Top 50 of 2011. Cos 10 just can't be enough

2011 provided more than its fair share of despair, frustration, anxiety, sadness and anger on a scale which I’ve never really faced before. From catastrophic world-events in my old hometown of Brisbane and shocking images from my adopted second home of Japan, to deep sadness at the loss of some near and dear friends, and finally giving the ending a bang by planting a personal mountain of bullshit to overcome. There have been some not insignificant highlights, too - the surprising welcoming of a new niece and my brother’s wedding counting as two peaks - but by the overall buckets of shit this year has heaped down on us, and me, it can not be too surprised if I wish it a big “fuck off” and eagerly anticipate this new one.

The upside of being forced to lay low for long periods of time (explaining why this blog attracted some dust and cobwebs) was that I was able to envelope myself even more in some cool music, so here’s my Top 10 of 2011, with a bonus 40 songs which I reckon are tops:

50 - Grieves, Speakeasy
49 - Yuck, The Wall
48 - Eddie Vedder, Sleeping By Myself
47 - Xavier Rudd and Inzitaba, Yandi
46 - Fucked Up, Queen of Hearts
45 - Scroobius Pip, Introdiction
44 - Mogwai, How To Be A Werewolf
43 - Eagle and The Worm, All I Know
42 - Radiohead, Little By Little
41 - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Heaven’s Gunna Happen Now



Yuck and Songs were cool discoveries this year, equal parts sludgy rock and hooky pop. Vedder picking up a uke was always going to be greeted with quizzically cocked ears, and a solo effort by Scroobios Pip somehow afforded him more lyrical balls. Rudd was rediscovered thanks to his impressive Bluesfest effort and the entire Radiohead was nodded at thanks to its teetering rhythm section, as brilliantly outlined with this song.

40 - The Bamboos, Typhoon
39 - Grouplove, Colours
38 - REM, Alligator, Aviator, Autopilot, Animator
37 - Ben Ottewell, Shapes and Shadows
36 - Gorillaz, Hillbilly Man
35 - Mick Harvey, Frankie T and Frankie C
34 - Only The Sea Slugs, Big Sky
33 - We Were Promised Jetpacks, Hard To Remember
32 - Femi Kuti, Dem Bobo
31 - Bill Callahan, America!



I got back to some singer-songwriter roots, after a bit of a break looking at new things. Ben Ottewell (that voice from Gomez) and Bill Callahan sing with a most sublime troubadour spirit, while Mick Harvey’s first post-Bad Seeds album showed some surprisingly picturesque Australian landscapes. The Bamboos have been a late addition - Melbournites of the same soul/funk revivalist movement as Sharon Jones. Booty-shaking.

30 - Yuck, Shook Down
29 - Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Bakitju
28 - Feist, How Come You Never Go There
27 - Eagle and The Worm, Good Times
26 - Songs, It Doesn’t Exist
25 - The Herd, Salary Cap
24 - Jeff Lang, Running By The Rock
23 - The Weeknd, High For This
22 - Seeker Lover Keeper, Bridges Burned
21 - We Were Promised Jetpacks, Picture of Health



I should’ve gotten into Feist and Seeker Lover Keeper more than I did, but their put-on, over-affected vocal can tend to grate sometimes. They miss the pained huskiness or extroverted sexuality which I dig so much. That said, a bold move for three very assertive and distinctive vocalists to harmonise together for a whole album (even though Sarah does win hands-down, favourite-child sydrome style).

20 - Xavier Rudd and Inzitaba, Time To Smile
19 - Scroobius Pip, Try Dying
18 - Eagle and The Worm, Futurman
17 - Ball Park Music, Literally Baby
16 - Bon Iver, Perth
15 - Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears, Black Snake
14 - REM, Oh My Heart
13 - Gotye, Eyes Wide Open
12 - Femi Kuti, Politics In Africa
11 - The Grates, Sweet Dreams



So REM fucked off, but left us with a true gem of heartbreak with a heartbreaking melody. Bastards. It was always going to be Gotye’s year the moment “that” song dropped, but this one is a killer also. I never really took to The Grates earlier on in their careers and found a little too deliberately indie, but now they seemed to have grown and a way more comfortable in their own skin.

10 - Holly Throsby, What I Thought Of You
It was Holly’s year. What, with her third “normal” album (she released a kids album, too) and then her part in the barnstorming Seeker, Lover, Keeper trio it’s hard to whack the shuffle on and not hear her smooth timbre. The cyclical melodic hook is heart-wrenchingly gorgeous.

9 James Blake, There’s A Limit To Your Love
Ethereal and mystical. His second offering (I think), but this one’s much more accessible thanks to actual lyrics being sung. His vocals are spooky.


8 The Black Keys, Lonely Boy
Seriously beat-worthy, which once again stakes they Keys’ claim as being the premier modern blues rock duo. The effect-ladden sloppy slide guitar intro gives way to a key-inflected melody which draws the hooks along. A classic Dad-dance film clip (akin to You Am I’s iconic Berlin Chair clip) is just the icing on the cake.

7 Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Ain’t No Buildings In The Projects
I had the pleasure of reviewing Sharon’s live show and an advance copy of this album. Nothing makes me happier than seeing this sassy woman crunchy out some deeply felt revisited funk/soul. I’ve done my bit in spreading the word on this scene, but I’m still amazed by how little people seem to dig it.

6 - PJ Harvey, This Glorious Land
I’ve never been a huge fan of Polly-Jean... truth is, she’s always kinda frightened me. But this album is all about the toilet-bowl which England society has seemingly become to her, and this was pre-riots. The slow dirge with the under laid off-timed “charge” trumpet call is a seething coil. In another song she poses the question “What if I take my problem to United Nations?”. The Mercury Prize was well-deserved.



5 - Ben Salter, I Am Not Ashamed
Always good to see a hometown lad and mate make it big. This album has just hit, seemingly on the tail-end of the solo bandwagon (seriously heaps of them in the past year and a bit... Glenn from Augie March, Gareth from The Drones, Adalita from Magic Dirt, Mick Harvey from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds). Anyway, I can almost feel the inner-western suburbs of Brisbane on a slow, heavy, bright January afternoon seep through this track. (The clip is from the single The Coward and it makes me instantly homesick).

4 - The Grates, Turn Me On
Finally, The Grates prove they have more than just youth and bounciness on its side. Its first two albums were fine, but they cranked the Lo-Fi ethos just a little too high. This one sees singer Patience Hodgson go from the frizzy-haired annoying girl next door to a contender as a serious rock vixen, in the Wendy James (Transvission Vamp) vein. She undermines that sex-bomb theme a little for anyone listening to her awesome tales on The Minutes podcast, but she’s still gorgeous.

Watch Enmore Theatre and other great gigs on Moshcam.

3 - Adalita, Hot Air
The ex-lead singer of bogantastic 90s rockers Magic Dirt has truly blown me away with this album. I reviewed the launch at one of two sold out shows at the Northcote Social Club and found it the hardest gigs the get a reading on and have some perspective about. The Tiger and I stood transfixed, yet floating and completely moved by the coiled emotion of just Adalita’s no-nonsense presence and guitarist JP Shilo’s contorted frame.



2 - Ball Park Music, It’s Nice To Be Alive
Brisbane indie group which I’ve had the pleasure of watching grow and blossom over the past couple of years. They’re part of a record label in Bris (Mucho Bravado) which is steadily building a name for itself as a new force in the city. Seriously catchy, smart and cutesy pop with a solid base. These guys will be huge.

1 - Gotye, Somebody That I Used To Know
My number 1 and Hottest 100 Number 1 for sure, lest there be some sort of massive Silverchair-esque backlash between now and when voting closes. Nothing I can say will compare with The Vine’s detailed analysis.

Whaddyou reckon?

This, precisely, is what's wrong with Australian music

There are very many things to rage against in the meaningful meaninglessness of this poll, but the Number 1 album pretty much sums it up. At the risk of sounding old and angry, I'm going to suggest that this album was the very precise moment that the Australian rock-based music scene got a tad full of itself and dived straight for the middle ground.

