Better get a lawyer

Better get a lawyer, son. You're gonna need a real good one.
- The Cruel Sea, 1995

It was a ‘standard management contract’, Kretin maintained. I knew bugger-all about legal language, and as far as I could tell, the language used in the contract was as impenetrable and intransigent as legalese got. I had a bash at decoding from first principles like a scientific research paper (which I’d usually found just as impenetrable and/or intransigent, probably why I was back here in Lismore getting my teaching ticket instead of PhDing it up a storm like Dr Cletus), translating each word as I went, but ended up tripping over all the double negatives, circular statements, heretofores and whomsoevers. As a result I ended up with a severely bruised brain and no more clue than what I started with.

So in the end I faxed the entire bloody thing to a mate from UQ who was finishing a double degree in science/law. Stuart’s science major was molecular biology and genetics, which is where we’d overlapped as undergrads (he slept in the seat next to mine in Biochemistry lectures) after first meeting as freshers in college. On the legal side of the ledger, Stu’s focus was on patent law, with the intent of someday becoming a high-flying patent attorney for a massive biotech or pharmaceutical firm, using the bottomless pockets of his faceless masters to lock away poor researchers’ intellectual property and delay new life-saving drugs reaching market until they could figure out a way to squeeze the largest amount of potential profit out of their existing ones. We all have our little dreams, I guess - some a little more mercenary than others, eh Stu?

“What’s the story, Stu?”

“Goldilocks and the three bears,” Stu quipped. His jokes got no better with time. “Actually, it’s a bit of a fairy story. One where the evil fairy godmother sods off with the rights to all your stuff, if you follow.”

“I kinda wish I didn’t, but go on…”

“OK, I’ll go through it with you - I’ll fax you back a version I’ve made notes on, there’s a lot of places I’d suggest improvements, but for now over the phone I’ll just go through the clauses which are just a total bucket of slop and need to be given the shaft straight off the frigging bat. You got a copy of this rancid bilge in front of you?”

I liked Stu’s approach to the law. He had a rare gift for making it accessible to the lay person.

“Let’s see. Seek Discoveries Proprietary Limited, being a Company registered in yada yada yada, hereafter referred to as ‘Seek’, blah blah blah… Oh here we are. Jump forward a bit, clause 3. ‘Seek shall retain all right, title and interest in and to the Material and its uses thereof, including but not limited to all right, title and interest in its publication or performance relating to the Material’…”

“So?”

“The ‘Material’ is everything you’ve ever written or recorded,” explained Stu. “As defined in Clause 2. Seek would own the rights to everything. Individually or collectively, past, present or future. Perpetual AND retroactive.”

“Ah.” That didn't sound good.

“See, this is where it screws you guys over, signing individual contracts with these thumbless monkeys - it pulls in any songs you’ve written by yourself, even that crap you used to write in college about dirty skanks from other colleges. I’d reckon by rights there should be a single contract between Seek and Flange Gasket, or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself, defined as the four of you working in concert, with a specified start date to this relationship - when did you start writing stuff together, six weeks ago did you say? It’d be easy to do, just change the introductions in clause 1 where we define who everyone is.”

“What else is there?”

“Apart from that minor issue?” he chuckled. “Well, there’s no termination clause. Well there is, but the termination clause is one-way, they can get rid of you but you can’t get shot of them. What else. Indemnity, that’s also stuffed.”

“Huh?”

“The ‘Talent’ - that’s you, apparently - shall indemnify Seek for any damages which arise, intended or not, from anything you do. So if those dirty skanks from college sue Seek Discoveries, or whoever they on-sell the rights to - another thing you have no say over, according to Clause 7 - because of the song you wrote about them putting out like noone’s business once they had a couple of RTDs on board, well, you’re personally liable. Or, say, if you break the contract and they’re out of pocket. Same deal. And there’s no cap on the liability. Could theoretically be millions.”

“Faaaarrrk.”

“Well put.”

“So Seek would own everything we do and everything we’ve ever done, we have no say over who they farm the rights out to, we can’t terminate the arrangement, and we’re personally liable for millions if we do - that about cover it?”

“Yup.”

“Anything else?” I hesitated to ask.

“Just clause five. The confidentiality provisions,” he said reassuringly.

