Entertainment

Guns N’ Roses

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I bought tickets for Guns N’ Roses for myself, son, daughter and son-in-law on February 10th 2021. We finally got to use them last night, November 22nd 2022, after a covid inspired year-long delay. And I’m pleased to say there wasn’t a mask in sight. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any of course, because the concert was at the local football stadium so it was somewhat difficult to tell whether the amorphous mass on the other side of the field actually comprised people, let alone people with bandannas on their faces.

Congratulations Brisbane! The Gunners managed to get more people into the stadium than most of our sporting teams although, to be fair, you can’t actually take a chair out into the middle of the field during a game. I’ve had enough of sitting (or mostly standing) in front of the stage so we go for seats on the side, looking down on the stage from a 30-45 degree angle. The promoters don’t miss you when it comes to the cost of these seats and I paid top dollar to be able to see not much on the stage to be honest. But the big screens either side of the stage were BIG so my initial reluctance to go to a stadium concert (this was my first) and my disquiet when I saw how far away we were (despite, as I may have just mentioned, the price of the tickets) was assuaged when the gig got underway and the visual and sound and fury hit us full-on.

I just read a review of the concert and the reviewer made the point that there aren’t many stadium fillers in the music world these days including the Gunners – there were a lot of empty seats. If you’d asked my opinion on this when the music started I’d have agreed but a couple of songs in, when the lights scanned the arena it was clear that many people in the stadium bars were not throwing that last beer down for anyone. Twenty minutes in, the only areas not filled were those behind light towers and other impediments. So the reviewer obviously didn’t turn round after the first few songs. And I can tell you this for nothing, this little black duck won’t be attending concerts by those remaining few noted stadium fillers like Cold Play and Ed Sheeran.

Actually the people who finished their beers rather than catch the first couple of songs did themselves a favour because it took that long for Axl to get his mojo. Initially he looked and sounded like me doing “It’s So Easy” in a Ginza karaoke bar. By the time we got to “Welcome to the Jungle” he was sweating and snarling and looking mildly deranged and it was game-on. Speaking of how he looked, minus the bandanna, long hair and beard I couldn’t decide whether he was morphing into Kiefer Sutherland, impersonating Shane Warne or auditioning for Derek Jakobi’s “I Claudius” (you have to be able to remember back to 1976/77 for that one).

Axl’s always had a reputation for being somewhat unreliable. The sound curfew may have had something to do with them kicking off a 7.00pm scheduled start at a respectable 7.10pm but he also seemed to be making an extra effort to stay onside (that’s two football references in one sentence) by having Aussie badges sewn into the parts of his jeans that weren’t holes. And he must have spent the afternoon in a souvenir shop because he changed his t-shirt about eight times and each one had something antipodean on it except the one that said “Satan is a Lesbian”. Alright!

Much as the sound i.e. the actual music, is vital to the whole, if the singer isn’t on song, so to speak, the performance lacks something. The concert went for bang-on three hours and the time flew by, I have to admit. But it could have been shortened and improved (IMHO) by cutting a few songs that Axl struggled with. His once incredible range came out to play occasionally but sometimes he seemed uncertain as to whether to bang it up an octave to banshee or remain in the safe baritone range. Sometimes that decision was taken mid-sentence and occasionally mid-word. But let’s not quibble – to churn out that volume for that long is seriously impressive.

The musicians and musicianship were as you would expect. Duff’s base is still making my organs vibrate and did anyone ever tell him he looks like a dishevelled David Bowie. They have a Ronnie Wood lookalike guitarist (while we’re doing appearance comparisons) called Richard Fortus and there’s not much of him which is emphasised by his playing a huge Gretsch White Falcon guitar. And he can really play it. They let him off the leash a few times and his lead work was very good even if the weight of the guitar seemed to be dragging him closer and closer to the floor. But no matter how good he is, he or anyone for that matter, playing in a band that has Slash in it, will always be the rhythm guitarist. The songs are always the stars of these shows but Slash’s playing was not far behind. We got the full range from finger picking acoustic to rip-roaring, fire-breathing electric 12 string on a twin necked Gibson and everything in between.

There were three other musicians who were stuck up the back – the drummer and two keyboardists – who rarely figured on the big screen. One of them is a rather attractive young blonde lady who we saw about three times on the big screen and not at all on the stage because there was a light tower right in front of her from where we were sitting. My unmarried son was most disappointed.

