Michael Gerard Bauer Author

blog 13: In which I trace the highlights of my stellar musical career

Posted on June 10, 2011 by mgbauer

Shintaro - The Samurai

After my childhood dreams of being a Samurai like Shintaro or a Ninja like Tombie the Mist faded, my next dream was to become a singer-songwriter – just someone like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul Simon or James Taylor would have been great.

My chances were slim however as I was unfairly handicapped by a lack of confidence and an even greater lack of talent.

Over the years though I’ve enjoyed playing songs with various guitar buddies starting with my older brother Rob, then my cousin and best friend Steve, then my friend Greg (who took over from Steve in the best friend department at Uni) and his younger brother Bernie, and finally my son Joe (who is a much better guitar player and singer than I will ever be).

My guitar buddies and I mainly played and sang by ourselves or to small gatherings of family and friends.

To the best of my recollection (there might be some moments during the 70s that escape me) I’ve only performed more publicly on three occasions during my entire life.

A good tip for the would-be performer is to restrict your audiences to people who are incapable of heckling you.

Number one was when I was a young Teacher at my very first school – Mount St Michael’s College at Ashgrove. It was a girls’ school and a few times I played and sang for the year 12s. I usually played alongside one of the senior students. She was much better than me. My most requested song as I recall was Hurricane by Bob Dylan. The senior girl did a great version of Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young. I always thought she was something special. This is part of what I wrote about her in my diary at the time.

Amid the plastic faces,
cardboard lives and paper dreams
There are still jewels,
it seems.

I was right. Her name was Mary-Rose MacColl. You might know of her. She went on to be a journalist and writer. Her first novel, No Safe Place, was the 1995 runner-up in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and was published 1996. Her other books are Angels in the Architecture, Killing Superman, No Safe Place and recently Birth Wars.

On the final day of school for that Year 12 group Mary-Rose recorded me doing a version of Dylan’s It’s All Over Now Baby Blue. It was played at the farewell ceremony. Can’t vouch for the quality of the singing and guitar playing but you couldn’t say it wasn’t appropriate. The girls’ school days were all over and the colour of their uniform was blue.

My Year 11`Homeroom class. I have the distinction of being the first male Homeroom teacher in the history of Mt St Michael's College. The girls printed me a t-shirt proclaiming just that to mark the occasion.

My second ever public performance occurred many years later in 2008. It was in Bali at the Bali Jazz Cafe. I had somehow managed to get invited to the wonderful Ubud Literary Festival and had also somehow agreed to be part of an authors’ cabaret. I just didn’t realise it would be held at such a public venue!

On the night the place was packed. There were people associated with the Festival, as well as lots of others who were just there to eat and drink and had no idea (and cared even less) about performing authors. Then I found out that some of the authors on before me were real musicians. Some had actually recorded songs professionally!

Luckily I had a couple of things going for me. Firstly, there was time to drink copiously before I was on and secondly, I had writing legend and all round lovely person Melina Marchetta and some of her friends there for moral support.

The song I sang that night was Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. Yes, in hindsight perhaps I could have chosen something cheerier and more upbeat than a song about a poor black woman being killed by a wealthy, cane wielding, white tobacco farmer!

Somehow I survived the ordeal, but as the above photo taken by Melina shows, I don’t think I opened my eyes until it was over! When I finished I got a generous round of sympathetic and drunken applause (at least from those who were listening). But what made the night for me was when the leader of the Bali Blues Band, who could have been mistaken for Bob Marley’s much taller twin, came up and shook my hand and said, ‘Weeeell don Maaaykuul. Thaart waz cool mon.’ I’ll take that over an Aria award any day!

My third and final public performance was in Munich last year at the White Raven’s Children’s Literature Festival. It was one of the highlights of my life. I always wanted to be in a rock band and at the festival I got my wish, playing and singing with the German Band Gone Fishin’. They were the band who had recorded the nine songs I’d written for the German audio version of my novel Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs. I travelled all the way to Bavaria, the land of my great, great grandparents and found these six brothers.

Ich bin ein rockstar!

So I guess I finally did achieve my dream of being a singer-songwriter even if only very briefly and maybe not quite to the same degree as His Bobness. And I also got to play in a rock band. I’m on a roll. Maybe anything really is possible.

I can almost hear Shintaro and Tombei calling my name!

Cheers
Michael
ps To see author John Green’s video of Munich and the White Raven’s Festival which includes some (thankfully brief) footage of me playing with Gone Fishin’ go here.

blog 12: In which I post a few of our old family slides.