“What about them?”

“You’ve broken them by sending me a copy of the contract to look at,” Stu laughed, “so we never had this conversation, OK?”

I definitely owed Stu a carton or three of premium ale over this, I figured, as I looked through the notes he’d faxed later in the day. Crown Lager was his preferred tipple. Lord knew why, because it was pretty much just VB that had gone through a particulate filter. Fact. Ask the QC boys at CUB’s Yatala Brewery, one of whom I still know from doing organic chem with him in second year.

That evening, I rounded up the boys and told them what I’d learned, if not from whom I’d learned it. Schooled up by Stu's point-by-point decoding, I went in detail through each clause, pointed out where the various traps and landmines lay, and indicated the wording which was putting us into situations which we weren’t in a position to manage. As such, I told them, there’s no way we can sign this document.

Marty, Phil and Sam absorbed this fresh information. Then told me they’d been to see Chris Kretin just that afternoon, and had all signed the management contract there in his office.

Arsebiscuits.

Next morning, Kretin went to the trouble of stalking me, hanging around outside my mid-morning education lecture. He waved a manilla folder in front of me.

“You’ll sign this agreement,” he said. I wasn’t sure if it was a request or an instruction.

“Busy,” I said. “Later.”

“The others have already…” he called after me.

He showed up at the house that night. Not that I was there, I was staying at Jessica’s, since her flatmates had all courteously vacated the premises and we had the run of the place. Next day I had no lectures, so I headed down to the farm to help the old man dig a drainage trench. We worked away at it most of the day, using the bobcat from the shed as well as picks, shovels and swearing. Once we’d finished, we sat under a tree with a couple of coldies and surveyed our work.

“I dug a hole, Dad,” I said.

He didn’t say much, just shook his head and chuckled. I mention this solely because cracking the old man up is an effort of Olympic proportions.

We had a couple more beers and a bit of a catch-up yarn, and I ended up sleeping in my old bed with too many ales on board to consider the drive back. When I got back up to Chateau Dodgy at first light next morning, I found an apoplectic Chris Kretin waiting on the doorstep. It was barely 7am. Christ knew how long he’d been there, he should have pitched a tent. It was about that time of the morning for it anyway. He was clearly attempting an ambush, current-affairs-reporter style, as soon as I opened the door. Unfortunately for him and his Cunning Plan I’d emerged from the wrong side of the door, and scared the shit out of him. This took some time, as he was so full of shit as it was.

“Sign,” he demanded, flipping over a dog-eared copy of the contract and planting a chewed biro in my hand. It began to bleed blue ink into my palm, so I handed it back to him politely.

“No,” I said pleasantly.

“What the hell do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no. I don’t like the conditions, and I’m not signing it. My shit is my shit, and you aren’t having it. Furthermore, if I was going to sign it, I’d want to sign two copies, so that I have a legally binding, fully signed copy, and so do you. That's what you did with the other boys, isn’t it?”

I pushed past him and through the front door.

“Hey Marty. Others still non compos?”

“You know it,” Marty nodded. He and I, both farm kids of course, were usually first to greet the morning at Chateau Dodgy, even if hangovers interceded. “Coffee’s on though.”

“Tops,” I declared. Kretin had followed me through the door, still stammering on about all the others having signed it and therefore I had no option but to do so and if I didn’t then…

“Don’t think Chris needs one though,” I added. “He seems quite excited enough already.”

“Now you listen here,” he demanded, “you little shit…”

“Flattery. Good move Chris, that’ll fuckin' work.” I took the crumpled contract from his grasp. Momentarily excited, he thrust the sticky pen towards me. I waved him away, grabbing a large wedge-tipped permanent marker from the breakfast bar, normally used for labelling the caps of our home brew.

“Here’s the problem I have, Chris. Here…” I circled the first clause in thick black indelible ink. He didn’t like that much. “This says you own every song I’ve written or recorded, ever, as well as everything I produce in the future.”

“No it doesn’t…”

“Yes it does, Chris. Some of us aren’t as fuckin' stupid as you’d like to think. So, a big black X through that,” I said.

McCarthy staggered out of his bedroom in an ancient Holden Racing Team shirt - may have even been the same one he’d worn to the high school social where I’d gone home with Nerissa five or six years earlier - and worrisome boxers. “What up?” he yawned.

