The singer songwriter blues

Well I can really tell my bandmates are startin' to worry 'bout me
I'm doin things with my facial hair, reminiscin' 1973
Listenin' to the Eagles and Steely Dan even the ones you ain't supposed to like
Got myself dolled up in a sharp white suit like Dylan at the Isle Of Wight

An' I'm takin' it all so serious now, so complex, won't leave a clue
I got the age old sack o' shit singer songwriter blues
Yeah the age old solid gold singer songwriter blues

I'm sacrificing happiness for a fat royalty cheque
Nonchalantly shoved in my pocket, but banked the first chance I get
Stay up late night drinkin' bourbon 'n' orange, feelin' all safe and snug
That I ain't out sharin' my life or my time or my precious recreational drugs

An' I'm takin' it all so serious now, so complex, won't leave a clue
I got the age old bullet hole singer songwriter blues
Yeah the age old where's my towel singer songwriter blues

The ways and means
Have got me guaranteed...
Oh feel my pain!

Now age it shall not weary them who shuffle in between the times
Who cares bout what's the latest thing when you can steal yer loved ones' lives
And turn them into cheap tomes that may not reach the heart
But sound real good with 3 chord changes and a sequestered string chart.

An' I'm takin' it all so serious now, so complex, won't leave a clue
I got the age old don't call singer songwriter blues
Yeah the age old bleedin' heart, where's my line, feel my art, somethin' rhymin' with orange...
Singer songwriter blues

- Tim Rogers and the Temperance Union, 2005

I'd seen Marty throw up before gigs. Turn pale, then white, then green, then Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Not always because of dodgy roadside eats en route to the venue, either. Back in the day, throughout the Gasket’s playing career, he’d been invariably frantic with nerves before gigs. Even on his better days, i.e. when we'd managed to get him to down a quiet or two with the rest of us between soundcheck and curtain-up, you could see the mild panic in his eyes, a kind of high-frequency quivering. We suspected he emitted sounds only dogs could hear. We also knew that changes to programme were absolutely verboten; he’d be thrown by the slightest variation to normal scheduling, and toy-pram dissociation events were always on the cards. Had Phil's AWOLness for final practice and qualifying happened prior to a proper name-brand Flange Gasket show back in the day, he’d have been apoplectic with anxiety.

And yet...

Yet here Marty was, slouched in a deckchair, feet up on the balcony railing, idly cradling an Uncle Ted in a grotty old Honda Indy 300 stubbie cooler which had once spent three solid, sweaty and continuous days around Super Dave's hairy wrist (Dave never left his beer full long enough to get warm, making the thing effectively redundant.) Triple J's troubadour du jour was kicking back, shooting the breeze with us lot of unwashed munters while the sun set over the back of the ridge, and looking most contented about his lot, not giving the remotest bugger that we were about to play the most shambolic show in Australian rock history to a half-empty room of disinterested, snotty-nosed, emo-fringed adolescents who wished we were the Presets or someone else less old and shit than us.

If anyone was showing nerves it was probably the Jeff - this wasn’t his show, wasn’t even his band, the drummer who was from his band was letting the side down (not that it was his fault, we were well aware how busted-arse useless the Duffer was with schedules), the arrangements for tonight were Sketchy At Best (so just to be sure, we decided to put it in the set list)… and under it all, he’d never been keen on the spotlight. Here he was the late reserve-team sub taking the place of the absent star striker, and despite being far more match-fit than me, was always going to be the one whose presence in the starting side was queried. He didn’t say so much as a word along those lines of course, but we’d known each other thirty years and some shit didn’t need to be said. As for me, I obviously wasn’t showing nerves, because I’m hewn from granite and cannot be harmed by mortal means. The fact that I’d spent an hour fretting histrionically about what frigging T-shirt to wear was completely unrelated to any paralysing fear I was suffering. I'd since prescribed myself a teaspoon of concrete and a big glass of harden-the-fuck-up.

“Here we are,” remarked the Jeff with a little relief, as a silvery car-shaped object loomed from the dusk and crossed his peripheral vision below eyeline. But no, unless Phil had traded his fulleh siiiick R34 GT-R for a metallic beige Camry - where the hell were you when I needed you five years ago dodging the cops on the way back to the farm? - this wasn’t the Duffer. The Toyota eased to a halt out the front of my place, and out strode a tall, weary looking figure with long, dark, unruly hair.

“I asked for a Mazda 6,” Lena declared. “Fucking typical, yeah?”

“Nah, that’s about right,” I called back. “The beige Camry of rock journos, that’s you to a tee…”

“I’d tell you to fuck off, but there are children present,” she replied. I think she meant the neighbours, who were craning over the opposing balcony (which hardly looked structural at the best of times) at every new arrival or further development at my place and text-updating merry hell out of the occasion.

