Chris writes from the St Kilda Film Festival (6.6.07)

“I could smell popcorn and they wouldn’t give me any. I went out to the candy bar and I said, may I have a bucket of popcorn, and the lady said,”

“Sorry Sir, we don’t have any popcorn.”

“But I can smell it” I said, “gimme the popcorn”, I told her “dammit, I want the popcorn and she said”

 “no we don’t have any”, then I asked again, “

“well how come I can smell it, if I can smell popcorn, you must have popcorn. Hey anyway, do you want a bite of my ice cream”

It’s a challenge to listen to some strange guy, pissed; in a darkened cinema, cause once you lend him an ear, he’ll keep talking, and the more he talks, the more your nearest neighbours go troppo with the noise. Charlie just slumped in his seat and didn’t say a word. Ben was strangely silent as well and I wondered if anyone was going to save me from the stranger. Just my luck to thave that little LED sign on my forehead flashing “chump”

This guy’s next stunt was to lean over during a particularly slow clip and ask in his loudest, secret whisper voice “Is this one lame or what?” to which I had to reply in a voice loud enough for the neighbours to hear “It’s okay; it’s going to go off in the chorus. It’s just building tension” Just like the tension building all around us. We’re pretty feeble when we sit in darkened cinemas – more so when we expect that the cinema experience is some sacrosanct chamber at the back of the temple and no one should utter a sound. Secretly I admired this guy who was confident enough to say what he was feeling – even if he was drunk as a skunk. How cool would it be to do that all the time and do it sober.

Anyway, who gave this guy that much free beer? This was a film festival and although I had probably had too many beers, he had way too many. I was beginning to wonder if I was as loud as he was. Nah I was only tipsy. I’m sure of it.

It was great to see all the film clips up there and in a competition screening it’s fun to get into the whole charade and illusion of competition – cheer, boo, applaud, think to oneself that’s an awesome clip and smile happily through jealous teeth. Makes you wonder why anyone bothers with competitions. Anyway this competition was well-known and it is apparently pretty good to be in it. Sound Kilda is a great place to be. I was having a ball.

After the show we wandered down the street and walked into a wine bar. The loud guy from the cinema attached himself to us like a lost Aussie back backer in London, and came in for another beer. Poor guy. He offered to buy a round of beers in a wine bar. That’s like asking for a bottle of French Champagne at a five-star hotel. It was cold, but the prices were red hot for this fella. All in an instant he recognized that the prices of everything were pretty high, mumbling something about oysters being $3 each. Then it hit him and he announced in his loudest whisper “F@#$ me, it would be far cheaper to pay someone to c*m in my mouth than buy a real oyster at this price - have you noticed how much the oysters are.”

Hmm, until now, this groupie had been like a puppy you were happy to play with, but suddenly we were feeling like we had allowed the pooch to poop on the door mat and the owners were coming down the hallway wondering what the commotion was – the other people in the bar looked a bit intrigued as well. I imagined some were wondering as to whether the very same oysters they had swallowed were of the highest, authentic origin. With an announcement like that of the whisper quiet PA system.

The clientele was actually very pricey, and we all suddenly noticed that we looked like a really sad group of casually dressed odd-bods, and not a high-brow executive, or professional trying to achieve a high return in a courtship ritual after a particularly great day pushing stocks high in  the market.

Screw that, were are professional which is why we were in Melbourne in the first place.

This was just a different crowd at a different venue, and this was someone else’s gig.

We left Kate chatting with some of her friends, and then walked back to our accommodation. We’d somehow lost that guy from the cinema, and as Ben and Charlie and I walked back to the hotel, we realized that the cabbie who dropped us off had gone the long way around the biggest block about 5 times when he dropped us off earlier in the evening. We walked directly home by accident in the Melbourne rain in 15 minutes and wondered why we went the long way in a cab that took over 15 minutes of driving.

Thank goodness for the delays to our flight home the next day as we all had some vague semblance of a hangover.

That pissed groupie from the cinema was nowhere to be found. A distant memory from an overnighter in Melbourne at the Sound Kilda film festival.

Kate writes from the road on the way back from recording the fourthcoming EP at Velvet Sound in Sydney (19.4.06)

Last week we went to big dirty smelly Sydney to record our little clean aromatic EP. There were some things that were good and some things that were not so good, which shall now be listed in alternating order.

Good
Velvet giving us free run of there synthesisers/organs/amps. We played with a lot of toys, plugged lots of things in and found out that some things make very beautiful noises and some things do not.

