PERTH daylight spending capital of the world

We had to get an early flight to Perth so that saw us heading out of our front door at 6am for the 75 minute drive to the airport. (If you leave any later its a 120minute drive).

We ate some fruit along the way and then talked our way onto the plane with three bags each. The flight takes three hours or so - depending on the wind. I took the opportunity to catch up on some back issues of the London Review of Books. There was a great story about the writer Stendhal. I love this bit....

"Beyle (Stendhal) had to be free. Free from his father and family, free from his own name, free from his birthplace, Grenoble, and from France and the French, free from responsibilities, money worries, people and places that bored him, free above all from the anxieties that have us seeking the approval of our peers, which is to say, from vanity, the great scourge, as Beyle saw it, of modern society. ‘The more I advance,’ he writes in 1812, ‘the more ambition disgusts me. It is simply putting one’s happiness in the hands of others.’

They gave us breakfast. I had the yoghurt and muesli but it also came with a miniature muffin type thing so my low carbs regime went out the window pretty quick.

We arrived in Perth to find it quite blindingly hot. Shade was at a minimum.

Clare and I were staying at a small hotel in Northbridge and Stu went to his ancestral pile elsewhere.

We had flown out at 11 and arrived at 11am. We went for some lunch near the hotel and found a Vietnamese restaurant. I had some stir fried vegetables and a rice paper roll. It was really great.

A couple of hours later I went to do an interview at the local ABC. That week had seen local presenters all over Australia get chopped as the National Broadcaster was being diligently destroyed by  a Murdoch schooled Managing director, Michell Guthrie.  She was also taking the final parts of Radio National apart and fashioning them into more of a twitter/clickbait style of afairs. She was questioning whether the broadcaster should really think of itself as a broadcaster anymore. She set all this chaos in motion and then refused to talk to anyone. She preferred to empower middle managers to go out and spruik the new media content generator to the world. Though they had to explain what she was making them do. Have you ever seen that John Carpenter movie, They Live?




Anyway, I ended up in the Perth (the state capital) ABC studio with a  couple of tech guys helping me to talk with the presenter who was in Albany, a provincial city hundreds of kilometers away. Nobody died! One of the tech guys was also filming me with an iphone attached to a miniature motion dolly to use of their web site - I guess. The rest of the large building seemed to be empty. (There was not even a receptionist)

That night I did a career long perspective Q and A interview type show with breaks where I would play songs to illustrate points we touched on at a boutique theatrette not far from the hotel. Well, not walking distance anyway. It was a place where film productions could show their finished work to prospective buyers to the cast and crew. A great venue. The Backlot Studios.

Before the show I went to an IGA supermarket to get some nuts and dried fruit and a banana for dinner. 

The capacity was about 50 people all sitting in deluxe Gold Class Cinema chairs and I did the talk with writer Bob Gordon. He mentioned that we'd talked many times over the years (decades) but this was the first time we'd actually met. A local book shop called BOFFINS was selling copies of WORKSHY.

An indigenous woman was very amusing before the show. She was with her brother and after a while she confessed she'd just wanted a beer and bought a book by mistake so she thought she should stay for the proceedings.

The talk/interview was really cool and Bob did a wonderful job. There were lots of really interesting people there. A fellow called John who had formerly been Ross who gave me an envelope filled with matchbooks from places like the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. A funny character, full of mad energy with darting eyes and always covering his mouth and moving in to whisper some dark conspiratorial line of investigation that I should go down. After the event I went back to the hotel and ate a few more handfulls of telegraph pole lettuce and chocolate with Clare Moore, (who had not attended the show due to a date with a friendly tv set).

The next day we had a  mild panic about backline gear  but soon sorted that. We visited a cool second hand vinyl shop run by Maurice Flavel who had been in early Perth bands with Gareth Liddiard from the Drones . The shop was vcalled Noise Pollution and I almost bought an Incredible String Band double but couldn't hack the idea of carrying vinyl back on the plane.

Perth was blindingly hot. They don't have daylight saving here- BECAUSE THEY HAVE ENOUGH SUNLIGHT THANKS....

We went for some lunch and, dazed by the light and heat, ended up in another Vietnamese joint in Northbridge.  Still avoiding meat, Clare went for an omelette type affair and I had a salad. Clare's omelette was quite large and was a bit like a Calzone pizza, rolled over on itself. It didn't take long to discover it had great chunks of pineappple in it (half a large tin), which the waitress even found to be weird. I also had some rice paper rolls and these fell apart in my hands. I think the work experience staff was on in the kitchen.

