~ lucas aid

Though I may have crystallised my brain in the aftermath, Thursday’s show came off pretty well. Perhaps there weren’t quite enough people there to deal entirely with Steve Lucas’s chronic back, but it was fulsome nevertheless. Every time I saw him, Lucas lay entirely prone on in one of the upstairs band rooms, his voice growly with painkillers, barely lifting his head as he pursued quiet conversation with his girlfriend, the singer of Dollsquad, who like the couch on which he lay was clothed head to toe in black vinyl. How he made it up the Geidi Prime-style industrial stairs to get there, I cannot imagine.

It was good to play a grungy down-to-earth gig. Morgen and Jane were there, and Nurin and Chrissie ... but there were lots of faces who haven’t seen us yet, in this latter day incarnation. Like every one of these new Ears shows it was ridiculously enjoyable, liberating, soul-lifting ... someone in the band-room pinned a badge on me that read ‘Music is Love’. It is love indeed, despite an occasional world shattering 120K hum on stage

And we got some of the most interesting reactions. Someone, it may have been Charlie Owen, said that when he arrived, during the Ears set, his interest was piqued by what he thought was some young interesting new band - that was until he saw the grey hair. Someone else excused the Nick Cave influence in my stage movements when he realised that everyone must have moved like that back then. Someone said we sounded like Muse but without the annoying whine. Even the enigmatic ‘Donald’ said he was ‘surprised’ and that he ‘didn’t mean it as an insult’. Kerry (Simpson), who has been filling in when Cathy McQuade can’t make it down from Sydney to do vocals, also got some really good reports.

Ashton Davey, who organised the show, deserves a word too.

My head feels full of cotton wool and I’m going to give up trying to string words together. A final thanks to Simon Polinski who during these past week has finished the masters of The Ears and Beargarden material now available for download on Bandcamp. It’s a satisfying feeling, a sense of resolution, making that music available again. It’s no longer orphaned, half-forgotten. And it’s about time The Ears released an album.

Below is a picture of me 'fixing up' some vocals at Simon's place. On Thursday someone actually asked me if I use botox! People say the weirdest things.

* June 14 1981 Sunday 8.00pm

I’m auditioning for an Ovaltine ad. Small Kate arranged this. There are photos tomorrow.

On Friday, after coming back from Franca’s and the most potent trip I’ve ever experienced, I took heroin and went to the Seaview. Afterwards, I went back to Kate S---‘s.

The following night I passed out at Phillipa White’s house. Our first practice is tomorrow.

I’m still very determined.

*

A laconic yet evocative entry.

First, the Ovaltine ad. I wouldn’t want to upstage any later posts, but it’s safe to say that the exact product was Ovaltine flavoured milk in a carton, that the ad had a ‘Blitz’ theme, and that I got the part.

I recall going to Franca’s. I was with Gus, at his place in Punt Rd across from The Office Hotel. His friend Simon dropped by driving a taxi and proceeded to flatter me on my talents as a frontman. This taxi-driving sycophant turned out to be Simon Polinski, who wound up joining Beargarden on bass, and ultimately became a legendary, Aria-winning producer/engineer.

Franca lived in the hills, in a place called The Patch. I can’t remember why we wanted to go there - surely it wasn't for the mushrooms - but I’ll never forget how astonished I was that Simon happily drove us in his Taxi and then went back to work. It must have been fifty kilometres, at least.

And the first practice? This was the band that would become Beargarden, though I don’t think we had the name yet. There was still a chance that we might have called it something else … that we wouldn’t make that fateful decision.

~ a time of seething

After a period of stability, say four days or longer, a tension begins to form in the air - like a charge of static electricity that will continue to build unless it is released. The simplest release involves drugs, a sudden abandonment of discipline that results in a slow build back to stability.

I sense her thoughts, whispering, cycling in her head. It is the only recourse she knows. The only thing she can imagine that will free her of the horror of the day-to-day, from her entrapment here, in this ordinary house - albeit for merely a day, and despite the peripheral damage on family and friends.

It’s a vicious circle, driven partly by her and, as things go, partly by me ...

Of course, I am making a serious effort to repair our world, even as it is being destroyed. I am alert for Spore incursions. I have total and permanent charge of finances. I try to organise my time so that no one will complain…

Yet I have so little energy. The Spasmo-Nemigron holds me steady as it eats my soul - deliberately, slowly, as if with a cocktail fork. I can feel the Slammerkin larvae making a chaos of my liver, and slowly I droop under long and wasting exposure to the winds of Quinquagisma…

I do what I can, but I have to do it at my own pace, to my own logic – otherwise, I know I will slash back and make the whole thing worse.

Yet her frustration must find an outlet – and for want of something better, I have become that outlet. When I spend a day cleaning and organising, I am criticised for not playing with Polly. When I spend the day with Polly, I am criticised for not cleaning. I fall foul, regardless of what I do.

It’s worse in those first hours after noon, when the Spasmo-Dromoran curdles her fluids, makes her dangerous to be near.

I’ve always been sensitive to personal criticism – but never deaf to it. And it’s worse when that criticism comes off a casually poisonous tongue. I cannot respond, for that would force an escalation. She is sensitive, a raw nerve and, were I to return fire, she would simply collapse. I’m told she’s been like this since a child, bursting into tears at the mildest of scoldings. At this late stage, I see that she is one of the worst cases of depression I have known.

But my reaction is perhaps the deadliest factor. l seethe. It’s a physical thing. I feel it in my blood, in my temples, a shuddering weakness in my sides. If it is bad enough, I take valium. Worse, it lingers, sometimes for days, and my only answer is to try to act normally, politely, until the causes are forgotten.

But lately these seething episodes have been compounding, one upon the other, and I am tasting bitterness on my tongue…



I spent the afternoon with Lynne and Polly, lounging around the pool at Bruce’s place, watching his two year old daughter – Madelaine – swim like a pearl diver. It was the perfect antidote to the nerve-racking morning during which I wrote the above paragraphs. Bruce keeps a reliably excellent bar. I tried some agwa, a marginally legal liqueur made from coca leaf. It’s okay, but yesterday I stuck to the chartreuse…

There’s been a lot of talk about the past lately. Last year, a specialty label in the US put forward the idea of re-releasing the Beargarden album All that Fall. Now, after much delay, the compilation of a bonus album, a re-mastering from the vinyl by the redoubtable Simon Polinski, it’s near ready.

At the time, for me, it was a grave disappointment. We were saddled with a couple of old school producers who seemed intent on sucking the blood from our music. The project went massively over-budget with the help of shadowy entries for cocaine and Japanese food [something I only learned of years later], and the whole thing – the fights, the tension, the firing of bass-players – became the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was so naïve at the time; I let something that I’d spent years working towards be swept out from under my feet.

A few months later the band was gone. Virgin Records abandoned the project [despite their massive investment] and All That Fall was quietly released on our manager’s private label, Chase. For a long time after that, I took no pleasure in music, [despite singing in a band called Index which disintegrated as quickly as it formed]. I went overseas for a while and then became a writer …

So it’s strange revisiting that time. I listened to the material this morning, free of all those emotional associations. It sounds surprisingly good. Very eighties, of course, but worth making available again …

We’re talking about compiling an Ears album next and that I would get behind …

*

When we arrived home, the pall had risen from the house. Everything felt clear. The woman I live with was smiling and apparently at peace with herself …