Growing Up In Bondi poetry

 

On grass-clipping streets and median strips
and cracked concrete that baked in heat and
bitumen on roads that bubbled under feet,
you hurled water bombs at the kids
from around the street and
went to the beach ‘cos that’s
just what you did.
And there you sat in groups beside
North Bondi Surf Club
or near the barbeques
or down South on The Hill or in The Corner
or at First or Second or Third ramps.
And the milkbars were still standing
and at Valis’s and Raffle’s and Bill’s
you drank thickshakes and played the pinnies
and you ventured to Homestead chicken
for special hot chips.
And school came and thankfully went
and the endless six weeks of Chrissie holidays
fanned out endlessly in front of you
and it was fish and chips in the sunset park
after a day in the water and into the 9pm dark
and into sandy feet station wagons and off home
to sleep behind salt-coated windows
and open fly-screen doors
and the whole neighbourhood wearing worn rubber thongs
and the cicadas noisy all the way into night.
Then February and on into the year,
Easter being marked exactly by the sideways blow
of the westerly wind like clockwork
and into the desolate antenna evening of June,
the grass-blade sunshine of July,
The flannelette days of August,
Then again the sudden jasmine days of September and
Into the salty October mornings,
Then the nor’ easterly afternoons of November
and around again and again.
Then my life turned to high school
and the dumped couches on the footpath
and the boarded up shops of early ’80s Campbell Parade
where you’d be crazy to loiter after dark,
the needle stick stabbing streets,
the heroin sand.
And the Maori kids who caused legendary trouble chaos down there
and the thrill of the stories of them
and those hot girls down there at night
who smoked ciggies and drunk cases and beer
and smashed bottles and fucked
and in one of those still-standing sheds
I kissed one of those smoke-tasting mouths
and I have never forgotten a single moment
nor the way I felt,
just as I have never forgotten
a single other moment
of growing up in Bondi
at all
either.

Street Music Playlist by Gareth Liddiard of Tropical Fu*k Storm

Gareth Liddiard is touring Sydney with new band Tropical Fu*k Storm, who have released two 7” singles this year, ‘Chameleon Paint’ and ‘Soft Power’, with two more to come before an album follows mid-2018. On the B-sides of each single are the band’s renditions of “Australian songs we wish we’d written”, like The Nation Blue’s ‘Mansion House’ and Lost Animal’s ‘Lose the Baby’. With this playlist, Gareth picks out more songs he wishes he could claim credit for and tells us why – Aaron Curran

 

X – ‘Waiting’
From Sydney around 1979. I think it’s about waiting for a smack dealer who’s late but it could be about any kind of waiting. It has the most unearthly scream in the middle of it. Perfect street music.

Rowland S. Howard – ‘Sleep Alone’
Brian Hooper’s bass riff is one of his best and he has quite a lot of great riffs. The guitar is outrageous. The whole misanthropy sentiment is something I can agree with. Imagine a big red button that would instantly kill every single human being if you pressed it. Objectively, when you take into consideration all other life, the right thing to do would be to press it. Subjectively too, if you consider that it would solve 100% of the world’s problems seeing as its humans who decide what is and what isn’t a problem.

Lost Animal – ‘Lose The Baby’
I heard this over a decade ago as a demo on Myspace. The album version and the demo are great. Most music nerds haven’t heard it and it’s fun to see their reaction when you chuck it on. They’re always like “wow, why didn’t I know about this?” I showed it to Don Walker recently and that was pretty much his reaction too. TFS has recorded it for our next 7 inch B-side. I secretly hope people think we wrote it.

Cold Chisel – ‘Flame Trees’
Up until recently it was illegal to publicly say you liked Chisel but nearly every musician I know has always liked them. Not liking them is like not liking The Beatles. Meaning you’re just trying to look cool. There is an interesting aspect to this song that’s overlooked and it’s that you really feel for the protagonist, he’s having a hard time, then he sings:

“And there’s a girl, she’s falling in love near where the pianola stands
With her young local factory out-of-worker, just holding hands
And I’m wondering if he’ll go or if he’ll stay…”

and everyone seems to think the protagonist hopes this couple stay together and have a good life or something. He’s such a romantic. But what people miss is that he hopes this guy f___s off so he can have a crack at chatting her up. He’s a prick.

L. J. Hill – ‘Pretty Bird Tree’
I like writing sad songs, it feels good in a bad way or bad in a good way. But I wouldn’t like to have written this because I would have had to have lived it.

Spencer P. Jones – ‘The World’s Got Everything In It’
Indeed it does. But now it has this song too.

All The Weathers – ‘Dogga’
This one is from Tassie. This song seems made up of all of the feelings valium removes.

Nation Blue – ‘Mansion Family’
Another Tassie thing. This is the sort of tune I’d write so it felt like a good choice for TFS to do it on our last B-side. Tom says all of his songs are A-G-C based but he forgot the C here. So when we did it I added a C and it was like supercharging a V8. Cal and Georgia from All The Weathers sing on it too. Cal sings like Prince if Prince was born in Hobart. The Nation Blue version is reminiscent of Rhianna’s Consideration, the backing singers go “whoooaaa” like Rhianna and SZA do. I like that about it.

The Saints- ‘This Perfect Day’
Great chorus. Mad guitars. Heavy as f___.

Percy Grainger- ‘Shallow Brown’
I like songs with lots of dynamics. I also like guitars. I like it when girls and guys sing on the same track. And I like opera. Good Aussie Opera.

True Blood Vegan activism in downtown Sydney

On Saturday 7 October, Anonymous for the Voiceless gathered at Pitt Street Mall to protest for animal rights by using their signature form of street activism, known as ‘The Cube of Truth’.

Cube of Truth in action. Photo credit: Anonymous for the Voicless

As the name suggests, The Cube of Truth is a square formation. It’s composed of activists who don Guy Fawkes masks, black trousers and shirts marked with slogans such as ‘Knives and forks have become weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘In our capacity to suffer, we are all equal’.

But the real attention-grabbers are the TV screens and laptops the activists hold, which play graphic footage recorded in New South Wales and Victorian farms.

On screen, a diseased pig writhes on the killing floor. Male chickens deemed useless by the egg industry zoom down a chaotic conveyor belt and are minced by bloodstained machines. This footage is 100% Australian and the methods of killing are all legal, RSPCA approved and recent, recorded in the last two to three years.

There are many Cubes of Truth internationally. But this particular Cube broke the world record for the most active ever, with approximately 130 vegan activists in attendance. Those who weren’t standing in the Cube dodged through the 2pm foot traffic to ask passers-by the same opening question: ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’

Most people hadn’t.

Anonymous for the Voiceless is a global animal rights movement. In recent years the Sydney branch has flexed its street activism muscles during popular shopping times – Thursday nights and early Saturday afternoon. In their belief, “Being vegan is not just a matter of being ‘kind’ to animals; first and foremost, it’s a matter of being fair. Going vegan is the only way we can align our beliefs with our actions.”

I ventured out to Pitt Street Mall in October to witness the record-breaking spectacle, now known across social media as “the Biggest Cube Day”.

Cube of Truth in action. Photo credit: Anonymous for the Voicless

A man with a Colonel Sanders moustache, blue Ralph Lauren, and coastal larrikin demeanour was pulling a young girl through the crowd. She saw the Cube and asked, ‘Granddaddy, what’s that?’ He turned his head, inspected the cube, and said, “Just a bunch of whacko vegans who don’t want to eat meat.”

A woman holding a David Jones suit bag was visibly distressed about the scenario. I soon caught on that she was actually disagreeing about the method of slaughter being played on the screens.

“I fully understand your idea,” she said, to an activist. “But you’re sharing the bad stuff… You are sharing the horrible images, not the good ways they kill. I don’t want to see it.”

I glanced back at the closest screen and watched an abattoir worker murder a cow with a hammer.

After listening to the woman’s argument about humane slaughter, the activist suggested that methods of humane slaughter – such as halal – are logically confused, since the definition of humane is to show compassion and empathy.

Not long after a bloke called Terry introduced himself to me. After eating animals for 48 years, Terry turned vegan immediately after watching the documentary Cowspiracy and hearing a speech by Gary Yourofsky, which he dubbed “the best speech you’ll ever hear.”

“I consider myself a sensible and reasonable man but I could no longer justify eating animals,” he said.
So what does it feel like to be on the other side of the mask?

“Meditative and contemplative,” Terry responded. “People forget you’re staring back at them.”

It was a big day for Anonymous for the Voiceless – but their mantra is everyday persistence. Across Sydney there is a stirring of vegan activism, a call to arms breaking the stigma of veganism as something trendy or naff. It is taking form as disciplined, peaceful protest at The Cube of Truth as something well-organised, serious, and most of all, disturbingly affecting.