Despite small glimpses of genuine gold since Fanning put his ovary-friendly intentions overtly on display with this insipid and weak brew of songs, it's all been pretty much downhill since then.

Bar-fkn-humbug. And Doc - the kids can have their fkn station back. It appears to be broken, anyway.

Countdown #1 | Hottest 100 Australian Albums Of All Time | triple j

Business as usual, then?

So, to re-cap an entire afternoon's worth of productivity sapped away by Twitter:

@DocYobbo thinks we're all far too over the hill to even be discussing such things as radio polls;

@beeso thinks we've all got our heads in the sand thinking that guitar music has a future, despite overwhelming influence that a dude on a turntable standing behind some dude delivering nasally poems is, by and large, "untrammeled shite";

@Medway has been voted unopposed to the Treasurer position of the Blokes Punching Way Above Their Weight club (with myself as self-admitted president and @JohnBirmingham firmly ensconced in the Patron role);

I seem to be the only one valiantly flying the flag for honorable, left-minded, honest inner-urban hipsterism into the third decade. I even have the bicycle, dastardly disheveled beard and copies of Monocle to prove it.

And, finally, the pricks over at @triplej are a pack'a cunts for getting us once again on this pointless round-a-bout discussion.

Oh, and for the record, my short list of Top 100 Australian Albums Of All Time (the top ten I voted for in italics) were:

You Am I - Hi Fi Way
AC/DC - Back in Black
Alex Lloyd - Black the Sun
Archie Roach - Charcoal Lane
Augie March - Sunset Studies
Church, The - Priest = Aura
Church, The - Starfish
Custard - Wahooti Fandango
Cordrazine - From Here To Wherever
David McCormack - Little Murders
Dirty Three - Ocean Songs
Gareth Liddiard - Strange Tourist
george - Polyserena
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - Gurrumul
Gin Club, The - Deathwish
Go-Betweens, The - Spring Hill Fair
Hummingbirds, The - loveBUZZ
INXS - Kick
Jeff Lang - Half Seas Over
Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
Paul Kelly & The Messengers - So Much Water, So Close To Home
Paul Kelly - Ways & Means
Pollyanna - Longplayer
Powderfinger - Double Allergic
Powderfinger - Vulture Street
Regurgitator - Tu-Plang
Sarah Blasko - As Day Follows Night
Something for Kate - Beautiful Sharks
Weddings Parties Anything - Donkey Serenade

Vale the best sax offender around

Sax is overdue for a revival in modern music. The soul-revivalists like Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings and Black Joe Lewis are doing their darnedest, but by Jesus a saw solo like this absolutely needs to be re-introduced. Vale, Big Mr Clemons.

YouTube - Clarence Clemons "Jungleland" solo (Milwaukee 3/17/08)

My Pals, yeah.

Some shit's just magic to witness, isn't it? Luckily the prophecy wasn't true - the Tote's still alive and well (even though I've yet to be fully immersed in its sticky-floored greatness)

YouTube - Last song at the Tote: My Pal - The Drones w/ Joel from God

Man crushes can really creep on you, can’t they?

Musically I tend to fall for the enigmatic frontman, generally one who can turn a hefty phrase plus also know there way around a fretboard or two. It’s not hard to see why - music, for me, is fundamentally modern poetry performed on stage without the wanky posing (for most parts). I’m a lover of the written word, so give me a beautifully crafted story over a clumsy chord progression any day and I’m essentially yours.

But sometimes, just sometimes, one of the accompanying musicians will grab my fancy. Usually its a rhythm section maestro (I mean, who doesn’t love someone who knows there way around a clever back-beat), but every so often it’s a flashy axe-man who tickles the bones. Recently it’s been The Drones’ guitarist Dan Luscombe - a man sometimes overlooked due to the sheer weight of personality displayed by his no-holds-barred band leader Gareth Liddiard.

I’ve always wielded a huge respect for the no-nonsense vibe Luscombe was able to bring to Liddiard’s stories (and, to be fair, Liddiard’s very own solid guitar work). There’s nothing new about what he’s doing, really: an easy equation of simple, clean guitar lines played on decent instruments and done so with absolute confidence. To be able to forge a distinctive guitar sound in this day and age is no easy feat, but to do it by bringing the whole equation back to absolute basics is impressive.

Tonight, I paid for a ticket to see ex-Augie March lead singer Glenn Richards ply the boards at the Northcote Social Club, but found myself increasingly attracted to the left-side of stage and the often-silhouetted figure of Luscombe creeping in. He straddled his side of the stage well with his axe of the moment (generally a clean Strat or a Tele put through a couple of effects) and barely moved. His guitar body stayed welded to his right hip, with the neck thrust to the left and slightly forward, like a loaded weapon. The nonchalant breezy air of his playing gave way to moments of complete tension as his shoulders hunched in and the strain of the upper reaches of the fretboard worked its way right through his neck muscles. Those moments built an enormous tension, which broke satisfying as his body floats back towards the drum riser. Man, that’s intense. It had been a while since I was musically smitten, but boy this lad with his shark-fin hair-do, barrel chest barely contained by his open-collared shirt and a don’t-give-a-shit swagger really does do things. Check him out.

Musical flashbacks: aren’t they great?

Since I self-satisfyingly maxed out my old iPod and was forced to replace it with a bigger model, I’ve gone through the obsessive-like mission to relisten to every song I own. And I’m loving every second of it. You see, Apple won’t let you transfer your music from one device to the other all that easily (a relic of the days when the paradigm for developing digital music was seen through the misguided prism of controlling the very consumer’s behaviour through digital rights management... not so #winning a plan, eh?), so I was forced to see solutions outside of their sanctimonious little Genius-bar bubble. The other tech slaughter-house Google threw up a number of options to download to fit my desired purpose: moving my library as it was in my old “Ben+Satomi iPod” (so named as it was purchased under the misapprehension that we newly-married couple would graciously and ever-so-sweetly divide the musical device’s custody between us... which lasted until Christmas when I forked out to buy the Tiger her very own green nano so she’d leave mine the hell alone) onto the shiny new precious “Big One” in one piece and without naming hassles or having to download entire libraries manually to switch them across.

I settled on the lowest range program (translation: tight-arse free) which promised to do the bare bones, without the bells and whistles. And it did just that - within an hour or so, all my tunes were copied across the Big One and I was no longer looking at a maxed out capacity bar. Which was fine, except the Crazy Clark’s No Frills Homebrand Black n Gold Savings brand program did away with pesky little things like playlists and, crucially playcounts. Hmm.

The latter of those two ancillary extras did my fucking head in initially. Like any self-respecting music-nerd who grew up secretly listening to Barry Bissell’s Top 40 on the wireless on a Thursday night, or got up extra early on both a Saturday and Sunday morning to watch the Rage Top 50 countdown (thinking, in my innocent youth, that cassingle sales on the Saturday would be reflected in the next day’s charts. Yeah, I was a very curious kid, not too bright though), you’d know that I was a little obsessive with this playcount malarky. Heck, even to this day my website homepage is set to my last.fm profile and I’m seriously very excited about bearing down on the hundred thousand listen mark in the next couple of months.

The lack of playcount data was weighing heavily until I devised a new Smart Playlist called Unplayed. Genius! (No, not in that kind of Trademarked marketing mumbo-jumbo that all those skivvy-types seem to use). It was simple - I’d make it a daily ritual to trawl through 50 songs from my back-catalogue of music and see what pops up. It’s a religious ADD-type activity now, usually accompanying my breakfast and then every music-listening opportunity throughout the day until I reach the 50 mark. I’m quite disciplined about it and make sure no other songs or albums or podcasts get turned on until that 50 is reached... I’ve even been known to stay up just that little bit later to cram them all in. Usually it’s background music and my ears will prick up once in a while to nod sagely as some musical memory worms its way into my brain, or wistfully stare into the middle distance with a vague half-smile and a knowing eye-brow raise. Or just throw a random devil horn around the empty house. I’m that kinda guy.



