Great Gigs II: Joe Walsh at the Prospect Hill, 1985

You can’t go past a guitar player who tries to do something a bit special with almost every note. You know the type. They’re said to play like it’s an attack on both the notes and the instrument. Think Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix. But I’m not so sure the metaphor fits. I think it’s more about an individual player’s feel. Intangible, I know, but what did you expect me to say? Je ne sais qua?

I’d first heard of Joe Walsh in early 1973 when his hit Rocky Mountain Way got airplay on 3XY. The talk-box was a strange new effect and his slide guitar playing was outstanding, with a delightfully dirty sound and plenty of sustain, artfully combining country and blues influences.

His album titles were witty (eg So What?; But Seriously, Folks; There Goes The Neighbourhood) and tracks from the live You Can’t Argue With A Sick Mind were regularly shown on rock clip TV shows like Flashez and WROK in the mid-70s. It was here that I was able to see Walsh in full flight.I mentioned that he’s the kind of player who puts everything into just about every note (by that I mean slight bends and the odd harmonic scream) but between notes he slid along the fretboard, going waow and whoo to punctuate his solos that really made my hair stand up on end. Here was a player who knew how to use the more “noisy” elements of rock guitar technique beautifully.

When I heard early in 1976 that he was to replace Bernie Leadon in the Eagles, I immediately thought their share price was raised considerably. No disrespect to Leadon, who was a fine singer-songwriter-guitarist, but up until Hotel California the Eagles had struck me as a group manipulating the easily-impressed (and easily depressed!) sensitive teenager market with contrived country-rock she-done-me-wrong songs. They still retained this element of their persona after Walsh joined, but it was just, I don’t know, better? And he and Don Felder really knew how to blend their similar styles. More fraternal guitar twins than identical. Kinda like Keith Richard and Ron Wood, but more accomplished.

At Kew’s Prospect Hill Hotel in 1985, legendary journeyman guitarist Waddy Wachtel supplied the counterpoint that Felder had provided on the Eagles recordings. Wachtel could play too. This was a Joe Walsh solo gig, but this American band (he had toured with the Party Boys* earlier that year. I saw them at Billboard) were just a hot outfit. Don’t you just love an eminent artist who doesn’t feel the need to be the big shot on stage?

They did all of his classic songs, from the early James Gang days, his solo career, and the Eagles. One particular highlight was a pumped-up Life In The Fast Lane, not an easy song to do live and believe me I would have understood if they’d left that one off the set list.

But for this admitted worshipper, Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl was the sour cream on the burrito. The original is the kick-ass opening song on Young’s 1968 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere album, but Walsh and his hired guns took it to a new level while still remaining faithful to the original.

It was a pretty blokey crowd of unashamed Joe Walsh fans that night as I recall and we were all just transfixed.

Isn’t it great when you see an admired artist perform and expectations are both matched and exceeded?

*The Party Boys were a band that served as a perpetual fun side-project for prominent Australian rock musicians and the occasional overseas guest artist. Their membership was fluid and if memory serves, at different times included: John Swann; Marc Hunter; Kevin Borich; David Briggs; Shirley Strachan; and many others.

Classic TV I: Flight of the Conchords

Last Sunday, I read a fairly tepid review of Flight of the Conchords in the Sunday Age. Thinking it might be okay but not really expecting a cack-fest of any great magnitude, I tuned in about ten minutes into the first episode and laughed helplessly for the remainder.

Flight of the Conchords stars New Zealand musical-comedy duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement as a New Zealand folk duo trying to hit the big time in the Big Apple. They have an unbelievably incompetent manager, desperately sell possessions to a pawnbroker who doesn’t like them but who is still their best friend in New York, and a lone female fan who they find repulsive.Inner monologues and dialogue between characters are often rendered in songs, frequently in the form of full-on music videos, a little bit like the Monkees TV show. There’re also many funny references to the Aussie-Kiwi dichotomy, which probably parallels the US-Canada relationship in some ways, I’d imagine. Read an interview with Bret McKenzie here.

Anyway, I’m about to watch episode two of this terrific 12 episode HBO series in just a few minutes. It screens on Channel 10 at 10:10pm. In Melbourne, anyway. Check local guides for details.

You can visit the official HBO website here; check out the BBC take on it here; and read a few slabs of dialogue here.

I found it piss-your-pants funny and littered with brilliant musical and visual gags.

So much of commercial TV is a complete fucking wasteland. And no, I’m not going to add the almost-obligatory “these days” to that assessment. Because let's face it, it’s ever been thus. But Flight of the Conchords is great TV, not just a cut above most of everything else that’s on at the moment.

Five Weird or Random Things About Me Meme

I’ve been tagged for this meme by the delightful Blakkat, whose gem of a response can be read here.

