we are all clapping, all of the time

Sometimes a girl has to put down her books and go in search of a song.

Fortunately, this girl didn't have to look very far.

Beyond the Bathroom Choir is a weekly singing group for people who just want to sing, whether or not they're great singers. You can come every week or just drop in when you feel like it. We all have a couple of drinks during the evening, meet new folk during the break and learn songs by ear (in four part harmonies).

I think we sounded pretty darn good during our performance at the Sydney Road Street Party last month.



beyondthebathroom.org

The title of this post came from a recent confusion while learning Pharrell's Happy. There's so much clapping in this song. Clapping in time, out of time... But Pippa set us straight. We are all clapping, all of the time. It'll probably be the title of our biography when we're famous singers beyond the bathroom.

50 years ago I bought you some cufflinks...

It was nineteen ninety something and I was probably fifteen or sixteen. My family went to Byron Bay, in the car. It was hot and we ate sugar cane bought from the side of the road. We alternated between Triple J and 774. Our parents played their tapes: The Travelling Wilburys, Cat Stevens ... and Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust album. It's the soundtrack to that holiday; I played it on repeat - kids, what I mean is I just kept turning the cassette around over and over again.

I fell for her voice (though sometimes giggle at its rawther dramatic vibrato) and her look, her activism, her passion ... and her proximity to his bobness ... And now I'm seeing her live in concert! This Friday - tonight, now! More a singer than a really beautiful lyricist, but I do still absolutely adore this song in particular:

Diamonds and Rust

Well I'll be damned

Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call

And here I sit, hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
"My poetry was lousy", you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the Midwest

Ten years ago
I bought you some cuff links
You brought me something
And we both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust

You burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms

And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed

Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling all around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You, who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague

'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
I once loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
Well, I've already paid

O that unwashed phenomenon, so good with words & keeping things vague...

away from home and back again

Heading Home

Pushing it to a hundred

flanked by paperbacks and pines.

Their branches tremble,

startled by the high-beam halo.

Velvet Underground

drowning out the engine.

Singing the choruses and

dipping lights for oncomers.

Mumbling the verses

and slowing to eighty

through Balnarring and Hastings.

heading for the city,

the freeway and the lights.

Leaving the winter coast

and the house without curtains

for another weekend.

 

- Adam Ford, Not Quite the Man for the Job (buy it here)

Reading this, I'm reminded of the song Animals by The Guild League, which begins:

Clouds of feathers fleece and foam,
halfway to my childhood home.
In the car and on my own,
white lines where the road is sewn.
Stitches holding down the car,
beside the sun under the stars.
Through the evening coloured so
like pink champagne and eye-shadow.

It's on their album Inner North (buy it here)

2012 bests

lots of people are making their lists of 2012 best reads and if i made a list it would go on forever, so i've decided to go with just two: a YA best and one grown-up one. as it happens, one is the first book i read this year, the other is the last. this is a kind of symmetry i like. one was first published in australia in 2012, the other is from a couple of years ago, but which i only just got around to reading.

there were many amazing YA titles this year (and A LOT of australian ones), but i'm going with daniel handler's why we broke up, illustrated by maira kalman. i love these guys; loved their collaboration on the picture book 13 words. when i read this i was just about to start work at hardie grant egmont and it made me feel so chuffed that my new workplace had chosen to be the australian home for this book. it made me feel confident that we would get along.

why we broke up

min green and ed slaterton are breaking up, so min is writing ed a letter and giving him a box. inside the box is why they broke up. two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.

beginning to end, all the angst and heartbreak included, this was a delight. all the (made-up) films and movie stars, the references that min made and which baffled ed. the conversations that went around and around, the tangents and segues. why we broke up is a brilliantly written and smart book - plus, so perfectly teenage. min is hyperbolic, feels things so deeply. she's over-dramatic (some might say) and i know there were many adult YA readers who didn't like this one at all. and this, above all, is why i love this book so: a teenager's life should often exclude or baffle an adult and i felt that min and ed and al all had the space to exist as teenagers and as people. they felt real, they spoke their thoughts and got things wrong. they were unlikable, precocious and whimiscal (angsty). and i loved them for it.