And here’s the set list:

It’s So Easy
Mr. Brownstone
Chinese Democracy
Slither (Velvet Revolver cover)
Welcome to the Jungle (Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ intro)
Reckless Life
Double Talkin’ Jive
Live and Let Die (Wings cover)
Shadow of Your Love
Estranged
Rocket Queen
You’re Crazy
You Could Be Mine
I Wanna Be Your Dog (The Stooges cover) (Duff on lead vocals)
Absurd
Hard Skool
Better
Civil War (Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” outro)
Sorry
(followed by band introductions)
Slash Guitar Solo
Sweet Child o’ Mine
November Rain
Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb cover)
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan cover)
Nightrain
Encore:
Coma
Patience (The Beatles’ “Blackbird” intro)
Don’t Cry
Paradise City

I know, I know. Witchita Lineman?? I guess if they can have a Paul McCartney song they can have a Glen Campbell song.

Funny Girls

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I just watched a trailer for the new Ricky Gervais stand-up special on Netflix. Netflix, the wokest outfit on the planet and Ricky Gervais. If they thought Dave Chappelle was pushing boundaries, were they asleep when they let Ricky loose? And Bill Burr. And Tom Segura. And Joe Rogan – yes he does offensive stand-up as well. It’s possible Netflix were just pretending to be woke with their offensive kids programs that nobody watches and their Megan Markle whatevers that don’t seem to be getting made, let alone seen, while letting their stable of comedians rip. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the cry-babies on their staff to leave. Maybe they were hoping for a job at Twitter but Elon’s thrown a spanner in those particular (renewable electricity powered) works.

But back to Ricky. The trailer is all about the scarcity of funny female stand-ups. There are plenty of them, even on Netflix, but their ability to make you laugh varies. I guess it depends on your taste. There’s Nikki Glazer who talks about her vagina and blow-jobs, there’s Ali Wong who talks about her vagina and anal, there’s Christina P who talks about her vagina and childbirth. See, a veritable plethora of vag…. sorry, variety. Oh and there’s Ilisa Shlesinger who, as best I can make out is impersonating a spider. And there’s Taylor Tomlinson with the girl-next-door looks who likes to talk about sex, presumably to piss off her ultra-religious family. There appears to be a pattern emerging here, apart from the spider. Did you notice?

Having said that, I actually like (and laugh at) the above-mentioned female comedians (remember when they were comediennes). Maybe its the attractive females talking dirty thing. Most red-blooded heterosexual males (certainly the ones I know) are okay with this. And they do make me titter (sorry, couldn’t help it).

It’s now a couple of days later and I’ve watched SuperNature (that’s the new Ricky Gervais special) all the way through. Now Ricky’s got a reputation for causing offence, mostly unjustified in my humble opinion (actually, that should be by my standards) but there are some people who insist on being offended no matter what. Unfortunately we seem to have here, in this special, a situation where instead of the comedy causing offence, the offence is meant to make you laugh. It’s a subtle nuance I know, like punching a disabled baby, but think about it or better still watch the show. But of all the funniest people (see, I included women) on the planet, he is still one of the funniest, try-hard offending notwithstanding.

Ricky also seems to be on a one-man crusade to elevate the word “cunt” to “fuck” status. “Fuck” is in the process of vacating its position as the second most offensive word in the English language through continuous usage (by almost everyone except my mother), and now challenges “shit” as an almost acceptable word in polite society. It’ll be a “bloody” or a “bugger” before we know it.

One more thing Rick. Lose “right”. Saying “right” three times in every sentence makes you sound like a young female (I’m being a traditionalist here – call me old fashioned). I may have mentioned this previously but if the word “like” was excised from the English language millions of young women and girls all over the world would be struck dumb.. If you had not said the completely extraneous “right” so often your 1 hour 4 minutes performance would have been over in 45 minutes.

I gave this piece the title “Funny Girls” after writing the first three paragraphs. For those younger readers with a, like, recent education and therefore not well versed in English grammar (or anything else for that matter), the first three paragraphs are the chunks of words above the third line space, right. After getting to this point I thought I should probably change it. But then I realized that the dominant theme in SuperNature, or at least the one most people are talking about is “trans” and, having thought about the title some more, it somehow fits.

Melissa’s Fight-Night

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My television viewing is fairly limited. I like the occasional movie or Netflix series but mostly it’s sport and politics. So at the moment it’s the first cricket test between Australia and England and opinion shows on Sky News Australia and Fox News from the USA. I know that last bit will get me branded a racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, climate denying, white supremacist by the socialist doctors’ wives collective but such are the burdens we who espouse common sense and human nature as our fundamental political tenets, are made to carry. For the child bride it’s who-dunnits, real estate, food and politics. She hated cricket until she met me.

