Zoe is always looking to Improve herself. Here she is enjoying one of the greatest prison story's ever - or is she hiding from one of John's tour bus monologues?
Another time Zoe attempted The Iliad but finding it tiresome had John read it aloud.
This was a bloody torture for the rest of us, but Zoe just went right on learning.
POSTED BY KING CURLY
The Curly tour vehicle is always a hotbed of ideas and solutions. Here however, John seems to be momentarily lost for words. (By now you ought to be getting a pretty good understanding of the two major components of touring.)
POSTED BY KING CURLY
This photo of Elmo and Zoe captures the gentle pleasure of being drunk. Taken shortly after a show on the Sunshine Coast at Joe's Waterhole/Eumundi. The 4 of us shared a bottle of something in the gloom of the garden of our unpleasant accommodation. Imagine also the din of the tropical bushland and the occasional cane toad hopping by on the lawn.
POSTED BY KING CURLY
We drove a lot on the Doomsday Tour and consequently otherwise dull things become interesting- like stopping at petrol stations. Nothing much going on here except the cashier refused to be in our photo. Zoe is drinking coffee and I'm paying for the petrol. One time we stopped at a remote station where a borderline-attractive girl told me she was "B.O.R.E.D" in a suggestive way. That made me happy for ages.
POSTED BY KING CURLY
I slept 8 hours at home last night only to be woken when my excited daughter jumped into my filthy bed out in the shed. Part one of the Doomsday Piano tour has been fun and very well received with only 2 crap gigs out of the 15. The last 3 shows in the safe seats of Sydney, Canberra and Katoomba were packed houses so we even made some money which is a nice change.
I want to make special mentions of talent we ran into on the way. 'Betty Means Business', the ukulele trio who supported us for a number of the shows were fine company and have won fans everywhere. A guy called Steve Ryan in Armidale played a solo support spot for us there and showed himself to be a truly brilliant songwriter and singer - I hope to play with him again now he has moved to Sydney. We had a support in Adelaide called 'Unspoken Things' who I liked a lot. They are like a high school band - heaps of energy and not taking it too seriously. Their tenacious little singer/drummer Travis very rudely said I looked like 'Ed' off that American sitcom but the bullet bounced straight off me. Well,... I suppose it did hurt abit. Ed - God. He was such a goose. Deb Collins and her partner running the Blue Poles venue in Byabarra were favourite people of ours - good people to balance against some of the evil characters we encountered elsewhere. Thank you.
Having just returned from our South Australian leg of the tour I should mention our encounter with an unusual and soon-to-be-banned shower head. We were provided in Adelaide with accommodation by a very kind relative of John's in the Bel Air hills. It is a tremendously relaxing and beautiful place while the house itself has clearly been designed with the environment as a priority - recycled water systems, solar power etc. It was here that we came to know the "Lil' Pixie 500". A shower head which gave off such an economical jet of water that it was impossible not to hate it. It was more of a fine cold mist to stand in. I consider myself a lover of the environment but the "Lil' Pixie" must go down in history as a bizarre false economy. If it does get dug up by some an archaeologist in years to come I'm sure they will have no idea what the stupid thing could have been for.
POSTED BY KING CURLY
We are now road hardened and while generally everything is good a few cracks have appeared. Zoe seems tense and could rip into John at any time. I want to warn him but he is on auto as always.
The shows have been very good except for Murwilumbah which was a bit crap but it meant we got to stay at John’s grandparent’s house in the cane fields. Grandpa Lindsay, a retired cane cutter, had some stories to tell. He reminisced about the 1920’s when there were big fish in the Tweed river and “plenty of birds to shoot”. Back then he said, they enjoyed pigeon pie and parrot pie too but found cockatoo and gallah meat overly tough – “best way to cook it was with some stones and when the stones get soft the pie was ready”. Heavy.
Long tedious monologues in the Tarago can sometimes bring up world changing ideas which will sadly/luckily never get off the ground – Here’s a taster. As a solution to sociological problems of the day, it might help to pair all teenage boys with sexually disappointed older women (usually single or married 35 – 45 year olds).
And there's more -To make our roads safer, young fellows wouldn't be allowed to have a drivers license until they were 25 years old – the responsibility would fall on their previously mentioned special mentors to drive them to parties and wait around looking bored etc. So, if a young person had trouble with the Law, it would be their special guardian held responsible and pay any fine (or worse). This brilliant twist would help discourage mentors from being greedy by taking more youngsters under their guardianship than could be responsibly managed.
Here's another clever idea put forward as a way of establishing a more functional power structure in Australia. Given many of our societies problems come out of a general bias towards good looking people or the wealthy: there would appear to be the need to establish an equitable but brutal class regime where parents of multiple children would be rightfully revered and worshipped. For example, under this system a clever young accountant with good looks, charm, no children and the world at his fingertips would be required to lie prostrate when a mother of 3 wearing tracksuits pants and looking like shit entered the room. Perhaps a system of military strips could be introduced: Parents would wear a strip for each child. The more stripes the more respect. Nice idea...
Finally, I am thinking it might be a good thing to start a Black List of venues. This might be useful for bands to keep tabs on the big bad world out there. Bands are always looking for the current ‘good’ shows – and dream of an unbroken run of such venues up the eastern seaboard. But, of course there are the terrible ones, which must be avoided and ideally put out of business through word of mouth.. Bands are generally pretty easy to please but I would suggest that there are some clear minimum benchmarks which venues can be measured by. Firstly of course there is the pay – we like to try to make $100 each and get a bed for the night and a meal. That's not unreasonable. One or more of these things will often fall by the wayside e.g. maybe the venue says we can have a meal for half price – oh well ok then… never mind. But the thing which really shits me is when you get a venue where they won't give some kind of a rider – however limited. It's insulting because clearly it is not a major expense for a venue. So, with this in mind, I will put forward a first entry for the black list.
The Federal Hotel/ Belingen
whose generally sour and condescending demeanour was crowned by their refusal to give us a beer. Perhaps we should set up a Special Black List Page?
POSTED BY KING CURLY
Just back from the Victorian leg of the tour where it does seem 'Doomsday Piano' is being picked up and passed about with enthusiasm. John and Zoe are yet to have a proper fight and spirits are high. Highlights include our show at the Butter Factory in Drouin where we discovered an Aladdin's cave of theatre costumes during the support band's set. Before long we had dressed up in what turned out to be the gear for a recent production of 'Narnia'. I had a big bejewelled crown and a long flowing fur coat which dragged grandly behind me. The others looked regal too in suitably smaller crowns and cloaks (swords too). As we readied ourselves for a grand entrance to the stage a small lady apprehended us in a savage manner even drawing her hand across her neck to make her point clear and so our grand entrance was doused -Great show however. By contrast our show in Mornington turned out to be truly horrible. The venue had changed ownership since the show was booked. We basically provided background restaurant music to a disinterested room of diners. One fellow heading a large table of very noisy children, kindly gave us $50 on his way out "for ruining our night" which was thoughtful.
As usual we emerged stronger and bitterer than ever. Watch out QLD.
POSTED BY KING CURLY
