BIG SMOKE CITY

BIG SMOKE CITY.

Joy and I had to start dipping into our land deposit savings to finance the southbound journey which meant she was counting every bloody cent along the way.  It’s almost as if she tried to make me feel guilty every time I bought a bottle of beer or a little bit of pot.  To keep the peace I just grinned and wore it as we clipped away the miles between us and the bright lights of Sydney.  On our arrival in the big smoke we crossed the Harbor Bridge towards the city and I spotted the silver flashing underbelly of a plane banking away between sunset reflected sky scrapers.  The only other time I had seen this place was when we departed on our flight to Europe and the dazzling majesty of the departing aircraft seemed like an appropriate coincidence to highlight the moment of our arrival.  The city lights were flickering to life all around us and it felt great to be entering Old Sydney Town and the gateway to my musical dreams. We spent our first night in Sydney camped down by the water at the Spit Junction on the northern beaches.  The PA was packed tightly into the van along with all our other gear so we just spread our blankets out on the beach and slept under the stars.  The next morning promised another stinker so we were up early to beat worst of the traffic and the heat.  My main objective was to find somewhere to store the PA so we could camp in the van while hunting for another place to live.  At an overpriced seaside cafe I phoned around to a few storage companies but they were all too far from the centre of town.  I needed the rig to be close at hand if I landed a gig so I decided to come at the problem from another angle.  We were sitting at a stoplight in Mosman when I noticed a friendly looking priest clipping some morning blossoms in the gardens of his church.  I did a quick left turn and pulled over across the road.  His name was Father Peter Blair and he listened with genuine interest as I told him of our predicament.  He cringed in horror when I lamented that my poor girlfriend had been exposed to scenes of uncontrolled violence at the hands of marauding natives.  I didn’t really get to finish my exaggerated little rave before he was offering the use of shower facilities, instant hardship payments and of course we could find somewhere to store the tools of my trade.

                                                                            'Bingo!, ... and  Praise  be, ... Good  Brother’

The church committee let us store the PA system at the back of a church hall that was used for jumble sales and the like.  It stayed there for about a week under lock and key and they let us leave it there absolutely free of charge.  Every time we popped in to take a shower Father Blair presented us with food packages that came courtesy of the ladies guild.  Our daily search for a home base eventually proved fruitful and we moved into a share accommodation with a couple of freaks in French’s Forest.  It was only a two bedroom house so Roy got to camp in the van and Joy and I had the welcomed luxury of our own room.   Within two days of moving into our new address I scored my first gig with an underground rock cabaret act known as 'D Minor and the Dischords'.  The venue was called 'French’s wine bar' in Darlinghurst which was an early punk culture hangout and I spent most of the night trying to keep excited youngsters from jumping on the speaker boxes or spilling their drinks all over my amp rack.  I found out very quickly that the first thing an inner city roadie has to learn is how to maintain an easy going yet authoritative presence around out of control teenagers.  If the kids have got it in for you they can fuck up your equipment in no time, so you’ve got to appear as if you are part of their tribal scene.  Within weeks of our arrival the bookings started coming in on a regular basis.  Most of the gigs we scored were one night stands with a diverse cross section of Sydney bands which ranged from hard core garage punks to sophisticated night club combo’s and everything in between.  Working with so many different types of acts provided a valuable opportunity to acquire musical contacts so I started filling my little black book with names and addresses.  As well as a number of recording company executives I gathered the names of some freelance players with whom I might be able to start my own band.  At the rate I was going I figured I would only have to play the role of the shit kicking Roadie for another couple of months and then I would be ready to start focusing on my own musical career.  A plan was established between Roy and myself that when I was ready to go into rehearsals he would take over as the manager of the PA business.  The rig would be available for my practice sessions two days a week and the rest of the time he could hire it out and receive a fifty percent share of the profits. 

