G’day,

Well first up I should start with a disclaimer for all aspiring crew & the young & impressionable. My stories come from a time in the industry that was pretty wild & I was young and probably (well, yes I was) reckless. Today you couldn’t get away with some of the crazy stuff that went on, and that’s probably a good thing. In the music industry a lot of people have nicknames and that is pretty much all they are known by. I have been known as Reckless or Recko for ages. Very few people from the industry know my is Steve. Glen “Heffo” Heffernan (Guitarist : Meatballs show etc) had fun with it, sometimes I’d be Restless (when I said i was going home) Legless (On the piss) Harmless etc. Anyhow this is how I got my nickname:

In the early 80′s i was working for Mad Gorilla from their second or third gig onwards. One of the first road trips was up to Cobar (September 1980) and that drive has a funny story i’ll tell later. If you’ve never been out that way it is a long drive and a totally different landscape from the coast. It’s actually almost in another time zone it’s that far. The locals don’t get many live acts, they come out in force and have a bloody good time.
When we got there it was straight out of the vehicles and into the load in. A quick focus & sound check and it was almost time to start. I grabbed a beer & went outside to check the sunset and gather my thoughts.

It was my first full night on the lighting desk for Gorilla as Roger didn’t come away with us due to work and family committments. So I had a walk around the club and sat down to roll a cigarette.

A female voice says “Is that a joint?” and I looked up into the sun to see the silhouette of a very shapely lady. I blocked the sun with one hand to see she was just as pretty as her silhouette suggested, “No, I wish it was” I replied. She giggled and stuck her hand under my nose, there was a round piece of alfoil in her hand & the smell of hash was unmistakeable.

“Where will we go?, we can’t smoke it here” she giggled again. I suggested the back of the truck and off we went. Well one thing lead to another and not only did the evil temptress get me stoned but not long after we were having some great sex amongst the drapes in the back of the truck. We were totally lost in what we were doing and had lost track of time.

Next thing i hear a guitar and someone banging on the drums “OH SHIT! ! !” I suddenly remembered why I was there. “Quick get dressed, OH SHIT, OH FUCK!!!!”

We get out of the truck, pull the shutter down and I’m running for the door of the club. My shoelaces aren’t tied and I get my shirt caught in the zipper of my jeans, “SHIT”.

I burst into the club straight past the doorman who’s saying “They’re looking for you mate”

The stage is dark, the band’s all on stage ready to go. The room is chocka block full. As I ran into the room tripping over my gym boot laces Sticko ( the singer) is saying to the crowd “Has anyone seen our lighting guy, he’s a little hairy bloke,where is that reckless young lad ?” the whole room turned around, pointed at me and yelled “there he is” and they all cracked up laughing and clapping. Coby was on the sound desk and immediately (and deservedly) starts paying out on me, points at my shirt sticking out my fly “What the fuck were you doing!?”. She kept threatening to make me get all the drapes drycleaned after I told her. All through the night the locals were coming up, slapping me on the back and saying things like “So what were you up to, you reckless young lad ?” then cracking up laughing and handing me a beer. By the end of the night even the local police seargent was calling me the reckless young lad. And everytime they did Coby looked daggers at me.

After the first set I was called into the band room for what would now be called “counselling” I copped an absolute bollocking & then someone giggled and everyone (except Coby) had a laugh. By the end of the night the name Reckless had stuck. The crowd had a ball and we ended up sitting up drinking with the club staff and the local cop till dawn. I never saw her again, can’t remember her name but boy do I remember that night and the time we spent in the back of the truck.

Disclaimer:

G’day Gibbo,
Had a thought about my ” My nickname” post and would like to add this disclaimer.
To all wives and girlfriends: The incidents related in the my nickname story were not everyday occurences & in the time I worked in the entertainment industry (1977 – 2008) only happened twice in that time. The second time I got married to the lady & besides 2 beautiful daughters was in hindsight a disaster. Generally we were too bloody busy & then too tired or heading off to another gig. ….. Recko.

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A decent truck can mean the difference between a great gig and a night full of grief. Back in the eighties I went back to work for Rick Doolan who was the original drummer in Bandanna. He had re-formed the band and had put together a nice little PA system. The “truck” he’d bought was a classic. It was actually an old bus that had been converted to carry a racing car. It had a big roller door in the back leading to a large storage area where the PA lived. In the front was plenty of seats and even a few beds which was bloody luxurious for those of us used to crappy old trucks that broke down regularly.

