Well, I’ll be damned! Cabaret singer and songwriter extraordinaire Amanda McBroom was here and I missed her, again. Unfortunately it was last year.

McBroom wrote The Rose for Bette Middler and has been covered by Judy Collins (where I first heard of her) and others. As a performer she has covered songs by Jacques Brel and jazz greats.

I was going to write a review of her best of record but got stuck halfway through when the song called Wheels got stuck in my head.

I started to learn it and started tearing up – it’s so sad. Yet McBroom has an innate knowledge of life cycles. It’s like hearing Dreaming all over again. I first heard that song on a Judy Collins record from 1990, Fires of Eden. The song was miraculous – sad but sweet.

McBroom doesn’t have a voice like Collins but her songs are something to be savoured. I’m glad somebody thought to put out a best of in 1999. The album called Portraits has a lot of could-have’been hits on it. There are also two hits for others, The Rose and The Best Is Yet To Come.

And for McBroom, now 70, it definitely is. She keeps very busy even though I missed out on seeing her in little old New Zealand.