About 15 years ago, when the Metro was still a nightclub which had been converted from a cinema, I was sitting late one afternoon after work in a bar located in Little Bourke Street directly behind it, sinking a few cold ones with some friends from the office. [When you spend as long working for the same employer as I did, most of your friends tend to be people you met through work.]
I am not sure whether the alley next to that bar was named yet, but it was later named Amphlett Lane after the late Chrissy Amphlett, front woman of the Divinyls. The bar at the time was named Mrs Parma’s, and I had been going there fairly regularly since the mid 1990s, when it was known as Cheers.
We were sitting at a table overlooking the alley, when I saw a very attractive, very short woman (accompanied by a couple of security) standing facing a group of fans, who were offering her bouquets of flowers. She seemed very young, although I was later to learn that she was 25 at the time.
It only much later that I learned that this woman was the artist popularly known as Lana Del Rey, who happened to be performing at the Metro at the time.
Very nice of her to meet those fans.
It was about a year or more later that I was introduced to her music by one of my colleagues, who was quickly to become one of my closest friends, when we were working together on Christmas Island. One night, over a few beers (or wines, or duty free whiskeys – who knows exactly), he played her music on his blue tooth speaker.
I have been a fan since then. Her music seems to be the lush audio equivalent of dark chocolate and fine port, doing for the ears what those do for the taste buds and the mood.
I reminded myself of this the past week, where I played catch up by playing her more recent albums on Apple Music a couple of evenings. She has definitely lost none of her artistry in the intervening decade or so since I became a fan.
Lost For Words! 