Head above water

Don't you know I'd do anything
To keep my head above water...
- Hunters and Collectors, 1992

The topic under discussion as we pulled out of the North Turramurra Shopping Village carpark in Sydney’s leafy north was university union bars, and in particular, how every single last one of them was a dodgy, dodgy establishment. The UNE Bistro, the Rec Club at UQ (now lost to the world - R.I.P.), the Powerhouse in Lismore (well, it basically functioned as SCU’s de facto uni bar, given all the contra-deals that went on with the student union) - these were all prime examples, but none outshone the Squarehouse, the old uni bar at the University of NSW. This was, as we’ve observed previously, a fetid shithole. The place reeked of spilt beer, stale sweat, cheap perfume and cigarette smoke. The carpet, that same Dept of Ed standard issue nasty green shit peeling at the corners of school classrooms nationwide, glued itself to the soles of your feet with every exploratory step with the effluent of a thousand spilt Subzeros blended with a frisson of fresher vom. The place was packed to the creaking rafters with charged-up college boys desperate to get a root, or to smack some bastard’s head in if they couldn’t. The dancefloor was the size of a miniature trampoline; the bands who played the stage there looked as though they were balancing on a skateboard. And the clientele… let’s just say you were guaranteed to see some bizarre and troubling sights almost any night you named. One of the various nights I was there (in town to crash on McCarthy’s couch, usually), while lining up to take a slash in the truly third-world gentlemens’ facilities, I witnessed a truly mythical creature, as fabled and as feared as Nessie or the Abominable Snowman.

“What the fuck is a trough monster?” Jeff queried.

From the front passenger seat of the Landcruiser, McCarthy laughed. He knew the story well. He turned around from his duties in guiding Marty through evening peak-hour traffic along the Pacific Highway southwards into Pymble, and said “Jeff, I’m afraid it’s not something for sensitive young ears to hear, sorry…”

The Jeff wanted to tell him to fuck off, as we would have all expected him to do, but wasn’t sure he was allowed to given that McCarthy was technically his co-employer for the next week. He wasn’t due back for first week of term at UQ Gatton for another fortnight, so he’d tagged along with Team Gasket as our nominal guitar tech, though he was really just here to sink piss, chase women and occasionally lug the odd amp from the stage to the trailer. Having given due consideration to the hierarchy involved in his new position, Jeff told McCarthy to fuck off.

“So what is a trough monster?” Phil wanted to know.

“A monster,” McCarthy explained, “which is found in a trough. Usually of the appearance of a drunken male hominid, floundering about like a pig stuck in a canoe.”

“Not… you mean some poor prick who’s fallen in because he’s totally pissed?”

“You see,” I mused, “that’s the question. Has he fallen in because he’s too pissed to stand up… or is just the the sort of sick fucker who just happens to get off on doing sidestroke in the slashers while getting pissed on by vindictive drunk bastards? I mean, this is Sydney after all…”

“You didn’t…”

“Me? Oh Christ no. Didn’t want to give him the pleasure, just in case he was there to get his jolls.”

“Jesus,” remarked Jeff. He wasn’t prepared for Sydney, I could tell. This town had a dark, fucked-up underbelly that rural folks just can’t comprehend. “So… you just left him there?”

I shrugged. “He seemed to be OK. Had his head above water…”

“Well I'd do anything, do anything... to keep my head above water...” McCarthy's impromptu karaoke broke off into giggling. “He’s probably still there,” he quipped. “Wonder how long a trough monster can survive in its natural environment?”

“Wonder what a trough monster would eat?” posed Phil whimsically. Yes, he’d had a smoke by now, but not in the car though - no way Marty would have allowed that.

“Urinal cakes?” I suggested.

I could tell Marty wasn’t overly happy with the tone, so we let it slide. He also wasn’t happy about (a) having to drive through peak-hour traffic through the narrow arterials of the North Shore and (b) that while he drove, the rest of us had cracked cold beers and were cheerfully talking shit, while we cruised past lines of traffic and the odd polizia. The former was his call: he’d insisted on taking the wheel for the ‘city’ leg, for fear of someone else scratching his dad’s 4WD, even though it was a massive, bullbarred, mud-encrusted thing that put the fear of God into anyone within a four block radius (particularly anyone in a shiny Beemer or Merc, which were very prevalent in these parts). Towing the half-Escort panelvan trailer, we couldn’t have looked more yee-haa country-hick if we’d tried. The latter was my call: I’d completed the last leg up the freeway from Newcastle and felt that a hard earned thirst needed a big cold beer, but fucked if I was drinking VB - I’d pulled the truck and trailer into the carpark of Liquorland in Turramurra (the first bottle-o we found off the freeway), suggesting this was an appropriate spot for the driver change. McCarthy, with his handy human-Refidex encyclopaedic knowledge of Sydney roads - right down to which lane you should be in at any given moment to avoid getting stuck behind turning traffic or being shunted into parked cars - had settled into the passenger seat with a longneck of Reschs DA, like his old man used to drink back in the day, and was directing traffic from there.