Tha band had picked up a gig at a biker show in Queensland one particular weekend and, as they didn’t need to take the whole crew or the PA system, it was decided that we’d pull all the uneeded gear out to lighten the load and help the old bus travel a bit faster. Rick had organised a friend to bring around another truck just to use as storage for the PA system. It was a beauty! I’m pretty sure it was an old International with a smallish pan on the back.

This is a very similar model to the truck in question except ours had a pan on the back. The bus in the background also looks a bit like the one mentioned earlier.

It was pretty beat up and was not registered but it would do. We managed to back the truck up to the bus and unloaded all the stuff the band didn’t need into it. That should have meant a weekend off for me as my Brother had drawn the short straw to drive the band in the bus to Queensland.

Not so fast Gibbo! Later that afternoon, just as the band was leaving, we got a call from a Heavy Metal band looking for a system for that night. After a short deliberation it was decided that myself and the lighting guy Wally would take the old truck and do the gig. Money is money after all…

The first challenge was getting it started. We didn’t have a key so you had to twist the ignition wires together and short the solenoid on the starter with the dipstick. Great! We eventually got the old thing going and made it to the gig, a Heavy Metal extravaganza at the Bayview Tavern in Gladesville. The gig actually went quite well. The bands were all happy with our gear and the job we did. They even offered to hang around and help us load the truck at the end of the night. All went well until we got to the last few cases… which now mysteriously didn’t fit back into the truck! Well we eventually had to pull half of the gear back out to repack it, several times. There is nothing worse than doing your work three or four times.

After what seemed like an eternity we managed to fit all of the pieces into the puzzle and we set off for an hour long drive home. Seeing as the truck wasn’t registered we had to keep an eye out for cops. The condition of the truck would have been a giveaway. About half way home we were starting to relax… until the bonnet came loose and with a massive bang, flew up to cover the windscreen. Gee that makes it hard to drive! I managed to peer through a small gap under the bonnet in order to pull the truck over to the curb.

Wally and I then had to try and get the bonnet closed and latched but it was completely bent out of shape. Eventually we both climbed on it and jumped up and down until it managed to latch shut. The trouble was that we needed to get under the bonnet to get the thing started again. Shit! Well, we managed that and even got the bonnet to latch once more. Soon we were on our way again but just as we were starting to calm down a bit, the bloody truck ran out of fuel. This was starting to become a very long night indeed! Luckily for us a car soon stopped and offered help. I could have just about kissed the guy. He had his whole family with him but still insisted that I squeeze in so he could take me to a service station. He even waited around and gave me a lift back to the truck. What a legend!

By this stage the 1 hour drive home had turned into a 4 hour saga and I’d well and truly had enough. I said to Wally “if this thing stops again I’m leaving it on the side of the road” and I meant it. Just as I spoke the back of the truck started to wander from side to side, making it awful hard to steer. I couldn’t believe it. This thing had more tricks up its’ sleeve than David Copperfield. By now we were only a few kilometres from home so I decided to just keep driving. It didn’t really matter to me if the bloody wheels fell off by this time. As we turned the last corner the truck lurched sideways and we heard a loud sound like metal breaking. Oblivious to the self destructing truck I managed to actually get it all the way into the driveway. We were home! It was at this point that I discovered that there was only one wheel nut left on each of the back wheels and about 4 of the wheel studs had snapped off. We probably wouldn’t have made it if it had been 50 metres further.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

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The Wombat Switch.

I don’t even know if it is a term that is still used. Back about 20 years ago “Wombatting” was something you did to the support band to sabotage them. You know, turn the amps down a bit or pull down the master volume on the EQ or something. Sometimes it was because they were a threat to the main act, sometimes just because it was fun to watch their crew try to work out why the PA system is suddenly a lot quieter than it should be. A test if you will. A bit like sending the apprentice to the shop for a can of striped paint. I can honestly say that I have never done it and never been asked to do it by a band but I have been the victim once or twice when I was first starting out.

The first time was a beauty. We (Bandanna) had picked up a gig supporting Mad Gorilla at the Greenfield Tavern.

The Gorilla’s in full flight.

This was big for us as the Gorilla’s had been around for a while and were a bit of a name in those days. They had “show” which involved dressing up in whacky costumes, fancy lights, smoke machines, pyrotechnics, intro tapes etc.

The lads in costume in Sticko’s loungeroom.

