~ 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.

~ a sacred kingfisher

Here's Cathy and I after the Ding Dong show. If I've ever had more fun on stage, I can't remember it.


First off, thanks to Amanda for getting me back to this blog. Obviously, I've fallen out of the habit of updating it, though not of writing generally - of course. Ambergris, the play I've mentioned often over time, needs just a little polishing before it's complete, and I've been working on a couple of novelettes which will soon be in need of publishing.

But first things first. I was walking Polly to rainbow guides this afternoon when I saw a flash of colour in someone's driveway. Colour and movement. Now, being somewhat of a birder, and having a pretty good knowledge of the birdlife around here, I was astounded to see an absolutely gorgeous male sacred kingfisher, flopping about on the concrete, unable to fly, presumably injured. Polly helped me capture it and we brought it home, boxed and watered it. Thankfully, it is not the kind of bird that drops dead from shock. Rather the opposite. As you'll notice from the picture, it has a reasonable amount of fight left in it.

It's presence in Mt Waverley is really quite a mystery. Polly, strangely, named it The King of Switzerland.

Next, for anyone interested in the long delayed re-release of the Beargarden album, let me raise your hopes once more. Bruce Butler and I had another meeting today. We have sworn to a schedule and both the Beargarden and Ears albums will be available well before the end of the year. Nothing will stop us this time, though they are likely to be online releases initially.

I'm just dipping my toe in the water today, so that's all for now.

~ the eve of the ballroom reunion

When the Ears played at The Corner last year, I spent the majority of the time either on my knees or flat on my back. The gig after that I resorted to an on-stage oxygen bottle. Tomorrow evening, which I am looking forward to exceedingly, I hope to vastly increase the time I spend on my feet. I’ve gotten into some sort of routine with my swimming, so my wind is better, my voice is louder and my legs are strong. Relatively speaking.

The vibe on this thing is extraordinary. Every man and his dog seems to know about it. And it’s a truly novel experience watching the discussions unfold ahead of time on the facebook events page ... and perhaps elsewhere, for all I know. Issues left unresolved a quarter of a century ago have resurfaced. There’s been bitterness, vitriol and sweet love. Old wounds have been reopened and cruelly salted.

Sociologically, it’s just so interesting.

A loose clique of friends and associates with similar interests, beholden to a similar fashion sense [mostly involving the colour black] and drawn to certain venues where its needs were most adequately served, dissolves over the decades into the greater cloud of humanity and is gone.

Then, much much later - like a male salmon releasing his milt into the stream - a package of memetic signals is released into society.

These signals are clues - gestural, semantic, mnemonic, perhaps even pheremonal - and intuitively, instinctively, the former members of the clique take note and respond - with the massive assistance of the tool that is facebook.

At once they precipitate from the population. From the suburbs they come, from colonies in the bush, from renovated terrace houses in places that used to be cool, and gather for a few precious hours,

Briefly, the old scene - wearier, less pert, less lissom, less nubile, more sluggish, flabbier, the heroin in their blood superseded by prescription medications - is born anew and briefly blossoms, before once again - like a shooting star in the heavens - it fades away.

How’s that for an analysis? I defy you for a better one!

I know it’ll make it a long evening, but I do advise getting there reasonably early for tickets. Our manager Dolores suspects that it may be a sellout and from the extent of interest I’m inclined to agree. I’ve even learnt that the person who heard mention of the Ears on Gold 104 was not, in fact, hallucinating.

The Ears rehearsed last night, by the way, and are champing at the bit. Cathy is down from Sydney with at least two outfits from which to choose. Nothing’s gone wrong with my voice. Mick is damn serious about it. Ross is just a fantastic bass player and is fundamentally conjoined with Carl. There’s something satisfying about watching experienced old ones do it just right. Our keyboardist, Andrew ‘Terence’ Park, is being tracked by the Parkes Observatory as he passes through the Kuiper Belt.

We don’t play often these days, so it feels like we’ve got to make it count. Strangely, we’re going to attempt a new song. It’s provisionally called ‘energumen'. Here are some of the lyrics ...

“I ate a golden egg! I ate a golden egg!”

Oh and the name-tag idea ... functional, ironic, stupid and monumentally off key, just my kettle of fish. Surrender your vanities at the door, my dark haughty emaciated brooding beloved.

