The Triffids - Wide Open Road Domino Recording Company is an independent record label founded in 1993. Subscribe to Domino: goo.gl/kdcyu dominorecordco.com / dominorecordco / dominorecordco open.spotify.com/app/domino
As fresh, haunting and powerful today as it was back in 1986. You don't listen to this and think "hmm, yeah, an 80s song". You just feel a brilliant song reaching in, and touching your heart. Quite rightly in APRA's Top 30 Australian Songs of all Time.
I was driving in outback Queensland and had put "Born Sandy Devotional" on, and when it came to this track it just captured the feeling of driving in the outback searching for something. I can't think of any track that better captures something uniquely Australia.
All of Born Sandy is stunning, but this one really stands out for me. It's unabashedly gigantic, deliberately out of step with mid-'80s indie times, and as a result completely unique. I still miss David.😔🎸
This song is completely symbolic of me leaving Mandurah (the album cover) and doing the road trip across the Nullarbor to live in Brisbane. I became so discontented with my life and left all my loved ones behind to better my situation, especially when community values were becoming non existent. I grew up in a West Australian wheatbelt town and the film clip shows such similar landscape. I felt like I had cut all my ties when I did the trip across and it was so surreal. That Wide Open Road experience was like "Then I Realised". When I started doing gigs in Brisbane I wrote a song about the trip and it kind of parallels this song without knowing it until recently. It is very relevant as it correlates with having left a girlfriend behind also. It is a massive part of the soundtrack for my pilgrimage in life.
Thanks Damian for sharing your story, one of many which create you. Can tell though that experience was a very significant one. As a flow music creator, I've had the exact experience you're talking of, how only now, or over time, words/sentiments from songs take on a whole new meaning. I've actually been thanking my younger self lately as been experiencing & finding new meanings in my own work. Is spectacular to experience! May you still be creating your music - I've had times in my life i couldn't even look at my guitars let alone pick one up, as they'd represented better times. Then, once, in this state, I Did pick it up, & immediately thought how stoopid I'd been. Also, negative influence, doesn't want us in our true happiness. As when we shine, our controllers cease to exist. Whoa! Did Not mean to go on there, just your story resonated with me. Much love, protection & peace of heart & mind be Yours brother. nsw, south coast
I don't write music, but I do write poetry in three languages (English, Filipino and Cebuano), and it's the experiences both positive and negative that happen in our lives that keeps the creativity coming! In my case, I retired after marrying a Filipina, and I now live with her in Mindanao Philippines. It was a big move, and I left family behind too. I don't regret it, but of course I still love Australia too! Cheers mate, and keep up the good work with your music!
I love the story of yours that goes with this. One of the great levellers - having a quiet drink, a common interest, a good meal, or a good song. We see each other more clearly. Love it mate.
If only we appreciated the brilliance musicians like David McComb while they lived . Go out and support your local musicians. Such a talented song writer. Cheers to everyone who ended up here because you've got very good taste in music.
i get the sentiment but if you think he wasn't appreciated while he was alive you're crazy, the triffids and mccomb always got due praise during his lifetime
This is one of the most essential Australian songs ever: the breadth of its poetry and lyric, the great landscape of its music...a long time ago, it followed me all over England and Europe across a year of backpacking, and I felt so proud to know it as somehow "mine": the loneliness, desolation and angst of the outsider lost in a great landscape...Dave and the band were such exceptional musicians and story tellers. After so many years, the power of this song has diminished not one iota - as with a favourite book, I return to it and feel forever haunted, nourished and inspired.
right up there with this one............ ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DT3kLBCMxxE.html Australian Crawl - Daughters Of The Northern Coast (1982) ....sons of beaches ;)
I love this song so much. It hurts brutally to think that Dave McComb was just 24 by then; an absolute prodigy, such a gifted poet and a divine singer. God I wish he was still around.
_"So if you disappear out of view_ _You know I will never say goodbye_ _And though I try to forget it_ _You will make me call your name_ _And I'll shout it to the blue summer sky"_ Rivaled by this Hunter's and Collector's ckassic
I've lived outside Australia for about the last 15 years, but this is one of those intrinsically Australian songs that takes me back on a really gtutural, emotional level. Life is a wide open road, a beautiful thing indeed.
Simple chords, but the music is filled with such space and detail, befitting a song about the vastness of rhe Australian outback. The drums, the slide guitar, keyboards.
The amount of blank faces when people ask me who my favourite Aussie bands are and my response is "The Triffids, Saints, Go Betweens" is quite worrying
Damon Langley And I guarantee you that if you asked those people who their fave Aussie bands are, they'd reply with all these bands with British/Kiwi members... P.S. You are an Aussie, right? Just checking
If this song had been written and performed by Bruce Springsteen, it would be right up there among his biggest and best hits and EVERYBODY would have heard it and no doubt raved about it... what a huge injustice it was (and still is) that The Triffids were largely ignored in Australia.
Stunning track. Don't think the video anywhere near does it justice, but hey it was the 80s... If you grew up in Western Australia it must have felt like the loneliest place on Earth, and this sounds like the loneliest song ever written. Perfectly sums up the meloncholy of leaving someone you love behind, being free at last to go 'anyplace that you want to go' - and the feeling of isolation and utter loneliness that comes with it. RIP David McComb.
Esta cancion merece tener mas de 5 millones de vistas, es una obra maestra para los que amamos la soledad, la libertad, la paz y la armonia con Dios, la naturaleza y nosotros mismos
God Bless this beautiful Great Southern Land. We owe the Triffids big time! Geez it takes me back. I was 25yrs old then and I was into the Celibates. My GF was into the Triffids, but being the yob I was I NEVER saw them but made her endure the Celibates. I now know the error of my ways and I can't take it back other than to realise I was wrong to not experience it. Chicks eh? They have it all over we males intrinsically and instinctively!
