in julia zemiros comfort zone - adelaide festival-lone wolf

The studio was a dripping ,swampy mess of leads and upturned electrical gear as we tried to drain the water from all the circuits. Pre amps, compressors, power amp, mixing desk, speakers, hard drives , keyboard. The water flooded in during the big hail storm mini typhoon. the Stones , which WERE as big as golf balls, plugged up all the gutters and the water found a way in any how it could.
We were out. Drove home through Hills streets full of leaves and branches chopped from the trees by the ice stones. Did all we could, wait a week or so to turn something on.

Flew to Adelaide to do a show at the Spiegeltent.

The Adelaide show was “The Comfort zone with Julia Zemiro”. the host of SBS show “Rockwiz” had an hour session with a performer at the Spiegeltent. The Rockwiz band was there. James Black, Mark Ferrie and Peter Luscombe. We were to have a chat, then I’d do a song by an artist I liked, then a bit more of a chat , then another song by a favourite artist, then a song of mine with a chat, another song and a chat and then I was to choose one of 3 songs to “workshop” with the band in front of the audience. Give them a bit of an insight into musicians talking to each other.

Before the show we had some dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Somebody ordered Crocodile and Bean sprouts. (We were all sharing). I had a few small bowls before everybody began shoving their personal spoons into the communal dishes. I can’t abide that and put my chopsticks in a cross pattern over my bowl. The food was dead to me!

Back at the tent, Julia started the show with a monologue. then I went on and we chatted about stuff. I’d had to provide some “personal” photographs of my life as a teen etc. I provided one of me in a country league football team in Collingwood jumpers at Victoria Park in the 70s. A few other stoopid ones as well. I did my best to keep things flowing towards a “shop“ area.

SONG 1-  I chose “alone again or” by LOVE from “forever changes”. Because I KNEW IT on the guitar and with the vocals. I talked with Julia about LOVE and the West Coast sound I loved . the early psychedelic scene in LA and San Francisco.

SONG 2 --”Lament” by the DOORS from “an American prayer”. I gave the audience a bit of a thrill with this one. A long poem by Jim and set to music by the surviving Doors in 1979.
I got to talk about Jim and how great his conviction was and how people mocked him for his boldness and pretension. His greatness!
I read this from a long piece of paper. It worked. I did it in my show "live in hell".

The audience has no real warning who the guest for each of these shows are. They are there for the Julia Zemiro factor really. A theatre kind of crowd? This song / poem put them to a test!

SONG 3 --Night  of  the Wolverine .”lament “ ends with the words “I sacrifice my cock on the altar of silence!” . On that note I picked up my guitar and started of the next tune. I like to play it in a more light funk style . On the one. I set the groove.

SONG 4-- “lets  kill  god again”. JUlia and I talked more of my background and life growing up in South Australia. Leading to this song. I mentioned my auntie who as a Carmelite nun in a monastery in Adelaide for 50 years. the first 25 being in absolute confinement within the monastery, shut off from the outside world. Why wouldn’t I ask for God to be killed again?

We talked more of personal stuff and Adelaide stuff. i got to tease the band a bit for dobbing on me to Julia.

SONG 5 - “Ruler of my heart “ by Irma Thomas. (The other choices were Bob Dylans “Its all over now baby blue” and “redemption song” by Bob Marley. The latter I felt to be too rooted in the artists own life and that of the culture of jamaica for me to swan about in. Bob Dylans song had too many words.

I asked Peter Luscombe to give me a hip hop beat. Something like a Jay Z track. Jay Z being the king of New York. I asked James to boil the chords down to a minimum couple of figures and away we went. I went for a vocal delivery like Richard Widmark, a giggling psychopath. The words being very nice but i wanted to have a bit of trickery involved in the singing. The guy singing is a bastard, asking someone to come back, just for his own kicks again.


We had another chat and then we played “Rock ‘n’roll is where I hide”. I tried to explain about where I was coming from within this tune.

As a show, I really enjoyed it. Julia is a total pro and puts a lot into it. We sound checked the songs ( except the “workshop” track) a couple of hours before the show opened. Julia was there for all that rehearsing and we talked about the questions she would ask then.
I suggested a psychiatrists couch would be better for some of the more personal questions. The band are doing a different performer each night ( four or five shows a week) . they had already had Tim Rogers, Megan Washington, Paul Capsis, Lior and Claire Bowditch. Coming up, Robert Forster, Deborah Conway,Katie Noonan, Chrissie Amphlett.
They got a sweet ride with me as I am a hardcore, hard boiled entertainer! And I let them know!

After the show, I caught a set by the Necks . They were very good. Things about them nag at me. Like , why don’t they try a “when the levee breaks “ kind of a groove every now and again but - maybe they do! . I enjoyed them for what they did on this night. I was still hungry so I went up an alley to a pizza joint. these young hip hop kids from Footscray were there , having done a set at Womad (!). I felt at home in the garish flourescent light of the pizza joint. I walked back to my hotel with a coke and a pizza, feeling like a lone wolf. I liked that.