Part Three: When Things Go Pear-Shaped

DAY 9 - ADELAIDE

The week leading up to Adelaide was filled with a lot of head scratching and "did I really do that?" moments. Victoria had really turned into to some kind of party monster none of us were ready for. This really made the fourth week of touring wall hit really hard. It seems everyone was feeling it too. Fake Tan had to pull out of our show at The Gov due to sickness and The Wiz, Hunting Grounds' tour manager was going down with food poisoning as he crossed the border. That's touring I guess, well apart from Fake Tan, that was just a coincidence, I hope they are feeling better.

The Gov is a huge venue when it's empty. We played here a few years ago with Does it Offend You, Yeah? and thought the same thing. It actually made me wig out a bit when I found out we were playing there, it seemed like a big hurdle. Luckily for us it sold out! I think this is probably the most chuffed I'd felt about a sell out in a while. When we rocked up we made a million jokes about the bikini girl massage "open late" place next-door and chatted to the sound guy, who was super nice, and will forever be known as the smiling beer assassin. We went through the motions of getting our projectors right and all that. Mickey Beats rocked up and did some grunge things, all pretty standard.

Later that night when Hunting Grounds were playing, there was this section of people in the front row that just kept yelling at Beats. No one watching from side of stage could work out what was going on, either they were about to get in a fight or these girls were really aggressive. Mickey Beats handled this as grunge as possible and just kept saying: “I can't hear you”. Eventually he dropped the mic down to this one girl to find out what all the fuss was about and she announced to the whole of The Gov very loudly her intention to fellate him. I don't think I've ever seen Mickey Beats turn red faster in my life, and for once he did something that I couldn't describe as grunge. The whole band desperately tried to play but was in hysterics and Beats was singing to the back wall trying to hide his embarrassment. Afterwards we had to clarify what was said with them because they all thought she said she wanted to fight him. This has to be a contender for moment of the whole tour.

Our show nearly went of without a hitch; I had to stop it briefly at the start because a whole section of the crowd tried to get on stage. It really sucked to have to do that because I felt like I was telling people off. The last time we toured Adelaide we played at another venue and the whole crowd got on stage and basically broke everything. We didn't have a tour manager on that tour and to be honest, we were kind of into causing trouble so we let it happen and as a result we got banned from the venue. I really didn't want to have that happen again, but Brendan just couldn't get them off stage so we had to stop the music and regulate. Which sucked. "Hey Guys, I'm a big party DJ, but could you please stop partying just for a second so I can maintain some kind of order" - lame. If anything I'm glad it happened in the first five minutes of the set because once that hiccup was over things really got swinging and the show was saved.

Technically, I think it was probably the best we performed for the whole tour so far. At the end of the show, you know the part where everyone is crowd surfing and has forgotten about their personal safety, I was about halfway out sitting up on the crowd and Muz from Hunting Grounds crowd surfed over and tried to give me a hug, This ended with the both of us heading towards the floor, me completely upside down. I hit the floor hard enough to momentarily knock me unconscious, and when I came to I had been picked back up and was heading for the stage. Then some guy dolphin dived away from the security and landed on my face crotch first, which dragged me back down to the floor. The problem was, Brendan and a security guard had my legs and dragged me onto stage at the same time. So I got a nose full of some random dude's back sweat. Very unpleasant and disorienting. Luckily it was the end of the show. We said our thank you and gave out CDs and walked off. I think a girl was hitting on me but I had been bashed around so much I could barely make out what was going on and didn't come around for about 30 minutes. By that stage I had been told I was the most boring person alive and was on my way back to the hotel.

Hunting Grounds later informed us they went to the strippers. They were very bad strippers according to all reports. Coming from Grunge Coolsar I'd have to believe it. 

 DAY 10 - HOBART

After having a Red Bull induced fistfight with my doona all night you can imagine I was feeling just a little bit strung out the next day when we left for the airport. To make for an even more pleasurable plane ride, I managed to spill petrol all over myself while refueling the hire car, so as you can imagine, I felt like a nightmare and was ready to die. It was a theme that ran through the next couple of hours, with the highlight being ordering a "croissant" that had the texture and density of a scone and the flavour of a wet dog that had rolled in flour. Spirits were high despite all of this, but I was certainly starting to hit my week three of the tour wall.

Then we heard about our three-hour stop over in Melbourne. 

We got to Melbourne with the plan of checking our gear and going in to Melbourne for a few hours, Jetstar had other ideas. We got to the check in and were quickly informed that we had to wait an hour and a half until we could check our gear in. So we sat around the airport trying to keep our eyes open and dreading how much the excess baggage was going to cost us, barely a word was spoken between the three of us the experience was so draining. To our surprise however, when we did finally check in and Jetstar's baggage allowance covered our whole touring rig, which was pretty extensive. I couldn't recommend flying with them enough just because of this, to give you an idea the same rig a day earlier cost us $320 on Virgin, who apparently have a touring musician policy.

Anyway enough of that. The show that night was a great, apart from how lethargic we all felt from being in transit for so long. Hunting Grounds weren't able to do the show with us and were replaced with a band called Tiger Choir. If you're a fan of Foster the People or Wavves you should check these guys out. I really got into the heavy reverb indie mixed with loud electronica and really well executed vocal harmonies sound they had going on. They also had a band member that uses a projector and laptop to create a visual performance. It made for a super engaging show. Our show was a lot of fun that night; Tassie always gives something extra, for better or worse. The first time we went to Hobart someone asked the sound guy to turn us up and when he refused they poured a beer over the mixing desk bringing proceedings to a screeching halt. Not sure what they thought they'd achieve. Luckily for the Waratah Bandroom no such shenanigans went down. The crowd did go mental and we fed off this and forgot how tired we were for a while. Afterwards we mingled around for a bit and I was ushered behind the bar to serve beers, which just ended with me doing shots with the bar staff and sculling the beers I poured at the request of this one really loud guy. 

Afterwards Elliot from Tiger Choir, Brendan and I went to the Brisbane Hotel, for what I was told was known as Crack-e-oke. This was like The Mallow Hotel in Ballarat during the Patty-O era, with a Saturday night Pony crowd and the only music was karaoke, brilliant. The kind of bar where they will call you a faggot for wearing skinny jeans and then give you a hug at the urinal when you know more about Tool than they do. Elliot decided we had to sing Under Pressure by Freddy Mercury and David Bowie. This went pear shaped. I was singing along great to Alice Cooper and all the other bad metal songs that were happening! It's difficult when you're sober, so I took the piss out of it. I coughed and asked for more talent in the fold back and dropped to my knees to do the chorus in the worst falsetto I could muster. No one got it, not even Elliot. But it was a good time. I took off home after a few more songs because we had to be up at 6:30am for our flight. I don't even need to tell you how bad that felt, but I'm alive more or less.

 And for those playing at home, this is how they party: