Part One: Toowoombaaaahhh To Coolangatta

DAY ONE: TOOWOOMBAAAHH!

To be perfectly honest, I was a bit worried about playing in Toowoomba. We've only been there once, a few years ago when we supported Dappled Cities and some guy tried to start a fight with me whilst we were playing. So when we rolled up to Spotted Cow I didn't know what to expect.

Luckily for us we were playing at the Spotted Cow, a venue run by possibly one of the nicest and most enthusiastic owners we've ever met. Phil was the man in charge, he gave us spaghetti, we talked basketball, he gave us awesome craft beers, we talked music and then he coined the phrase that will be used 1000 times over the tour, “Get ya hats on,” and he gave us hats, awesome hats. I got a '90s Phoenix Suns strap back. He was so energetic and happy to have us there I swear he nearly would have played the show for us if we had asked. It made life really easy for us, and we would have had a great time even if the show had been crap, Phil is a boss.

It was also the first time we had met Gung Ho, the band who would be opening the shows for Hunting Grounds and Yacht Club DJs for the Queensland leg of the tour. A band full of familiar faces, sticking strictly to the Brisbane tradition of having members of every other Brisbane band in your band! These guys were cool, I was bopping away down the front amongst the awkward drunk guys wearing suits, that'd been out at the Woomba races all day, and reminiscing about when Gang Of Four CD's never left my stereo. I loved it.

Hunting Grounds were really well received too, we heckled them and they heckled us. Tim and Moz rode around on each others shoulders for the whole gig, and Muse drummed in his jocks. I got possibly the best photo ever of Tim looking like he was posing for an '80s heavy metal magazine as well! I laugh every time I look at it. Mickey Beats acted pretty grunge too. Really grunge. I like having these guys around, touring with them is even better!

I feel like a wanker belting on about our gig too much, but it was awesome. Toowoomba really turned it on for us, and the vibe was great. There was heaps of hands in the air and sing-alongs, which is always funny to mash-ups. It is always heart-warming to turn up to a place about as far away from where you live as you can get and have a crowd come out and get crazy with you, and we got crazy as always.

The only sombre moment of the whole Toowoomba experience is when a bunch of guys jumped in a taxi after the gig and chased us out of town. I think one of us might have provoked them at the servo where we were getting food. Who knows, we had put away a lot of craft beer. But it's always interesting to have four guys jump out of a taxi at the lights and try to start punching the windows out of your tour van. Luckily our tour manager thinks he's Micheal Schumacher and got us out of there. But that ended up being the funniest thing ever.

Good times, Toowoomba!

DAY 2 - BRISBANE

I'm not sure what it is about Brisbane, I think it's either one of two things, or both. The first being that people from Ballarat and Brisbane both have a devil-may-care laid back attitude or people from the two towns are identical trouble making brats who love to party and were separated at birth to save the world from the inevitable party destruction that would result. I think it is both. I cannot begin to tell you how much I love coming to Brisbane.

Our day in Brisbane started with the usual eye-rubbing and post-gig debrief with more than a few coffees. Then a panicked attempt to find someone with a Qld drivers licence willing to vouch for us so we could actually hire our tour rig - Jesse Barbera, you are a saint. Then we just sat around sweating, it was hot for us in Brisbane. I made the unfortunate decision to only pack jeans and black t-shirts, so I retired and slept all day.

When we finally got to the venue had to do the most intense amount of gaffer tape work I've ever been involved with. We decided to get some stupidly bright and fun LED light strips, but the hire place decided to not put in the stands. So Brendan (our tour manager) and I went to work taping them to Alhambra party soaked walls. I felt like MacGuyver by the time we had the first one up, it was a piece of gaffer tape art. But that said I was more than a little terrified that my head was going to get a visit from a light half way through our show. We got all the lights up then headed out to dinner to meet our friends Jesse from Alhambra, Shane from DZ Deathrays and his girlfriend. Jesse had decided to take us to the best steak restaurant in Brisbane and we stuck out like wings on a pig. Being covered in home-made tattoos and not shaving or having a haircut in the last year doesn't exactly fly in the world of fine dining but the steaks were great. I kept noticing one waitress in particular was looking over her shoulder the whole time like one of us would be smoking inside or throwing up or something and she was going to catch us. I just kept thinking, 'its ok, love, scruffy people have manners too.' The highlight of the meal for me was getting called a poof at the urinal by an old bloke. That kind of thing always makes me happy, we laughed about it a lot.

