~ dog related cinema

Since Sunday, I’ve been doing the bare bones, eating, taking the child to school, napping, eating again, putting the child to bed. These days. even a moderate expenditure of social energy impacts on me for many days hence. Unlike, I’m sure, powerful, well-seasoned campaigners like Nurin and Emma de Clario.

Seeing Dogs in Space afresh was a surprising pleasure. It was fast moving, it didn’t sag and, strangely, it seemed a far better film today than it did at the time. Perhaps current audiences [by that I mean me] are more accustomed to films without a strong narrative spine.

The documentary We’re Livin’ on Dog Food was utterly fascinating. It returned me to the early eighties a lot more efficiently than the fictionalisation. Footage of the freshly squeezed Ollie Olsen and Rowland Howard [then of The Young Charlatans] daubed in makeup, bursting with romantic sensibilities and dreams of glory, was just wonderful. The two were to go their different ways, one to the North of the Yarra to pursue hard-edged no-quarter-given industrial mayhem, the other South to inspire a more flamboyant generation of post-punks, including my band The Ears. The film was a box of memories as complete as anything like that could ever be expected to be. Pierre, who was sitting a few seats down from me, ought to have been interviewed. He was one of the few key figures who didn’t get sufficient mention, and the film would doubtless have benefited from his wit and his bitchiness.

Sometimes, I wonder if the medications I take are disordering the functions of my amygdalae which, I am told, are the seat of emotion. There is a section of the documentary in which I describe the circumstances surrounding the death of my girlfriend Christine. My reaction was a kind of stunned fear or horror, as if some dark uniformed figure was about to enter the theatre and call me out. Over the intervening decades, the grief I felt at the time has attenuated to a keening note on the wind. What remains is a statue of sorrow rather than the sorrow itself. They say time heals all wounds, but I wish … not so completely.

~ the resurrection of dogs in space

A few days ago, Mick Lewis and I delivered ourselves into the hands of Richard Lowenstein at his studio in St. Kilda.

For a long time now, Richard has been labouring over the DVD release of his Melbourne cult movie. (You know the one. It stars the sadly missed Michael Hutchence playing a character with distinct similarities to the writer of this blog in his tumultuous youth.) I’m not certain what the delay has been, but it appears that the long awaited release is near.

Mick and I were member of The Ears, the band whose story was used as the basis of the film. We lived, with all the others, in that ratty, shambolic, dangerous, vigorous household of ancient Richmond.

Rather than simply putting a restored copy of the film on a disc, Richard seems to be assembling a comprehensive document of the era itself, collecting a great amount of material in various media to include as extras: photos, posters, all that; some footage from the set of the film, (including my acerbic interview with Michael Hutchence). There are old Ears film clips too, plus the interviews he’s currently doing with a mix of surviving stalwarts from the early Eighties scene. These include other Ears members Tim McLaughlan and Chuck Meo (who played himself in the movie), legendary Birthday Party guitarist Rowland Howard, Ollie Olsen and Dolores San Miguel, promoter of the famous Exford Hotel.

Mick and I must have spoken with Richard for two hours. Sometimes it’s nice to have permission to be nostalgic. I enjoyed dredging back through that time. Despite our courageous dedication to drunken partying and general intoxication, a surprising number of recollections survive. Much of what we recounted sounded, in retrospect, like some scatterbrained, completely arbitrary art project, though it was certainly never intended as such. Magically, bleating lambs appeared overnight in bedrooms. Rattling gumball machines were dragged through the dead of night. Sombre dialogues were held with patient eight-foot roosters on busy Wattletree Rd. After speed-fuelled Space Invader marathons the pixelated aliens would march remorselessly across the inside of our eyelids as we threshed in our beds. Once I spent hours on my hands and knees crawling around someone’s house, entirely disoriented, desperately trying to stand up after injecting a vial of liquid phenergan which someone had appeared with ...

Through the interview, Richard didn’t concentrate strictly on the events which inspired the film, but attempted to steer things towards the broader context of the time.

When you’re young, everything is exciting, that’s a given. If you’re out there doing things, making the scene, it’s easy to feel like you’re the centre of the world, the cynosure. It may feel like it’s the first time in the history of the Earth that such fantastic new sounds have been heard, but really all that’s in play is the arrogance and naïveté of youth.

I have always suspected that the claims made by contributors to the early eighties scene in Melbourne have been overly subjective, and that, however brilliant it all seemed at the time, it was still more or less the same thing which every generation goes through. As for myself, I’ve always been reticent to suggest that I was part of something particularly unique.

But, after the interview. After listening to Rowland, Dolores and all the rest, I began to suspect that there might really have been a special something about the scene back then.