~ images from sails of oblivion - the gig

Some fabulous shots from Sunday at the Corner by Andrew McDougall. These ones are mainly of me, apparently, with pictures of Sean's Kelly's cameo and sword swallower Baroness Micha at the end. Andrew's Flickr album is here, and includes excellent photos of Hugo Race, Brian Hooper, Steve Kilbey, Nick Barker and all the sainted souls to who I am so thoroughly indebted so for helping me out. Not forgetting, of course, Dolores San Miguel, David Bridie, Chris Walsh, Andrew Park, Simon Polinski, Mark Gason, Mick Lewis, Cathy McQuade, Kerri Simpson, Carl Manuell, Bryan Colechin, Angus Hooper, Osker, Jo, Michaelangelo, Snicket The Wonder Dog and any performers I've forgotten and every last living soul who came on the day. Eternal gratitude.

* 2 June 1981 Tuesday 9.00pm

It is agreed on all sides now that the Ears, as such, have split. I am still startled and am not sure what course I shall take – perhaps I should just sit down tonight and write a story. Perhaps that would set the right forces in motion.

Tomorrow we’re playing at a place in the city called “The Boulevarde”, Friday at the Oxford Hotel with the Models. It will be their farewell and certainly ours as well.

This alcohol thing shall stop. I am resolved.

Last night, as is my Monday night habit, I went to Inflation. I saw Sue Ryan again and talked to her. She has so much faith in me it is painful. She kept saying, “I feel so inadequate …” Her friend Anne-Marie is definitely worth the time of day.

Will I persevere with music? Today Gus, Mick and I arranged random words in the Office Hotel and came up with the name Vast Blood Masons. I like it, but Mick prefers Running Teeth.

Franca was down tonight. I stayed Thursday and Friday nights up there, in The Patch. I went to a mushroom party on Friday. Hideous. Those boys especially. Terrifying. Coarse. Hills people. And fancy dress to boot - as if it wasn't enough of a nightmare already. I sat out in the car for most of the night.

Franca loves me. I can see it a mile away.

Shall I go to Nimbin with her? (She has a swathe of unspoilt land in Tuntable Falls)

Shall I go to Sydney … then Europe, perhaps … singing and writing all the way…?

PS: On the RRR charts our single reached 7 and is now at 9.


*

We were crazy, letting the Ears go like that. At least, that’s my opinion with the benefit of hindsight. But the personal stuff going on between Mick and Cathy, in particular, would probably have made it impossible to continue. That Oxford gig, our last, was great.

I remember, that night in the hills, being in a car with rednecks on mushrooms. He hit something, probably a rabbit, and utterly freaked out. It was very disturbing

The Boulevarde was a place which later became Subterrain? Subterranean? Models farewell … Well that wasn’t a very successful break up, was it? As far as I know, they’re still playing.

Alcohol. Yes, alcohol. No alcohol for me these days – it would ring my glass liver like a bell.

I have a handbill from a secret Vast Blood Masons gig, which I will scan as soon as I get my scrapbook back. Andrew Till is using it for the packaging of the Beargarden CD. I wish that little cut-up session with Gus & Mick had yielded something really good, or at least something that didn’t sound like ‘beergarden’.

Mick was later to form a group called The Walking Bellies, I wonder if it was inspired by Running Teeth?

* 23 May 1981 Saturday 7.00pm

These are troublesome times. My group has very little hope of surviving them. I may leave and go with Franka to Northern NSW, where I will again pursue my writing

I’ve been to Macedon twice and taken mushrooms in this last week. The second time we had a serious car accident. I would imagine this is why I am so utterly confused as to my wants and needs.

Storm paid for a night at the Hilton, where we became hopelessly drunk. I boffed Franka in the heated swimming pool sometime that morning. It was good.

Terry has been busted for drugs. Carl is being too stupid for me to bear. People like Mark Gason are depressing me more with their criticism. Mick has no conception of the correct course to take and his assured but reckless statements muddle things further. Cathy, I think, will be chucked out. Gus is becoming my good friend,

Our single came into the RRR charts at 28, Canberra at 19. we’ve had bad reviews for our live performances. Good for the single.

In the next three weeks we are making a last ditch effort to improve. If we don’t make it, we bust.

I am reassessing my life. Should I continue with the group? If I don’t, I shall lose a lot, the easy lubrication of my social life for instance… Has the time come to retire into writing? Something inside me is telling me it has…

There’s no reason why I should make anything of my life, but I may as well try, at least for interest’s sake. In this respect, pride is my greatest asset and my greatest enemy.


*

Sound like this band’s tearing itself apart, doesn’t it? I think I was in love with the romance of self-destruction … I wonder how much Christine’s death, coming when it did, played a part?

The mushroom trips to Macedon are very tasty tales which I will save for another occasion. Some very wild stuff was involved

I remember consciously always using the word ‘group’ instead of ‘band’. ‘Group’ was groovier. Later, ‘band’ became groovier. ‘Boffed’ was a good word. I’m pretty sure it’s fallen out of usage now. The verb ‘to pork’ was just coming into fashion.

