Youth Group

Youth Group played the ‘Rocking For Rights’ rally at the SCG in Sydney on Sunday. For those of you who live outside of Australia (or under a stone) this event was to protest the Government’s new workplace relations laws which seek to undermine workers’ right to unionise, strike and protest unfair dismissal. Pretty basic rights for a developed country in the 21st. century you would think. The most important role of Government is to protect people from the effects of capitalism; to provide what newspapers love to call ‘The Safety Net’. These new laws are holes in the net. One of the proudest achievments in Australia’s history, I think, has been the Labour and Trade Union movements’ civilization of work practices. At the same time John Howard decries ‘black armband’ views of history, he seeks to destroy a genuinely positive and humane part of our history. …anyway, enough lecturing.

It was a great day. The Sydney Morning Herald said 40,000 people came through the gates which is brilliant. We arrived in Sydney that morning, direct from a six week tour of the US and Rockhampton. We literally drove straight from the airport to the SCG, which provided an unusual homecoming to say the least! All the bands got to play two songs. We toyed with the idea of covering Billy Bragg’s ‘Power in a Union’ or the Whitlam campaign song from the 1970s ‘Its Time’, but in the end went with good ol’ Forever Young and Shadowland. It was wild and exhilarating. I wasn’t able to take much in, but do have an image in my head of a burly union bloke, southern cross on his singlet, singing along to Forever Young next to a couple of indy rock kids. And that warms my heart. My other personal highlight: Kev Carmody and Missy Higgins playing Kev’s ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. Such a great, simple song and genuinely moving. Goosebump material!

TOBY

Perth: the most isolated city on earth and the last stop on Twisted Logic’s Australian leg. And so the remarkable Burswood Dome was saved for last. An over-sized and idiosyncratic white elephant on the banks of the Swan River. A vestige of WA Inc., it’s linked to a casino built on landfill by a mate of the gaoled ex-premier Brian Burke. For some reason (improved tennis ball trajectories perhaps) its roof is a fibreglass dome held up by maintaining positive internal air-pressure. It’s a strange situation. Demolition is threatened for the Dome and the Coldplay tour only stopped here thanks to a fan-petition. It may be that the Dome’s just too big: there were 16,000 people in for Coldplay. As Chris Martin bantered on-stage: the back-row was in another time-zone. And the pressurisation has its hazards. At one point I mistakenly opened an emergency exit and a huge bellow’s wind blew me off my feet. Luckily I could slam the glass door shut before the stadium deflated.

The stage doors were airlocks. Youth Group’s dressing room was out of the pressure-zone through an airlocked service-door which refused to re-admit unless a supplied security guard slammed his shoulder heavily into it. Sometimes we had to double-team the door to get in. Eventually this door made a bloody mess of our helpful security guard’s hand and he had to be bandaged and replaced. But by then we were on stage.

From stage the people in the furthest bleachers up the black back were almost out of sight in the distance. I can only assume it was similar circumstance in reverse. It was a buzz to play for that many people. Walking off stage that night was about the point that I mistakenly decided our record would definitely debut at number one.

After Coldplay finished, on my way out, I talked to Franksy, Coldplay Tour Manager, to say thanks and goodbye. I made comment that it was a great tour to be on: meals were excellent, people friendly, morale high. To the last point he replied “Why wouldn’t we? We get paid well to travel the world, take on all comers”. But there was work to be done. The entire stage had to be broken down and the crew put on a five am flight to Singapore. Toby and Danny tried to no avail to get a cross-camp drinking party into Perth city. And so the tour ended. Just like that – no more Coldplay.

Tennis is the main event at the Burswood Dome.
YG celebrate with Vicki Taylor and a Pat Rafter poster:

Following the Laver shows in Melbourne we had occasion to drink with members of The Cold Play and assorted Melburnians. A boozy late-nite at Meyers Place Bar in the City and another quiet drink on their very own floor at a swank five-star hotel on Southbank.

Out in Melbourne with Coldplay

The Demazins were coming in handy with all these late nites. After careful assessment it was decided that Youth Group’s favourite Coldplayer is Jonny. Jonny is always grinning and he says sharp things and he’s a stand-out dark-horse as the most important musical ingredient. But one thing that you’ll read about Coldplay is that everybody knows that nobody knows anyone in the band except Chris Martin. What gives?