Tonight, however, was a little different. Whilst bashing last night’s dinner dishes into some sort of wife-pleasing state, a couple of songs from Ryan Adams’ Demolition album banged out right next to each other. And I got an instant reminiscing hard-on for the moment when this album found its way into my world. It’s nothing special, there was no cataclysmic moment - it was just an aimless, relatively poor Saturday morning in Brisbane-town when a cool $20 note was burning a hole in my tatty shorts pocket, and the upstairs of the old Rockinghorse Records was faintly beckoning me from the Love Den’s enveloping beanbag. There was nothing on the New Release shelves really calling my name, and I was in a mood to punt. The unspooled tape on the cover grabbed me, and I was familiar enough with the prolific songwriter’s name to grab it from the could-a been’s shelf in a “fuck it, what the hell” moment. Got it home, sparked and up tuned into the truly alt-country vibe which seemed to mix well with the aimlessness of my life at the time. It swiftly becoming an oft-reached for tome and it was perfect as a Saturday night accompaniment - enough bubbling enthusiasm to get you fired up early, mixed with enough maudlin reflection to bring you down after yet another fruitless excursion into the mass of the Valley.

Sure, call me a big ole’ softie, but while there are some testicle grab-worthy moments of crunchy rawk within this effort, it’s the soft touches which still grab me, take this:



Or, from a Youtube-less tune, the lyrics: “Cry on demand / How’d you learn to? Cry on demand / Teach me if you want to, you know you don’t have to / I’ll just close my eyes / And think of you” Naaawwww...

Escaping the sinking ship

I've been in Melbourne six months now, and was commenting just the other day to a very recent escapee of Brisbane how much I did not miss the tropical city. It's true - I'm absolutely head over heals in lust with this new place, which has always been my spiritual home. It's captivated my every day and I've discovered a new energy within me which seemed to flicker just slightly in the last couple of years in Brisbane.

I rarely felt at home in Brisbane, even though it - specifically the Albion Love Den - provided me with more of a stable home that I'd ever experienced in my lifetime. There was always something a little daggy about BrisVegas which never really allowed me to adopt it as an identified 'home city' (the term BrisVegas and it's ironic connotations give an insight into that quintessential 'daginess'). No matter, Brisbane was just as much a city of internal refugees early on in my time there - thanks to the catchment of the state's two major universities - and then later on as my maturing friends extended to interstate and international migrants in search of a better and cheaper lifestyle.

And so went the conversation on Friday night (before the cocktails and scotches took hold), as I enthused to Jinna about the life on offer here compared to there. I had felt no pangs of regret at moving, there were no second guesses about if it was the right choice, and there was certainly not a drop of any sort of homesickness. Until yesterday.

There's nothing like nature coming and parking its bus on your doorstep to make a community come together, and watching the shit storm in the past couple of days has me longing for the place. Sure, seeing the old haunts in danger is concerning, but seeing the spirit of the place has hit home what it was I left behind. Agreed, the place is as boring as bat-shit sometimes, and those fkn poisonous dog-days during summer are enough to make a man spend an afternoon setting up a kiddies wading pool in a baking concrete courtyard just for a few moments of sweet cool relief (only to have it get torn apart from a stray fkn fox terrier). Anyway, I guess what I'm missing is the "we're all in this together" mentality which is shining through beautifully right now. Oh, and the absolute ease in which life's rich tapestry is approached and absorbed, perfectly encapsulated by a mate's pic:



Yeah, I miss it.

Top 10 Albums of 2010

It’s Top 10 time. It’s been a sweet little year music-wise, with Brisbane’s gorgeous pop-driven sunlit sound dominating the ear-holes early on, but some new sounds thanks to my new surrounds have started to creep in. As expected, live music and reviews have dominated my charts as I’ve boned up on artists so I can write at least half-way intelligible critiques. The reviews have also opened my ears to stuff I probably wouldn’t expose myself to ordinarily (Gareth Liddiard and Edwyn Collins, for example). So, here’s what I reckoned was good sounds in 2010. What say you?

10. The White Stripes, Under Great White Norther Lights.

There’s nothing like a great live album, is there? The Stripes never quite grabbed my fancy on a recorded setting - something to do with my natural aversion to overbearing fan-boys which tend to cloud the issue dramatically - but in a live sense, this duo is seriously powerful. This was a duel CD/doco release following the group on a Canadian tour, and it highlights a band keen on presenting its music as honestly as possible: crunchy, loose and with enough rough edges to make it endearing.

9. The Vasco Era, Lucille.

Aw, love a cool concept album. This group’s second offering is solid, with a dominating narrative following the break up of a couple by the names of Sam and Lucille. Importantly, the music has infinitely more depth than it’s first album and relies less on gritty guitars and front-man Sid O’Neil’s screech. Some people have found this appalling (this great review here, for example), but I love a band willing to break the mould so early.

8. Edwyn Collins, Losing Sleep.

One of those reviews which somehow made its way to my top rotation list. The former Orange Juice leader came back from the brink of death to record this star-studded affair and it’s a corker. The themes deal with those awful truths of aging and relevance, which seems weird coming from an artist as accomplished as Collins, but its done so with compassion and tenderness, rather than fear and loathing. Oh, and it’s chock full of some of the most irresistible pop hooks of 2010.

7. Gareth Liddiard, Strange Tourist.

Another review album which wormed its way in under the radar. I really didn’t think I’d get into this initially and actually wanted to dislike it (part of that anti-fanboy thing... I’ve really gotta work on that cynical resistance to some music), but what’s not to like about a laconic story-teller who can weave a yarn about a French tight-rope walker at one end of an album, and book-end it with a 16-minute verbose biography of David Hicks which turns itself into a spittle-flecked diabtribe about modern living?

6. Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, I Learned The Hard Way

Soul/funk revival in all its refinery. Don a fedora and a white wife-beater and get your mofo groove on, bitches. This is the real deal.

5. Cordrazine, Always Coming Down

Time to take it down a notch or three. After going to ground thanks to freaking out at the reaction to the band’s first album back in 1998, Hamish Cowan finally got the band back together to record its follow up. The decade-long absence has not wearied them one bit, with the dreamy ethereal soundscape just as lush and inviting as ever. And honestly, who couldn’t be soothed by Cowan’s detached falsetto?

4. Glenn Richards, Glimjack

So Glenn broke up Augie March and formed another identical band featuring a couple of dudes from The Drones, his brother and some other bloke. Who the hell cares? This is an Augie March album in the vein of pre-One Crowded Hour. It’s only criticism could be that it’s very conscious of not producing another OCH, which seems to have become a talisman for Richards and co. Still, good to see their live show is less irritating.

3. Gorillaz, Plastic Beach.

Ho.ly shit. There is so much packed into this supergroup’s new album that it’s almost too much to comprehend. The Clash’s Paul Simonon and Mick Jones teaming up with Blur’s Damon Albarn should be enough to smack you in the gob with its awesomeness, but with cameos from artists such as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed and Mos Def this has turned into a spectacle of spectacular proportions. The music is thumping and huge and is genuinely exciting in its delivery. I cannot wait to see where this is eventually heading.

2. Two Door Cinema Club, Tourist History.

How can a trio of pasty Northern Irish lads with foppish fringes, tight jeans and angular guitars sounds so fucking French? There’s an irreverent lightness in touch and an almost arrogant approach to the hook that it sneaks up on you and bites you fair on the arse before you can implement the cynical old dude gene and discount it as pure kiddie pop. Sure it’s that, but it’s also strong and with a driven undercurrent. This is head and shoulders above the throw-away hipster guff out there.