Posted on June 4, 2011 by mgbauer

Just about all of the photos taken of our family when I was a kid are slides. There’s not too many of them because Dad had the only camera and he worked away from home for years on the Snowy Mountain Scheme, only staying with us for Christmas holidays. Here are a few of the Bauer Family Slides. They’re pretty blurry because they’re just photos of the image on our old projector screen.

Here’s me with our dog Billy. Yes I know he’s not a dog – now. But we were too poor then to own a real dog so my parents just bought this guinea-pig and told us it was a miniature short-tailed Schnauzer. It all ended tragically when I tried to mate Billy with the neighbours’ pit bull.

And of course because I come from Australia we also had the obligatory pet kangaroos. We just rounded them up from the streets.

This is me at our Grade Three Graduation ball. Those things on the side of my head aren’t advertising hoardings, they’re actually my ears. I could pick up short wave stations with those babies!

In this photo I’m thinking, “I’ve heard about these girl creatures from my mother. They’re dangerous! Although, this one looks pretty cute …”

Here’s what you do if you have big ears – apply Einstein’s theory of relativity and make friends with kids who have even bigger ears!

Actually I think there might have been some kind of big ear epidemic going around in those days. Check out that boy in the background! Is he primed for take-off? And what is he wearing? You can tell that he is just so jealous of me and my friends Kenny and Paul. I mean, could we be more dashing and suave?

This is us at our Auntie and Uncle’s sugar cane farm at Woongoolba. That’s me and my sister Cath on the horse. The tall girl is my sister Helen and the red-haired boy is my brother Rob. Mum figured she could save a heap of money if she just stopped feeding Rob altogether. It worked a treat!

Once every three months at the Bauer’s was bath day. It was a lot of fun!
Nothing says “Queensland” to me more than this photo.

Now here’s a sight that struck fear into the hearts of men!

This was my first Rugby strip. It always looked this clean and neat because I had the unique ability of going through entire games without ever actually touching the ball or making a tackle.

This is me at Lone Pine Sanctuary in Brisbane about to run and hide behind my mother’s dress because I’m heart-stoppingly terrified of those killer Peacocks.
And just look at how proud my father is of me!

Pretty sure this is me on my First Holy Communion day. That dog was called Penny. She was a part Collie part Pomeranian. She used to wait for me to come home from school everyday on the footpath outside our house. Then she’d jump all over me. Best. Dog. Ever. I gave some of her stories to Mr Mosely in Just a Dog and she’s mentioned along with our other dogs in the Dedication.

These are a couple of my favourite slides.

My sister Cath and I at Sutton’s beach Redcliffe having fun and lost in our own little world.

Then we get wiped out by a wave that we didn’t see coming.

Isn’t life sometimes like that.

This is the only time I think Dad ever tried to get arty with a photo. I’ve always liked the warmth of it. Mum’s holding our vinyl album of Oklahoma. Don’t know where Rob was though.

I loved that old stereogram behind us. In the years that followed I remember standing beside it and hearing Bob Dylan sing Like a Rolling Stone for the first time and later the same thing with The Beatles singing Hey Jude. Both times I was completely blown away.

Finally a rare shot of the entire family.

I wasn’t allowed to sit on the couch till I was house trained.

It took some time.

Cheers
Michael

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blog 11: In which I ponder whether a rose by any other name would just be confusing.

Posted on May 31, 2011 by mgbauer

: I’ll say it for you: “Haven’t changed a bit!”

The story goes that I was given the name Michael because when my mother was pregnant with me, the old lady next door said something like, ‘Not long now till Michael is born.’ For some reason she just assumed that would be my name even though my mother had never suggested it. I like to think our neighbour back then was psychic and had foreseen some great destiny for me. On the other hand, she might have been clinically insane which would probably explain a lot about her. And me.

As it turned out, I’m glad I was called Michael. I like my name. That probably started when I was in Grade Two at the local Catholic School and our teacher said we all had Guardian Angels looking after us. I soon found out that my Guardian Angel wasn’t just any run of the clouds dude. He was the head man, the El Supremo, the Big Kahuna. He was Michael the Archangel – the Aragorn of Angels!

: This is the guy who’s got my back? ALL RIGHT!!!!!!

Not only that, but in the classroom there was this massive heavy vinyl poster of A-A Michael dressed in armour and standing on top of a mountain peak surrounded by dark clouds and lightning, holding forth a sword to the sky. He looked like he’d been really working out too! No doubt about it, if you were going to have a Guardian Angel, then this was the guy you wanted. It was like being given Shintaro or the Terminator or Superman as your personal body-guard! Suddenly I was indestructible! I immediately went up and confronted the grade two bully. I was immediately beaten to a pulp. Apparently the Lord works in really annoying ways.