“Hey don’t knock them, that’s our audience,” remarked Marty wryly. Recognising the face attributed to the blonde head which had recently appeared from the passenger side of the car - one which I was trying very hard to put a name to, unsuccessfully - he called down to her. “Hey Steve, how’s everything going?”

Steve (which seemed to be a fucking stupid name for such a babe, but hey, I don't make this shit up) smiled demurely and waved. She didn’t look the sort of girl who lowered herself to shouting up at drunk men on balconies - even if they’d only had two or three beers across the afternoon (honest) and even if, as it turned out, it was partly within her job description to babysit them for the evening. At a glance she exuded professionalism and cool - for starters she was more responsibly dressed than any of us, in a fitted white blouse and black business pants, tote bag slung over her shoulder, black square-rimmed glasses. At a glance, you can probably take as read, I was reasonably smitten. Formal introductions had to wait until both made it upstairs, however. She was tall - taller than me, which I'm a sucker for, getting Brooke flashbacks - and she moved through the heat haze like the 35-plus temperatures were a figment of our imaginations; they simply didn't apply to her. She smiled coolly; her handshake was cool, too. "Daniela Selinic. Friends call me Danno." I took that to mean she wanted to be friends. That made two of us.

"Steve and Danno?" I observed with a smirk, to which Marty offered a sheepish grin. One or two Radio Birdman tracks had almost made the setlist for tonight. "Hello, or should that be Aloha?"

She smiled again. Yessss. She got the reference. (She should, her boss used to play shows with Birdman back in the day.) Today just got even more awesomer, and I'm not even drunk yet.

Daniela Selinic had been blessed with a cool, unflappable demeanour which made her ideal for her current job: herding cats. Or, as it was officially known, A&R for Exocet Records. Which meant not only dealing with the whims and vagrancies of mercurial, mind-addled musos, but their Machiavellian minders and managers. Mmmm. However, she dealt with the machine-gun onslaught of sharp queries from Maddy re tonight’s arrangements - everything from what time we were getting on, to what kind of mineral water was on the backstage rider (‘Heineken,’ I hoped, the Extra Dry having started to grate after a while), to what the hell Richardson was playing at with the promotional material, she had a good mind to cancel the gig altogether until Marty had talked her out of it, etc etc etc. It was like watching a Test debutant facing up to a barrage of chin music from Curtly Ambrose, but Caitlin ducked, swayed and fended her way through it all and emerged unscathed at the other end, not out at stumps. And not only had she sorted Heineken, but proper imported Heineken, not the shit they were brewing under licence in Lidcombe. That was attention to detail (and doing her research.) She'd earned my respect.

Maddy smiled. She’d earned her respect, too. “I’m glad he sent you, Daniela,” she said. Maddy didn't do nicknames. Which was why none of us were stupid enough to call her 'Maddy' to her face. “You’re clearly the most competent person in the whole organisation. What on Earth are they going to do when they lose you?”

“I’m sure the boss will manage somehow,” Daniela replied pleasantly. “He always did before.”

“We’re off, then,” Maddy declared, unanimously. The Royal 'we' presumably. “Back to the hotel to prepare ourselves for the show. We can leave the truck here in case you need it for lugging-in, as long as you bring it back here and keep it locked up here rather than at the venue.” I wondered if Maddy was even cogniscent of the fact we did actually expect Marty to help carry his own shit, given that there was no crew here to do it for us. “Meet you there, say around half-seven, just before soundcheck, OK?”

Marty shook his head, and said he’d better stay here to catch the Duffer before the show. And yes he DID intend to go out dressed like that, and no he couldn’t see why there was a problem with that. Maddy, bemused by Marty’s sudden lack of fashion sense as much as his insolence, made her excuses and left, with a veiled warning for him not to be rolling drunk the next time she saw him.

“It’s all under control,” he remarked good-naturedly, as the door closed behind her. To my quizzical look, he added, “Don’t stress, it’s all good. She knows it’s different rules for tonight compared to usual gigs. Different… pre-match rituals, yeah?” He held up his bottle, which we ‘cheersed’ with a clinking of glass.

“So what, you and Imogen and Bruce Reid and the boys don’t get on the turps talking complete bollocks before Vanity Project shows then?”

Marty shook his head with a grin. “Reid’s been clean for a good few years now. I don’t even think he drinks full-strength coffee these days.”

“Sorry, Daniela,” I said, realising we were completely ignoring our new guest, “can we get you anything?”

“No, that’s fine,” she said breezily. “I’m due back at the venue shortly, Lena suggested I might want to meet you guys before the show, so we’re not all strangers. I know Marty and Maddy, of course, but the rest of you only by reputation…”

“Uh, great,” I replied. “Given it’s Richie who’s been describing our reputations, we should be worried, yeah?”

