Adelaide During the Fringe

From Tuesday til Saturday I was in Adelaide seeing friends, Fringe shit, and fam. I planned this trip and bought the tickets pretty much as soon as I got back from my Hometown Christmas last year, but this time around – without everyone having the obligation to spend so much time with their families, and everyone from everywhere being back in town – the trip was way way way way WAY much better. Here's why:

Tuesday I got into town at seven-thirty at night after a brilliant (as always) bus ride involving books, music, and some great ideas and time alone to think. I love those bus rides – there's a reason I always include at least one in each trip home. As soon as I got off the bus I headed straight to the Cranka for some free Tuesday night comedy and caught up with Ross Voss, Josh Cruze, and saw some great comedians who I hadn't seen before. Jesus, what a refreshing change seeing people's sets that I haven't seen ANYTHING from. Being around the same comics all the time in Melbourne, while obviously lovely as it gives a great sense of community, can become exhausting because whenever someone has a good set, you already know more or less how the set is going to go. I can still recognize when someone has done a good set because they have performed well or really captured the audience or whatever, but it's rarely THAT exciting to see someone do well if sixty to eighty percent of what they're doing on stage I have seen before. So seeing my open mic contemporaries in Adelaide do their thing was a great break.

Then the Rhino late show that night was awesome – Will Anderson did some great stuff about framing Adam Hills for a murder by hopping away from the crime scene. Then we somehow got into the Artists' Bar. Then we got drunk. Then we went home. By the way 'Home' for this trip was Phil's place in Kent Town, which was a fucking great change in and of itself because it was a ten minute walk from town, and the posse that he lives with are fucking sick. Sick as dawgs.

Wednesday I woke up earlyish with a hangover, me Elle and Leon went to breakfast at ETC which was always one of my favourite Adelaide breakfast spots. We consumed, then I sweated my shit down to the DMV and got my full license. Tick. Then back home, broke into the guys' house through Leon's bedroom window and crashed out for the afternoon under a fan waiting for MA BOIIII S. Rouse to call, but finally having to pay a Twenty-Five-Dorrah cab to his place during rush hour after he was to shit to get out of bed all day. We reminisced over Pool Party (WHOSE PARTY?!!) days in Empire and then I had a gig at the Ed Castle that night where I also met the lovely German, Sarah for the first time after chatting to her for ages on CouchSurfing since mid-year. The gig went okay – good enough, although I felt I performed a really tight set, but the crowd reaction wasn't AS amazing as I would've liked, but I was happy enough – then me, Elle and Josh Wills jumped into the Artists' Bar again after Rouse went home to crash.

Thursday: another hangover, another breakfast, another cruisy afternoon in Kent Town that ended with the most brilliant snap-decision of recent times with me, Phil, Leon and Nick Fuckenwhatever unanimously agreeing in about five seconds to go to the Tap Inn and have beers. After this I went on to dinner with the fam and shaking Dad's hand after his last day of working some shitty job that he's had for the last ten years and moving into semi-retirement at the tender, supple age of forty-five. He now plans to become a stay-at-home wife and paint the house while Mum Dawgz is off making DEM STAX. Now THAT'S Feminism, bitches!

After family dinner I went off to see David Quirk's Fringe show which was fwarking brilliant I have to say, notwithstanding the tech blunder that sort-of ruined the ending. I can forgive that, the show was great, and I still need to write to that dude and tell him how much I liked it because it really was that good... if any of you reading have a chance to see David Quirk's 'Shaking Hands With Danger' at either the Adelaide Fringe (until march 16^th I think?) or the Melbourne International Comedy Festival later this month, do it. Drinking and deep hangs with Lucy at hers, and then the Rhino Room Late Show again capped off my Me Time before I headed to the Botanic to romp some cunts I'd never met before in doubles pool and crash out around three AM watching something I don't remember on the laptop. Or maybe it was music? Three days into this journey I start to get mixed up about details.