It was a band I had been to see as a punter on quite a few occasions and they were always great. This was the first time I’d ever actually met the band and as it turns out, I made a couple of friendships that have lasted since that time. Langs the drummer is a great mate as is Sticko & Zack Flack, not to mention the amazing Jimmy Bourke, their lighting guy who I had the pleasure of working with many times since. Jimmy is a topic that deserves a web site all of its’ own! What a character. He can drink his own weight in bourbon and still work like a trojan. I’ve seen him do it many times. Jimmy’s classic line was “who wants to chuck in for a bottle of boubon for the load in? No-one? Oh well, I’ll get it”.

Anyways… the production itself was quite impressive for those days too. It was a double or triple three way system with lots of foldback & heaps of lights. Myself and the other crew couldn’t wait to get our hands on the system. Does anyone remember the JANDS JM8 mixing console? It was an impressive looking bit of gear and I couldn’t wait to get behind it.

The Gorillas didn’t do a soundcheck so it was up to us. It took me a little while to get my head around this massive system but with a bit of help from the ever helpful Gary, their sound guy, I got things sounding ok.

Well show time came around and off we went. Things did’t go quite according to plan though. The venue had a noise meter installed that would cut the power to the PA system if you went beyond a “reasonable” level of volume and the thing was cutting out on a fairly regular basis. This involved running backstage to turn all the amps down before the power came back on a few seconds later so the thump didn’t blow any speakers then running back through the crowd to the mixing desk. I was not having fun. The band was not having fun. We seemed to be very quiet yet were still tripping the sound meter.

Eventually we reached the end of our set and it was all over. I was in a bit of a lather and was hanging around the desk trying to figure out what had gone wrong since sound check. I felt like a bloody goose. Gary the Gorillas sound man was standing with his back to me when the publican came up and said words to the effect of “I’ve turned that meter back to where it was for your band OK?” The bastard had wombatted me!

Mad Gorilla came on and the sound was enormous. They played brilliantly as well which combined nicely to blow us off the stage completely. And guess what? The sound meter never tripped once during their set. I can laugh about it now but on the night I wanted to kill someone.

Big thanks to Sticko for the Mad Gorilla pictures.

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Stage diving and crowd surfing is a phenomenon that has become popular over the last 10 or 15 years. The idea being that after diving from the stage, the crowd will catch you and you won’t end up on your arse on the floor. When the crowd is in good form you can stay aloft for quite awhile.

This is what it looks like when all goes to plan. From a Celibate Rifles gig on the Sunshine Coast.

When it doesn’t work, it can occasionally lead to tears. I was having a bourbon with my Brother on the weekend when he told me a funny story I thought I’d share here.

He was working with the Hoodoo Gurus on their last ever tour and was doing a gig at Sawtell RSL on the NSW north coast. The club is typical of most. Stage, dancefloor then an area for tables & chairs all set up in nice long rows. Quite often you will set up the mixing position at the rear of the dancefloor in front of the tables. This is usually an unobtrusive spot but, depending on the act and venue, you still need to create a “bunker” out of roadcases to keep the punters and their drinks off the gear when they get rowdy.

This particular night the band and crowd were in great form and the stage diving was progressing well. Suddenly my brother noticed a guy at the back of the room. He had climbed onto the table and seemed to be trying to work out whether he could dive from the tables, over the mixing bunker, and into the crowd from the rear.

Off he went at blinding speed along the tables with drinks flying everywhere. After a few stumbles along the way, he hit the end of the row of tables at pace and launched himself into the air. Having underestimated both the distance and his ability to fly he ended up landing face first on the mixing console which knocked him out cold! Security was called and the guy was carried off for treatment. This all came as quite a surprise to the poor bugger standing there operating the sound gear that night. They normally don’t attack from the rear.

My brother says they spent quite a while on their hands and knees looking for knobs that the guy knocked off the mixer with his face. They didn’t find them all and he still suspects that the guy left that night with a mixer knob embedded in his forehead!

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Round about 1990 we got a call from a Biker Club about doing a big gig for them. It was to be a three day festival of bikes, booze & music about halfway along the Putty Rd to Singleton. My boss at the time was a guy by the name of Rick Doolan who was no stranger to the wonderful world of the Biker. Rick was the original drummer in Bandanna and had lured me away from my comfy job at the bank to go full time with his PA company.

Rick Doolan in the Bandanna days.