1. The Gin Club, Deathwish.

I wrote this group off a couple of years back as nothing more than a curious piss-around for a couple of serious musos looking to blow off steam before getting back to their other work and a healthy rotation of part-timers getting their pound of stage-flesh before returning to their day jobs... yeah, so how wrong was I? Where 2008s Junk tended to be a large wielding mess, Deathwish provides a tight direction and a consistent vibe. One of resigned optimism and reflective contemplation which, while navel-gazing in all its refinery, never loses itself up its own arse. The dichotomy woven amongst these tracks is intriguing: it’s understated, but grand; it’s simple but dense; it’s accomplished, but also allows enough breadth for a first-time singer-songwriter (Ben Salter’s brother-in-law and farmer Gordon Stunzner) to shine through. Most importantly, it’s built of a straight-forward, no-nonsense song craft of which classics are made.

The Palace adds pizazz to your rock pig moments

Name: The Palace Theatre
Size: Mid to large. About 1900 packed in.
Who Plays There: Mid to large cultish type bands. Artists keen on presenting an "experience". I reviewed Weddings, Parties, Anything there.

Well, ain’t this ferkin lush? Melbourne’s The Palace Theatre is one of those curious live music venues which almost makes it a bit too good to host sweaty rock gigs - that “Ooh, Ahh” factor when you walk in. It’s an old-school theatre which had all its guts removed long ago and, after a bit of an identity crisis in the 80s where it masqueraded as a plush disco venue complete with dancing podiums and large mirrorballs, it’s now a fully-fledged, opulent live music venue.

Getting there in the first place provided its first hassle, in that I was convinced The Palace was in St Kilda, next to the grand ole Palais Theatre and Luna Park in that beloved triangle, defended by all the nimby yuppies (on the misguided pretence that the development would ruin the soul of St Kilda... without seeing the irony that they themselves were doing more damage than a development ever could. But that’s an anti-gentrification rant for another blog, I’m sure). A quick check revealed my suspicions that a 2007 arson attack on the St Kilda forever put paid to that quandary and confusion, and I found the right venue in the CBD, up the top end of Bourke Street - the ‘theatre’ district. Funny place to build a rock venue.

The name, however, does give it away. It was a theatre, built back in mid 19th century and surviving its many incarnations largely intact. As you wander in from the street, the opulence smacks you in the face with its wide foyer and sweeping double staircase bearing down on you. You can only look, however, as the Art Deco entrance is roped off, apart from the narrow path they allow you to take down one side to have your ticket checked at the booth. Strange.

Most skirt around the staircase and head through the swinging doors to the sides, which leads into the huge, sweeping floor. I had no idea how big this venue was (1800-odd capacity, to be vaguely exact), but it immediately hits you as you wander into beer-hall style floor area. The wooden floorboards slowly graduate a half-step down every few metres, give multiple vantage points even on ground level. As you venture past the huge sound desk and on to the floor proper, you can look back over your shoulder for an awesome sight: 3 levels of people staring back down at you from the stalls above. For a theatre, it’s nothing special - for a rock gig there’s this weird Colosseum feel to all as bods rock and sway over the balustrade, throwing the horns and tossing the hair back and forwards. It’s an awesome sight. Up in the stalls, every level is like the floor in that there are multiple half-steps, with deep in-laid lounges and booths at the back.


There are indulgent-looking bars skirted by deep red lights every level, which is a blessing in that you’re not corralled into a central bar area and spend forever getting libated. Getting around the place is a breeze through internal stairs in the guts of the venue, or via each level’s interconnected foyers. For the punter, this means there’s a bevvy of spots to camp out to watch and listen. As with most multi-level venues, however, the sound quality varies wildly depending on where you are - the sweet spot near the sound desk is almost impossible to claim and maintain through the evening. Taking up prime positions on the stall balustrades gives a great view of both the band and the heaving mass on the floor, but also means your earlobes are almost level with the mounted PA... bleeding ears ain’t my bag. All of this can lead to a restless night for the obsessive punter keen on squeezing the best out of the venue.

That said, The Palace is one of those unique “special moments” places, guaranteed to stick in your mind long after the event. Like Brisbane’s The Tivoli before it become The Zoo v2.0, The Palace booker is discerning and looks to fringe and cult bands to raise the roof. We caught Weddings Parties Anything’s pre-AFL Grand Final gig (supported by an on-fire Gin Club), and later this month a two night set by soul-revival queen Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings is sure to entice. It all leads to a unique “ohh, ahh” moments which are always a pleasant way to frame a gig memory.

My Top 50 Albums

A few weeks ago, a trio of grizzled old rock journos launched a book about the Top 100 Oz albums of all time (just in time for Christmas, kids!) which, naturally, sparked a bit of an argument over there at Twitter (“can’t come to bed yet, honey, someone’s wrong on the internet”). That ended up with Messrs Dr Yobbo and Beeso raise the stakes of their musical friction by posting their own lists... and those bastards know that I love compiling top 50 lists, so here’s mine.

50. Doug Anthony All Stars, Icon
49. James Blood Ulmer, Bad Blood In The City, The Piety Sessions
48. Gorillaz, Gorillaz
47. Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Angles
46. The Gin Club, Deathwish
45. Jurassic 5, Power In Numbers
44. Angelique Kidjo, Oremi
43. Harry Manx, Wise and Otherwise
42. Custard, Loverama
41. The Swell Season, Strict Joy


This 10 was mostly newer stuff which has crept into the earholes in the past 5 or so years and gets returned to most often. I have various playlists on my iPod to accompany my day, the most used one of these is a list called New Stuff, where songs added in the past 3 months are rotated up to 3 times before being automatically removed. It’s where I ‘taste’ most new music, those which pique my interest, I play their album from start to finish at least once. Ulmer, Gorillaz, Dan le Sac and The Gin Club crept into this list via those means. Kidjo, Manx and The Swell Season are part of my ‘maturing’ tastes. Custard, J5 and DAAS are just good fkn fun.

40. Skunkhour, Chin Chin
39. Butterfingers, Breakfast at Fatboys
38. The Mess Hall, Devil’s Elbow
37. The Cat Empire, The Cat Empire
36. Asian Dub Foundation, Punkara
35. Placebo, Black Market Music
34. Something For Kate, Beautiful Sharks
33. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads
32. Shihad, The General Electric
31. Michael Jackson, Bad


Truth be known, I love to shake my booty. Sure, I look like a dick when I do, but so does a crowd of thousands around me when I do crack out da moooves. Save SFK and Cave, this 10 is just great moving albums. A friend of mine bought a vinyl of Bad to school when it was released and I remember being awed by it: I was a bit confused about the ways of the music industry at that age and believed that Jackson himself had physically put this package together and distributed it. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to retain that wide-eyed joy of experiencing new music well into my adult life and still get a buzz by it.

30. Jeff Lang, Half Seas Over
29. Gomez, In Our Gun
28. Salmonella Dub, Inside The Dub Plates
27. Cordrazine, From Here To Wherever
26. The Go Betweens, Friends of Rachel Worth
25. Bruce Springsteen, Devils and Dust
24. Toothfaeries, Where?
23. The John Butler Trio, Three
22. Faith No More, Album of The Year
21. Ben Harper, Fight For Your Mind


Holy crap, there’s nothing more intoxicating that a dude with a story to tell and an ability to work their way around a fretboard, is there? I’ve always been a sucker for good story, a melodic hook and a little bit of noodling on a guitar. Take Faith No More and S Dub out of this group, and you’ve essentially got a gang of solid singer songwriters.