Twenty five years ago, it was a smaller, greyer, far more conservative city. There were no street cafes. Restaurants rarely had bars and you could count on two hands the number of 24 hour establishments. You’d be hassled for wearing hats in pubs and chastised by war veterans for wearing second hand medals on the tram. You could get beaten up as a poofter for wearing anything even remotely peculiar. The only alternative scenes were the sluggish festering hippies in Carlton and Fitzroy, a gaggle of Maori drag-queens in Fitzroy St, and the tribes of skinheads and sharpies in Holmesglen and Bayswater. Musical offerings included pub rock, more pub rock and maybe a bit of flaccid folk rock.

Into this dead zone stepped a new generation inspired by the punk movement in London, New York and Detroit. But it was not just the music. Because the city was smaller, because it was so disobliging of strangeness, there was a tendency for the weirdos to find each other and congregate for safety. The David Bowie queue portrayed in Dogs in Space was one catalyst for this. It was there that Mick and I and the rest of the Ears discovered a host of like minded souls who became our friends, collaborators and fans.

An example I like to use involves the freakish hair colours most of us sported to varying degrees. In the Melbourne of 1980, if you caught sight of someone across the street with dyed purple hair, the odds were you’d know them. The scene was that small. Today, well, you wouldn’t bother looking twice.

So all the alternative types were tossed together by circumstance: the hardcore punks, the industrial experimenters, the new wave pop exponents, even mods - along with visual artists, designers, artists and writers. And it became a melting pot. Today, Melbourne is large enough to support many distinct scenes, but then there was really only one, and the vibe, looking back, was singular.

*

There was a tragedy during the period described by Dogs in Space which was to fuel the central drama of the film. It was over this issue that Richard and I were to fall out. Readers of this blog, specifically the transcriptions of my early eighties diaries, will know I’m referring to the overdose death of my lover Christine.

Though I’d been involved with Dogs in Space and had encouraged it, I hadn’t taken careful notice of certain plot elements. It wasn’t until I saw a rough cut that I realised that the film appeared to show the ‘Sam’ character introducing the ‘Anna’ character to smack. I was aghast. Though the film is fiction, it conforms largely to the facts of real life, and on this sensitive point, it jarred badly with the truth. I was horrified to think that anyone might think I was responsible, even indirectly, for Christine’s death.

I responded in the media with as much vitriol as I could muster. ‘Sam Mad About Dogs,’ is one headline I recall. In one interview I was quoted as saying ‘The film appears to be suggesting that if you take heroin you can go to heaven with Michael Hutchence’. Contemplating litigation at one point, I even found myself in lawyer’s office [but not for long after he discovered I had no money].

Indeed, it wasn’t until Troy’s memorial a year or so ago that Richard and I buried the hatchet. It was mostly down to me, as the aggrieved party, and I was relieved to end the acrimony. During last week’s interview, the subject of Christine’s death was raised and we discussed it like gentlemen. Richard had always thought that the dichotomy between fact and fiction was clear, but way back, when my emotions were still tender, I just didn’t believe the public would be able to make such distinctions. To some extent I was probably right, but it was all so long ago… Thankfully, we can be friends again at last, and Richard, all in all, is not a bad friend to have.

*

Addendum July 21 - The 'Dogs in Space' re-release premieres at the Melbourne Film Festival on August 1; the related doco 'We're Living on Dog Food' on August 2. The Ears reformation gig is on August 16 at The Corner hotel: Keep informed on Twitter

Ears photo album

* 8 June 1981 Monday 8.00pm

I’m still in Mt Waverley. I shall not go to Inflation tonight; a decision I bless myself for making.

The important thing is the flat I’ve found. Carol’s to be exact. In Acland St. Therefore very little chance of aid from my mother.

$40 a week. How will I do it? I will do it, I know, but how? I need an initial $400 plus, but I’ll get it somehow.


*

Just a brief entry this time. It must have been the era of the wonderful ‘Blitz’ nights at Inflation, where people wore the most preposterous costumes imaginable, danced to Duran Duran and considered themselves very, very cool. Up the stairs I'd go, past the Mick Jagger hologram glowing in the pillar, to sit at a curved bar in the corner and down Crown Lagers until I was brave enough to join the seething masses below. When Inflation comes to mind, the first detail I always recollect is a brief exchange of pleasantries with Siouxie Sioux.

How I made the shift from lousy punk to New Romantic is somewhat of a mystery. The underlying sentiments seem quite different, but the clothes and the excitement were comparable. So there you have it - I was lured by the clothes and the excitement, shallow creature that I was. And not just I; much of the scene of which I was a part was shifting.

It occurs to me also that Inflation was pretty much the first nightclub I and my friends frequented … Though there was that place high up in an office block at 100 Collins St on Wednesday nights – the University Club, I think it was. I used to go with Troy. I remember a beautiful night there with Christine, dancing to Ashes to Ashes …

Before this, it was strictly band venues. And after, more and more clubs: Subterrain, Underground, Chasers, Hardware, Razer. My memory is nowhere near good enough to remember all the names, and when exactly they were at their peak, but certainly the clubs began to take over as social hubs for the freaks of Melbourne.