We took a drive up there and had a look at the site in order to do a quote. It was a beauty. Set back off the main road and in the middle of nowhere. There were going to be no noise complaints here! Rick was operating two PA systems in those days and we booked both systems and crew for this one. These type of events go until all hours of the morning so you have to have a few spare bodies to last the distance. A little while out from the gig came murmurs that there may be trouble getting the license to sell alcohol. This was a problem! The rumours came and went, mostly about a publican who had the shits about the bikers selling grog, until it was resolved. A catering company had gotten involved and they were licensed. They were then also contracted to operate all of the food stalls. This was getting bigger by the day. Wow, these guys were really moving in. They also managed to get the contract to supply the toilets! A couple of weeks before the gig I got a call from a guy by the name of Phil. He told me that he had been employed by the catering company to record the gig as the soundtrack to a video that was being shot. We chatted about the gear we were providing and organised to have a beer sometime over the weekend of the gig. This was a big deal for me as Phil was “a bit of a name” as he was the sound engineer for a reasonably big band. This industry is very much based on “who you know” so this was going to be a good guy to know. The actual setup went very well. The staging company had erected a nice control tower with a guy rope to the stage to attach our cables to.

Mission control after the first night. First mate “Gaf” at the helm.

The first night went well with a few good cover bands including one that I worked with regularly, The Last Stand Cold Chisel Show. The main problem was that there didn’t seem to be many people about. It was only Friday night though and we did expect that most of the crowd would roll in on Saturday morning.

The massive Friday night crowd in all its’ glory.

Saturday was a long day with bands starting about lunch time and going all the way through to about 3am from memory. the highlight of the night was the Phil Emmanuel Band. Coming on about midnight with a light fog rolling in, the atmosphere was perfect. If you’ve ever done sound for a band you will know that nothing sounds better than a great band through a big P.A. system outdoors with it cranked to 11. I still rate that set by Phil as one of the highlights of my mixing career. I once heard a classical conductor say that heaven was when the sound of the orchestra matched the sound he heard in his head. Mixing is a lot like that. You have a “perfect” sound in your head that you try to achieve with the mix. A couple of times in your life you will hit the bullseye. This was one of those nights. The only problem ws there still wasn’t much of a crowd. You could see a few of the catering company managers looking a little worried. they had brought massive amounts of food and grog in anticipation of a large crowd that never turned up. Maybe they would turn up for the Sunday?

Living in the back of the truck is tops. Not! This is Ziggy the lightingmeister.

Oh well, they didn’t turn up Sunday either. So far the bikers had come out very well with their deal to let the catering company promote just about everything. By midway through Sunday you could smell the tension. As the old saying goes “the smell of burning promoter hung heavily in the air”. For our part it was all going well. Well, most of it! You don’t sleep much at these type of events and the lack of sleep mixed with vast amounts of alcohol combined to almost spell disaster for one of our lighting chaps, Bicky. We had gathered in the back of the truck to have a few quiet beers with one of the bikers my brother and I knew through mutual friends. This guy was reasonably high up in the club and went on to become the president a few years later. All was calm until Bicky staggered in with a smoke machine in his hand that needed re-filling. This was one of the old “Mini Big Smoke” machines that were popular once. You filled them with “smoke oil” then put a CO2 cylinder into it to pressurise it. Bicky filled it with oil then let off the gas cylinder…without putting the lid back on the oil reservoir. High pressure oil went everywhere, covering our biker mates. You could see the look on Bickys face when he realised what he had done. “Near Death Experience” I think it’s called. We did some very fast talking and managed to get the lads to see the funny side of it and not kill him. I felt a bit more awake after that! Sunday progressed well from our point of view culminating in a performance by The Amazing Zarsoff Brothers. This was a band I used to see very regularly in their heyday in the early 80′s and once again they didn’t disappoint. I think they are still going around, get out & catch them if you can. I still have one of their albums which contains such classics as “Fucken’ beauty”, “Nose Pickin’ Boogie” and my all time favourite, “You’re a Prick(ya make me sick)”.

The amazing “Izzy Foreal”. He stopped the band because “some prick wanted to take his photo”.

