Portraits & lemon wheels distract island resident

I took this dodgy photo of Lyndal

Grizelda has gone away for the entire weekend, left Friday morning and won't be back until Sunday night. I consider this to be incredibly excellent, good fortune on my part because I have been in need of uninterrupted time to work on my manuscript. All week I've been excited about having all this time, so excited I have named this weekend My Island.

I planned to spend every waking moment from Friday after work until Sunday night in a deliberately blissful state of writing reverie but as it so happened one or two things popped up. The first thing was work, stupid fucking work, I ended up working until almost eight at night, until Spencer came in the office door with a Rolling Stones poster and the pronouncement that he was bored and sick of waiting for me to finish. We had planned, earlier in the day, to travel together to official distraction number one.

Official distraction number one was having our portraits taken by the excellent photographer Lyndal Irons, who happens to be a friend of ours. The portraits were Lyndal's idea, not mine. When we got to her house the lounge room was transformed, huge light panel thingos and boxes that look like amps but aren't,  they were giant light-controlling box things. We all sat in the back yard drinking beer and yammering in our way until Lyndal called us in one at a time to take her shots. I don't like having my photo taken, I'm not at all photogenic, I'm all surface, no shadow, unlike Spencer who has more angles than a geometry lesson, but when Lyndal asks me I'll do it.

It was odd just sitting there, occasionally being directed to turn a little this way or another. Lyndal looked busy, changing settings on everything from her camera to the giant light-controlling boxes, moving big things on stands around. I have no idea at all about anything to do with photography, except this, when she works there is a beautiful intensity about her. She becomes transformed and it's mesmerising.

Official distraction number two came the next night. I had two to choose from, one party where Spencer was the dj and I'd know about a billion people. The kind of party that I might easily find myself still at as the sun rises or a party at Mr X's house where I would know almost no one and would most likely stay well within the limits of tame. I chose the wrong party if my purpose was partying. I went to Mr X's house to help his lovely housemate celebrate her thirtieth birthday. It was a mild party, the housemate's friends were over-groomed and simultaneously over-confident and embarrassed. The embarrassment became evident when the housemate declared it was time for an air guitar competition. There were grown men hiding behind the lounge to avoid being called up to compete. If I had declared such a competition at my birthday party a few weeks ago I'm fairly confident that at least three pieces of furniture would have been destroyed in the resulting mayhem. As it was Spencer, Madam Squeeze and  AHC performed a five minute interpretive dance piece, with moonwalking, P Street and E from next door waltzed mightily into the refrigerator, Abdullah did something entirely unexpected and I injured myself jumping around with a bucket on my head, and at least three highly shocking yet hilarious events occurred before midnight.

At Mr X's tonight three sets of people competed in an abashed manner and then rejoined the herd as quickly as possible. The poor birthday girl tried getting everybody to do it at once, and then tried to do just general dancing but nothing would work. They all stood there hoping not to be noticed. I felt sorry for the poor girl who is obviously quite a bit more fabulous than her general network of friends.

Around midnight a serious case of the yawns set in, just as Mr X reappeared from the kitchen with a mug of gin and tonic that included a whole wheel of lemon. I suppose I might have stayed and talked merrily with Mr X and the small band of people I have come to know but the yawns got hold of me mightily and skulked back through the back streets to The Peach. I wrote for a few more hours but now I'm giving up for the day. It's three in the morning and I've run out of steam.

I'm hoping tomorrow, with no scheduled official distractions, I can get back to island living.

Don't go out tonight

That old problem again. Walking home drunk and it's late and I'm tired and I'm smoking someone else's cigarettes and what a good time it was and then I 'm lost and then I'm home and then the keys and the door and then that's all of it finished and gone. Just nothing but me in an empty house where it is dark and an obligation for being quiet and not screaming up and down the hallway for just one more thing, just anything, something, someone to happen but all is untying shoelaces and remembering teeth and vowing about morning showers and nothing ever happens but the ordinary slow winding towards morning and one more day rattling up and down the hallway.