Carol. Carol Pinx? Carol Pinxt? Who knows what became of her? Her flat in Acland St … I think Cathy Denny may have lived there too. After sound-check at the Ballroom that’s where I’d commonly go to get myself sufficiently drunk to perform.

[Thanks and love to those who've donated. It will make a real difference. I'll be finding out today the true extent of my financial tribulations, but, like the black clouds looming over Melbourne, things do not look bright]

* 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

* 20 April 1981 Monday 4.00pm

I am spending very little time here at my mother’s house, accounting for the rarity of my entries. I have been sick. This has retarded my house hunting efforts. Nor has singing been easy.

We played at the Central Club on Thursday with the Models and on Saturday at the Jump Club with The Reels. Though my vocals fell below standard, they were good nights. We have a new song called This Time Tomorrow.

On Thursday strange things happened with Cathy D----, and I can’t say I’m not afraid. I suspected my feelings for others would be dampened but they are not. It is by no means love, but it’s more than nothing.

People like Pierre and Anne Harding dislike Cathy D---; I find it annoying. Anne had the immeasurable gall to say that “Christine would turn in her grave.”. It makes me suspect that she has an insensitive side I had not previously seen. But then, she is grieving too.

On Thursday we tracked each other down. Cathy D---, when she left for the country at four am, gave me a thought provoking goodbye…

My eyes scan right and left as she kisses me … am I waiting for the men with knives …?

I think, even if I found someone to love, it would take me some time to find the courage to admit it. As Christine would have said, ‘I am afraid to be hurt’. It is the first month’s anniversary of her death. Seven months with. One without.

We did an interview and photographs with VOX on Saturday before we played at the Jump Club. That night I slept in a bed with Lachelle – I dared not touch her – I cannot follow myself sexually. This girl is mad, sure enough, but enough of a dreamer to almost be an inspiration. By comparison, she made me feel earthbound and pragmatic.

On Good Friday, I attended a picnic in the Botanical Gardens. Troy’s friends mainly. He spent most of his time baiting skinheads.

Matthew Flinders on Thursday; t-shirt and jeans I think.


*

I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned Lachelle in these diaries. She was a gorgeous creature - dark-haired, petite, sharp-featured - but she lived on an entirely different planet. Nicque Needles quoted her as saying, ‘unicorns wander through the valley of broken hearts’ while talking in her sleep.

I think we were supporting La Femme at that Matthew Flinders gig. What I recall is that one of their members had an abscess under a tooth. There was a tube coming out of his jaw, draining the pus, and he was pissed off. I remember being fascinated by this tube and by the ingenuity of his bitter cursing.

* 13 April 1981 Monday 11.30pm

My spirit feels very uneasy and it is weak. My talent, for what it’s worth in these depraved days, can offer me nothing; nothing will come. I search for song titles in the writings of others.

I feel livelier now, stronger. I’ve been drinking though – as always.

I must find some new companions. The friends I keep now crept into my life during the days of Christine, and some of them may have avoided the security check.

Over the taxi-driver’s radio: … Wellington Street. Like a hot knife. She can stab me through a fly speck on the wall. Through a newspaper crushed in the gutter

The Ears at the Exford Hotel [?] circa 1980

*

Christine’s flat was in Wellington St, that was the significance.

For many months, the slightest thing – a word, a warm breeze, a song – could set off the pain. Bryan Ferry’s version of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ – that was the worst. When I hear it today, it still fills me with melancholia

Mick Lewis and Sam Sejavka [The Ears]

*

Back in the present, I’ve had an atrocious day. On my way to pick up Robert from South Melbourne, I drove into the back of a black car. Of course my Third Party had lapsed, and of course my Renault is on the critical list. I really don’t know how I’m going to cope with this financially. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll be able to think more clearly.

These things can hit you out of the blue, can’t they? It was my fault, but the shoddy driving of the contactee was largely responsible. They were truly contemptible, by the way - this man and his distastefully subservient wife. My phone was out of charge and he refused to let me make a call on his, even when I offered money; the wife wouldn't let me because she hadn't got the say so from him. The guy, who looked like he might have been related to Pol Pot, spent a long time watching me trying to push the Renault out of traffic before he deigned to assist.

My faith in humanity was restored to a degree by a girl, who stopped beside me as I walked to Robert’s. Having seen the accident, she inquired after my well-being with some genuine concern.

* 13 April 1981 Monday 3.00pm

I have not been home to my mother’s house since I last wrote. I have been very drunk; taking speed against my better judgement – even heroin. I’ve been cavorting with women - Jane M----, Carol L---- and, significantly, Cathy D----. But sex is like food for me – something is gone.