1. When I was 16, I somehow managed to get a school holiday job working for a toy company. The job involved making personal appearances at K-Mart stores in Melbourne’s outer suburbs. As Spiderman. These stores were selling a new range of Spiderman toys to coincide with an upsurge in interest in the web-slinger.

I’d like to think I brought a certain dark, brooding, teenage angst-ridden presence to the role. I’d like to think that, but the facts don’t quite accord with that alternate reality. For starters, I was painfully self-conscious: not a terribly helpful trait for one embarking on acting. And the costume was made of some kind of pre-lycra type stretch fabric that itched like buggery and threw my puny physique into fairly sharp relief, adding to my discomfort. 13 Ribs! Count ‘Em, 13!

What a trouper I was. Anyway, three times a day the company car would pull up at a K-Mart entrance and I would sit and wait while my boss got the shop PA system working and could announce my presence and the location of my show.

“Ladies and gentlemen, give Peter Parker, Spiderman in person, a big welcome as he makes his way to Aisle 5. You can have a Polaroid photo taken with your friendly neighbourhood Marvel superhero and he will also be demonstrating the new range of brilliant Spiderman toys and merchandise.”

I lapped up the applause and cringed at the odd giggle and guffaw that greeted my awkward entrance. I did it because it paid a princely (at 1976 value) $20 a day and I was keen to use the money to buy ugh boots and a lumberjacket.

The worst day was a one-off at Myer in the city, where for some reason that now escapes me my boss couldn’t drop me right out the front so I had to walk half a city block in costume. To make it fun, I walked in character too. But even a superhero has to obey traffic signals and I had to stand and wait at the crossings with all of the lunchtime shoppers, some of whom thought I was some kind of pervert, and said so.

But I still have my pride. If one of my mates mentions that I was once Spiderman I strike a pose, hopefully a relevant one, and tell them, “That’s The AMAZING Spiderman, thank you.”

2. I was on Sale of the Century in 1990. I went in to Channel 9 in Richmond as a standby contestant and squeezed in to the Friday episode where I finished ahead of a very popular, attractive, long-running female champ. So I imagine for that weekend, in many households I was that-bastard-who beat-that-lovely-what-was-her-name-again-oh-and-she’d-just-had-a-baby.
Anyway, I managed to convince myself that I couldn’t give a fuck whether I was popular or not. And the plan was to buy at any cost so I could at least maybe come away with something half way decent. I bought everything, but then kept winning anyway. One more show and I’d have the prize showcase. Two more shows and I could add the $234,000 cash jackpot. The show for the prizes was the last of the day, the one to be screened on a Friday night.

After being 30 down, going into the last sweaty commercial break, scores were tied at the end of the final round. Oh, and thanks to the Dixons, our next door neighbours growing up, who gave the nine year old Lad a book about pirates for Christmas. I managed to nail the final answer, Captain Kidd, right on the buzzer. So there was a tie-breaker question. After Tony Barber read just the one clue, the other contestant buzzed in and got it wrong.

So one more episode for $234,000. During the ten seconds of background muzak, all I could hear was, “You’ gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…..”

I took the prizes and ran for the hills!

3. The Monday after my son Larry’s team won last season’s U12 footy premiership was Mad Monday. Not for the boys. Don’t be stupid. They had school. For the dads. The boys had a brilliant season, going through undefeated, although they only won the last home and away game by one point and were behind at half time in one match and behind at quarter-time in the 2nd Semi-Final. Every other game was a massacre.

In the Grand Final, Larry was selected at full-back for the first time that season and kept the competition’s leading goal-kicker to just the one touch, and that from a dubious free kick. So Mad Monday was a fitting way to celebrate a sensational season.

We kicked off triumphantly at 11am at Ascot Vale’s Prince of Wales Hotel and then walked up Mt Alexander Rd (Mt Rd in our local dialect) to the now-defunct Chung On Chinese restaurant for a long lunch. There was only heavy beer at the restaurant for some reason so ol’ Lad Litter shrugged and joined in the serious drinking with predictable results. Stinko. But leavened somewhat by the three or four joints I’d brought along.

Back at the pub, wives and even whole families started arriving at about 10pm and quite a few tired and emotional dads were embraced and then bundled into waiting family vehicles. “Are you coming back a bit later?” I called to one staggering escapee whose charming wife giggled and shook her head resignedly.

Resisting exhortations to kick on elsewhere, the walk home was like live action pinball as I staggered and bounced off trees, fences and then eventually the interior of our house. I might have binged, but I’d binged responsibly, I maintain.

4. I have never had sex. I’ll just let that sink in first before I qualify it. In a dream I mean, silly. I don’t think there’ve been all that many erotic dreams for me, but I always seem to wake up just before actually consummating. Does it mean that my life is destined to always fall short of true fulfillment? Am I unable to meaningfully follow through on commitments? Or does it mean that someday I am destined to lead the Jews out of Egypt? I don’t know.