Anyway, to the point of all of this. Last night in the early evening, we had exhausted the TV options so put on some music. If one is going to drink, one is much happier with accompaniment. When I say we put on some music I don’t mean we downloaded onto my phone some stuff from the iTunes Store and bluetoothed my phone to a stand alone speaker. I mean we physically took one of hundreds of CD’s from our CD cabinet, put it into a CD slot in our stereo player and turned up the volume. Call me old-fashioned.

The CB chose Melissa Etheridge, someone who would have no truck with my TV viewing choices, I’m sure. But then her sexual preferences don’t particularly appeal to me and her choice of father for two of her children (carried by someone else incidentally) – David Crosby – implies some potential genetic foibles down the track. Notwithstanding, we like her music. In fact we like it to the extent that we’ve seen her in concert, twice.

The first time was December 1995 when she accompanied The Eagles on their Hell Freezes Over Tour. The second time was in April 1996 when she toured on her own. And that, in a very roundabout way, is the subject of this very digressionary missive.

The concert was performed at an office building site which was then occupied by Festival Hall. That same office building now houses our financial advisor. Considerably more fun was had there when it was Festival Hall until it was demolished in 2003. Great concerts in a cosy environment included Yes, The Eagles (on their 1976 tour), Status Quo and, of course Melissa. Plus there was boxing and cheering for the bad guys while being showered with blood at World Championship Wrestling (RIP legends like Skull Murphy and Killer Kowalski). And the wrestling was legit back then – really. But not as legit as what we saw after the Melissa Etheridge concert – I’ll get to that. We even went to the Roller Game once – LA Thunderbirds v New York Bombers. I’ll never forget my father on his feet yelling “come on Ronnie” as Ronnie Rains literally ran round the track wearing roller skates and flung himself over a collapsed pack to win the game with seconds to go. That was legit too.

So, back to Melissa. On entering Festival Hall with the CB and her sister, I was somewhat perturbed to notice a paucity of males. In fact there was me and another bloke a couple of rows away. We exchanged nervous glances and girded our loins for the oestrogen express that was about to shirt-front us. We were seated in an elevated spot on the side. There was a seating area on the floor in front of us and a large block of seats was unoccupied until a few minutes before the concert when an army of buzz-cut flaunting, overall wearing, brickies labourers arrived. I think it was a busload of the Gold Coast chapter of Muffs Anonymous. And they were all pissed so you can imagine the hijinks….and the noise. To their credit though, they did confine the raucosity to between songs.

Melissa was thrilled she had such a devoted cheer squad which was basically everyone there except me and the other bloke (and the CB and her sister). And she played up to them by at one point commenting on how hot it was and how “moist” she was. The sisterhood swooned with orgasmic delight. Two people rolled their eyes. At that point I started to feel really sorry for her backing band – all males. After a rock concert usually the band (and the roadies) can look forward to the star’s cast-offs at the after-concert party but there would be no nooky for these poor bastards unless they were gay and played with each other both on and off the stage.

An ablution solution was also problematic for the girls (the straight ones). Neither of the two sitting with me had the courage to relieve themselves either alone or collectively for the duration of our time there. For me and the other bloke – not a problem apart from running the gauntlet of what could potentially be a resentful and hostile clutch. I’d have rather invaded a Hells Angels clubhouse dressed as the Village People policeman.

To give Melissa her due, she put on a good show and no doubt incited all manner of goings on afterwards. The Gold Coast bus driver would have seen some shenanigans through his rear-view mirror on the way back to broad beach, sorry Broadbeach.

However not everyone was happy. As the throng made its way down Albert Street towards the carpark a hullabaloo started somewhere close by. There was a lot of shouting as a red faced, ball fisted, hellcat stormed through the crowd, obviously looking for someone. That someone had attended the concert without her now apoplectic “friend” and she was cowering only a few metres away from us.

“Where’ve you been, you cunt” screamed the hellcat. And before the poor girl had a chance to open her mouth, HC smacked her with a right hook that wouldn’t have been out of place inside Festival Hall when Hector Thompson was on the card (you’ll have to look him up). She went down like the proverbial bag of shit and as the obviously alpha member of that partnership glowered over her beta’s shaking, crumpled body, we made our way to the carpark lest she make eye contact with one of us. You can’t beat a bout of brutal lesbian violence to round-off a pleasant evening.