That night at the show Gung Ho, Hunting Grounds and YC all got a great reception from the sold out crowd. Mickey Beats was being really grunge, Muz was in his undies, Tim and Moz were on each others shoulders running around the crowd and my main man Guy announced to me half way through our show that if he had to wear pants any longer he was going to die. After the de-panting had taken place we both danced around on the desk for most of the show, bending down to mix and head bang away. But there was a photographer taking photos of Guy, I haven't found one of them yet, but apparently there is a few photos of Guy where unfortunately you can see through his undies. The set culminated in me begging the crowd to get guy to do a pantless crowd surf, them cheering, him saying no and then me just pushing him into the crowd. They crowd surfed him around the whole venue and felt him up a lot, he looked really confused the whole time. My apologies to the girl in the front row who he fell on, but I think you'll agree with me, Guy crowd surfing in jocks was worth it.

After the show the Brisbane/Ballarat party machine kicked in, a few of the Last Dinosaurs guys were there, BC from Dune Rats came down, Si from DZ Deathrays turned up and the party really began. Tequila flowed from the ceiling, Jessie became obsessed with buying rounds of "wet pussy" shots and I invented a game called make Moz from Hunting Grounds shot gun all the beers. That game didn't end very well. Brisbane, you whorish bitch, you ruined my life, and I couldn't love you anymore for it.

DAY 3 - BYRON BAY

Dr Moose is probably about as addictive as heroin. If there was a Dr Moose in Ballarat I would have no money because every time I saw a meme that made me laugh or took a funny photo of Mickey Beats being grunge I would have it made into a t-shirt. "My name is Gaz and I am addicted to Dr Moose." Apart from getting an awesome t-shirt of a little girl on roller skates that say drugs and a Led Zeppelin jumper, we decided Mickey Beats would be pretty grunge if he got a t-shirt of our friend Luke, who plays bass for Gold Fields. It was probably the funniest t-shirt I had ever seen in my life, until we took a photo of Mickey Beats wearing it at the Great Northern that night and I got a t-shirt made of that. It is pretty Inception of us! If someone got a t- shirt of Mickey Beats wearing the t-shirt on my t-shirt, Leonardo DiCaprio's Dreidel would probably shit itself. Nerdiest fun you can have in Byron Bay hands down.

BC from Dune Rats filled in on drums for Gung Ho that night, and we had some great fun dancing with a few of their diehard fans in the small but appreciative opening crowd. Its was really cool to see a band still in its infancy have fans die hard enough to drive from Brisbane to Byron to go crazy for them! Their set went off as if BC played drums with them all the time, god knows he probably does with the member swapping nature of Brissy bands. Hunting Grounds set was just as fun as ever, the highlight of the night being when Mickey Beats told the crowd that they wouldn't play another song until someone got on stage and licked John, the bass players back. That was pretty grunge of him. This one girl virtually appeared on stage like her life had been building up to the moment where she got to lick some sweaty back on stage in front of a crowd. I'm pretty sure Moz was going to have a stroke laughing because of it, he played the whole next song doubled over his amp laughing, trying to play. It was great, made even funnier by the fact that she bluntly refused to leave the stage for the rest of their set and if that wasn't funny enough… I tackled Mickey Beats at the end of the last song and she thought I was trying to fight him. She poured beer all over me and started screaming, “ Get off him you bastard.” Priceless.

Now our set from the Northern was a weird one. I like the Great Northern, during the day its relaxed, the band accommodation they give us makes for a fun school camp vibe between all the bands and the band room has a great PA and mixer dude named Red, who I always like drinking with after shows. But our night didn't go exactly to plan. To begin with Red wasn't there, he was replaced by the grumpiest sound guy I have ever met, he hated the fact he was doing sound for anything to do with DJs, I was shattered and immediately decided that the Byron show was going to be as tame as we'd ever done. Anyone who has seen our shows will understand they get pretty wild.