On Friday, for the first time in my life, I saw red. After finishing our gig at the Jump Club, we were required to go back on stage to fill the time quota on our contract. We did so reluctantly. I walked into the band room afterwards and lost control. I kicked in a door, ripped another half off its hinges, then punched holes in a third. I wound up in a toilet cubicle. Some guy had tried to stop me without effect. The band will have to pay for the damage.

This incident frightens me. I am not experiencing one of my more sane periods.

[We received our first record contracts on Friday.]

*

I had completely forgotten this before reading it back – but it doesn’t surprise me. During the months after Christine’s death, I grieved in some very strange ways, some of which I’m sure will emerge in later posts

Long after the fact, I learned that extreme promiscuity is not that unusual a reaction to the death of a lover. After losing her physically, it seemed like I wanted to kill Christine’s memory through sex.

The record contracts would have been with Missing Link.

More diaries from 1981

* 2 April 1981 Thursday 1.30am

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game
they burst their manacles and wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain!

Coleridge was writing about the French Revolution, but I prefer to think of the above passage as universal.

*

I am twenty-one today. I feel sour, yet glad to have something on which to anchor some kind of new life. The pain comes and goes.

The group has been booked into Armstrong’s in six weeks to a record a single. We’re doing the supports for the Snakefinger tour, and a Macy’s headline is coming up. Ian Meldrum congratulated me on Saturday night for what he said was a great performance.

Friday night was my funeral. I cried from start to finish. It was a release I needed.

Still colours cannot be properly colours. I feel alone, as what was closest is gone. The distance between me and other human beings seems much greater.

I spoke to Brian Harding on Monday night. He relieved me over legal matters. I’m free to grieve and suffer over myself.

*

Snakefinger was the guitarist with mightily eccentric US band the Residents. The outfit he brought to Australia, however, was a lot more comprehensible.

One night after a gig at Melbourne Uni [I hope I’m not presaging a later diary entry here] I had passed outside through some revolving doors. Hearing something, I looked back to see Snakefinger on the ground. He’d had a serious heart attack. He survived, but the tour was cancelled, and I believe he did actually die not too many years after of something similar.

I spoke of my meeting with Brian, Christine’s dad, in an earlier diary post. I was in my youth and had no idea how the dreadful incident would pan out legally. I had been worried that I might be charged with something, and was thankful that he cleared up that concern.

Some friends, I recall Anne Harding and Gus were among them, organised a casual celebration for my birthday downstairs at Inflation.

Diaries of 1981

* 25 March 1981 thurs 2.30pm

I’m Sam Sejavka. I’m a writer and a singer. I’m twenty years old, but in one week’s time I’ll be twenty-one. Allow me to briefly describe my life up to this point.

Half way through my HSC year at St Kevin’s College, I left home and school and took a flat in St Kilda. I was seventeen. Shortly after that, suffering from nervous tension, I spent some weeks in a private psychiatric hospital. Though I never returned to school, I did sit my exams and managed to do pretty well, particularly in English.

I lived a reckless life in St Kilda, spending time with the basest of the creatures who abide there. I wrote all this time, though the results were dubious. I was young and over-stimulated by my new found freedom. I was seeing a girl called Irene, but broke up with her around the turn of the year …

I was evicted for general rowdiness and spent a week or so wandering in St Kilda, staying at hotels. I was undergoing another personality crisis, but this time it was not quite as severe.

I took up a new flat in Armadale and attended university, which I loathed. After two or three months I left, again undergoing a kind of crisis. I had done not a skerrick of work in this time. I found myself completely uninspired.

I moved to Sydney, found a flat in Kings Cross and wrote. I viewed myself as something like the protagonist from Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London - but under a shadow of inexperience and pretension the work I did was pretty well unreadable. [Woe the day I first read William Burroughs]

I made no friends there. I never went out. I became a lonely bum, trying to live his twisted idea of a dream. I must say though that I was brave. I’ve never had quite the same attitude to food since I found myself starving up in Sydney. At times I would go to a nearby homeless shelter to partake of the disgusting food they served there.

Eventually, I could stand it no longer and returned to Melbourne. I rented a house with George in Richmond and lived there six months, leading a wasteful sort of life. We had trouble with hoodlums in that place and left suddenly with the house in a wreck. Though I pined for female company, George and I enjoyed ourselves concocting and realising all manner of eccentric schemes.

I left for a new flat in Armadale. I was determined to write as diligently as I could - and I did for while, but it was forced, meaningless stuff.

Inspired by William Burroughs, and much to alarm of my parents, I joined The Church of Scientology Though my involvement was pretty marginal, [probably because I had no money,] it still remains omne of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

In September, for five days, I camped out for David Bowie tickets. This was to be a turning point. I was introduced to heroin and LSD, though I’d had my fair share of other drugs previously. I made many friends and by the time of the next queue – this time for actual seating – I could almost have been described as gregarious. I spent those three weeks stoned in as many ways as it is possible to be. This is where the idea of the band was born.