“Contract law 101 tutorial for old mate here,” I said cheerily.

“Why are you always so fuckin’ chirpy in the morning?” he grumbled, reaching blindly for a mug to get his hit of caffeine.

“Comes from getting up at sparrows for years, old man Sam,” I said. “Now, Chris, I don’t like this bit either. It says I can’t fire you if you’re shit, which you are, but you can fire me whenever you like.” I scribbled it out. “Bollocks to that,” I said. “Furthermore, it says down here that if I do decide to break the contract, I’m liable for unlimited damages. Bollocks to that as well, I’d say.”

The contract was now starting to look like a monochrome version of a Jackson Pollock, and Kretin was turning incandescent with rage. Just before steam started to come out his ears, he screamed “Enough!”, pointing to the defaced contract and snapping his fingers. You had to laugh. Or at least I had to, and did. He jabbed a finger in my chest. “You will fuckin’ sign that contract, or you will never amount to shit in this industry.”

“Much like yourself then, Chris?” I suggested. “Mate, I don’t give a fuck, I ain’t signing. You don’t own me and you don’t own my rights,” I pronounced, raising my voice so even Bill and Ben next door could hear, “so get the fuck out of my face, and get the fuck out of my house!”

It drew the Duffer out of bed as well. His moth-eaten nightwear was as terrifying as Uncle Sam’s, and if anything, he was even more in need of caffeine.

“Your rights are worthless, you idiot,” he declared triumphantly. “Anything you’ve done which any of these other boys have contributed to, you can’t do a thing with, because I own it.”

I considered this thoughtfully, while the boys squirmed over this realisation.

“And by the same token,” I mused, “anything they’ve done which I’ve contributed to, is worthless to you, because I own whatever I’ve contributed. Like Learn to Swim, for instance. The lyrics and the riff. Not much of a song without those.”

He’d not thought of that, it seemed.

“You haven’t even published that song,” he said. “Who’s to say you even wrote it?”

Time to bust out one of Stu’s favourite patent law terms. Technically patent and copyright law were different kettles of fish but they had common elements - both still stank if you left them out in the sun for a week. “I’d have no problem demonstrating prior art, Chris, if it came down to me suing your arse for a cut of the proceeds. I have notes, recordings, witnessess. So by all means, go off and do what you like with these songs. Just get some handy lawyers on board for when I come calling, okay buddy?” I slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a wink.

“Well now,” he began cautiously, “there’s no reason to bring lawyers into this, now is there?”

“Well, you didn’t when you drew this up,” I said with a chuckle. “It barks.”

“What?”

“It’s a fuckin’ dog, Chris.”

“I had a solicitor draw that up,” he said defensively, “there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Your brother does a bit of conveyancing then?” I screwed the scribbled-on contract up and tossed it in the bin. “Here’s what we do,” I told him, pointing at him and snapping my fingers. “You’ll terminate the agreements with these nice three boys, since they’re not in a position to do so themselves under the terms of the agreement because it’s fucked, and we’ll sit down together and put together a management agreement between Flange Gasket and Seek Discoveries, for the period of April 1998 through March 1999. Anything which we produce collaboratively in that period, Seek owns the right to promote, but retains no material rights over; nor have you any rights over any of our individual work, past, present or future. We can terminate our agreement with you, and you can terminate with us. We get a say on who you on-sell the rights and recordings to, should we get that far. At the end of 12 months, we can sit down again and talk about doing it all again, or we can go our separate ways and everyone still owns what they came to the table with. All nice and friendly like.”

“Or?”

“Or, I don’t know, maybe a series of very unfortunate fires destroy the other boys’ only copies of the words and chords to that very catchy song on the radio at present, as well as the other songs from Insert Title Here which I might have had an involvement in. Now, they might be able to remember how the songs went,” I considered, glancing around the room to gauge the lads’ mood, “but then again, they might not. And it won’t be their fault, of course, and they certainly won’t be liable, because it was all an unfortunate accident caused by their randomly pyromaniac flatmate who refused to sign the indemnity clause on his management contract.”

Chris Kurtin tried to come to terms with everyone staring at him.

“You are a devious little cunt,” he commented.