I Dreamed of Don Walker and the Kings Ghosts in the Machine

Bought a car from Don Walker last night.

Early ’60s Kingswood sedan. Pale blue, white roof. Suspension pretty ragged but I had to get to Sydney pronto. Heading through the Maccas dogleg on Lygon and Holmes I realised I had a problem: couldn’t see over the steering wheel. Cars honking, I spun a dangerous right into Albion, all the while fiddling for the steering column adjustment I knew full well wasn’t there. It was an early ’60s Kingswood, ffs. Found Don again, puffing on a long cigar on a dark street corner. Said he could fix it, led me across the road to his place: a tiny room above the seediest pub you ever saw. A pair of Vietnamese kids were playing on the creaking staircase, which grew darker and darker as I followed him up, until he disappeared in his own cigar smoke. Last car I buy from an enigmatic truckstop-blues raconteur.

 

‘Ghosts in the Machine’ is a column dealing with the unique and intimate ways that artists become iconic in our life. We are open to submissions below 500 words.

Trance Pray Phone Draw Commuter sketches

I originally entitled this series of drawings Strangers on a Train – a bit like the old movie, but mostly inspired by The Sports song of the same title where a relationship had failed and they had literally become like “strangers on a train”.

Public transport must be the only contemporary environment where you can intimately share a confined space and have no known relationship with your fellow citizen. My daily commutes have become an obsessive mission to record my fellow travellers, almost all of whom are locked into a trance pray on their smartphone.

I guess I’m like them. The purchase of my first smartphone was a cheap Samsung 4 that featured an inbuilt application called S Memo. This simple tool opened up a new genre of drawing for me. Primarily it’s meant for hand written notes, shopping lists, and reminders. But it’s also a very simple app for an artist to use – no fancy filters, just a drawing tool with a few added options for colour. The simplicity of the app, no smudging or tones, just clear, confident, simple, bold lines, results in drawings being a success – or a spectacular fail.

I have always been fascinated by the prosaic of everyday life and commuters on their smartphones on their daily commute is as prosaic as it gets. Except for the extremely odd talker on a phone, it’s a strange stillness that exists in our train’s carriages. People on their smartphones sit unnaturally still; it can’t be a good thing for their physique, but a boon for sketching. They bring to mind the subjects in Edward Hooper’s paintings.

Negotiating my unwieldy app, in its sterile glass and plastic case, and contorting it into lines with my cheap $2.00 stylus, I give myself 10 minutes to produce a drawing. 10 minutes being the travel time of my journey between Bondi Junction and Town Hall. I have produced hundreds in the last couple of years. Too shy to strike up a conversation with my frozen subjects, they’re unaware they’ve become my intimate ‘friends’ for a few minutes. This is just enough time to capture the nuances of the man spread, observe the drapery and the folds of office attire, the pattern of a three-day growth across a man’s jaw, or cascading hair across a face.

I’ve lately introduced white lines to highlight certain points, a device that the great 15th century draughtsman Albert Durer masterly applied. Each 10-minute session sharpens the skills and the decision making. After all, drawing is series of concise decision making, the bolder the more rewarding.

In the two or so years, I have been drawing these intensely absorbed sitters, I never been caught out by anyone. I am not sure that this either a good or a bad thing. But the pleasure of observing my captive subject, and drawing them on a device the size of my hand, has made my commuting a joy and a journey of creative adventure.

A profile sketch of a woman wearing a striped shirt, with her black hair tied back.
A sketch of a large man hunched over a small phone
A sketch of a young man with a beard, a cap and a black tee shirt.
A side-on sketch of a young man with spiky hair, looking downwards. His eyes are hidden.
A figure in a coat and pointy shoes leans over a phone, held in two hands like a prayer.
A man in a beanie and glasses, sketched from behind.
A profile sketch of a woman wearing a cap backwards.
A figure wearing glasses holds a phone close up to their face.

Inside Out with Lorde Her musical journey from voice of the people to solitary queen of hearts

‘We live in cities you’ll never see onscreen.’

A line like this might have earned Lorde a reputation in any pop era. But in 2013, with a new conversation about class and inequality underway, her arrival seemed especially timely.

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis and Occupy Wall Street, Karl Marx was creeping back into the bestseller lists, while the IMF was gingerly coming back around to the idea that taxing the rich might be a good idea after all. Bill de Blasio became Mayor of New York by promising to end income inequality, while the Hunger Games film franchise brought the language of class struggle to the multiplex.

Lorde soundtracked them both, the first unwittingly (when de Blasio took the stage to announce his victory to the strains of her first hit song, ‘Royals’), and the second very carefully and deliberately. For reasons within and outside of her control, the idea of Lorde as a conduit for dissent grew, and ‘Royals’ became the unofficial anthem of the 99%.

Her song’s targets – rappers, rock stars and rich kids of Instagram – were picked from the world of music and pop culture, not Washington or Wall Street. But then, pop culture plays its part in making everyday life what it is: soft-selling the myths of the ruling class, making a gaudy spectacle of its riches, just to remind us that we could have all this too – if we’d only dare to follow our dreams.

The woman singing in ‘Royals’ seemed to have found a life beyond all this; to have seen everything on offer, and chosen not a dream, but her own experiences. She sang from the suburbs, from that place where we’re supposed to watch what we can never have from a distance. Instead, Lorde switched off the Kardashians, piled into a crappy car with all her friends, and drove off to have some real fun.

It was only because we wanted to be part of her gang (or felt we already were) that the “we” in ‘Royals’ chorus rang so true. Lorde’s pop spoke from outside of pop, for people who will never lead a pop life, who have resolved to live in the world they have – and to celebrate it.

 

‘My friends and I we’ve cracked the code.’

Nevertheless, in the wake of her debut album Pure Heroine, Lorde found herself in a familiar pickle. To wit: she had earned our respect by daring to say that celebrity life is not that interesting, that real life is where it’s at. But this made her famous – and within a couple of years she was spending far more of her time in this bullshit world than the anonymous and somehow freer one where she had started.

To keep denouncing the spectacle of fame when you’re being invited to the best parties it can offer would be bad manners at best, and fatally ironic at worst: “If I wrote my next record about the same stuff I wrote the first record about,” she explained in 2014, “I think people listening would be able to tell I didn’t believe it.”

What to do?

Lorde had learned a great deal as a listener, as a fan. In high school she graduated from Ke$ha to Animal Collective (and felt superior for it), and then came back around to Ke$ha, (because fuck feeling superior). Like a lot of crossover acts before her (Human League, Blur, Hole circa ‘Malibu’, Ladyhawke; Bluejuice) Lorde adopted a view which sees pop, because it’s loved by people, as demotic (if not democratic), and whatever is ‘anti-pop’ as tainted by the stink of snobbery.

She was initially brought up to love high culture, but grew, she said, “allergic to anything that feels exclusive in art”. By these lights, pop, when made by the pure-at-heart, is the very voice of ‘we’, and to be a pop artist is to participate in a kind of folk art: for the people, by the people.

Lorde in the back of a car, looking directly into the camera.

Lorde in the music video for ‘Green Light’. Photography by Brendan Walter.

Once a pop consumer becomes a successful pop producer, their relationship to the masses of which they were once a part changes quickly and completely. Trying to keep up the impression that it hasn’t would expose them to the charge of inauthenticity; admitting that it has is more honest, but causes problems of its own, as Lorde now knows: “I have sat in the back of a car with tinted windows and wanted to unroll the windows but couldn’t,” she told Tavi Gevinson.

However lonely this might be, Lorde knows she can’t write about it. ‘I’m in a jacuzzi with champagne but I’m really sad,’ would be unacceptable subject matter to her audience, no matter how ‘real’ it is. To be seen to be enjoying (or not enjoying) this kind of thing would make her a part of the very same “everybody” she so casually wrote off in ‘Royals’.

In that song they were all “gold teeth, Grey Goose”.

Was Lorde now like that too?

 

“How can I fuck with the fun again / when I’m known?”

The solution to this dilemma in Lorde’s music, evident in the first fifteen seconds of her comeback single ‘Green Light’, is the disappearance of a certain pesky pronoun. Lorde’s original trilogy of hits were defined and united by their use of the collective first person: ‘we’.

“Kristal, Maybach,” she sang, in her famous litany of pop excess, “we don’t care.”

By contrast, ‘Green Light’ begins with a very different set of pronouns: in the first ten seconds it’s all “I”, “you” and “she”. This is no accident. “The first record was ‘we’ and ‘us’,” she told NME, “and this record is ‘I’.” Melodrama takes place, as Lorde puts it, in “the bubble in my mind”, a private world of feelings and impressions, emotional intrigue and personal catharsis.