He was head over heels with excitement when I promoted him to the position of a business partner and overnight he developed a healthy interest in the art of drumming up trade. A new influx of clients filled the books and we found we were able to get more selective about which bands we wanted to work with.  Some of the better ones we hired the rig to were Midnight Oil, Chain, John English and The Stevie Wright Band.  Joy stopped coming to the gigs not long after we got established in Sydney.  She didn’t like the hectic pace of the nightlife and besides she had become very self conscious about the scars on her face.  I tried to convince her that they were barely noticeable but it was all to no avail.  Were the truth known the scars had become a bit of a turn off for me in bed and I’m pretty sure that she sensed it.  The tension was unescapable between us and our once active sex life came to a standstill.  She became so protective of our land deposit savings that I started to wonder if her nesting instinct was the only thing keeping her around.  To get around Joy’s obsession with saving money I started dealing pot on a much larger scale which allowed me an independent income.  I just payed the bills from week to week with no questions asked while Joy sat dreaming of green pastures and a second chance at motherhood.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      'Yikes!'

The temptations of dancing female flesh can cause the most noble of men to stray and it wasn’t long before I was inventing bullshit stories to explain my movements just like the next dirty, two timing loverboy.  It seemed like Joy and I were only together out of habit and eventually something had to give.  I had too much on my plate to embark on any kind of emotional bust up, so I just buzzed around madly in the megopolis and dreaded the times that I had to go home and face those awful vibes. It got to the point where we didn’t converse about anything interpersonal because it was just too explosive a subject.  Just like any doomed couple we only connected to consolidate the household bills and other mundane affairs and should any detail concerning our relationship creep into the dialogue it was promptly avoided on my way out the back door.  After a couple of months of constant searching I had recruited almost enough players to call my first rehearsal.  The drummer I settled on was a guy called Jim who was an inner city barfly I had met at chequers night club.  On Jim’s recommendation his mate Johnny was invited to play bass and they formed as tight a rhythm section as any band could need.  The keyboard player was a bloke called Peter and he was a seasoned veteran of the music game who had worked with the renowned blues singer Wendy Saddington some years before.  The eventual line up was intended to include two guitarists who could double on rhythm and lead but as yet only one had been found.  His name was Gwyne and he was a dirty slide blues man, better that most on the scene at the time.  Through Gwynes playing I got in touch with the true essence of my most suitable vocal style which is rhythm and blues based rock spiced with country feels.  The end of year silly season had commenced and there were a lot of crazy people around getting up to one kind hedonistic mischief or another.  It was a hot and bouncing Saturday night at the old 'Hopetoun Hotel' in Surry Hills and ‘Mental As Anything’ were on the stage hamming it up.  I was out on the footpath smoking a joint and keeping an eye out for any likely pot customers, in the hope I might be able to afford a gram of the mind snapping speed being sold around the pool table.   At certain venues you used to be able to get away with choofing a scoob in the vicinity of the pub and it was a great way for a dealer to advertise his wares.  A lavishly attired Drag Queen strolled over and brazenly plucked the joint from my fingers.  He took a man sized drag and said, “Thanks mate” in a shameless masculine tone.  I took a second look and realized it was not an actual Queen, just some drunken prankster who had decided to get dressed up like a chick.   Under the heavily caked on layers of face paint I realized it was a guy I had jammed with at the Bondi Lifesaver some time before.  His name was Ian and he was an expatriot New Zealander living in Australia.  From what I had seen of his playing he was a versatile and solid contender so I asked him what he was up to musically.  He blurted out in a slurred attempt at femininity that he was,  “Desperate for a gig” at which we both chuckled knowingly.  We were joined in that moment by his very attractive girlfriend Parrissa.  She was drunk as well and dressed in the cutest little white ballerina’s tutu. Parrissa zoomed in on our conversation as if she was missing out on something important.  On hearing that I was preparing to form a band she let me know that she could do lead or backing vocals, whatever the gig required.  They were fun loving people who knew how to have a good time and we partied into the night like a gaggle of long lost pals.  I scored a gram of  speed from the pool room which saw us stealing the show on the dancefloor of the Tivoli as INXS did their thing.  I got us all backstage after the show which most certainly would have left a good impression with my new party animal companions.  I let the following day slip by nursing a chronic hangover and I didn’t even remember to phone Ian as I had said I would. 