Jonny is the linchpin; every song he lends a guitar signature. In Coldplay’s band mechanics, there’s a couldn’t-do-it-without-you partnership between Chris and Jonny. That’s not big news: Chris hadn’t done a TV interview without Jonny until Enough Rope with Denton this year. They’re like Bono and The Edge. Old news: Chris M. wrote an article about U2 in Rolling Stone. U2 are their official role models and Coldplay live on this tour come off often as Joshua Tree-era U2. The interesting thing is the difference between The Edge giving press conferences demonstrating how he achieves his guitar sound and Jonny Buckland’s anonymity in the pub unless he wears his Cuban-military cap. And even then he’ll be missed by 99% of punters. What gives?

Their’s is a pioneering spin on the guitarist-singer stadium-rock partnership: mega-famous singer & anonymous guitarist. It’s a post-nineties thing. Everyone knows the singer/guitarist axis in bands: Mick and Keith, Plant and Page: they were some of the first and the biggest. Hair metal it’s most cartoon-like apogee. And Bon Jovi are like the last of the breed. In this format neither player is meant to be the centre point of audience interest. For a long while, if anything, people thought the guitarist was more important, eg: Johnny Marr was the real genius behind The Smiths, Tony Iommi thinking that he was Sabbath. The empirical chart-based evidence has shown that the public follows the singer. He’s the pied-piper. So presently no-one cares about the guitar player in the Biggest Band in the World.
It would appear that a stable post-nineties band mechanic is the Oasis model. Liam and Noel in their respective power bases as singer vs. songwriter are much more evenly balanced in this modern era. Neither is Oasis. No-one needs the shredder anymore.

Anyway, in Adelaide Jonny (the shreder) asked, with his ubiquitous smile, how our show went.

“They looked really scary but they were alright” I said. Truth be told, I recall the venue now as an Entertainment Centre but with a stamped earth & blood floor, as 8,000 ghouls baying and us sounding very weak and tinny in the boneyard. I was ill. I walked home straight after the show with an envelope full of flu-pills that Vicki had given me. The pills were from Thailand. They must have had a lot of salt in them. They made me feel better but I had to stop taking them after a day because I got sick of drinking a litre of water every hour. I missed out on the Kava (?!) Bar expedition across street that the other guys undertook. Onwards to Perth!

It is interesting to note when comparing, say, an audience at the Ding Dong Loungue to the audience at Rod Laver Arena, that Melbourne’s infamous so-what-that-doesn’t-impress-me attitude differs not at jot. To their credit no one can fault them for their real music fan attentiveness: they just listen harder.

Soundcheck at Rod Laver:

There were three shows in Melbourne. Youth Group played, as usual, at 8:15pm and then Coldplay played and everyone went crazy, blah, blah, blah, I’m boring myself …. interesting anecdotes …. hmmm …if you want to read tour-diary genius here is the Tucker B’s: http://www.messandnoise.com/articles/244851
it’s very similar to our experience, minus the worst gutter drugs imaginable of course.

Shane Warne was at the first Coldplay show, the Saturday night, with Aaron Hamill the St Kilda footballer. I saw him in catering, making a stage door betty entrance. Unfortunately for that shrinking violet he had his cover sprung in a Chris Martin song intro. It was all covered in the Herald Sun the next day. He watched the encore from the side of stage, right next to where Cameron and Toby were standing, he seemed genuinely embarassed by the Warney-chant that had erupted and was heard muttering “I can’t believe it” to himself. This wasn’t the last we’d hear of Warne.

It was Cameron’s 30th birthday on Tuesday the 4th. We did a pub lunch at the Vine Hotel in Collingwood to celebrate. Stuffed ourselves with parmas we did. Vicki was there and was fielding texts from one Shane Warne. We had to see them. I know what you’re thinking. We were thinking it too. But Warne’s full of surprises. All he wanted was to know was whether Coldplay liked chicken or fish, beer or wine for the BBQ he was throwing for them that day. He actually seemed really sweet in text format.
Tuesday afternoon I went over to Hot House Studios in St.Kilda to visit the Red Sun Band as they were making their second LP with the bass player from Kids In The Kitchen. Everyone else went to JB Hi Fi in Bourke Street to see the Sleepy Jackson do an instore.

