Category Archives: reflection

On the wrong side of relaxation

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The line between the lowly consumers and the mighty performers has made me anxious ever since I started thinking about crossing it. I just want to be a part of something. Something historical and international and mythological and romantic. In 2004 I told Phil Elvrum (a.k.a. The Microphones, a.k.a. Mount Eerie) after a show in Hobart that I was moving to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks and hoped to start playing my music live over there, and did he have any tips for a first-time performer? About eight months later I told Bryan Hollon (a.k.a. Boom Bip) after a show in Edinburgh that I was playing my first show later that week, and did he have any tips for a first-time performer? I had no specific concerns and my music had nothing much in common with theirs; I couldn’t read myself well enough back then to know that all I was hoping for was some kind of coded message from either of them, a secret handshake, any way they wanted to say “Hey, welcome to our side, buddy! You’ll love it over here!” They were both perfectly friendly but unsure of quite what to say to this nervous youth, stammering in his curious accent.

Nowadays I’m somewhere on the bill at most of the gigs I attend. Not something I’m proud of but it’s true. Work and family commitments mean I’m a lot less likely to stake money and a chunk of my free time on a band I’ve only barely heard of if I’m not actually needed there. One consequence of this is that I tend not to feel that ugly need to assert my place in the gang anymore, as it’s practically self-evident. In three years I don’t think the Native Cats have ever met a headliner who didn’t want to mix with the support acts. Although it doesn’t hurt that Julian is at most two degrees of separation away from anyone who plays music in Australia (or organises a show for an international act).

The old feeling came back when Jeffrey Lewis played here in 2009 though. I’d been a huge fan ever since a friend sent me an mp3 of the revelatory “Don’t Let The Record Label Take You Out To Lunch” some years previously, but it hit me during our brief chat at the merch desk that I just felt so small coming to him simply as a dude who enjoys his work, rather than a card-carrying brother in music. I felt so embarrassed seeing this in myself that I could barely speak. I’m an aspirational bugger but I don’t enjoy it. If I was Jeffrey Lewis I’d make a delightful but brutally self-reflective comic about it. But I… can’t… nnngh… draw!

I think my anxiety backstage on the one night I did a short stand-up set at the Hobart Comedy Festival alongside some biggish names was borne out of much the same thing, although it didn’t help that (i) I’d put a lot of pressure on myself to do very, very well, which threw my instinct out completely — last time I’ll ever build a single show up in my own head like that, with any luck — and (ii) all my Hobart comedy friends who could have been feeling anywhere near the same way were spread out performing on different nights, so during my time backstage I had the choice of either trying to muscle my way into the conversations of my social betters (well, more elbow than muscle, given my wiry frame) or moping around on my own, maybe trying to pretend I was silently going over my already over-rehearsed five-minute set. It was like high school all over again. Worse, it was like being shifted to a different, more intimidating high school halfway through the year.

And here I am again without a conclusion or even a good concluding sentence! I’m just writing for the sake of it. It’s been a while.

…*

Your friends are dust!

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Haphazardly serving the two masters of “music” and “comedy” in equal measure as I do, I often find myself, against my own better judgment, comparing the two and trying to divine the essential similarities and differences. This is about something very specific though, a technique that has excited me for years, which lends itself equally well to lyrics and to comic prose, and which at some point in my life I hope to be able to utilise. I’ve never heard it discussed before, I don’t know what to call it except for exploiting the tension between writer and performer. It’s what you get when somebody has such a unique command of language that there’s a kind of grubby thrill in hearing them put their words in somebody else’s mouth. The two mad maestros of this technique are the undying/undead captain of the Fall, Mark E. Smith, and the steely-eyed satirist best known for the news and current affairs parody series The Day Today and Brass Eye, Chris Morris.