Eagles

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When the child bride and I relocated in April 2017 it had taken 12 months of marketing, six months of bridging finance the mafia would have been proud of, countless sleepless nights and almost as many grey hairs before we could move out of our acreage based country house and into our city based townhouse. On Friday this week (it’s now Sunday) my mother put her house on the market and on Saturday (yesterday) received an offer which was bang on the money. I consider this rather unfair. As unfair in fact, as favourite musicians dying while at the height of their powers. Which brings me to last night’s Eagles concert.

It was our sixth – 1976, 1994, 2005, 2009, 2015 and last night, the first since Glen Frey left the building in 2016. Now 2005 was called the Farewell 1 Tour which I guess makes last night’s concert part of the Farewell 4 Tour although they appear to have abandoned that naming protocol like Led Zeppelin stopped numbering their albums after 2,3 and 4.

Things have changed in so many ways, not least the Eagles line-up and their relative popularity. Back in 1976, the CB and I were wandering past the now demolished Festival Hall in Brisbane’s CBD and noticed on the hording above the main entrance that the Eagles would be appearing so we walked in to the box office where there was no queue and bought two tickets on the side, half way up and about 15m back from the stage. For all subsequent concerts getting similar tickets is like winning the lottery and you just about have to anyway to pay for them. So we each sold a kidney (now we’re on dialysis – the other two went for the Rolling Stones tickets a few years ago) and got tickets in a similar location, albeit in a different venue from all those years ago at Festival Hall.

As it happened, the seat location turned out to be rather problematic. I have to admit I’ve been doing it rather tough these past few weeks. Not genuine refugee tough but compared with a month ago, a bit challenging. If you read the few posts prior to this one you’ll see I had dental issues, an infection which turned out to be in my prostate which sent my PSA from a relatively benign 2.1 to something better measured by the Doomsday Clock and more recently a stiff neck which feels like my vertebrae have been fused together. So last night I had to either swivel to the right in my seat or gingerly turn my head to get a good look at what was going on. I had managed to turn it enough to be able to look straight at the stage but now my head is permanently locked at 10 minutes past the hour.

You thought this was going to be a review of the concert didn’t you and up to now the connection between this blog entry and the concert has been somewhat tenuous. But here goes.

The vocals and musicianship were predictably flawless so I’ll leave those aspects alone but there was one exception.

Joe Walsh forgot the first two lines of “Walk Away” and the magnificent screen behind the band had a ten foot high picture of his face on it at the time. They carried on regardless and never missed another beat. Status Quo would have admitted it and pissed themselves laughing about it but we’re dealing with a more serious entity here although everyone had a chance to chat and the mood was pretty relaxed throughout. But Joe is one of my favourite guitar players – the flamboyant artist to Steuart Smith’s technician – so he gets away with it. Add Vince Gill who selfishly combines terrific soaring vocals with stunning guitar chops – why does one person get to quarantine the outstanding talents of two – and you have a guitar line-up second to none in modern music.

A band with three gun guitarists plus two other competent players and a bass player lined up across the stage is my kind of band. Add five different lead vocalists and back-up musos who’ve been with them for decades plus an unrivalled back catalogue and I’ll be lining up for number 7 if the opportunity arises. By adding Vince Gill and especially Glen’s son Deacon Frey to the line-up, the average age of the band has plummeted. It doesn’t make the older guys any younger unfortunately and while 60 may be the new 40 (I’m prepared to stretch this even further) I’m not sure we’ll get to see 7 in Brisbane, if at all.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Brisbane concert (or Sydney, of Melbourne I expect, especially Melbourne) without the obligatory clown yelling “Aussie Aussie Aussie” and expecting the predictable follow-up. It didn’t work the first time and he got howled down the second time so mercifully, there wasn’t a third. I guess this is a reflection of the evolving demographics at Eagles concerts. We took our kids when they were youngsters (Hell Freezes Over in ’94 I think) and there were families there last night doing the same. So it wasn’t quite the Hollies or Status Quo crowd who we are starting to recognize and nod acquaintance to. But no doubt we’ll see elements of them and most of the Eagles crowd at Fleetwood Mac later in the year.

And to the prick who kicked a bottle of water all over my man-bag (phone, wallet, glasses, keys if you must ask), thanks for making it an even more eventful night.

My mother thinks Frank Sinatra was the duck’s nuts. I’m happy to listen to the duelling guitar solo (duet?) at the end of Hotel California on a continuous loop until I disappear into the flames.

For the record, here’s the set list. There were three encores and to all of those people who left after the first and second encores, hahahahahahahahahaha.