It’s a good solution; if the artist is no longer really a part of ‘we’, but would rather not draw too much attention to her increasing affiliation with ‘they’, she can escape the whole mess by insisting on herself as an ‘I’; by producing, as she puts it, “a record about being alone”.

“A lot of the things that happen on the songs take place sitting in a car with one other person, or being inside my own house while a party’s going on, in the bathroom or on the dance floor, in a bedroom or whatever,” she explained to NPR. “The intimacy of the spaces on this record, I think, is a direct response to having my life kind of flipped inside out.”

Lorde in concert, photographed from behind near the barrier, running her hand along the hundreds of hands stretched out towards her.

Lorde’s second album is a record about being alone. Photography by Brendan Walter.

This new personal focus has already been praised by critics as a sign of her increasing maturity – and Lorde herself sees the shift in similar terms.

Tellingly, she’s cultivated a fondness for Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell and Don Henley (formerly of the Eagles), artists who defined and epitomized the shift from the prevailing themes of rock in the sixties – collective action and generational insurgence – to a new preoccupation with interpersonal drama and emotional introspection in the seventies and eighties.

“I’m excited to get older,” she told the New York Times, “and be able to do it like they do it.”

Lorde sees this music as timeless, because it deals with emotions and not so much with class struggle or intergenerational conflict. Whether it’s you or me or Paul or Stevie, Tavi or Lena or Lorde; no matter how big our house is or how famous we are, we all want to find ourselves and understand our feelings, be moved by music, lose ourselves in sensation, love and be loved.

Maybe that’s all there is to it, and all there ever was?

‘Team’, ‘Royals’, ‘Tennis Court’ dared to imagine a lazy revolution, our gang against the world, or at least the version of it shown on screens and heard in songs; all those 2012 bangers advertising parties we never seemed to get invited to. That gang re-appears only once on Melodrama, on a song called ‘Perfect Places’, a kind of counterweight to the rest of the album. In it Lorde steps outside her bubble, takes a look at what’s going on in the world, and concludes – reasonably enough – that nothing can be done. “I hate the headlines and the weather,” she sings, “but when we’re dancing I’m alright.”

She invites us to slip away with her in search of “perfect places”, to get lost, get high, dance, fall in love.

In 2013, Lorde told us that she was “kinda older than I was when I revelled without a care.” Now, she’s a little older again.

 

Lorde Australian Tour:

November 21 and 22 – Sydney Opera House Forecourt (All Ages)
November 23 – Riverstage, Brisbane Botanic Gardens (All Ages)
November 25 – Spilt Milk Festival, Canberra (18+)
November 26 – Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne (All Ages)
Tickets: https://www.frontiertouring.com/lorde

Rough Sleeper A Letter from London

Over the last few weeks a series of storms have blown into London – zephyrs with the warm, faintly cloacal smell of a heavy drinker’s halitosis. Back in the early 2000s, when the city had a run of unnaturally clement winters (I think it was 2003, when I found myself wearing a T-shirt, outside on Christmas Day), I floated the idea of interpolating the current four seasons with a fifth, to be called ‘Ballard’ in honour of the great English dystopian novelist and caller-in of the globally-warming near-future.

Ballard – who I had the honour to call a friend – has been dead for almost a decade now, but the season I named for him has been resurrected. What typifies Ballard is not only odd weather, but social disintegration: the grim tidings of economic collapse if there’s no deal with the European Union over Brexit are only the notional eye of the storm called ‘austerity’ that’s already hit London: in the last year the number of rough sleepers on the streets has doubled – as has the amount of homelessness overall, as the Tories’ benefit cuts and ‘rationalisations’ bite still deeper into the wanting flesh of the city’s poor.

My canary in this notably stygian coal mine remains Bill, who I first struck up an acquaintance with when he was begging by the ATM machine outside Stockwell Tube station. Bill is a fairly representative rough sleeper: an ex-squaddie with PTSD and a raging substance abuser. Seated on the York stone payment, his wizened, teak-brown face assumes the ataraxic expression of the most fatalist Buddha – yet engage with him kindly, and he becomes all smiles. Last year there was no Ballard to speak of, and London was seriously chilly by November; Bill’s bash in the yard of the local Baptist Church was inundated every rainy night. I took to subbing him a few quid each evening, so he could pay for a backpackers’ hostel – the last thing he wanted to do was go in the Local Authority one at Vauxhall Cross, which is a toxic swamp of violence and disease the rough sleeping fraternity dub ‘the last chance saloon’.

Nevertheless, that’s where Bill has ended up, after a tumultuous year which saw him admitted twice to hospital – firstly because he’d shot-up smack adulterated with Fentanyl in his groin, and acquired a pesky blood clot the size of a fatberg, and secondly because a fellow resident of the last chance saloon had thrust a broken bottle into his upper arm for no bloody reason at all. Bill contracted gangrene. He’d only gone into the hostel, in the end, because there was no other way for him to gain access to better accommodation, and drug treatment services – a nasty little Catch-22 that’s par for the so-called ‘welfare’ course. Now Bill and I are desperately seeking an in-patient berth in a proper drug rehab unit before Ballard gives way to autumn-proper. I’ve friends who work for the local council’s rough sleepers’ unit – they’re good people, but they’re pretty cynical and burnt out. Wouldn’t you be, if your job consisted of a dawn round of the local parks, kicking the sodden bundles slumped under bushes to check that they’re still… alive?

Still, at least the down-and-outs in London aren’t quite so fucked-up as those in my other neighbourhood: I spend three days every week with my girlfriend in Paris. She lives in the tenth arrondissement, close to the Gare du Nord, and in the nooks and crannies of the surrounding city you can find entire mini-bidonvilles of the homeless, complete with makeshift tents, and hollow-cheeked women clutching babies to their breasts. The addition of the occasional army foot patrol, heavily armed with semi-automatic machine guns, completes the dystopian scene. So, while the British state may be trying extract itself – with the rrrrippping sound of giant Velcro – from its entanglement with the European Union, London and Paris alike, bask in the sinister radioactive glow of a truly exceptional Ballard.

Love is in the Air 61.6%

A large crowd gathered at Prince Alfred Park in Sydney, a mere stone’s throw from the golden mile of gay rights and freedom of expression that is Oxford Street, to hear the outcome of the marriage equality plebiscite.

Special events are hard to capture; often they take even their own organisers by surprise. This was just one of those mornings, one of those days. A bright, sunny, spring beginning at its simplest. And something more like history.

Anticipation was at bursting point by the time a 10am announcement was being wired through the PA system. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics spokesperson began to outline the voting process and the data analytics (“get to the chorus,” shouted one heckler), even he was droll enough to admit it was the first time anybody had taken much notice of an ABS spokesperson. Cue much laughter from the crowd.

It was nonetheless astounding to hear that in an optional ‘survey’ of the entire country, 79.5% of the nation were motivated enough to make their vote on same-sex marriage known. For better or for worse the process had stirred us.

For those farther back from the stage, the main announcement did not really come in words as the volume of the response up front drowned out what was being said. As individuals reached for their phones to get the information that 61.6% of those who voted said ‘Yes’, the news came across the crowd like a wave. People cheered and people wept. Lives were suddenly raw and on display.

Certain speakers told their own story, not so much with their words really, but just by being there – figures like Christine Forster, Tony Abbott’s sister and Ian Thorpe, the swimming champion, whose personal narratives offer so much hurt and hope to anyone of basic empathy.

But it was comedian Magda Szubanski who was, by some margin, the leading voice of the day: articulate, sensitive and, as you’d expect, a little funny too. Her affirmation that “we are a strong, loving community” seemed to reach into the crowd with all the physicality of a deep hug, while her sense of charged historical connections took us back to the nation’s convict beginnings and a country that in some archetypal way could offer up, even at its bleakest, “a belief in second chances”. This was a speech that would do any politician proud. Not that many politicians had much to be proud of when so many of their comrades had abrogated their responsibility to simply do their job fearlessly.

During the ABS announcement there was especially intense applause at the revelation of a high rate of voting response from 18 and 19 year olds who had registered, an undercurrent feeling that this vote belonged to tomorrow as much as today – and a better tomorrow for that.

As John Paul Young’s ‘Love Is in the Air’ burst through the PA system, rainbow flags emblazoned with the word ‘YES’ fluttered everywhere. A huge scrum of media meanwhile tried to get hold of a story that felt bigger than any one view, its pieces flying all around like so much brightly coloured human confetti. Picnickers drank champagne; badges saying, ‘Stronger Together’ were passed out for free. A large placard held aloft, ‘THAT’S MRS DYKE TO YOU’, showed the good humour, and maybe a little of the ache in the moment as well.

