sshhhhhhhhh

I am cheered by the lack of notice this page has gotten. It remains an experiment. I shall continue cruising down the river, firing shots into the dense jungle on both sides. shots into the void. It remains pure and unsullied , No distortions or sudden , creepy shadows moving over the page as I write.
I had three hours sleep on Friday night/Saturday morning and then caught a plane to Perh which is two hours backwards on the clock. I stayed in a guest house run by a woman called Sappho. The room had a mezzanine/loft type bed which was accessed via stairs that were as steep as anything in Amsterdam. Very high. I did a two set gig at Mojos, probbaly two hours of playing with my 12 string acoustic. I trialled my new Aphex acoustic exciter which allows you to dial up and blend in "big bottom" and "aural excitement". I believed it and it worked. My wooden , highly strung racing camel had some funk and some zing. I hung on at first and by a few songs in I was taking the reins and flying.
There was a man there who said I had been to school with him. His name was "Deathmore". I'm sure I would have remembered and befriended a name like that. Must have been the chaotic pubic years. The pubic wars.While we talked, my nose started to bleed. I walked down to the beach and stood in the dark listening to the crashing waves and breathing some sea air for about half an hour. I got back to the club and did the gig, feeling vulnerable.
I arrived back at the loft and a little house dog called Hef was jumping up and down to meet me.
I slept like a log and negotiated the climb twice during the night.
The next day I had a lovely breakfast of fruit , coffee, juice and toast and drove to a place called Pinjarra.
It took me three hours to get there. Along the way there was a detour as two helicopters battled some sort of fire in the furtherest Perth/Fremantle suburbs. Helicopters wheeling above the suburban streets picking up water from the sea and dropping it on the blaze. I sat in a jam in endless looping West Australian housing cul de sacs for ages watching the people come out of there houses to look at something actuually happenning and listening to the football. I got to Pinjarra which was a wide spot in the road and then a dead end . I consulted my map and directions and eventually found the venue deep within a real estate operation that seemed to be half finished and still on the drawing boards from the road. I went past the golf club and the winery and the private zoo and the display homes to find the pub. It was said to be beside a river but that was a dry bed behind the trees and down a hollow in the earth.
I played for an hour and a half straight to a crowd of people who sat around on folding chairs or simply laid out on the lawn. It was a lovely day out. Things are really booming out west. Thats how its told to the rest of us and it really seems to be the case.

nice room

I have no idea what the point of a blog is. Who its for etc. I get enough self expression from writing and playing music and guiding that stuff out into open waters or safe looking harbours. I don't think I'll be seeking any software ( of which I'm sure it exists) to alert people of this stuff I'm hanging up here. Here in this lovely, empty room. I have played to empty rooms before.
Everybody likes empty theatres. I mean theatres in the daylight hours. I am treating this as an "audient void" which is a lovely turn of phrase I copped from HP Lovecraft. I take it to mean a listening emptiness. A vacuum like space in which things resonate purely. The room gets a bit of its own character and actually begins to effect the living sounds which are drawn near to it. They become excited as they hover tremulously on the edge of the doorway, the event horizon.
Yes, its nice in here. Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.......

butchers,bakers,millers,blacksmith, sexmith?

Went to see Ron Sexsmith at the Corner hotel in Richmond. Its black cube which is the premier rock club in Melbourne due to its location and its size. People know where it is. Its right next to the station which is a junction for a lot of suburban lines and is also the closest stop to the MCG. I first went there in about 1989. It was a bikers pub then and they had the run of the joint. Music existed on the margins. Now its a rock club and there is an entrance and exit.Everybodys in on it. No barbarians grunting and bellowing upstairs as they snort speed from their Bowie knives and no pizzas being expressed through the crowd and through the doors crossed with pool cues.
Saw Love play there a couple of years ago and they trancended the situation. Music sounds great in there. They sounded spectacular. Also saw Pere Ubu doing their "Modern Dance" set there and the Dictators as well. KINGS! The joint has some gteat acts.
Ron Sexsmith is another to add to that. I have two of his albums, the one with "idiot boy" on it and the follow up , "blue boy" which was produced by Steve Earle. He casually mentioned that he was embarassed that his new album wasn't out in time enough for the tour. He proceeded to play an hour or more of songs that were so fresh and direct that they existed and hung in the air and then blew away as he conjured another cloud from the air inside him. It was a privelege to be there. Acoustic guitar, bass and drums. No bass amp for the guitar, just a modelling kind of pedal. No guitar changes, just a Taylor acoustic for the whole set with a brief trip to an electric piano. Ron has great songs and sings across the lines, the chords, in a free and smoky way that is simply amazing. A bit like Tim Hardin but a lot more songs in his book. He is coming at the music rom an area of rare expertise and confidence. He is playful where others begin in a sweat and grab at the chords and notes and try desperately to fill up the spaces. There are no other mics, no harmony vocals, just the bass, drums and the acoustic. In lesser hands it would be pretty dull. He picks the strings with his fingers, no plectrum.
Its rare to see such blazing talent.

where the blog title comes from

I had no idea what to string up above the page. This morning I was reading "the tree of smoke" by Denis Johnson". I have read "already dead" by him a few years ago. That one was like a classic Californian crime thriller, only it was set in blinding daylight instead of Marlowes night and everybody , absolutely everybody, was stoned on marijuana or coke.
This is a Vietnam story. I read the page with the young North Vietnamese man sitting in a camp with a lost group of mountain youths. Nobody speaks the same language and he is trying to persuade them to give up their fugitive life ( as nobody is looking for them anyway) and come North to fight for freedom. In the dawn he sits and thinks, "sooner or later the mind grasps at a thought and follows it into the labyrinth, one thought branching into another. Then the labyrinth caves in on itself and you find yourself outside. You were never inside-it was a dream".
I love that stuff.