07/10/2020 00:06
Loud music can put people to sleep. Especially children. I was told that once. Something about the ‘psycho-acoustics of the bass drum’..
I’ve been told many things. By experts. I’ve always been surrounded by experts. Even now.
There’s a woman yawning down the front. You get that. A smile on the face of another. Over there a beard with a phone glowing in the dark, his head twitching, looking sideways. Nudging his mate. Laughing.
It’s a decorated room is the Athanaeum. With vaulted plaster work, rosettes and cherubs, hanging in the theatrical smoke. Apparently the stage wall is the oldest in Melbourne. Heavy blue stone painted gloss black for the dungeon effect. Works for me. We could be anywhere. Not even Melbourne. Could be that freezing club in northern England I once found myself in, head half-shaved and two punters on bar stools sledging in the gloom.
‘Cept it’s full. Which is nice. Warm too. Little round faces looming out of the fog, seated in rows all the way to the back. Can’t see for buggery though, for the smoke hangin’ thick and heavy right up into the ceiling. Not to worry though. We like smoke. It’s effective. Adds to the mystery.
Back to the yawning one down front. I can’t help wondering. What’s she thinking? Maybe a toilet run? A quick clamber over arms and legs. She’s looking across at Mayhem now. And why wouldn’t she? He’s going off. Bent over like he’s trying to extract a truffle out of the stage with the head stock of his guitar. Is she into him? Maybe. He’s definitely exciting to watch, like he’s building towards something and not just with his fingers. His whole body’s following his head, dipping up and down in a golf cap.
Or not? She’s half standing now, looking behind. Nah. It’s not Mayhem. It’s the toilet. But She’s trapped. It’ll take forever to get out.. She’s down again. It’ll have to wait.
She'll be ok though. There’s an intermission later. It’s a theatre after all, complete with half time. A world away from a pub. Order rules. No milling at the bar. No hiding in the corner. no banter. No wandering off. Audience and band equally focussed. There’s no bluffing, which means the stakes are off the dial. It’s either good or it’s rubbish. And everybody’s listening.
But then again, you’d think, less noise, so less effort. Not so. See that’s the thing I’ve always wondered about rock music. It’s supposed to be this galvanizing cathartic thing, where physical excitement takes over and makes it real. Hence the ‘going off’ bit.
And there’s that look that rock musicians get right? The grimace. The howling mouth. The flailing arms. Hair everywhere. That’s the effort right? The uplifting joyous reaching for transcendence. The great moment. But in a pub it’s kind of like noise trauma.. you just trying to be heard. So go hard. Hence the look. It just comes out in your body. Sort of upset but not really. Then the striving turns into a thing. Every one gets it and passes it on. It becomes de rigueur.
But in a theatre? How to do 'The look' and be totally in control at the same time?
Then there's Springsteen. He's always in control, ‘cuts sick’ for three hours and NEVER stops smiling. How does that even work?
Then again, what about Elvis’s hips? After all, they kind of got the ball rolling right? He could do the twitching thing wherever.
Even the ED Sullivan show.
Now there was a dead fish. Where was the vibe there? Can’t have been in the room. What? A 60’s CBS sound stage? You’ve got to be kidding me? Still he only had to twitch and they went mad. So what was that? Can’t have been hard to do. The actual twitching. Of course you wouldn’t do it mowing the lawn. But what if it really was genuine sexual excitement? The question was on everybody’s lips back then. Or.. was it, dare I say, just theatre? And did the king ever draw the line? Not once! Was there even line to be drawn? Between the glorious truth and the unlovely lie? Or was the ‘twitch’ a kind of shared experience before it became an artefact? Or was it all just BULLSHIT?
And now there’s Mayhem, looking like his head’s about to fall off.
Is he all right? Or just pretending he’s going to die?
Or is it just me who’s even thinking this right now?
Quick look behind.
What’s Mazz doin? he’s got this double time thing goin’ on. Beltin’ the bejesus out of the high hat. Face screwed up like a bulldog about to kill something. Surely it’s not that hard? Ha! He’s smiling now. Elvis again. What a give away. Damn. Can’t tell anymore. And what about bassman Favarotti? Nah. No clues there. The mask is on as usual. Inscrutable, the zen master but that’s a thing in itself isn’t it?
“I am a bass player. Bass players know everything.”
What exactly? Forget it. They’ll never tell.
We’re mid-song now. Something about a South Australian courtroom.
What was I thinking? A bar in King Williams Street named ‘Courtroom 32’, populated by a mob of impossibly successful middle-class lawyers.. also goin’ off. There was a point in there somewhere. Something about greed, corruption, and entitlement. The usual shambles. Musings on Canberra. A bubble of buffoonery.
Which might help to explain the twitching mob over on stage right. Arms waving, bodies gyrating inappropriately in the flickering light. Theatrical types. Actors. Fresh from some semi-independent production. Prone to exaggeration. There’s even a daughter and a wife in there somewhere. Bodies leaping ‘round in the dark.
How could they be they doing that while I’m thinking this and singing at same time?
Here comes the long bit at the end where the band winds out and I don’t have to sing anymore. The singer gets to draw breath.
Made for a ‘guitar solo’.
Much maligned is the ‘guitar solo’, mired in accusations of feigned theatricality and the yearning for collective transcendence amongst a certain Post Hendrix elite who raised the flag of shoe-gazing as though it would fly forever..
Which is exactly what I was thinking right then.
Mayhem is normally an orderly, quiet, reserved man. Lives alone with complex machinery. Likes to read Hegel in the mornings.
But not on this occasion.
Eyes rolling, head back.
“This is mine now!”
There’s the runway, dead head.
Courtroom 32 was made for cliff top action.
And as I always say,
“If it’s in the script, go for it.”
And he does..