After an eventful and tiring weekend we crashed in the back of the truck one last time ahead of Monday’s packup. We awoke to an empty paddock, covered in empty cans & bottles, and a few slow moving people. The vibe amongst the catering people was now at rock bottom. They were all wondering if they were going to get paid and the boss was wondering if he would lose his house. The sluggish silence was broken by an approaching ute. It was being driven by one of the catering staff and seemed to be chockablock full of ice. He pulled up near one of their portable bars and proceeded to unload the lot onto the ground. At this point the boss appeared and we could see that his head was now glowing bright red. The rant was absolutely priceless. “How dare you go into town and spend MORE fucking money on ice we don’t need! I’m gonna lose the lot… blah, blah” On and on he went. Whipping himself into an absolute frenzy as he went. The employee was just speechless. I thought the boss was going to spontaneously combust. As he built his rage into a fever pitch, the rest of the staff were gathering around, not believing the spectacle before them. At this point we noticed that the bikers were all retreating and some had actually locked themselves into one of the nearby buildings. This guy was scaring everybody! Finally, when I thought it couldn’t get any better, he launched himself into the air and came down smack bang in the middle of the ice pile. He then continued to scream incoherently as he ripped the ice bags to bits and spread it everywhere. Unbelievable! After a few minutes it all subsided and he lay there on top of the ice pile almost motionless, gasping for breath. There was just silence for a good 30 seconds then… the assembled crowd of catering staff erupted into spontaneous applause and cheering. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The incident that came to be known as “The Ice Dance”. Believe it or not, the bikers weren’t detered by the apparent failure of YellaRock 1 and held YellaRock 2 the next year. But that’s another story…

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I was blown away last night to see Stevie Wright on This Is Your Life. During the late Eighties I worked for a while as Stevies live sound engineer, alongside brother of Gibbo on monitors and My Pal Brian(TM) on lights, and I have wonderful memories of some great gigs as well as some downright strange ones.

He was (I think) still on the needle in those days and was very definitley on the turps in a big way and was quite a handful. Even so, he was still very much a household name and drew decent crowds. The band, Hard Road, consisted of Peter Northcote (sax, keys, guitar), Bruno Renzella (guitar), Vic Young (bass) and Paul DeMarco (drums) and one or two others who slip my mind.
They were outstanding in both musical ability and counselling skills. It was a major effort sometimes just to get Stevie onto the stage in a reasonable condition to perform and the guys showed endless patience(usually!).

The guys started picking him up quite early in the day to get him to the gig before he got too blind. They would then keep him occupied and soberish backstage until show time. This worked for a while until the cunning bugger figured that he could just get the crowd to buy his drinks. “Who’s gunna buy Stevie a Southern Comfort then?” would be the cry. Half a dozen punters would then head to the bar and buy him drinks. The look on the faces of the band was simply priceless. What can you do to help someone who is determined to trash themselves?

Poor old Stevie didn’t have much of a voice left by this stage and it became increasingly difficult to get his voice to sit in the mix at a decent level. Brother of Gibbo had the worst of it as he looked after on-stage sound which was…loud! One night Stevie was having particular trouble hearing himself in the monitors so he decided he would kick them off the front of the stage, as you do. Classic rock ‘n roll tantrum! Anyway, being the professional he is, brother of Gibbo wanders out from side stage nonchalantly and puts the speakers back on stage. Well, Stevie manages to kick them off again at which point brother of Gibbo decides to unplug them & remove them. Picture the scene… Band wailing, punters dancing, singer fuming and brother of Gibbo standing at the front of the stage giving Stevie a right bollocking. Common sense eventually prevailed and the rest of the show went well. During the packup I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of the band members had brother of Gibbo bailed up side stage and seemed to be giving him a gobfull. Thinking there could be ill feeling about the incident, I wandered a bit closer just in case and managed to hear words to the effect of: “Why didn’t you hit the bastard? I that had been my gear he kicked, I’d have floored him!” Brother of Gibbo explained that it wouldn’t look good on his resume that he had knocked out Stevie Wright.

One day I’ll tell you about the Stevie gig where I had to leave the mixing desk to punch on with some of the crowd! I’ve still got the scar where my tooth went through my mouth just below my bottom lip. I’ll bet the other prick’s still pissing blood though!

Thanks for the fun times and classic memories Stevie. Stay straight. I hope you find the peace you are looking for.

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The “tour” story about Bandanna apparently gave some people, including my beloved Mrs Gibbo, the idea that touring was some sort of wonderful, bohemian lifestyle chock full of naked women, intoxicating substances and midnight law breaking! In an effort to correct this very misguided idea, I would like to present a tale from the other end of the scale. A real tour!
It was 1992 and we were working for a great bloke by the name of James Blundell.

He was red hot property at the time and we worked hard. 6 shows per week, every week for 6-10 weeks at a time. If we could fit a matinee show in we would as well. Monday was classed as a “day off”. It’s funny how driving up to 12 hours can be considered a day off. We literally were on the job 7 days a week for weeks on end but it was great. I can honestly say that some of the best times I ever had professionally were with this band. There were a lot of factors that contributed. James himself was a thorough professional and a real gentleman. The band were absolutely red hot, all top class musicians and all top blokes. They were an absolute joy to watch. The crew all got on well and all did a great job. The standard of venues was usually good. Clubs, theatres etc and the hours were very civilized for people in our line of work. It was usually an 8pm to 10:30 show which is much earlier than a rock gig.