The night of the concert, my basement flat flooded and I could no longer live there [I’d forgotten to turn on the pump]. I moved home and around the turn of the year, The Ears began to practise. In January 1979, I went to a science-fiction writer’s workshop in Sydney where, among others, I met George Turner and a young Lucy Sussex.

I moved into a house with Mick Lewis and Tim McLaughlan [keyboards] and The Ears developed. We played for the first time in February. I returned to Melbourne Uni and could stand it this time only because I found a girl, Elise Valmorbida, with whom I fell madly in love. But I was far too immature to make something like that work and the relationship had decayed to nothing by the end of the year.

The group was playing regularly now. I rented another flat in Armadale, where I decided to once more quit university. Soon after, I moved to a house in Richmond with Mick and Richard Lowenstein. I was a night bird, going out as much as possible and living a life of debauchery. They were the days of the Champion Hotel. The end of the year came and I had frittered it agreeably away. It was 1980, I was nineteen. I was in a group and things were fine in a twisted sort of way.

I stayed in Richmond till March, then moved to Elwood, to the flat where I began this diary. I turned twenty. Our first single was released. I pursued girls. We got a manager, then a different manager. I went to parties. And in August I met Christine.

There followed the most rewarding period of my life thus far. I was not prolific, I was not together, I was just unreasonably happy. We slept together almost every night. I was totally, without qualification, in love. And love was what was most important.

Soon after I met Christine, my father died. But that just healed with time. Then on the twentieth of March, Christine overdosed.

And now it’s the twenty fifth of March; I’m sitting out the front of Milton St, watching some placid old people mulling over the detritus of their lives. Mine is a pain equalled only by the pleasure that it echoes.


*

As you can imagine, this was a hellish period for me. I was wracked with grief and life seemed drained of all value – so forgive me if the above entry has a rather sententious tone.

It was interesting to read though. A lot of memories sparked. A lot of things forgotten.

After Christine’s death I woke in Troy’s flat next door with no memory whatsoever of the night before. It was barely daylight. I had a terrible sense of impending doom, but my mind was too foggy to work out why. I found my way to the front door; I could see Peter Walsh walking up the path from the back yard where he’d lain unconscious all night. He looked like a zombie. I caught his eye, but there was no reaction. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I couldn’t think how to open it. I made my way back to the bed and again fell unconscious.

I awoke several hours later in full realisation that something had gone terribly wrong. I looked around frantically and saw Craig McGee in the doorway. Where’s Christine, I asked? She’s dead, he said.

Craig took me to his and Laura’s house, where I slept on the floor for a few days, before going home to my mother’s and doing the same for a fortnight. The heroin, fresh from Thailand, had been unreasonably strong and I took a long time recovering. I’ll never forget that pain and desolation. The last image I had of Christine was slapping her face, trying to wake her. It was just a flash in my memory of that night

To make matters worse, not long after, I began to receive a certain amount of police harassment. This was due to Christine’s father being the head of the police union, and her brother a member. In reflection, it was bound to happen. A fellow named Colin, a keyboard player who I think once burnt down someone’s garage, had been round to Milton St. The police had stopped him, hassled him severely. He said he had the strong impression that they were looking for someone with bright red hair, but not him. [I had bright red hair]. Then, after a gig at the Crystal Ballroom, a couple of cops pulled me into a corner and threatened to kill me if they heard of my further involvement with drugs. I wish I’d taken them more seriously.

Christine’s father, though, was understanding. He called me to the Harding family home and talked to me, not with anger but compassion. The family was less understanding towards the hapless Craig Elrick, who was a reckless spirit, doomed to forever get himself and others into strife …

* 25 March 1981 Thurs 7.00am

Christine has died of a heroin overdose. One part of my life has also come to an end.

My mother, strangely enough, is singing in the bath.

I am ailing. Since the Friday night she died, my voracious appetite has ceded its place to a cruel inability to eat.

My heart is like a man tensing as the guillotine blade slips towards his neck. It has fallen a thousand times since Friday.

I and Peter Walsh also overdosed – but we woke up. Craig Elrick, who procured the drugs, has been put to blame by Christine’s family. Perhaps they are right, but I can blame no one.

Scraps of my sanity survive. This entire experience is a thousand times more sunken in terror, in horror than my father’s passing six months ago.

I do the crossword – Yearn: to long – Promise: to pledge – Stir: to try and wake that marvellous heart, so warm between her breasts.

The smell of sex from that Friday afternoon was still with me on the Saturday.