We survived the trek through Turramurra and Pymble, Gordon and Lindfield, Chatswood and Hunters Hill then crossed the Victoria Bridge into the inner-west and eventually found ourselves at a motel off Glebe Point Road in Glebe (a reasonable place to put Glebe Point Road). It was dark, cramped, shabby, cockroach-infested and thoroughly depressing; it made the Marlin Coast Holiday Court in Port Douglas look like the Sheraton Mirage down the road. No points for guessing Terry Kurtin’s name as the proprietor; but at least we had somewhere inexpensive to stay. Or at least that was the plan, until we actually took a look at the shared suite booked for us. It was about as large as the old on-site van Jeff and I had shared in Airlie. Bedbugs, roaches and fleas competed to see which could leap the highest off the carpet in order to attach to whatever area of exposed flesh they could find. The whole place looked and stank like murder had recently been committed and hastily cleaned up within its walls (‘Funny you should say that’, said the shifty-looking Russian-expat concierge), which was enough to have us retreating to the Landcruiser; housing five grubby blokes for a ten-hour day on the road still didn’t have it reeking like that place. Anyway, it was Kretin’s credit card number they had, not ours.

Kretin himself flew in later that afternoon – no dreary road trip for him – collected his hire car, drove across to his hotel in Darling Harbour, then dropped by our hotel to see how we were settling in. He found a note with the concierge simply saying Chris, you cheap-arse bastard, this is the last time we ever let you book our accommodation. Then the porter, another recent arrival to these shores, decided he wanted to find a more lucrative line of work than his current one, pulling a flick-knife on the owner’s brother and relieving him of his wallet, watch and mobile phone, as well as the keys to his rental car, which he proceeded to bugger off with.

As Phil’s mobile number was the easiest of ours to remember, it was his which Kretin managed to reach from the phone in his hotel suite quite a bit later in the evening, once he’d argued and shouted and stamped his feet at Hotel Ibis reception until they’d believed this furious little ID-less tyrant really was Chris Kurtin from room 1106, and provided him with a new room keycard - but not before issuing him with an invoice for his old, stolen one, to be paid on departure.

“Oh hi Chris, how’s it going?” Phil said cheerfully.

About thirty seconds into the blistering ten-minute tirade that formed Kretin’s response, Phil set the phone down on the table in front of us so we could all hear - no need even for a speaker-phone, he projected his voice so well, and even without any drama schooling! The other advantage of not needing loudspeaker was that he couldn’t hear the rest of us pissing ourselves laughing quite so well.

“So where the hell are you boys staying?” he fumed in conclusion.

Things had looked grim for a while, but we’d had a bit of a hurried ring-around of friends and family, and we were going to be all right. Marty and Phil had been warmly welcomed by Phil’s grandparents, who lived in suburban St Peters just south of Newtown. For the rest of us, we had McCarthy’s venerable buddy Super Dave to thank. Super Dave, once he’d heard our plight, simply said, “Why the Jesus fuck didn’t youse just stay with us cunts in the first place?” and offered the use of his apartment for the rest of us to share. Super Dave was a generous soul, particularly with other people’s stuff; his other two flatmates, both well known to McCarthy from uni, were out of town for the duration of our stay (Jason was a sixth-year med student who was on internship at Bathurst Hospital for six weeks; Mike was a marine geology masters student who was currently on a field trip to Rottnest Island in WA. Bastard.)

The Super Dave story in three sentences: He was from Broken Hill, his old man was a mining engineer, and he’d learned from him that if you’re going to be an engineer don’t be a mining engineer because you get stuck in busted-arse shitholes like Broken Hill all your life. So Super Dave did chemical engineering at New South, and currently raked in large sums of money overseeing the shift-worker peeps at Goodman Fielder in their making of Meadow Lea margarine. Super Dave was as coarse as sixty-grade sandpaper and as blunt as Chris Kurtin’s head, and those were prime among the reasons we liked him. And he lived in a cool flat in Coogee, relatively handy for Goodman Fielder’s Botany plant but more importantly so for the Coogee Bay Hotel and the Beach Palace. Ah shit, that’s four sentences.