***

i don't read a lot of books for grown ups, and even more rarely do i read non-fiction. but i've been coveting patti smith's memoir just kids for a month or so now, drawing it out and savouring it. i finished it this morning; i loved it.

just kids

just kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to new york city during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. a true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

smith's prose is dreamy and yet straightforward, it's intimate but not self-exploitative. i knew so little about her life, and littler still about her relationship with robert mapplethorpe. this was such a special book. i loved the way she spoke about all those crazy cats who inhabited manhattan and brooklyn and paris in the 60s and 70s - it was just life, it never felt like she was name-dropping or big-noting. i appreciated the solemn, serious and dedicated way she approached her art. i think this is one i will read again and again.

yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. it had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. perhaps it was an awereness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. sometimes i just wanted to raise my hands and stop. but stop what? maybe just growing up. (p.104)

happy new year!

the gentler side of mankind's death wish

To be honest, there's a whiff of arrogant yet self-deprecating affectation about Father John Misty. His lyrics are clever, fun and sometimes moving, though I'm not sure how to interpret his attitude to women.

But he has got one hell of a voice. He is also an absolutely charismatic, beguiling performer (with top dance moves) and his album is compulsively listenable. I particularly enjoy this song for its wry little message.

Now I'm Learning to Love the War, Father John Misty

Try not to think so much about
The truly staggering amount
of oil
that it takes to make a record
All the shipping,
the vinyl,
the cellophane lining
The high gloss
The tape and
the gear

Try not to become too consumed
With what's a criminal volume
of oil
that it takes to paint a portrait

The acrylic,
the varnish
Aluminum tubes filled with latex
The solvents and dye

Let's just call this what it is:
The gentler side of mankind's death wish
When it's my time to go
I'm going to leave behind things that won't decompose

Try not to dwell so much upon
How it won't be so very long
from now
that they laugh at us for selling
A bunch of 15-year-olds
made from dinosaur bones
singing "oh yeah"
Again
and
again
Right up to the end

I'll just call this what it is:
My vanity gone wild with my crisis
One day this all will repeat
I sure hope they make something useful out of me

A superior sound quality version is found on his album Fear Fun.

Father John Misty lives here.

yes!

so apparently it is july

it's cold where i am,

not actually taken this winter, but in january 2006 at a famous castle in france. this is how cold i feel though

but we built a tent in the lounge room.

this is actually my house. we are real grown ups

it's super hot where the rejectionist is

here are some texts from jane eyre

lala over at the joy of mediocrity saw take this waltz and had the same reaction as me. it was so beautifully filmed, a brilliant soundtrack, great cast ... but just a little over-wrought and seemed to take itself quite seriously. the beautiful michelle williams' character margo was really quite unlikable, the handsome stranger kind of dull. there were elongated silences that were supposed to be Poignant but could have used banter. and early on margo gives a little speech that basically baldly states the entire subtext of her character and this was a moment we could have used a Poignant Silence.

i have sonya hartnett's latest book to read, as well as sarah waters' fingersmith and courtney summers' this is not a test, but i spend most of my time on suri's burn book and when in melbourne.

but last night i saw simone felice and josh ritter play and sing and read at readings carlton. it was very nice.

some music in your book, madame?

king dork, frank portman

We had been working pretty hard to get the band ready for the Festival of Lights. We weren't sounding too bad. It was still pretty rough, but, in our better moment, we sounded kind of like Buddy Holly meets Thin Lizzy with a punk rock sensibility and a slight psychedelic edge, like UFO playing Velvet Underground songs or something.

about a girl & mahalia, joanne horniman

When she'd played four songs straight she paused. She had kicked off her black rubber thongs and was sitting on a chair in the spotlight barefoot, bare-shouldered, dark-haired, with her white guitar cradled in her arms like a lover. She drummed her feet lightly on the floor, staring into space as though considering what to play next.

It was a simple, dignified song, sung with strength and purpose. Eliza improvised, and sang on, oblivious of Matt standing in the shadows, listening. She played with the notes, bent them and warbled them, whispered them, and cried them out, her whole body, her mouth and lungs and chest an instrument for the sound.

after january, nick earls

This is just another item on the growing list of things I am unlikely to tell the people I went to school with when I see them next. So what did you do at the coast? Well, one day I sat on a stool in the hinterland and a hippy family played pop songs for me.
That was great, Cliff says. What did you think Alex?
Yeah, really good.
So, do you sing?
Me? No.
I think you might, F says. I think you might be about to.

if you like a bit of music in yr books, there are many others i'd recommend:

if i stay, gayle foreman, just listen, sarah dessen, nick and norah's infinite playlist, rachel cohn & david levithan, queen of the night, leanne hall (wolfboy is in band), amy and roger's epic detour, morgan matson, rpm, noel mengel, the true story of butterfish, nick earls
(not a complete list)

(badges by Carrie the Excellent via the sticky institute, lyrics by mr darren hanlon and messieurs donald, monnone and white aka the lucksmiths)

the golden age of aviation

Cath Crowley recently posted a playlist for Graffiti Moon, which included Sunlight in a Jar by The Lucksmiths.