A letter to Spencer in Leipzig, Germany

Dear Spencer,


There's been a Bensplosion round these parts since you've been gone. I'm not talking just one Ben but many. There are many Bens. I have spent time with at least one Ben a day for the last week. In my head I refer to them by their surnames so as not to become confused, like I do with Hunter, and Wilson, and Worrad. I suppose you've being seeing a lot of those folk lately, say hi to them for me.

Gemma has been texting me words like 'Benglorious, Benerific and Benutopia'. She said I have Bens on a revolving schedule but it's entirely unintentional.

Diesel not truckers and a long-winded unrelated introduction to the promised Safe As Houses post

Times, they are a blurrin'. A weekend soaked through to the bone with exhaustion and mix'n'match pile of friends. The whole thing finished with a kebab eaten sitting on a plastic chair on Parramatta Rd with Mr X while he told me about his father and the war and the traffic tucked away for the night.

Before the kebab and the talk of war I made an adventure to the casino. Walking down the long guts of the place with Miles Davis on my mp3 player and those old brown lace-up shoes on my feet I looked around the lit calamity of the joint and the frocked up, clean-shirted crowd and wondered just what it in the fuck I was doing. Theoretically I went to write about the absurd 'Rock Lily' venue. Mr X's band has a residency there and the idea intrigued me. He took to the stage and I sat at a long empty table.

Diesel and his bass player asked if they could join me, but I didn't know who they were until they got up later to play. I'm not in the habit of recognising people I know let alone strangers. I made notes, got drunk on free beer handed to me again and again by Mr X and his band's rider. I rambled down a set of back stairs out into the night after an hour of non-stop Diesel. I was trying to shake off the impression that there's something very wrong with the world.

Back in the Inner West under roadside electric lights I gratefully devoured a kebab and conversation. They shut off the lights after a while so I carried home two borrowed books to read and a whole new set of memories.

Better memories than the ones I'm talking about in my houses project over here.

SLAMMATOWN - Tex Perkins and the unwashed floor

A sticky floor gives you something to hold on to, with your feet, when five drunk men knock you sideways as they muscle past carrying six beers each. It holds you, like a subterranean lover, enabling you to bend, wobble, flex and lean. Stuck fast you can hang on to your hard-won position, not too far from the bar, with a good view of the band. Everything will be beautiful but nothing lasts forever, when floors become too sticky two separate yet equally horrible disasters may occur.

Disaster One; feet stay put when the rest of you moves, embarrassingly bruising consequences ensue. Disaster Two; feet slip out of shoes, bare soles touch the raw horror of foul floor and convulsive shivers invade all modes of thought, forever. Here now is a sorry tale of how Disaster One defeated the universe and Tex Perkins was lost to me forever.

Continue reading...

Sham civilian drinks free beer with the band then writes a boring post about it or Gareth Liddiard might be something more than an ordinary man but I'm not quite sure about that yet

 Image by Chris Familton

 The other night I was sitting as a civilian at The Annandale watching bands and rubbing at the stamp on my wrist. It's been a while since I bothered to go to a gig I had to pay for. I pulled out my notebook out of habit, taking down the sentences music pushes through my head when I realised the whole rock'n'roll civilian feeling was a sham. Sure I paid like everyone else to get in to the venue but that's where the similarities ended.

I'm pretty sure most people don't make notes at gigs. I made a lap of the venue and spotted exactly no other notebooks so I gave up the sham and walked over to Gareth Liddiard to say hello. He said, "Come on Dale let's go upstairs for a durry". We were talking about taxes, new songs he's writing for his solo album and knock knock jokes when Spencer walked through the band room and out to the balcony where we were all sitting. He threw himself across a lounge. I kept hitting at the side of my head hoping to shake whatever was plaguing my ears out of my head. There was meandering and pointless conversation, free beer, I solved the mystery of The Faz* and of course there's always a photographer trying to get photos of Gareth sitting out on the balcony. Spencer is the only man I know who'll walk towards whoever is trying to take a shot to make it easier for them.