I figured if he and his girl felt half as bad as myself then they would also need a day to recover.  The following day I contacted the number Ian had given me, only to find it had been cut off. I remembered him mentioning a squat at the end of Glebe Point Road where there was some rehearsal space available, so I jumped in the van and drove there hoping to track him down.  I was in luck.  Ian and Parrissa lived in the top level of the squats which was the disused office block of a large, pine scented timber yard.  The densely populated dwelling was inhabited by musicians and an assortment of other artists.   It was perched right on the waterfront across the water from Victoria Road and it was known by all as Fed Art.  The squat dwellers were head to head in battle with the local council over plans to demolish their home and develop the area as a recreation park.  A petition was circulated in attempts to try and save it as a community based cultural facility and regular benefit concerts were held in a large downstairs area.  This was the space that Ian had spoken of when we first met and it suited my needs perfectly.  Ian and I studied the weekly rehearsal schedule for the groups who practiced in the space and we worked out that the best time for us to use it was on the weekends. The other bands were generally off gigging which meant we would have the place to ourselves.  Ian was free to start working so I made a tentative booking to hire the room on the forthcoming Friday night. There was a pay phone in the upstairs kitchen on which I called each of the other musicians to see if they could make it.  All had nothing better to do so I confirmed the booking with Ian and dropped a thirty dollar contribution into the biscuit tin on the fridge.  Over neatly stacked cones of Nambucca heads and some squat community home brew Ian and I embarked on our first exploratory music session in his pad overlooking the water.  We conversed about the best cover versions on which we might build an act as he tinkled on the strings of his electric guitar. Our tastes in music turned out to be very similar.  We agreed that the majority of the players I had assembled were no frills, four on the floor rockers who were most in there element playing up tempo, traditional feels.  Peter and Ian were more diverse in their musical knowledge and this it was hoped would provide some much needed contemporary tones for the repertoire.  A list of about twenty songs were plucked out of the air which ranged from whisky drinking favorites like ‘Bad to the Bone’ and went to sweet melodious ballads like ‘Lying Eyes’.  The closest we got to any kind of heavy metal was ‘Sweet Child in Time’ which just happened to fit with the direction we wanted to go. 

Ian knew the basic chords to most of the songs but he was unsure of the overall musical arrangements so we spent that night and the following day stop starting on each piece until we locked them in.  Then we began the harrowing task of matching them to keys that would suit my voice.  By the time Friday night came around Ian had a pretty good understanding of the music structures and he felt confident he could guide the rest of band through them.  The rehearsal area was a home built, ply board stage which acted a bit like a trampoline in certain spots and was adorned with graffiti murals and other rebellious, urban art.  Stage lights were permanently situated among the high metal rafters of the hall which gave the impression more of a soundcheck for a gig than a practice session.  As our first official rehearsal got underway we found that all but Peter were concerned about the commercial nature of the songs Ian and I had selected.  There was enough hard hitting material in the mix to keep the majority of them happy, but they were hesitant about the complex vocal harmonies they would have to perform.  Ian was an accomplished frontman in his own right so he was quite at home singing backing vocals.  Likewise was Peter and the final touch of Parrissa’s voice produced a sweet sounding chorus of rich, earthy sounds.  All were excited by what was coming out as we mastered each song and before the night was through we had most of them in the bag. 

Our practice sessions became regular weekend events around the squats and we were never short of an audience because the front entrance of the building led right into our rehearsal space.  There was an unending stream of human traffic passing through because someone from upstairs was dealing high grade hashish and heads.  Most other party aids could be scored around the place as well and one time we had the drug squad come thundering in the door half way through a song.  Most of the time our practice sessions were like private gigs for those commuting through the place and they were always unpredictable affairs.  There were constant interruptions of one kind or another which invariably stemmed from the internal politics of the Fed Art Collective.  Certain ’New Age’ types within the community wanted to use the space on the weekends for self improvement workshops, but the majority of the inhabitants were meat and potatoes musicians who saw things differently.  One time we were confronted by a primal therapy group who were extremely heated up and claimed we were monopolising the space.