“This Road” filmclip

A day usually went something like this.

Brother of Gibbo at his post side stage during a soundcheck. His job was to keep the whole band happy on stage by providing 8 seperate monitor mixes to an array of speakers on stage. Do you know what the difference between a Monitor Guy and a Toilet is? The toilet only has to deal with one arsehole at a time.

The never ending stream of black boxes. Note the downing of a well earned, refreshing ale.

As I said, they were pretty good hours really but shit we did some driving. This is, to the best of my recollection, just one leg of a tour that we did, covering about 4 weeks.
Day 1, drive for about 1000k’s to meet up with the band and half the crew in Brisbane who have been doing record company promo shit.

Leaving NSW. Note the rainbow.

Arrive in Brisbane to find that the record company is still paying for room service. Yeehah!
The next day we are on in earnest. It starts with a drive to Gold Coast to pick up extra lights then off to Toowoomba for the first gig. Up 1 flight of steps!
then(roughly) Kingaroy, Caloundra, Gympie, and Bundaberg.

Some of the boys doing common after gig activities. One is passed out drunk. The other is dribbling shit to his Mrs on the phone just before passing out drunk.

We get a day off at some resort at Bundaberg before the show. The weather is shit so we just bum around all day but appreciate the rest already. We actually sit down to a real meal in a good restaurant. Wow.
Update. I was reminded that I had my first Cane Toad kicking experience in Bundaberg. Happy days indeed!

Then Gladstone, Rockhampton, Emerald, Dysart, Mackay, Townsville and Ayr. I get to catch up with my Auntie Margie and a few of the cousins in Townsville. We even get devon sango’s with Uncle Ray the next day on our way out of town. Bleedin’ luxury.
Enough of the socialising though, it’s off to Cairns.
Even though the gig is at Innisfail, we drive a couple of hours past it as we are staying in Cairns and for some forgotten reason, we need to go there first. We then turn around and drive a couple of hours back to the gig at Innisfail. On the way back to Cairns after the gig that night, I fell asleep driving the truck. Luckily, the guy in the passenger seat was awake and managed to wake me up. He only realised I was asleep when we crossed the road rounding a bend and ended up sideways. Something that is not recommended in a truck! I was wide awake for the rest of the trip.
We got back to our room in the early hours of the morning to find that two of our rooms, mine included, had been robbed. In all the years I travelled, this was the only time it ever happened. They got away with mostly clothes and a bit of cash. I think a few other things went missing that weren’t reported to the Police! Bastards.
We had the next day off in Cairns which was spent mostly sleeping. That night we walked into town to find a Blues Festival going on. It turns out that one of the acts are friends of mine and I am drafted into doing sound for them. So much for the day off. We end the night at Johnos Blues Bar, pissed as nits, watching Phil Emmanuel go off. What a great night.
The next day we do our gig and as soon as the truck is loaded, we start the trek to Mt Isa. The first stop is Townsville for a few hours sleep in a bed. Then head about 1500k’s inland. Fuck it’s a long way. This is the last gig of the run and after this we are heading back to Sydney for a few days off before doing Southern NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

Shutting the truck in Mt Isa, ready for the 3 day drive home. That pan is 26foot long and is chockablock full. Top to bottom, front to back. My Uncle Ray who is a “real truckie” said it was a “poofy town truck that had no right to be driven so far.”
The truck becomes a central part of life on the road. You drive it, sleep in it, eat in it and it carries your entire life for months at a time.

Nearing the end of the first day driving home, we came across the famous Blue Heeler Hotel at Kynuna which was the subject of James’ first(I think) Golden Guitar winning song. We decided it would be a great idea to stop for a pie and a few beers. The publican was really friendly regailed us with stories of when the film clip was being shot. It was a real big deal for them and they treated us well.

Leaving The Blue Heeler.

The Blue Heeler film clip

Crossing the desert that night we were treated to the beautiful sight of a desert sunset.

“Only two more days of driving boys, and we’re home!”

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I had a conversation with Gibbo Junior the other day that brought back a few memories. He is “getting a band together” with a few mates as teenagers do and we were talking about things rock & roll. The word “tour” came up as it does. It is a funny word in the rock & roll world and can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. When I was first kicking off, the definition of “On Tour” was driving more than 3 hours from home and not sleeping in your own bed! Later on it came to mean months away from home and many thousands of kilometers travelled, literally! It brought to mind though, my first “interstate tour”. It was a trip to Queensland consisting of a gig in a wonderful place called Strathpine, Qld, followed by a midnight trip to a national park in S.E. Qld for a biker’s party. The band was called Bandanna.

