Stories

Interview by Raudie Mcleod and Marcus Pedersen

Miss Goldie is one of the most avid soul collectors in the Southern Hemisphere. With a collection in the 1000’s she has everything you would ever want to hear. Luckily we, the general populace is able to indulge in her rare soul collection on PBS FM for one hour every week. Her show ‘Boss Action’ graces the air waves every Saturday from 7pm till 8pm. If you are ever unsure of what to put when entertaining friends, having a bath or cleaning your fish bowl you can never go wrong with a session from Miss Goldie. If you were smart enough to witness Miss Goldie playing at the Floating Points Freedom Time party, then you know what an awesome addition she is to Off the Grid (OTG).

We sat down with Miss Goldie at a cafe in Brunswick and learnt a thing or two about how to dress chic, where we could buy four figure soul records and how 45 records are simply the best.

R & M Do you have any personal tactics to lower your own environmental foot print?

MG – I don’t drive a car, I grow my own veggies, I’d say I’m actually quite low impact. The only thing I buy are clothes and I only buy clothes that are made in first world countries. Oh shit, and old records. But they are recycled because I don’t buy anything new. My furniture is also recycled. I guess I have a pretty low foot print. Most of my records I have to ship from Britain which isn’t exactly environmental friendly, but I mean, I don’t really want to move to Britain, it’s just too good here.

R & M When did you start your show Boss Action for PBS FM and why did you fall for the genre of Soul and other similar genres?

MG- Ohhh that’s a good question. I don’t know… I don’t really remember; I don’t really pay much attention to dates. We can figure it out though. I started roughly a year after I moved to Melbourne (from Sydney). So I can’t tell you exactly how long it’s been going for, but around 8 or 9 years. Maybe I was just too excited to leave Sydney to remember the date. Sydney at the time was soul destroying, there was just nothing going on. Similar to what’s happening now I suppose. If you got a gig they wouldn’t pay you, you know it was just…shit. Sydney’s all style and no substance, if you like living by the beach and have lots of money then maybe it could be enjoyable. What was the second half of the question again? Oh yea and when did I fall for soul. In the early 80’s the first soul I loved was deep soul, but really I was just collecting everything. I came from a punk and hip hop background. The sort of music I’m still collecting today I would of started collecting about 15 years ago. This was due to three women who collected 45’s up in Sydney. This small group was about nerding out to music.

R & M If electricity ran out how would you go about living?

MG – I’d be miserable. I’m being honest. I wouldn’t be able to play records; I wouldn’t be able to watch Netflix… I couldn’t surf the net for ridiculously priced records. I tell you what, we should have started putting solar panels on roof tops 20 years ago. Australia has so much sun, why aren’t we utilising more of it. I mean Germany generates a higher percentage of solar then Australia and they have something like 3 months of sunlight per year haha. Some of the people in power need to remove their hands from certain dirty pockets and start investing into renewable energy. The countries in Europe that barely get enough sunlight had a light bulb moment and started investing in wind energy, fucking genius! To sum up your question without electricity I would panic.

R & M What’s been your most influential musical experience in Australia?

MG –Keb Darge was monumental. He put out funk compilations and I supported him a few times when he has been out. He is a very generous guy, but boy he swears like a trooper, a true Scot. He used some abomination of a word when I interviewed him on radio. I put my mic down without turning his off and I said ‘Ken you can’t swear like that on radio’, his reply was something along the lines of ‘I’m so f*cking sorry, oh f*ck’ and he was being totally genuine. When I supported him in Adelaide I caught up with him a few days before the gig. He just handed me his record box and said ‘just bring them to the gig’. I mean he had just handed me half a million dollars’ worth records so I could go through them all and check out all this music I didn’t know. He was just looking out for the soulies.

Off the Grid are honoured to have Miss Goldie on board for 2016. Limited second release tickets are moving fast via www.offthegrid.global

See you there!