Daniela reflected carefully on her reply. “Let’s just say my boss did make sure I was comprehensively briefed.”

“Which you’ve followed very well, as near as I can tell - sounds like everything’s by the book?”

“Not entirely. Greg wanted the promotional material to read ‘Marty di Biagini and Flange Gasket’… plus a promotional tag-line for the upcoming best-of album… but knowing how that would have been received, I managed to talk him out of that.”

“Wise move,” Marty remarked. “Don’t think my boss would have approved.”

“You sure we can’t get you anything?” I pursued.

“Thanks, but no… like Madonna, I really need to get back to the venue.” A slightly exasperated look. Only slightly. “I also need to find five minutes to get back to my place for a shower at some point, I can’t say your weather is agreeing with me.”

“Where are you staying?” An ironic grin creased my mouth. “Richie’s sparing no expense, no doubt?”

“Ah, an on-site van at the local caravan park?”

A little laugh of affirmation. A very cute little laugh of affirmation.

“Sounds like Richie,” I laughed. “Has it at least got an ensuite?” She nodded. “He’s moving up in the world. Seriously though, you’re welcome to stay here if you like, you’re part of the family now…”

Caitlin shook her head. “Like I said, my boss did make sure I was comprehensively briefed. Particularly about you, Andrew,” she added, with a knowing smile. An all-knowing smile. And with that, she left.

After all these years, my reputation still precedes me.

“Gents… and Lena [who’d been raiding my red wine cellar again]… a toast,” I proposed. “To the show. And to your girl Danno. I haven’t been shot down in flames as nicely as that in years.”

Clinkies.

Lena knelt down next to my deckchair and mused conspiratorially, “You’re lacking one piece of the puzzle there, boyo.”

“What’s that?”

We watched Daniela slide behind the wheel of the commandeered Camry, and disappear down the street.

“You know Richie Richardson remarried a few years back?”

I’d heard, vaguely. And said as much.

“Well, as part of the package, he ended up with a free set of adolescent stepkids,” Lena explained. “The eldest you’ve just had the pleasure of meeting.”

“Ah,” I replied. Because it was about all I could come up with.

“Look, don’t mention I said anything… you know what the Richardsons are like about nepotism.”

I did. Anytime Richie felt such a perception was possible - whether it was himself in the past editing Drum Media as well as running Exocet out of the spare bedroom in his inner-city terrace, or Lena writing articles about her boyfriend’s band, or even McCarthy working for the paper when we were getting established in Sydney - his response was to work twice as hard (or make you work twice as hard) to counteract any speculation, real or imagined. No doubt Danno had earned her stripes.

“She’s very good,” Marty offered, unsolicited. “Well organised, level-headed, responsible and reliable, particularly when things are going to shit and need last-minute sorting, as you all know often happens with dodgy venues and promoters. She’s exactly what you want out of an A&R rep.”

“‘Taking all the band’s money and sticking it up your nose’, what about that bit?”

“Not so much,” Marty noted, with a wry grin at the mention of our former Intercom ‘minder’. “Nah, she’s excellent. It’ll be a pity if she does go. Sounds like her mind’s set on a Europe OE, but Richie could do with hanging onto her. Exocet... it’s really too big these days for him to do it all himself - being so hands-on, running the company and doing all the A&R stuff - but he’s been doing it so long...”

“And, like most self-made men, he can’t let anyone else do anything because he’s a control freak,” I added.

Cue our uncontrolled freak. Grinning like a loon, as ever.

“The hell have you been, Duff?” The Jeff interrogated.

The Duffer looked around the room. “Had to go into town to pick up some gear I’d left behind,” he explained, and held up a cardboard box - thin, about a foot long, a few inches square, black, and emblazoned with the logo of a prominent brand of drum equipment. Oh OK, Pearl. Not that I’m going to get a kickback or anything, dammit.

“It’s a bit hard to play drums without drumsticks, I’ve found,” he noted sheepishly.

So Phil packed up his kit, and his new drumsticks, while the rest of us pondered how to get our gear down to the venue without attracting the attention of the local RBT units. Wish we’d thought of that before we started that second carton of Teds, hey.

“I can drive,” Lena replied. “I’ve only had half a glass. And Danno’s on her way back as well, she figured she’d be needed for chauffeur duty. She’s across it. She’s across everything.”

She was, too. That I didn't doubt. By Christ, the girl was organised. With that, I proposed another toast to Danno. It wouldn’t be the last for the evening. I shudder to think what a complete fucking shambles (yes, that’s our word for the day, kids) the night would have turned into without her input.

