tour diary

Day three - Bluebottle Kiss 'Vs five angry heavy metal bands

O.K so we're all a little hungover. Richo's Mediterranean style of sleeping has become a regular sight in the bbk camp as of late (you'll have to ask Richard to explain that little phenomenon). Jamie got up and ate a whole unpeeled lemon (honest). Off we went down to the Valley for breakfast and to grab the local music papers. In one of the papers (I forget which one) we're booked in at the Buffalo Club for our single launch tonight which is peachy. BUT, in the other paper five heavy metal bands are booked in as playing the 'Get Stuffed, Urination' show in the same place as us! The dodgy meter clicks up a notch and after a few calls to those incharge we find out that a guy who will remain unnamed and who had skipped out of the country had booked us in first months ago then, due to his unbelievable stupidity and obvious lack of both will, and brain power, then went ahead a week ago in booking the following bands: 'Anal dreadlocks', 'sphincter liqueur', 'Butt implosion', 'The Shit Heads', and last but not least 'Hemorrhoid Hair-do'. Breakfast tasted funny.

So basically we are stuffed and have nowhere to play our single launch in brissy tonight. After driving however many hours and playing up here how ever many times we still get shafted and have to find somewhere else to play tonight..... The jobs left with poor little Richard and we all go our separate ways. Jamie and Wesley go into the grand cemented cemetery (city), Richo wanders back to the hotel and makes seriously about fifty calls to try and get us a place to play, and I run off to someplace to get away from every thing and think about nothing.

Blue and White day and it seems like this whole town is under construction in some way or another, cranes, tractors and workmen crowd the hot sticky tar streets. I wander around the unmovable city passing friend and foe keeping my eyes wide open trying to catch thoughts or other sad eyes. It dawned on me today (as things usually do) that this whole damn world has sad old eyes. From the little newly born screamn' tears for lack of anything else to do, to the middle aged goin' crazy in trying to figure it out, to the older with their sad road trodden stories of way back when, with the ending nigh. Take a look for your selves, the eye tells all. I find a place to rest my feet in one of Brisbane city's' many war memorial 'peace parks'. There's a ancient homeless soul next to me on the bench so I start asking him questions but all he wants to do is sleep his useless day away in a noisy golden slumber, his burnt throat glistens in the midday sun, his empty terps bottle an ode to last nights stormy weather. He has red and stone gray eyes that mope and weep like an old opened sore.
"Life's a constant unwaking dream" he slurs suddenly, making me jump. His long red beard drips with saliva and soul.
"Nothings real, I'd jump off da Story Bridge if I had legs ....... I'd fly around all these dead blades of grass if I hadn't lost my wings down at da Wharf's" he declares to me crazy eyed, his gray head on fire with a million thoughts, none of them any saner than the last. He lays back down on his death bench and mumbles away,
".... this is my last day, this is my last day......" I feel sorry for him and give him a couple of bucks, then take off to the pub over the road by my self for two quiet beers with the Dhama Bums. Tonight's gig was still in the air but somehow I knew we'd play.

Night Three - death metal upstairs, nothing metal down stairs....

So after a thousand calls the owner of the Buffalo Club 'kindly' agreed to put us down stairs at the R.S.L looking public bar in the venue. With wall to wall pokies and a huge Bingo sign over looking the 'stage' which was just a carpet square on the floor, there were off brown chairs and tables with 'TAB flutter forms' (I think there called) scattered around the place. We arrived and held our beaten chins high, it was awful, one of the worst moments in the bbk: 'worst moments log book'. With no P.A down stars we had to set up Fields' who for some reason had a spare one with them. So we loaded in early and set the P.A up, but were not to make any noise due to the duo covers band playing there until seven. So Mr. El Dodgo with his slim lined mustache and his off-browny-gray pin striped suit has not only double booked us with five local, angry death - metal bands who for some reason get precedence over us but, he's also booked a covers band complete with computer drums, a sax player, and a shredder guitarist who is about 60, singing all your favorites from: Buddy Holly all the way DOWN to Alanis Morisette. Sitting there with the five or six people (all family) watching blankly to this abysmal trash vomiting out of the small speakers I realized tonight was gonna be kind of like a cross between: the enjoyment and longevity of 'Home Alone 3' and the excitement of 'Water-World'. The covers band went 45 minutes over time. We all thanked them eminently and got their number in case any of us ever needed to play a joke on a loved one.

And so finally after setting the P.A up and moving the tables and chairs we were all ready for the onslaught of our Brisbane based fan club who we'd all heard very little from. Fields started late, the dodgy P.A groaned loudly at the mass of sound forced through it. There was about ten people in the room, what was there to do but drink and make the night comical and almost adventures. Fields finished with a pop and Dumpster started, the room slowly filling to a Brisbane record of.... FIFTY people!!! Meanwhile the music up stairs could be heard in between songs, the growl and stench of the Silly Metal bands found its way down to our 'Bingo' room it wasn't welcome but it was too big and smelly to be shown the door, so it stayed... Outside was wild. A quick trip to the car to get my puncey (as it was called) tie proved rather dangerous with a hundred youngn's sitting around drinking their cheap alcohol stolen from mummies liquor cabinet waiting to get upstairs to 'SMASH SCULL' I recall one of the brighter of the group suggest.
"Hey dick-head" one of the highly challenged youths called out to me. Being the tough guy I am I pretended he wasn't there and continued on my way back in the club.
"He said hey, you BEEP"(the red beep suggests a naughty word ed.) said yet another being, Human or not I still can not say. I turned expecting a verbal hiding, the likes of which I had never known.
"I reckon your ties BEEPing puncey"(the red beep suggests a naughty word ed.) said the first derelict his mates laughed and as simple as that he had won his little imaginary street brawl with me, a formidable foe, Ha, I think not. I ran back in to the down stairs bit of the club a tiny bit scared and watched the rest of Dumpster who were great.

Kerouac was the in-between band amusement with the instant, non-stop hum of his voice and a piano accompanist, spontaneous, muse. We started and I was all ginned out. The foldback of the poor little P.A sounded like a whale fart. I won't whinge or even comment any further on the lack of people at the gig, it ended in a rock jump or two and before I knew it we'd stopped playing and I was packing up. So we packed the van up after an empty, hollow night then off we went back to the QLD night trippin' over our selves after being defeated once again by Bris-vegas and her minions. The air was thick tonight, humid thick, bus and car pollution staying on the ground hanging around our sculls. Breathing crap in and out. Wes, Richo and I ended up of course at Super Deluxe and drank the night away...

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