Just another drycleaner

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One of my favourite books when I was young, somewhere between “when I was little” and “when I was a kid”, was Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs. It’s quite extraordinary and there’s very little like it in children’s literature. The story is just an ordinary day in the life of a Bogeyman, living underground with the rest of his kind and only venturing to the surface at night to scare humans, but that’s not really what the book is about; it’s just the foundation for a sort of sociological text about Bogey society and culture and ordinary life. One of the details that stayed with me for years and years after I read it was the fact that Bogeymen would only ever put up posters to promote events that had already happened. As I recall, the intent was to foster a constant air of disappointment wherever one goes, being reminded of all these great concerts and happenings that one supposedly could have attended but didn’t.

On that note, two things that will be happening in the future: on Saturday the 16th of April I will be performing a half-hour set for the next Melodica at St George’s Hall in Battery Point — something electronic that I am yet to fully work out — and on Sunday the 24th of April I will be doing something very strange and special for the next Poptimism at the Grand Poobah on Liverpool Street. Details to come. I am very, very excited. I may be the only one.

Lucky dog

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Out of all the projects I’m presently working on, there are two that excite me the most. One of them, I have no idea whether there’s even an audience for it; the other, there’s a guaranteed audience and I don’t have a clue whether they’ll dig it. Wish me luck. Silently, silently, wish me luck.

False Document #1

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The false document is one of my favourite forms of comedy, and one which I’ve attempted a few times in my life to varying degrees of success (this is probably the best one I’ve done). Every so often with this thing I expect I’ll just want to link to somebody else’s work rather than produce anything new myself — like today, where I’ve been busy with both work and doing a warm-up set for Matt Burton’s solo comedy show — but I may as well stick to a theme, and for now, false documents it is. One of the first I saw, and still one of the best: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats previews the then unreleased second Strokes album. To this day it thrills me when bands really and actually record and release their own True Tales from the Rev0lution.

Weirdos Exposed: “Be Your Healer”

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The Native Cats, Always On, track three. Whenever it was in 2007 that we decided we were going to start a band together, Julian gave me a CD-R of nine experimental instrumentals he’d recorded on his own while he was still in the Bad Luck Charms, and I wrote lyrics for the last two tracks. We finished them both during the Always On sessions, with my vocals, Julian’s new bass parts, and Anthony Rochester working his mild-mannered magic on the whole lot. One was the still unreleased dark country swing of “Guns All In Tune”, which we’ll find a home for someday, and the other was the manic 300BPM XTRMNTR tribute “Be Your Healer”. I say that having never heard anything off XTRMNTR other than the singles, but Julian’s always banging on about Primal Scream so I’m assuming that’s what he was trying to do. I don’t know who I was trying to channel with my vocal part, although the bit where I suddenly drop all vocal artifice for the line “don’t you get so bent outta shape” is definitely a Dave Graney trick. It’s no “that guy would give a dog’s arse heartburn”, but I was only young.

There aren’t many songs I can honestly say this about, but I literally can’t remember what the lyrics were meant to refer to. I recently got into a long and rewarding conversation about video games with a dude in Melbourne because he was quite sure I meant “healer” in the Final Fantasy white mage sense, which doesn’t ring any bells, but it’s still likely enough that I agreed with him. I know I was trying to help a friend through a situation that had nothing to do with me at around about that time, and trying a little bit too hard for my own good, so it’s possible that that whole experience fed into it somehow. The “you know you’re not so bad” part I just lifted from an old unreleased song of mine called “Killed Off”, and it refers to my longstanding habit of trying to cheer somebody up by reminding them of all the ways in which they could be awful but aren’t.

So I guess this song is a bit more personal than I remember? Doesn’t feel personal, though, which I like. It’s a lot of fun to sing, especially the high notes that I don’t quite have the voice for. As with everything else on Always On, we haven’t played it live in ages, but we’re trying to bring it back.

you need a little subtlety
you need a little style
you’re turning black and green
you’re turning over in your sleep
somebody funhouse mirrored all your single syllables right back at you
like a child would do

you need the grace of a ballerina
to be a healer
don’t you get so defensive
you just need a healer

I’ll be your healer

you’re so aspirational
always looking for an in
but you know you’re not so bad
you’ve seen what all these other people do

you need the poise of a ballerina
to be a healer
don’t you get so bent outta shape
you just need a healer

I’ll be your healer

Common or garden herbs

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I’d like to see a law that requires all of our most revered musicians to record and publicly release their first attempts at using every new piece of musical equipment they acquire. Samplers, synthesisers, effects pedals, vocoders… one’s early, childlike days of exploring what they’re capable of, half-accidentally making a pleasing sound and trying to repeat it, like a baby with a new rattle. Mimicking the masters of the instrument in such an unselfconscious way. Fully self-indulgent.