  1. Seven Bridges Road (all)
  2. Take it Easy (Deacon Frey)
  3. One of These Nights (Don Henley)
  4. Take it to the Limit (Vince Gill)
  5. Tequila Sunrise (Vince Gill)
  6. Witchy Woman (Don Henley)
  7. In the City (Joe Walsh)
  8. I Can’t Tell You Why (Timothy Schmidt)
  9. New Kid in Town (Vince Gill)
  10. Peaceful Easy Feeling (Deacon Fry)
  11. Love Will Keep Us Alive (Timothy Schmidt)
  12. Lyin’ Eyes (Vince Gill)
  13. Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away (Vince Gill)
  14. Those Shoes (Don Henley)
  15. Already Gone (Deacon Frey)
  16. Walk Away (Joe Walsh)
  17. Life’s Been Good (Joe Walsh)
  18. The Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
  19. Heartache Tonight (Vince Gill)
  20. Funk #49 (Joe Walsh)
  21. Life in the Fast Lane (Don Henley)

Encore 1

  1. Hotel California (Don Henley)

Encore 2

  1. Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh)
  2. Desperado (Don Henley)

Encore 3

  1. Best of My Love (Don Henley)

 

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The Hollies – a Tribute to Time Served

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The child bride and I took off for the Gold Coast on Thursday. The last time we went, to see Status Quo (reported on here), we hadn’t planned the most efficient route and therefore encountered about 47 red lights. This time we did it right which is just as well because the CB drove. I’ve been feeling like death warmed up since Wednesday or as an old boss of mine used to say “half fucked and let go”.

But I wasn’t going to let that prevent us from seeing the Hollies so, as I said, the CB drove. Now I’m not going to comment on her driving because we are safely back at home now. Suffice to say, I don’t tail-gate, I don’t lane-hop and I manage to keep my road rage more or less under control. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, as a great philosopher once said.

We’ve been lucky enough to see most of our musical heroes from our yoof so while it was great to see the Hollies last night, I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities because they tour relentlessly. They are probably the longest surviving band in history having performed and toured every year since the formative year of 1962 and the eventual settlement of most of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame line-up in 1963. Bobby Elliot and Tony Hicks have been with the band since 1963 – no hiatuses (hiati?), no taking a year off to pursue individual projects. Now that’s stamina. Actually, we may not get to see them here again because as you can calculate, those two are getting on a bit.

After performing Bus Stop, Carrie Anne, He Ain’t Heavy etc etc etc for all of those years you’d expect them to be pretty tight. Of the other four band members, two have been there almost 30 years and the other two 15 years. So they are able to reproduce that typical sound. Peter Howarth, the lead singer said some heckler in the audience at a previous concert yelled out “I didn’t expect you to be this good”. That sound was honed back in the 60’s with some rather accomplished session musicians – how about Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Elton John.

And when they came on stage at the start, they were all dressed in white shirt, black tie, black trousers and shiny black shoes. The drummer had his top button undone and his tie was all over the place but that’s drummers for you. I haven’t seen performance uniforms like that since I went to see the Halle Orchestra in Manchester in 1973.

The crowd was the Status Quo crowd and the Eagles crowd – SKI’s (spending the kid’s inheritance), COB’s (cashed up bogans), GLAM’s (greying, leisured, affluent, married) and GOFER’s (genial old farts enjoying retirement). We were six rows from the front so I’m speculating on those who were behind up but I’m pretty confident in my CUOA (compulsive use of acronyms).

So as I said, I’ve not been well, in fact I’m not well now so this post is not quite as hilariously funny and irreverent as previous ones. The concert was a welcome distraction but I hit the wall a few hours later and woke up at 4.30am thinking I was sleeping on the inside of a water bed. Hopefully a course of antibiotics will do the trick. Personally, I think it was the mouthful of bacteria I experienced during a tooth extraction two weeks ago. Maybe the course of antibiotics that followed didn’t complete the job. Let’s hope (well you don’t have to but I certainly do) this course does the trick.

It’s all I can do to tap on these keys at the moment but it just goes to show – if the desire and incentive are there, adrenaline will get you though.

Ringing in the Years

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I’m not a complete tech dinosaur – I know enough to get by. But I do remember when the first electronic calculator appeared – still don’t know how that liquid crystal display works. And when I first worked in an open plan office at a mine, there was one phone for everybody. My first job in the commercial world was eased by the use of telex then faxes and if you were extremely lucky you had a computer terminal on your desk linked to a main frame computer in another building. And it spoke a language called Fortran or something. Some of us even remember that there were floppies before there were flashes. Fast forward to now and the smart phone era and it’s time to upgrade.