We were sitting in a pub in Newtown - actually it was the rather cool beer garden under the Bank Hotel, which doubled as a Thai bistro, now also gone but not entirely fucked up by the inevitable gentrification process - knocking back beers with Super Dave, Cuntstable Care, the King of Seed, Dogga from Wagga and other assorted luminaries from McCarthy’s brief but interesting time in Sin City. It was Wednesday night. On Thursday, we would be across the street at the Town Hall Hotel. On Friday, the uni bar at UNSW. On Saturday, it was the Golden Grove in Maroubra. On Sunday, a more relaxed afternoon set at the Bay View Hotel in Gladesville. On Monday, way up north to the Castle Hill Tavern. On Tuesday, out to some random Irish pub in Parramatta. On Wednesday, way down south to Caringbah Bizzos. On Thursday, the Manning Bar at Sydney Uni. On Friday, south again to Revesby Workers. On Saturday, back into the inner-west to the venerable Annandale Hotel. And on Sunday we were heading home, probably to fall asleep on the way and crash into a tree. Kretin had seemingly worked out our itinerary by taking a series of darts and throwing them at a large map of Sydney, then connecting the dots at random. Then again, even getting gigs in Sydney at all was an achievement. We knew this had been ‘his town’ at one point, or so he’d always claimed, but it was a little more reassuring to see that under all the bullshit, Kretin seemed to be able to deliver gigs here as proficiently as he had back at home. No matter how random the establishments seemed to be.

It was the New South uni bar gig, and next week’s gig at the legendary Annandale, that loomed largest on our collective horizon, though. Ironically it wasn’t that we were headlining either gig that preyed on the mind - we were third name on the bill in both cases, opening act for the opening act, and only had relatively short sets to play - but the fact that we were supporting the biggest band that had come from our region in living memory. In fact, if it wasn’t for Grinspoon, we would have never played either venue on that trip and we wouldn’t be where we are today. At least that’s how the Grinners boys tell the story. In any case, not surprising in a small, incestuous music scene like that of the North Coast, Kretin was on good terms with their management - or at least he had photos of them in compromising positions or something like that - and had managed to ‘leverage’ the ‘synergy’ of Flange Gasket playing on the Grinspoon undercard. We knew the boys vaguely, and had been booked to support them once before, at Lismore Workers, (not that they actually needed any support in their home town) but the arrangements had fallen through. Eskimo Joe, newcomers from Perth armed with a catchy, Triple J-rotated song about their unwillingness to wear a particular sweater, which they were to ditch at the earliest possible convenience as their career developed, were main support for the Grinners’ Annandale show; Deus Ex Machina (or deusexmachina as the gig poster described them), a Melbourne act who I’d never heard of but half expected to be a ludicrously crass gore-metal act in the style of Razorslash, had been promised the main support slot for the O-Week gig at UNSW, presumably because someone in deusexmachina knew someone who knew someone who’d slept with someone on the UNSW student guild.

The Thursday gig at the Town Hall Hotel in Newtown went OK, I guess. First set was a bit scratchy, like an opening batsman who’s a nervous starter against the new ball. The footwork was more a shuffle than a confident stride down the pitch, the shots tended to be hurried, the timing was a little out and the head wasn’t entirely in line with the pitch of the ball - but we played out the session and survived to lunch. The large rounds of indifference we’d been presented with by the eclectic Newtown crowd told us we weren’t in Kansas (or Kyogle) anymore, Toto. They were a whole different species down here - how would smartarse songs about nude runs, Harold Holt drowning and the inability of the Spice Girls to hold down gainful employment engage these too-cool-to-care, deliberately alternative sophisticates? Answer was, it seemed, Not Fuckin' Very, Batman.

Then, in our first set break, in strode our cheerleaders - Team Drunken Eejit, led by Super Dave. No drama queens or fashionable androgyny here, kids. These boys were country bumpkins done good - smarter than your average, but still grounded by their no-bullshit bush upbringing - and they backed us to the hilt. Super Dave was from Broken Hill; the King of Seed, Gorgeous George Valinsky, was from Lithgow (well, someone has to be); Dogga from Wagga was from Wagga, funnily enough; and Cuntstable Care was from Tamworth (again, someone has to be; call it an accident of birth.) Here was our demographic. Hopefully it wasn’t the limit of our demographic; we’d see whether the inner city hippies and trendies could be swayed in the fullness of time, but tonight we just appreciated the support. We settled our nerves, got our collective head down, played much better, and in the end, wobbled to a respectable total and were applauded off the ground at stumps.

But by comparison, tonight was a gentle net session; tomorrow felt like having to face the West Indies circa Perth 1988 on that busted-arse WACA pitch with cracks big enough to lose your Julius Marlows in.



McCarthy was aghast. Mortified, even. The seedy, decrepit old Squarehouse uni bar was no more. It had ceased to be. It had expired and gone to meet its maker, rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible: it was an ex-unibar. Next door to the old place, which was being refitted as offices (presumably involving several alternating rounds of disinfection with bleach and Agent Orange) the Union had extensively revamped an existing larger, circular building of dubious architectural value called the Roundhouse (these guys were original hey?) and this had become the new UNSW unibar. Where there had been fetid government-issue green carpet and dirty walls was now stainless steel and polished floors that didn’t stick to your feet. Yet. As McCarthy put it, “it’ll take six months of beer spillage to give this place any character.” McCarthy was a good judge of character, particularly that bestowed by consumption of beer.