Nothing I look at, nothing I do is without her memory. I cannot really face that sliding blade. The hair in her brush, which I have kept …

Clearing out my flat … there was a nightmare of memory under every item of rubbish …

So ends the happiest, most content and oblivious time of my life. There was a funeral, a wake, even a rosary. I can’t believe she’s gone … wearing a black bow, as she slumped against the door … Good god, what shall I do …? My love is dead …

I am very quickly reorganising my life. Soon I will have my house and perhaps the flavour will return to my food.

I’m so scared of ghosts …

mt waverley

* christine & sam

These canvases were painted by Jenny Watson in the early part of 1981

* 10 March 1981 10.30pm

I am going to move. Craig and Christine are interested in taking over my flat.

I found a pidgeon walking on the street which died in my care a day later.

The ears played disappointingly on their ‘Return Peformance’. A crowd of 300. More than doubles our previous effort …

*

The only thing I can say about this is: hadn’t I heard that pidgeons are the rats of the sky?

* 26 February 1981, Friday 9.30am

I’m getting irritated with Troy and Christine – I can get no peace in my flat again. I am retiring early and rising early. I’ve been smoking dope which has fogged up my sensibilities.

3 March 1981, Tuesday 8.45pm

These entries are stretching further and further apart, but I must persevere. I’ve already broken my personal record for keeping a diary.

It is raining today. The door is open. Leaves and vines are slapping wetly against each other.

Terry is strengthening the morale of the group again. We are to play on the 26th of this month at the Waltzing Matilda, supporting Johnny Farnham. That will be a splendid occasion [!] – though I shudder to think of the stress it will cause me …

Friday is coming closer. Our bills have been posted. All handbills gone. Dolores is very happy. We’re expecting a big crowd. Terry has unearthed a PR guy – a fat queen named Kevin …

On Saturday Craig McGee and his friend Warwick photographed us in and around the stormwater drains of South Yarra. Terry brought his briefcase up at least 500 yards of stuffy, cramped tunnel.

Our cover is finished. I’m on the front. Gus [of course] hated it – made much soul-destroying noise. I came away grasping my head – they all complain to me, these hideous inhuman complainers, and it chills my very spirit.

I’m reading The Tin Drum. It’s an excellent book [Oertel gave it to me while my father was dying, I think]

Christine and I had more sex than usual today – once shortly after waking, once while watching television in the afternoon. She described it as my horny day. We’re getting on much better now.

On Saturday night, dazed by speed and alcohol, I rose and urinated on Anne and Ed who were sleeping near the foot of our bed. I believed I was pissing into a dark, deep abyss. I awoke during the act and, horrified, cried out ‘My heart! My heart!’

I shall work on my crow tonight with Franka, who returned yesterday.


*

Terry Rogers looked after the Ears through a good percentage of their existence. He was a Kiwi who came to Melbourne with another group he managed, The Marching Girls, [previously The Scavengers,] who consisted of Ronnie Recent [who became Brendan Perry], Des Hefner and John Cook. At the time, Ronnie was going out with Lisa Gerrard, who was fronting a band called Microfilm, but was soon to collaborate with Ronnie on Dead Can Dance. I was fascinated with Lisa for a long time; she was an exotic flower, ethereally beautiful, and already her voice was breathtaking. She also played in a little band called Junk Logic. A mild-mannered freak named Lee Smith hammered an untuned guitar, while Lisa sang and played what may have been her Yangqin. They had a really good song called ‘Junk in Cupboards’.

The last time I saw Lisa, she was singing at Wendy’s burial under a hellish sun, perhaps ten years ago. Despite her unmistakable voice, I did not recognise her. I did not know that her brother had settled in with poor Wendy. Later, at the wake, I sought her out, aiming to say something about her incredible voice, but wound up staring …

There’s something very familiar about you, I said. She replied by saying the same thing. A few seconds later, we remembered; a capsule of very intense time, a long time before …

Terry Rogers also ran the Champion, a gig which was our home away from home north of the Yarra.

Dolores is a promoter. Amongst other things, she used to run the Exford Hotel. I think she’s with Chane Chane now, the singer from La Femme.

Franka was a rusted-on hippy chick from the Patch. Many years ago she disappeared into the psychic wilderness of Tunable Falls

Diary of 1981 - index

* 21 February 1981, 11.13am

The following appears to have been written under the influence of amphetamines – therefore I’ve made an editorial judgment to amend some of the crazed grammar that fizzed from my young mind.

Speed was then amphetamine sulphate, not the methamphetamine we have today. Traditionally, it came in small translucent red capsules worth twenty dollars. Heroin came in half clear/half red capsules referred to as double oh’s. The caps were sourced, I think, from a cold medicine and if the smack was not served up in a double oh, it was instantly suspect. Later, foil and paper folds came into fashion. Later still, balloons. In 1981 a ‘cap’ was fifty dollars – and, unless things have changed just recently, the price remains the same.