“From you that’s high praise,” I said. “So how do you want to play it, Chris?”

He could still see dollar signs, even without all his ill-gotten ancillary rights. “We’ll play it your way,” he mumbled. “But I’ll not forget this, son. I’ll not forget this for some time.”

And was gone.

I poured myself a big coffee to celebrate. “What do you say about that, boys?”

“You are a devious little cunt,” laughed McCarthy.

“This from the man who humiliated a member of parliament for radio airplay…”

“Thing I don’t understand,” Phil said, as if there was only one thing he didn’t understand in this world, “is if you think he’s an incompetent, manipulative prick…”

“And I do.”

“Why on Earth after all this do you want to still work with him?”

“Because,” I figured, “given the state of the music industry, every other booking agent out there is surely going to be at least as bent or dodgy as Kretin. At least he’s bent and dodgy in a way we can manage.”

So we and Kretin drew up a more equitable management agreement and I had my legal consultant in Brisbane (who by now was owed a uteload of Crownies and all the morally unkempt college girls he could eat) look over and approve the document in the interests of all parties involved, before we signed it. I suggested Stuart should dump the degree now and go straight into practice, just get a big fuck-off billboard on the freeway to promote himself. “Nah,” he replied. “Disco Stu don’t advertise.”

After that, we didn’t hear from Chris for a week or so. Then there was a gruff message on our phone: “Boys, Chris. Three weeks time, Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Metropole May 23, Maggie Moore’s the 24th, Gollan the 25th. I’ve called in favours to get these bookings, so you won’t let me down.”

It was good of him to say that we weren’t going to let him down, it was very encouraging and supportive. At least I think that was the gist of what he was getting at.

The Metropole (now the Standard) was a bit of a dive, with an old-school ‘tiled urinal’ for a public bar, and a dark, dingy ‘performance space’. I didn’t rate it much, but McCarthy didn’t mind the place - it was pretty much straight over the street from the Star offices, so Friday staff drinks often ended up there, particularly tonight, giving us a useful rent-a-crowd. By the time we went on at nine, most of the older, crustier staffers had headed home. The rowdier youngsters were still front and centre, led by their entertainment reporter, who was several sheets to the wind by this stage and would probably be very engaging company for her boyfriend of An Month if she was still awake when he got off stage after midnight.

I wasn’t nervous. At least I think I wasn’t nervous. Given that I have no clear memory of the night other than coming on to scattered applause and encouraging cheers from the Star contingent, and that the rest remains a vague blur of colour and noise, maybe I’m kidding myself. I remember we weren’t perfect, and when things didn’t work, things really didn’t work. Interestingly those moments seemed to correlate with us cranking out the old, crusty covers-band standards which McCarthy and I didn’t want to play. The sets flew by - we played four sets across the night, sticking with Kretin’s set list largely because (a) we’d rehearsed it and (b) he was sitting in the corner watching us, with a smouldering ashtray and a little notepad, making copious spidery notes in a rather disconcerting way. He insisted on extensive debriefs in each set break, when all we wanted to do was grab a drink and unwind a little with our audience - McCarthy with his workmates, the rest of us with friends from our uni courses who were loyal or curious enough to come by. Jessica was working that night, but had promised to show tomorrow.

“Reasonable set, boys,” Kretin conceded. “Adequate show all told, for first timers. Improved a lot as you went through. Well, you had to, really.”

“Can we go home now?” McCarthy croaked. “I’ve gotta get me some Throaties.” He’d never sung so loud, for so long, in his life.

Kretin pointed, but held back from the click. He was trying to work through his issues. “Like I warned you at the end of set two, you’d have nothing left of your voice if you kept ripping into it like that. You’ve got two consecutive nights after this, son. Decently played, though.” He turned to me, and read from his notes. “Andrew. Good engagement with the crowd, some of the banter with Sammy here was amusing. But sloppy technique, lazy phrasing in places, with both instrument and voice. And,” he added sourly, “when you’re playing something you clearly don’t want to play, can you at least try to hide your distaste?”

“Chris, I’m not going to tell you how to do your job…”

“Seems to me you do nothing other than tell me how to do my job…”

“All I’m saying is, all the crusty old shit, noone under 30 wants to hear it. And we had an audience almost entirely under 30. Brown Eyed Girl killed all the momentum we had in set 3, why do you think that is?”