O-Week was the grand opening for the new UNSW unibar, and Friday’s centrepiece gig, headlined by Grinspoon, was the shiny new facility’s first really massive night (there would be plenty of others to follow - St Paddy’s Day, Oktoberfest and any date near the end or the beginning of semester were always big nights there). Eskimo Joe, Gerling and You Am I were playing cross-town rivals Sydney Uni’s O-Week-closing gig the same night, because their student union had more money to spend on higher-profile acts, not having poured a whole stack of funding into refurbishing their facilities.

Personally I didn’t mind the new look, even though I usually hated the nu-wave shiny pub gentrification deal. Maybe because this was a new facility, rather than a lovely old pub that had been ripped up and given the stainless and frosted glass treatment. Or maybe it was just the free piss talking. We were getting paid bugger-all for this gig - given the valuable exposure we were getting out of it, we probably should have been paying them - but we didn’t seem to be left wanting for liquid refreshment, even when lugging in from the carpark around the back of the Materials Science lab into the Roundhouse. The very first thing the student guild’s events coordinator, the friendly-but-frazzled Emma-Kate Caldwell, asked us (straight after “Hi, you guys are Fridge Casket, yeah?”) was “Can we get you a drink for the lug-in?” A chillin’ round of Uncle Teds was pressed into our hands, and we said a silent hallelujah for Tooheys’ sponsorship of UNSW’s O-Week related activities.

Emma-Kate looked like she could use a drink herself, but was coping remarkably well. To both of their surprise, she and McCarthy remembered each other vaguely from being in the same lectures for various first and second year arts subjects. If they’d known that, she said, we could have been slotted onto the bill as a local band without the need for a political turf war - there had been serious acrimony on the student guild council over the lack of any local ‘student’ bands on the O-Week lineup. She and McCarthy exchanged histories in a hundred-mile-an-hour bullet-point conversation: currently she was
• working on her PhD in gender studies and inequality
• still active in student politics, hence her involvement in events coordination
• living in Paddington with a couple of girls who went to NIDA
• in a hurry but would catch us later, had we seen anyone who looked like they might be deusexmachina?

“Nice,” I said. “Bit intense, but nice.”

He laughed. “By my recollection, she’s mellowed,” he replied. “She used to be an absolute fucking hand grenade. Used to stand up in the middle of lectures and get right up old male academics for maintaining chauvinistic dogmas and repressing subversion of the dominant paternalistic paradigm, or something. Trust me, she’s much more reasonable now. And hotter. Used to have dreads. Made her look vaguely like Jay from Frenzal Rhomb.”

“That’s not attractive,” I commented. “Got the weight there?”

“I’m good,” he heaved as we backed a speakerbox through the doorway. “Maybe not so much now, don’t know - but back in the day she was positioned so far out on the left wing she should have been running the fuckin’ touchline with a flag in her hand. Militant, radical leftist causes, you name it she was in it - hard-core vegan, greenie, animal rights, international socialists. women’s rights, fights against poverty, homelessness, the whole deal.” We set the speakerbox down at side of stage. “Irony is, of course, she went to Abbotsleigh College and her dad’s a state Liberal MP. Always the way with these fuckin' well-off North Shore private school princesses, fuckin' telling you man…”

“What’s this about well-off North Shore private school princesses, Samuel McCarthy?” demanded a boisterous little female voice behind us. I knew that boisterous little female voice. So did McCarthy - he turned around so fast he crowned his head on the side of the speakerbox. Rebecca Townsend, boisterous little female to the stars, leapt into McCarthy’s arms like a gymnast sprinting towards a vaulting horse, except she didn’t flip over his shoulders and land on Phil’s drum riser. More the pity cos it would have been STELLAR. Once she’d disengaged from him, she swung around and gave me just as big a hug. Then proceeded to drop to the floor, turn to McCarthy and abuse the bejeezarse out of him for not telling herself or anyone else from the old Sydney crew that he was coming down, and in fact for cutting off all contact ever since he moved up to Brisbane. If not for a chance meeting with Super Dave in Randwick Coles last week, she’d never had known to sneak out of her NUTS rehearsal at the nearby student guild theatre and say hello. NUTS, the NSW Uni Theatrical Society, usually put on a performance in the first week of term as a teaser for the rest of the year, basically to attract new members out of the first-year influx.