20. Paul Kelly, Nothing But A Dream
19. AC/DC, The Razor’s Edge
18. Hungary Kids of Hungary, Escapades
17. Midnight Oil, Diesel and Dust
16. Guns N Roses, Use Your Illusion I
15. Metallica, ... And Justice For All
14. You Am I, Hi Fi Way
13. Sarah Blasko, As Day Follows Night
12. Michael Franti and Spearhead, Everyone Deserves Music
11. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik


Wow, this was a lot harder than I thought. Not only to whittle down an initial list nearing the 150 mark, but also to define what it was I was trying to rank. Sure, the rules were fairly clear cut (no live albums, no compilations or EPs and you must actually own the album listed), but what I considered to be worthy of my all-time top 50. I cut and re-introduced many, before realising that I’m still being heavily influenced as much by new music at the age of 30-odd as I was when I was in my teens (when the likes of The Razor’s Edge, Gunners, Diesel and Dust and RHCP gave me woodies). Sarah Blasko’s new effort (released last year) is as near as perfection in the quirky, heart-on-sleeve angular pop as I’ve heard. Likewise, Hungry Kids of Hungary are at the pinnacle of their game and represent a gorgeous groundswell of striped sunlight sound coming out of Brisbane right now. While the album’s only been out for a couple of weeks, the tunes are very familiar thanks to a bevvy of singles, EPs and gigs over the past couple of years. In all seriousness, there’s a great little scene happening in Bris right now - rivalling, if not exceeding, all offered during the heady mid-90s guitar-pop with which many still associate with the Valley scene - and it was a true joy to have dabbled on the edges of it (and, no, Melbourne hasn’t shown itself to have the same qualities as yet.. I’m giving it time).

10. The Beatles, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
9. Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
8. REM, Monster
7. Radiohead, OK Computer
6. The Frames, For The Birds
5. The Church, Gold Afternoon Fix
4. Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
3. Augie March, Strange Bird
2. Nirvana, Nevermind
1. Pearl Jam, Vitalogy


But when it all comes down to it, epic era-defining rock is where it’s at for this heart of mine. Give me a soaring chorus, a middle eight out of left-field, a face-melting solo or two and charged lyric, and I’ll show you one very happy music fan. And while I’m proud to say that my top 50 reflects a deepening mood and a penchant for discovery, I’m also quite happy to wear my influences on my sleeve and stick by them.

All roads lead to the East

Name: The East Brunswick Club
Size: Small, probably about 300 pax
Who plays there: It's one of many small venues on the Melbourne local circuit. It's sister venue is the larger Corner Hotel in Richmond (which does all the ticketing), and it seems this is the smaller option for the bookers. We've seen Hungry Kids of Hungary, Jeff Lang and Cordrazine there.


Ahhh, this is better: sticky floors, paint peeling off the walls, a dank den of bad air circulation and a swirling odour of stale beer, urinal cakes and desperation. This is what a rock venues are all about; and we’ve found it in our adopted ‘local’ in the East Brunswick Club.

By stroke of luck or by design, the ‘East’ or ‘EBC’ was our venue of choice for a few weekends in a row, and it’s actually a pretty cool place. It’s an old brick corner bar which, over time, has sprawled over into a rear courtyard and the building next door. The main bar room has been converted into a pub dining room and small beerhall, with widescreen teevs providing entertainment for the sports buffs. This room does a decent atmos when a Wallabies game is on, and the dining option is quite acceptable pub fair with a twist, even though the ubiquitous parma does tend to dominate.

At the back of the main bar room you can head out to the scraggly courtyard or, probably more enticingly on cold evenings, off up the dark little corridor, into the tiny reception area-cum-box-office and through the doorway into the building next door, which has been colonised into the band room. Immediately clear is the fact that this is a small room - you wander into the back of the dark space and you are confronted by an unnecessarily large sound desk, complete with a stack of equalisers and machines which go ‘ping’. Looking past that, you have a small flat floor area, a long hole in the wall to the left which serves as the bar, and a relatively high stage area. On both sides at the rear of the room are two small risers - one housing the merch area, the other just an open viewing space. Both risers are vantage points, but end just shy of the mixing desk, meaning that the optimum listening space (just behind the sound-desk) is interrupted by the hundreds of people movements as they squeeze through this small opening to get to either the bar or the front of the room. All small rooms have their quirks, I guess.

The place is warm and cosy, both in its sound and environs. There’s a lovely absence of polished concrete, brushed metal and glass furnishings, and the audience of equally devoid of the fucktards generally attracted to such unimaginative decor. It’s at the top part of Lygon Street, but far enough away from the gangland reprisal attacks for which the Carlton part of this strip has become known that it may just as well be on another planet. The area is on the cusp of some form of gentrification - a couple of unit blocks are already in construction - but the old guard are hanging on. EBC is a local pub to an extent, so the inner-urban semi-profs mix with the inner-urban militia-hippy to provide an interesting people-watching mix. For the blokes, it manifests itself in a happy conglomerate of beards styles - from full, bushy, ‘fuck the man’ style jobbies to the tastefully full, but equally trimmed office-approved types (like mine). The ladies are tastefully beardless.

The pub is a little way from any other night-time establishment, meaning the between-set wanderings are a little sparse in highlights. Come 10-ish when the Fox Sports options are limited and the dinner visitors have cleared off, the place is just a regular local bar with a cool little band room. It has that slight air of “trying hard to be cool, but really not caring if it is or not”, akin to the multitudes of RSL clubs and community halls in the northern rivers of NSW who are now run by ex-Sydney band bookers who opted for a sea-change but couldn’t quite give up on the rock n roll lifestyle. This adds to the vibe that this is a little gem worth preserving and a ‘secret’ worth keeping.

Is The Espy all show and no go?

Music reviews have been a little sparse since moving to Melbourne, and it's taking a little longer to crack into the scene than I thought. Oh well, it'll happen. In the meantime, I'm still going to gigs and checking stuff out, so I thought I'd write about my take on some of Melbourne's venues.

Name: The Gershwin Room at the The Esplanade Hotel (the Espy), St Kilda.
Size: The Gershwin Room capacity is 650
Who plays there? Anyone from up and coming locals, to well known interstaters and some internationals with cult followings. I saw The Mess Hall play there.

Melbourne’s all about its hidden little gems. It’s so in love with itself over them that it even devised an entire ad campaign based around it (aka - the most annoying ad campaign in the world feature a giant ball of wool. Umm, WTF? You can’t tell me ad creatives aren’t sittin around smoking weed all day and starting every pitch with “Hey, you know what’d be cool, man?”). And sure, it’s certainly got it’s hidden little gems tucked away everywhere. I mean some days, it’s hard to walk down the fucken street without tripping over some new swanky bar or art space or showing room. Which I guess defeats the purpose of hidden gems, but hey - who am I to deny some marketing guru’s ball-of-wool-driven wet dreams?



And so if the CBD is the demure, alluring and sophisticated maven sipping her over-priced cocktails in some gorgeous little bar off whatsit’s-name-alley, then St Kilda is surely her slutty little friend raucously sucking down vodka jelly shots, tongue kissing her BFF for a dare and endlessly taking pouty pose portraits to upload to Facebook. Sitting on the bay, St Kilda is not about dark alleyways or hidden gems - it’s about getting it’s tits out and displaying its assets for all and sundry to stare at, even if it may not be the best rack in room. From the gaudy Acland Street cake-porn windows, to the huge toothy grin of Luna Park and the art deco twin spires of the Palais Theatre, St Kilda is about fun and frivolity.

Late on a cold winter’s Saturday night, however, St Kilda becomes a divided suburb, with Acland Street’s coffee and cake-centred clientele filling out one bookend, while a couple of blocks away lies a bevvy of bars, venues and take-away joints on Fitzroy Street. Smack bang in the middle sits The Esplanade Hotel, a big white monstrosity of an old-school sprawling pub which, as its names suggest, overlooks esplanade of St Kilda beach. Locals call it The Espy and it’s one of these venues which somehow attained mythical status as a key element of the musical scene in a city which, rightly so, also places the musical scene as a key element of its personality. But is it really all it’s cracked up to be?



A Saturday night brings all the dregs to the bar, and even by the relatively early hour of 9pm the small beer garden out front is chock full of fully siiiick mates and their moles. The central staircase leads through the tunnel of smokers before a double door leads into the pub proper. The main room is large and dark, with paint peeling off the pressed tin ceilings and the open fire place on the side providing warmth. A large bar takes up the wall on the right, and a free band usually shacks up in the space next to the door which leads to the pool room at the back. This is the free-for-all room, where people meeting for a quick pint are mingled with tight groups out for a large one and yet other groups keen for a cheap pub meal at a relatively cool place. When there’s a paying gig on, whatever kind of audience the band attracts also gets thrown into the milieu.