It was inevitable I guess. My iPhone was built during the Triassic period (see reference to dinosaurs above) and powered by cow dung and hamsters and needed gunpowder to take photos. On Wednesday the CB’s iPhone decided it was a two year old toddler so threw itself on the ground and refused to function under any circumstances. It did the equivalent of locking itself in the bathroom and flushing the key. So it was time to upgrade our communications capability from the 21st century equivalent of smoke signals to something akin to the pony express.

Off we went to the internet to try to find a plan less complex than the theory of relativity and locate phones that……make phone calls, gasp!! We decided on 21st century iPhone 6S’s. I know, I know. This is like buying a Zephyr 6 to replace a Model T Ford. Admirable in 1960 but hardly cutting edge in 20… (what year is it again?). Then it was off to the shopping mall to confront a bouncing, toothy 20 something in the Tech shop who knew everything about stuff and proceeded to explain all about zzzzzzz.

We eventually left after very patient, very polite Katie explained a whole lot of something or other to us which I suspect had nothing to do with making phone calls.

So to home. Much more important things were beckoning – the sun was over the yardarm and it was Friday afternoon. Then Prodigal Son spent an hour transferring my contacts and emails from my aforementioned steam driven device to the new one, because these things are so user friendly if you are Steve Jobs.

I can now do things that defy description. It can tell me my location which will be very useful when I don’t know where I am. It will tell me that I am, in fact, here. I can do a university course, learn a musical instrument – I stumbled on a piano keyboard but have no idea how to relocate it. It makes noises that a movie studio would be proud of although it doesn’t seem keen to let me use my old ring tone – Rocks Off by the Rolling Stones. I can watch movies because a 5 inch panorama is as good as it gets (if you’re an ant).

Whatever. Our phone numbers and email address are unchanged.

A Band by Any Other Name….

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I just read an article about how bands like the Beatles and Pink Floyd and pretend bands like Coldplay got their names. It was interesting up to a point. The point being that they left out one of the world’s premier, if somewhat understated and underground, bands. I speak (write, actually) of none other than Not Garfunkel. The stories of how others got their names pale into insignificance when compared with the saga around our name. Did I mention that I was one of the founders of this iconic band and am currently the only member? Actually the others may still consider themselves to be members. It’s just that when I grab a guitar to play, I’m the only person in the room these days.

Back to the name. Son and girlfriend at the time came round to see the CB and me one night. The girlfriend was 24 and basically knew nothing about anything that had happened before her 18th birthday and outside this state. So when we told them we had tickets to see Simon and Garfunkel she explained that not only had she never heard of them but that it was a stupid name for a band.

Later that evening I announced that Saturday afternoon some mates were coming over and we were going to set up our gear on the deck and play some music and drink some beer. I forget which was used as an excuse for the other. Son asked if we had a name for the band and before I could answer girlfriend blurted out “It’s not Garfunkel is it?” And a legend was born.

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A Night Fit for a Queen

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Another rollicking good time at the Hammo last night. It seems tribute bands are all the rage at the moment. It was Led Zeppellin a couple of months ago and we have Pearl Jam and Bon Jovi on the horizon. But last night it was the turn of Killer Queen, a tribute to Queen (obviously) dutifully attended by daughter, son-in-law, son-in-law’s mate and your humble correspondent.

Whereas the Led Zepp tribute sounded really good, not only did the Queen guys sound good, they even looked like Queen. So we had Freddy with the obligatory black short back and sides and the 70’s pornstar moustache, Brian May with the still black shaggy curls and John Deacon with the gravity defying front bouffant which looked like it was about to tumble down his face.

But make no mistake, these guys spent more time on music than appearance and nailed it. The night did, however get off to a rather confusing start. We were advised that the Freddy character was sick and the John Deacon character would do the singing. Now a lot of the Queen songs contain some pretty lengthy and unmistakable bass runs so I was a bit dubious as to how the poor bugger would be able to handle both roles. But as the intro to the first song was being played, out bounded Freddy like Trevor Gillmeister off his death bed in State of Origin III in 1995 to lead an unexpected triumph.

Of course there were those iconic moments to look out for and the crowd didn’t disappoint when it came to their (our) turn. Everyone remembers the head banging scene from Bohemian Rhapsody in Wayne’s World. This was faithfully reproduced by all of the women with long shaggy hair. Sorry, but it doesn’t work with a sensible haircut. And the spontaneous hand clap (well it was spontaneous at Live Aid in 1985) for Radio Ga Ga was there if a little disjointed. But we only had a few hundred people, not 72,000.

