ARCHIE ROACH AND HIS 198 ALBUM
While listening to these songs today, 21 years later, I felt a little uneasy about their pending release. I’m not quite sure what it was that made me feel this way.
Maybe it was the language I now find rather offensive and would not use today.
Maybe it was the total unprofessional attitude toward music, like an out-of-tune guitar with months-old strings, or no idea of how to structure a song.
Perhaps it was a little of both, I’m not sure. I do know I was younger, angrier and crazier than I am today. I was also getting off the booze so maybe it was a way of getting rid of all the muck that had built up through the years, pouring it into songs rather than pouring alcohol into me.
Upon these reflections of 1988 I hope to take you back to another place where I once stood. Then moved on. That being said, I am now looking forward to the release of these first recordings of my songs. As raw as they are, this is where it all began.
Yours in the struggle
Archie Roach.
In 1988 much of Australia was celebrating two hundred years of white settlement but a young Archie Roach was expressing in song what many who weren't celebrating were feeling.
For many indigenous people there was anger, despair, disadvantage, land rights battles and deaths in custody. Archie Roach dealt with this by writing songs about his own experiences and feelings and then performing these songs to whomever would listen.
Twenty one years later in a special tour, Archie will present a collection of these songs and launch his new album Music Deli Presents Archie Roach -1988 which feature some of the first ever recordings by a young Archie Roach.
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