However, in a similar way, I always regain consciousness during particularly frightening nightmares when I am just about to be killed.

5. Barracking for Essendon means I have reason to be antipathetic towards Carlton. And just so you don’t think I’m understating the case here, I don’t hate them. Not at all. I despise them. So many of their supporters are loud-mouthed, boastful, bragging, solipsistic, gloating, skiting baboons who insist on deliberately arguing from an extremely illogical position What lovable larrikins they are. Larrikin is actually Australian for fuckwit, but there are enormous sections of the media industry devoted to convincing Australians that it isn't.

So you can imagine what sort of revelation it was when some family history research turned up that my great-great uncle had been Carlton’s captain back in the 1870s and was even club President from 1914-1921. And that a grandstand at Carlton’s home ground Princes Park is named after him. And that his two sons had also played quite a bit of footy at Carlton, one even going so far as to play 150 games, kick 330 goals, lead their goal-kicking in several seasons and feature in two Carlton Premierships.

Our second son Larry, just by coincidence, shares Mr President’s name and probably also coincidentally, some measure of football prowess.

Of course none of this makes me go around with a paper bag over my head. I am, actually, a little bit proud of my antecedents having been such high-achievers. And the many ex-Carlton players I have spoken to and corresponded with during further research have all been wonderful, charming, generous people. And it is a club with a rich, grand history. Quelle contradiction? Hypocrisy anyone? I beg to differ.

It’s the narrative I’m into and I rationalize it thus: you don’t have to agree with the policies of Nazi Germany in order to be fascinated by its history.

Carlton supporters I know have derided me for the forsaking of my family tradition. But I believe my relatives’ stewardship of Carlton was a lost Golden Age, before they let all the spivs take over.

So there it is and I’m tagging Ann O’Dyne; Lord Sedgewick; Jahteh; Edward Yates; and Geoff Dening. If they haven't been tagged already, that is. Should be some good reading with that lot.

Lygon St Purgatory II

“You need to see the manager,” the waiter told me, raising his eyebrows and shrugging to show me it was out of his hands.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary. All I’ve asked is for you to bring me one of the stubbies I handed over to you earlier. Just bring one of them with you when you come back please.”
“You go see the manager.”

I had absolutely no fucking idea why I would need to talk to the manager but I was given the distinct impression that it was because I’d done something wrong, and it had something to do with my asking for one of the stubbies. Maybe they’d lost them and the manager was going to apologise and offer me some other bottles of beer. That was about as much as I could come up with and judged it pretty unlikely as soon as it occurred to me.

No, it looked like I was going to be hassled. And I was a bit irritated by that prospect as I dragged myself up from my seat and walked through an arch to where the manager was standing behind a bar. I’d already heard from the colleague who organized the night out that this manager had a long and proud history of rubbing people up the wrong way. He was thirtieish; smooth of skin and hair; and ginger-fair in that northern Italian way. Southern Italians reckon northern Italians are all up themselves. I’m not sure if that’s one of the great truths, but this bloke might have had his own colonoscopy footage playing over and over in his mind.

Like the waiter, he looked like he wanted to impose himself on the ambience. And he was going to do that by being a pain in the arse. And I picked up that he thought I was not the kind of customer he really wanted in his restaurant. So he and the waiter probably felt some kind of entitlement about treating our group like shit. I wanted to help him understand that the unpleasant customer he was dealing with was entirely his own creation.

“The waiter told me I had to come and see you to get one of my stubbies.”
“Well, there’s a problem with the stubbies you’ve brought into the restaurant. We are BYO, but wine only.”
“Really. That sounds like a very uncommon arrangement.” This is a few years ago now, probably 1998, when this sort of drink-specific BYO, now widespread, was still very much in its infancy. “There’d be quite a few of your patrons caught out by that, I’d imagine.”
“No, not at all. It’s printed on all of our menus.”
“Menus that aren’t sighted till after everyone’s sat down. I said g’day and went off to get some beer. This is the first time that’s ever been something to be hassled over. What’s the reasoning behind the restriction?”
“People come in, and I’m sure you can imagine, they have eskies loaded up with beer and it’s not the sort of dining experience we want for this restaurant.”
“My dining experience has been getting hassled for bringing in six stubbies. Of light beer. You’ve created a problem where there wasn’t one.”
“You’ll find most of the restaurants in Lygon St are now BYO wine only.”
“I don’t go to Lygon St much anymore. Too many people who just want to give you a hard time. I’ll grab those stubbies thanks. All of them. I don’t want to have to ask your waiter to bring me one and have to go through this all over again.”
“Do you intend to drink them here?”
“Yeah I do. And I don’t expect to be persecuted for it either.”

He handed them over and the rest of the evening was spent pleasantly. We’d finished the main course by this time and didn’t need to have as much contact with the waiter and didn’t see the manager again.