Actually that was something that had pissed me off too. Not NUTS, though their performances were occasionally (OK, often) on the ropey side. McCarthy’s excommunication of Lena after the New Years debacle the previous year - well, to be fair on Unky Sam, the excommunication deal was a two-way street as near as I could tell - had meant not only burning all bridges between himself and the drama queens, but me and them as well. Granted, a lot of them were self-indulgent, self-obsessed tossers, but there were some cool people in their midst, including our Beck. And even then, some of the more ‘intense’ (read ‘punishing’) young actresses were compellingly gorgeous enough to make you prepared to set their ‘difficult’ reputations aside.

Beck perched herself on McCarthy’s amplifier and chatted while we hauled boxes around her. She’d missed out on getting into NIDA, for the third year running, but was trying to stay upbeat about it. She was still tossing up whether to defer year five of her three-year New South dramatic arts course, which she’d badly lost interest in (having deferred, skipped or failed various subjects over her years here). She couldn’t afford to keep sharing an apartment with Lena (or ‘my flatmate who you don’t get on with any more’ as she described her to McCarthy) and was probably going to have to move back home to Pymble with her parents. She’d applied for admission into WAPA (the Western Australian Performing Arts academy, Perth’s version of NIDA) but couldn’t stomach the idea of moving so far away from all her family and friends who cared about her...

McCarthy simply ducked the thinly-veiled left hook, and remarked benignly, “What can I say girl, this town’ll do that to you if you let it.”

“This town could use a fuckin’ match put to it,” corrected the Jeff, cursing his day to the heavens as he stormed in, steam issuing from both ears, after having been dropped off by Chris Kurtin in his rental car. His replacement rental car, that was. He and Kretin had been racing around the various venues on our whistle-stop tour of greater Sydney, running around putting up posters and meeting with venue owners. Scratch that. Jeff had been running around putting up posters while Kretin met with venue owners, most of which he seemed to be familiar with, or at least made a big show of being familiar with when Jeff was within earshot.

“The man’s less use than a busted arsehole,” he correctly surmised.

“Sorry, Beck. As you can see, my brother reserves his finest behaviour for around ladies. Jeff Young, Rebecca Townsend; Rebecca Townsend, Jeff Young.”

“Hi, Rebecca. As you can see,” he remarked, “my brother reserves his most patronising behaviour for when I’m around ladies.”

“Hi, great to meet you, Jeff,” she giggled, and wrapped him up in a big hug. The Jeff didn't do hugs. His expression was priceless: exactly what the fuck is going on here? We offered reassuring nods: yes, this is normal conduct for this one. “So do you play in the band as well?”

“Nah, I used to play a bit, but I’ve kinda given that up. Just here for the beer, really,” he admitted with a grin. “These slave-driving bastards have me shifting boxes instead.”

“So you’re the brawn, and… no, that doesn’t work, that would make Angus the brains, wouldn’t it.”

“Hey…” I poked Beck in the ribs. Knowing her record with men, it was probably the first decent poke she’d had in a while, though I suspected Jeff was hoping to remedy that. McCarthy recognised it too, and seemed to bristle in an oddly defensive way; I was pretty relaxed about any attempt on little Beck’s virtue by my ragged younger brother, knowing full-well he stood absolutely noooo chance with her whatsoever. My understanding was that Beck hadn’t let a boy get near her (emotionally or physically) in a long time, not since her first boyfriend mistreated her badly back in her tender years. Many had tried and failed since.

“No, that’s about right,” Jeff concurred. “Angus got the brains in the family, and I got the looks. Reckon we should both ask for our money back, yeah?”

We were on at eight. The energy was good; a vibrant background hum like an overloading power transformer. We were all feeling the nerves, but we weren’t nervous; we knew how important tonight could be, but we also knew how good we actually were. McCarthy had a look of steely determination to him that inspired confidence: when that guy was on form, we were in for a good night. I remembered the same glint in his eye, backstage before our SCU band comp ‘victory’ over Razorslash - he’d gone out and shredded like the ghost of Hendrix that night. He could pull out the big rock moves when he felt he had a point to prove.

We certainly seemed to be handling the pressure better than Emma-Kate from the student guild. She looked harried and haunted, flitting about here and there checking things, answering queries from panicked underlings, barking instructions down her walkie-talkie, and generally running around like a headless chook. As the background noise rose, she would pass on messages or instructions by putting a hand on your shoulder, leaning forward and talking to you solemly and methodically, like she was gently scolding a five-year-old: ‘Now, you know what you have to do next, Andrew?’ Mind you, I’d never been patronised so nicely in my life.

McCarthy was sitting on side of stage, idly working through some chord changes and solo ideas on his unplugged Les Paul copy, while the madness ensued around him. Emma-Kate knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Sam, is everything all right with you guys?”