We loaded Phil’s kit into the back of the Falcon ute - Lena seemed a little disappointed Phil wasn’t keen to give her the keys to the GT-R, apparently because he wasn’t sold on the idea of leaving it around the back of the surf club all evening with hordes of pissed teenagers milling about, though apparently my shitbox ute was expendable - and Lena and Phil motored away towards the venue…. after Phil had spent twenty minutes carefully repacking, padding and strapping the kit after we’d already loaded it into the tray, his selective OCD kicking in at that point. As it ALWAYS did.

Daniela emerged from the lengthening dusk on foot, looking fresh and gorgeous after her quick shower, though in more gig-friendly gear - skinny jeans, white Exocet Records logo T-shirt, access pass dangling coquettishly on a lanyard around her neck. I focused on my physical responsibilities, trying to ignore the fact I’d become instantly, acutely envious of her showerhead. And her towel. And her loofah… Richie’s stepdaughter, I reminded myself. Then again, it could be worse. She could have been Richie’s actual daughter.

Marty, for his part, seemed to relish the DIY nature of this gig; he even looked happy to be lugging-in. On his own shows, of course, this sort of stuff was left to underlings - he hadn’t actually had to haul gear into a venue himself since long before Capt’n Snooze, Macgyver and the Jeff joined the Gasket road crew. And the novelty didn’t even wear off when Phil dropped an amp on his foot. He did, however, invent four new swear words.

“If your international football career wasn’t over before, it is now,” I offered.

“Nah, I’m good,” he said. “It’s only a flesh wound.” Actually, with his manicured ‘fro, Meditteranean complexion and light blue shirt, he looked a little reminiscent of Alex Brosque from Sydney FC (if he hasn’t been sold at time of press.) Maybe there was hope for an international recall after all.

Courtesy Marty bringing half of a music shop with him, once the mining company Rodeo was packed, it was packed. As in, there was just about enough room to fit someone in the driver’s pew and maybe even someone else beside them on the bench.

“Now by my simple maths,” I began, “we ain’t all going to fit in that thing.”

“You went to university, didn’t you.” remarked Marty. “Screw it, it’s a nice evening, let’s leg it.”

“You sure? I mean, what about your hordes of screaming pre-pubescent fans?”

“Pre-pubescent? What do I look like, Hilary Duff?”

“Mate, if you looked like Hilary Duff, we’d have a very different sort of relationship...”

Marty pulled a face. “That's wrong. Not sure I want you walking with me, you’d better go in the truck!”

“No way, I’m not sure I trust him either,” Daniela deadpanned.

“I’ll ride shotgun, if you like,” the Jeff volunteered. With a casual wave of his wedding ring hand, he added, “Don’t worry Danno, I’m the responsible married one out of us who Richie would have told you about. In his comprehensive briefing.”

“From my recollection, I’m pretty sure he said you were worse… but I’ll take your word for it.”

I liked her sense of humour. Actually I just liked the fact she HAD a sense of humour. I knew certain other slender, attractive, highly efficient blonde girls who lacked one entirely. Anyway, the Jeff and Daniela closed all the doors and battened down all the hatches, before the big white ship (or perhaps more like a chest freezer on wheels, and was crammed full accordingly) sailed away down the street, its red taillights winking in the encroaching darkness.

“Actually,” considered Marty, “given that he’s supposed to be our delegated sub for Sam…”

I considered his point. “Yeah, she probably should be worried, if he’s taking the role seriously. Particularly if it’s late-era Sam...”

Marty thought for a bit. “Shouldn’t it be Lena who’s worried?” he grinned.

“Well, yeah. Reckon he might be taking it a bit seriously,” I reflected. “Jeff’s already nailing her former BFF - sounds a lot like something late-era McCarthy would have tried…”

Night had descended. It hadn't so much fallen as emerged by stealth. Houselights were on, illuminating the shadows of people wilfully and blatantly having a Good Time. Music and barbeques wafted down the street; cheerfully inebriated teens and toolies regarded each other warmly as they wandered past. And on past experience, it was relatively quiet in my street - other streets, with a larger percentage of holiday houses, would be rowdier. And probably more heavily populated with Marty’s target demographic - so it was just as well he had this grumpy old bastard as security. Marty's regular security chief, Major Havock hadn't made the trip. He was a Schoolies parent this year and was spending the week posted by the phone expecting the worst.

“Yeah, there’s enough of us,” Marty conceded. “Probably enough for a football team.”

“The Sad Solo Singer Songwriter Selection?”

“Something like that. Though I'd prefer Troubadour FC.”

On the walk, in between shout-outs to and from (mostly from) random passers-by, and the occasional stop-off to be told that ‘youse are fucken awsm ay and fucken hope youse go good tonight cos youse are good cunts’ or near offer (why thank you, Reverend), we settled on a team lineup.