Diary of 1981 - index

* 4 May 1981 6.00am

Tonight, I went with George to the graveyard. We climbed the fence and, after a good deal of searching, found Christine’s grave. As we stood in contemplation, a dense fog floated in from all directions. I am resolved to invest my talents wisely…

It was an unhappy gig at Melbourne University tonight. Cathy’s amp broke down. I think the others want to chuck her out. Me? Do I care? Don’t I care?

Martini’s was okay. Two hundred people. Posters up. Singles sold. I jerked my mike stand up between Cathy’s legs at one point in the performance. It made her feel degraded and angry. I sang to the wall, climbed and scratched the wall. I was very drunk, as I had been at a party all that afternoon. I cried for a while after the gig was over.

The Jump Club on Friday was fine. I went home with Cathy D---, passed out as soon as I reached the bed. She behaves as if she more than just likes me. Do I care? Don’t I care?

Troy’s friend M--- is having an abortion tomorrow.

*

That incident with Cathy and the mike stand still makes me cringe today. I remember it as if it was yesterday and still feel stupid and nasty for doing it. My only excuse was my inebriation, and the wave of grief which consumed me that night, which sparked off my reckless and aberrant behaviour.

Regards being in the graveyard with George, this must have been an incident separate from the one I described in this earlier post.

And Troy’s friend? I have no memory of this, though I did bump into her at his memorial. I wonder why I mentioned it, if I was not involved? If so, it was one of countless potential lives truncated so that Polly could be born.

Speaking of Polly, yesterday, out of the blue, she asked me which cave my parents were buried in.

Diary of 1981 - index

* 1 May 1981 Friday 12.00am

This perpetual drunkenness is perpetrating a haze… still this group keeps churning its way through my life. it was the Matthew Flinders tonight – a rough looking punter told me I sounded like Bowie. It looks like Cathy may finally be thrown out of the band. Tonight was a good night.

Monday I went to Blitz night at inflation. Later I wound up with Lachelle – for better or worse. I snorted some novocaine – a strange experience and my nose still hurts.

Sunday I went out with Anthony, Kerry, Franka to Pokies – stealing drinks all night

Saturday I was hopelessly drunk, following myself from party to party – from Prahran to North Fitzroy. Somebody photographed me for Ragtimes magazine….

Friday we played at Monash Uni in the day and Paradise at night. Nothing to recount. It was good. But so?

The record is out – signed two hundred copies for this Saturday night. Will it be a good launch? I don’t know. Snakefinger and New Race are playing in town on the same night, we may have our work cut out for us …

Stop drinking, Sam.

*

The above was written in an almost illegible scrawl and some of it I had to guess at - I don’t think the word ‘punter’ was in common use in Melbourne yet, outside betting circles that is. I didn’t have to guess at my state while writing it.

Monday nights at Inflation. Blitz night. That was such a scene. I have no recollection of Ragtimes magazine.

Novocaine. I don’t remember that. I remember ‘Champagne & Novocaine’, which I think was the name of a Roxy Music bootleg …

I clearly recall that night at Pokies, [a gay club upstairs at the Prince of Wales]. We were absolutely skint, but wanted to go out. Anthony Smethurst was the ringleader; we’d wait for people to put down their drinks and turn away. Then we’d snatch them. Fun, huh? I didn’t enjoy it, I’ve always had this aversion to stealing.

Kerry was one of Anne & Christine Hardings' closest friends

New Race were a partial Radio Birdman reincarnation from Sydney. I think Dolores San Miguel ran the Paradise Club, but I've forgotten where it was…

Diary of 1981 - index

* 25 February 1981 9.30pm

Apologies to Mick Lewis, Ears guitarist & co-founder, over this one.

*

My entries are slipping further apart now. I hope this journal doesn’t die.

I’ve just made my way out of an infernal depression. It was probably born from tiredness and compounded by irritation at [Mick] Lewis. Gus has done this comic-book detective style piece of artwork for the record cover [Scarecrow]. Mick seemed to like it. I simply hated it. I would prefer our artwork to be artier, more along Birthday Party lines.

We printed many posters and I organised Lyn Nicholson to put them up.

What’s more, Cathy’s back. We went to the Seaview [Crystal Ballroom] last night. She stayed the night with me and Christine.

Our song Green Food For a Queen is coming along nicely. The future of my other song looks depressing. Our first full band rehearsal was terrific fun.