The main band action takes place in a room curiously titled the Gershwin Room. To get there, one must first negotiate the front gate bouncers, the fully siiiick mates and their moles in the beer garden, the huddled smokers around the front door, the growing masses in the main room, then veer off to the back left and look for a doorway through which you can see a larger-than-life close up poster of Adalita’s upper thighs and the body of her distinctive SG. After entering the doorway and leering at Oz’s first lady of rawk’s legs, you wander down the long corridor which leads to another set of double doors and into the Gershwin Room proper. Phew.



The room is a long rectangular piece of work, probably about four times as long as it is wide (I’m sure there’s a scientific name for that sort of shape, but fuck scients. What’s it ever done for us, apart from discovering alcohol and other psychotropic drugs?). It’s divided into three roughly equal parts. At the back of the room is the entrance and a slightly raised platform to the left with comfy couches and low tables. This is the defined chill-out/chatting area. The middle third is taken up by the bar on the left hand side and the sound desk on the right. The front is a small open floor area before a low, but quite large, stage area. There are interesting tid-bits everywhere - ornate plaster work on the cornices, two odd chandeliers made from deer horns, and stained glass windows on the far wall.

The thing is, though, a band room is nothing if it doesn’t allow for good sight and sound. And this is where The Espy, and the Gershwin Room in particular, is fucked. The sheer length of the room means that you’ve got no hope of physically seeing the band unless you’re 6 foot tall, or you are in the mood to be squashed up the front. Up the back, it’s pretty fucking dismal: the sound is muffled at the higher registers and boomy at the bottom end and, of course, you can see nought but the tops of the heads of the performers. But here’s the catch - considering it’s a rock gig, you’re prolly gunna want to be up the front at some point to get amongst the action... but the centre third is a bottle neck, with the bar on one side and the sound desk on the other funnelling you though a very small and cramped space. And then you’re stuck snuggled under the armpit of some Amazonian while still having no better view than if you stuck it out up the back. But does it sound ok up there? Fucked if I know... at that stage of the night, I’m busy trying not to asphyxiate and the band has become little more than an annoying distraction to the mess of humanity I find myself wedged within. A bit sad, really.

The Gershwin Room at The Esplanade gets a big “could try harder” in the music stakes, with a “yet to show it’s potential” in the memory-making category.

Settling into the new heartland

And so with some sadness, the transformation is complete and the Albion Love Den has been wiped from all but the history books. It's spirit will remain, but now conveniently located in Coburg.

Up until the 71 items were delivered and the boxes were unpacked at our new digs, the whole move still seemed a little surreal. At first it was like an extended holiday, with our temporary North Melbourne abode seemingly like one of the best do-it-yourself B and Bs around. I revelled in walking into the city heart a few nights a week to go the gym; the Tiger became the Queen Vic Market queen; we loved being the surrogate big brother and big sister to 2 absolutely adorable German Shephards.



It wasn't to remain, however, with our short time masquerading as trendy inner-urbanites coming to an end and we had to settle for being trendy-fringe outer-urbanites. Comparing the two realities, it’d be easy to be dismissive of where we’ve decided to settle. The truth is, however, I’ve absolutely fallen head-over-heels in love with this part of town.

The suburb’s got a character a lot like Albion, really. She’s a bit downtrodden, in need of a fresh lick of paint and a bit of tender loving care, and yet it offers up some sweet gems which warm your cockles and makes a place great. In Albion, it was not just the cosy nook I’d created in the Den, but also the little beauties like the cheap eats at Thaiways, Saturday morning boiled bagels from Brewbakers, and late night munchy-runs up the hill to the shops. Here, we’re a stone’s throw from all the amenities (including 2 Coles stores facing the very same carpark... weird), the great Italian coffee shops, fruit and veg markets and a bonza butcher. Nestled amongst it all are the usual array of bits and bobs shops you find in lower socio-economic and migrant-heavy ‘burbs, and the ubiquitous conglomerate of kebab shops.

There’s an unpretentiousness about it - you can almost see the exact line where over-eager local councillors just simply gave up trying to make the place more “family friendly” - and there’s a delightful feel of gentrification being valiantly resisted for just a little while longer. A lot like Albion, really... before the polished concrete and stainless steel brigade barged there way in with their bulging cheque-books. I wonder how long this little gem can outlast the threatening hoards?

What I Got, You Gotta Get It.

It’s funny what sticks in your head while watching a band sometimes. Most of the time, if the music’s right, you’re floating a little bit off the floor as the waves of emotion sweep you up and along. Other times, it’s more earthly and realistic - like the dull ache in your lower back, or wanting to drill a hole in the back of the head of the six-foot-tall knuckle dragger in front of you.

On occasion, however, the band itself provides a shake-of-the-head, what-were-they-thinking type moments which you just know is fast-tracked on to the cringe file in a few years time. Tonight while enjoying news.com’s live coverage of The Temper Trap from Splendour In The Grass, I was struck by bassist Jonathon Aherne’s awkward playing style. At first it was entertaining and quite a thrill, but it soon became irritating as his arms-akimbo schtick and hail-flailing antics proved themselves to be nothing more than window dressing. Blech, check it out.



I got to thinking about how a band’s presence leads a lot to how they’re interpreted. Augie March, for example, are a band who compliments their intricate style with their gentlemanly couture, and it wouldn’t be Metallica without some form of hair-fling (that said, their current collective receding hairline has got to detrimental to a good head-bang). It got me wondering which musician’s behavious lends most to helping to solidify what’s going on with the music. Keeping with the bass player theme, and I think you’d be hard pressed to go past RHCP’s Flea in terms of someone who not only plays what he feels, but let’s that be abundantly known through his expressive movement.



So whatdya reckon? Whose on-stage antics bug the shit out of you? And whose gets your juices flowing the most?

Our beautiful matriarch

The word matriarch is such a fitting misnomer for me when talking about my family. The Greek word speaks of a fiery, silver-haired maven who commands all those before her into quivering servitude. It suggests a matron used to getting her own way and making that fact known to all around.

For the Surridge family, our matriarch was the polar opposite of the poetic imagery, but her impact was just as forceful. Audrey (aka Mum, Grandma and Great-Grandma), while silver-haired and occasionally imposing with her unshakable simple, homely faith and open-hearted kindness, was a beacon of gentle calm. In the face of some very considerable adversity, Mum (as I confusingly came to call her early in life) fought hard to maintain a stable shelter. For most in my family who didn’t venture far from the nest, this may have been overlooked and possibly taken for granted, but for those of us who’ve been imbued with the perpetual itchy-feet, the vision of that modest, gorgeous home on the main highway in Albury was a beautiful touch-stone and battery recharger.

Matriarch the word, however, does fit when considering what it was that Audrey was able to achieve in her life. A simple farm girl, she nabbed the handsomely chiseled town-boy and set about making a family and a home. Through some of the world’s greatest societal upheavals, Audrey and Roy brought five head-strong, very determined children into the world. With fierce determination, they fought through the catastrophic murder-suicide of my Uncle and picked up the pieces of their family left behind to provide a temporary home for their three boys. She sailed through the continual upsets and disappointments from challenging family members and continued to welcome all with open arms. And with steely determination, she fought through the loss of her life partner and maintained a proud home through thick and thin.

Our matriarch passed away tonight and it’s left quite a hole. As far as I know, it’s last of the grandparent generation for my family and it’s shifted everyone up a notch in the family tree. For me, Mum’s passing has brought back how important the family unit can be, regardless of its foibles. And it’s given me a great appreciation for what Audrey was able to provide - it sounds simple, but it’s infinitely far from it.

Rhythm of life

Was it a rut? Some people thought my living at the Love Den was a sure sign of ruttage, as I set about doing as little as possible and just staying put for as long as I could. And I guess it was a self-imposed rut in that sense, but with a clearly defined theory: I needed to know what it felt like to sit in a comfy chair and watch the world turn for a bit.