“What, you mean mentally, hell no…” He quickly figured out that now wasn’t the time for witty quips. “We’re good to go, I believe.” He leant over her and put his hand on her other shoulder. “What about you, Emma-Kate? Is everything all right with you?”

“God, don’t ask,” she muttered. “Neither of the other two acts have clocked in yet, security are freaking out over venue capacity given the numbers of heads trying to get in, we’ve lost power to the cold storage room…”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll be all right. We’ve got your back.”

McCarthy’s words shouldn’t have been as reassuring as Emma-Kate seemed to find them. What were we going to do to save the day, race down to the Caltex servo on the corner in Kretin’s rental and pick up a bootload of ice?

No, McCarthy clarified; what we were going to do was climb on stage and rock this fuckin’ place to its architecturally-dubious circular foundations. And he looked as though he meant it, too.

Eight till eight-forty, Flange Gasket. Nine till ten, deuxexmachina. Ten-thirty till twelve, Grinspoon. And dodgy house DJ to fill in the gaps, as he was doing before eight. From the stage, shrouded in darkness, we could see the circular expanse of the dance floor was maybe a third full with tops-of-heads bopping up and down along with turgid modern dance, or just waiting around for something to happen; presumably there were plenty of folks still getting drinks out the front, or kicking back upstairs in the ‘soft furnishings’ bar.

Time to get them back out here where they belonged. The DJ pulled down his volume, the dance floor lighting dimmed, then came up on us. I glanced across at McCarthy; he had the look of evil to him, always a good sign. We punched into set opener Sketchy At Best with evangelical zeal, family-pet-scaring riffs peeling fresh paint off the walls. Before I knew it we were being applauded warmly and McCarthy and I were bantering by way of introduction to ourselves, our world view, and our good friend Harold Holt.

The best gigs are like the best parties or the best music festivals: my recollection is not much better than a blur. I remember it felt great, watching the steady stream of bobbing-head traffic into the room as we charged headlong through our set, studded with all our strongest, most upbeat numbers. McCarthy was using his wit and charm to chat up the audience just the same way he’d done with Angie or Sarah. I even busted out a kick-arse solo in Ode to Joy; apparently you can teach an elephant to tap-dance. After thirty-six minutes of the above, we’d managed to pack the floor with eager young things keen to shake their stuff; unfortunately we were just about to run out of stuff ourselves, or at least our set allocation of time.

“Cheers folks… we have been Flange Gasket, we’re all around the city of Sydney over the next week so check us out… we’re gonna leave you in the capable hands of Deus Ex Machina…”

“Angus please, this is an educated audience - it’s Latin, so it’s dey-uss, not doose. Or douche, or whatever the fuck you said.”

“Sorry folks. Dey-uss.”

“Deyyyyy-uss. Deyyy-eyyy-eyyy-uss,” he sang. “Dey-uss come and we gotta get off…”

“Fucking Christ that’s bad. Just play your guitar and shut up,” I told him.

“Hey Angus - just out of interest, who’s your favourite guitarist of all time?”

“Funny you should ask,” I began, as Phil’s intro drum fill kicked in.

The DJ was back on, spinning his wheels of steel, and we were ‘backstage’ (basically an area at the back of the massive circular hall which was cordoned off with barrier fencing shrouded with black shadecloth, into which Emma-Kate’s team had hurriedly shifted some tables, chairs and a few couches from the upstairs bar - we’d been lugging-in while the whole assemblage had been constructed.) The Flange Gasket entourage was camped on one of the couches and a couple of folding chairs in a corner, around a coffee table scattered with questionable union catering nibblies and half-finished bottles of Uncle Ted, all works in progress. Kretin was attempting to spoil the self-congratulatory tone by demanding to know why we hadn’t mentioned where and when we’d be playing over the next week. We’d missed a valuable opportunity, he told us, through our lack of professionalism, our inattention to detail, etc… I faded his levels down in my head. He was such a pathetic little gobshite sometimes. The rest of the time he was asleep.

The Jeff excused himself and went off to find the lovely Rebecca and company out amongst the teeming unwashed masses. I vaguely considered joining him, but the free Teds and nibbles won the argument. You will have learned by now that I’m easily bought. The Duffer had cornered Grinspoon’s drummer Joe and had instigated one of those fantastically interesting conversations drummers have about being drummers, usually involving discussion of the relative merits of different cymbal manufacturers, comparing the number of sticks each had broken in the past week, exchanging tips on lightbulb changing techiques, and whinging about how noone else in their bands (or anywhere else on Earth for that matter) respected the intrinsic art and mastery of drumming. Kretin went off to hassle some other bastard. Marty went outside to call his mother and tell her he was doing fine and that noone had stolen Dad’s Landcruiser yet. McCarthy and I scrambled into the vacated couch positions, clinked our half-empty beers and kicked back.