I turned up at the Birthday Party’s film clip shoot at the Hawthorn Tip. There were fires burning in a pit bordered by a murky lake, which in turn was bordered by a great sandstone cliff. Bubbles of methane spurted from the surface of the lake, gallows and crucifixes were set up on mounds. I watched for hours until finally – on heroin and booze – I decided I wanted to swim in the lake. I stripped and Troy covered me in body paint. I made my way out to a bathtub, in which they filmed me, as I danced…

The whole thing seemed like a cheap version of Ashes to Ashes.

I’m getting very nervous about March 6th, the date of our first gig. The Serious Young Insects got picked out by “Sting” from Police for their record label – it makes me sick with jealousy.

christine & I

*

The sentence in italics is paraphrased – the most sense I could extract from a very strange mess of words. I recall my anger at Gus’s record cover – it was entirely naff and I was determined to at least match the wonderful graphics coming from the Birthday Party camp. The fact that it was even being considered infuriated me….

Lyn Nicholson was queen of the Melbourne poster mafia. I worked for her for a time, but because I was solo and didn’t have a car, it was a nightmare. On my second or third night, I was nabbed by the cops, charged and later convicted. To this day, this bill posting crime still pops up if I get pulled over, or questioned or whatever. I think it’s the only actual conviction on my not-so-brief rap sheet.

The film clip was of course Nick The Stripper, directed by The Rich Kids [Paul Goldman & Evan English]. That film about Frank Sinatra’s tour of Australia – The Night We Called it a Day – is the last work of Paul's of which I am aware.

Nick The Stripper on YouTube

I recall Nick Cave saying something caustic about the tribe of extras in rabbit suits etc - but it did turn out to be a bit of a classic, didn’t it?

It was a filthy night, and the occasion of my most unsanitary injection ever – squatting on the putrid ground of the dump, by the light of one of their witch-fires… Simone was with me. Yet I wonder, where did the gear come from?

To my great chagrin, the bathtub dance never made it into the clip. Apparently, I was too far away for it to be effective … I should just have been thankful that I did not die from tetanus, or hepatitis…

Diary of 1981 - index

* 10 February 1981, 11.10pm

Generally, I don’t have much truck with censorship, but I have to be careful with this ancient diary [and, indeed, the current one] – especially when names are mentioned. Basically, I don’t want to hurt or abhor relatives and friends who nurture sweet memories, nor do I necessarily want to freak out any net readership.

Upshot is, I’m going to blank out some ‘sensitive’ passages. Use your imagination…

I’ve also corrected some uses of uncouth US spelling.

This second diary entry was made late on the same day as the first.

*

And so I rush to the kitchen and frantically paint, feverishly adding to my film jungle, not daring to stop and think what else I could be doing – what other constructions I could be involved in – forever thinking of phrases to supplement this diary.

I don't think this cataloguing of myself is self-indulgent. I take far too little time, of late, to examine my actions. The diary will hopefully help me keep an eye on myself – rejuvenate my hold on myself, my vision of myself.

Or is that all passed now, with my adolescence? I suspect it may be, though I cannot be sure.

My memory for instance. Once, when I fashioned a sentence... I cannot remember having the trouble I have now of forgetting how the terrible thing began as I came to its conclusion…

Grammer! There must be something wrong...

As my group [The Ears] becomes more recognised, so do I. And in this way I learn to recognise myself... Again, after first I lost my dignity... my self-esteem... when I bared my naivety to those naïve faces... But only music. Not even that, I suppose…

[? The above paragraph may refer to some event my earlier self was so embarrassed by he could not bear to put it into words.]

I am tired and I am confusing myself.

Today we practised without [bassist] Cathy. It was not a fulfilling rehearsal. We drank in The Office afterwards, frustrated. We played some pool and I left, determined to achieve something – I don’t know what. Christine and I tried to buy some heroin, but it seems at this stage that we’ve failed. She ___ ___ as we watched TV with Troy.

I completed a crossword, but faked two words.

I’m considering using the World Series Cricket theme in the group. The melody, though, is hard to figure out …

*

What a marvellous idea …

At least it seemed to be at the time and, who knows, maybe it was? Gus, the best technical musician in the band, sorted out the notes and, for at least a year, the Ears opened their set with a highly orchestrated cover of Channel Nine’s theme for the Wide World of Sport. It did seem cool, somehow.