We were to play as a trio at the Fly By Night Musicians Club in Fremantle, a short drive from Perth. Clare had a Gretsch kit, Stu had  a big bass cabinet and I was to play through a Vox. ( I never feel Voxish but I got some good tones after a while) We had a long sound check and then took care of some admin and waited for the show.

The first band was a mostly all female setup led by  a keys player - singer songwriter called Em Burrows. Quite madly prog - jazz. Not as mad or hot and bothered as Melbourne's  MANGELWURZEL but just as enjoyable. More composed and arranged. Great textures from the keys and guitar and an excellent sax player.

Tomas Ford then tore the joint up for a solid hour with his Craptastic Dance Party show.  A Fremantle based international fellow of comedy and cabaret, his show is big on audience capitulation. He gets people up and bothered.

We then played a long set of songs from across the years. A beautiful old room and a pretty full house. We started with "I'm Not Afraid to Be Heavy" and ended with "Rock 'n' Roll Is Where I Hide", stopping at a lot of songs from Lets Get Tight and doing "Robert Ford On The Stage" because somebody asked me to.

Was great chatting with people who'd come to see us play at many different stages of our career and especially cool to hook up with old comrades Alsy McDonald and Jil Birt from the Triffids. Alsy took the photo of us playing at the club.

A woman asks me to sign her vagina, then says she's only joking. Thank christ. I rolled my sleeves back down. Another says "give me a hug you big beautiful hunk of a man!". Another is more demure and  chats while buying a book and then strides around to my side of the table, saying "now I must kiss you..."

The next day i was to do a  WORKSHY launch at a hotel and then we'd fly out. So we had to check out of our hotel and kill some time . Hotter and brighter than ever, our promoter Andrew kindly lent us his BMW and we drove down to Scarborough beach. Honestly, Albert Camus would have loved Perth in this kind of weather. It is existential. I think of nothing but doomsday scenarios as we walk about. The locals don't. They are cool with their tattoos and their short shorts and shades. And their LOOMING CERTAIN DEATH!

Clare is adamant that she's going to eat "something normal - like a crushed avocado on rye!". So two minutes later we are the only two customers in a Nepalese restaurant and I am ordering a Mushroom and pea curry and Clare is asking for some Dahl. The waitress is a goddess from a mountain tea plantation with long hair and smiling, almond shaped eyes. The food is pretty ordinary and I keep asking Clare why are we not enjoying a smashed avo. She is not amused and blames me for going along with her when she didn't know where she was going.

I find a nice book shop and buy something by the poet John Kinsella, who I learn comes from Perth. the older gent runing the shop tells me the poet came and sold all his books and then "came back when he was off the drugs and wanted them back...." I ask if he sold them back and he says of course so. I also get a volume of Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry. I only wanted the Walter Raleigh stuff.

WHAT is our life? The play of passion.
Our mirth? The music of division:
Our mothers’ wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for life’s short comedy.
The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,
Who sits and views whosoe’er doth act amiss.
The graves which hide us from the scorching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus playing post we to our latest rest,
And then we die in earnest, not in jest.

The event at the hotel is again chaired by Bob Gordon but more focussed on WORKSHY. Not as well attended but still very enjoyable. Livened up by the presence of John who I mentioned earlier and also our friends from out West, Dennis Commetti and his girlfriend Velia.

We had a cool time and then found ourselves at the airport sitting in a cafe staring at some overpriced air commuter food. I got an egg salad and Clare made show with some sort of sandwich. Nobody died. The plane left at 11:25 pm and landed in Melbourne at 6am.

My book WORKSHY was well displayed in the aiport... I'm actually reading the one about Robert Stigwood, "Mr Showbiz", which is displayed next to mine.

Dec 26th Dave Graney and Clare Moore annual Boxing Day show at the Hotel Metro in Adelaide, SA.

2017 Dave Graney memoir - WORKSHY out on Affirm press in .Order it here.

Feb 7th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at Smiths Alternative in Canberra, ACT
Feb 8th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at Jane's, North Wollongong, NSW.
Feb 9th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at the Agrestic Grocer, Orange, NSW

Feb 10th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at the Cafe Metropole in Katoomba, NSW

Feb 11th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at Dangar island Bowling Club, NSW,

Feb 16th - Dave Graney an the mistLY at the Grand Hotel, 124 Main st - Mornington, Victoria

Friday Feb 23rd Dave Graney and Clare Moore at the Bison Bar in Nambour, Qld
Saturday Feb 24th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at THE JUNK BAR in Ashgrove , Qld
Sunday Feb 25th Dave Graney and Clare Moore at THE JUNK BAR in Ashgrove, Qld.(4pm)

March 11th Dave Graney and the mistLY at SOUNDS IN THE SECRET GARDEN - the Events Foundry,74 Brougham st, Geelong.