One wit back at the table referred to my stubbies as the Carlton Six. The next day, I was to hear a view of the evening and the incident that seemed to come from a strange parallel universe.

Update: Well, not really an update, but does anyone know how to make my sidebar appear at the side of my posts and not all the way down the bottom? If there are any kind souls out there who can help, I'd really appreciate it. And feel free to patronize me for my stupidity.

WorkCover Blues I

Sorry about the long absence. I ran out of dope.

This is a true story. The names have been altered, but not the initials. In a kind of homage to Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory, if you like. Criminal libel, come and get me. Just over two years ago, I entered the twilight world of the WorkCover claimant. This is what happened. Needless to say, I hadn’t thought I’d ever be in a situation like that.

I’d been teaching at Oxford Primary School in Melbourne’s far outer west for ten relatively happy years. And I had it pretty good, being the Information and Communications Technology specialist teacher and all. I mean, kids want to stay on the good side of the computer bloke. You never know when he’s going to need someone to test out games or let your grade have a bit of free time in the lab at lunchtimes. But I thought I needed a change, just the same. I was keen to move on and also find a spot a little closer to home.

Right before the end of 2003, a job was advertised that would suit me perfectly. It was an ICT specialist teacher position, and the job description was pretty much what I was already doing. In fact, this Solar Hills PS in Melbourne’s west wanted an ICT set up very similar to what I’d helped put in place at Oxford over the previous 5 years or so. So I could swan in, hit ‘em with all of the ideas that were starting to go stale at Oxford, and look like I was some kind of expert.

The Acting Principal, who chaired the interview panel, was someone I’d worked with previously, if briefly, and she seemed okay. TLOML had even worked there about twenty years previously so there were some familiar, if older, faces on the staff.

When I got the job, the techie at Oxford told me that he’d heard there was a lot of friction between the Principal, Min Worland, and the Assistant-Principal, Mary Gajic who was acting in the top job. Oh well, nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t have any trouble staying out of it. And when the job started, Mary was away in Europe on Long Service League, so the catfight potential was reduced.

But according to Min and the Acting A-P, Gavroula Parageorgiou, there were concerns over the job the staff were doing. Shit, I thought. I’d never been in a school where the staff were not well-regarded by the Principal Class people, so I hoped it wasn’t going to be too much of a pain in the arse for me to get them to use computers.

There were some warning signs during that first year. In the beginning, the Principal had seemed okay and I hadn’t seen her do anything too far out of line, but there was a bit of clubbishness about the school leadership group, which I was on, and a lot more denigration of staff-members when issues were being discussed than I was used to. Denigration that looked like it was unwarranted.

And I got the third degree once in a meetingfrom a couple of older female teachers who didn’t like the big changes I’d made to the ITC set-up, which were really pissy to begin with, but these two were threatened by them. Like getting staff using email for instance. You know the type.

Then the PE teacher resigned during my second week there, walking zombie-like into my class from next-door at about 9:30 in the morning, handing me a handwritten note and leaving the school immediately, and me with a double grade. He’d had a confrontation with the Principal over his teaching allotment and told me as he gave me his resignation that he wasn’t going to put up with her abuse anymore.

I didn’t really have a view either way about Min and Gavroula. I hadn’t really seen them do too much wrong up until that stage. But TLOML quickly developed a very firm opinion of them when she met them at a staff do.

“That Principal. I reckon she’s a bit funny.”
“Don’t be silly. She’s alright.”
“And the Assistant Principal or whatever she’s acting as. I can’t STAND her.”
“How can you say that? You hardly know her.”
“Oh, I don’t need to know her, you stupid man. And don’t give me any of that innocent-until-proven-guilty crap. She’s an absolute bitch. I know that.”

The apparently instantly-detestable Gavroula had even told me that she and Min were very disaffected with the Australian Education Union, in which I’d always been active.This was a bad omen for me. People who leave the AEU in high dudgeon, or worse, stay in it so they can obstruct what the AEU might be trying to achieve, and run and tell the Principal what people say at meetings, are impossible. They usually take that disaffection, and the petty bigotry that goes with it, out on anyone who is still active. They are without exception, unreasonable, spiteful, vindictive, and always behave atrociously. I wouldn’t have described it thus if it weren’t true in every case in my experience. And it is.

Gavroula showed her hand early when she confided in me that our AEU meetings should be held on a Tuesday, so that she could meet with Min straight after, because Min liked to be kept informed, you know. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. You’re going to get sick of me telling you that. I told her the AEU couldn’t let its meeting dates be determined by the convenience of a non-member and left it at that. The relaying of sometimes sensitive AEU information I’d have to think about and leave till later.

Mary returned from LSL and disappeared a short time later. Actually, she went on sick leave never to return, but there was a story behind it that I didn’t hear till much later.

It was starting to get curiouser and curiouser.