That strange feeling occurred again, subsiding and rising but always there – not the day itself, but of history present within and around it.

The songs rolled on… Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’, Sister Sledge’s ‘We Are Family’, Candi Staton’s ‘Young Hearts Run Free’, Bruno Mars’ ‘Marry You’… a party was beginning.

The crowd was streaming away. Word was Oxford Street was going to have an illegal street event that would go all day and take over both Darlinghurst and Surry Hills as today moved into tonight. It seemed the right way to celebrate, a community unable to be contained.

In the end, it had all come down to the people.

The following portraits tell a little of the story…

 

Jasmine Noud and Lydia Jupp

Jasmine Noud and Lydia Jupp.

Lydia Jupp explains that she and Jasmine Noud “are both queer. And today, I really want to be surrounded by my queer family while I hear the result.”

For Lydia the ‘Love is Love’ slogan is about that sense of family in the community “and the acceptance” that comes with it.

Jasmine agrees. And says she is here for “a lot of the same reasons”. Being part of a community where there is a “love, unity and unconditional, pure feeling” is obviously central to her.

“But love is such a big topic,” Jasmine says, “there is so much to it.”

“My grandfather was gay and he passed away before he could marry his long-term partner,” Jasmine says. “I especially wanted to come along today to pay my respects to him. Being here, the SSM vote, I’m fighting not only for myself, but for the legacy of my grandfather.”

 

Scott Read and Brad Martin

Scott Read and Brad Martin

Scott Read says, “Today would be too hard to do without the support of the people you love and know.” That’s why he has come down to the park to hear the result of the plebiscite. He needs them as much as they all might need him.

“Its been tough. There’s an anxiety, there’s hope, but it’s all tinged with sadness that the whole thing had to be at all. The last three months have been about bringing up old traumas – its been like high school again. Reading the stuff in the dailies [papers]. Just being in my backyard and seeing ‘NO’ written in the sky. I love my garden. To encounter that hatred in my own backyard, that was very upsetting.”

Brad agrees. “That was the worst. It was the first time I cried in this whole thing.” He gives Scott a pat. “It feels good to be here now, the community, the family here.”

Scott nods. “The ‘Love is Love’ slogan,” he says, “boils down to a simple thing. Love one another. Also the love that a community can offer. We’re not perfect – but the love’s here. Yes.”

 

Angela Griffin and Zoe Ford

Angela Griffin and Zoe Ford

Zoe Ford uses a curious phrase to explain herself. “I feel like it’s my rent that I have to pay, my responsibility, my obligation to be here today. It’s hard to explain… it’s a role I feel I should play to be a good ally and to do my part.”

More simply she says, “And I just like the feeling here today. There’s nice people here. And everyone has gathered for something so positive. I think we tend to gather when we hate something; so it’s nice we can gather with so many people for something so positive.”

Her friend Angela Griffin has been inspired on an equally human level. A friend of she and Zoe’s is the NSW Deputy Field Director of the Marriage Equality Campaign. “She’s incredible,” says Angela. “Her morals, her values.”

Deeper and closer still is “a family member. His first relationship is happening now. It means his relationship is just the same as mine. And that’s how it should be, right? That is why I’m here.”

 

Krissy Jaman and Ellie Daniel

Krissy Jaman and Ellie Daniel. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

“We’re here to support equality,” says Ellie Daniel.

Krissy Jaman agrees. “And to be a part of history.”

Ellie laughs. “Yeeeaaah, the revolution!!!”

A little more thoughtfully, Ellie sees the outcome of the same-sex marriage plebiscite as “something that can be such a positive in our stage of growing.” She emphasizes this idea of growing as both “for ourselves – and for our community.”

“And we’ve got the champagne ready,” she says, bending her hip against her friend.

“We’re quite lucky to be here when the change happens – when we are only in our 20s,” Krissy adds. “I’m just so excited to be a part of it.”

Ellie reveals she and Krissy are “ex-partners”, but as Krissy says, “We’re still friends.”

“We’re great,” Ellie adds, so there’s no misunderstanding. “We still work together. We still want the best for each other.”

The ‘Love is Love’ message of the SSM Campaign reached into them both as something true. Krissy finds it hard to explain, but for her “love is your… it’s your person, like who you are.”

Out of that comes what you want for others, she more or less suggests. “Yeah,” Krissy says looking at Ellie, “we just want the best for each other.”

 

Rhys Platz and Alex Plester

Rhys Platz and Alex Plester. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

How do Rhys Platz and Alex Plester know each other?

“We’ve been friends for a while,” Alex says.

Rhys smiles like it’s a joke, “We just found each other.”

Alex says they are “here to support the cause and just be here in numbers”.

The ‘Love is Love’ slogan behind the SSM Campaign is something he takes very much to heart. “I could go corny on you,” he laughs, “and just say it means accepting love no matter where it is coming from.”

Just prior to the announcement, he admits to “feeling optimistic and anxious at the same time.”

Rhys shared those mixed feelings. “I feel very optimistic. I’m hopeful. But I also feel like the people are doing what the government are refusing to do. I don’t really feel like it’s a great victory, but it is a step forward.”

 

Sebastian Tesoriero and David Marr

Sebastian Tesoriero and David Marr.Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

Sebastian Tesoriero says his partner David Marr “is here for professional purposes [journalism] but I’m just here to be with my bloke.”

This seems sweet. ‘Love is Love’?

“Actually,” says Sebastian, “I’m really pissed off about the process that’s had to happen. I feel anxious about the likely outcome of the plebiscite, but really I don’t give a damn. This is a right and I claim it. So, I’m not grateful,” he says.

His partner David Marr lightens the mood. David takes great pleasure in a large red crane with the logo ‘THE MEN FROM MARRS’ dominating the park skyline. “They must have done it just for me. I’m going to call them and ask.”

“It’s just great to be here with friends,” David says, “and I love happy crowds. And it’s such a gay crowd, I mean look at everyone not listening and just talking to each other. All the show-offs and people over-dressed. And of course,” he laughs, “lots and lots and lots of dogs!”

 

Mac Rayman and Drew Reddy

Mac Rayman and Drew Reddy

Drew and Mac can hardly keep still long enough to talk at all. The results of the SSM plebiscite are just five minutes away from being announced.

“Yeah,” says Drew, “I’m very nervous and excited.”

Drew draws a breath and says, “Love comes in all shapes and sizes. It shouldn’t be denied.” Though, in the end, there’s an admission of being from the UK and therefore a bit on the outside of things: “I’m not from here so I don’t have the right to vote here.”

Mac just looks at Drew wisely, and not without some humour. “But,” Mac says, “we can get married.”

 

Jack Blore and Lisette Armstrong

Jack Blore and Lisette Armstrong

Just one minute before the SSM plebiscite vote is announced – and as soon as his photo is taken – Jack Blore practically runs away into the crowd to be closer to the main stage. The moment is almost here! Gotta go, go, go. Lisette Armstrong chases after him and calls back, trying to explain. “We’ve waited for too long,” she shouts. “Shit’s gotta get done!”

 

Jenna Schroeder and Ben Mills

Jenna Schroeder and Ben Mills. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

Ben Mills lives in Beijing – but he has come home just to be here today. “I came back to be part of it. I’ve been active in this since 2007, trying to make it happen. Since I was at uni. I’m old!” he jokes. “There will be a lot of pressure to find husbands and wives at the parties now.”

His friend Jenna Schroeder says, “It’s been nice to be around people when the results came out today. But to commiserate as much as celebrate really. The ‘Yes’ vote won, but not by that much. Frankly, I am bitter there had to be a vote at all. That I had to vote for an institution I don’t even believe in.

“This has been so shit. To have to define a relationship in a way that is intelligible for Australia as a whole. Yeah, ‘love is love’ when you get married. But what about other things? What about embracing other forms of love? What about embracing people of difference? There are still all these people on the margins. Anger has made me want to articulate this.”

 

Luca Young and Christina Kim

Luca Young and Christina Kim. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

Christina Kim and Luca Young are part of Young Labor Left NSW.

Luca defines it as a political movement dedicated to social justice. That is why he is here. Then he says, “I’m also bi-sexual, so obviously I support everything today.”

He smiles and looks around as if this world is too good to be true. “Being bi-sexual, the funny thing is I have twice as many more dating opportunities than most people here.”

Christina Kim shares his political allegiance. But her views are not always so easy to express. “I do have a lot of conservative friends.”

Being politically involved, coming to the park today to hear the SSM plebiscite result “is strengthening. And that is what makes our friendships so strong, isn’t it? The values we share. It’s just so obvious what needed to be done was right.”