They were the first band that employed me as a sound engineer. It was 1985 from memory. I had played in another band with the guitarist Larry. This guy could play really well as well as being a more than capable singer. The other guitarist was a Kiwi guy called Graeme who immigrated to Holland, which was sort of appropriate… if you knew Graeme! The drummer was the amazing Rick Doolan who you will eventually hear much about. The bass player was Terry who was known as “Dr Gofast”. Another legend whom you will hear more about in future.
Basically they were a “bikers band”. They played blues, boogie, rock etc. and were really, really good. As a lot of bands were then, we were working about 3-5 gigs per week and all had “day jobs”. I had taken a few rostered days off to go on this jaunt.

This is us leaving the Strathpine Hotel. This photo includes myself, my pal Brian™, my brother, the band and a couple of extra crew known as “The Muckhole Brothers” who were “chemically enhanced” most of the time though they worked very well.

After an event free trip to Qld. and a great gig, we packed up and headed out the door.

Here are my pal Brian™  and my brother Brett in their devastating youth.

Off to Aratula we go. The fun started early. We hadn’t got 10 minutes out of Strathpine when we realised we were heading the wrong way which called for a quick U-turn across the median strip. This was something which seemed to annoy the local Police. I was driving my Lite-Ace “party bus” with the band, a couple of crew, a stray girl that the bass player had found, lots of grog, and a few other things that I won’t admit to here. Constable Plod was thrown by a NSW license and a van full of rough heads so he let us continue on our merry way with a stern talking to about “the way we do things up here”.
The rest of the trip was uneventful until the stray girl decided she needed to vomit. Now!
We pulled over to let her chuck. Awesome. The bass player was still interested at this point.
Off we go a few miles down the road when the stray girl decided she needed to pee. Now!
We pulled over but she was concerned that we might “perve on her” so she went around to the other side of the van. The side where the road was. The side where the traffic was. She quite happily piddled while cars drove past watching. I think we still perved.

Arriving at the party was an eye opener for me. If you have never been to a serious bikers party, then you have missed out on one of lifes great adventures. It was quite late(or early),in the middle of the bush and there were people everywhere drinking, smoking and… well, bloody everything. Come sun up, we were treated to the site of our stage.

What a beauty eh? That’s our truck at the back acting as a dressing room.

After setting up for most of the morning, there wasn’t much to do so we went and watched a “bash the Japanese bike competition. You paid a few dollars to have a couple of swings with a sledge hammer and the first one to get the crankshaft out, won. Classic stuff.

The afternoon rolled around finally to everyone’s favourite event. The tit show.

This is where female members of the audience are asked to remove some of their clothing on stage for all to enjoy and a winner is democratically selected.
All was going well until some girl grabbed the mic and started rabbiting on about how sexist the whole thing was and that she “wanted to see some dicks”.

Well, she didn’t have to ask twice.

The stage and was swamped by blokes with their slugs out.

This bloke was the obvious winner.

Fairly soon it all settled back down to the girls and a winner was duly selected.

Her prize seemed to involve going back stage with a couple of the bikers! I wonder what second prize was. Later on we had to let the strippers use the back of our truck for a dressing room. While we were in there “getting stuff ready”. It is quite bizarre watching a strip show in reverse. They would appear from the stage nude and get dressed again for their next bit. Wow.

Anyways, time was approaching when the band would actually have to take the stage and play. Trouble was that the singer was suffering from a bad cold and no sleep and 57 beers and……and was rapidly losing his voice. Finally the band started. The music was pumping and the crowd was going off. Until Larry tried to sing. Absolutely nothing came out. The band struggled on for a few songs doing “instrumental versions”. This was not going down as well as we would have liked. Let me put it this way. Bikers are not the best people to disappoint.

It was decided that one of the support acts would loan us their singer. Great… he knew two of the songs. It was then decided to let this bloke have a go who could “blow the harp(harmonica) like a bastard!” He knew two songs as well. He played them twice I think. It was then decided to give it away and beat a hasty retreat before anyone got more angry at us. We packed up in record time and scurried back to Sydney. At this point, we hadn’t been to bed for a while and some of us were a little bit “emotional”. A small altercation was had between myself and my pal Brian™ over who should get the sleeping spot in the van. Although this involved pulling over, much swearing, some pushing, much more swearing and a little bit more pushing, it was sorted and we had an uneventful and quiet trip home.

