Hello Michael, thank you for your kind words and for posting the track to YouTube. I am very happy you took the initiative to make it public and to add visuals as well. How very considerate of you. I loved performing and recording this song. I met with Dave a few months before his death and sang it for him at Maddisons in Chch where the Canterbury Folk Music Club celebrated its artists over its entire history. Later, at Dave’s wake, his son and I played and sang some of his beautiful repertoire, with his ashes next to the grand piano he often played.

Random internet denizen here. I will occasionally buy a random record from a thrift shop just in case there’s something interesting to hear. Even one great piece of music is enough to justify spending a dollar or less, and sometimes I’ll find something I really like. This was the case for your recording of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” which I recently found on the compilation “40 Great NZ Country Hits.” The rest of the record is fine, but this song is truly a standout and I’m happy to have found it.

Not happy, on the other hand, to realize it’s not readily available online! I hope you won’t mind that I’ve posted a copy on youtube, the writer above may appreciate hearing it and hopefully others as well. It’s just recorded form the scratchy vinyl, but better than nothing! Happy to take it down if you’d prefer, but to my thinking it’s better it gets heard than fall out of sight so to speak 🙂

https://youtu.be/k5L-KFKdKB8

Cheers!

Hi Chris, lovely to hear from you. It’s been a long time, although I caught up with Richard Oddie in 2012 and he spoke of you, how talented you were and remain and how fortunate we are to still be standing. Dave was an enigma and a talent who could put his finger directly on the pulse of absurdity and beauty at the same time. From ‘Gutboard Blues’ where so many of the Uni students spent their holidays working at
the freezing works in order to get through the next semester, to ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’ and ‘Lady’ the Kiwi markers were identified and pinned to the ground in his lyrics. Your first-hand knowledge of him probably views him in a light which is personal and relevant to you but isn’t that ART after all? I still miss the days of Brock, the Band of Hope and the days of raw and unbridled talent. I used to feel like a kid amongst all of it. It was inspiring if a little daunting.

In the early days of 1972 when we met at the Phonogram Offices in Cashel Street, you managed to hold the interests of Philips’ artists as paramount. Thank you for your friendship, Sally. Universal has decided to digitise and re-release “Country Lady” and it will become available in a couple of months.

Hello Don,

You wrote on 28/1/’13 asking how you might access MP3’s of the two Carol King covers which were included on my album “Country Lady” recorded in 1972. I included “Why are you Leaving” and “Lady” on Philips 6436750/78. I have recently been contacted by the Chairman of the Recorded Music Society of New Zealand. He has requested permission for a digitised re-release of the album. Philips’ back catalogue is now handled by Universal in New Zealand. Therefore, the tracks and the entire album will be available within the next few months once the process has been completed.