*

I went off to the Crystal Ballroom last night, though I can remember little of it. Afterwards, we visited Constance at his petrol station, and some friends came over to Milton St. – Jane, Leia & Cathy [a visitor from Adelaide]. We drank a huge amount of vodka and wound up being very sick. At about 9.00 we awoke from our stupor …

The Ballroom was full of friends. Even Warren Coleman was there - he dropped by with [Paul] Storm at four yesterday morning and yapped… and yapped …

I found myself in a very lurid mood. The girl Tobsha was giving me the eye, I’m sure, and I was returning it. My recollections of the night are full of skirt-filled flashes … Sometimes I’m like that; most of the time in fact, but never wholeheartedly. When I think of Christine, I lose any active interest.

I am on speed and have not slept a wink.

It was probably a foolish thing to do, taking it, but it was kind of fun.

There’s a lot I have to say, but I’ve little inclination to say it. I’m experiencing that dreadful speed state in which you are forever teetering on the edge of a ghastly chasm*, waiting for your life to crumble around you…

Somebody asked me to write a story for a magazine last night… Mmm … perhaps ... It will feature a pallbearer and be called ‘The Pallbearer’.

Christine is going to live here for a month, she thinks, before she moves in with Craig Elrick. In my paranoid state I can’t help being worried about that… We may be going to Adelaide. That visitor I mentioned, Cathy, she would be arranging it.

Wally is sweeping the path outside. A slow fly is on this book. Christine is in bed, awake, and probably grumpy….

*

Paul Storm, a school friend, was living around the corner around this time. I remember running to borrow money off him for a cab, after cops – called by my mother - came to my door and alerted me to my father’s terrible stroke. It was only a few months previous to this diary that he died.

I see Paul often these days. He has a daughter Polly’s age, Caitlyn, and as we’re all Sainters, we catch quite a few games together.

1982 beargarden

Constance working at a petrol station … I believe he would die if he knew this information was publicly available. He’s a serious [and I think successful] visual artist now - whom I last encountered at Troy’s wake.

Warren Coleman was another school friend. He was one of the boys in The Devil’s Playground and a co-writer, I understand, of Happy Feet. I don’t know much of what fell between, but we used to share very similar tastes and it was he who came to school with an Aladdin Sane haircut and he who introduced me to The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and thence to Philip K Dick … My parents hated him, blamed him for the incident when I took Bowie’s Young Americans record cover to the hairdresser and asked them to duplicate it. [The Gitane I could arrange myself.]

And Tobsha. Hmmn… A strange game of sexual chess stretched for years before burning out sans consummation. Then a VCA sculptress living at the end of the street, now she lives in LA and writes erotic novels with names like Quiver and Tremble and The Witch of Cologne. I’ve always been jealous of her success, principally because once I was far superior at spelling.

* Wasn’t someone teetering on a brink in my last post? I wonder how often I use that metaphor? Possibly a lot – I always seems to be treading the edge of some abyss or chasm or whatnot ...

Diary of 1981 - index

* 19 February 1981, Friday 2.30am

These old diary entries were all written so late at night, have you noticed? What a night owl I was.

*

I have been very busy. I’ve organised handbills and today I pasted a painting by Hieronymous Bosch onto Carl’s drumskin. In about six hours Christine and I have to return her mother’s car. I must take with me the photos for Tony Harding : he is doing our record cover. [Scarecrow – pictured in an earlier post]

I snapped at Christine today and I could see she was hurt because she walked straight out of the room without finishing her cantaloupe. I had made a bad error with Carl’s drumskin and she’d laughed.

- Christine, don’t laugh. It really irritates me.

She’d sounded so derisive. But there has always been a sort of mocking tone in her laugh. I should have known a time would come that it annoyed me.

I could not apologise right away.

We’ve been watching Craig Elrick’s huge colour television here all night. Christine made dinner. Troy refused to make coffee. I am jealous of Troy, you know – the way he flirts with Christine – even now I hear the sounds of her laughter from the other room … it sounds so pathetic … God, what am I writing?

It doesn’t hurt me now. I’ve turned off my emotions. But with eliminating the jealousy, I must also lessen my love for Christine. I’ve been wondering all day if this thing is waning [Oh, how I would flourish in the pain of a break-up [!]] But, admittedly I have been tired and in a grumpy mood.

We moved most of Christine’s possessions here today – they’ll stay till she gets a house.

I have what Christine believes to be warts on my cock. I must go to one of those family planning centres. Who’s planning families now? … I am embarrassed to go …

Now my flat is annoying m. I’d like it much simpler. There is tinfoil over the walls and yesterday I added to the film jungle [once again] with milk-bar type streamers over the door


*

Re: the drumskin. The Boys Next Door had a song called The Red Clock by Rowland Howard… the red clock goes tick tock … and someone had decorated the skin of their bass drum with a very cool looking interpretation of the title. I think that’s what drove me to make sure ours was a cool one too.