You sense Christina might be growing out of old friends and finding new ones. But life and politics are not that simple for anyone.

“Yeah, it’s a solidarity thing being here,” Luca agrees. “And sure, the same-sex marriage plebiscite has brought a lot of hate and differences to it – but it has brought a lot of shared feeling too. Even politically, I see Green as well as Labor and even Liberal youth here.”

 

Matteo Pellegrino and Benjamin Strum

Matteo Pellegrino and Benjamin Strum. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

Are you two dating?

“Sadly for me,” says Benjamin Strum, “the answer is ‘no’.”

He and Matteo Pellegrino crack up laughing.

Matteo is here today “just to be a part of such a big moment event in Australian gay history. It’s great energy to feel around us.”

Benjamin agrees. He was in living in San Francisco “when DOMA (the Defence of Marriage Act) got thrown out. But I felt a bit detached from it all and so I really wanted to be here for this moment.”

He sees the plebiscite vote in favour of same-sex marriage as just one step in a long march for rights and respect that goes “back to the ‘78ers, who were the first Mardi Gras, and who marched up Oxford Street without permission and got arrested for it, and were outed the next day in the Sydney Morning Herald.”

Benjamin has seen all the changes and struggles since then – and is optimistic today that “the younger generation has a much more intrinsic sense that love is universal. And that we can live in a world where love is more universal, where no one questions the validity of one person loving another. Marriage equality is a massive step towards that world.”

 

Reverend Ben Gilmour and Justin Whelan

Reverend Ben Gilmour and Justin Whelan. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

The Reverend Ben Gilmour is pleased to say more and more Uniting Church Congregations “support marriage equality”. His friend Justin Whelan meanwhile leads the Australian Churches for Marriage Equality. Justin knows he and Ben must seem unlikely advocates.

“Yes, the dominant media narrative is that Christians are against same-sex marriage,” Justin says. “But polling actually shows the majority of Christians support it. I wanted to be here today with friends and colleagues who feel the same; as a straight ally of all that; and it just felt like something that should be shared.”

Ben describes this support and the wider sense of community as “heart-warming”. “Marriage is a symbol of a particular kind of love,” he observes. “It represents a deep companionship. A love we usually attribute to family. We’re here to say the LBGTI community are worthy of this love like everybody else.”

“Yes,” Justin says, “love is the core of it. It’s what it means to be human. Equally human. Straight society has often not thought of the LBGTI community as a place where people are seeking or desiring that form of love that we are talking about. But people do want it and everything that comes with it. This vote is recognition of the full humanity of the LBGTI community.”

 

Cameron Foye and Alec Beckett

Cameron Foye and Alec Beckett. Photography by Matthew Abbott/Oculi.

Cameron Foye has to take his glasses off during the photoshoot. His partner Alec Beckett leans across and massages the bridge of his nose to clear it of any redness. Just a little tenderness.

Cameron is the more quietly spoken, but Alec tells him to speak first. “I’ve been doing too much of the talking.” Cameron waits for while anyway, hoping Alec might still say more. Then Cameron slowly offers his opinion that coming along to a public event to hear the outcome of the SSM plebiscite is a very natural thing to do. “We want to be surrounded by friends and family. Marriage is a community event [too]. It’s just what you do.”

The pair wear paint-streaked rainbow-coloured shirts they bought online. “Cameron wasn’t convinced they’d go down well but we’ve had a lot of random compliments,” Alec says, mildly amused.

They came here today for the joy of it. But being here also involves the fact “we’d be emotional wrecks whatever way the vote went. So it’s nice to share it with people.”

It does not seem like a big protest thing for them. They already know how they feel. “We see our love as no different to any other relationship. And how we have lived that love as no different.”

Cameron is almost shy when he says he and Alec met at a gay camping group in 2008. “Then we started dating in 2009,” Alec says. “We’ve been engaged for the last 18 months.”

They both reach out their hands and show their engagement rings. They hold hands so a photo can be taken of the rings. “Now that this has happened,” Alec says, “we can get married next year. We’ve already got plans underway.”

Words by Mark Mordue
Photos by Matthew Abbott/Oculi

No Free Rides oBikes, Reddy-Go and sharing but not caring

The basic principle of sharing is that you don’t break someone else’s toy. Take a look at recent stories of share-bikes being thrown in trees, hurled in rivers, or stacked on top of each other like kindling in a funeral pyre, and it’s easy to think this principle hasn’t been learned.

In the few months since share-bike companies oBike and Reddy-Go released their armadas onto our streets, local councils have been battling complaints over vandalism and public safety, including everything from bikes being parked in obstructive places to people breaking eggs on seats.

But as more stories emerge it seems the issue is not a matter of users knowing how to share the bikes, but the share-bike companies not knowing how to share the space. King Street Cyclery Marrickville staff member Edward Lancaster argues: “You’ve got foreign companies with a good idea – but are they managing it properly?”

The answer, it would seem, is no. Reddy-Go and oBike promise their customers ultimate convenience through a dockless system that lets the share-bikes be parked anywhere bicycles are legally allowed. At the more benign end of the spectrum we see people happily riding share-bikes down the hill to Bondi, but deciding they’d rather catch the return bus than sweat back up the hill. At worst you see Instagram accounts documenting the macabre fates of share bikes, with everything from being stuck with skewers like a voodoo sacrifice to being strung up from a tree like a Christmas bauble.

Former Mayor of Waverley Sally Betts takes another view: “The issue is there’s no control on the suppliers. For example the supplier can decide that the bus-rail interchange at Bondi Junction is the place to go and they can go and dump a hundred bikes [there].” Local councils currently have no legal authority to prevent bike-share companies from leaving their bikes in particular areas. Paradoxically, local rangers are obliged to remove any bikes that are parked in obviously dangerous situations. Waverley and Randwick local councils are considering legislations to impose fines on share-bike companies and give rangers the power to impound bikes left in unsafe places.

Cr Betts says: “Everything in the end comes down to money… the bikes are cheap, [and] the companies don’t have any impetus to do the right thing. It’s like just a get rich quickly scheme, with no care and no responsibility.”

Both oBike and Reddy-Go nonetheless say they employ teams of operational ground staff who maintain the bikes and respond to customer requests to relocate bikes left in unsafe areas.

Lim Chee Ping, Head of oBike Australia, says that oBike is committed to providing an “affordable, eco-friendly and accessible” alternative mode of transport and that each service technician can attend to up to 50 bikes a day.

Reddy-Go offers a similar service, but notes that they have had issues with people consistently leaving bikes in unsafe areas despite repeated attempts by Reddy-Go staff to relocate them.

Customer Service for Reddy-Go says: “We want to clearly differentiate ourselves from our competitor oBike by [providing] a higher quality service, especially in terms of a professional maintenance and relocation management. Our aim is to be recognized by Sydney’s residents as [a] company that is trying their best to provide an excellent service and at the same time address issues and solve problems responsibly.”

As our public transport systems become increasingly strained, and concerns over the environmental and health costs of our reliance on cars grows, share-bikes should be the perfect solution to our health and transport woes. School children are already showing signs of taking advantage of the bikes’ availability and the fun it offers. But as a third share-bike company, ofo, prepares to enter the market, the question of whether private share-bike companies can balance public interest with private profit still needs to be answered in practice.

Reflecting on the way authorities in China have struggled to manage growing piles of damaged share-bikes, Edward Lancaster from King Street Cyclery says, “It’s just a waste. At what point do the benefits of sharing bikes and the environmental benefits of it outweigh the costs and the environmental aspect of throwing them away because they’re just dumped?

“It’s like if you own a car or a bike or any kind of machine; if you own a product you are responsible for that product. If you own a company and you have a fleet of a hundred cars, a hundred motorbikes, a hundred boats, a hundred aircraft, you’re responsible for those items. Aren’t you, at the end of the day? And with this whole sharing thing [the companies] might be trying to say well it’s really the end user, but no. At the end of the day they own the app and they should be responsible for them.”

Sydney has one of the highest concentration of cyclists in the country and continues to invest in cycling infrastructure. But the lesson for Reddy-Go and oBike might be that if they want to share in this valuable (and highly profitable) resource, they have to ensure they don’t end up breaking it in the process.

Justice League Super-bland

During an epic battle in Justice League, Greek gods, Amazon warriors and an army from Atlantis war with aliens that look like dried prunes with goggles.

It’s a flashback full of exposition designed to set the stage for the bad guy, Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds). Steppenwolf wants to destroy the world for the sake of a blockbuster needing the easiest route to uniting its heroes.

The huge Lord of the Rings style battle is a reminder of how cool these ancient myths are as the inspiration for most of DC Comics’ characters. But while these legends have endured for centuries, their modern superhero cousins, as portrayed in Justice League, will dissipate minutes after leaving the cinema.

