|
Day 2 - The second of days |
|
|---|---|
|
Opened my eyes, the room was totally black I honestly forgot I was in Geelong. I was about to get up and walk down stairs to get my self a drink thinking I was at home. But laying there I suddenly realised the match box style room with the 'Old man lived in' kind of smell. Our Geelong hotel was more like my crazy grandfather's convalescent home than I care to mention..... We had a really hard choice to make; should we drive straight to Ballarat now and spend the day there, or, should we stay in Geelong and drive to Ballarat tonight. It was like being asked if you'd rather head butt a wall all day or sit at home and watch re-runs of Sally Jessie-Raphael (the second season). We spent most of the day in Geelong, Richo, Peter and Dougo went to the movies to see 'The Little Mermaid', while Jamie and I found a beach, it was freezing cold..... I didn't go in but Jamie braved the weather and took a dip. We left Geelong at 4, the drive was a long winding road south-west, with the sun setting right in my eyes, sometimes being eaten by great thick black clouds. O.K. Computer blasting. Beautiful. Something that needs to be spoken of in this little diary is our mixer, Rod's collection of CDs. You wouldn't believe if you saw it. He has this big, black case full of CDs in little cd single covers made especially for the case, all in alphabetical order from aerosmith live '81 to z z top. On request of how many CDs in the box, I'm told with a shrug of a shoulder 'About 800....' so the van holds a bass amp, a guitar amp, 6 guitars a drum kit and 'About 800'CDs.
We got to Ballarat early, loading in to the 21 Arms Hotel just after sun set. The whole place smelt like one huge sand shoe, it wreaked, but it was a lot bigger than Lambys. Richo seemed to somehow have acquired an attitude on the way from Geelong to Ballarat, making loud, incorrect statements about sheep herding in the Sth Eastern alps among other things. Anyway, before the gig actually opened Rodo was let lose on the very loud stereo system in the hotel, foaming from the mouth he proceeded to play the worst 'Shlock rock' music ever heard, not only did play them, he played them loud, really loud. Richo quickly intervened with 'Play with love' and Rodo's quick, almost erotic statement into bad eighties rock and roll ended in him being banished from pre-gig entertainment ..... forever...... Night 2 - 21 Arms Hotel, Ballarat Hazier- tonight’s set was accompanied by some crazy, avant-guard dancers. Tonight we put our smorgasbord-like souls on the line and played a pop-rock set full of your favourites. Jamie's lead fell out during the end of Tap dancing (do you see a constant theme in the bad luck of Hasto). Tonight’s set was action packed, a bit like the first season of the A-team, (you know before they actually had a budget and they used scenes sometimes six or seven times a show) Jamie was Hanable, I was B.A Baracas, and Richo was .... well Richo was one of the other guys. We had people screaming for no other reasons than to hear their own voices, we had people dancing like retards to 7/8 timing songs like Sister, we had it all, Ballarat offered us immortality and riches beyond our wildest dreams, no more ten dollars a week food allowance, no more travelling in the van of hell and suffering, on stage we were kings, princes, and thieves all rolled into one. Bluebottle was flying high on the road to STARdom only to have it all taken away from under our noses the moment Pollyanna started...... but you get that.
The set was:-
The new song 'Running around the white picket fence' was very loud and very angry, with Jamie showing us there’s nothing cool about the 'Rock jump'. Performed by Pete Townsend, perfected by Tim Rodgers the rock jump has been tried and failed by Bluebottle a number of times..... but all in all a spirited set. Tonight we must drive back to Melbourne, not to our lavish hotel or to our outrageous penthouse, but to our friend James' house. That’s what you do when your as popular as the 'kiss. Don’t get us wrong its not that we don’t want to be rock stars, its just its really, really hard to pull it off convincingly. I mean some bands (not mentioning any names) pull off the rock star look, feel, taste, but the 'kiss have a problem. Although I don’t quite know what that problem is. Jamie tells me 'its 'cause I constantly sound like I’m singing with a tight pillow case over my head' I just think if we pulled off these; rock moves, rock style, rock banter, rock look, rock life’s, rock needs, rock wants we'd be seen a joke band, a kind of Wiggles in suits.
Tonight's little shin-dig in a few words by Jamie:
Ballarat is a beautiful place full of European style buildings in the main drag but like Geelong everything shuts at 2:30 pm. You have to search long and hard to find a place to eat dinner. The drive to Melbourne from Ballarat was numb faced, head spinning, sour taste, sickle moon, sickle heart, small talk, speeding car, sore limbs, freezing feet, double meaning dreams, short movies playing in the back of my head being projected out my eyes, snippets of black and white world war one moves, super eight, red wine over charge, Wolf Blass yellow playing the sound track to this tour, creepy cold winds blowing down the main drag, with loud uncontrollable bursts of verbal diarrhoea from Rodo....... |