And when Freddy told the ladies that the next song was especially for them and the unmistakable intro to Fat Bottomed Girls started I scanned the fat bottoms for signs of rebellion but thankfully that potential tipping point passed without a descent into chaos or at least indignant detachment.

My review of the Led Zepp tribute also featured a crowd review because when we’re talking about bands with their origins in the distant past, all manner of enthusiasts emerge from the shadows. This time the attendees seemed a tad more middle of the road with more women than men by my estimation. I expected the gay community to be out in force and maybe they were, I just didn’t notice. Anyway, one thing’s for certain; when the band starts up all of the tall men and short women push their way to the front. Lucky the child bride wasn’t there or she would have been somewhat miffed.

At the end I commented to my daughter that most of the songs we heard were recorded before she was born, some of them a decade or more before she was born. I don’t know how to adequately explain this but it’s like time has condensed or concertinaed in recent decades. Had I been her age and we were listening to music from a similar time in my past, we’d be listening to Glen Miller and when I was 30 that was never going to happen.

The Song Does In Fact Remain the Same

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Last night was a trip down memory lane – back to the times when we spent hours standing in smoke filled rooms getting our ear drums assaulted. The only differences last night were the complete absence of cigarette smoke (or any type of smoke for that matter) and the difficulty in standing for two hours without both knees locking up.

Yes, the child bride, the son-in-law (who kindly provided the tickets), one of his mates and I attended a Led Zeppelin tribute concert at the local Hamilton pub. The Hammo has an upstairs room with a laughable VIP section right at the back, a very long and well attended (both sides) bar, very few tables and chairs and a stage just big enough for a four piece band and all of their gear. Actually, that’s not quite true – two of the speaker stacks were on the floor in front of the stage. So they were just a little bit closer to us. We were about six or seven metres from the stage.

Of course a Led Zep tribute band doesn’t work unless the singer sounds like Robert Plant. This guy pulled it off with aplomb although the little thermos he occasionally sipped from, I’m sure was filled with honey and Lemsip, rather than vodka. Getting through Stairway to Heaven which starts slow and low and finishes fast and high would challenge the most muscular vocal chords let alone two hours of high pitched wailing.

Listening to the real Led Zep taught me the value of a tight rhythm section. Forget Plant and Page. It was Jones and Bonham who held it together. The two P’s were always keen to demonstrate their virtuoso capabilities with musical and vocal flights of fancy but it was the other two who kept herding them back onto the straight and narrow. Without them, the more complex songs would have become a self-indulgent cacophonic mess. And so it was with “Song Remains” which I believe was the name of the band in question. No, not a cacophonic mess, a rhythm driven performance.

Every time the base player hit a note it felt like I’d been punched in the lungs and the base drum is still pounding my skull 12 hours later. However I could have done without the 10 minute drum solo. I thought drum solos had gone out with Iron Butterfly and Cream. Still it gave the other guys an opportunity to indulge the rock god/groupie paradigm with some of the “girls” from the audience. Or maybe they just had a rest.

I’m assuming now that these guys haven’t been too successful to date although that would be a shame because they are very talented. What drew me to this conclusion was the fact that the guitarist only appeared to have one guitar. In a four piece band where one of the four doesn’t play an instrument and two of them are keeping the beat, the fourth has to fill a considerable musical void. So the distortion level is turned up to broaden the sound but not to the extent that it disguises those famous riffs. That’s all very well on Rock and Roll and The Immigrant Song and Black Dog but doesn’t work at all on Stairway to Heaven where a much cleaner sound is required. A pedal would have done the trick but he must have left it at home. Knit-picking I know because he did manage to sear a trench between my ear-drums as those famous riffs were being meticulously reproduced.

We’ve been to see a lot of the bands of our youth in recent years – Rolling Stones, Status Quo, Eagles, John Fogarty, Mellencamp and others – and as the CB says, it’s as interesting to observe the crowd as it is the band. And so it was last night. When we arrived there was a group of skinny seventy somethings who looked like how you would imagine Spinal Tap would look today. Where these people hide during the day is beyond me. We thought they may have been the band. They weren’t but they did park themselves right next to the aforementioned floor mounted speaker stacks from start to finish. They may have been the road crew but didn’t seem capable of lifting their heads such was the mass of hair, let alone a massive speaker.