Justice League is a headache. A disorientating, nonsensical, hot mess barely tethered together by the digital blurs of DC Comics’ heroes: Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman (Henry Cavill), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher).

The film can’t handle its roster of iconic characters. It’s constantly pulled in six different directions, but can never find meaning in uniting a team. They have to save the world because the world needs saving. The stakes are huge – but it means absolutely nothing.

Commissioner Gordon looks wistfully out into the distance.

J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. Photo Credit: Clay Enos/Warner Bros. and DC Comics.

Justice League follows the events of Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice (which might seem like Nickelback opening for Led Zeppelin but the truth is it’s Nickelback opening for Nickelback). Humans are treating each other like garbage more than usual after the death of Superman in the earlier film. He was a symbol of hope, inspiring people to do good – despite the fact his presence in Man of Steel killed more people than he saved.

Due to the fact Superman is dead he has to be brought back to life in Justice League. To save the world and to save the franchise. This process is a mixed success and he’s not such a good guy anymore, and he starts fighting with the other superheroes and, well, like Facebook says of relationships, it’s complicated. Lois Lane will have to help him figure himself out and, of course, the evil Steppenwolf and his alien invasion will give this confused superhero a renewed sense of purpose.

For a brief moment in Justice League the world has shades of the cynicism and fear that has driven contemporary events. There’s a scene where angry men trash a store and yell at a lady in a hijab who’s cowering in the doorway with a child. But this kind of political edge gets junked quickly in favour of pummelling bad guys.

Alfred (Jeremy Irons), Batman/Bruce Wayne’s butler, says, “I don’t recognise the world anymore.” Wayne replies, “I don’t need to recognise it, I just need to save it.” The mantra becomes emblematic of the path Justice League chooses; why try to understand or invest in anything emotionally when there’s a job to do?

So Justice League decides to focus on the bombast of saving humanity – but it’s a chore. Most of the cast appear like they don’t want to be there.

Ben Affleck looks sad while sitting in a cafe.

Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Affleck’s Batman is the worst of the bunch, always exhaling like he just got a large power bill. The Dark Knight is more like a deadbeat knight. Cavill’s Superman is bland and seems to be doing more cosplay than acting. Even Gadot’s charming and fierce Wonder Woman feels like an afterthought, merely present for the action but absent in spirit, which is a huge disappointment after her excellent solo adventure in Wonder Woman. As Cyborg, Fisher does his best with one eyeball but his digitally created body of armour never astounds, and Aquaman is a hard-drinking aquatic hero who feels like he was yanked out of Point Break but has little to do.

These heroes appear to need saving from themselves and the guy to do it is Miller. The Flash/Barry Allen is an infectious bright spot in this morose roster, and the only character who takes a moment to relish how cool it is to hang out with other superheroes.

The future looks good for The Flash, and to some extent, Aquaman. The one thing to salvage in the rubble of Justice League is the promise of their solo adventures (note that DC Comics films are developing a bad habit of disastrous films setting up characters for future films; Wonder Woman was the star of Dawn of Justice as The Flash is for Justice League).

Close up of The Flash running: his outline is blurred and blue lightning streaks around him.

Ezra Miller as The Flash. Courtesy of Warner Bros. and DC Comics.

What’s most alarming about Justice League is how underdone everything looks. It’s a film that was plagued by constant tinkering and reshoots and it shows. A scene where Lois Lane (Amy Adams must be questioning her career choices with this role) and Superman talk in a cornfield looks like it was shot in someone’s backyard on Halloween. The action sequences are an incomprehensible digital minefield of pixelated melee. The camera sits at angles that seem like they were picked at random with no sense of direction or momentum.

There are so few genuine moments of awe that I felt insane for not getting a thrill from seeing the most iconic characters in comic book history standing side-by-side. They all have faces like a parent has yelled: “pretend like you’re having a good time!”

I begged desperately for Justice League to get worse so its awfulness would be enjoyable, at least, but it’s a steady flat-line from start to finish. ‘Strength, Power and Courage’, as the Justice League’s original comic book motto goes, may get you through. And another superhero, Paracetamol.

Unmarked Tracks: November A monthly Australian music column

“Sydney was a different city then. The mood was one of space and possibility… with plentiful spaces [for musicians] in the ruins of a past city. Abandoned buildings, unloved terrace houses, old working men’s clubs with dwindling clientele [offered] a productive emptiness. Music can be a good way to time travel [and] I imagine I can hear the Sydney of that time in its music. Songs made to fill empty rooms.”
– Vanessa Berry

10. The music of Vanessa Berry’s Mirror Sydney (Giramondo Press)

Vanessa Berry’s new book Mirror Sydney is an intriguing excursion into lesser-travelled areas of the city and suburbs, not least because so many of the places she features are abandoned, unknown or (almost) forgotten. She illuminates a “shadow” Sydney in writings and hand-drawn maps that are a testament to “the radical potential of taking notice”, creating alternative viewpoints of what is and was culturally important, and giving voice to the memories and environments of the communities who live(d) here. Her long-running blog of the same name features some fascinating music-related editorial, like this piece on Pel Mel and the post-punk scene, or this playlist of songs that conjure up locations and landscapes across this changing Harbour City.

Vanessa Berry's popular blog, 'Mirror Sydney' is now being published as a book

9. Tropical Fu*k Storm – ‘Soft Power’ 7” and live shows at The Lansdowne Hotel

Tropical Fu*k Storm is the latest project from Gareth & Fiona from The Drones, joining with mates Lauren of High Tension and Erica from Harmony. While this is Sydney’s first chance to hear them live, they’ve just returned from touring across the US with Band of Horses and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, so they’re already match-fit and firing. Their first Lansdowne show sold out quickly so don’t dither if you want to attend the second on Sunday 26 November. New single ‘Soft Power’ has just been released by the Mistletone label and it’s as unruly, droll and vituperative as debut ‘Chameleon Paint’. Both vinyl 7” releases feature the band exploring “Australian songs we wish we’d written” on the B-sides, making lesser-known gems from The Nation Blue and Lost Animal their own. Gareth Liddiard has also made NEIGHBOURHOOD Paper a mixtape of the band’s favourite Australian songs and we’ll be sharing that here very soon.

Tropical F*ckstorm (l-r: Gareth Liddiard, Lauren Hammel, Fiona Kitschin and Erica Dunn) photographed in Nagambie, Victoria, on 5 August 2017 by Bleddyn Butcher

Tropical F*ckstorm (l-r: Gareth Liddiard, Lauren Hammel, Fiona Kitschin and Erica Dunn) photographed in Nagambie, Victoria, on 5 August 2017 by Bleddyn Butcher.

8. The Clouds/Falling Joys, The Stems/Rocket Science, The Scientists at Factory Theatre

What’s an appropriate collective noun for alternative rock reunion concerts? A garage of…? Well that’s November at The Factory in Marrickville. The guitar-swirl harmonies of The Clouds and pals Falling Joys kicked off proceedings with two sold-out shows. Then mid-month The Stems celebrate the 30th anniversary and reissue of At First Sight Violets Are Blue, their chart-hit debut which owed as much to snappy ’70s power-pop as it did underground ’60s garage rock. Frontman Dom Mariani has enlisted the redoubtable Davey Lane and Ash Naylor to bolster their paisley-patterned songbook, and they’ll be supported by Rocket Science. On the same weekend, Kim Salmon regroups the mid-’80s line-up of The Scientists to kick the stuffing out of scuzzy anthems like ‘Swampland’ and ‘We Had Love’, along with their first new single in thirty years, a delinquent cover of Jacques Dutronc’s ‘Mini Mini’. The world finally seems to be cottoning onto The Scientists, as recent reissues on the Numero label like last year’s A Place Called Bad compilation got rave reviews internationally.

The four members of The Stems sit in a row on a balcony

The Stems.

7. The Aints play The Saints; 10th anniversary of Ed Kuepper’s Jean Lee & The Yellow Dog

Also at the Factory in November is Ed Kuepper’s brass-fuelled return to his earliest songs and first band The Saints, but that’s been sold out for months so your best bet for a ticket is his second gig at the Bald Faced Stag on the 23rd. These live shows sync with the 40th anniversary of the release of The Saints’ 1-2-3-4 EP, which memorably included frenetic covers of ‘River Deep Mountain High’ and ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’, which you may well hear on the night. That this Aints tour is selling so well is testament to the nation’s ongoing interest in one of our finest bands, but don’t forget that the ever-prolific Kuepper has released many quality albums that are still under the radar, like Jean Lee & The Yellow Dog, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last month. Back in 2007 this was Ed’s first album of new material in seven years, a concept LP about the last woman to be hanged in Australia. Jean Lee is an overlooked jewel featuring some of his most evocative songs and distinctive accompaniment from guests like Warren Ellis (Dirty Three), Peter Oxley (Sunnyboys, also The Aints), and Jeffrey Wegener (Laughing Clowns).