Overblown libretto and a sumptuous score
Could never contain the contradictions I adore
We can just be chaos and then something aligns
It's so hard to contain, maintain it or define it

So, inspired, I thought what's better on a ever-so-slightly grey Sunday than a little Luckmiths singalong?

From the album Staring at the Sky, The Golden Age of Aviation is one of my all-time favourite Luckies songs*.



The Golden Age of Aviation

For argument’s sake let’s pretend we could stop arguing
Over which of us is wrong and why it isn’t you
We’re barely awake before your head’s up in the clouds again
There’s nothing you like more than having nothing much to do

Stood akimbo
Staring out the window at the sky

All afternoon you’ve been buried in a biography
Of an aviatrix lost at sea, never to be found
Holed up in your room, holding out for an apology
But gravity will get to you eventually

You’ll come down from upstairs again
With all those model aeroplanes

And the novelty wore off
When the pilots still wore goggles
But your eyes look skywards
And your mind still boggles

I’m going grey but you look younger than a year ago
When you put your hair in pigtails and you put your hand in mine
We’ll be OK - I’m happy when you’re here
But oh, your smile can seem as far away as once upon a time

You can’t help it
Hopelessly nostalgic

A passing interest in the past
But I think it’s going to last a little longer
I’ll hold on to your hand as tightly as I can
But modelling glue is stronger

The novelty wore off
When the pilots still wore goggles
But your eyes look skywards
And your mind still boggles
Through frequent flyers’ disappointments and disasters
The golden age of aviation never lost its lustre

*I love planes, am the first to look skyward at the sound of one.
Here's the 'Little Ripper', my grandfather's Piper Arrow.
If you ever want to get me a present, I would like to go up in a biplane.

here comes the sun

'Kate!' I hear you saying. 'What are you doing? Why no blog?' And here's me, just a-shruggin' and mumbling, 'I dunno, stuff, work, reading, summer, I dunno whatevs. Anyway, you're not my real mum!'

Here are some of the things I've been reading and watching and listening to and being generally inspired by lately:

Forever YA posted a list of the top ten british shows you could be watching, which made me laugh and reminisce. And I pop Misfits on there as the eleventh show for being hilarious and badass...and in a large part due to this scene (warning: bad swears! and spoilers!) and also the brilliantly anachronistic Ashes to Ashes for DCI Gene Hunt and all the blue eyeshadow and amazing music.

Also, one of my favourite anonymous and inspiring bloggers - The Intern - has outed herself and, extra-excitingly, has a YA book on the way.

And I still can't stop looking at the ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS.

I've been secondhand book shopping at Lost and Found in Brunswick:

Read as much as you can, and write. Keep notebooks. Be open to everything in the world. Don't give up. Tenacity is the most valuable asset for a writer.

This is a quote from an interview with Joanne Horniman here. I keep it on the wall next to Kerouac's Rules for Spontaneous Prose. I may be failing NaNoWriMo but am practicing tenacity.

The George Harrison documentary Living in the Material World by Martin Scorsese was a four hour cinema experience (including interval) that I hope you didn't miss (though I think you have, but just get the DVD). It is a fabulous look into his life, the contradictions in his personality and his relationship to death and dying. The music, the drugs, the religion. His beautiful son...

Then watch this scene from A Hard Day's Night. It is a hilarious and curious little jibe...maybe even relevant to today's hipsters, hmm? I challenge you not to laugh at lines like "the new thing is to care passionately and be right-wing".



I am also trying to read Haruki Murakami's new book 1Q84. But I'm worried I will drop it on my face while I'm reading in bed and it will kill me with its weighty tome-ness.

