friday night i have dinner with a lisa and gravy, cool meal, japanese food, seaweed salad and english spinach and black sesame seed sauce. very very cool, we smoke a big spliff and watch a big red moon rise over the ocean and follow it as it appears over the headland, i look through gravy's hi tech secret agent binoculars and we can make out the craters, it's magickal, my soul gets its nurishment from this kind of thing, i need it in my life, and people to share it with.
its all wonderful until someone tells me the red is caused by pollution.
saturday i am in glebe an old second hand book shop when an attractive young girl introduces herself, she's an old friend of a friend, we chat a bit and i give her a cd cos she looks a bit gothic and the cover is a bit gothic and truth is i was trying to immpress her, which i now feel embarressed about. me a grown man!
then later in the same bookshop i meet another friend who says hello, he lives in glebe now and i chat about my time living above the salvation army church on ross street. strange days, i lost my mind in there.
in the evening i drive to steve's gig at manly. i'm very early and wander around the jetty looking at the ocean, very calming. there's a strange energy in the air, lots of people getting ready to start their big nights out, i'm a bit nervous because i don't like manly, its filled with testosterone and alcohol fuelled teenagers at nights, not my cup of tea at all.
the boatshed is a place that has not changed much in 20 years, it's a narrow staircase leading into a nautical ambience contained within its confine, a small bar, small stage, no major dress regulations which i find refreshing and a very nice lady running the show.
people trickle in, i'm the first person so and i watch them arrive, such a mixed crowd. the first guy goes on to play. it's not my cup of tea but i admire his playing, the place is filling up fast, steve and nic arrive, we go for a quick smoke at spots. outside manly is gearing up a notch, you can feel the energy, frantic charges with no direction, chaos emerging, random drama, i look at the young girls plastered in make up, short dresses and the folly of youth, the males loud and testy, the smell of violence hangs around, it's unnerving, almost animal but less than, because animals have a nature that they have to follow, this is just stupidity, even decadance has style, this is not decadent. we have a quick puff on what i can only describe as super strong weed. i suggest i take the merch box and see what we can generate. we can only try, all things being equal i hope we can shift some cd's books and the dvd to make up for loss of earnings from the previous gig. it seems the least i can do.
i'm finding it hard to understand how steve kilbey didn't get paid for a gig, it's incredible that someone could not pay the greatest singer song writer in australia for a show. i know it's a big claim but it's true. i've thought so for 30 years. i'm not wrong about this. anyways im kinda having a ball, steve is very funny and has a mind that operates at a million miles a second whereas mine is super slow and sluggish especially after smoking the green goddess. anyways it is kinda like a dream come true, to help your fave rock star out at a gig. something i can tell my grandkids about when steve finally gets that acknowledgement.
the crowd inside are loud and wild, its a rowdy northern beaches joint where people just wanna drink, fight and fuck. i'm somewhat frail tonight, it's intiomidating being in the middle of such erratic people, colliding intop one another, screaming at the people standing next to them, so much interference.
nic and i set up the small box of merch. i'm plugging painkiller to anyone who will listen. steve plays an awesome set, but i feel the crowd should just shut up and listen, they are talking and yelling at one another and steve has to work them into a bit of enthusiasm. i guess the leonard cohen may have been a bit to dark for those beachy types but eventually a persistent steve won the crowd over. people dancing.
then in a kinda post script to the evening, steve has this awful time getting paid resulting in some pretty serious stuff occurring, and then as a result not only gets his money but gets invited back again without the toxic middle man. i do love a happy ending these days.