Let’s Call Him Doug

An Australian music memoir. Of sorts.

By Rhys Moult

The gigs. The friends. The things we kept.

Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I kept concert tickets, photographs, letters, backstage passes and all sorts of other things that, for one reason or another, seemed worth hanging on to.

Most ended up in a couple of old boxes.

Thirty-odd years later, those boxes have become the starting point for Let's Call Him Doug, a collection of memories about growing up with Australian music, going to gigs, meeting people, and occasionally finding myself in the company of some of the musicians whose records I played endlessly.

Midnight Oil, Hoodoo Gurus and others make appearances. But this isn't really a book about rock stars. It's about being a fan, the friendships that formed around music, the experiences we shared, and the things that somehow survived.

The stories are anchored to ordinary objects that have become surprisingly precious. Things that spent decades tucked away, occasionally brought out for a private viewing.

Now they're part of something resembling a suburban museum exhibition.

For those with dark thought

The book

Let's Call Him Doug is an illustrated memoir combining stories, photographs and memorabilia from a life spent enjoying Australian music.

It's a personal collection of experiences and chance encounters, told from the perspective of an everyday fan rather than someone on the stage (though sometimes I was on the stage, just not as a performer).

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