In this period, I had cultivated at least half the kitchen with a ‘film jungle’. Strips of 35mm film hung thickly from the ceiling like vines. It was a good effect, if I remember correctly. You could sit at the kitchen table and examine frames by staring through them at the light …

George - my best friend in secret craziness – was always my partner in projects like this. He was, at that stage, a photographer, and his maxim was – if you get enough of a thing, it’s going to always look good. We collected a lot of a lot of things. Cats, kitchen chairs, roast chickens… In crimson, we painted the word ‘photo’ on the ceiling in Milton St so many times, it did, indeed, look good. But I’ll talk about George in a later post …

The Office was a pub across the road from Gus Till’s house, in the basement of which we rehearsed. Gus's was a double storey terrace that has long since disappeared under a widening Punt Rd. The Office has transmuted into a Seven-Eleven.

One last note. Though there’s much mention of heroin, it was still a recreational thing for most of us. We were innocents. The real slaughter was yet to come.

Diary of 1981 - index

* 10 february 1981.

Over the course of my life, I have kept diaries. Sometimes in beautifully bound journals with marbled endpapers, sometimes on butcher’s paper. I start them, stop them, and start them again. Most I have preserved, and all, to my [almost] certain belief, have been read by no eyes save my own.

From time to time, I will include them in this blog. I’ll edit them as little as necessary, and provide an epilogue to put them in context.

I will begin 26 years ago. I am 20 years of age and in love.

*

February 10 1981.

It's nine in the morning; I am tired and disinclined to leave my bed. Christine has recently departed for her job. She is a nurse. I am contemplating what I can do with my day - perhaps paint? My bathroom's gaudy colour scheme is almost complete ... Perhaps I’ll call my mother and go shopping with her.

I am obsessed, to a degree, with my flat. I think that somewhere, deep down, I believe my mental and social state will improve as it improves. As Dick Hamer furnishes Victoria with Olympic bids, Art Centres and underground rail loops, so I will furnish my rooms.

Most likely I'll ring Lewis [Mick] and arrange a band practice, but first I shall certainly lie in bed and finish Deus Irae [by Dick & Zelazny]. Existentialists believe we may infer our states from our actions. Mine must be a ghastly and dissipated state indeed; unrelated actions leading to no common goal, executed with no conviction. But then, 'What takes place in love is beyond good and evil' And I am certainly in love. More intensely and more bewilderingly than ever before.

It has initiated some confusing changes in me. I am now a victim of such frustrating emotions as jealousy & masculine pride. [Not since my times with Margaret Waldron in the sandpit, have I felt driven to shield a girl from danger] Christine [Harding] is actually Margaret’s cousin and knew her well. Margaret is recently married. [She couldn’t have been more than twenty]

I more or less live with Christine at the moment - a new experience which has thrilled me, but also caused me to doubt. It's been so long since August 30, 1980 - almost 6 months have passed. So, thenceforth this shall be known as my longest and most important relationship…

… I have been contemplating writing a story, perhaps this diary is my way of getting round to it... But Terry has bookings already for after Cathy's return, and we're mixing down our tape on Thursday - things will start rolling again soon.

Last night I cooked a meal and my hands still smell of curry. I do things like this for Christine. My manners, my personal habits, are becoming vastly more sophisticated.

The day before yesterday, I came home sweating, and cleaned the whole flat in anticipation of Christine’s return from work. As I cleaned the fireplace, I continually glanced over my shoulder, hoping she would not come till I was finished

Where is the old scrambled, confused, palpitating Sam? He is still there, I think. Only he is happy.

But he’s neglecting his god-given gifts.

*

I can actually remember how good I felt the day I wrote that. And I am still trying to make women happy by doing housework. It is a technique that has rarely failed me.

The flat was in Milton St, Elwood. I moved there from the Berry St house immortalized in Dogs in Space. A friend, Leigh Hooper had been the previous tenant

Leigh was in with the Turkish Book Club who imported Turkish language books with the centres cut out and filled with heroin. One time, someone on the Turkish end mixed the gear with something brown that became a silty gloop when mixed with water. Strictly speaking, it was uninjectable, but that stopped no one. It became known as The Mud. For a time, peoples arms were covered with hideous weeping sores, Leigh’s more so than anyone’s. She appeared to have advanced leprosy. [Those interested in strangely adulterated drugs, click here.]

Anyway, the flat was on the ground floor of a once magnificent mansion. It was in pretty bad shape and the odour of Elwood Canal emanated from the sink, but I loved it. A gay couple lived at the back, and Troy was my immediate neighbour. Troy, I will speak of again, and soon. [He has recently perished from AIDS]. A warlock lived in the mansion next door and his crow could often be seen, perched at the front of our drive.

The band referred to is The Ears. Cathy McQuade was the bass-player. Terry Rogers, the manager. The fireplace had beautiful green art deco tiles. All gone



Diary of 1981 - index