There was a formal party happening upstairs so we pushed our way down the hallway to get downstairs to watch Gareth do his solo set. I wanted to be standing right there, side of stage so I could watch to see if I could spot the moment this time. I've been trying to work out what happens when someone walks on stage and settles in front of the microphone. In between the time they turn their back on me and place one foot at the bottom of the stairs to go onstage and when they open their mouth to let the first sung syllable out something happens.  I've seen it happen to Spencer hundreds, possibly thousands of times. I used to wonder if he'd come back, if it would be my friend that descended the stairs back down to ordinary floor space or if he'd remain transformed.

I've never seen anyone more transformed than Gareth Liddiard but it's not as simple as it sounds. He'll talk, tell stories, make jokes and then drop suddenly into song as though the devil got hold of him and  every person standing in the room knows they're witnessing something more than music. I saw the moment again and again as he switched between banter and song. He was dropping in and out of his ordinary being without any hint of effort. I tried making notes, watching closer then closing my eyes but I came no closer to solving the riddle.

After the gig I was sitting over a cheeseburger with Spencer across the road from The Annandale. I could see the others still up on the balcony talking and drinking beer like nothing just happened. On reflection I suppose it's just the state of reverie made visible. This is the advantage that musicians, real ones and not just people who play music, have over the rest of us writers. It's just not very interesting to watch somebody type.

 * All night Spencer and Worrad had been talking about 'The Faz' as though he was a mystical being but they refused to tell me who he was. When Luke from The Laurels came into the room I asked him if he was The Faz and he said yes. Not very interesting to read about but still I am pleased that I managed to solve the riddle so easily.

Click here to read one of my reviews of The Drones, if you can be bothered...

Fake rock journalist breaks solo streak by busting in on The Drones

The life of a fake rock journalist is lonely sometimes. I've been rattling from gig to gig alone, just me, my cigarettes and my notebook but not tonight. By the time Pavement came out for their encore I'd had enough of solo time so I split, flagged down a taxi and made it over to The Annandale in time to see the end of The Drones' set. I didn't have a ticket so I just marched straight through the doors, around the bar and through the black curtain to side of stage. Spencer was standing there leaning against a partition and grinning like a goon. Lyndal was shooting the band and The rest of The Holy Soul were standing in line nodding their heads in unison, Madam Squeeze was out dancing with the crowd.

Spencer cheered when he saw me, held up his arms and made room for me beside him. I don't think I would have gotten away with such a spectacular level of sneaking in if Spencer hadn't just played support for The Drones about an hour ago. Luke from The Laurels was there and Loene Carmen looked like she had just snuck in too. I stuffed my earplugs back into my ears and let my eyes wander over the crowd. The Drones were cranking out their new version of stadium rock and the crowd was going just a little mental right down at front of stage. The huge speaker stacks were moving the air in my lungs for me and for the first time in months I thought now this is really something. After the show we all headed upstairs to drink, smoke, talk and watch that crazy old man named Doc stand on his head in front of a giant mirror. I forget sometimes how unbelievably lucky I am not just to see all these bands but to be there, right there, side of stage, front of stage, backstage, just there.

Ye gods and far out I was sitting next to a former Rolling Stones tour manager

I was having a relatively normal conversation with the excellent Mr Fenton when I noticed that his shoes were quite shiny. I had a scope around and confirmed that his were the shiniest shoes in the outside area at The Annandale so I asked him if he shined his shoes. You should have seen the look Spencer gave me. Mr Fenton was drinking a beer and looking at me in that quiet and quizzical way he has then gently shook his head. He'd just come offstage after playing a Billy Thorpe tribute for a book launch* where I was plagued by ghosts from the literary set but soothed, after a fashion, by live music. Mr Fenton said his shoes were shiny from use, beer swill and dropped cigarette ash. When I think about it that is the most rock'n'roll way to shine your shoes.