Night fell and we all hopped in the Tarago, out to Nunawading to appear on Rove Live. We were expected to mingle in the green room with the other guests: Ronan Keating (top lad), Russell Peters (Canadian comedian who sold out the Enmore Theatre on the back of internet fame) and Gaelan (that week’s Big Brother evictee). Between Russell talking about porn movie sequencing and Gaelen informing me that his in-House girlfriend Crystal “had great big tits” I started thinking that the green room was a bloke’s club. Danny discovered we all had one degree of separation: Gaelen went to school with Jet, Russell lived in Jet’s street in LA.

Rove Live went very well I thought. We played Forever Young.
Youth Group on Rove Live (photo: ROVE LIVE)

Save for the mega multi story car park next door, the Sydney Ent. Cent.’s roof is the largest in the whole of the City of Sydney. Capacity here is double that of Brisbane; 15,000 punters a night and right in the heart of it, just on the edge of Chinatown. Our stadium rock destiny grows grander.The massive scale has it’s down-sides though. The room is cavernous and echoey and emptier at 8:15pm than in Brisbane; I suppose there are more distractions outside on Market Street than can be found in the mangroves near the Brisbane Ent Cent. It took me until the third show, the Wednesday night, to find my feet. Sadly, all of our friends were there (as the Kinks once sang) on Monday and Tuesday. Along with The Rolling Stone magazine. But let’s face it, my subjective experience of standing stage left, plonking away on the bass, is far less interesting than Youth Group’s collective experience of being the support band on a leg of Coldplay Twisted Logic Tour. So let’s hear about that…

Our presence is deemed “an opportunity”. We’re lucky. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Apocryphally there is a law that stipulates some Australian content at such events. One priority of our band is to be unobtrusive backstage. We are gruffly warned this time and again by our vastly experienced tour manager Kate Stewart. Turn up on time. Don’t take guests to catering. See that the guest list is finished an hour before doors. Don’t fuck around! It’s not like we’re in the way but a slip and you soon could be regarded as such. This is stadium rock!

Backstage at every show the rooms are designated by travelling laminated A4 signs; “Coldplay Dressing Room”, “Catering”, “Youth Group Dressing Room”, “Coldplay Family Room” etc. One of the first things friends think to ask us is whether we’ve seen Gwyneth or Apple or Moses, perhaps in the Coldplay Family Room. As far as I know the room was always empty. But Chris Martin’s brother and father were on tour. My Mum and Dad met Chris Martin’s Dad and he escorted them back-stage with his AAA pass in Sydney, remarking “I know what it’s like to be a parent”.

After watching five Coldplay shows you start to recognise the choreographical skeleton to their show. This regimentation and their uniform black clothes with odd pockets make them resemble the crew of some fantastic well-drilled space-station with a vague militaristic theme. That and the martial discipline. Chris Martin’s body looks like that of a yoga-enhanced sensei. But bass-player Guy doesn’t fit this at all. He looks like someone smudged him out somewhere along the fifty or so years of touring he’s done.

As I said, we’ve become friends with Vicki, their long-time PA, she feeds us little bits of gossip from the band. They (Coldplay) were disconcerted by people sitting down throughout first Brisbane show. I assure Vicky that it’s always like this at the two arena shows I’ve seen (REM and Split Enz), it must be an Australian trait. Apparently it doesn’t happen anywhere else, even in lard-ass America.

In the last two years Youth Group has flown into Brisbane Airport at least half a dozen times but today we did something different and turned right (not left) at the corner of Airport Drive and the Gateway Motorway, turned our backs to the City of Brisbane and our usual two-bit pub venues, and drove north into the mangrove and casurina stands of the Moreton Bay shore where the Brisbane Entertainment Centre’s bulk stands balanced on the low-ground, for a date with our stadium rock destiny.

From the moment we were waved into the backstage car park by a decidedly un-officious gate-keeper, whose job it seemed was to keep a lazy eye on a lone paparazzo, everything seemed to be coming up Milhouse for Youth Group. There was a very low-key warning from the stage-manager to “keep off the thrust” (the extreme front-of-stage) during the show but apart from that we had the keys to the Ferrari.

Before the show a caped and hooded Chris Martin who was hopping and loping along the hallway past our dressing room congratulated us on being number one “in the world”, his talent for hyperbole undiminished in person. He was off to play ping-pong before show-time. We made friends with Vicki, Coldplay’s right-hand-woman and said hello to Bash, their drum tech who we know from around the way, and who functions a little as Coldplay’s sublimated Id.

Then at 8:15pm, as it would be every night, there was our performance to attend to. One hears horror stories about the treatment of support band in arenas: bad sound, bright lighting on the crowd & distracted or disinterested audiences.

