Month: January 2025

Live music!

Goddamn, I actually LEFT THE HOUSE last night and SOCIALISED! I can barely believe it myself, and yet here is photographic evidence… I don’t do a lot of socialising like this any more, usually when I do go out it’s to a club, and actual live music is something I do even less (last gig I went to was in August last year). But a bunch of friends’ bands were playing at Moshpit in Newtown, so I decided to take the opportunity to go see some people I know at a venue I’d never been to before and give the new phone camera a test drive… click to embiggen.

First up, Moroderhead, who weren’t quite as heavy as their amusing name may suggest, and who only lacked mullets to complete their overall 1986-ness. I was thinking this was the first time I’d seen Alberto not playing as half of Neuropa, but now that I think of it I have very vague memories of seeing him at the Hopetoun in 2006 when he was still doing Junk Circuit as well…

I got this shot of the stage backdrop while waiting for Burnt Souls to start…

…Which they did a few minutes later. Lineup’s changed since I last saw them at the Town and Country a couple (?) of years ago—new guitarist, new bassist, no more drummer—but at least Colin’s still got the tallest hair in the room…

…And finally Sounds Like Winter, who I was mainly there for, cos Ant has also recently reconstituted what he calls “version 3.0” of the band, though the band’s always had a somewhat wobbly lineup including a Spinal Tap-esque revolving door of bassists, so I think “version 3.0” was technically about eight or nine years ago… anyway, whatever number the new arrangement may or may not be, they’ve had a similar change to Burnt Souls (new guitarist & bassist, no drummer) and it sounded good. New album is apparently about half done, so presumably we’ll have that by the end of the year.

RIP Richard Perry

Now here’s a man with a hell of a career. Seriously, just look at that list of production credits… great list of production clients—Tiny Tim, Captain Beefheart, Leo Sayer, Barbra Streisand, Nilsson, Fats Domino, Ringo Starr, a whole bunch more—and a stack of hit songs, plus an eight-year romantic relationship with Jane Fonda:

And somehow, despite all of that, until news broke of his death a few days ago, I’d never heard of the guy to the best of my knowledge. I suppose it’s good to be reminded sometimes of how little I actually know…

Come out, come out…

I knew about “Emergo”. I knew it was the gimmick thing that William Castle came up with for certain showings of House on Haunted Hill, involving a skeleton being pulled out at a certain point in the film on a wire over the heads of the audience. I had heard of it, obviously… I had not, however, actually seen what it looked like until now. It is… not what I expected somehow from the descriptions I’ve read, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

Happy 2025, if you’re into that sort of thing

So much for that, eh. 2024 was intermittently amusing, up to the first week of November anyway. I occasionally left the house and turned 50. I’ve noticed that, at least since I was 29, I’ve felt… not really angst or anything at starting a new decade but a sort of fascination, for want of a better word, with the fact that I was at the end of one and about to start the next, and I spent most of the year thinking about it. I did it when I was 29, I did it when I was 39, and I did it when I was 49… and each time, once I’d rolled over into my new decade, I stopped thinking about it. Did it when I turned 30, when I turned 40, and again when I turned 50. I don’t think about being 50 now that I am 50, indeed I almost have to remind myself that I am…

I spent years dreading NYE because I spent too many years thinking I should Do Something To Mark The Occasion and that it was important. One of the good things about getting older is that I have long since stopped feeling that; it has to be something really worth going to the effort of trying to wrangle transport to it and back home again. I can’t even remember the last time I did, though from looking through my old photos it appears to have been ten years since I last socialised at a club for NYE (I see no other NYE-timestsamped pictures after that… I dimly recall my friend Lara driving us there, first to a friend’s place out at Marrickville for their gathering and then to the Imperial where the club was… I think the year after that was the time I went over to Joe’s place for NYE before he moved in here, had an unexpectedly easy time getting taxis there and back, and otherwise I don’t think I’ve been anywhere on NYE since. Part of me misses it, there was a club on this NYE that would’ve been nice, but I no longer feel the need I once did to put up with the probable difficulties I’d have had getting there.

Friend who was out working tonight posted the midnight view from Darling Harbour (where he was working):

Looks delightful but I don’t need THAT shit any more either. Back in 1994 and 1997 I went with a friend to Circular Quay for the 9pm show before we kicked on to other things. Do you know how long it takes a hundred thousand people to evacuate that area once the show’s over? Cos I know better than I’d like. With hindsight I can’t believe I actually did that a second time. It was fun, the atmosphere was pretty good, and I don’t ever need to do it again. In fact, I can barely believe I did it once, never mind twice. But I was so much younger then, and still thought that Doing Something on NYE mattered, and wasn’t smart enough to worry about these things. Doing Something didn’t require the effort or preparation it now does…

Anyway—to bed. I don’t have a lot of optimism for 2025, but I’m assuming the world will still be here when I wake up, so back to normal disservice later. And happy 2nd birthday, blog.