pssst
I'm not actually dead, just busy undercover.
Will write soon xxx
Being the not particularly meaningful ramblings of a newly arrived Brisneylander! ... Well it will be once I've figured out how to make this thing work.......
Hey check it out! It's like someone has a watersports, seaweed and mollusc fantasy here!! And it's not me! The picture in the post before this one was included because I've had that watery tart up in my loo for years... then I found this picture - and well, I just included her 'cause it looks like bad soft porn... and frankly, I find alot of soft porn rather amusing.
The Surfari Krishnas and the Fred Band @ Ric's
What a great night this was - 2 of my favourite Brissie bands in the one line-up... so who knew or cared who or what Bob Log was eh?
Love the Rev - cool little venue, big enough to avoid someone you don't like (like BARRY the knobgobbler during the Hard-Ons gig last year) but small enough to catch up with everyone you do(like at last year's Ramone-a-thon)! I always meet groovers at the Rev, it never costs a fortune to get in (most I've paid is about $20) and I pretty much always have a good time. It used to be an old church but has been a gig venue for some time now (at least that's what the locals tell me) and has a really cool little tiny beergarden out the front lit by fairy lights - and as we all know nothing says party like fairy lights!! (and a sequinned boob-tube if you ask Bubbles!!)
Anyways, went to the gig, El Borracho did a great little set first up (I was even a tad groupie-ish and wore my El Borracho t-shirt - mostly because I remembered that night that I had one as I was getting dressed and hadn't yet worn it!!) - doesn't matter what sort of a mood you start the set in, as soon as Stuie gets going on that slide and Paul starts cranking out those vocals delivered at breakneck pace, your feet start moving and the whole gorgeous infectious delivery just ends up making everyone jump around. I even had my mate the lovely Hawaiian Masseur Senor Fishbits there and he liked 'em lots and lots - almost enough to concentrate on the music and not the proliferation of attractive young bloods around the joint. (I understand to a point - I like 'em tattooed and scruffy too, but he does tend to like 'em a little toooooo young for my taste - personally when boys are that young I wanna take 'em home and feed them, make sure they have some clean knickers on and a clean hanky along with change for the bus in their pocket... that sort of stuff!)
Anyways El Borracho did a fabulous job as always, and I didn't actually get to see the Vegas Kings because I was outside yapping to Stuie and Mr Slippers and this crazy dude called John (who I met for the first time and was utterly mesmerized by - not only did he talk a squillion miles an hour but he said the most outrageous things and was just completely fascinating - owns a guitar shop somewhere here in town and asked if Adelaide is as completely and utterly fucked and he suspects - by the way I asked him how completely and utterly fucked he thinks it is, and was very happy to be able to reassure him that it wasn't - there aren't actually acid baths in every second house in Adelaide!!!). Stu was feeling glum because he'd managed to get one note out of his amp (that he had borrowed as his were in being fixed) before it blew. So then he had to borrow an amp from the Vegas Kings, broke several strings, had his awesome solo cut muy short in El Instrumento (which is the very cool instrumental song they do where he usually gets to cut loose and wow everyone in the audience with his string supremacy) and was just basically feeling like blowing off the Rev, grabbing some pizza and going home.... which not surprisingly he did hehehe... wish I'd gone with him for pizza - just can't bust a move on that fellow - it's sooooo against the code... he's a mate of my ex... bugger! Makes him unattainable for ever - sucks to me!! But anyway....
So, missed the Vegas Kings, but knowing them (and from what I could hear coming out of the place) it was an awesome, dirty, rockin' set delivered to a hungry crowd at breakneck speed and without missing a beat. Those boys are ACE!
Then it was Bob Log.
hehe the dude actually wore a jumpsuit. And if you think an old-school jumpsuit in dark blue polysatin with stars down the sides of the arms and legs and flares wasn't enough for ya - he actually wore a full face sparkly silver motorcycle helmet, with an old fashioned big, heavy, black telephone handset attached upside down to the front of it with a mic lead coming from it. AND silver sparkles on his chest. Man the guy was hysterical. His ideas were suuuuper cool (even if the performance did get a little same old, same old by about half way through). So Bob Log turns out to be a wacky, crazy, zany one man blues extravaganza from Tucson, Arizona in the USA. He crowd surfed the crowd in a rubber dingy without missing a beat, he had MASSES of energy and his variations of a theme were positively astonishing.
I think he was one pretty cool dude.
Remember kids, Bob Log. hehehe fucking weirdo.