Still trying to work out how best to incorporate my new MPC1000 into the Native Cats and my solo work. Thinking of original sounds I can sample and manipulate and chop up and sequence. Sounds from the piano, sounds from the kitchen. It’ll be a long process trying to develop a halfway unique take on a very, very popular sampler.  But right now I’m content to slice up Nintendo music and just muck about with it. Scoff at the last couple of minutes of this track if you feel the need, but just know that I had mountains of fun. In my own mind I am Metal Fingers, and this is one of my first Special Herbs.

Contrast Cave by Paytahr Escobar

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.

…*

Gang of losers!

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In my writings here so far I have alluded to but not attempted to demonstrate myself as a comedian. I’ve been planning what I’m going to write about in the coming days and weeks, and going in hard for laughs doesn’t really sit well with the contemplative, honest-to-a-fault tone I’m aiming for here. This is a comfort zone. It’s unfortunate that we typically only speak of a comfort zone as a place to be stepped out of. Come here for comfort!

I definitely feel like writing a lot about comedy, mind you. I am all too aware that there are a lot of people in the world doing this! But here’s the thing: when I compare my experience so far (performing regularly around Hobart for close to two years, plus a couple of shows in Melbourne) with all of the interviews and memoirs and stories and textbooks and guides and fictional portrayals I’ve devoured since I first started taking an interest, it’s a near-total clash. Films that show you how it is: that’s not how it is! Bitter, starving decades-long comics that tell you how it really is: that’s not how it is either! At least it hasn’t been for me. I recognise that we have a weird scene here, oceans away from any revered “brick wall brotherhood”, and that excites me.

Tasmanian musicians will invariably scoff when mainland street press brings up the supposed “isolation factor” as it applies to their music (the idea being it sounds like it does because we don’t get exposed to anything but the sound of our own uneducated heartbeats), but while internet connections and cheap flights to Melbourne mean nobody is left out when it comes to all the strangeness that every new or long-gone wave of music has to offer, there’s still a lot of exploration and lucky hot tips between a Hobart comedic neophyte and the works of, say, a Stewart Lee or a Paul F. Tompkins. Lee has a career autobiography, Tompkins has a podcast, they both have various recordings of their live shows for sale, but if you’re only in it because you can make your friends laugh and you’ve done an Adult Ed course, how do you even know who to look for?

So people come into Hobart comedy out of nothing in particular, they start doing shows with nothing to influence them but their own gut instinct and about 15 to 20 other friendly locals showing up on the same lineup, no two of whom are doing the same thing, and the result is that everyone who sticks with it evolves in such a weird way, and everyone who becomes great does so in a way that stuns interstate crowds and comics alike. I devour comedy albums and documentaries and podcasts, generally in moderation but sometimes reaching to a level that becomes just a little bit sad and embarrassing, and I’m happy to be largely alone in this among my peers. I love that I know someone here who listens to WTF with Marc Maron, and I love that nobody else does.

Although one nice thing that our music and comedy scenes have in common is that the limited number of people involved means that you have no choice but to suck it up and get along with people that you have very, very little in common with stylistically. Not only do we only really have one comedy circle here, but it also crosses over quite heavily into the little world of cabaret and any of the light-hearted performing arts. I defy anyone here to try and live out some kind of small-scale American stand-up fantasy when you’re regularly sharing a bill with an apron-wearing Italian “mama”, or a robot version of same kneading dough on-stage to a New Order remix, or an leather-clad Eastern European dominatrix/obtuse trivia hostess. And they’re getting more laughs than you.

There’s no end point to this. That’s just what I’m excited about today. Hobart! (Although even Hobart’s not as pure and uncolonised as it could be. A few of us went up to Launceston last year to mix it up with some local comics there. Like apes at the monolith, they were…)