Speaking words of wisdom

Here's Tom Waits in a recent Guardian interview:

I used to imagine that making it in music -- really making it in music -- is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jumprope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.

If Michael Nichols had been lurking around in a typical suburban Canberra street a couple of evenings ago he could have borne witness to five seven-to-eleven-year-olds running around in a backyard and singing "Does anybody here want to buy some cabbage / Right down this way / Does anybody here want some brown-skinned cabbage / Get down this way". (Okay that last line isn't right but I didn't want to spoil the moment.) And I know for a fact that three of them had never heard the actual song. Hanshalf Trio, you're in the culture.