Sunday, February 19, 2006

Rock On

23 Jan 2006


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CONCERT REPORT FROM BAD DAD CENTRAL
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........................... ..
............The crowd shows it's appreciation for my delicate guitar work

The baby is barely two weeks old and already I have abandoned him to play rock and roll.
Bad Dad.
Our band played the Big Day Out, an early slot at 12:30 pm.
We followed high school idol winners The Electric Confectionaires.
On the radio they said they liked Jimi Hendrix but I could hear no sign of the influence. There was no menace for a start.
“Gimme danger!”
I wanted to yell. A reference to the song I wouldn’t hear later because it was too raw.

I expected to be performing to a hot dog stand attendent and one, hot, dog. But from our porta shed we watched; a healthy throng, 300 strong, teenagers determined to rock.
Unfortunately by the time we hit the stage 295 had left with the Electric lollies. Even the dog was nowhere to be seen.
Halfway through our set things had picked up. . .
. . .the dog was back.
Various friends arrived and were soo impressed they sought to text friends with the good news...
“Raygunn stg red. lol...”
So. . .
far from the maddening crowd, in our own discreet way we rocked..
At least the dog seemed to like it.
I’ve never liked playing in the daylight anyway, unless you’re in a reggae band it is just plain wrong.
But playing had got us in the grounds, we had a special pass to an alleged bar somewhere (I never got to it) and later … THE STOOGES were playing!

After we played I volunteered to transport our equipment out of the grounds. We left the stadium in a jeep, the sound of one hand clapping ringing in our ears..
Back in civilisation we stopped at SPQR for a regroup and a cleansing ale.
An SPQR with Calamari salad, a kickin’ antipasto and fine wine. Stumped by the menu we asked our ‘camp as a row of tents’ waiter to recommend a Sauvignon Blanc...
He said with a flurry
“The most expensive one darling!”
And with a swirl he was off...
I love these guys... If you want to eat at a restaurant like SPQR you must know that you are being decadent. It must be demonstrated to you pointedly by the gay waiter, otherwise, why bother.
At the hands of a master like the woman Krishna who used to be maitre’d here I would knowingly hand over all my worldy assets(or a beleaguered credit card) for the feeling that I was briefly, a Roman.
It was a strange respite. A moment of calm in the day, where it seemed like the Big Day Out didn’t really exist. Even if we had played at it.

Soon Frankie ‘NZ idol’ Stevens arrived and occupied the table next to us.
Eventually he was joined by his hair.
No, just kidding, it was Paul Ellis fellow judge.
Which was slightly weird because he had once signed our band to Sony and when things soured (long story) he sent us a fax calling us “The laziest band in the world”.
Something I am very proud of.
They shared their table with teenie girls and talked about ‘the market’ and ‘phrasing’ and vocal coaches. Shit that had nothing to do with a dirty old rock band like the Stooges.
We called a cab. We were off back to the real music world.
“Mt Smart, Driver..”

We arrived back thirsty.
We decided to go to the bar...
Which is never as simple as it could be at these things. This time you arrived at the entrance to the bar and were told you that you need to have a band confirming your age.
“My god. Doesn’t everything about me confirm my age. Do I really need a band?”
I did, and of course you couldn’t just get the band at the entrance you had to go somewhere else to do that..
Why do we always have to do this crap in New Zealand?
I had to walk to some tent half way down the field to confirm what everyone already knew. I’m no spring chicken.
I say - Just put a gay guy in charge and be done with it.
They know how to look after the public.

After a crap beer in a plastic bottle, a brief tour of the event caused me some disquiet.
There was something missing. There was no sense something was about to happen, no frisson.
Even the kids looked bored, even though they were texting their little hearts out, trying to look essential.
Also AWOL “The Racket”.
The Volume, the noise, the sound that makes your stomach churn, gone.
The warning signs were there when I spotted two guys talking in the front row when we played.
‘whats that all about’ I wondered in between verses.
Now my worst fears were confirmed;

Frisson absence and volume depletion.

“We will have to move to the front for Iggy”
I said once the volume issues were verified by a rough concensus.

Getting there was remarkably easy, a stroll in the park really.
Sometimes you really have to fight to get through but here, I could have conducted a tour for Japanese tourists.
It was especially easy for a veteran like myself.
Survival systems developed after being; punched in the head and knocked out cold at a Deep Purple concert, vomited on at a Ramones gigs and spat on (everyone was) at the Members concert at Mainstreet where skinheads eventually burned their leather jackets on the dance floor..
I once spent a whole gig where The Sweet played at the Gluepot (only one original member) abusing them until the end when I realised the only reason I was there was because Doug Hood had given me a free ticket to help load them out. So I was then forced to skulk about on stage hoping none of them would recognise me while helping them pack down.
The point is that I've survived a lot of crap at concerts and have developed numerous survival techniques s and systems for getting to the front of a stage, so Big Day Out 2006 was never going to present a big challenge.
And really, if all else fails just pogo your way to the front.
No one in their right mind will get in your way (anyone who has seen me pogoing will be nodding silently).

5 rows from the front and suddenly there were a lot of familiar faces. Even the seemingly mild mannered David Slack was there.
And of course there was Iggy.
And some Stooges.
I had to wonder how reverentially these guys were treated in Australia.
When I lived in Sydney in the late eighties you could go and see an Australian band that was a version of the Stooges in a pub in Surrey Hills every night of the week. Actually, on the weekends you could see about half a dozen of them. I used to joke that a statue of Ron Ashton ought to be erected in a square in Surrey Hills to honor his contribution.
Probably not a statue of how he looks now though. (Think: comic shop guy from The Simpsons).

But really, when they played “TV Eye” or “Loose” it didn’t matter what they looked like. It’s the Stooges man. The Stooges!!
And if you don’t understand why they are so cool or so important then you have probably missed the bus so I wont bother filling you in here.

There was an apparent clash with Mars Volta that troubled some people but you must be kidding if you’d rather see them than the Stooges. In twenty years time no one will know who Mars Volta are and the Stooges will still be influencing bands (Iggy will probably still be playing, the friggin freak).

After Iggy, the White Stripes were on.
I love that chicks ‘meat and potato’ drumming. I love lot of their songs, but compared with the magnetic charms of a certain kid at home twiddling his thumbs (Sucking actually), they couldn’t compete. Especially after the Stooges.
I was off to see junior. I hailed a cab. When I told the cab driver where I wanted to go (it cost a lot of money) the drivers eyes lit up and he vowed to open a college fund for his kids..
But..I didn’t care..
"Driver take me to my baby.. Step on it"


Although I had abandoned junior to wallow in rockery, I spent much of the day being congratulated by friends, smoking cigars and swapping baby stories and so on. The best story came from our bands mixer Tex. He is back living in Dunedin and I had heard a rumour about a rumour that had percolated there, in splendid isolation, concerning my son’s name.
I was simply ‘dying’ to know if it was true.
When Tex said “I think congratulations are in order.”
I said “yeah thanks..”
and continued “ Do you know what we have called him?”
Tentatively, more like a question than an answer Tex said “Pinnochio?”
Excellent.
Pinnochio lives. Still giving me joy, and in Dunedin, providing the tantalizing impetus that manufactures urban myths. That desperate desire for something unfeasible to be true, just because it will make the world a more interesting place.

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