4AM, Thurs: Get up, wake housemate/bass player. Beat housemate to shower and therefore use up all hot water. Pack frantically. Guzzle disprin direct chewables and anti-nausea travel sickness tablets. Twice the recommended dose. Taxi early. Meter runs at double time the whole way to airport.
5AM: Board the plane. Pray for a safe flight during safety demonstration. Fold self into ball. Fall asleep.
6AM: Doze merrily through turbulence. No food, no drink. Seat doesn’t recline. Wake briefly. Same in-flight magazine as last week. And the week before. And the week before. And the week before.
7AM: Sinuses playing up on the way down. Pressure above right eye. Plane seems stuck in clouds for ever. Bass player asleep (though later will claim not to have dozed).
8AM: Touch down in Coolangatta. Stand on bass player’s glasses (he dropped them when getting off the plane). No damage to glass. It’s warm outside. Always feels like it’s the 60s when we walk on the tarmac.
9AM: In the hire car. Humming REM’s All the way to Reno all the way to Brisbane. Stop for a risky coffee in Burleigh Heads. Risk pays off. Coffee good. Dispel theory that there’s no good coffee between Coburg and Southern Europe.
10AM: Studios of 98.9 – Aboriginal Country Radio Station. Possible world’s nicest people. Welcomed with open arms. Pre-record interview with Dan and a few acoustic songs including cover of Tom T Hall’s “That’s how I got to Memphis”.
11AM: Hanging out with the 98.9 crew. Hayley’s new tattoos look amazing. All Sailor Jerry stuff. Left arm completely covered. Says she’ll cover the other when she finds a man and gets married. Not sure of reasoning behind this…perhaps she plans to marry a tattoo artist and get the work done for free?
MIDDAY: Driving in circles round Brisbane, looking for affordable parking.
1PM: Still looking for affordable parking.
2PM: Shaun and I meet Shane from The Verve Cafe (tonight’s venue). Free beer (first of many for the evening). Don’t really like Coopers but know not to look gift horse in mouth.
3PM: Move car to less affordable but more long term parking. Loiter in an Irish pub for half an hour or so watching the Mets Vs The Cardinals. Have no idea what’s going on.
4PM: Start of a long long soundcheck. Just Shaun as I as the others are still on the plane. Listen to the 98.9 crew send us and hank Williams through the airwaves. Resolve to one day cover the entire hank Williams Songbook – whether you like it or not (obscure Nighthawks at the Diner Reference for the geeks out there).
5PM: Lovely waitress. More free drinks. Lovely Brazillian guy explains to us how racist he finds Australians to be. We suspect he’s probably right.
6PM: People start to shuffle in. Even Shaun’s aunty is here! We sit down with her and her friend. They all have Lamb Shanks and I, the “vegetarian” have some kind of brandy-drenched prawn dish. Shaun’s Aunty resolves to set him up with a nice girl.
7PM: The others still aren’t here. We get the call to say they’re still at the airport cos Jetstar forgot to deliver Andrew’s guitar. It’s a little inconvenient. 98.9′s Luke Peacock comes to the rescue with a Fender amp. Looks like Wriggles can go electric all night.
8PM: Luke floors us with his songwriting. Great support act. His new track “My Shit” is a bonafide country classic. He’s up for a Q Music award for best Indigenous song and we think he should damn well win it.
9PM: We plug in and play. Can’t hear ourselves at all so we thrash and have a great time. New fan offers us a ‘herbal gift” for our troubles. Pretty sure we can’t accept such forms of payment. Very sure that we wouldn’t admit it on our blog if we did.
10PM: Encores. Post show drinks, merch flogging and pack up. farewell to Luke til next time.
11PM: A night out is planned but first we must check in to our Digs – Base Backpackers. We only booked for 4 but there’s 5 of us. Whoops…we’ll have to sneak Mat in later.
Midnight: Backpackers, bogans and beer drinking contest. We stick to the $4 vodkas and coke. After a couple my mouth feels sull of sugar so we resort to vodka and soda. Bar is no good, let’s move on.
1AM Friday: VB – or, by it’s offial name, The Victory Bar. Covers band with a drum machine play brown eyed girl, holy grail, sweet child of mine etc. Change rooms and it’s all “putcha hands in the air”. We keep our hands in our pockets.
2AM: Kebab time. Doner kebab for Shaun. Long discussion about whether Doner is actually meat. He tastes it and agrees with mat and I that it is not. But then again nor is chicken probably. I am safe in the knowledge that felafel is tasty.
3AM: Another bar, this time the Irish one from earlier. Sweaty bodies writhe around twixt the olde worlde veneer. Covers band plays unrecognisable tunes. Shaun home to bed.
4AM: Been up for 24 hours now. Try to sneak Mat in to backpackers. Fail. Can’t let him sleep out on his own so I do the honourable thing. We share the steps outside the backpackers for a while and politely decline offers of all sorts of pharmacuticals.
5AM: Find two vacant park benches in the park. Figure that millions of people do this every night and at least it’s warm in Brisbane. Damned uncomfortable though. Mat dozes until a local ne’er-do-well disturbs him by leaning over, scratching under his chin and calling “wakey wakey”. I chuckle to myself having seen the whole episode unfold.
6AM: On the neighbouring bench a yound English blonde politely explains to her new Aussie cowboy why it is not a good idea for them to sleep together – especially seeing as they just met and she “hardly ever” does this kind of thing. He struggles to understand. It may be because she is using sentences.
7AM: Bounce up fresh as a daisy from park bench. Collect car from undercground garage so as to take advantage of the cheaper nightime rate. Drop all cards out of wallet in the process. Didn’t sleep but feel ok.
8AM: We’re on the way to the Sunshine Coast. Shaun driving. I feel refreshed as I had a shower at backpackers but had to dry myself with last night’s shirt as I forgot to take towell from room.
9AM: iPhone shows just 5 % battery but enough to guide us to ABC studios in maroochydore.
10AM: Live to air with Annie Gaffney on the morning show. An excellent, knowledgable interviewer. I play an acoustic version of ballad of a young married man and mat and laura sings bvs. It goes down well.
11AM: Breakfastg somewhere beginning with M. Vege pie. Quite delicious.
Midday: Back on the road – this time headed for our accommodation in Noosa,
1PM: Arrive at accom. Stand in the street and do a phone interview with Tony from Inpress about next week’s Wesley Anne show in melbourne. Another knowledgable interview and we talk a lot about videos and Sean Genders.
2PM: Stroll around Noosa on my own, drinking coffee. Almost coax the stern german waitress into a half smile. Decfide to head back to the hostel and type up this blog. It’s taken me an hour. Still no real sleep in the last 34 hours. now off to soundcheck in Eumundi. Feel fine. ( minutes left on internet credit. Had better post.
Lachlan
Crickey! It’s rock and roll all the way! Now get some sleep!!!
You boys sure know how to live x
I might be 3 months late to this but I loved this post. Puzzled how you found the time to document the day. That’s dedication!