Tim Rogers as manager, picked himself. Alex Lloyd in goal (insert ‘they’d need to widen the goalmouth’ jokes here). Back four of Pete Murray (though he was more a rugby player), Jack Johnson, David Gray and Paul Dempsey. The English have always had a history of producing wingers (and whingers); we figured Jameses Blunt and Morrison (not the trumpeter) could cover either role. Marty had not-very-bashfully put himself down as lead striker at the point of what was turning out to be a 4-5-1 with the Poms playing wide (as was Lloydie, after a fashion); he’d proposed a three-man all-Australian midfield of Darren Hanlon, Josh Pyke and Bob Evans…

“Didn’t he host Perfect Match?”

“Nah, you remember, from Jebediah…”

“Christ, they on the bandwagon too now?”

“Yeah, we’re all cashing in. It’s colour by numbers, churning this stuff out,” moaned the put-upon artist sarcastically. “Piece of piss, this.” Did that make him a put-upon piss-artist?

“Ah, you love it. Can’t tell me you’d rather be playing three-chord thrashes in sweaty, nasty little rock fleapits. You’re earning shitloads more than we ever did, individually or as a group. And you attract a much nicer class of fan too. Definitely a gender imbalance there…”

“How the hell does that help me?” Marty grinned. “Nah, you’re right. It’s not exactly a difficult life, yeah?”

“Yeah, I can’t really see you crying yourself to sleep in your penthouse apartment next to your millionaire girlfriend with your BMW keys clutched in your hand... which screws you totally, I reckon. You’re too fuckin' happy. All those other bastards have their own personal misery to dwell upon for material. James Blunt served with the UN in Kosovo, Tim Rogers’ wife and kid left him, Paul Dempsey was in Something For Kate…”

“And, don’t forget, Pete Murray had to play rugby for Queensland. In public. There’s misery, and then there’s man's complete fucking inhumanity to man.”

At which point we were interrupted by a giggle of teenage girls - I believe that’s the correct collective noun - who surrounded Marty like a lynching party and pleaded with him to sign their T-shirts, RTD cans, bare skin and anything else available that an indelible marker could scribe an autograph on. They were all of seventeen, if that, and clearly didn’t have the remotest fucking clue who I was. Then again I deserved some form of punishment for the largely filthy thoughts I was having at their expense, so it was all swings and roundabouts. On the swings, then on the roundabout. Yeah baby… Christ on a bike, I needed to get out more.

“I mean… commercially, financially, it’s a massive success. Artistically, though… fuck I’m a wanker, have a listen to me... Autistically,” he continued, giggling, “it’s a bit limiting.”

“I thought that was the reason you fucked off from Gasket?”

“Yeah, that was it. Not because we were all going to bloody well kill each other if we stuck around, it was the artistic limitations… And fair enough, the electronica thing was pretty self-indulgent, but there’s only so many ways you can write a guitar-and-string-section song about breaking up with someone, particularly if you’ve been in a relationship for seven years.”

“Seven years? Where’s that ring, by the way?” I chided.

“You can fuck off right off,” he suggested wryly. “Look, it’s not a big thing…”

“I’ve heard that,” I interceded. “In fact I think I saw it on the internet.”

“Fuck off. Look, say, what if I happened to want to write a great big fuck-off rock song. What am I gonna do with that then? How's that ever gonna get to see the light of day?”

“When have you ever wanted to write a great big fuck-off rock song, Martin?” I mused.

He looked a little sheepish.

“I get riffs in my head,” he contended, “just like any of you other fuckers... OK, fuck the hypotheticals. I have written a great big fuck-off rock song. I think. Or at least something far too loud and offensive to fit on any album of mine. Got the riff, Got a decent swag of lyrics… reasonably smutty, as you'd hope... I just don’t know what to do with it. Maddy thinks I’d be insane to release it, she thinks it’s so bad it’s a career-ender.”

“Usually an absolute guarantee of rock gold, yeah?” I remarked. “Has it got a name?”

He looked a little more sheepish. Any more so and he’d start getting propositioned by Welshmen, or New Zealanders. Sorry, Hayabusa.

“Beef Week Queen,” he admitted.

As I began laughing, he tried to explain that it was just like the Beach Boys’ California Girls, except… it was about the Beef Week Queen. Apparently Imogen’s partner Gerard, a documentary filmmaker, was just finishing post on a fly-on-the-wall doco following various hopefuls in Casino’s Beef Week Queen pageant. This to my knowledge is the only beauty pageant where winners are assessed not on their form in a swimsuit or their hopes for world peace, but their knowledge of their favourite breed of beef cattle. Marty, who’d agreed to write a theme song for the film, had already seen a pre-release cut of the film and reckoned it was hilarious. It was called Real Girls Eat Meat, which according to Marty was a T-shirt worn by Jessica Simpson which triggered a celebrity spat between her and PETA spokesmuppet Pamela Anderson earlier in the year. Marty knew well that was exactly the sort of vacuous Hollywood bollocks I spent my days actively avoiding. I had doubts about his man’s intent, it probably wasn’t that sympathetic to the Cletuses involved. “Just some inner-city wanker with interpretive facial hair taking the piss out of rural inbreds, yeah?”

