ragin' full onn

Big weekend involved two ‘gigs’ (as I never call them, if only out of respect to my friend Gig, and of course the family gig and pony from the auld days of pique-niques to Peter Rabbit’s house). Friday night was Beaches/ The Twerps at the Abruzzo Club. The AC was a great venue (middle-aged grim bouncers notwithstanding) but the sound was flippin’ terrible. Or to rephrase, it was an interesting and engaging sound – like distorted synthesisers at loud volume and it was the kind of loud volume and noise where you could hear all kinds of other things in it that you knew weren’t there – but there was not a synthesiser in sight. So I guess whatever was being played, faulty and overstressed audio technology was making its own interpretations. It was crowded and OK. Last night was royalchord at the Toff in Town which was pretty good, though perhaps a little quiet. There were a few newies (including one short, accapella) which was fine also the excellent ELO cover. I had a good time and was very funny.

Saturday night was Shane’s 37th birthday, marking 13, 514 days of Shane, not much really. There was a lot of whiskey around but I didn’t overdo it. I did confirm my adherence to Primitive Methodism though. Then I discovered (this morning) that Primitive Methodism is not, as I imagined, some kind of amish style but in fact a much more boisterous and democratic Methodism. I can’t go for that, as Hall and Oates sang when they first heard about Primitive Methodism. No can do. I want a kind of grim Methodism where those-who-would-dance have their achilles tendons severed by pastors and the End of Days is calculated in studiously typeset charts and grids.

Inbetween was spent rehearsing for this new Cannanes record and also a long conversation with an amateur (I mean, god bless ‘em) historian who is writing a community health centre history and who also happens to be locally famous musically but let’s not go there.

Anyway I completed the weekend tireder than I was on Friday, and that is rare, and in fact quite bad. I feel pretty crappy this morning and I don’t know how fine the day is going to be overall.

By the way I failed to mention a few days ago we went an’ saw 2012 which is non-campily conservative in its narrative but has what we want, amazing scenes of mass destruction of urban areas. It is true this is probably 10%, at the most, of what is essentially a pretty overlong film. It is a pity also that the grand trek/epic destruction was put to use as a device to cleanse humanity of all the slightly problematic characters (death by drowning, for instance, is god’s punishment for those who might augment their breasts surgically); I don’t care for that as a subtext, or any of the other subtexts (eg that John Cusack’s characters’ kids were called Noah and Lily; i.e. two floaters, one active, one passive). Anyway I am looking forward to seeing Prime Mover (being a very big David Caesar fan ‘n that). I wish it was on at the Westgarth though as there seems little option but to see it at the Nova. And that’s no fun. The Nova is a place where all the cinemas are tiny and the audiences elitist little bitches. Their computer projectionists always play the wrong films and whinge whinge. I would rather go to see it at Knox or Southland. Or the Westgarth, obviously, or our local Hoyts, but as the poor people say, ‘that ain’t goanna happen’.

I have a vague feeling Edward Woodward may be unwell.