They insisted on being allowed to do a workshop in the unused section of the room, right there and then, while our rehearsal was taking place.  They claimed that their vocal expressions would not be heard over our amplified music, then they stormed off to the back of the hall to conduct their workshop.  The twenty strong group formed a large circle and taking it in turns they commenced to plead with their perspective mummies and daddies to give them the love they had not received as children.  Each of them let out blood curdling screams which were intended to free them from the haunting grip of some tortured childhood scene.  The racket they were making made it impossible for us to concentrate whenever we stopped playing to talk about the arrangements and besides, the lads and I were laughing so much we found it impossible to stay focused on what we were doing.  It was decided in a mood of forced tribal tolerance that we should pack it in until our work space intruders had rid their souls of those terrible, howling demons of self pity.  Ian extracted some home brew from the fridge behind the stage area and reached for his acoustic guitar.  Jim disconnected his snare drum and we all went down by the water to escape the noise of the intruders.  It was here under a streaky, urban smog sunset that the lads began to nurture the first embryonic rhythms of their original sound.  As they jammed away it became evident the band were capable of greater musical feats than the cover versions we had rehearsed.  Everyone had original ideas and these it seemed are what they most wanted to pursue.  After much passionate debate on the subject Ian suggested that once perfected the song list should only be used as a sideline to attract a regular paying gig.  The rest of the time we should concentrate on our own material because that’s where the, “Real money is”.  All agreed and it was settled that when we had written and recorded enough original songs the list of covers would be scrapped.  Fuck me sideways and I thought that I was calling the shots.  Democracy it seemed had sent me tumbling from my high horse so I decided to just go with the flow and live with the final outcome.  The accumulated talent was too good to lose through mere details and the potential of those guys was such that they could play Jingle Bells and it would have been a hit.  I found it took a giant leap of faith to let go of the familiar old cover versions and venture into unknown musical territory.  I had never written a song in my life and I was suddenly thrown into the greatest challenge of my artistic evolution.  I had books of poetry stuffed away in a cupboard somewhere but as yet I had not tried to put any of the words to music.  My most immediate point of reference was the blues based, jam sessions I had been involved in where I just sang the first thing that popped into my head.  Now enthusiastic onlookers were expecting me to develop precise vocal melodies through which I could convey my inner thoughts and feelings.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                  'If only they  knew'

The guys were aware that I was running on pure instinct so they were sensitive to my lack of musical expertise.  After each plugged in experimentation we sat around listening to rough, four track recordings and my raw, explorative vocal jams were dissected to locate the appropriate melody.  Peter and Ian took me aside for separate composition workshops and quickly scribbled lyrics were placed among melodies wherever they would fit.  My dusty old stack of poetry provided the central idea for many of the songs and once I had isolated the main theme it became like a Christmas tree upon which I could hang a swag of new words.  The most fun was coming up with hooky chorus lines to compliment the verses and give each piece a memorable singalong feel.  Most of the songs were about romance and heartbreak in some way or another and I knew that I had to strive for a greater degree of substance.  I wrote constantly to come up with more mature lyrical ideas and as a result new melodies started blossoming forth.  Before long I could simply sing the lines that I had composed to the band and they would locate the accompanying chords.  Most of that early stuff didn’t make it into my current catalog, but they served their purpose at the time to get us up and running as a composition team.  Our official debut for the band was a benefit gig at Fed Art.  We played alongside many of the other performers who were associated with the place and it was an absolute, howling hoot.  It would have been nice if we were playing on a different stage for our first gig but the room was packed to the rafters with party people and they cheered us on from the word go.  Ian, Parrissa and I dropped ecstasy tabs before the show and hefty slugs of tequila were thrown back with salt and lemon.  Countless crates of home brewed coopers were turned on for the festivities and we were as loose as long necked gooses by the time we hit the stage for the first set. I don’t think anybody noticed how sloppy we were playing because the whole place was just as out there as we were.  People were jumping onto the already cramped stage area and screaming stuff like, ... “Save the Squats” and, “Fuck the fucking council” into the microphone.  I was in no state to rumble with those hostile punters, so I withdrew to the sidelines and let them have their way.  Taking the chaos of the moment as my cue I jumped from the stage and moved in on a sexy young brunette who had been putting out the signals during the last couple of songs.  After a brief and inviting little dance we vanished out the back into the abandoned wood yard and fucked each other brainless as the throbbing pulse of hard core sounds banged out of my PA. 