So we went on stage, and the crowd was great, the vibe was up, our dramatically over bright light show was looking good, people were really down to have a good time. My hopes were suddenly raised and we were having a great time. The Hunting Grounds and Gung Ho guys were all dancing on the drum riser behind us and having fun. Muz and Tim tackled me to the ground and covered me in wine and that is about where the trouble started. What we saw as a hilarious stage prank flicked the security guards kill switch. We had no idea because Brendan had taken care of it on the side of stage, but they were not happy. Then Mickey Beats crowd surfed and as he was crowd surfing, two rugby player sized bouncers grabbed him by the throat and started dragging him across the dance floor. I saw this and did what any self-respecting person would do, I stopped our set and said, “Put down my friend or we are leaving!”

It was pretty tense, two massive guys choking out a 60kg punk kid for the most tame crowd surf I've ever seen. They let him go pretty quick, but it definitely wasn't the last I heard of it. The rest of the show went off without a hitch, the crowd was amazing and had energy all the way to the end, I even head banged too hard at one point and hit my head on the turntables cutting my head open. Great show with one minor hick up. Although like I said, the tamest Yacht Club Show ever!

Other than that darkness, Byron was a great show, the biggest thank-you ever has to go out to the fans who drove from Brisbane and then to the Gold Coast to see us and gave us shout outs on triple j. That was a massive mood lifter! The 'Black Keys '08' tag out the back was pretty cool too!

DAY 4 - COOLANGATTA

After we had spent our last remaining dollars at Dr Moose entertaining ourselves and I caught up with my eldest sister Ruth for breakfast, we trundled on up to Cooly. Mickey Beats had decided to ditch Hunting Grounds in favour of a car trip with us.

We got to the Cooly Hotel at about lunchtime and decided we should go shopping for props. Guy got a pair of novelty star glasses and some wig that had the American flag for hair. All pretty standard stuff really. Then we caught up with Benji from Surecut Kids. He took us to this bar that had a swimming pool and a heap of bikini clad girls and tanned muscle dudes. It was like a scene out of The OC. It was a great spot, but I have never felt more Victorian in my life, black skinny jeans, black t-shirt, scruffy hair, tattoos and white skin, where else would we be from? We had a few beverages of the alcohol variety and soaked up the sun, it was great! Mexican food followed and we rushed back to the venue to see Gung Ho do their last show with us for the tour.

Touring is a strange bird sometimes, every now and then a show just doesn't work out. Tonight was one of those, booking an 800-capacity room on a Sunday in Coolangatta was definitely going to make it hard. Gung Ho played to only a few people. They still smashed out a great set and to lighten the mood, Hunting Grounds and us ran around the stage while they played and went and did a circle pit out the front. Muz did a nudey run across the stage too, it was so much fun and it was sad to wave goodbye to Gung Ho. After their set, I decided it would be a good idea to warm up the crowd with a bit of "improvisational comedy" (Liam Neeson voice), Tim and I went on stage and did impressions of Metallica whilst Enter Sandman played, then I forgot how to tell jokes and tried to explain it to the small but growing crowd. Eventually I gave up and gave a long speech about how Muz had promised to drum naked if they made enough noise. Although no such promise was made, they made so much noise he drummed in his underwear. The set was riddled with stage invasions and people from both Gung Ho and Yacht Club appearing on stage to drum sing and run around naked. Tim, Moz and Mickey Beats spent most of the time out in the crowd playing as well.

By the time we played there were more than a few people in the room, but they were so into the swing of us that they were acting like maniacs and ready to go nuts. We dragged out our stupidly bright LED lit DJ rig for the last time and started our show. I'm not sure how they did it but the people who came managed to fill up the large space and create the most incredible vibe. People went crazy, both Guy and I ended up in the crowd doing conga lines and dancing. I even managed to convince enough people to get in one spot for me to do a small hilarious crowd surf. It was so much fun and a perfect end to the Queensland leg of the tour and a great lesson in making the most out of bad situations paying off. Man of the match goes out to the sound guy at the venue, not only was he the man, but he told me that Lene Nystrom the girl from Aqua had a porn career, how that escaped me in my teenage years I'll never know, teenage Gaz is weeping.

Queensland leg of the tour done, so many goods times and a great way to kick off what is going to be a mental tour.