You see, as the step-child of a soldier and the son of a rather gypsy-ish woman, my only memories in childhood revolved around the rigmarole of finding new friends, fitting into schools, working out the pecking order... and getting the shit kicked out of me from time to time for not getting that pecking order right. Basically all the joys of being, as the term goes, an Army brat. Even after being removed from that lifestyle, the itchy-footed wanderings still regularly overtook the family, until my early twenties when I realised I’d lived in almost as many houses as years I’d lived. Soon after that realisation, I had a full-body urge just to sit the fuck down somewhere nice and catch my breath for a bit. Albion Love Den was the place, and took more than a decade for me to feel it necessary to move on.

The moving around may not have been all beer and skittles and happy roaming families, but it also wasn’t a depressing tale of being the constant awkward new kid and getting lost on the way to the shops, either. One of the benefits, in hindsight, was the ability to re-invent yourself without the burden of a collective memory - the other was the almost immediate injection to the rhythm of your day-to-day life.

Living in the one spot, I found, my natural daily routine tended to seek the path of less resistance. Like muscles against a force, or birds on the wing, my travels were more about efficiency and finding the easiest, simplest way to get shit done. It became more about maximising the time doing the things I loved and less about exploration and seeking new things. Not that I was fully embracing the suburban hermit dream, but I did find the work-gym-home triangle, with the occasional Valley gig a bit of a yawn-fest towards the end. And as a result, the cycle naturally slowed until a near-crippling boredom of Brisbane started to set in.



A change of scenery, however, naturally injected a wad of extra digits to my energy levels. Everything is new and exciting and wonderful and enchanting and full of life. The new surroundings thrust subtle nuances at my senses which excite and turn me on, and I can think of nothing more enjoyable than cruising around her artery-like streets for hours on end: achieving nothing, but soaking it all in and trying to gauge the mood of it all to eck out my own niche amongst it.

Even the mundane tasks of day to day life have gotten a nitrous-oxide injection, with Melbourne noticeably a quicker and more urgent city than Brisbane. Getting to work in Bris used to be a leisurely hour or so on public transport: train, then a short wait in the city, then a bus chugging through the inner-eastern suburbs. In hindsight, it seems positively sluggish compared to my daily commute these days: within an hour of waking, I’m saddled up on the white mountain bike and am hurtling myself through the misty, dark streets of North Melbourne, heading for the train station. I dodge trams and weave in and out of the traffic and delivery vans, before a 20-minute public transport commute to the northern suburbs. The trains themselves are jet-powered compared to QR’s silver bullets, with shorter dwell times at stations and absolutely no mercy should you be running even 5 seconds late.

The weekly shopping trip to Toombul Coles has been replaced by regular visits to the Queen Vic Market, just around the corner. It’s cheaper and much better quality, with the atmosphere enlivened by the vendor’s cries of “$2 bag, $2 bag” and the jostling with Italian grandmas to get the juiciest, plumpest mandarins. The gym trips, now down to just two visits a week thanks to the daily cycle commute, see me strapped to the iPod and lightly jogging or quick-stepping from home down to Melbourne Central. There’s something purely indulgent about calling the inner-city gym as my local, even if it’s just temporary until we find a place of our own.

It’s true, I’m completely keyed up with this new phase of life and I’m so energised by the power of this place. Sure, things are a little tough at the moment (money-wise, house-wise, etc), but the energy and tempo of Melbourne is doing things to me which I’m really excited about. Yes, I’m smitten by this sexy bitch of a city.

Leaving the Love Den

Leaving the Love Den was always going to be painful. What, after 11 years in its warmly glowing warming glow, I could confidently say I knew it's each and every crack and creak. I knew those creaks in a way in which I'd never known a house before - my tenure at the Love Den was the longest I'd ever lived in any one place my entire life. Those cracks were my constant from way back when I finished uni; through my stint as a working journo; through a fairly monumental career change where I gave up on the life I'd strived for since I was a teen; through heartbreaks (both caused and felt) and through countless episodes of the most defining shit-talking, drinking and smoking fests. The pain of leaving those creaks and cracks was most acute, however, when confronted with cleaning them for the first time in 11 years.

First cab off the rank was getting rid of the mountains of shit which had spontaneously appeared within her fours walls over the years. Chief amongst these was the ancient fridge which was initially included in the lease for the "partly furnished" deal. This thing was an absolute monstrosity of 1970s electrical engineering. The interior spawned a life of its own, with its internal freezer only being usable for about 3 days after the frustration-driven manual defrost cycle (with the use of numerous tools through years, including hammers, kitchen appliances and hair-dryers). The white exterior had long been pock-marked and stained, and then ceremoniously covered in an array of stickers, magnets and other Useless Junk.


I remember the Wiseacre sticker taking pride of place on the bottom third of the front door, despite no-one ever admitting to liking them enough to defile my fridge with their name. In to the mini skip she went, along with my ancient double bed (which could spawn a whole other blog of its own memories, if you know what I mean. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Say no more, say no more. A bit of the ole 'workbench' action, eh? A bit o' rumpy pumpy on the Love Lorry, yeah? A bit of ee-eeee, aw-awww on the Caravan of Luuurve, see?... Yeah, I'm talking about wanking), a fine selection of chip-board 'furniture', a couple of old bike frames (one of which had to be broken away from the house with an angle grinder thanks to me losing the key many years ago), the back-breaking cloth-covered dining chairs and the 2-seater couch donated from Jinna all those years ago, but had long since lost its arse. Like many of us, I suppose.

With the shit gone, the next task was the 'music room'. For those who never set foot within her, the Love Den boasted an open scrapbook of musical memories in the form of a wide, short hallway linking the front of the house with the lounge area at the back, whose walls were adorned with band posters, gig tickets, postcards, wrist-straps and torn out pages from magazines and street press. It was a tradition to end a great night out seeing a band by Blu-Taking the evidence on the walls and you could trace the various inhabitants through the years in a clock-wise direction around the room. There was so much history on those walls, even pre-dating my time there, that it's hard to pin-point the stand-out memories from the hundreds, possibly even thousands, contained. There was, however, one poster representing a gig which I sadly missed, twice, but at the time consoled myself with the "I'll catch them next tour" thinking - only to have them disband soon afterwards. I'd interviewed Irish band The Frames right when they were trying to crack into the Australian market and was naturally taken by their smooth, emotional guitar-driven anthemic style. They toured Australia for the first time soon after I'd interviewed them, but I'd decided to take a little break at that point and headed to Melbourne for a week... right when they were playing at The Zoo. Nevermind, was my thinking, they'll come back. And they did about a year and a half later, when I was going through a relatively rough patch and was unemployed. Being in a constant state of poverty, I'd decided to stop reading the music press so I didn't get tortured by the shit I was be missing out on. I had no idea they were touring, until I was out in the Queen Street Mall one afternoon, wandering around with my new girlfriend trying to think of cheap things to do. We walked into HMV and I instantly spied a poster bearing The Frames' name - and it stated they were playing a free gig on the top Mall stage at 1pm that day! Halle-fucken-lujah, I cheered to myself as I checked the time... "Oh, you're fucking joking? It's 2.2opm?!?!". I'd fucking missed them, again. The pinched poster was a fair consolation prize, I figured.

Yeah, this room, more than the Love Den itself, personified my growth through the years and was a very tangible link to what I've devoted my adult life to - being an unabashed, die-hard, true-blue believer in great music. Taking this down and deciding what to cast aside and what to take with us was easily the toughest thing I had to do when kissing this old girl goodbye. The wheels of progress we chugging away, however, and so with all our stuff packed and shipped out, the shit dumped, the load-bearing Blu-Tak and picture nails removed, it was time to don the sugar-soap and try in vain to scrub away every note of our existence from those faded VJ walls and polished wooden floors.


Where the fuck did this stain come from?