                                                                            

I made it back to French’s forest two days later and Joy was nowhere to be found.  All of her belongings were gone and the word ‘Cunt’  was scrawled in red lipstick on the bedroom mirror.  Nick and Suzie were the couple who we had been sharing the house with.  Almost apologetically they said that Joy had left for the bus depot the previous morning and she was in a terrible rage.  Apparently she had decided at the last minute to go to the benefit concert and she must have arrived while I was on stage.  From somewhere deep in the lustful, ecstasy driven crowd she must have seen me spiriting the girl away and that was it. Initially I shrugged Joy's departure off as an inevitable occurrence but a nagging sense of pain began to emerge in the days that followed. I knew that I had deeply wounded a close friend who I had shared special moments with and a crippling depression set in that rendered me incapable of functioning properly.  At the bands next rehearsal I found it difficult to stay focused on the arrangements in the songs.  My heart was just not in it and blind Freddy could have seen how low in spirits I was.  Joy’s absence hit me with more gravity than I had imagined it would and my work was being affected to a noticeable degree.  Ian suggested that we should take a break from practicing and smoke some cones until I was feeling more like singing.  Peter, being well accustomed to the emotional ups and downs of performers said that these things take time and there was no point in hitting the gig circuit unless we were all in top form.  The rest of the guys agreed and it was decided that the next few rehearsals would be dropped until I was more in the mood for performing.  We arranged to recommence the sessions in three weeks time, then all but Ian and I departed for the pool table at the local boozer.  After the others had split Ian sat me down for a brotherly chat.  He listened to my woeful lamentations as we knocked over his stash of Bundy rum, then he commenced to give me an outside perspective on the situation.  As he saw things the romance between Joy and I was doomed from the word go.  She wanted domestic bliss, kids and security while I was destined to take the music world by the balls and shake it.  In a most intoxicated and theatrical bout of passion he described how we were travelling in different orbits and no amount of tears could change it.  What was done was irreversibly done and there was no point in trying to patch things up.  At the end of the day he said, “all it really meant was a convenient fast track to freedom”.  In my drunken, self pitying stupor I explained how Joy and I had been through a lot together but it all went haywire when we traveled overseas.  I felt a secret guilt for causing the dreadful scars on her face and I knew in her heart of hearts she blamed me for it as well. There was an underlining hostility between us most of the time and I couldn’t continue living with that kind of knot in my guts.  I knew Ian’s home truths were correct so in a mood of fateful acceptance we polished off the last of the bottle and listened to Tim Buckley records until I crashed out shitfaced on his floor.

Roy started working the PA on the weekends and I only saw him for briefest of moments when he popped in to give me money.  I bailed him up between gigs a couple of times to ask after Joy and he told me that she was staying at the bungalow in the Adelaide hills.  I tried to call the house on numerous occasions, only to be told that she wasn’t available.  In the end I stopped trying and decided to leave any contact that might happen up to her.  For a time Roy acted as our go between in my attempts to get in touch but he didn’t really want to know about it.  His relationship with me became strained in the process and I predicted that it might not be long before I had to start looking for another sound man.  After a week or so of boozed up inactivity I found that I was climbing the wall so I phoned Ian and told him that I was ready to get back to work.  The rest of the guys were just as keen to get started so we made arrangements to meet at Fed Art the following weekend.  As it turned out Roy had taken a booking for the PA which clashed with the time we needed to use it.  He kicked up a real stink when I told him to let the gig go and we had a heated barney at the entrance of the Steyne Hotel in Manly.  Flexing his newly tatooed and work hardened young muscles he stormed off up the street in a huff, after telling me where I could stick my high and mighty attitude and my,“Piece of shit fucking PA System”.

