Two gentlemen, neighbours, both living within sight and sound of the beautiful Liffey Falls, discovered that each had a passion for music.

So, they did the obvious thing: they started to prepare music programs to present on the local community radio.

David Hanslow had been a teacher, organized the Blue Mountains Blues Festival and then managed a record shop in Katoomba. 

His expectation was that, being in charge of a huge collection of records and CDs, he’d be spending less on buying them. He has had mixed success there.

As a teacher, David had brought several groups of students to walk the Overland Track and fell in love with the Tasmanian bush, so he moved here. 

When he moved to the Liffey area about five years ago, one of the first things he did was to set up his loungeroom quickly with all the equipment necessary to hear and enjoy and share plenty of music.

Then, along came Chris Thompson. Chris had been a mainland music producer and sound engineer for the past 45 years, thirty of them with the ABC and some freelance years. 

He had won heaps of awards for his work, including three ARIA awards. Among the luminaries with whom Chris worked were Paul Kelly, Nick Cave, The Wakes and Redgum (of ‘I was only nineteen’ fame). One of his great achievements was ‘The Big Day Out’.

The two chaps got together in the loungeroom for what they call “musical therapy for two old retired blokes” and radio listeners in the Meander Valley get to benefit as they enjoy their chatty, informed and fun time together.

Their program on MVFM 96.9 is The Liffey Lounge and may be heard on Fridays at 8 pm and Saturdays at 4 pm.

Their music covers many genres - blues, hard rock, country - but they claim that there are really only two genres of music: good and bad! They enjoy getting to pontificate about which pieces fit into each category.

When pressed to define their choice of music a little more they said that there was just word one to describe it – “indescribable.”