“Nice work if you can get it,” he remarked.

“Yeah. Still have to lug all that shit back to the truck though,” I reminded him.

“Cheers, Captain Positive.” He drained his beer. “Earlier we start, the earlier we can get back to drinking, I guess… nah fuck it, let’s wait for the others to get back, we can lug out during Deus Against The Machina’s set.”

So it was agreed. McCarthy scanned the backstage throng - clearly these cheap little laminated passes weren’t that hard to lay hands on - for anyone who might be interested in getting him another beer.

“Oh, shit,” he remarked. “Perfect timing. And yes… she’s recognised us and is coming over. Motherfucker.”

I craned my head around to see what ghost from the past had caught his eye.

Oh, I thought, swallowing my surprise. Right. This’ll be interesting.

The tall dark-haired girl swept through the crowd like a hot knife through I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Her long hair tied back in a ponytail, the green access pass around her neck casually drawing attention to her impressive curves as it swung on its lanyard, she emerged from the gloom like an overdue underground train. Except without quite so much of the hissing and screeching of metal-on-metal.

“Hey,” Lena said. “Long time no see.”

I ambled to my feet and accepted her warm hug of welcome. She gave good hug - very different to the patented ‘psychotic koala’ assault of her flatmate, but appreciably warm, firm and soft. I said hi, and that it was great to see her again. Apparently I was speaking for both of us; McCarthy didn’t budge from the couch. When I glanced back at him he was immersed in texting someone on his phone. He nodded, offering a distracted Yeah hi, how’s it going without looking up.

“Quite well, thanks Sam,” she replied evenly. “How about yourself?”

“Excellent,” he emphasised pleasantly. “Fab-fucking-o since I escaped this shithole.”

“Take a seat,” I offered. “How’ve you been?”

“Good, good,” she replied, not really meaning it. “What about you guys though? I mean, wow, I never realised you guys played, let alone had a band that could go off like that…”

McCarthy looked up from his Morse code with a quizzical expression. “That pass around your neck says Media, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah…”

“Well,” he posed, “not to tell you how to do your job, but I’d have reckoned you’d have done your research beforehand and figured that shit out for yourself?”

“I meant,” she backpedalled, “it’s a surprise to see you guys here again so soon.”

“We’re full of surprises, Lena.” His mobile sounded off; he checked the message. “Hey, what you up to babe?” he grinned at the screen. “Angie says hi,” he told me.

Dude, I thought, if you were any more transparent you’d be the round window on Play School.

Taken a little aback (to put it mildly) by McCarthy’s cool, dismissive tone, she asked, “Sam… could I possibly talk to you in private for a moment?”

I started to get up; I would have been glad to escape the situation at that moment, trust me. But McCarthy slapped a hand on my shoulder and said that anything she had to say, he was very happy for me to hear as well, as I knew the background story just as well as either of them. I got the distinct impression McCarthy wanted a referee for this particular fight. With a shrug, I sat down again. Wished I hadn't the moment my arse touched cushion, of course.

“Now, what do you want to talk to me about, Lena?” he asked pointedly, staring her down from the couch as she fidgeted uncomfortably and shot him the dirtiest of dirty looks.

“Well, Sam, I just wanted to say,” she began tentatively - she was never this awkward, and he seemed to be thrilled to see that she was - “that I’m sorry that things didn’t work about between us… and for my actions surrounding that.”

Mate, what are you doing? You don’t take pot shots at someone waving a white flag, no matter how badly you’ve been nuked previously.

McCarthy seemed to take his time digesting this. His silence bade her to continue.

“…And I guess I just wanted to know… wanted to ask… whether we could be friends again.”

Come on, buddy. Pull finger. It’s your chance to shine now, kid. Tell her what you’ve wanted to tell her all these years. She wants to hear it, just say it.

Again, McCarthy lingered, steepling his fingers like Monty Burns. Finally, he glanced up at her, and smiled.

“Nah. Got enough friends, thanks all the same.”

I sank even lower into the couch, thinking: Not that, you stupid bastard…

Rescue of sorts came in the form of Emma-Kate Caldwell, who bustled into our circle out of breath and apologetic. “Sorry guys… Sam, can I talk to you for a moment real quick?”

“Sure E-K, no problem,” he said, getting to his feet and following her into a quieter corner of the backstage area, with the merest hint of a sly backwards glance to the pair of us.

I looked at Lena with an apologetic shrug, but no words. She took a long time to say anything herself. “Well that went about as well as could be expected,” she finally said, darkly. “Think I’ll go hide under a rock.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s changed, since he’s been back home. And not all the changes are necessarily positive.”

“So why should you be sorry?”