*"Billy Thorpe's Time On Earth" by Jason Walker

Bogans love You Am I

I suppose I am quite lucky that the first time I ever laid eyes on Tim Rogers was upstairs in the band room at The Annandale. He was walking around doing vocal warm up exercises then unexpectedly broke into a fair rendition of  I Will Always Love You. I was sitting on one of those Fender stools that allow you to rotate all the way around quite rapidly. Spencer was standing behind the bar fishing beer out of the ice bucket. I don't know why they have to put beer in an ice bucket when there is a perfectly good fridge. Tim Rogers is taller than me, I always thought he was a very short man but as it turns out he is not. Also his guitar tech smells like coconut and his tour manager has a tendency towards rudeness but then offers copious apologies after the rudeness has occurred. I believe she would benefit from swallowing the Little Book of Calm.

The Annandale is a bit shit really, the floor is never not sticky, the back stairs up to the band room are strange and I always run my arm across the exposed hot water pipe and jump at the shock. The sound tonight was, in places, shocking. I'm going to recommend they stop enticing the Sydney Morning Herald to write stupid articles about their fight with local council and start worrying about being a good venue again.

Anti-mashwoman at The Kill Devil Hills

It's the wrong side of midnight and I have to be up at 7, I left before the band finished playing but I'm not happy about it. I started the night out as a civilian but as soon as I discovered that The Annandale has installed soap dispensers in the ladies' toilets I decided to turn my notes into a review (which will theoretically be published sometime soon). I think I'm starting to love The Annandale, I used to think it was adequate with periods of shithouse sound but tonight there was soap and a chair with wheels. I managed to suffer only one mild disgrace when talking to members of bands such as Crow and The Mess Hall. I have a feeling The Annandale has taken pity on me, spread her beer-stained legs and offered me some shelter. I had nothing to do with the poor woman who tripped and fell down the stairs and lord knows if I was going to trip over anyone it would have been a Fenton or two. I had an awkward but passable conversation with John Fenton about kitchen stools and family photographs. He is using a scanner from 2001 but his computer is fairly new. I muttered strangely at Jed Kurzel who was interrupting my note-taking, I had to stuff my pen into the pockets of my jeans to shake his hand. I have no idea what he was saying to me, I was trying to grab the tail of a sentence as it flew through my head. I didn't manage to catch that sentence and I've been mourning its loss ever since. I suppose I should console myself with the fact that both he and I were rocking the double denim but mine slightly more stylish because I had made the addition of a silk tie.

Oh yes and the bands were quite good too.



For those people that like information the bands were:
Loene Carmen (solo)
The Holy Soul
The Kill Devil Hills

Glass hammers and the pleasures and perils of time travel

Returning from 1952 I hit a touch of turbulence and made a pit stop outside Nuremberg. It was decided amongst the locals that their cheese was in all ways superior to all French cheeses. I declined to taste the cheese and was cast out of space and time, I did not know the German word for lactose. Fortunately Spencer, Madam Squeeze and I had already made plans to visit Penrith which exists outside of space and time. My brother was there in a tuxedo playing the trombone with a glass bottle of cola at his feet. The band leader, noticing they were outside of space and time, had instructed them to remove jackets and ties. It was a casual affair. Shops with literal names were visible from all windows. Spencer was momentarily relieved. Last week he walked in Thaitanic expecting a pleasant ocean cruise but came away with chilli and lime stuck between his front teeth. It is important to note that Gareth Liddiard plays an important part in this tale.

I reconfigured the flux capacitor by wiring it directly to the Eye of Harmony. We reappeared at The Annandale where Gareth Liddiard sat perched on a stool. He began strumming at an acoustic guitar. The room fell silent and the crowd tilted their heads and set back their shoulders. You need to brace for this music or you will come undone. I tilted and braced but the onslaught was thorough. We all know he works with the geography of sound but I wasn't expecting such a terrible revelation. I've been hitting things with glass hammers.