So I was prepared, as I am wont to do, for the worst. But it was euphoric to have the crowd cheer loudly – just for us and just for walking onto stage. The lights dimmed to the third or fourth shade of black (there are regulations of course that disallow complete blackness) and the on-stage sound was brilliant, we felt welcomed by the crowd. But I suppose if there is a band who you’d pick to have a polite audience it’s Coldplay. I was absolutely buzzing by the time we got off.

Coldplay were mightily impressive. The arena show seemed like a political rally and they were cast as the supreme leaders. They were the complete show and I must say that the kick off, Square One with attendant video screen display, was a little breathtaking. Toby said it was like “Total Art” and indeed it is. The arena space is a massive installation, if only the artists at the AGNSW <http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/archived/adventures_form_space> had the money that Coldplay can muster. Certainly the visual element of the show is integral and the whole space is used – where the stage ends is indefinite, with yellow balloons bouncing around and Chris Martin vaulting to the back of the room.

Danny said that “it’s like they use psychology to create the show” and they know exactly what buttons to push to bring the crowd to fever pitch. It was all very exciting. The Brisbane “leg” of the tour ended with me (Patrick) vomiting on my foot in the airport car park, the emotionally up-ended by arena rock and a little worse for wear after the last two days.

Sunday afternoon we had an in-store performance at ‘78 records on Hay St. Three hundred youngsters showed up, most of whom were under-eighteens unable to see the Rosemount show. We played them five songs in the peaked-roof & wooden-floored space and then, by my reckoning, we signed four hundred autographs afterwards. I wondered whether puberty is contagious after an hour of autograph-signing as I became increasingly tongue-tied and as nervous about eye contact as any one else there. I want to say, though, that it’s heart-warming the response that YG is getting at the moment and that it’s all very welcome.

Afterwards I discovered how hard it is to find somewhere to eat in Perth on a Sunday afternoon – like Australia in the fifties or so I’ve heard.

At the show, an early eight p.m.’er, we heard from the one of the Rosmeount’s bar staff that the weekend before, Alex Lloyd was seen feverishly releasing his pent-ups by writing LAMO over the YOUTH on our posters. If this isn’t true, and we’ve been mislead, I’m sorry. But it’s quite “lamo” itself if it is true.

The Rosemount was our best show for ages. Cam’s despondency had passed and he danced like he knew everyone was watching. Everyone had good mid-evening hi-jinks. Afterwards, which was at the supreme witching hour of 10pm, the Sleepy Jackson were kind enough to invite us to their Menora Palace for some beer and table-soccer.

The next day came the flight home from Perth, which on other occasions has been excruciatingly endless. This time I filled the five hours by attempting to write the YG press bio – the final record company version of which will end up on-line soon.

I was excited to spot Kate from Big Brother (that’s BB05) across the aisle, a TV-crush of mine. A stewardess on the flight, recognising us as a band, had crouched down to tell us of how she was an old school friend of Powderfinger’s and to secretly give us a few mini-bottles of champagne smuggled down from business-class. I suggested to Cameron that we should send a baby-cham over to Kate. Cameron, never one to procastinate, immediately asked the stewardess to “send one over from that gentleman there”. Well I never. I got so adolescently nervous that I demanded that the champagne would have to be sent from all three of us. But Danny didn’t want that. So poor Kate got no champagne and probably thought that we were all a bunch of drunk pervs.

I’ll always savour the fact that I was in Adelaide-town the very same day that Terry Wallace’s Tigers broke the world record (!!) for most marks in a game. A game when they knocked the Crows off their perch at Football Park.

Youth Group on the other hand, tried to cover ourselves in glory at the Flinders Uni Bar; out in the sticks and up an Adelaide hill. We found ourselves in what appeared, from the walls and carpet, to be a minimally-converted teaching space. We had asked Little Ice Age, an Adelaide band we’d spied at the Adelaide Big Day Out, to play with us. As we enjoyed their set, I noted that someone had designed a light-show that perfectly suited the institutional atmosphere of the Tavern. As choruses swelled, one light-bulb above the audience’s heads slowly glowed on and off, on and off. I was tickled to learn instead, that a dimmer-knob on the wall was being inadvertantly turned and that there was no light show.