I think it was about this time that I ate my first avocado. It was Christine’s sister Anne, who introduced me to it, halved, with vinegar poured into the seed-hole. Believe it or not, avocados were a very rare thing prior to 1981. Mangoes came even later.

And with regards to those warts - now that I've made the mistake of mentioning them - they were successfully frozen off shortly afterwards.

Diary of 1981 - index

* 17 February 1981 2.15am

I don’t know if my Queensland holiday did me any good at all. The Slammerkin came down hard that Saturday night. I was delirious with glee and forever holding out my wineglass to the gaggle of drunken teenagers in Nikki’s backyard – who were only too happy to ply me with their poisonous Southern Comfort. I was well past the point of making sensible decisions and paid for it by spending the last week of my holiday in bed. My liver is not what it was and behaviour like this could literally kill me.

I’m back on line now, however. Back in the psycho-dome that is my house in Mt Waverley. No whiff of the Deadly Spores, thank goodness, but plenty of other unpleasant challenges to occupy my time. Jenny stormed out of the house Sunday after riling me up with a nastily phrased litany of my inadequacies. She called back today and told me she’d had her period. We compared notes and realised the exact same thing had happened exactly twenty-eight days previously.

So, to resume transcription of my ancient diaries …

*

This afternoon after practice, I purchased some heroin and took it back home to Christine. We locked ourselves in the flat and fucked ourselves sore … She is asleep now.

My love for her is frighteningly strong. She assures me this is also true for her. We assured each other, in fact, continuously, very self-indulgently all evening.

I’ve heard that Keith Glass said I was either stupid or a genius for writing the lyrics to Triple Treat. Well…?

Our new song should be called Green Food For a Queen. I have found a pseudo-religious poster to use on our drum skin... Put in a handbill to be printed… I have so very much to do.

Last night Christine and I fucked madly to the listening ears of her sister Anne. We are such ostentatious lovers. Christine’s father asked her if she was going to marry me. Hah! I am the first of her boyfriends he has seen and he is confused.

That’s all I feel is worth recounting on this excellent night

*

Green Food For a Queen turned out to be one of the best Ears songs …

green food for green queens tonight
and gruel for the black and the white

Triple Treat? Well there was a particularly tasty ice-cream available at the time with a slab of nice soft pink nougat-like material sandwiched in vanilla ice cream and coated in chocolate. I don't know if the song was related specifically to the ice-cream, but it went something like this ...

it was a triple treat, a triple treat
and triple tigers perish on the hour

Christine and Annes’ father, at this time, was the head of Victoria’s police union

Diary of 1981 - index

* 14 February 1981 11.50pm

One more time, before I leave…

*

It’s a very murky, humid night – my mind is very hazy – I keep drifting off to other things, other places.

Since my last entry, I have not been in any state to write. I did score the heroin. It was average. Rushed off to the recording studio. It was a relative success, I cannot say for sure as yet. The next afternoon me and Christine set off for the city – we visited Missing Link to find out the limitations on the record cover [which must be got under way very soon]. Then we went to the Australia Hotel and drank for some hours – then we ate – I consumed two meals, through sheer gluttony – Veal Cordon Bleu, Veal Parmigiana. The tab was nearly $17 – [am I reading this right?] – so we caught a cab to Craig [McGee] and Lauras’ – A fellow named Dud had some LSD, which we promptly bought – then we drank and smoked – can I tell you everything, my diary? LSD can make me lose control …

[If only I could remember what I was referring to here …]

At about six we went to Wellington St – we bathed – I drank three sachets of Vincent’s Powders – TV – and finally slept – missed a practice – and Cathy Denny’s 21st – most ashamed – acid still frolicking round in my system – Practised today – not long now before we play – prepared ‘The Freighter’ [of dubious quality] – visited my mother – she keeps talking about my father – on and on …

It is a sultry night and I only want to sleep.

*

Transcribing these diaries is beginning to make me nervous … I myself have not read ahead … but I know what is to come.

Vincent’s Powders … I recall them clearly - pink grainy stuff that came in paper folds like heroin… don’t know what was in it, but it’s been banned now. All I remember about the LSD trip was Christine crying because [she thought] her ice-cream was falling off its stick … and her horror at a piece of fairly normal rubbish she saw on the ground. I think she was hallucinating something Lovecraftian.

“The Freighter.” A song which never made it to the Ears’ playlist, though it had a strange and obtuse melody which I recall to this day. The song was a kind of sequel to one of our signature tunes: ‘The Crater’.

The Laura I mention ran a second hand clothes shop in Barkey St St Kilda for years. It was called Junkarucci.

The father I mention was my recently deceased progenitor.

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