Nah.back then my gf put a fkn communards tape in my car stereo Nek minit it was under the wheels of a STA bus (this was on george st sydney on a saturday night) 😎
From an album brimming with poetry and emotion, the quintessential song of loneliness and isolation. It sits in my top three Australian songs of all time, along with "Throw Your Arms Around Me" by Hunters & Collectors and "The Unguarded Moment" by The Church. I'm living overseas now, but hearing any of those songs takes me back to the land of my birth. Dave McComb, gone too soon!
Gidday Geoffery. You are spot on. Three brilliant songs written by wonderful song writers. I'm listening to Wide Open Road in Central Java, Indonesia where I've been living for years. It really can make me miss Perth at times but I have a good life here.
@Klaas Vos g'day mate, or as Filipinos would say, mabuhay! Midnight Oil were the more popular of the two in Australia. I understand that The Triffids were more popular in the UK and Europe. Midnight Oil had many songs that were very political, and indeed Peter Garrett, the lead singer of Midnight Oil, went on to become a Labor Party minister (Minister for the Environment of course!). Dave McComb, the lead singer and songwriter for The Triffids, on the other hand had a rather troubled life including drug addiction, a major car accident, and a heart transplant. His music was poetic and introspective mainly, and I would compare The Triffids to The Doors, while Midnight Oil might be more similar to say Greenday or R.E.M. The Triffids were never as popular in Australia as they deserved to be. You might also like to listen on RU-vid to some of their other classic songs, like "Bury Me Deep In Love" and "Estuary Bed". The album "Born Sandy Devotional" can also be found in its entirety on RU-vid, and you will understand upon listening why I compare The Triffids to The Doors.
@Klaas Vos what I meant about The Triffids was that they were more popular in Europe and the UK than they were in Australia. Midnight Oil was always more popular than them anywhere in the world. Great to hear you mention 1927. I still have their first album back in Australia, but yes I live in Mindanao, Philippines now. Of course, the most successful Aussie bands have been AC/DC and The Little River Band. If you haven't already, check out The Church, and Hunters and Collectors. The Whitlams are also worth a listen!
...Also the song is definitely an ANTHEM of road trips around this great land ! This and Lloyd Cole...perfect driving music...New England Highway, here we come !
Such a big sound. Evocative and stirring. Almost to tears. Of another time. Lost love maybe? I suddenly release I am lost in time. Lost in another time, that I don't want to leave, even though it stirs me to tears. A strange feeling. Sadness and joy intertwined. PS Saw this great band in 1989 at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney.
There has never been a more quintessential Australian song ever written. Mccomb simply nails the desolation and loneliness of isolation from someone and somethings that you truly love. The Chasm that exists between reality and longing can not be more beautifully expressed by anyone ever! Vale David McComb and truly wonderful Triffids
Incredible song which naturally conjures up images of Australia, but McComb's poetic brilliance betrays the real meaning of of the song which is about unrequited love. Pure genius.
How do you think it feels sleeping by yourself? when the one you love, the one you love is with someone else Then it's a wide open road It's a wide open road And now you can go any place that you ever wanted to go I wake up in the morning thinking I'm still by your side I reach out just to touch you then I realise It's a wide open road It's a wide open road
For a quintessentially Australian song, the Triffids’ Wide Open Road owes a lot to absence from Australia. The band travelled far and often from their Perth origins, first back and forth across the Nullarbor, then to London and northern Europe, where for a long time they were more widely appreciated than in their home country.
Las bandas de rock australianas en verdad si que tocaban hermoso, esta melodia hecha cancion demuestra el talento de los australianos en el rock, supera con creces al rock en español latino
I was 25, so I saw all of the great Perth Bands in the late 70's and all of the 80's at pub gigs. A great time for the Perth Music Scene. I could go any night of the week to see a live gig with these bands. And the old Sunday afternoon sessions were the best during summer. Cheers
lyrically brillant musically brilliant why do i need to find out about this band now they're fuckin amaziing the drums went off in my forehead the guns went off in my chest what the hell more do you want? why wasn't this more popular when david was alive
I'll introduce my Filipina wife and her male cousin who is my drinking mate to this song. Pity it's not on our videoke here in Mindanao Philippines! What a classic!
It's an utter mystery to me why so few back in the day got the genius of the Triffids and David McComb. Mysterious, wistful, melancholic, unforgettable. They could really make you feel something...
I’ve never understood how the Triffids weren’t as “hailed” as the Hoodoo’s or Oils, this song makes my chest ache and makes me yearn to hit the road, still ❤️
I’m 54 man I was young once in 1984 I worked all over the Northern Territory working on the road gangs operating scrapers and rollers on the Stuart highway life was easy then can you see now why I can’t move forward why I live in the past I hate it but look now my country has been sold off Covid19 all this crap! Yeah I’m older now but I can’t see any future man nothing !!! So I come here play this great song sit back and dream of the past on the Wide open Road..
Just listening to 'My Generation' with Dangerous Dave interviewing Paul Kelly, who rated this song as the quintessential Australian song. This song is on my play list when taking the bike out to the red centre, just me and the track. Timeless classic, we've all come here because we know isolation.
IMO one of the greatest bands ever and certainly one of the most underrated. They were also involved in the making of my favorite forgotten album, Bill Drummond's "the Man". The album Drummond released before he formed the infamous and world shaking KLF.