Friday played host to another breakfast/lunch thingo at the Austral with Phil and Eliesa, and then meeting up with Sarah again for a CouchSurfers' picnic in the Botanical Gardens. I convinced my new CS friends to join me in jumping the fence into WOMAD that night to see the Cat Empire – I decided to jump even though I had a press pass, a move that infuriated Phil after I lost his pass in a drunken haze later that night, but for which I'm sure he has forgiven me, and will understand. Adrenaline baby. A-dre-na-line. Before WOMAD though, we went to the UniBar for some final nostalgia and I caught up with Sammy B and Chess – DA BOIZ from Immanuel College. We spat the shit over jugs of cider and laughed heartily as if we were seventeen again. I know I'm not really allowed to reminisce that heavily because I'm still only twenty-two, but whatever, fuck you. I remember shit too you old fuck reading this. That's right, you. Old.

After loosing my shit to the Cat Empire (six years since the last time) me and Jaleesa the Dutch girl went to Trashbags in EC and I capped off my stay catching up with the Kings of Hindley St: Johnny Monday, Jason 'Terror Terror' Petersen, Jake Baker, Liam Ball, and a million other cats that were there that I won't start to list off now mainly because I don't remember shit and I'd probably start guessing, and guessing poorly. When I woke up at ten am on Saturday, I looked at my phone and confirmed what I knew instinctively was the case anyway – I had missed my bus. Mum bought me a plane ticket because she's a diamond, and I spent the rest of the day in Glandore, spending some time with my little bro watching Louie off my hard drive, and then driving around with Eliesa in order to make up the loss of the press pass to Phil. I bought the boys a bottle of wine for letting me crash at their place, and then at nine pm, Eliesa drove me to the airport, and an hour later I was inside a flying steel box, soaring over the country on my way back to Melbourne.

So that's why this trip was better than the one over Christmas. Any questions?

Peace, Taco.

Understanding Cliches

I'm starting to understand a few things a lot better lately. Things that other people have said, and yes, some of them are cliched to the hilt... but things are cliched for a reason, namely, that they are often true.

Hunter S. Thompson said – and no, I can't remember where, but he did say it – that “music is fuel”. He sort of approached that realization by talking about how most people have a very sentimental attachment to music and they over-complicate their relationship with music by making it into some all-mighty force, some god to worship that saves them from the black abysses and carries them through life. I feel you there, Hunter, there was some video by a fairly run-of-the-mill late-emo band whose name I forget that I remember had the band playing their song life, interspersed with footage of their fans, all emoed out, staring into the camera and saying how music had 'saved their life' while choking back tears and shrieking. Ok, fair enough, if you feel that way. But what HST said is beginning to resonate very much with me because even though I still have an intense connection to some of my favourite artists, music as a whole is more like a thing that I find keeps me going when I get bored. The sensation of finding new music and listening to something – discovering it for the first time – is pretty hard to match, and that's where the analogy to fuel comes in I think: finding a whole bunch of new music over the last few days has given me so much energy and from feeling pretty shitty on Saturday afternoon, I suddenly feel pretty damn good. Great, even. And if we are going to get really picky or defensive about the 'music saved my life' thing, well music is just the medium through which amazing artists work, really. It's not music itself that saved you from ending it all when you were fifteen, it was the artist – The Used, or Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, or Bullet for my Valentine, or whatever guitar-saviour you happened to stumble upon when you needed help. They are responsible.