I am a mashwoman

I seem to have a habit of accidentally injuring famous people. The latest installment to my List Of Embarrassing Incidents happened in a doorway at The Annandale. I wasn't watching where I was going. I was talking to Spencer over my right shoulder as we squeezed through the narrow side of stage passage to go out the back. I'm not sure what I was going to say as I was distracted by the incredible stench coming from the men's toilets. What in the hell do they do in there? My best guess is that they wee into jars then stick the jars in microwaves to heat the wee before pouring hot wee into bain maries to further encourage the stench. There might also be poo involved but if there is then it is rancid poo. See, I am still distracted by the stench. I personally smelled like cigarettes and nannas but I did this on purpose by smoking cigarettes, applying a nanna perfume called "Safari" and wearing a red lipstick that smells like lipstick.

Did I mention that I haven't slept for four days? I am sure that insomnia caused my sore feet. Well it was either insomnia or the incessant walking I am doing in a bid to tire myself out. Ah yes, the celebrity mashing. I was squishing sideways through the doorway at the same time as a tall man but I was bumped and mashed into him. It was the sort of full frontal contact that usually occurs immediately before sex or even during but in this case I had my dress on, also jeans and underpants and socks and shoes. I looked up and croaked an embarrassed 'sorry'. He looked slightly puzzled but uttered 'that's cool' and continued on his way. It took a moment but when I realised who he was I turned around to look again but found only Spencer jumping up and down with excitement and yelling "That was Peter Buck!".

Beats the hell out of the time I headbutted Paul Mac but I really should mention that I have never smelled a more fragrant man than Paul Mac. There is the exception of Tex Perkins but that's a different kind of smell altogether because in the immortal words of Helen Razer "Tex is sex" and he smells like it, in a good way.

Big heavy stuff(ed) sofa

The urge overtook me suddenly. I woke from a dream straight into a level ten urge for home improvement. I measured things then set out for the hardware shop but I didn't get far. Outside The Peach was a sofa, its old, faded and overstuffed and precisely the kind of thing I have been dreaming of. I knocked on The Cowboy's door and asked if he had a moment to help me carry it inside. I was worse than useless at handling the logistics of the operation so in the end Grizelda and The Cowboy were the ones cursing, puffing and sweating their way down the hall and into the library.

The Cowboy said he was playing at The Annandale tonight and ordinarily I would have gone but I'm resting my bruised and stupid self this evening on my new sofa in the library. I think its best if I stay in for the foreseeable future. I've decided I can't be trusted outside, in the real world, except for hardware shops, they seem to be ok.


Yeah that photo is a bit shit but do I look like I care?

This is not a review of the Damo Suzuki gig and Dale's Fake Birthday Party. Do you want a guitar and a petty job?

Tex Perkins is alive right now because my brother used to deliver pizza for a shop that owned a fleet of race cars. He also used to run fish from the airport but that's another story.

Ben Byrne and Ivan Lisyak opened the night with some laptop noise. It brought back memories of a thousand nights spent sitting on concrete gallery floors watching boys, including those boys, crouched behind laptops making noise and art while my back bent and butt froze. I whispered to Ron & Rita "I had eight years of this stuff". Rita made a face.

I want to be The Captain of Noise is what Tex Perkins must have thought to himself one day and now behold, he is. He stood in front of the Bumhead Orchestra in a tuxedo waving a knitting needle like a madman. The idea is he points at one of them and they make some kind of noise based on the wildness of his gestures and face. The overall effect is somewhat startling if lacking a little something in terms of noise art. Between songs he turned around to address the audience, this is where the swooning happened. Unfortunately it was me doing the swooning.

The Annandale is sticky at the best of times but Friday night they outdid themselves in the sticky department. Every time I wanted to move my feet I had to curl my toes and grip my shoes or one of two disastrous things would happen. Disaster one; my feet do not move but the rest of me does in a swan face plant. Disaster two; my feet come out of my shoes and step unprotected onto the stickiness.