The Fall – And This Day (live at the Hammersmith Palais, 1982)

If you’re new to the Fall, this is about as perverse an introduction as you can get: a 15-minute live version of their apocalyptic Hex Enduction Hour LP closer, “And This Day”. That thing that the band is doing at the start of the song? They’re still doing that at the end of the song. Years ago I would play this on repeat for hours; to this day I still feel invincible when it’s on. I bring it up here because of the closing minutes, in which — and this is an educated guess as far as the exact circumstances are concerned — Mark E. Smith leaves the stage and is replaced on lead vocals by Lana Pellay, reciting from and improvising with Smith’s lyric sheet. The effect of this Lovecraft-obsessed working-class Manc speed freak barking out nightmare visions over a circular calliope post-punk groove for 10 minutes, then simply handing said nightmare visions over to a Shirley Bassey-inspired disco drag diva (“It’s clear when every lie disturbs… makes you jump! Everywhere! Just no fucking respite!”) is phenomenal.

Even so, it appears that not everyone shares my fierce affection for this technique whenever it’s deployed:  for example, the largely panned “Trust In Me” on 2005′s Fall Heads Roll, in which Smith’s lyrics, seemingly inspired by a recent injury and hospitalisation, are delivered in rotation by the producer, the engineer, and two members of swiftly-forgotten New York indie-indie band Shelby who happened to be in the building on the day of the recording; and Smith’s barely noticed solo album The Post-Nearly Man, much of which takes the form of a disjointed read-through of an already confusing screenplay, complete with annotations and directions.

Chris Morris now has radio, television and film productions to his name in which he seldom or never appears, packed full of actors working from his scripts (Blue Jam, Nathan Barley, Four Lions), but while his peculiar comedic voice comes through in everything he writes, I’ve always found it works especially well when foisted upon unsuspecting dupes. (Is “unsuspecting dupes” redundant? I like the sound of it too much to care.) Take a look at this clip from The Day Today‘s vox pop segment “Speak Your Brains”. It’s unique for this type of comedy, in that it’s vital for the star to be a hesitant member of the public rather than a trained comic actor, but at the same time, the humour doesn’t come from mocking the elderly gentleman on camera, but from the absurdity of the script he fumbles through. Even the slip-ups and mistakes are deliberate inclusions in the script; I’m quite certain now that the sheet of paper includes not only the word “bulled”, but the subsequent “Sorry, my mistake”.

Brass Eye, on the other hand, is a mean, mean programme through and through. It’s best remembered now for its celebrity campaign segments, in which public figures of various levels of notoriety and credibility were fooled into raising awareness for a number of invented causes, such as curbing the spread of a fictitious new street drug, preventing the dangers of “heavy electricity”, and most notoriously, reciting deeply implausible facts and statistics for an overzealous anti-paedophilia scare campaign. There’s been enough written about this element of the show already, sadly more often than not simply reducing it to its most outrageous dot points — the closest I’ve come to making sense of the Chaser team’s steady descent into (and then past) mediocrity was hearing Julian Morrow at the Australian Four Lions premiere excitedly describing Morris as “This is a guy who made a paedophilia special” — but even after the novelty of all these people being so naive or unthinking as to willingly sign themselves up for these campaigns, there still remains the simple joy of not just the scripts, but the sublime readings thereof. You marvel at the fact that The Good Life‘s Richard Briers could believe even for a moment everything he’s saying about “heavy electricity”, and then you’re still left with his warm, calming voice gently explaining, “Basically, it’s like being hit by a tonne of invisible lead soup.” Take that element away and you’re essentially left with Surprise Surprise Gotcha.

Chris Morris and Mark E. Smith share a love of language and all of its horrors, and each have a unique ability to bend language to their mighty will and create a fantastic and unpredictable world in doing so, but I think they’re also well aware of the dynamic effect of not just subjecting passers-by to that world, but occasionally dragging them into it and making them broadcast it back to us. Although I don’t doubt there’s still a basic element of exhaustion or just laziness when Smith drags the tour manager on stage, hands him the lyric sheet for “Tommy Shooter” and goes backstage for a smoke. But it still works!