I moved out of the house at French’s Forest and took up residence in a flag pole rotunda at the infamous Imperial Hotel.  My host was a nightclub buddy called 'Pedro' and he lived in a pre-fab hut that was part of a large, impressive roof garden.  I suddenly had a sweeping million dollar view of Paddington and the local surrounds which cost me a mere fifty bucks a week.  Pedro originally offered up the space to be used as a recording studio for the band, but I liked it so much that I moved in.  I set up my four track recording rig and hi-fi equipment in one corner of the eight sided room and there was just enough space left to squeeze in a double bed.  The lads used to complain about how pokey it was to work in but they loved coming over and getting up to mischief in the meat market just down the stairs.  My pad was pretty much band property and it was used as the official boudoir for any unattached members who managed to score a root.  There was a 'Boy's Club' routine in place that whenever the rotunda was being used for sexual purposes it was signaled by a set of red, yellow and green traffic lights situated in the doorway of the roof garden.  There was an operating switch for the lights ingeniously hooked up at the foot of the stairs, behind the public phone and one was also installed in the rotunda.   As a bonus to giving indication that a bit of the old 'in out' was taking place, the lights provided a fool proof warning system for my assorted drug transactions.  My new flatmate Pedro loved our music and as a result of his emerging entrepreneurial skills the owner of the pub agreed to try us out. The fat, greedy wanker declared in his 'Im the king of the shit pile' way that he didn’t want to run the night at a loss and our first gig had to be free. If it was up to scratch he said then he might consider letting us perform again.  Before he turned his back on us and resumed cleaning beer glasses, he added that he didn’t want to know about any original songs.  At a following meeting of the band and the publican our list of covers was scrutinized in microscopic detail before he gave his final approval for the show to go ahead.  As we were leaving his office the dribbling poonce was stating how none of us 'new bands' could ever compare to the likes of Perry Como and Frank Sinatra.  After the meeting a heated discussion transpired around the pool table in the back bar, until finally the lads agreed to his rip off terms.  It wasn’t going to be a very equitable start to the collective enterprise but at least our introduction to the Sydney gig circuit would have begun.  By making official our forthcoming 'first pub gig' it brought home the fact it was time for us to prove our worth in public. 

We were adequately rehearsed but we hadn’t even settled on a name yet.  Some half hearted tags had been thrown around like, ‘Scruffy Mulligan and the Jet Setters’ or ‘Claud Balls and the Electric Pranksters’  but no-one could really make up their minds.  Some time earlier I had devised the name,‘The Neon Farm Boys’ largely due I suppose to the fact we had all originally come off a farm somewhere.  The name had been stuck in my head ever since, so I proposed that it should be our working title. It was voted in five to one.  The band were all regular patrons at the Imperial which meant we new most of the audience.  The over all vibe was familiar and jovial among the locals so we didn’t have to bust our asses to win them over.  The Saturday night crowd at our first Imperial gig gave us such a good reception that the publican reluctantly agreed to book us for another show. The second show went over just as well as the first and before we knew it we had a regular paying gig in the front bar.  Things turned out pretty much as Ian had predicted.  An ever expanding list of covers kept us playing the Imperial every third Saturday for about six months.  Songs like ‘Roadhouse Blues’ and ‘Born to be Wild’ became our most requested and when we did ‘All Along the Watch Tower’ it was like the annual bash for the Jimi Hendrix fan club.  Every now and again if the boss wasn’t around we would hit the crowd with our most advanced originals. They were received with just as hearty an applause which gave us valuable feedback on their appeal.  After a while the publican got wise to the fact we were playing our own stuff but he didn’t make it an issue.  It seemed as long as we delivered a greater percentage of beer swilling singalong favorites he let us have our way.  The girl I had raced off at the benefit concert was a friend of Parrissa’s from High school and her name was Sylvia. She was a wealthy young Jewish Princess from Saint Ives who dug our music and started turning up at the gigs with a swag of her rich girlfriends in tow. As fate would have it the girls and the boys in the band hit it off like a laughing, bouncing litter of puppies until all were established with partners for the fun that lay in store.  Ian and Peter were the only members of the band with permanent relationships which left Jim, Johnny, Gwyne and myself to party with the girls. They were all good lookers who complimented our collective image and the best part was they always insisted on buying the next round.

'I’m not in love ... so just forget it ...

It’s just a silly stage ... I’m going through.'