“Because,” I admitted, “I’m probably responsible for encouraging the worst of it. Like drinking large amounts of alcohol, fraternizing with women, and getting himself fired from the Northern Star.” The latter was a blatant diversion I hoped she’d pick up on and not ask about the former, but no such luck.

“This Angie,” she inquired, “she’s the current fuck, I presume?”

“Uh, yes and no. She’s an ex, but a very friendly one,” I replied. “To be honest, he’s got a few on the go at the moment, I haven’t really been keeping track…” Yeah good. Stuff you say, then realise just as you've said it, how inappropriate it is to say, but can’t reel back in… arrrghh.

“And Joy?” she asked ironically. “The girl who served more than Maccas, who might she be?” She had done her research. Or listened carefully to the lyrics in the opening set, anyway.

“It’s not you, if that’s what you’re thinking. McCarthy wrote the song, but it’s definitely not about you. Everyone seems to think that,” I said, then hurriedly clarified: “Every girl seems to think it’s about themselves…” Was that better? How was that better? “No, it’s about his ex-girlfriend.”

“Same one as before, or another one entirely?”

“Another…” I was running out of feet to stick in my mouth. “Lena, look, I’d rather not talk about this. There's no benefit in having this discussion. You don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want to be the one telling you.”

Our attention was diverted to the pair in the corner. Emma-Kate, clearly distressed, was resting her head on McCarthy’s shoulder, and he was warmly providing a ‘consoling’ hug. Some of his hand placements were a little inappropriate, strictly speaking...

On any other night, I realised, I’d have been silently cheering for him. I’d created a monster.

“It’s not your fault,” she protested weakly.

“It is, really,” I asserted. “I’m the one who kept telling him for four years that he needed to get out there and have a shot, rather than sitting on the sidelines commentating. Now that the band thing’s forging ahead… I mean, you know the music scene, lead guitarists are never the least popular people with the girls after a gig, are they? You could be Lucky Grills on a bad day and still go alright.” I almost said ‘you’d still be beating them away with a stick’ but was trying very hard to self-censor. “He’s getting a bit carried away with all the attention, basically.”

“Four years,” she repeated. She kept picking up on the things I was hoping she wouldn’t. “That’s just lovely. Are you’re telling me there was noone else the whole time, that he really was just waiting for me or whatever… Jesus Christ,” she cursed. “I was so sure he just wasn’t telling me, that he was playing deliberately vague, the secretive, manipulative fucker… She produced a half-empty pack of Alpines and lit one up, after I’d declined her offer. Exhaling bitterly, she observed, “Reasonably safe to say he’s no longer fucking waiting, yeah?”

Shouldn’t the God in the machine be descending from the clouds onto mainstage right about now? I’d have appreciated any distraction I could rustle up at that point. My beer was empty, Jeff was out there surrounded by a bunch of judgement-impaired lovelies and I wasn’t, and it was my fault McCarthy would rather inflict pain on Lena than kiss-and-make-up. ‘Poor, stupid, deluded bastard’ was his current phrase of choice when talking retrospectively about his previous life, about the Sam McCarthy who’d lived in Sydney. ‘Poor, stupid, deluded bastard with negligible clue about reality whatsoever’ was the extended 12’’ dance remix. And hell hath no fury like a man with negligible clue scorned.

Aforesaid poor stupid deluded bastard was suddenly standing over us; he clapped his hands together, his variation on Kretin’s attention-securing point ‘n’ click approach. I'd tried telling him that every time he did it, God killed a kitten, but he wasn't a cat person and hence didn't give a fuck.

“Great set break. Ready to go out again?” he declared. “Deus of Thunder are a no-show. No idea why, but Emma-Kate has no act two to keep the animals entertained until Grinspoon go on, and she’s apoplectic. Which is where we get to be heroes. Now, do you wanna disappoint all those lovely people and possibly cause a riot, or shall we venture back into the night and set some fuckin’ amplifiers a-smokin’?” He glanced over at Lena, who was steadfastly observing the end of her cigarette. “Not that I’d want to condone smoking, of course… filthy habit.”

“Uh, shouldn’t we run this past Chris first?” I suggested. “He’d probably want to negotiate a revised fee with the organisers, given that we’re playing for twice as long…”

“Come on Angus, what kind of mercenary image would that project when we’re trying to make an impression in the big city? Anyway, even if they double our fee, two times fuck-all is still fuck-all, by my maths. Look, I’ll go find Marty and Phil - do you reckon you could detach your brother from this one’s flatmate so he could shift some gear on our behalf?”

He disappeared into the throng, leaving me with more questions to answer.

“Appears that Rebecca has taken a shine to my brother,” I confirmed.

“To what end?” she asked, defensively.

“Not sure,” I said. “But if he mistreats her, rest assured, I will smack him into next week.”

“If he does, the queue will begin directly behind me, so get in line,” she replied.