the steps to the Sound Workshop studio on the third floor of the Centre to lay down tracks and do overdubs.  The end result was the album, Revenge, originally released, 20 April 1994, on CD and compact cassette and now available as a download.

Robert Childs Elastic Band - Revenge

Following the release of Revenge I had another creative dry patch completing only a (very) small handful of songs until 1999 when, in clearing up my music room, I discovered many songs I'd forgotten about and, for some reason, this prompted me to write a dozen new songs during the year.  So far only three of these have been recorded.  The first was My First Wife, Your Father And You And Me which was recorded during my birthday performance in June 1999 for SCALA at The Office Bar & Bistro in Pirie Street, Adelaide.  I'd only completed the song a couple of weeks before the gig.  It was recorded on cassette and Neville Clark at Disk-Edits performed his remarkable craft to clean it up whilst mastering the SCALA Steps album.

SCALA Steps


2000 - 2009
There was a great deal of upheaval in my life during the "noughties" and I had a number of dry times with only 21 songs completed.  Somehow or other I managed to do a quick recording of some songs that I thought would become redundant after the 2007 Australian election - songs that I'd written and should have released some years before.  The result was the "EP" or "mini album", Contagion, with 5 songs on it.





2010 +
I've had some kind of songwriting revival (writing 28 songs in the last 30 months) since 1 May 2010 when I completed Whose Turn Is It Now?  I wrote the song after seeing a TV program about Rwanda which made the point that 19th century eugenicists were responsible for the subsequent civil war between Hutu and Tutsis.  The so called racial difference between the groups had no basis in fact but what misery the pseudo-science of eugenics caused the country.  I recorded the song at my 2010 birthday gig for SCALA at Higher Ground, Light Square, Adelaide, and it appears on the SCALA Higher Ground album.

SCALA Higher Ground
You can listen to and buy (as an mp3 download) Whose Turn Is It Now? on my RouteNote page.

You can listen to a selection of songs from these releases plus some live performances and other demos on my ReverbNation page (or use the widget in the sidebar on the right of the screen).

... more to come!?



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