Last, but not least, our favorite Witty Waiter down at A Minor Place recorded this song, Against the Grain, and a guy called Dropbear has made this incredible stopmotion video to go along with it. Pencils! What a mad dog. Enjoy.

Hudson - Against The Grain from Dropbear on Vimeo.

she's got sad machine gun eyes

Simone Felice wooed the Northcote Social Club this Wednesday with his folksy, countryish, acoustic singer-songwriter-poet songs performed with all his heart* and a lot of dry humour and the glimmer of mischievous evil in his eyes. He's a showman, for sure, sitting up on stage on his stool in his motorcycle boots, interrupting himself mid-song to explain things (and even though I think these asides have just become part of the show he's so endearing you don't even care) and he's a little bit Dylan, a little bit Springsteen and makes the audience feel pretty darn special. He played all my faves: Don't Wake the Scarecrow, If You Ever Get Famous (prefaced by a little "fame, i'm gonna live forever" spoken word jibe), One More American Song, Radio Song...and more, and more, then finished with the best Springsteen/Dylan/Neil Young/Amazing Grace singalong bonanza.

Well, the man cries,
"Who gives a damn when a tramp dies?"
But I loved you there in the lamp light
With your bare thighs
And the halo of your hair alive

And all my lifelong
I'll never shake off your siren song
And all of your talk about dying young
With an iron lung and that crazy way

You said, "Simon,
I think I might stay here with Scarecrow tonight
Simon, I think I'm gonna stay here with Scarecrow tonight."


Simone's book Black Jesus is out now. It's the story of a young American marine returned, blinded, from the war in Iraq. Answering only to the nickname Black Jesus (because he was so white, or maybe because his surname was White) he's back home in his shitty upstate New York town with his mother, who has moved into the closed-down Dairy Queen after their trailer home burned up. Then there are chapters from a young woman riding across the country on her moped with pretty much only a broken leg and the last of her stripping money to get her anywhere. Am only a few chapters in and, like Simone's songs, this book is written with spare but loaded prose that evokes the sad tragedy of a strange new broken America. "Amazing I can even read," he said before performing an excerpt, "considering the third world country I come from."

Have a squiz at Shaky, a song he recorded with his band the Duke and the King. It's what he called a "put down your grenade launcher and shake your ass song". This film clip is just ace.

Simone's website.

I saw his bros in action earlier this year. I love them too. Remember?.

*the same wonky heart that prevented him visiting us last year.

allez viens je t'emmene au vent

Feeling awfully lazy. I blame the blue skies and sunshine.

Went along to the Melbourne Writers Festy today and wandered in and out of a couple of sessions, slightly vaguely. Nick Earls is just great, funny and friendly and everything he says makes such sense and I really felt like writing a novel was achievable for about fifteen minutes there. Maggie Stiefvater was extremely energetic and spoke so fast sometimes I missed what she was saying but then she explained that she just wanted to write books that made people so emotional that they cried - the big snotty sobbing kind of crying - and this amused me. I was really impressed with the questions the audience asked.

I’ve been reading the blog Hyperbole and a Half quite obsessively because Allie is hilarious and self-deprecating and likes grammar and dogs. I like this blog alot.

In reading news, Kate Constable's Crow Country is amazing. I wrote a little thing about it on the Younger Sun blog. You can read Kate's blog here.

Rereading Mahalia and feeling a funny old feeling now that I have heard Jo Horniman pronounce it ma-HAY-lia when i’ve been pronouncing it ma-HAH-lia this whole time. It's a feeling sort of like an existential crisis plus foolishness.

A friend came home from Africa and brought back the DVD of Spud for us to watch. This is v exciting because this is one of the funniest books I have ever read. The funniest three books I've ever read.

And then I looked at some baby elephants thanks to my Marvellous friend's twitter link.

All these things made me feel better about the Chelsea Hotel closing down without me ever getting to stay there and how BHP is going to make ooh a roughly TWENTY BILLION DOLLAR profit this year and how the newspapers hardly ever publish any articles about young adult literature.

But anyway. Here you can watch and listen to Louise Attaque's song Je t'emmene au vent. It is a supremely daggy film clip but a top song.

burn down the disco / hang the blessed dj

i thought you all, though especially aimee, might like this. i loved reading her desert island discs blog post the other day...and haven't really left youtube since...

here are the smiths, in 1986, and two guys in blue shirts near the front doing...

the. best. dancing. ever.



i discovered this through charlie and caroline's blog. they're trying to find out who the air guitar-playing schoolboy is. WHERE ARE YOU NOW, KID?

just for the loveliness

darren hanlon sings his song home (from album i will love you at all, which i reviewed here) on a beach. in spain. how wonderful.