What chu gon’ do NOW?

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I’m roughly three months away from fatherhood. It’s 10.30 on a Sunday night and it’s the start of another working week tomorrow. Yesterday my partner and I found some excellent second-hand furniture for the lounge room and what will eventually be the nursery; today was taken up by some heavy-duty tidying. The room I’m in now hasn’t looked this neat since we first bought the place a year ago; I only stopped because it was getting dark outside, and some electrical issue far beyond my understanding has seemingly been blowing bulb after bulb in here, before finally refusing to light anything.

If it’s any indication of how excited and happy I am about the impending birth of our (probably) son: Broadcast and the Fall, two of my all-time favourite bands, are coming to Australia for the Meredith Music Festival — Broadcast for the first time ever, the Fall for the first time in almost twenty years — and they’ll each be playing their share of side shows around the mainland, all of them within two weeks of the baby’s due date. The morning I heard that they were both coming down, then realised that there was no way I could justify flying up to Melbourne for even a night… I was crushed for all of half an hour, and then I moved on. I am getting kicked in the hand by a mostly-completed kid on a regular basis and that is more of a thrill to me.

My point for tonight is that if I’m ever unhappy these days, it’s only because I’m unfairly beating myself up for not living the life of a madly creative free spirit for every waking moment. Feeling like an embarrassment to my kind because I’m always bursting with ideas that I don’t write out or put into practice. I cause myself a lot of stress in this and many other ways, but lately I’ve been putting a stop to it. I had a rotten night when I did my five minutes at the Hobart Comedy Festival because I put so much pressure on myself for it to be perfect, and for it to stand out and shine for the festival audience and all the big-name performers on the bill, so I resolved to loosen up on stage for my comedy shows and never try to stake my reputation on one night’s work; I’ve been performing better and feeling a lot better since. Now it’s time to do the same with my weekends.

I am gonna try and write here more though, without feeling like it has to be phenomenal. You did not come here to be blown away; I will no longer attempt to. Not here!

Say it with me: “I am a magnet for success!”

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“That was a negative, and right now I need two positives: one to cancel out the negative, and another one, you know, just so I can have a positive.” — Alan Partridge

The billboard for Akmal Saleh’s show at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival quotes a review from, as I recall, the Adelaide Advertiser, claiming that “at times the audience could have been forgiven for crying with laughter in their seats”. I feel these words could have just as easily applied to my performance at the national Raw Comedy final last night, albeit deliberately misinterpreted along the way; that is to say, the audience could have been forgiven with crying with laughter at every one of my unique observations and solid gold punchlines, but they just didn’t. Instead, my set was fueled largely by the sound of 1500 people furrowing their brows and scratching their heads. But they can be, and have been, forgiven for that.

Perhaps the majority of the crowd didn’t want to think too hard about what I was saying, especially as I was the last of the evening’s 13 acts (not even counting Cal Wilson’s pieces as the show’s host), but it’s just as likely that I didn’t leave enough space for them to think. I can’t blame an exhausted festival crowd for not responding warmly to what may have been, upon reflection, the comedy equivalent of a Mars Volta song.

Small mercies: Rove McManus, one of the judges, told me afterwards to keep doing whatever the hell it is I’m doing, or words to that effect. And somebody writing for Chortle (presumably Steve Bennett, also on the judging panel) described me as “probably the most intriguing act on the bill”. Granted, “intriguing” doesn’t pay the bills — indeed, if anything, “intriguing” just makes people very curious as to why you’re not paying the bills — but it’s encouraging nonetheless. I’ve already decided it would be quite funny to include “give him a couple of years, he could be something distinctive and special” on a festival poster two years from now, and funnier still to include it on a festival poster one year from now.

