Radelaide- cool machine!

The hotel we played in in Adelaide is really on that side of the city that is the best. I mean the innovative and self sufficient and totally effective side . Its in a part of town thats a bit of a secret. Not at all hip or hyped up but you could walk to it from the end of Hindley street. Quiet streets but there were three pubs having music in a couple of blocks, in the middle of a lot of old houses. Somehow they have it working.
The pub is run by a group of women. I heard they applied for a loan to buy it as a partnership or company but were refused by the bank as their business plan did not include poker machines. Did you ever wonder how things happen in certain directions? Undeterred, three of them secured personal loans and they bought the place , freehold. they have no poker machines and the only tv in the place is a small one with a rabbit ear aerial up the end of the bar. No food, just booze and music. They sponsor an all girl roller derby team and on the Saturday night of our two night stand, they all came back after their match. This had been in front of 2000 people at the Showgrounds.
There is no security as they keep the numbers allowed in below that which triggers the need to do so. They charge an entry fee to the room where the band is and everybody gets paid. there are lots of seats and tables and the equipment is good. People old and young like going there. We played on the Saturday night at about 10:30 pm for an hour and a half. Stu Thomas Paradox opened the show. On the Sunday the brilliant Adelaide band No Through Road did a set at 4pm and we played from 5:30pm until Seven. How easy does that sound? Pretty easy when people know what they’re doing.

There were four of us playing. Clare Moore on drums, Stu Thomas on bass, Stu Perera on guitar and myself on guitar on vocals. We play electric guitars through smallish combo amps. We all sing and generally tell the local engineer to give us an R&B sound with the vocals up front.

We drove from Melbourne to Adelaide with our gear and the two Stuarts flew. We carry our own gear and generally look after ourselves.

We played these songs...

the sheriff of hell
night of the wolverine
a man on the make
pianola roll
bodysnatcher blues
feelin kinda sporty
rock n roll is where I hide
dylan the indie fake
mt gambier night
I like to be haunted
you had to be drunk
I come from the clouds
you’re just too hip, baby
the birds n goats
apollo 69
I’m in the future now
lets kill god again
I’m gonna release your soul
My schtick weighs a ton
sellout!
lifes a dream
midnight cats
I don’t wanna know myself

Most are from our last two albums, “we wuz curious” and “knock yourself out”. There were four or five unrecorded songs that I like to play as its something absolutely fresh in the room for everybody to check out. We also play songs from our albums going back to 1993. Anything earlier, we play if people ask for it and we know it. On the Sunday night I asked if anybody wanted to hear anything. There was a call from “three dead passengers in a stolen second hand ford” which hadn’t played for a few years. We stole onto a sweet version of that, with a bossa nova beat. Someone asked for “the Moodists” so i went over to Stu and played the bass line of a song we did with them called “runaway”. Clare hit the beat and I cued Stu Perera to start wailing half way through the song.

After the show we went to a house nearby and ate pizza and drank wine with Matt Banham from No Through Road. There were all these intelligent women there, smoking Adelaide joints ( rolled with herbal tobacco) and we watched a video of Adam and the Ants clips. Stu Thomas is an expert on Adam and he talked us through the changes.

We drove back the next day. Thats how you do it!