I crawled into bed at home finally, after three days with basically no sleep. Around two hours later the phone rings and wakes me. It is Rick, the drummer. He owned the truck with the bands gear in it. He says words to the effect of “If the cops call you, tell them you were driving the truck”.
Half asleep to fully awake in .5 of a second!
“What the…” I say.
“Well, you’ve got a class 3 (truck) license haven’t you?” He says.
“Why?” I ask.
Rick says sheepishly: “I sort of overtook these Army blokes going along Putty road. Across double yellow lines, on the wrong side of the road, around a series of blind corners, going down the mountain, in the truck, and, my license isn’t sort of valid at this point. Can you cover it when they ring? Apparently some fuckwit officer has taken the number of the truck and has made a complaint.”

Oh how I miss those days.

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How often does Shepparton spring into your mind? Be honest. Not often I’ll bet. Well, I have had discussion recently with someone from Shepparton and it jogged a few memories.
As some of you know, I used to be a roadie. A few of my pals have been hassling me recently to publicly tell some of my “war stories”. I have resisted for a while but, enough time has passed now to make them interesting without getting people in the shit.I have spent many an interesting New Years Eve, but among them is not the one spent in Shepparton.
From (unreliable) memory, it was 1992. I was working for a chap by the name of Rick Price who was doing good business at the time. We were booked to play New Years Eve at this pub in Shepparton along with The Black Sorrows and Daryl Braithwaite as well as one or two others(Dave Mason-Cox I think). At the time it was a very impressive line up and it promised to be a great night. The bloke who owned the pub had spent a motza on this night. He was planning to clean up on account of the fact that basically nothing else was going on for a hundred miles around. He had put a cyclone wire fence around the car park and had blacked it out with plastic. He had put a quite decent stage in, along with reasonable backstage facilities for us and the other bands. The topper was that he had knocked a big hole in the (brick) wall of the pub to allow him to sell grog at a phenomenal rate to the vast crowd. The guy had pallets of grog everywhere!

For the “PA Heads”… We had an ARX PA system of around 18,000 watts front of house and about 13,000 watts of monitors on 8 sends. The Black Sorrows had an almost identical system so we set them both up to form quite a decent system. It took all afternoon to set up and make the two systems work together. We had a crew of 6 and they had similar. They also had this poor schmuck who had “won” a competition on the tele to be Joe Camelleris’ personal roadie. He had been on the road with this particular tour for about two weeks. In the scheme of things, he was basically useless. The Sorrows’ crew made no bones at all about letting him know this. They wouldn’t let him touch anything. He was the epitome of “the lunch boy”. The poor prick was miserable but he was hundreds of miles from home and broke! Apart from this, their crew was blueing pretty good amongst themselves, so the atmosphere was “touchy” at best. Our crew were getting on well and took the opportunity to “stoke the fires” a bit.

The publican was expecting a crowd of many thousands, literally, and had invested heavily. Guess what? They didn’t turn up! We had this massive setup, these great bands, the “hole in the wall bar”, the pallets of grog, the bar staff, the big stage, the security dudes, the backstage compound with catering, generators, cyclone fencing, but… no crowd. The artists, all of them, kicked arse. If you have never seen Joe Camelleri and The Black Sorrows live, then you have truly missed out. It is a musicians band. The musicians will know what I mean. Our band kicked too. Rick Price had a red hot band and they delivered. But no one was there. Daryl Braithwaite started the show with just himself and a keyboard player and managed to be thoroughly entertaining for about 45 minutes. Quite a feat for two dudes, but, no one was there.

At the end of the night you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. The smell of burning promoter hung heavily in the air! We packed up our gear in record time and then attempted to leave. The Sorrows’ crew decided to get shitty at this point. What right did we have to piss off early when the job wasn’t finished? Well, we were finished! We figured that we had about half the gear each. We had packed up ours therefore fulfilling our part of the bargain. However… these dudes were fighting each other and were working like “old moles”. In the spirit of reconciliation, and with much hesitance, we decided to help these poor buggers who had just about had enough, and wanted to go home.

We eventually got their truck packed and headed off to the Motel for a well earned kip. Only, my brother and I got side tracked into another Motel room with a local band! I’d like to tell you the full juicy details but… nothing happened. These dudes were the most boring people you could meet. No sex, no drugs, no rock & roll. Not even a couple of long necks.
It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen, and no one was there!
That is my complete experience of Shepparton. In my opinion, the place could do with a few more chemtrails. It could bloody well do with something!

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