The next thing that I've started to understand a whole lot better, and I realize now that there are only two 'things', even though at the start I said that there would be 'a few'. Oops... the next thing is that thing that comedians tend to say about comedy, that they, “feel like they can be themselves when they are on stage.” Nothing sounds more cliched and over-sentimental, I recoil at the thought of ever saying those words to someone without a meaty preface and some damn strong context, but it seems that they are starting to become true. For me. That's right. When I first thought them I thought the speakers were trying to say that they don't have the courage to be themselves in other situations, or trying to imply that they are somehow being brave by getting up on stage and 'being themselves'. Those explanations don't really make complete sense though, and so when Rach and I were in the middle of an afternoon-long 'talk' ('talk' as in 'we need to talk' talk) and the conversation came round to my love of standup, it started to hit me. On stage, it's so much easier for the things that I say and the way that I am to align with my internal monologue – that ever-present voice inside my head that represents the way that I would ultimately like to express myself but that I can never perfectly match because of the limiting distance between my brain and my mouth. On stage, there is no one talking back, and diluting my thoughts with their silly external opinions in real time: this is both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing because I can get whatever thoughts I have out there without interruption, even if, admittedly, at this stage the thoughts that I'm 'getting out there' aren't that groundbreaking or important (“it's not so easy for guys to pee standing up, you better RECOGNIZE!”). It's a bad thing though because sometimes it's good to have someone else keeping my thoughts reined in, in real time, because if they are allowed to run wild and unchecked then there is the very real possibility of my unrestrained ego having a field day and saying something stupid and regrettable. Something that I don't really mean, that maybe seemed fair at the time, after five straight minutes of me, me, ME!!!

And I think that's just about enough of exactly that, for now. I downloaded a pretty cool skip-hop/ambient mix yesterday from the Friends of Friends mixtape series, and it feels like my day is amping on the up-and-up. Day time. Yes.

Peace, Taco.

...aaaaand we're back

Two weeks exactly since my last post, and things have changed quite a bit in those two weeks, but I don't even want to talk about those things. I just want to sit. I want to write something. I just found this mixtape by a dude called Joey Bada$$ whose name I have heard around the place in the last few months, but as is always the case with new music, I've been way late to jump onto the new stuff coming out, even if it is TRAGICALLY up my alley. Basically the idea behind this guy and his crew (Pro Era) is that they love the 90's New York hip hop sound, and they are making music in the style that came out of the greatest city in the world during the Golden Era. I cannot express how much I would have absolutely lost my mind over this about eighteen months ago. Two years ago. This would have been the most amazing thing in the world. Now, it's just a nice surprise.

Today has been a nice surprise, sunny outside, and at ten-thirty I woke up after getting to bed at four-thirty in the morning, and felt great. I felt so great, in fact, that I went for a run with the Vintage Beatlab Podcast number twenty pumping through the headphones I found at the Workers last night. Luck luck luck motherfuckers, it's coming in through the windows.

I've been stressing this week about the looming rent day on the sixteenth, which is tomorrow now, and I was about ready to cruise down to the bank with a pocket full of coins and fifty bucks I'd borrowed off of Benny to pump my account up to what would have been about fifty cents above the required amount. Shit was deep. Things were getting thingy. But then, just as I was finally contemplating the beginning of preparations to leave, I saw an email come in – PAY SLIP. I'd forgotten about my pay from the one night I worked at Yah Yah's on the weekend. That's A-Hunned-and Twenty-Fo' of them sweet sweet dorrah ladies and gentlemen. Crisis averted. The lucky streak continues.

Tonight I'm going to kick the football around with Rich and Mick in Flagstaff Gardens – and yes, by football I do mean soccer ball... oh how I await the day when I don't feel the need to clarify on that point. Then, after a bit of social outdoorsing, I've got a gig at Stomach Ache in Collingwood where I'm OPENING of all things, and have a seven minute spot. I've written a bit of new shit over the past few days and am actually feeling okay about it. This week is going to be all about new material. Heaps of new. I've been getting a bit lazy on that front I think.

Okay, so maybe I will talk about what's been happening lately, I guess I kind of can now, I feel okay about it. Not great, but okay. Rach and I broke up. I mean, we talked for ages and it was shaky and we couldn't come to a decision, but I think I've sussed out that I need to be by myself. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Who cares. HAH! This music is so fucking good. The 1999 Mixtape by Joey Bada$$ – it came out in June last year – so about the time that I was heading over to Melbourne DAYM SUHN... but I'm recommending it now. Listen.

Wow that feels good, finally, something written down. Stay tuned, whoever is tuned at the moment, I feel a resurgence coming on. Fuck, I just jinxed it.

Peace, Taco.