I never knew my feet were that dirty. I mean, being constantly bare-footed and proud of it, it's pretty obvious they'd be grubby, but the stains on the wall underneath my computer desk were fucking ridiculous! Without a footrest, I'd unconsciously rest my feet on the pale-blue wall while frittering away the hours at my keyboard, which led to a mess of brown and black feet stains spanning a 1m wide radius. Of course, it wasn't all just mindless frittering at the computer screen - there were those 8-months or so when Satomi was back in Japan just after we got engaged, and our only tangible link to each other were our nightly webcam chat sessions and the occasional 'on-line date'. Ahh memories... are no match for sugar soap and a scourer.


Who was the dirty fucker who did this?


Oh that's right, it was me - throwing a tea-bag up under the small wall overhanging the stove in a bizarre attempt at one-upmanship after Steve-O had hoisted a slice of peanut butter toast across the lounge at me one wintery eve. This little game of house-hold brandy would kick in every now and then (generally in response to poverty-induced extreme boredom), with one of us setting up a fortress of sorts on the old lounge or papasan and hurling relatively soft household items at the other. Generally off our trees, this game could go on for ages and would only end when my subliminally implanted idea for munchies (well, not so much subliminal, more obvious... along the lines of "Go get me some ice-cream, bitch") would take hold in his mind and he'd be off up the hill for some sugary goodness.


Nicotine ain't just bad for your lungs, kids

It was a proud smoke-friendly household, the old Love Den. From the moment I took up residence, my pack-a-day habit moved in too. There were brief moments of outside smoking only, generally around the time new flatmates moved in and not wanting to freak them out. That resolve would last until either the first good movie was on telly which I didn't want to miss a second of to get a hit of cancer, or said new flatmate decided it was high time to take up an evening of green and amber fuelled shit-talking around the kitchen table with me. The result was off-white walls which slowly but surely took on an orange-brown hue, noticed clearly when pictures or posters were taken off the wall only to have their outlines marked on the VJs. Sugar soap and a number scourers tried, but failed, to remove evidence of this excess... and let's hope a couple of years of smoke-free clean living since has done a better job on my lungs.


Oven cleaner is not just for ovens


There was a time when I fancied myself as a bit of a budget-special cook, just a slight nudge up the scale from hopeless experimenter (I'm looking at you here, Jensy). Monday nights were always a specialty, with Secret Life Of Us usually accompanied by a house-guest and some interesting, if pedestrian, take on a pasta-based staple. Or there were the days when the Emma and Joey show would roll around just for the sake of it, bringing with them their own organic goods to whip up some of the most fantastic sustenance I'd ever eaten (preceded by some of their own organic 'produce' which probably heightened my love for their dinners, if you catch my drift). All of this excess coupled with the day-to-day grime of living under a flight path, a block away from a train line and on a main-road combined with an almost pathological hatred for unnecessary cleanliness (my thinking was that if it wasn't attracting vermin, then it was probably clean enough), meant this part of the house was a sticky putrid mess. Sugar soap and scourers weren't cutting it, so Mr Muscle oven cleaner did wonders in bidding goodbye to this evidence.


Who the fuck scratched this fucken floor?

The papasan took pride of place in the various incarnations of the Love Den lounge. It's a big double-sized mofo who grumbles and protests the minute you fall into it, but never fails to engulf you in it's charms. For the first few minutes, you attempt to get yourself comfortable, but realise it's nearly impossible to do so gracefully and so you adopt a lying position akin to a palsied cat passed out in a litter tray. It felt luxurious and wrong initially, then alluringly snuggly, but it soon turned to back-achingly annoying and thoughts of escape started to creep in at about the half-hour mark. But, it entraped you with its deceptively hard exit procedure requiring gymnatic-like poise and feline-like reflexes - but which invariably shifted the entire mechanism a few centimetres back against the wall, and in the process scarred the beautiful polished wooden floorboards. It was this papasan which was the prime position in the household brandy wars, it was also the place where Jen, Brendan and I would sit wilfully every evening when we were underemployed to conduct live over-dubs on episodes of Neighbours, turning them into the most sickeningly depraved porno movies you could imagine. Let's just say Bouncer the dog was a shining star in these alternative realities, which didn't just cross the line of good taste, but gave it a fully-fledged frontal wedgie as it zoomed past at warp speed.

And that was that - 2 days of flurrying activity wiped away the physical evidence of more than a decade of my life, and chunks of many others, from this rented property's walls. When I moved to Brisbane from North Queensland all those years ago, I was craving some stability and made a promise to myself to set down some roots and try to experience what it meant to feel connected to a place. I did that, and then some, and in addition to that, I had somehow created a place which many also had a strong connection. Which is, I guess, is the crux of that stability - it's not about not changing, it's not about stagnating; it's about providing a warm resting place for you and yours and ensuring it does all it can to enrich your world. To me, it's this, from my good mate Brendan in response to a recent late-night emotional email rant:

the Den was always there.. it provided reassurance and stability during some tough times.. equally, it was a place where I have rarely laughed harder and felt more joy.. those walls are caked with memories (you don't want to know what I've caked the papasan in...) but most of all it was the people within those walls that have been among the true foundations in my life and that's infinitely more important than any single piece of real estate

Step, 2, 3... Die, 2, 3

There are many things I have seen come and go in my time as the chief custodian of the Albion Love Den: countless flatmates and friends; innumerable intoxicated evenings; about 15 failed restaurants on the strip; a procession of pithy billboard beacons shining into my bedroom; my youth and vitality; and the last patches of non-grey hair on my head. The latest in the string of departures has, however, caused me great joy for my remaining time here - the demise of the much-reviled Roofayels Dance Club.

For the past decade (and a bit), my bedroom windows have been just over the road from the unchanging drone of ballroom dancing instructions, as Roofayels went about discovering if anyone in Brisbane actually could really dance (apparently not). Delivered in a perfectly monotone nasal Aussie drawl, the dance calls came with a backing track of Ricky Martin, the Venga Boys and Baha Men... oh fucken joy amongst joys. Monday nights were the worst - their 'come one, come all' beginners classes which culminated in an ear-splitting group dance-off right on bedtime and so served as my unwanted lullaby ("Step, 2, 3... together, 2, 3... back, 2, 3..." she bangs, she bangs. Oooh baby, when she moves, she moves). 

Over the years, we'd tried everything to rid our earholes of this pollution - like pumping out Sepultura and Metallica with the volume cranked to 11, or vaguely threatening them with a noise complaint following a particularly awful summer night where they decided a teenage girl sleepover was a good idea - sure, that wasn't necessarily a bad idea... just allowing them full access to the PA and encouraging their scientific experiments on what effects reverb and microphone feedback has on S Club 7 medleys was probably not the club manager's shining moment. Heck, I even had one flatmate who took it upon himself to freak out each and every female club member by standing in the window of his darkened room every night, watching them shimmy and shake to their heart's content (he didn't grasp the concept that the back-lighting from the rest of the house actually accentuated his rather imposing silhouette to them... yeah, he wasn't the brightest of sparks).

So seeing them pack up their PA, rusting industrial fans and 1970s era plastic school chairs was not met with too much sadness this morning, as you could probably imagine. Sure, it's the end of an era and yet another sign of the "wheels of progress" (attached to either large wrecking balls or tunnel boring machines) motoring through Brisbane's northside. The building they're in - the second story of an old picture theatre which makes up the bulk of the Albion strip - is being turned into a boutique hotel upstairs and "upmarket" shops and salons downstairs. You know, for all those prissy pretty young maidens and faux-hawk heroes who are eager to spend a night soaking up the exciting ambiance of the Albion restaurant strip, but who cannot bring themselves to booking a night in the tres uncool Albion Manor or Hampton Court (I think it's something to do with there not being enough polished concrete and stainless steel. They love that shit). 

Fuck it, what do I care? I'm leaving in a month, so whatever happens to this neck of the woods is of little concern to me. This small change just means that I may be a little less homicidal on Tuesday mornings towards Ricky Martin or whoever the fuck let those motherfucking dogs out.