Another interesting thing about having Michael as your name, is how many different forms and variations it can take. More than just about any other name I can think of. Personally, I always refer to myself as Michael. Sometimes I say Mike but it feels a bit strange and a little too intimate. I just don’t think I know me that well. Besides it always sounds false and pretentious when people refer to themselves in the third person and Michael Gerard Bauer is definitely not the kind of person to do that!

However I don’t mind at all what other people call me and I have many close family and friends who never use Michael at all, preferring Mike or Mick as well as variations such as Mikey, Micky, Mikail and even occasionally Michelle! At one time my cousin and best friend took a shine to calling me Mitch. When I was little I often got the double bunger Michael Gerard but also sadly Micky Drippin’. (I’d like to stress here, that to the best of my knowledge, the Drippin’ was a reference to the stuff you cook with, not to any allegedly leaky part of my anatomy).

I think we’d all agree that Mickey Drippin’ is taking creative name mangling too far!

I’ve since discovered that I’m not the only Michael whose had liberties taken with their name. One girl told me that as a child her father was called Underdaks Micky (That’s gold!) and a boy once said when he was little he got Mickety Pickety! What is wrong with you non-Michael people out there?! Haven’t you got anything better to do?

Which brings me to the important moment in my life when I had to settle on an author name.

My first book was going to be published and I was faced with a big decision. What name should I go with? Michael Bauer or Mike Bauer or Mick Bauer or Michael G. Bauer or M. G. Bauer or M. Gerard Bauer or Mike G. Bauer etc etc etc? In the end I decided on Michael Gerard Bauer.

Here’s why:

The main reason was, that as a name (and possibly a person) Michael Bauer was just too common. There are heaps of us. Bauer (meaning Farmer) is like the name Smith in Germany, although some people here have trouble pronouncing it. (No it’s not Boo-ah or even Bore! It’s Bow-er. Just like Jack ‘I’m-gonna-shoot-your-wife-in-the-leg-again-if-you-don’t-tell-me-where-the-secret-nuclear-lab-is-located’ Bauer from the TV show 24). So now at least if you were to put Michael Gerard Bauer in inverted commas and Google it (not that I’d ever do such a thing!!) you’d basically just get me and not, for example, a famous food critic from the San Francisco Chronicle, or an unconventional artist from Germany. (By the way, I heartily encourage you to click on that artist’s link and read the descriptions under MB’s first two paintings. We have so much in common!)
Also, when I was in secondary school, once you reached the senior levels, it was trendy to have a briefcase with your initials embossed in gold on the side. (Yes we were born to rule!) My initials, including my middle name, were M.G.B. just like the sports car. I loved it. For one brief shining moment, there was actually something cool about being me!

MGB – Not too cool for school!
Finally, in grade 12 we studied the English Poet Gerard Manly Hopkins. I developed a bit of a thing for Gerard. I loved the way he combined words and sounds and even created new words. He was ahead of his time – a bit of a 17th Century rapper. I could recite his poem The Windhover by heart and I always loved Spring and Fall which describes a young girl confronting her mortality. So the Gerard in my name was also a little nod to G.M.H. (Notice how by a strange coincidence his initials have a car connection too? Spooky!)

But there are drawbacks to choosing the name Michael Gerard Bauer as your author’s name. They are these:

~ You sound like a bit of poser. Especially when people pronounce your middle name Geraaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrd rather than Gerrid like it’s meant to be.

Hmmmmm.

~ The longer your name the harder it is to fit on the cover of your books so it will be in smaller font and we all know the size of the author’s name is usually in direct proportion to the author’s success and popularity.

~ Finally, having three names can confuse people. Is his last name Bauer or Gerard-Bauer? And what order did they go in again?

: GMB? It just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

These days when I weigh up all the pros and cons, I’m very happy with my decision to go with Michael Gerard Bauer. Except perhaps for this one nagging doubt:

Maybe if I’d chosen something like Micky Drippin’ Underdaks, I might have ended up the next Andy Griffiths.