Dear The Annandale,

Get a mop.

Dale

This is the part where my musical knowledge does its own faceplant. What happened was large in a monument to Superman kind of way. Damo Suzuki, Spencer with The Holy Soul (plus Petey-O, Andrew Gaddo and some other guy I don't know) walked onto stage set up their equipment and cracked open my ribs one at a time until the noise broke like the ocean. I hear that the Melbourne gig was a quiet affair but in Sydney the rock escaped and raged round inside the big room at The Annandale until even Spencer was dancing on stage. I was standing in the crowd cracked wide open and pulsing like a bird on a wire.

Tex Perkins was in the crowd right in front of me, luckily for me I was so distracted by what I was witnessing onstage that I only nearly swooned seven times. Not too bad really.

A woman in a white dress came up to me and said she liked my dress. She put her hand on my waist and said something that I didn't hear. I felt odd, it felt odd, it felt like she knew me but I didn't her. She smiled every time she saw me. She was a leitmotif.

Afterwards Gecko came back to The Peach and we sat on The Peach Deck drinking cups of tea. He's a walking cupboard of discombobulation opening and closing his internal drawers and hidden panels sometimes brandishing a shining swatch or an orb of darkness. He seems dangerous and frightening but only after he goes away. When I sit by him with mug in hand it feels like a conversation lifted from my blueprint. I'm not sure what to make of him really.

At the end of the night lying in bed staring at the sticky shoes on my bedroom floor I felt the music come back through me in spectacular waves of noise, light and fury. I just closed my eyes and smiled.

Home, home on The Dale (which is what some people call The Annandale Hotel)

The Cowboy left an inventive invitation to hear his band in my letterbox some time last night. He signed the note J---- "Cowboy" B----.

Psychic shower tiles and German surfing Professors of Literature

Ah ha! I thought, followed later by Oh no! This had nothing to do with the fact that I was standing in the middle of the road it was more shower related than that.

Grizelda and I walked to the end of the road to pick a mango, on the way home we swung by the IGA because I was desperate for a frozen dim sim, the kind you bring home from the shop then put in a pot of hot water. I haven't had one for ages but Rita was talking about them on the telephone and that's what set the whole thing rolling.

I walked with Grizelda because I wanted a dim sim; I cared not a fig for a mango. After mango picking we continued to the IGA but the IGA was closed. Most people say I G A but I prefer to pronounce it as a word that sounds like tiger. We plodded on with me grumbling incoherently about frozen things and pots of water while Grizelda held her mango as though it was a grenade. Out the front of the backpackers I stopped to cross the road. This is where the Ah ha! happened.

Across the road sitting in the driver's seat of an unusually small and decrepit red car was one of The Beautiful Boys. I've only met this one a few times. He looked up in surprise and called out to me. I walked straight into the middle of the road. I asked him if he was lost but he shook his head and pointed at his mobile phone. It was an odd conversation in that it wasn't really a conversation at all. We exchanged few words but inside my head went technicolour. I have no idea what I was thinking beyond Ah ha! until I had a shower.

In the shower I was thinking of a way to describe him, that and wishing I had shouted "Come to The Annandale on Friday night". He is like a German literary professor that surfs and then dries off and puts on tweeds is what I was thinking as I turned in the shower and placed my right palm flat against the glass of the shower screen. I thought that's odd, usually I turn left and put my right palm on the second tile down. I turned and placed my hand on the tile. Immediately I remembered the last time I had stood like that feeling at once that I had better move my hand or be overcome. I removed my hand, waited a moment then once again placed it on that tile. It is the tile of sorrow, memories hardened and sharpened their points. Feeling experimental I turned right and tested the spot on the glass screen. Happy spot, all Zissou, fuzzy cats, fig sorbet and German Surfing Professors of Literature.

The only sensible conclusion I can come to is that I have psychic shower tiles, that and I'm thinking odd thoughts about German Surfing Professors of Literature in small decrepit cars. Oh no!