“Nah, it’s done very affectionately. You’d like it. It’s a bit like The Castle or Kenny, I guess, except it's genuinely a doco. Gerry’s a rural inbred anyway, he’s from Rockhampton, which is why he’s interested in cattle… not like that you dodgy bastard. It’s really just a microcosm of rural life and how things are changing and traditions are dying off and all that, and how your inner city wankers with interpretive facial hair are arguing how carbon-intensive beef farming is with respect to global warming, which on one hand has its merits, but on the smaller scale endangers the livelihoods of people like the families of the entrants.” Or like, erm, Marty's family. He had a horse in this race too. “And of course there’s a discussion of the deeper issues beneath the Casino-Rocky Beef Capital rivalry... Anyway he needed a song to go with it, and I had this riff, and I came up with all these stupid lyrics after a few too many drinks at a dinner party one night at his and Imogen’s… look, it’s a bucket of shit really, I was hoping to get someone who actually knew how to write hairy-arsed rock songs to take a look at it.” He looked at me, self-deprecatingly. “Know anyone with any sort of form with that stuff?”

I didn’t think I was that drunk - and indeed I wasn’t - but it did take me a while to figure out that he did actually mean me.

“I know some people who know some people,” I offered.

“Look, remind me to email you a MP3 of what I’ve got so far when I get back home. The vocal’s a little… I dunno… Andrew W.K.? Down a well? With his balls in a crab trap?”

“Good place for him,” I suggested.

“Anyway it sucks balls, so just ignore that, and the rest is all synthesized so it’s pretty fucking pox too, but if you can cast your expert eye over it, or your expert ear, or whatever appendage you use - I don’t know, I’m no expert in this area, but I’m hoping it all stays hygienic - and let me know... that would be choice bro.”

A couple more shout-outs and autograph stops later we emerged at the bottom of the hill. The streets, even at this relatively early hour of the evening (seven-ish, late dusk) were teeming with life. Somehow, I’d walked down to the surf club and had ended up in the middle of Hell’s Own Big Day Out, half an hour before gates-open time. The surf club was cordoned off with fencing, but at this stage there were no signs whatsoever of massed crowds pressing against the chicken wire desperately trying to get in (or out, once they heard us play). Still, if someone did actually turn up, they had the logistics sorted tenfold. Cops, security and official Schoolies Week ‘helpers’ in garish polo shirts (vaguely reminiscent of the fucking hideous Olympic volunteer shirts from Sydney 2000) milled around on the fringes, trying to look busy. We wandered along the side of the surf club to the loading bay around the back, where security were persuaded that it might be a good idea to let half the band into the compound.

Inside, Scotty and his team had already helped the lads lug in most of the gear, so Marty and I decided to look busy as well. After setting up, and Phil had exorcised his latest bout of selective OCD on the audio settings, we had time for a quick soundcheck, cranking through Back In Black. At my insistence, given it’d been on my playlist for tonight but hadn’t made the final cut. Heathens! Philistines! How can I be expected to work under these conditions! (etc)

Backstage after soundcheck, sampling the ‘mineral water’ – thanks again, Danno – while DJ Scotty cranked the beats and the punters began to file in, Lena looked a little subdued. I figured it had something to do with seeing us all together again, minus one. “Long time no see,” I remarked. “Nice Media pass, did you Photoshop it yourself?”

She contemplated the pass, swinging on its lanyard. “Not my work, I’m afraid. Scotty and Danno, again. Between them, they’ve made this whole deal look very professional.”

“Ah, we’ll soon fix that once we get on... No you’re right, they’ve done a fucking awesome job,” I said. “To be honest, if I’d known what a massive deal this would turn out to be…”

“You mean with the security, and the riot fencing… Yeah, I think that’s just because this is supposedly one of the Queensland Government’s official ‘Schoolies Week’ events. I’m presuming that’s where all the money for that is coming from. Explains all those horrible bloody purple shirts.”

“Does it? Does it really?”

“Hey look,” she added, with the beginnings of a reluctant smile, “can you do something for me?”

“What’s that?”

She looked awkward, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to say what she was about to say.

“Look… tonight, when you get into the banter… don’t gratuitously slag off Sam on stage like I know you’re hanging out to, okay?”