DARREN HANLON - HOME from WAAAU.TV on Vimeo.

visit daz's website.

review : the taste of apple

Pedro Jones is lost. Abandoned by his father and forced into commission housing with his Filipino immigrant mother, the future seems bleak. But when Pedro meets the 'mad' street busker, Johnny Lazzaro, and gets involved with the East Timor freedom movement, life takes an unexpected detour. James Laidler deftly crafts a cast of vivid characters in this gritty story of self discovery, justice and belonging.

the taste of apple is the story of Pedro. It opens to him standing on the roof of his council flat home in Richmond, looking out over the city, reminding himself to breathe.

‘I take my heart
…
and nail it
to the Southern Cross.’

It is a heartfelt novel, raw and painful. Pedro’s left to live with his Filipino-bride, devout Catholic, enigmatic mother, after his father leaves one Christmas, in a building full of down-and-outs, refugees and junkies. He’s a boy trying to become a man. the taste of apple travels a long path, covers a lot of terrain from Heidelberg to Richmond to Colac – and looks into the people and the events of East Timor, a country so close to Australia and so seldom in our collective consciousness. Pedro becomes involved in a local community group who work to raise awareness of what has happened in East Timor through the crazy busker Johnny, whose mother was killed in the 1991 Dili massacre and whose father remains imprisoned in a Timor gaol and who opens Pedro's eyes to the world around him.

the taste of apple lies somewhere between a traditional verse novel and a typical prose novel. The author, James, calls it ‘poetic prose’. More of the action and events are narrated than I would have expected, and perhaps some of the poems and scenes could have been tighter, but I think this kind of novel help to bridge a reader unused to a verse novel.

The CD, a collaboration between the author and Warrnambool musician Don Stewart, is great - many of the tracks quite beautiful and evocative and it definitely adds to the experience. However, I found it a little tricky, having to ensure I was at home or had my portable listening device* on me in order to read and listen at the same time, providing, or requiring, a different reading experience (ie. not snatching five minutes in the bank line, ten minutes over a sneaky mid-afternoon coffee) than usual.

I really enjoyed reading the taste of apple, primarily for its honesty and emotion. Pedro has such a distinctive voice and the reader is with him, fiercely so, right from the get-go. I love the exploration of social justice, and how – despite the things that come to pass – there’s hope.

the taste of apple is published by Interactive Press, a small independent Australian publisher. you can buy it here.

visit james' website.

Jess from The Tales Compendium has written a very thorough review, I'd really recommend you go have a read.

*iiiiiiiiiDidn't want this to be an advertisement for any fruit companies.

she keeps a 38 smith and wesson at her side

the felice brothers melbourne show at the prince of wales, st kilda

If Bob was far away, then The Felice Brothers were the opposite. In my face. Steppin' on my toes (literally. Ian jumped off the stage and cheered his own band from the crowd) and LOUD. Some of their enthusiastic singer-spit even flew at us and we didn't even mind, because everyone was having a good time...except that douchebag who was being an annoying douchy loser, but even he I forgot, once the guys came out and launched into Murder by Mistletoe - honestly, an interesting, slow choice for an opener, but we just went with it. And fracks, it was a great show.


These self-confessed "dirtbags from New York" looked a little, um...sleepy...when they first came onstage but distinguished themselves well and leapt around stage, talking to us, talking to one another in between the songs. James and his piano accordion were spectacular, in particular his solo song Got What I Need (I think many of us fell in love with him). And the bread thrown into the audience? Fabulously hilarious! 'Take this bread if you need it friend...'

The crowd were all fans (well, those at the. very. front. row. where we were, err were) and of all ages. They came back on for a rambunctious encore, including a great scrappy version of Frankie's Gun. Then, a second (and hard-earned, on our part) encore of Whiskey in my Whiskey. I could have stayed all night. And a friend pinched the set list.

Love 'em.