Ok, come with me now... I wanna take you to a little place in the West End - which is of course the particularly groovy & bohemian end of Brisvegas... where there are still loads of hippies, and students, and artists and musicians, bums and homeless dodgy looking dudes wandering the streets, lots of people with mental health issues, weirdos, vegans, wierdo vegans, and alternative types by the bucketload - obviously the coolest part of town!! This is a very funky little suburb tucked into a bend in the river, close to everything but not yet ritzed up, glammed out, totally fucked over and rendered soulless by dollar worshipping developers and their evil empires. This is where the best markets in Brisbane are - under the incredibly gorgeous Moreton Bay figs down by the river... the funkiest markets where you can eat a snowcone whilst listening to the barefoot jazz kids jamming on their milk crates, watching families of all shapes and descriptions play and relax... nice! This is the part of town where all the best bookshops, record stores (that's right kids - VINYL with the big fat bottom end and it's endless appeal and vulnerability), restaurants of every shape and ethnicity, a profusion of fabulous little coffee houses, second hand clothes stores, art and art supply shops, Trash Video, Bent Books, The Avid Reader, The Three Monkeys (absolute best cake on the planet), a sheisha house (big hookah-like smoking pipe thing from Turkey where you sit around it and smoke fruit tobacco's over hot coals through these long snake-like appendages), Mick's Nuts, Reverse Garbage (where you can find everything and anything) and endless other varieties of funky businesses of every shape and description.
If an Egg Yolk Jellyfish were the sort of jellyfish to show discernment and taste in the parts of town that it frequents, then Brisbane's West End would be just the place it would hang out. It would eat at Cantina's and Lefka's, it would wander up and down Boundary Road checking out all the different stuff - it would probably head toward the river, finding itself in the leafier, greener part of the West End... it would quite likely find itself on Hardgrave Road ambling along cheerfully. If an Egg Yolk Jellyfish were to find itself ambling cheerfully along Hardgrave Road it would almost definitely go past Tongue and Groove at some point - which amazingly enough brings me to the point of this whole monologue....
Thursday before last I discovered 2 awesome Brisbanian things - 1) Tongue and Groove, and 2) Death Rides a Horse. Now from the street, Tongue and Groove looks like just another of the West Ends MANY funky restaurants chockablock full of tasty titbits, but as I discovered you can go downstairs to the coolest, funkiest, most laid back little bar I've been in whilst up here yet!!! Like being in someone's loungeroom if it were uber-cool and full of groovy, beautiful people. (with suitably esoteric artworks on the wall and of course a big fuck off bar in the middle of it). Down one end was the velvet half of the room - floor to ceiling red velvet drapes, fairy lights, and teensy weensy stage. There was a big old piano, lots of sofas and lounge chairs, and dreadlocked student-y types there, chatting and so forth. Down the other end of this fabulous little oubliette of cool were more lounges, more sofas, more dreadlocked student-y and musician types, and a doorway through to where you can go (semi)outside to smoke etc. So we got a drink, and made ourselves comfortable by leaning against the piano and watched Stu and Paul from fabulous Brisvegas band 'El Borracho' (one of my favourite bands on the scene here) do their 'Death Rides a Horse' thing. And lemme tell ya it's a fab, fab thing. Utterly hilarious. All Ramones, all mellow, all steel string (and some slide guitar), all perfectly delivered by Paul with Stu providing extremely amusing commentary. Now Stu happens to be one of the finest guitarists it has ever been my good fortune to come across (not to mention a drop dead SPUNK and - much like Philosophy Stu - a version of the perfect man) - so good in fact that he makes country almost bearable, and in this case extremely enjoyable. After all I love a good laugh and if you've ever heard these boys do 'Beat on the brat', 'The KKK took my baby away', 'Rockaway Beach', 'I wanna be sedated' or 'Sheena is a punk rocker' then you too would be in stitches. Who knew the Ramones were so country???? I never did, and it gave me a new perspective, and a new appreciation of one of my favourite bands. The boys were giving away their Death Rides a Horse cd, and lemme tell ya it's excellent so if you get the chance to nab one, do so! (otherwise you can come over to my place, smoke a few billys and listen to my copy). So not punk, so not cool, that it's cool!!!
What about this one??? It's a Blue Jellyfish... think you would give it a bit of a slurp if it were swimming past you in the ocean? Maybe you'd drop down on all fours and give it a lick if you saw it lying on the beach (much to the surprise and possible consternation of all passersby)??The Lion's Mane Jellyfish - would you lick it with a slurp? Would you lick it and then burp? Would you lick it from a dish? Would you lick this jellyfish??????
Check it out at http://thesurrealist.co.uk/trivia.pl
Hours of uncontrollable hilarity I assure you!!!