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Is it august yet
Posted Sunday, August 01, 2004
Is it august yet? Pinch and a smack in the gob, and all that good stuff. I did my first Sydney gig on Friday and it went pretty well. The audience were a little slow to start but kicked in after about ten minutes of the show, and from then on it was loveliness. The State Theatre in Sydney is one of the most gorgeously designed you’ve ever seen. Fantastic chandeliers abound and various statues hold light fittings, knights in suits of armour seem to flex menacingly as you walk through the doors and it’s all very glamorous and beige and ‘olde-worlde’.At the end of the show there was a standing ovation, which blew me away, as I’ve been to Sydney several times and it had never happened before – I was very touched. I actually don’t know how I got through the second half of the show because from about half way through there was really loud talking coming from backstage-definitely female voices having the most interesting conversation you could imagine that was juuuust out of earshot. Don’t you hate that? I’m on stage doing my show, and I can feel myself thinking –‘I wonder what they’re talking about?’ It was so distracting. Not quite as distracting as the other night in Adelaide when one of the stagehands’ phone went off. The guy took an eternity to turn the bloody thing off too – He spent quite a lot of time looking around as if to say: ’Sounds like mine, but it can’t be, because we turn ‘em off when there’s a show on…but it sounds like mine...wonder if I should check?’ and so on.
We’re seeing quite a lot of friends from the UK out here – Sophie and family in Perth (Hi Soph! Thanks for the baked potato-hmmmmm ‘the potato is my friend’ and…I got to meet ‘Cliff – the black guy from The Spinners!!!’. He’s been out here for years having retired in the mid 90’s. He’s re-married and is having a lovely time. He looked very chipper 60, maybe 65 years old. Having taken the piss out of him throughout most of the Large tour, I was a bit anxious that he would beat me repeatedly over the head with an acoustic guitar –but he didn’t. He told me that he’d enjoyed the show and then we had our pictures taken.
The Seekers (‘Hey There Georgie girl!’ …etc) were in Brisbane. They were very enthusiastic about coming to see my show in Melbourne. I of course was very interested in the reputed Danger Mouse remix of their greatest hits package. ‘Carnival is Over’ mashed up with D12’s ‘Fight Music’ apparently it’s a wicked mix-you can only get it emailed to your phone… Judith Durham of The Seekers is really tiny, she sleeps in a matchbox, and she’s lovely, still singing well.
I’ll tell you who is also singing well –bloody hell-We went to see the UB40 posse last night at the State Theatre…the
show rocked like a Yardie!
They played a barrel load of hits including most of Labour of Love (how can you ‘wear someone to the ball’?
Also, ‘The Way You Do The Things You Do’ is a classic Temptations tune, but, I don’t know if its because Ali Campbell sang it so sweetly or what, but for the first time, I heard the lyrics properly –“ you got a smile so bright, you know you could’a bin a candle / I’m holding you so tight / you could’a bin a handle”, Smokey Robinson was having a laugh wasn’t he? “If good looks was a minute, you know you could’a bin an hour.” Its clever, but daft all at the same time.
The State Theatre has a raked balcony that slopes downwards and although the audience last night was told not to get up and dance – from about ten minutes into the concert people just got up – as if their limbs were behaving involuntarily – the minute the dropped, ’Cherry O Baby’ and ‘Keep on Moving’ and ‘Falling in Love’, People were leaping out of their seats and giving it ‘major league contort’ ‘Sorry, this isn’t me, its my body doing this’.
We had the most shameless woman in the audience in front of us, who kept wiggling every part of her anatomy in her husband’s face. Her friend was doing the same, whilst also trying to pull a fake dreadlocks wig onto her balding husband’s head. The fake dreadlock phenom is amazing – how do people think they’re gonna get away with it? What, you put a silly velour hat on your head with some cotton wool hanging from the inside and all of a sudden you’re Bunny Wailer? Get a life pal.
We went back stage to see the UBEEs afterwards and it was a pleasure to see all of them chilling out, drinking, eating big food – Astro had a mountain of food in front of him, Earl the bass player was working on some hard bread …Ali was cruising the room, making sure we all had drinks and so on. Brian the sax player was telling me that although the band don’t have huge chart hits any more, they are still in demand and have two record labels vying for their signature. The tracks I heard last night from their new album sounded very good. I still love ‘Love is All is alright’ and ‘King’ and ‘One in Ten’ and ‘Tyler’ and ‘Food for Thought’, but then, I remember going to Graduate Records in Dudley when it was just a record shop and not a burgeoning Indie label with one of the hottest bands in the UK under its wings. More power to you guys and keep in ridin’ the ryddim.
Peace
LH
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