Two images of Jean Lee side-by-side; on the left a close-up, on the right a full body shot.

Jean Lee, the last woman hanged in Australia.

6. Lo Carmen – Lovers Dreamers Fighters LP/30th Anniversary of The Year My Voice Broke

When did Loene Carmen first break your heart? Was it her teenage debut as wild-eyed Freya, when she chose damaged Trev over Danny in John Duigan’s The Year My Voice Broke, screening in Australian cinemas thirty years ago this month? Or as poor doomed Sallie-Anne Huckstepp in TV classic Blue Murder, strangled and drowned in Centennial Park’s Busby Pond? Or maybe it’s her voice that did you in, curling like smoke across a lifetime of music with friends like Automatic Cherry, Mick Harvey, and The Cruel Sea, or her own catalogue of country death torch songs. New and sixth solo LP, Lovers Dreamers Fighters, was recorded at The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville and includes the enervated grind of single ‘Sometimes It’s Hard’, her duet with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.

 

5. Charlie Munro Quartet – 50th Anniversary of Eastern Horizons LP (Phillips)

The heady, incense-fogged year of 1967 saw much fruitful fusion between Eastern and Western music forms, like Ravi Shankar meeting and influencing The Byrds and George Harrison, and jazz investigations into Asian and Indian scales from John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, and Joe Harriott. Explorations of a similarly pioneering nature were taking place much closer to home, for 1967 also saw the release of Sydney saxophonist/cellist Charlie Munro’s Eastern Horizons, a mod masterpiece and much-sought after rarity on the Phillips label that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary. John Clare calls it “arguably the most striking and powerful album (in all of) Australian jazz … (but) nobody seemed to take much notice of it”. Make an effort to track down a copy and you’ll be hooked by its unconventional and celebratory openness, its swinging carefree drive, with tracks like ‘Islamic Suite’ exploding with all the colour and movement of a bustling spice market.

A yellow-skinned fat Buddha features on the album cover of 'Eastern Horizons'

The original cover of ‘Eastern Horizons’.

4. Andy Rantzen – 1/66 EP (Efficient Space)

Efficient Space is the archival offshoot of label Noise in My Head and has attracted global attention with compilations of rare Australian electronic and DIY music like Midnite Spares and Oz Waves. Their latest release, 1-66, is by Andy Rantzen – a.k.a. Itch-E of ARIA-award winning ‘90s dance/techno duo, Itch-E & Scratch-E – an EP of digital dub that has been sitting in the vaults since 1999. Home recorded “above a lawyer’s office and next door to a brothel”, this EP is an atmospheric excursion into bass-heavy, glitch-and-delay-friendly territory that bears comparison with the work of the great Sheriff Lindo, who often played with Rantzen and bandmate Paul Mac at Itch-E & Scratch-E’s live shows.

 

3. The Tol-Puddle Martyrs – 50th Anniversary of ‘Time Will Come’ / ‘Social Cell’ 7” (Spiral)

A moody double A-side of organ-driven psych-pop capturing downbeat but catchy responses to the Vietnam War and conservative society, this is a crucial addition to any discussion of notable Australian singles from the 1960s. From Bendigo, the band chose a name with a political dimension and interesting history. The original Tol-Puddle Martyrs were a group of 19th-century labourers in Dorset, England, who were arrested for forming a union to improve their own working conditions. Convicted on trumped-up charges, they were sentenced in 1834 to penal transportation to Australia. But the outcry in the UK against this injustice was so great – with massive protest marches through London and a petition of 800,000 signatures to Parliament – that they were pardoned two years later.

 

2. Underground Lovers at The Rose, Chippendale; The Double and feedtime at The Lansdowne Hotel.

These days it is standard operating procedure for musicians to gratefully take money from corporate patrons but two recent Sydney gigs showed the awkwardness of some arrangements. Last month’s The Double/feedtime Lansdowne show was sponsored by a US beer company throwing a Halloween party promotion aimed at younger punters, with the unusual result of grizzled aging art rockers bringing the noise onstage to a half-empty room of fake blood-covered, costumed teenage nubiles, while fans of the bands were turned away at 8pm from a “full house”. The day before, the Underground Lovers had been invited to Chippendale for a free gig to promote the AMP Music Awards, a mutually-supportive arrangement with costs seemingly offset by another beer company. But it must have been challenging for the Undies to do their bit, performing in front of beer logos and behind a pool table and oblivious locals picking up their pizzas and burgers from the kitchen next to the ‘stage’, while the band bashed out songs from their abundant 2017 LP (and AMP award-nominee), Staring at You Staring at Me. Who could blame singer Glenn Bennie for changing the lyrics of the chorus of ‘Takes You Back’ to “feeling like a corporate clown”?

The Double playing at the Lansdowne Hotel.

The Double playing at the Lansdowne Hotel. Photography by Doug Maloney.

1. Vale George Young

“[Flash and the Pan] is carte-blanche. We can take pretty much any approach we like: orchestrated, strange and poetic, far out, rocky, big band. Anything goes.” – George Young, Billboard 1981

The depth of affection felt for The Easybeats and AC/DC ensured that the sad news of George Young’s death at 70 last month was dominated by considerations of his essential contribution to both bands. However his impact on Australian music, with partner Harry Vanda as songwriters, producers and performers, was much more expansive and curious. Like Don Walker, I’m particularly fond of Flash and the Pan, their undervalued studio-only project whose first single, ‘Hey St Peter’, turned 40 last year. One essential element was George’s spoken word vocals but otherwise Flash and the Pan consciously eschewed the formulas that the duo’s other productions rigorously adhered to, using diverse instrumentation, exploring different genres and the limits of then-new music technologies. As Vanda bluntly put it, “the shackles were off and we could piss around as much as we liked”. Consider them alongside eccentric pop acts like Sparks, Godley & Creme, or The Art of Noise. Not every experiment holds up but post-disco pop tracks like ‘Midnight Man’, ‘Waiting for a Train’, ‘Ayla’, and ‘Walking in the Rain’ (which Grace Jones famously made her own) reveal wit, atmosphere and innovation not just novelty.

George Young and Harry Vanda sit together at a mixing desk

George Young and Harry Vanda

 

Listen to the Unmarked Tracks playlist:

Songs of Experience A conversation with Adam Curley of Gold Class

The last time I saw Adam Curley was next to a van on Little Eveleigh Street, close to Redfern Station. He was in Sydney to perform with his band, Gold Class. I knew Adam from Melbourne, when he was a writer. I suppose he was a musician too, though I didn’t know it then. Years later we spoke to one another on the phone, and I asked about his childhood and the intersection of art and masculinity. I asked about his life.

 

I want to start with your writing. How old were you when you began?

I was the kind of kid who was always drawing and writing. But it got to a point when I was mostly writing about music, and I knew I didn’t want to do that anymore.

 

Music journalism?

Yeah. I mean I was just having a crisis over what I was doing with my life. I used to write all these little books as a kid. And then in high school I got into poetry and started playing guitar. I used to make cassettes and give them to my cousin. Really angsty songs when I was 14. I come from a really practical family so it wasn’t really on the cards that I would go into something artsy or creative. I was always more geared towards putting my talents into something that would get me a job. So I studied journalism because it was the only thing that made sense.

 

Let’s talk about your short story collection, Men in Places. I found it in an old suitcase in an old house I used to live in long ago. For some reason, I’d never read it. There’s a quiet, almost creeping, darkness to the stories that I found incredibly familiar and confronting. You’ve said before the collection is “… about men. Men away from home, men between ages, men hanging on and men letting go.” You self-published the work in 2013. What is your relationship to that collection, to those themes, now?

I think that conversation with masculinity is still developing. I can’t really remember whether there was any conscious effort to explore masculinity in short stories or if that was just a running theme in what I was writing at the time. At least one of those stories is set in North Queensland, where I grew up.

But I think it’s really hard not to be aware of it: the presence of masculinity. Everyone’s being affected by it all of the time even if they’re not fully conscious of it. When we started the band I was working in a music venue surrounded by men. Most of the customers were men and most of the bands were made up of men too. As a queer person in a band with other men, I felt really conscious of my place, and I wanted to carve out a little queer space within it.

 

Is that why you started the band? To continue exploring those themes?

Maybe. I know when I was writing short stories and nonfiction it was always about other people. So it made sense to start the band as a way of exploring my own feelings.

 

It seems like a good way to avoid writer’s block: switching mediums.

