The King, The Cool Guy and the Not-Loud-Enough

I promise to commit no acts of violence, either physical or otherwise if things come alive.

Interpol at the Hordern. The first person I recognise when we walk in is a boy wearing a denim shirt. He's tall. I know he was at The National. I feel like he's part of the architecture crowd and I've met him before but I don't know who he is. The one thing I do know is that he has cool taste in music. Perhaps he's just from the train. He passes me on the stairs in the Fox and Lion.

The second person I recognise when we walk into the Hordern is The King, Richard Kingsmill. There's a trail linking three people: The King, The Cool Guy and me. That trail goes through Sufjan Stevens, The National and Interpol. That trail tells me Sydney is small.

They begin with Mammoth. Behind us a portly man in a suit and glasses begins to sing. He sings every single word through Mammoth and into the next, and the next. At first we roll our eyes in acknowledgment. And then we seeth. Eventually I give him the narrow eye and for a while he stops.

While watching I'm thinking all these things: the guitarist moves around the stage. I think he's shark-like but then realise that he's too fast and actually he has the speed of a huntsman spider. Moving without trying. First here and then there on the drum kit. I want Paul Banks to be wearing a suit and the music needs to be MUCH louder. Carlos has posture to die for.

Noonie says it's like watching them on TV and I do agree except that I've been thinking more generally that the whole sound is done now. She says can't pick their influences so I go to Myspace to see who they've listed. In the space for influences there is a promo link to merchandise.

In bed I try to start at the beginning. Turn on the Bright Lights on the i-pod but it comes to a point where I can stand no more of the voice.

And then it's Friday night. Singles night in Bondi. Either physical or otherwise. It's the otherwise that you have to watch.

http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/outdoor-travel/selk-bags/index.html
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/pick-your-nose-cups/index.html

Monday Night Television

I want to take back all the disparaging things I've ever said about Sass and Bide, particularly Heidi Middleton. And I might just want to find a husband like hers. I still do think the clothes are pretty crap, though.

Strangely, I don't want to take back any of the many disparaging things I've ever said about Alexander Downer. Peter Costello on the other hand forced some reconsideration. I've always had some kind of perverse admiration for a degree of sustained disdain.

Nonnas of the World Unite

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/11/history-of-the-evil.html

Dan Kelly at the Vanguard

Dave and Dan, McCormack and Kelly, are conveniently in the same room and one gets the feeling that the clandestine convenors of some secret Generational Change in Australian Music Commission have arranged the whole thing for the sole purpose of a symbolic handing over of the Most Ironic Man in Pop title. In a Logies-style flourish they've flown in Jarvis Cocker as the international special guest. No one's seen him yet. He's out the back polishing his glasses but he'll be here soon. Dave's worn smart slacks especially. Dan, in a nod to the importance of the mantle, has especially dumb hair tonight.

At one point my ears believe Dan will start singing: "Are you reeling in the years?" Steely Dan style. There's something about the music that evokes it. Just like the Abba riff in...whatever that Custard song was.

LT and Trev are locked out. Think of your friends and put one on the door. Sadly not on the door. On the street.

Lindsay says that Dan has Paul Kelly's ears. Large. Big ears. Big ear muffs. And there's another Lindsay on stage with a ukelele and a lei. There's Cameron Bruce as the foil. And there are songs more genuinely funny than ironic.

Although it's less than six months since we got rid of the Cocksucker, Motherfucker and already it feels like we're in a different country, when he sings about a beamer trailing streamers and nearly getting into a fight there's no purer feeling.

Later there's a man in a black shirt hovering near our table and I suspect he's hassling us to pay the bill. Actually he's Deb's brother.

I'm introduced to Dave Mc and he kisses me on both cheeks. There was a time when this would have completed my evening but we're aware, somehow both of us I like to think are aware, that that time, our time, has passed.

Chris and Ray were there too.

Old Powderfinger sounding like Ruby Tuesday.

A Friday coming to the end of summer, and the start of the proper year. The start of trying.

Satire to round off the week. The new government not quite as funny as the last and the Democrats are just not funny at all any more.

Crikey is spot on regarding continued Liberal arrogance. They haven’t even registered that they’re in opposition now, no longer in the business of truth creation.

Sorry. Sorry. Scrawled on walls between shopfronts on King Street. A good, solid, hopeful day. In the end. In the beginning the old problem of facing the world, but by the end the hairs on my neck are standing up as I listen to news radio on the way home from the mall that almost burnt down.

Back to Friday. We stand in the Utzon Room and talk about what we would do next. Perhaps we’re already spoilt.

Two chefs on Sussex Street glimpsed from a taxi sit with their backs against a wall and their knees bent to their chests, smoking. I have pants like theirs and like to tuck them into orange tan boots. The silhouette makes me feel like an urban swashbuckler. I want to know where they’re from, these smoking chefs, but they rise and head around the corner into an alley as the lights change.

Ryan Adams sings of a woman who’d get him pretty loaded on gin. She’s got a busted tooth, a smile, cigarette ash in her drink, goes out on her own, takes him to France, or Spain to dance in a mansion on the top of a hill. She ashes on the carpet, sleeps on a boat, swims in the sea without clothes, winks at him, tells him that it will all be OK, maybe gives him a bath. I’ve found what I’ll do next.

It could have happened like this, I think. On the Fly sent out an email to their list suggesting that a particular place would be a great place to go after Good Vibrations. Then Justin Hemmes, or one of his people, could have called the nice people at On the Fly to forbid them from saying that because the official after party could obviously only be at small e establishment or The Ivy or CBD or Angel or... and then came the sorry email. On sorry day. And that could have been construed as a simple reminder of what a dickhead Justin Hemmes must be.

The Open Air Cinema

The moon is scant and low. Roberto says cento percento and we have to say, huh? Damp air feels like a cockroach crawling on my leg. I've had to concentrate on keeping my heels in my shoes all the way from the wharf and the effort is telling on big toes.

Briony is a snake in the grass with a bob and a touch of Picnic at Hanging Rock about her but, as Noonie says, she's not enough to elevate the film above soap opera.

As we're leaving they're testing tomorrow night's film and we see a man set alight and then shot several times.

I stop at Seven-Eleven on the way home and buy my first Easter egg.

LT calls it subtle but touching. It says: dear hearts, we love you, dmc. And it's scrawled in thick black on the front of our house. I think it's someone reaching out. We stand in the dark, take photos with our phones and wonder how long it will take for the council to erase it. My wish is that it can stay for the week.

Lindsay tells a story about Glen Campbell, a chewing gum wrapper and his daughter's head. How we laugh, but it could just be the pink lemonade and the delirium of Chinese New Year.

The bus ticket says:
Bus Drivers Wanted
Ph: 8354 4444

I may not have remembered the phone number correctly so if you want to be a bus driver, you have to go on a bus and check the number.