Most of YG had a fun show in Adelaide. I got to write the set-list for a change – which was good. But Cameron didn’t have a great one: he said that the whole time he was thinking that this was the worst show ever and that it was never ever going to get any better. His gloomy outlook has passed I assure you. Bon vivant Toby Martin got a bit drunk on sips of scotch whisky and, by the encore, managed to bust a bit of wood off his Thinline Tele when he let it fly. All in good humour and high spirits of course. Later Toby somehow got lost on Hindley Street and had to make do with only a couple of hours sleep as we had to catch an early flight to Perth.

We were booked to play this union-subsidised Wednesday night extravanganza by an old Youth Group friend called Sarah. It was a one-off in a few overwhelming ways. With the crowd numbering 900 white-teethed young people, it was our biggest headline yet. And falling as it did between Forever Young being number one and our record being released, and tickets costing the princely sum of $5, there was one song above all that a lot of people wanted to hear. But it was fun show and close to home.

A young (nameless?) band from the audience gave Cameron a CD they’d home-made; a version of every song on Skeleton Jar, done in sequence, made using scarily precise drum-machine programming. This drum programming was exact to the point of comedy – if only you could hear it.
There were pre-show dramas too when Michael Carpenter, the drummer for Jason Walker & The Last Drinks, collapsed back-stage with stomach flu and had to get an ambulance to RPAH.

Two shows in Brisbane – our first shows since we touched down back in Australia on the 5th May.

We played in Fortitude Valley on Thursday and Friday nights at The Troubadour, upstairs in its brown, mock-bohemian surrounds, safe from the gargling psychosis of Brunswick Street below. Down on street level, five different kinds of four-on-the-floor house music are played at industrial volumes. And hundreds of bouncers curdle on the brick paving. The Valley is a site where all the sub-tribes of the town converge to drink; from pretty girls in stripey dresses to footballers out on the turps. Toby thought in this respect it is like Canberra’s Civic. And both seem to be notoriously easy (paved) places to get your teeth kicked in. Brisbane’s hot autumn weather may mean delirious nights but I found I could always escape the bedlam to walk across the Story Bridge, back to our hotel at Kangaroo Point. I crossed six times during our stay, all the while a soft, brown river flowed under a cloud-streaked sky between orange cliffs and the glass fronted sky-scrapers. Oh Brisbane!

On Thursday night, the first night, our favourite Brisbane band, The Gin Club, played before us. It was a greatest hits set for mine – all my favourites. They said that’s all they’ve been playing at the moment but there’s another batch of songs newly written. Then afterwards there was a little drinking (as usual) and a few jacarandas (to make it a special Brisbane night).

The next morning I was attempting to come down by eating a bacon and egg roll down under the bridge while reading the Murdoch organ (a gall-bladder I think), The Courier Mail, the only newspaper in this city of a million. Far from calming, the paper sent me into a Fear & Loathing tail-spin as the grisly finds of the tabloid press were inventoried: severed heads and country-town crimes. Oh Brisbane!

The next day was Friday. La Huva supported on Friday night. They were cool and brilliant. In the afternoon though, the rest of us dropped Cameron off at St. John’s Cathedral so he could attend The Go-Betweens’ Grant McLennan’s funeral, a solemn task indeed. We were heading off to do a few radio interviews. It was my first taste (but not Toby or Dan’s) of doing chart-radio for Youth Group. Danny had a contagious giggling fit when we had to do some liners (as they’re known in the trade) for B103. You know: “hi this is patrick from youth group and you’re listening to B103 with the hits you can’t get out of your head. Like this one…” It was that acid-flashback type of giggling. Irrepressible.
Later on some of the other attendees of the funeral wound up at the Troubadour via Rics toward the end of our set. A bit drunk Dave McCormack sprawled half on stage, half in the band room, and told Toby to “get out of my band room”. But he’s getting his due credit on Casino Twilight Dogs for arranging the strings on our hit.

We had learnt the Grant McLennan song “The Clock” at rehearsal on Tuesday and played it in the encore this Friday night. That was good. But over all these two shows were unenjoyable, due to the on-stage sound consisting mainly of crash cymbals. As we played I told myself just to grin and bear it but I cracked after the Friday show and was a bit cranky afterwards.

While we were in America Forever Young’s been a big hit and we’d been warned that having a radio-hit could change our audience. It was a very pleasant discovery at these Brisbane shows that our old-faithfuls were still around. I did have a few interesting conversations after the show as I grumbled around drunk. We have a band in-joke; we’ll say “oh my god, did you actually go to the OC?!!?”. Well wouldn’t you know it – that night someone actually asked me this.