“Son, when you’ve been around as long as me, and you’ve seen as many acts as I have come and go, you can come and tell me what you want to play, OK?” he said dismissively. “Marty. Awesome sound. No presence at all. Where were you, mate? Hiding up the back behind your keyboard… we gotta bring you forward buddy, we can’t have these rock-ape guitarists dictating the look and feel of the band.”

Marty, never comfortable as the centre of attention, seemed to me quite happy hiding up the back behind his keyboard, thanks very much.

“Phil. Kept time, mostly. All we need.”

“Gee, thanks,” remarked the Duffer.

“That’s all. Tomorrow night, then.” He swilled his G&T and stubbed his cigarette out. No chance of him helping with lugging out, of course. “Oh yeah, I’ll be elsewhere come the end of your gig tomorrow. Steve and Razorslash are on at the Workers’ Club at eleven. If not for the double-booking, I’d have suggested you stop by and see how a proper band goes about their business.”

We lugged out into the cool of a late May night, loaded up the postie van, the Drum Machine and McCarthy’s Camira, and wobbled home to bed, relieved as much as anything. Farm kids or not, Marty and I staggered out of our beds just as late as the other lads next morning.

Saturday was Jessica’s twentieth birthday. We went to Byron for lunch and took a dive into the surf at Broken Head on the way back. Things subsequently got a little funky in the shallows when noone else happened to be around, but nothing I wasn’t prepared for. Jessica did happen to need a long, hot shower to get the sand out of her bikini afterwards, with some assistance. You’d have thought it was actually my birthday.

My favourite blonde person had to work Saturday night as well, but at least she had on-site entertainment. Maggie’s was home ground for us - we felt comfortable here, having spent plenty of time at the bar, and knowing the folks behind it very well (in the Biblical sense in one case - if not for the Precautionary Tactics at least.) Likewise, as a more welcoming venue than the Metro-hole, friendly familiar faces were more likely to pack the place out. By nine, when we took the stage, the floor was nicely heaving with friends and strangers alike. More confident with our material after last night’s full dress rehearsal, we seemed to regain the broad-grinned swagger which we’d carried through the Insert Title Here performance the month before.

Nearing the end of the second set (6-2 6-1), Kurtin’s colour-by-numbers setlist (identical to last night’s, but being punched out with a lot more enthusiasm) dictated Recent Alternative Rock Hit, specifically Peaches, by the Presidents of the USA. Moving to the country, I drawled, gonna eat me a lot of peaches. I was always sure this was some kind of dodgy reference to ‘dining at the Y’ but could never get my head around the bit which proposed twist[ing] a rotten peach in my fist and dream[ing] about you, womaaann. Not the sort of scenario that floated my boat, to be honest. A bit too Amsterdam for my liking.

“We are so going to do this,” McCarthy barked keenly in my ear, off-mike, as the song neared its end. I knew what he meant: hybrid theory. I glanced over to where Kretin was parked at the bar, but couldn’t make him out over the swaying bodies. Fuck him, I thought. And heard McCarthy laying that characteristic Thunderstruck backing vocal over the progression - aah aah-aah AAH aah-aah AAH aah, when he was supposed to be singing about there being millions of peaches, peaches for him and/or free - and found myself, in turn, kicking each chord a little harder in the arse as I punched it out. I glanced over my shoulder; Phil, grinning, seemed to know what was up; Marty, looking slightly ill, ditto. Now, which one of us had to crank out the Brian Johnson howl, and which got to try their hand at that kick-arse twiddly guitar lick? I knew McCarthy could pull the Angus riff off and I wasn’t so sure I could (not on cue, anyway), so I waited for the moment, and then ripped into a blood-curdling shriek: ‘Thunderstruck… thun-der-strerr-yuck…” McCarthy, on cue, jumped in with the right lick, complete with a couple of bonus bum notes which he got away with, just like Angus Young would have done. “Yeah, you’ve been thunder-struck,” I told our audience. They didn’t seem to mind, in fact they quite liked the idea judging by all the jumpin’ up-and-down and the hootin’ and a-hollerin’. Safe to say, as McCarthy reminded the boys, that we’d been right about that one after all.