Furrowed brow, one unit, owner me. “The thought hadn’t occurred to me,” I replied.

“Sure,” she said. “It’s just not a good look if… you know, if we find out something bad’s happened to him.”

That made about as much sense as a Lithuanian tractor manual. “Something bad has happened to him,” I responded buoyantly. “He’s missed out on playing this show, which is going to be more fun than a bouncy castle full of Playmates.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

With twenty minutes until kickoff I wandered out from the poky (Roger Crittenden would have said ‘cosy’ or ‘compact’) confines of backstage to the side of stage, to see how the punters were starting to shape up under the ministrations of Scotty’s decks ‘n’ effects and plentiful supplies of ever-so-slightly overpriced alcohol in non-breakable vessels. I was a little surprised by what the audience lacked, i.e. emo fringes, fluoro wristbands, baggy T-shirts with big stupid text on them, bumfluff, training bras or acne. It wasn’t a teenybopper audience. It was us. Late twenties, early thirties. At this stage, it looked as though we were going to be tried by an audience of our peers.

“It’s the same most Schoolies nights,” reported Scotty over the wheels of steel. “The Schoolies kids don’t actually come out until pretty late in the piece, they just sit around the campgrounds getting fucked up first. Cheaper short term, but a lot messier in the long run.”

“So who’s this lot?” I wondered aloud. “Toolies?”

“Gasket fans?” he suggested. “You did once have fans, yeah?”

“Yeah, but I’d have figured they’d have repented their sins by now…”

My God. There’s a girl in a Hey Hey We’re The Drunkees shirt. Hasn’t she been on eBay recently? She’s putting a lot of money at risk wearing that tonight. I’d meant to wear mine (I didn’t often get the chance) but had run out of time to grab a shower before the show - having spent far too much time agonising over what shirt to wear - so it was still my old, slightly-stinky-from-rehearsal (I would have said ‘pheremone-laced’) retro-purple Holden Torana XU1 shirt that declared ‘When you’re hot, you’re hot’, and an alarmingly lairy pair of boardshorts with rainforest leaf patterns that looked like ‘70s bathroom wallpaper. I’d looked at myself in the mirror when I’d ducked off for a slash just after soundcheck, and the guy grinning back at me had looked vaguely familiar. I remember you. You used to be that guy from Flange Gasket. You play loud music and sleep with women you barely know. You’re a bastard. Welcome back.

I took a long look at Drunkees-shirt girl. She’s a fan, and she’s cute, and I’m single, or near enough for government work. I took a short look at my watch. Twenty-five minutes to kickoff. Fuck it, I’m going in. Cover me. I scrambled off the stage, brushed past security and began slaloming my way through the sparse crowd towards her. Some enchanted evening, you may meet a stranger, across a relatively uncrowded room… or something.

“Wanker!” declared a familiar voice to my left. I turned, distracted from my target. Dr Cletus was wearing a lairy Hawaiian shirt and an even lairier grin. I was surprised, nay astounded to see he’d been allowed out of the house. “Yeah, got the night off for good behaviour,” he admitted. “Took a lot of bowing and scraping, and I’ve got to be back by two for the night shift with Matty, but I was hardly gonna miss the return of the GASKET now was I?”

“What’s that?” I indicated the opaque plastic cup he was grasping in his hairy ginger hands.

“Gold,” he explained, meaning XXXX, “but I’m on the Cokes after this.” He mimed a steering wheel. “They’ve put a late ferry on, one am. They’re thinking of doing it right across summer apparently. You guys are finishing when, half-twelve?”

“Supposedly twelve according to Scotty, but I’d hazard a guess we’ll go a bit over.”

“So how’s that deadly weapon of yours running?”

“That’s a rather personal question, Dr Cleaver…”

“I meant the ute,” he groaned.

“Ah yeah. It’s going all right. Just need some Blundies, a checked shirt and a stupid hat and I’m set for the next Longreach ute muster… how’s the Magna, you’re all domesticated now?”

“Yeah, it’s good. Just like Elvis, but safer traction, which is good up the hills around where we are.” ‘Elvis’ was his old ’97 Magna - so named because it had a big arse, lived in ‘Vegas (Brisvegas or Rockvegas depending on who was telling the story) and had recorded a lot of hits. Mostly in supermarket carparks - those things had pretty ordinary turning circles. He’d had a soft spot for Elvis, as had I given that it’d been directly responsible for me dating the ludicrously beautiful Olivia, largely because she was being stalked by a loser who drove the same car. Not that losers drove Magnas, of course…

“You didn’t… um… run into any problems on the way over here?”

“Like what?”

“Oh I dunno… with the local constabulary?”

