The Ritz

Thank you to Natalie and her absent parents for their hospitality over the last few days in salubrious digs in Sandy Bay. We saw a good band yesterday called Mess o Reds at an all ages show at the Brisbane - and a stupid band called The Ritz and a decent, fun band called Bring Sophy to Me. All seemed to be about 15 years old. The Ritz looked to me like three guys (that much they would have looked to anyone) who had seen some early 90s hair bands on Rage one night and taken to the notion, to the degree that the bass player wore a motley crue t-shirt, striped red and gold trousers, scarves on his bass, and hair that was either a wig or hair made to look like a wig. I felt that in The Ritz only one member was really serious - the guitarist/singer - who was pretty perfect in his playing, whereas the other two had totally embraced the moves.

I was actually there because I wanted to see Manchester Mourning, whose CD I have been enjoying a lot over the past year. They were on the board outside but that was the sum total of their appearance. Having enjoyed Mess o Reds I went up to the door and asked the boys there who they were and what was next. I was given the run down and said, 'what happened to Manchester Mourning', to which a scamp from Bring Sophy to Me said, 'they're not playing, that's a mistake with the thing'. I wondered there and then whether this was a canny Hobart trick to advertise a slighty-known group such as MM in the hope that everyone would come and no-one would be so bogus as to complain when it was discovered the hit band wasn't there. Then I reasoned MM are probably only a hit band to me, and that if you did something like that in Hobart it would attract the same kind of stigma as putting a fake Fleetwood Mac on tour did for Clifford Davis only on a Hobart level.*

Meanwhile it's a beautiful day in Hobart today and we are about to go to Glenorchy market.

* I sent them a message on myspace to ask them why they hadn't played and got a response: 'we weren't supposed to..... i dont think we were ha'