In the last two sets, once Kretin had buggered off to babysit his precious bloody Razorslash, we diverged from the script further. We cranked out a version of Lady Marmalade all funked up and overdriven, like Ted Nugent out front of Parliament. We pulled out the mongrel Last Junkie/Enter Sandman hybrid; McCarthy kept sniggering when he tried to do his monstrous James Hetfield vocal, but it still went down really well. We played Kula Shaker’s Hey Dude with slightly mangled alternate lyrics - ‘Hey dude, don’t lean on me man, ‘cause I’m losing my erection and I can’t understand…’ File under 'Not my idea' and move on. It made us laugh, at least. And on Phil’s insistence we closed the last set with Song Formerly Known As by the Gurge, with big funky wah-wah guitars in true Prince/Love Symbol style. Great fun. Time to pack up and go home.

Uh, no. For the kiddies wanted more, evidently. We bounded back onto the stage, exhilarated to be invited back up by our audience, but without a lot of idea as to what to play for our first ever encore. (If you didn’t count I Love To Have A Beer With Everyone from the Insert Title Here session, which we’d didn’t, having orchestrated that just a tad.)

“Thanks a lot, folks. Good to hear we’re doing our job properly,” I grinned. “This is a bit soppy, I’m afraid. It’s my girl’s birthday today.” Chorus of Awwwww. “She’s the smoking hot blonde one behind the bar. Yeah, she's mine, so back the fuck down… This is for Jessica.”

And this is what exactly? read McCarthy’s expression.

“It’s a little song called Faded, by Mr Ben Harper,” I added for his and others’ benefit. McCarthy nodded in assent. I turned to Phil and signalled he should count us in, and that Marty, largely bewildered, should just follow our lead. Jessica was a big Ben Harper fan - no idea why, but it was better than then Hanson - and though we’d only played the song before once or twice as a band, never having formerly rehearsed it for a rock show, I’d played it acoustically for her in our quieter boy-girl bonding moments, so I already knew it reasonably well. We fudged it reasonably successfully, judging by the reaction. Unfortunately, the reaction wasn't 'Played hard done good, onya, now fuck off and have a beer'. It was 'One more, one more.'

Problem was, we’d now officially Run Out Of Stuff, and the pauses were lengthening. We knew we’d officially Run Out Of Stuff when I heard McCarthy crank up Louie Louie, and actually thought 'Thank Christ for that'. Any bastard could play it, and every bastard knows the words. We crunched through a few rounds of that, diverged into Wild Thing (the last refuge of a desperate covers band) which is pretty much the same chords, then McCarthy went a bit left-field and started singing the lyrics to the old Gurus’ song My Girl over the Louie Louie progression. Another of his wacky hybridzation experiments that actually came off. Christ knew where he came up with them. That should pad things out to going-home-time, we thought.

Uh-uh.

One more? Didn’t these people have homes to go to? We didn’t have one more, but they clearly wanted one more. I checked my watch. 12.29pm, surely that was too late, we’d hit curfew in a minute. I glanced over at the bar manager, who’d been the one who told us originally that we needed to be off by half-twelve. Helpfully, he was also bellowing one more, one more, clapping his hands over his head in time with the chant.

One more it was then.

We held an emergency council-of-war up on stage. “Anything?” I suggested.

“Preferably something that will clear the room,” Phil offered wearily.

“Job done,” said McCarthy. He then began chanting, “She’s… mah… cherry pie…”

Surely the man was joking.

“Cool drink of water, such a sweet sur-prise…”

“Oh fuck no,” I said. “We want to clear the room, not evacuate the building.”

“Tastes so good, bring a tear to your eye…” he persisted, with an evil grin.

“I think I know the chords,” Marty relented, “or could have a decent stab at them.”

“Sweet cherry piiiiiiie…”

“Knowing this guy’s history with 80’s poodle rock,” I reckoned, “probably better this than Kickstart My Heart. Come on then...”

So for our last song of the night, to our eternal discredit, we played Warrant’s massive slab of spray-on cheese, Cherry Pie. And to our audience’s eternal discredit, they absolutely loved it, screaming She’s my cherry pie back at us loud enough to drown out McCarthy’s bullshit hair-metal solo.

