Nic's Video

An abridged version of No Through Road is playing on Friday Feb 15th at some venue I can’t remember. Apparently it’s a benefit for our manager Ross, so he can accumulate enough money to post bail for the bands he takes care of. Neither Marcin nor myself will be there. Marcin’s in Japan, I’ll be in Melbourne at the Festival of the Photocopier. So the show will be a total write off.

Also, Nic’s video for our nearly totally forgotten smash hit “Next Bob Dylan” has been nominated for some sort of local video award. You can view it below:


Alternately, you watch Matt performing one of his ‘Dance’ numbers:

More about Nic

We had a 'band meeting' last night to discuss plans for recording with our engineer from Broadcast Studios. Nic is increasingly hyperactive when he's at band practice lately. I was trying to figure out who he reminds me off. Sort of scruffy, jumps about a lot, tends to get himself in trouble through a sort of hyperactivity-induced penchant for being inappropriate. It occured to me as I was riding home that he reminds me of a sort of foul mouthed version of Tigger from the popular children's book 'Winnie the Poo'.

NTR on 3D Radio

Yesterday Matt and I went in to 3D because we were number 60 in their hottest 100+1 thing. They had the lists for the last couple of years. We were number one last year, so we were standing around reminiscing about that. Then we were looking at the positions of all the old bands we’ve been in. I was, as a solo performer, number 24 one year, and 53 another and my old band was in the sixties and fifties a couple of times. So I was remembering being up at the lofty heights. Then Matt pointed out his old band, 5! Now You’re Talking, were in there as well. 5!NYT were one of the reasons I used to dislike Matt Banham. Back before I met him I, along with nearly everyone else in Adelaide, used to be on their mailing list, whether we liked it or not. Yesterday, however, I disliked him for an entirely different reason. When we were getting interviewed he quickly hijacked the conversation to make it about the time he almost got to work as a clown at the Christmas Pageant. He went on and on about how his “big break” was thwarted by his “hateful” band mates and their “jealous attempts” to frustrate his career as a professional clown. He got quite worked up about it. One thing I will say for Matt, he doesn’t go at things half hearted. As he himself said at the end of the interview, “There ain’t so such thing as a half way clown.”

We also spent a lot of time talking about how we once cruelly nicknamed Nic ‘Mapey’ on account of his inability to read maps whilst we were in Perth. To be fair, he was almost unbelievably drunk at the time. He tested his blood alcohol level at a breath tester situated, oddly enough, inside a fish and chip shop and, if I remember the figure correctly, he shouldn’t have been capable of standing up, let alone making sense of complex cartography. We assume he didn’t listen to the interview because he hates being called Mapey and if he knew we were calling him that we would have got outraged text messages.

Later I had lunch with Steph and Matt. We discussed potential titles and cover art for our new album. I suggested we have a picture of a human skull with a snake slithering through the eye sockets, and the album would be called, “Skull with a snake in it.” My suggestion was cruelling dismissed. Then I mentioned that my new bike was the smallest frame size available (it’s a 51) and was cruelly mocked some more for riding a ‘ladies size’ frame.

Dressing up as jockeys

Last night at band practice we had a lengthy conversation about our next photo shoot. It's amazing enough that a band as fundamentally goofy looking as us actually does photoshoots. But the idea for the photo shoot is to dress as jockeys, head up to some farm in the country owned by a friend of Nic's and pose with a bunch of miniature horses. Apparently his friend breeds them. They're so small you can't actually ride them but apparently they're really aggressive, nasty little bastards.

 

We argued over whether we should be dressed as jockeys or cowboys. Personally I think we should go for a fox hunt theme and all wear red jackets and those little helmets.

 

Afterwards, it occured to me that this sounds like one of those stupid stories I'd make up to confuse my best friend, The Baron, like the time I told her that several thousand people every year die due to accidents with paper spikes.

 

It was an eventful band pratice. Dexter and Steph had totally amazing new songs, my bandmates spent five minutes cruelly mocking my love of cycling, Matt had a haircut thus greatly reducing the opportunity for clown jokes, and Nic was even more hyperactive than ever. When I was riding home some guy leaned out his car window and honked at me with an air horn. Who carries an air horn around with them when they go for a drive?

Nic and his Big Plans

Last weekend I went to visit ‘Papa’ Nic and Clair so as to view their new baby daughter, Charli ‘Chip’ Datson. She sure was adorable. We ate chips and Nic discussed his plans to produce my least favourite No Through Road song ever, Matt’s ode to gender binaries ‘Girls are the Devil’. He has quite a plan for it – making it faster and sparser and emphasising the percussion. I can see what he’s saying. He’s sure it’ll be a big ‘hit’. Personally, I’m not farsighted enough to be considering the potential commercial value of songs because I’m usually too busy trying to remember how to play them. I have accepted that I’m a naturally extremely confused person and can only focus on so many things so, when it comes to rock and roll, I happily consent to whatever the band deems best. Plus Nic's big plans and enthuasiam never really work out badly. Even when they don't work, you still end up with some sort of drunken adventure.

That said, I got to thinking, “If we had a hit, that might pay off my HECS debt.” And then I got to thinking, “If we had a hit with a song I hate, would it be morally justifiable to use the money to pay off my HECS debt?” I came to the conclusion that, yes it would.
Last night we didn’t have band practice because Matt was using some new clown make-up and had an allergic reaction to it. Steph posted pictures online under the title “Balloon Face”. Search for Balloon Face on Google and they might come up. Poor Matt. He was attempting to justify his fetish for clown themes the other day. Apparently Insane Clown Posse and their ilk have dented the ‘simple, childish melancholy of the sad clown’s image’ and he wants to reinstate it.

More About Clowns

As promised, at our last band practice I confronted Matt about his Clown related themes for the band, particularly his increasingly blatant attempts to remodel himself as a sort of operatic sad clown. It didn't go down well. He started making that high pitch shrieking noise he makes when he's expressing extreme grief and wouldn't shut up. The other members of the band began to berate me for being mean to him, again.

 

That said, I refuse to drop the topic. Yesterday we went into the studio to demo our new super album. I got there late and Matt was already recording the first vocal parts. It was a song I didn't recognise. I asked Marcin what it was and he sighed and said it was Recitar! Vesti La Giubba! from the famous opera Pagliacci. For those less cultured than Marcin and myself, Pagliacci is the opera about the sad clown.