And if “intriguing” is what made you look me up: hello! I’m 25, I’ve been gigging regularly around Hobart for about a year, I’ve written and performed close to an hour in total of what I would still consider halfway decent material, I am indeed in a band called the Native Cats, I tend to stutter when I’m not on stage, and I didn’t think I was being all that perverse and wilfully obscure with my choices of comedy subject matter, but apparently I am. To quote Luke Heggie, the chap who actually won the final: have that!

Bed of nails

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There’s a working light bulb in the room where I keep my computer; I can write again!

Alternatively:

I’ve lowered my standards from “justifying my earthly existence with every word” to “blog”; I can write again!

Upcoming appearances, all things to all men, all men to all men, at the following venues, in the following guises:

Thursday, 4 March 2010: Five new minutes of stand-up comedy for this month’s Playground, at the Brisbane Hotel. Hosted by Mr Mick Davies, a tall man with even better individual eyebrow control than me. I expect great things.

Thursday, 11 March 2010: Five newer-still minutes of stand-up comedy at the Alley Cat in North Hobart. I was offered five minutes last Thursday, but then there were circumstances, and the circumstances dictated, and five minutes became twenty-two. I hasten to add that this occurred with the full blessing of the co-host and co-organiser, Mr Tim Logan; the last thing I want is a reputation as a man who “goes long”. (Careful, now.)

Friday, 12 March 2010: Singing and playing my piano music for roughly half an hour at the very same Alley Cat, alongside The Stan Show and Joe Nuttall. Another run through most of the songs that will hopefully eventually comprise my next solo album (working title: The Long O). It’ll happen!

Saturday, 20 March 2010: The Native Cats playing for roughly half an hour, again at that friendly old Alley Cat, alongside Drunk Elk (launching their new CD, Pieces of People We Have Known) and Manchester Mourning. We played one of our best sets yet at the Alley Cat not long ago, and we’ll have even more new songs this time around.

Sunday, 21 March 2010: Five tried, tested, judge-pleasing (let’s hope) minutes of stand-up comedy at the Uni Bar for the Tasmanian Raw Comedy… what do we call it? It’s the heat, it’s the final, it’s all we get, it’s all we do. And it’s on a Sunday afternoon. Controversial choice. Have you ever laughed on a Sunday afternoon? Can you give me an example? Can you specify the date and time? You can’t, can you? (I’m not saying it’s necessarily a doomed idea; that’s just a cross-examination trick I’ve learned from my job as a legal transcription typist.)

Honestly? The Sunday afternoon element is the least of the weirdness for me. I love a good underdog story as much as anyone who isn’t Jay-Z does, so much so that I’m fiercely protective of my status as the most unlikely contender in anything I try to do. Which is exactly what I was when I got up and won the state Raw final back in 2004 with nothing but a comically shambolic O-Week amateur night under my belt. Trouble is, this year I’m entering because even though I’ve already won in the past, I didn’t win hard enough to get to Melbourne for the national final. This, sadly, does not make me the Mighty Ducks. Or the Cool Runnings, for that matter.

Saturday, 27 March 2010: The Native Cats playing for roughly half an hour, this time at the Brisbane Hotel, alongside Moe Grizzly, the UV Race, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring, who I’m told are the pretty biggest of pretty big deals right now. The show is still a month away and is already in danger of selling out, such is the pulling power of ECSR. I am still yet to hear a note of their music.

Thursday, 1 April 2010: I will be hosting the Playground, again at the Brisbane Hotel. Mastering the ceremonies, if you will. If all goes to plan I’ll be filming some sketches in the lead-up (with help from Mylo and Heath, lead organisers of just this sort of thing) to show between performers. If nothing goes to plan I’ll be lost, lost, lost.

Wednesday, 7 April 2010: The Native Cats playing for an unspecified length of time at some kind of 99.3 FM Edge Radio “radio-a-thon” at the Brisbane Hotel.

And so on, and so on, and so on. Muted post-performance summaries may follow.