At the folk club on Sunday we had a full house and it was so good to be there and be heard and feel worth something so thank you so much!
Copper and Steel filled in for a covid hit Sophia Evelyn and they were so funny and cool so I thank them too!
They Opened with a little river band song, and it made me think about my old heavy metal pal Chris Pope. When we were 13 we use to pool our money and Chris would pay some shifty 16 year old to leave a bottle of Rocket Fuel behind a gravestone. We named this thunder brew The Bean Juice. I have many powerful visions of what that stuff did to us, powerful visions of the powerful visions I had while I was drinking it. Of course it was vomit and tears and fights with friends and strangers and passing out in the darkest and lightest of places all over our flat city. But it was also, lip synching to Deep Purple, gate crashing parties looking for tapes and Nikes to steal and long 3am walks to the Dog House for some Mortal Kombat fatalities. It was of course, like all times, the best and worst of it; but mostly the best.
Anyways me and Chris loved the Little River Band( if you scroll far enough down this page you might find out how that happened in another longwindednosenseofbrevity story of a post), but we lost him to the great sadness a whole bunch of years ago before I got to tell him that it was the Little River Band who made all them songs we knew but didn’t know who.
It made me think of this song I got to writing about the old chch, when things were probably wronger but somehow betterer as much as they were worser. I started the song as tribute to one of the wildest to ever do it around town, but eventually other ideas and people and memories showed up…
Jesse j
And little kate
Singing dirty old town
They were 16 years young
They were Seven pints down
The gangs left early
The old men hung round
They had Five bucks in common
They were Seven pints down
Their lordships their manor
Their kingdom their crowns
Now Sold and repackged
Repurposed unwound
Singing time time time cruel time
But you go a’smiling
and I’ll see you in time
and you go a smiling
and I’ll go a singing
I’ll see you in time
It was rehabs and wonder
As the yuppies would chunder
the boot boys played trumpets
the beasts they would thunder
We were lost on the corners
In the flats in the trees
But I got you in the toilets
We went down on our knees
Cactus and chaos
Tinnies, db’s, it was blood on our knuckles
It was wild and painful and desperate and free
Before craft beer and clean lines
Soft music, money music, weak music, cheap music and selfies and wellness and sighs
We wrote slayer in spray-paint
In the alley in the crescent
By the main road we were agro
Stealing bulls’ caps and bikes
We were climbing over fences
Over labour party hoardings
smacked in the head by their dads
I’m alright
Still standing ever laughing
I was psycho going wild
We were bruised, we were rifles
I’m still a benefit child
I’m still a benefit child
.303, you and me,
13 we would be
Ever after, no matter, the pub and the road
you hitting cunts, pulling them out of their homes
Rolleston or Rimutaka you won’t die alone
Anyways it’s a long way from the Little River Band to that but ain’t that just the way this good music should take you, all around and back again through all the good and all the bad and best of times and things and places and people and all of it!
PHEWEEEEEE
I’m tapping this out on the ferry right now, back in my sweetest of places, running between shows, not enough sleep and looking forward and back just far enough to see right now!
I’ll be singing the song above tomorrow in the Hawkes bay and for the weeks after at the shows below and all the shows after that, I’ll have Little River Band on the preshow for Chris Pope and all those other hard doers who used to populate the in-between places of my wonky old home town all of whom would no doubt go and give the LRB a kicking at the first opportunity. For me though its memory and wonder and dreams made and unmade. Whether you want to give me a kicking or share in my strange explorations of it all, I’m just glad to know you’re out there! Hosannas on you all!
PHEWEEEEEE
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