And of course there’s the obligatory wanker who wants to work his moves and doesn’t care about bumping those near-by or jumping in front of others while the missus feigns indifference. No doubt he had ambitions of indulging the rock god/groupie thing when they got home. I hope she had a headache for the ages.

And have you noticed how in a crowd, if you leave a space, someone will come and stand in it. It’s like waiting for your luggage to appear on the carousel at the airport. Unless you are hard against the carousel, someone will come and stand in front of you. So we had a reasonable area around us which respected our and others’ personal space and then the Andrews Sisters came and occupied it. Their jiggy little coordinated dance move where they hopped from one foot to the other would not have been out of place at a Barry Manilow concert. It was absolutely unacceptable at a rock and roll concert.

As the CB is fond of saying, I’m getting grumpy in my oldish age. That may be true but I prefer to characterise it as reducing tolerance for idiots whose indulgences reduce my enjoyment of an event. And if you believe life’s too short, that’s non-negotiable. Notwithstanding crowd induced minor irritants, it was a great night.

As an epilogue, we got home in time to see Djokovic beat Nadal 10-8 in the fifth at Wimbledon after Anderson beat Isner 26-24 in the fifth in the other men’s semi final. The equally remunerated women’s final was a 6-3 6-3, 65 minute romp. If you believe in the gender pay gap, there’s a perfect example of one. But that’s another story for another day.

A Toe-Hold on Insanity

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No one has ever been able to convince me that mankind is creating a climate catastrophe. An alliteration catastrophe perhaps but not climate. For all of those people who “studied English” at school less than 20 years ago, alliteration is stringing together a number of words with the same first letter or sound. And by the way, you’re mostly to blame for encouraging the doom and gloom merchants perpetrating the biggest scam in human history on the world. Those of us who were taught to think for ourselves are waiting to see the evidence. If you advocate shutting a coal mine because parts of the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching, you are making a giant leap of faith with “faith” being the operative word.

We (mankind, that is) may be a minor irritant when it comes to the climate like an errant thread on a new jacket. We can tug on the thread and make a manageable situation much worse or we can snip it off. Similarly if the temperature goes up a tad (or down – ice ages anyone?) we can adapt as we adapt to night by turning on the lights although it has to be said that every day fewer of us have this privilege as the carpet baggers, rent seekers and thieves who run our parliaments and power companies keep imitating King Canute (or Al Capone, take your pick).

I’m not here to present a detailed case for sanity or debunk (much) the case for the prostitution. If there is evidence to support one side or the other go and find it for yourself. Incidentally, that’s part of the problem. Too many people, especially those with vested interests (looking at you Al Gore) don’t want to face facts because as mentioned above, it’s a faith thing and plus there’s the all powerful kaa…ching factor.

I can’t resist inserting a celebrity into the discussion here because as we all know, celebrities have the answers to everything. This allows them to hold a tune or be really good at pretending to be someone else. Or is it the other way round? I’m never sure. Anyway our favourite intellectual chanteuse Missy Higgins said this about the Adani coal mine (which is yet to produce a tonne of coal) – “This coal mine is so big it will tip our climate into environmental devastation”. It’ll produce 40 million tonnes a year. The world currently produces 7 billion tonnes a year. Enough of this stupidity.

No, I’m trying to find an analogy that presents the issue from an Australian perspective in an understandable light. There’re those pesky lights again. Yesterday I thought I had something really neat but when explaining it to the child bride I realised I had made a major mistake. But let’s enjoy ourselves and I’ll give it to you anyway. See if you can spot the error.

Imagine the atmosphere is the packed crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which we’ll round up to 100,000 people. If 4% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide (NOT “carbon”), that’s 4000 people. If mankind is responsible for 4% of carbon dioxide emissions and nature the rest, that’s 160 people. If Australia is responsible for 1.3% of the world’s man-made emissions, that’s 2 people. Our government’s emissions reduction target is 26%. For the sake of argument we’ll ignore the virtue signalling idiots on the left who want an even bigger target and stick with 26%. So we will save the planet by disposing of one half of one person in the MCG crowd of 100,000.

Then I realised where I had made the mistake. Carbon dioxide isn’t 4% of the atmosphere. It’s 0.04% of the atmosphere – 100 times less than my original calculation. So instead of half a person in the MCG crowd we, in Australia, are reducing global emissions by a toe. So if you’ve had your power turned off because you can’t afford to pay your electricity bill anymore you can be contented knowing that those billions of dollars of renewable energy subsidies we pay every year are paying for a toe.