Cheers
Michael/Mike/Mick etc

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blog10: In which I throw a much needed life-line to fellow author Barry Jonsberg

Posted on May 27, 2011 by mgbauer

A couple of years ago when I was resident Blogger at the State Library of Victoria’s Insideadog website, I did a post on my good friend and fellow writer Barry Jonsberg. I thought it might be an opportune time to recap on that and update it. (At this point the cynical amongst you will be muttering that I’m merely re-hashing old ideas because I haven’t got an original thought in my head. Yeah, well, you’re just the sort of people who probably poohoo-ed the Rapture as well!)

Anyway, many people would be aware of what a terrific writer Barry Jonsberg is, having produced wonderful books such as The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull, It’s Not All About You Calma, Dreamrider, Ironbark, Cassie etc. (Incidentally Barry’s wife Nita has written excellent Teachers Notes for many of my own novels. She is also stunning, charming, witty and intelligent. What’s that thing they say about opposites attracting?)

But I digress. I first met Barry at a Reading Matters Conference in Melbourne. For both of us, it was our first event as authors. In fact Barry pointed out to a big audience at the conference that the two of us had a lot in common – we were both ex-English teachers, we’d both just written our first novel, we’d both been shortlisted for the CBCA award (I won’t mention who eventually won that because Barry’s still very touchy about it) and we were both of a similar age. He went on to tell the audience that we were so similar he thought he might have been in love with me! (Apparently he was joking. It just would’ve been nice if he’d told me that, so I didn’t waste all those days waiting by the phone for him to call. Men!)

But that’s all water under the carpet now and as I said at the start, I consider Barry a good friend. (He maintains that he considers me a ‘complete waste of space’, but I put that down to his wacky sense of humour.) Sadly however, in the last year or so, Barry has fallen on very tough times and subsequently his life has spiralled out of control. These days, he is a broken shell of a man, reduced to wandering the streets of Darwin, getting what enjoyment he can by planking in the gutters at night and warming himself by fires fuelled by the pages of his novels.

And the shocking thing is, IT’S ALL MY FAULT! It came about like this:

You may recall that in the 2008 Melbourne Cup (aka the race that stops a nation) there was a horse running called ‘Bauer’. (The very observant amongst you will have noticed a startling similarity between this and my surname!) Well it turns out that when Barry Jonsberg saw that there was a Bauer in the Cup he took it as a clear and unmistakeable omen that the horse was destined for victory. In fact, such was Barry’s faith in the ‘Bauer brand’ that rumour has it, he put his house, his superannuation and the untold millions of dollars he’s earned from book royalties on Bauer to win!

Bauer didn’t win.

It came second – not even by so much as a nose. (In fact if the horse had actually possessed what my wife quite hurtfully refers to as ‘the Bauer nose’ it would have romped it in.)

See below for proof.

: BAUER losing the Cup by a micro-nose.

That’s Bauer at the bottom of the photo. It was officially the ‘closest photo finish in Cup history’. As you can see if Bauer had just sneezed before the line she would have won. If she had stuck out her tongue she would have won. If she had blown someone a kiss in the grandstand she would have won. If she’d had her lips surgically enhanced Sophie Monk style, she would have won.

But she lost … and so did Barry. Big time.

Barry of course, as is his nature, took it very well. For the next month or two (until the Restraining Order kicked in) he sent me an endless stream of amusing, tongue-in-cheek emails and text messages questioning the legitimacy of my birth. Oh how I laughed!

: Barry Jonsberg bravely managing a smile in times of adversity.

Sadly, as I was chortling away, I was totally unaware that Barry’s own life was plunging into an awful pit of despair. But not any more! Through this blog, I want to lend Barry an Oprah-like helping hand and raise him back up into the light!

So here goes:

Barry Jonsberg has a new book out called Being Here. You should buy it and read it. It is brilliant and beautiful. It will draw you in. It will make you think and wonder. It will touch your heart and mind. And if you are anything like me, it will cause you to say repeatedly during the reading, “Omg, I wish I’d written that.”

And if you doubt my judgement or feel I might be biased (after all there is a minor character called Michael Bauer in the story) then go here and read other glowing reviews and learn more about Barry and his books then it is probably healthy to know.

So there. It’s done. My debt is paid. I’m pretty sure I have saved Barry’s life and his marriage, as well as single-handedly resurrecting his faltering career. And don’t worry about writing to thank me Baz, it’s nothing – besides that Restraining Order still has two years to run.

Cheers
Michael

ps Of course the other important reason for posting this story is to serve as a cautionary tale on the dangers of gambling. Remember, that what happened to Barry, could just as easily have happened to you! (Unless of course you were smart like I was back in 2008 and put $20 on Bauer to run a place and you won $130 . Yay me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)