My baby told me, darling
If you can't get a pardon better get a parole
I told her I'd be out by morning
When the sun is dawning
With a money roll
Oh-wee that gal's the gal for me
She loves me tenderly
-- love me tenderly

his bobness : live in melbourne

the two men sitting behind me at rod laver arena discussed the furore that followed dylan going electric at newport in '65, but of course his tour in australia in '66, well there's just not a lot written on it...i love a dylan tragic. they were out in force at the rod laver arena last wednesday.

papa bear and i just hoped bob would sing something we could recognise. he did. in his own special way: a voice that sounds like he's gargling whiskey and gravel, a spiffy suit and hat and a couple of rockin' dance moves. i swear it's contrariness that sends his songs spinning in a new arrangement every year. highlights for me were tangled up in blue and simple twist of fate. they were closer to the originals and the band didn't bang on too loud or too long.

rod laver arena sucks though. bob was just too far away. so impersonal. and chilly. i don't think i shall go there again. it had none of the ambiance of other old rocker concerts i've been to.

did i say that bob was far away? (click to enlarge) though the lighting was fantastic, in the absence of screens (damn your contrariness bob!) his silhouette was uplit and projected large onto the back of the stage - i could philosophise on the many meanings behind this, and interpreted from this, larger-than-life, a false modesty, ...

he finished the evening with forever young. a beautiful song, which is now a fab children's book with great illustrations, full of references to his songs and his life. perfect for the offspring of dylan tragics.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young

trailer for the book:

reviews of the concert here and here.

meredith music festival 2010

day one:
we are so hip we had to climb a tree to demonstrate to the masses. then we break a hip trying to get down while wearing masks and wellies.

little red. because i've been going to see them since way back when and they are still mega-nerds.

day two: i consider getting a massage, but it seems like a risky move.

the beautiful afternoon sun shines through the gums and pines...

terrible quality photo of neil finn as he invites anyone who can play guitar a bit to come up on stage and play a song with him and a young lad called matthew, who we predict will get so lucky post-show, is the winner.

day three:
i find who i have been looking for and the weekend is complete.

meredith. it was a gas.

leonard cohen at hanging rock

the beautiful hanging rock

what a crowd! (i felt very young, it was like being at PFFF - excellent!)

dan sultan's sexy sultry snarl (they ought to have turned his mic up and let him sing more than five songs!)

the magnifique full moon (and fairy lights)

the wonderful man himself. he promised to give us everything he had and surely he did. he was humble and spritely and generous and magic. the best day i've had in a long time.*

highlights:

-our picnic
-how quick it was to get a beer
-hanging rock itself
-leonard skipping off stage
-leonard looking so dapper
-the back-up singers, the webb sisters (especially their cartwheels and them singing if it be your will)
-suzanne, so long marianne and the future - hells, all the songs were my favourite.


*i know a lot of people had trouble getting out of the venue at the end of the night and they are very cranky now. there were fights on the train back to melbourne too, apparently. (one teenager i spoke with on monday said she was so ashamed and thought "what would leonard think of us?!") we didn't have these probs as i was with someone who had a disabled parking ticket and we were outta there in 20mins, max. i hope people still remember how amazing the show was in spite of the loooooong exit strategy.

UPDATE: so i've been observing my stats this morning (not euphemism)...dear people who are getting here via some facebook site, where are you coming from?! leave me a comment. it is tres bizarre.

punter's club reunion show

check it out!

before it was called bimbos and served cheap pizzas to the drunken masses (hey, before brunswick street was gentrified and filled with colour-by-numbers hipsters and tourists) the building that sits on the corner of brunswick and rose streets was an excellent live music venue called the punters club. when it closed, people were sad. but now there's a couple of nights for nostalgia and tribute and hopefully much drunkenness and music.

and so, in tribute, (as always) THE LUCKSMITHS:

Requiem for the Punter's Club

Have you been drinking?
'Cause it's not too late to start
There's still a week
Before they come and pull the place apart
And I was thinking
I have sorrows to be drowned
Too complete to contemplate
Without a friend around

On Brunswick Street the bits of broken glass
Sparkle brighter than the six or seven stars

And I'm reminded
Of a Sunday afternoon
How the sunlight caught the cigarette smoke
Curling through the room
And you behind it
Your hair in rubber bands
One more for the footpath
And we walked home holding hands

Like the weekenders and window-shoppers do
We were happier than either of us knew

So act surprised
It's been a while since I came calling
I know it's late
But old times' sake and all that junk
I'll be alright
We'll make tonight tomorrow morning

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows you're drunk