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.
Chief, you write rings 'round Bobbie Forster.
ReplyDeleteits not a competition but...yes... i agree!
ReplyDeleteI agree with anon. - wholeheartedly! - but Messrs Escott'n'Teakle would've been thrilled with the March '10 Monthly. Sometimes that lofty elder statesman shtick really works, but generally I prefer the immediacy of Dave's reports from the trenches, as it were, knee deep in indie gore....
ReplyDeleteHey Dave - am thrilled by Supermodified, sorry 'bout yr cat and very much looking forward to the book. Will trek to Melb for the 22/10 instore. ps you'd have made a great Jesuit, y'know - their world is enirely conceptual.
ReplyDeleteentirely conceptual, even
ReplyDeleteHey Dave
ReplyDeleteThe book's great - us tone-deaf types need someone to explain music's power to 'em and there's so much more in there besides, even a little bit of the 'private' you! When you write about your family and (leaving)the Mount it beautifully balances the conceptual musings. No ghostwriter and the edited sections don't overshadow the collected online postings. And thanks for the Scrivener's Fall piece! I love the way you got wordy just when Smith slowed his flow from a flooding torrent to a steady stream, sometime '86/7. You guys are two sides of the same coin and genuine fucking heroes both. All the very best, Richard.