He looked at me oddly. “Funny you should say that. Had some cowboy copper pull me over this evening on the cross-island road. Lights and sirens, the whole deal. You’d have thought he’d caught the Dukes of fuckin’ Hazzard. Real cocky little bastard too, really put the cunt in constable.”

“There isn’t one,” I pointed out.

“There was with him,” Dr Cletus maintained. “Anyway he had nothing - I drive like an old grandma these days, what with Matty and all - so he had to let us go. Think he was a bit intimidated in the end. Particularly when Disco Stu mentioned he was a lawyer…”

“Disco Stu’s here as well?” I grinned. This could be messy. Scratch that. Would be.

“Yeah, he’s getting the round in,” Dr Cletus explained cheerily. “Over this side of the ditch for his bro’s wedding next weekend. Last night was the bucks’ do so he’s a bit sketchy, but he’s soldiering on. It’s like a college reunion out here, saw Mad Mick around as well. With some new woman. Christ, I tell you what, he can pick ‘em.”

“What, bipolar psychotics?” His last couple of ladyfriends hadn’t exactly been on the emotionally stable side.

“Yeah, well if they all look like that, you could probably excuse it... Keeps things interesting.” He glanced over his shoulder, and waved back at Mad Mick’s nod of recognition from across the room. “Yeah, you’re right, she’s probably a psycho,” he noted. “She’s a Gasket fan, for starters. That’s one of your old band shirts she’s wearing, yeah? Hey Hey We’re The Drunkees?”

Dammit. Mad Mick could pick ‘em, that was for certain. Scratch that too. Instead, I shot the breeze with Dr Cletus, Disco Stu once he’d fought his way back from the bar, and Mad Mick and his new ladyfriend who also came over to say hi. Mick’s new lady turned out to be absolutely lovely and not in any way insane, which was probably why they didn’t end up lasting more than a few weeks together; she failed to meet his exacting standards.

Before long I’d been shoulder-tapped by the ever-efficient Daniela, who mentioned we were five minutes from going on and that my presence was probably required backstage. I half-recognised a handful of assorted Brisbane music industry types en route from front of house to backstage, and more once back there - a few folks from other bands, the odd journo, promoters, venue owners record company people etc - I believe the term is ‘industry identities’. Or, in the case of our old mate Jono from Concrete Box in the Valley, former identities, which made it sound like he'd entered into the witness protection program rather than packing in the management gig and tree-changing to the Sunshine Coast hinterland to run a lifestyle farm slash cooking school. Apart from a hurriedly grabbed yarn with Jono - most of which was him reminding us about every Queensland sporting victory over New South Wales opposition in the past five years, to which we employed the same response which had worked for the past ten, 'How about them Reds?' - we had fuck-all time to stop and say hello to anyone, which was just as well, because I’d forgotten half their names in the five years since I’d been part of the industry (‘half-recognised’ meaning I only recognised about half of them. Which half-depended on the forum in which I’d last seen them.)

Flange Gasket, for want of a better description of us, were amassed at side of stage, eyeing off the artfully deployed equipment on stage, and the partly lit, partly full room beyond its edge.

“Nice of so many people to turn up to our garage to hear us jam,” remarked Marty.

“I think they had the impression we’d actually be playing a proper gig,” the Duffer suggested.

“Ah well they’ll be in for a bit of a disappointment then won’t they?” I grinned. The nerves had amplified themselves to near-manic levels, but given how badly I’d slept, at least it was a source of energy to tap.

“Nothing new for a Gasket show,” the Jeff grunted wryly.

“We on after this?” I queried. Scotty was playing an Arctic Monkeys song - I figured that was what it was given the astringent Northern accent and ska-disco riffs. Knowing the Monkeys’ work as well as I did (i.e. not at all), I’d had to check with someone that he wasn’t playing the one we were supposed to be playing as part of our first set. Didn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence, of course, and I didn’t have much to inspire anyway.

“Not quite,” Marty reported, with a devilish smile. “Trust me, you’ll know when we’re on.”

Lights were dimmed at front of stage, Scotty faded the Monkeys down. And brought up…

Bloody hell, where did they find this from? Must have been Daniela, after Richie’s ‘comprehensive briefing’…

I grinned, this time a genuine smile rather than a nervous rictus, as the dramatic old Wide World Of Sports cricket anthem began blasting out of the house PA at thunderous, floorboard-shaking volume. The prehistoric full-bore orchestral version that was around for most of our childhoods, not the endless poxy electronic remixes which they replaced it with. Nup, the original, and still the best. And, apart from being the best theme tune on TV, Flange Gasket’s original play-on music. Back from the turn of the century. Back when we were just starting to make it big. Back when we were still having fun. Daaaant da daaaaaaaa...

Marty nodded. “Super effort that,” he noted, with a more-than-passable Richie Benaud voice.

“Maaarrvellous,” I agreed.