There was no flaking-out this time. Dosed on adrenalin and Red Bull, we packed up and lugged out in double-quick time, hauled all our gear back to Chateau Dodgy, then headed back into town to meet up with everyone else. At the fucking Powerhouse Niteclub, of course. But we were already deaf from the gig, so Breathe by the Prodigy at organ-liquefying volume didn’t have that much of a negative effect. Grinding against Jessica on the dance floor (yes, following a series of frantic catch-up drinks I was by now drunk enough and hyped enough to be shaking my groove thang), I felt there were only positives. Before the ugly lights could make their presence known, I bundled her in a taxi and took her back to her place to finish off her special day the only way we felt was appropriate.

What a fucking awesome day that was.

Next day, of course, I was clinically dead. The lot of us were zombified, as if we’d come down off a long prescription course of MDMA to come across The Biggest Comedown In The History Of The Universe. We were exhausted, drained, shattered and shot to bits. And we had to do it all over again, this time at the Gollan. If the Metropole was a bit of a dive, the Gollan was a headlong plunge off the ten metre tower at the Olympic complex at Homebush. And that was still under construction at the time so not much chance they’d finished putting water in the pool. We were at a grotty venue we didn’t rate, on a Sunday night, completely rooted, with no serotonin, adrenalin, energy or even voice left. There were no romantic ideals here - this would tell us whether we were cut out to be in a band. This was our litmus test. Our trial-by-fire.

We failed.

We’ve addressed the issue of the Gollan being the seediest pub in town. We’ve addressed our personal exhaustion. We’ll now address the crowd, or would have had there been one. Or at least, those that were there were hard-core drinkers who didn’t want them or their alcoholism disturbed. Our loyal cadre of followers from the last two nights were all too deaf and hungover to make it out on a Sunday night, or maybe the novelty of having mates in a band was wearing off already. It certainly was for us.

Particularly considering that everything that could go wrong, did.

There were drunk bogans shouting for Khe Sahn from song one. The band stage was the size of a picnic table; the room was wreathed in the choking stink of Eau de Winnie Bleu. Equipment spontaneously combusted all over the place - a lighting rig (a rental, with a stonking deposit we now weren’t getting back) nearly took my head off on its way to hitting the floor and exploding, Phil contrived to kick a hole in his bass drum, and McCarthy ended the night with a smoking ‘Arshol’. Our front-of-house was mixed so badly by the house guy we sounded like we were under several feet of water, breathing through straws, and in our setbreaks he managed to DJ half the songs we’d planned to play, straight before the sets when we’d intended to play them. Management were constantly ordering us to turn down because their battery-hen pokie punters couldn’t hear their welfare cheques ding-dinging down the drain over our din. Kretin had been kind enough to reorganise our setlist along the lines of the Top 100 Overplayed Shit Covers Of The ‘90s - we were now so middle-of-the-road we needed lines painted down the middle of our foreheads. Kretin himself was parked there on a bar stool, cranky as ever, making furious notes and flashing us the death-stare any time we even looked like diverging from the script. Better still, his mate Steve Bennett and the Razorslash boys were kind enough to join him at the bar for a few, and loudly offered their particular brand of collegiate advice between songs, such as ‘Fucken fuck off back to faggot land you fucken faggots’.

In the end, management pulled the plug on us an hour early. We almost didn’t mind that they withheld half our fee. We certainly didn’t mind that they told Kretin never to bother trying to book us there again. Kretin minded, though, it seemed. He let us finish our discussion with Razorslash out on the street - I recall instructing Steve Bennett that the next time he even thought of turning up to a gig of mine to offer advice on how we should carry ourselves, I’d tear him a new Arshol (and I didn’t mean Sam’s amplifier) - before the tattooed midget and his entourage were encouraged away, and Kretin rounded on us with point-‘n’-click appendage ready for action.

Here came the tirade. Presumably.

“Now,” he began, “what have we learned?”

“That you shouldn’t bring arsepunching fucking cuntbags like that to our gigs,” suggested McCarthy, aptly. He’d studied well at the Super Dave School of Conjugating Swearwords for Greatest Offense.

“Son, if it wasn’t for those arsebag… whatever you said, you wouldn’t have had an audience,” he pointed out.