I don’t know. I have friends who are like, “I think everyone should have more than one thing going on. Doing art and music and writing make you a more interesting person.” But I don’t really care. I think there’s a lot to be said for focusing on one thing.

The cover shows a mirror image of a blue mountain, flipped horizontally."

The cover of Adam Curley’s short story collection, ‘Men in Places’.

Let’s talk more about your music. To me, it’s urgent and demands attention. Your latest album Drum asks, but never romanticises, the two questions that seems core to most artistic endeavours: “Can you hear me?” and “Do I belong?” How do you feel now that people are listening? Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel like you belong?

I don’t think you ever really know if anyone is listening. People always come to music, or writing, but especially music with their own ideas. But music is like that. Music doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to someone else.

 

And what about you? Do you feel you belong?

A lot of what I was reaching for with that album, what you could call “outsiderness”, was reflected in a lot of queer literature I was reading at the time. But I also found those stories in my own life and what I was experiencing in my relationships, what my life was, what it added up to. It seemed easy for me to relate back to the history of queer people. There’s a lot of loneliness there, and a lot of anger, and I think especially right now, for me, or as I get older, it’s easy to connect the dots and see how people are treated and the ways people are ‘othered’ and isolated. I was trying to figure out how to turn this around for myself. Just pulling the thread count to see where it went.

But it’s definitely exhausting. Every show feels physically and personally revealing. In a lot of ways that’s a part of letting go of what people think. People have struggled to grapple with what I’m writing about because it isn’t just overtly political. It isn’t just political statements. I think for a long time people wanted to pin that on me. But that’s not what it is. It is mostly personal. But then that is inherently political, which isn’t a new idea.

 

When I read your work or listen to your work I get the sense that if you hadn’t made it you would have ceased to function. I don’t mean this in a cliché way. I really feel that. Maybe that’s part of the package deal, you know, with being an artist. Doing what you do.

Yeah, sort of. I try not to let it frustrate me that people think my performance is mostly angry. Or that I am somehow an angry person. Or only an angsty person. Because I really wanted to involve a lot of humour and sex and joy into this album. I really hoped that that translated. But then you don’t know either. I guess that’s part of it, when your voice is part of something and your presence is part of something. I have no idea how I come across on stage. I don’t know how my voice translates. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do with my voice. I’m always going to come across as rage.

 

That’s interesting. Because when I think of you I think about a very calming person.

I guess another part of it is that it’s been a fucking long couple of years. And I think I’m looking forward to a break, to sitting and writing for a while, to being in Melbourne, just like, fucking around with plants and lamps. Because it’s been a couple of years when I don’t think I’ve been a very calm person. And I think that’s gone into the record. And translated to touring and being on stage. And I don’t think that’s necessarily for worse. I’m up for that. It’s life. But I’m also looking forward to taking a break. I think that’s healthy. And for the band too.

 

You said the album began with queer literature. What were you reading?

Well, if we’re talking about how the album started I don’t think it started with queer literature. I think it started with just being alone a lot after my relationship ended. But God, what was I reading at the time. Umm. I’m drawing so many blanks. I guess… I don’t know. Isherwood. Baldwin. Giovanni’s Room [by James Baldwin] is about an American who travels overseas to escape the homophobia of his family and his community – and he gets into this incredibly troubled relationship because essentially you can’t run away from yourself and somehow be a person in the world who is capable of making a relationship work.

I think that story gets told over and over again. And I think there’s a reason why this story gets told over and over again. You know, it’s not like an age-old story. Queer identity is only relatively recent, like the past 100 or 150 years. But Giovanni’s Room shows where we’ve come from in the past 70 years. And the fact that a lot of these stories still are being retold tells us there’s a problem.

There’s a theme that runs through queer lives a lot of the time. It’s a little bit harrowing when you start thinking about your own life. You’re just like: fuck. This is largely a story I can relate to. And I know a lot of people who can. And there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t get spoken about. There’s a lot of silence. And silence inside relationships because everyone is too afraid to make themselves visible or vulnerable because of real fear of violence, of rejection, of abandonment. I don’t know. I don’t really know where to go from here. It’s so tedious having to go through the plebiscite about marriage. I don’t know. If marriage makes some people want to live their lives and makes them happy then that’s cool. But on the other side I have a real problem with marriage being the answer to all these issues that effect queer people. I just feel really resentful about the amount of money that has gone into lobbying for and against same sex marriage. 120 million dollars gone into a postal survey when it could be spent on health services. Or housing. It’s so frustrating.

 

It’s madness.

That’s the situation we’re in.

The four members of Gold Class stand in front of a back background.

Gold Class. Photography by Paige Clark.

For me, your literature and music hold a mirror to the toxicity and fragility of masculinity in Australia. I believe you grew up in Northern Queensland. How has Northern Queensland impacted your work? How does geography impact your work generally?

I don’t know. Maybe that’s not for me to say. But I do think Australia has a toxic masculinity problem. And that really needs to be, not addressed, but investigated in a real way by people who aren’t just living in the city. I grew up on a farm, on a mango and strawberry farm. I don’t know. There were lots of people who acted like capital M Men. But then I think that was just as prevalent, if not worse, in the suburbs. And you know, I think women in rural areas are very… like my mum probably did as much labouring work as my dad. And my dad’s mum was a nurse in the war and then in the army so you know she was a pretty hard woman as well. And then you get to the suburbs and I think that’s when you see these weird populist ideas of gender spreading. Femininity and masculinity take on these alien forms, and then everyone has to express themselves in this “gender- bought-in-a-shopping mall” kind of way. It’s really strange to me. I don’t know if I’m answering your question.

 

You’re answering it beautifully.

Okay.

 

What do you do for money outside of work?

We’ve actually been really lucky because the band has paid for itself. Which is good because we decided pretty early on that we didn’t want to go into debt. I have a bunch of friends who have signed record deals and then found themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt due to marketing or music videos. We just decided we never wanted that hanging over our heads. And if you’re doing that maybe you’re gambling on making it in some commercially viable way, which was never our intention. So we’ve been lucky. But it’s meant we’ve worked at the same time, which is hard when you’re touring. I’ve been working at Melbourne University in the medical school doing admin, and I work in a little wine bar in North Fitzroy. That’s been it this year.

 

It’s sort of interesting to think that in 20 years or less automation will be here and no one really knows what that looks like. It seems people can agree there will be less jobs. Apparently kids are being told they would be better off studying philosophy and music and literature rather than, say, accounting. So critical thinking and creativity will be valued because I suppose those skills are harder for robots to grasp. Which seems like incredible news for you. Do you have plans, creative or otherwise, for the future?

Is that true that kids are being told to study music and literature?

 

I think I read that somewhere.

I mean I can understand philosophy would be valued because philosophy is going to be really important when automation comes. There’s going to be some pretty big questions.

 

Okay, let me rephrase the question. I don’t think the issue with automation is necessarily people not having work. Hopefully, there’ll be some sort of basic universal income or something will fill the void. I think the more interesting question is⎯

I think it’s interesting you think something will fill the void. I feel less and less sure that anyone actually cares if something fills the void. I’m less and less convinced that the politicians and the 1% think it’s important for people not to be homeless or unemployed.

 

Maybe what I meant was: what are people going to do for purpose when automation arrives? If you take people’s jobs away they’re are going to need things to do: music, literature, art might become more crucial than ever. I think that puts people like you in an interesting spot.

I think that’s an optimistic view of it.

 

Yeah… I know.

If you look at towns where unemployment is really high you don’t see people picking up instruments. You see people doing lots of drugs. And getting involved in violent crime. Which is sad, but often there isn’t any infrastructure around the arts in those places. But, you know, it’s a nice thought that when the robots take over maybe people will want to be creative again.

 

It’s called a renaissance, baby.

I mean I hope so. But I’m tired. We’re going to have a big break. And I have no idea just how long it’s going to be but this will definitely be our last shows for a pretty long time. You know when you’re exhausted by something and you can’t get your head around how you’re going to get back into it? Or what it will look like? It’s quite possible that when we return the band will look like something completely different. We played this show in Brisbane and people came up to us and were like, “You’ve gotta keep going.” “Make sure you come back to it.” And, “You guys are doing your own thing and it’s really important.” And part of me says, “I want to” but another part of me is like, “It’s just fucking hard.” I want to do other stuff. I want to return to nonfiction. I want to experience other things.

 

And all you’re hearing, basically, is people saying, “Don’t abandon me.”

Yeah. I mean hopefully nobody feels like that. Thank God, there are a billion other bands out there.

 

Gold Class perform with Mere Women at the Oxford Art Factory, 8pm Saturday 18 November. Details and tickets here.

 

 

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