With our success at the Imperial we were a bonified working act and this made it relatively easy to hook up with a booking agent.  The band started doing one night stands in venues all over the metropolitan area and sometimes beyond the rural fringe.  It seemed no sooner had I kicked off my cowboy boots and crashed out exhausted it would be time to get up and do it all over again.  We played every drinking hole from Bondi to Bathurst and recruited a loyal following of headbanging pissheads along the way. A new Sound Roadie took Roy’s place behind the front of house desk and my PA was acquisitioned as the bands permanent rig.  I stopped making as much money as I did from being a freelance hire man but I was earning enough cash from gigging that it didn’t really matter.  Among other successful family interests Sylvia’s folks owned a chain of exclusive fashion outlets around Australia. They had spoiled the silly girl rotten since her birth and they continued to shower her with gifts and money into her adult years. She also picked up a substantial wage from managing their Centerpoint Tower boutique but she was the kind of girl who could never have enough.  Myself and everyone else that Sylvia befriended was on the receiving end of her good fortune.  She was not unlike myself when I received my compo payout but that was a mere flash in the pan compared to her unbridled generosity.  I was probably too proud for my own good, but I started feeling like a gigolo whenever my girl shouted me out to impress her friends.  A good humored competition emerged between us and we actually started racing each other to pick up the tab.  We both had expensive tastes which often saw me penniless broke between gigs.  My land deposit savings shriveled up like a sun parched oyster as we dined in exclusive restaurants and raged till the early hours in the most happening clubs in town.  Sylvia’s old man bought her a new Mercedes Benze convertible for her twenty first birthday, which she drove like a maniac and inflicted parking scratches on like a hell bent demolition driver.  I never felt safe in the car with her but it was our best transport option because the van was in constant use for the band.  In a crafty manoeuvre to re-establish my independence at the wheel I bought a fully restored two door XP Ford Futura coupe.  It was gun metal grey and it had shiny chrome mag wheels.  Now that’s the kind of sleek vintage saloon a budding young rock star should be driving.  My new car suited our combined, glam rebel appearance and we never failed to get the rev heads howling at the lights.  Sylvia soon came to enjoy being chauffeur driven in my 1950’s dream machine because it freed her up to suck on UDL cans and sing stupid pop songs full blast in my ear.

‘Girls just want to have fun’

                                                                                                                              

                                                                               The beast. No not me, the car.

With time it became apparent that our women folk were would be singers so after much pleading and cajoling we finally agreed to let them get up on stage with us.  It happened at one of our less important gigs in the western suburbs and I must say they looked a lot better than they sounded as they grappled for words and the right notes to sing.  That didn’t really matter because the punters were up and dancing and our booking agent declared that it was a big plus for the group.  Parrissa took the girls aside to give them some basic harmony training and within weeks they were good enough to get up at our bigger shows.  A new band poster was silk screened into existence by the resident artists at the squats and it included, ‘A Special Guest Appearance By The Neon Farmgirls’.

Our gigs doubled overnight because of the girls and an aura of shameless sexual energy started following us wherever we played. It seemed the hornier the late night crowds got the more they consumed at the bar and this meant we were a big hit with pub owners. Our weekly earnings increased and we were pretty much assured of constant work.  Months of solid gigging started to wear us all pretty thin and the next band meeting saw a unanimous vote to take a break.  Everyone was fucked out in one way or another from the merciless work schedule and the pressures of maintaining public interest were starting to take their toll. 

We all agreed that our originals had been well received on the electric stage so there was no better time get started on a debut album.  I proposed a plan whereby after two months of rest and recreation the following three would be allocated to polishing up our best songs on the four track, in readiness for a larger studio situation.  All agreed it was a good idea and the meeting ended with a renewed sense of enthusiasm for the future of the band.  It would seem the work schedule I put forward was far easier said than done because the whole friggin circus slackened right off when the lights went out at the last gig. 

The four track demo recording of twelve songs might sound simple enough in theory, but it proved a long and frustrating ordeal which tested the patience and dedication of everyone.  It was almost impossible to get the band to recording sessions and when they did finally roll up it turned into a stoned and lethargic shit fight.  It became such a thankless task in the end that everyone just gave up on it and went home.  In the following months everyone headed in separate directions to pursue their own brand of fun.  Ian and Parrissa went mountain climbing in New Zealand and Gwyne took a gig with Johnno’s Blues Band, who were permanently stationed in Cairns.  Peter went back to doing solo piano gigs in Kings Cross while Jim and Johnny became the rhythm section for a swing quartet in WA.

'Fame  Eh!, ... Go  and  get  stuffed.'