“It’s a fuckin’ Sunday,” I said. “Who goes out on a Sunday to listen to a band? Least of all to a shithole like this, full of pissed bogans and alcos.”

“So…” Kretin prompted. So what? I was a little surprised to realise he actually wanted us to respond. We didn’t, so he continued. “Lesson one. Pick your times. Don’t book gigs on a Sunday night,” he finished. “Afternoons maybe, but only gentle acoustic sets, yeah? Got that?” He looked around at his dumbfounded audience, shivering in the cold. “What else? Any other moral lessons learned tonight, boys?”

What the fuck was this, Aesop’s Fables?

“Pick better venues,” suggested Phil.

“Not better venues,” Kretin distinguished. “More appropriate venues. Those Razorslash arsepunchers, as you so eloquently called them, would pack this place out.”

“Pissed bogans are Razorslash’s target demographic,” offered Marty bitterly.

“Don’t knock it. Pissed bogans buy a lot of alcohol, which is why hose-out beer barns like this just love them, and why bands like Razorslash are hired to attract them to pubs like this. Lesson two. Know your market.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Chris,” I said tiredly, “but aren’t both those things your concern, as our fucking management?”

“Not at all,” he lectured. “You’ll need to be across this too. What else have we learned?”

We were too knackered, and bewildered, to come up with anything. So Chris dug out his notepad and consulted his copious notes. He came up with the following: Don’t rely on rented gear, particularly lighting or PA - invest in your own as soon as you can. Have a plan B if the DJ’s setlist starts mirroring your own. Be versatile. Be flexible. [Like he was allowing us to?] Don’t bait punters, or rise to their bait, no matter how obnoxious they are. Don’t play requests until the last set, or at all. [We’d relented on Khe Sahn early in the night, but this only served to demonstrate that ‘none of youse pooftas know the words to the unofficial fucken Austrayan anthem’, proving to the gentleman in question that we were ‘fucken un-Austrayan poofta carnts’.] If you’re playing originals amongst covers, time it carefully. Don’t play an original at the start of a set. Don’t play an original at the end of a set. Don’t play an original at all if it’s likely to get you lynched. [Sample quote: ‘So you’re the carnts who play that poofta song about killing Harold Holt, you fucken un-Austrayan poofta carnts’.] On balance, play a set which is appropriate to the venue’s clientele, and IQ. Some days will be fantastic, some days will be shit. Just like a real job, just with nocturnal hours. Take the good with the bad, the rough with the smooth. Everything will be better in the morning, everyone has a better side to themselves which they need to find and show the world, everyone looks better after half a dozen beers. That is all. Oh, and five cones is probably the realistic limit of intake for subsequently attempting to drum along to heavily syncopated funk beats.

“You on Prozac or something?” I inquired.

“Zoloft,” he corrected mildly. “Less hard-edged, a bit smoother on the come-down.”

“It’s working,” McCarthy observed dolefully. “Can we bludge some off you?”

“Ah, son,” Kretin began magnanimously, “don’t despair. These things are sent to try us.”

“They weren’t sent to try us. You set the whole situation up to be the greatest shit-fight in the history of the known universe,” Marty blurted. Sharp and pointy words from the little curly-haired fella. He looked to be attempting to grow an afro, I surmised, and possibly even some facial hair, which could take some time. Get down with your bad self, Martin.

“True,” Kretin said, “but you’ve learned so much from the experience. I’m proud of you guys, you know that?”

I suddenly recalled Kretin had been doing shots of tequila with the Razorslash boys for a good hour or so while we were on stage. Mixed with prescription anti-depressants. Hmmm, I think I see the flaw in that otherwise faultless plan.

“I think it’s going home time, hey Chris? Let’s call you a taxi.”

“Good idea. I’m a taxi,” he declared. “Hey, I made a funny.”

We loaded him into a cab and extracted the address from Kretin before he passed out. Just before the Falcon pulled away, the rear window came down and Kretin’s head popped out. I wasn’t expecting a farewell; I just figured he was going to be violently sick. He pointed to each of us with his primary clicking finger wavering in the night air.

“Chin up, boys. Remember,” he instructed us as the cab shuffled off jerkily, “gotta do it all again next week. Something to look forward to, hey lads?”