Bad
(yet impressive) Ben seems to have further lost control of his sphincter in a manner which we had previously thought impossible. His flatulence erupted in roughly 30 second bursts all week and Charlie thinks that maybe we should take him to a doctor now as it's just not natural. Regardless of the volume and frequency of the flatulence, Ben still finds it very funny. He has now taken to leaving farts on my and Charlie's answering machines after we go to sleep at night.

Good
Saint Chris of Holimage. Chris' official title is "photographer" but he is very sneaky and made us coffee and toasties all week. His new official title is St Chris The Generous who takes pity on poor indie bands and makes sure they have food and warm drinks in their bellies. Ben and Charlie cried a lot when Chris left us. Ben continues to fart mournfully in Chris' honour.

Bad
Signs that say you cannot turn left and signs that say you cannot turn right. Signs that say parking will cost one billion dollars and then cackle in evil manner at you.

Good
Lachie who did all his bass lines perfectly and then when we figured out that Ben and I can't play in time, did them all again to cover up the fact that we can't play in time. Plus he told us cool stories about webbed feet, being mistaken for Mal Meninga and some about poo that you will have to ask him about yourself.

Bad
The Retardis. I am generally referred to as Captain Retardo, and after a whole week of breaking things, losing things and forgetting things, Ben and Charlie decided that I travel in a Retardis.

Good
World Tower. Charlie skilfully found a special deal on the internet and we got to stay on the 75th floor in Liverpool St high high high above the city. Was like living in Sci-Fi film where we were gods of the universe with all the little worker bees streaming around the city streets and glittering in the dark of night. Met lots of interesting people in the lift including a man called Boom Boom.

Bad
Eating too much heart attack pasta and not seeing daylight for five days. Plus drank too much beer. Feel a little pasty and bloated, cannot imagine what Metallica look like after recording for 18 months.

Good
Watching Adrian bound around the studio, watching James fall off his chair, hearing Bella sing again, having Justine and J bring us pizza, hearing Ben play drums to A Country Practice, hearing Chris' monologues that sound like Monty Python, having Adrian say "do it! do it!" all the time, saying hello to The Grates, seeing Charlie laugh so hard he starts crying.

Ben writes from the road about the Roadtrip to the Acoustic on Broadway Competition (5.12.02)

The last couple of weeks have seen us relying on the good will of other bands, as pressures outside the band have taken up brainspace and caused a couple of bouts of forgetfulness when preparing to go on the road:

Firstly, I realised part way to Sydney on the way to Pop Tarts last week that I hadn't brought my guitar leads (which I kind of need) (this was Chuck's fault for reasons I dont have room to write about here) and then even stoopider, Chuck forget ALL his cymbals and realised this only when unpacking at the Acoustic on Broadway competition.

A very kind Chappy who looked alot like Jeff Beck let me use his leads at Pop Tarts, and in a strange turn of events at the Broadway gig, the drummer fom the band playing after us forgot his drum kit EXCEPT for the cymbals. At this point, if we were on Sesame Street, the word 'cooperation' would have appeared at the bottom of the screen.

These 'up-and-back-in-one-night' road trips are getting dangerous. The only way Kate and I made it home last night was by doubling the daily recommended dosage of Red Bull, and playing countless games of "Would You Rather": our favourite road game that we invented a few months ago, which I really shouldn't explain the workings of here.

Until next time...

Ben writes from the road about the Roadtrip to Pop Tarts in Sydney (4.6.02)

We were driving back from Sydney after our gig leaving about midnight on tuesday.

At about Phesants Nest, the alternator in the car died and so the car stopped.

We called the NRMA, and because Chuck was not a member, they charged us $200 to come and look at it, only to say its stuffed and needed to be towed.

Faced with the choice of paying $30 to get towed to Mittagong and getting a room, or paying $700 to get towed to Canberra, we chose to get a room, only to find there was no rooms at any of the motels and we were stuck in Mittagong with nowhere to sleep until the mechanic opened at 8:30 (at this point it was 3am).

Anyway, we decide to wait it out in the car (what else can we do?) not realising it was going to get down below zero. We also didnt realise we had been dropped of between a sewerage plant and a football field sized compost heap.

Having not known we were going to be having a campout, me and Chuck weren't wearing the warmest of clothes, and by 6am were sharing one sheepskin car seat cover as a blanket.

Then to make things worse, when we finally got the balls to get out of the car at about 7:30, we walked around the corner of the building we were parked next to, and saw that accross the road there was a servo that sells hot coffee and pies and was staffed by a bablicious local girl that had opened at 5am!!!

On a positive note I met one of the girls from that band Girlfriend.

(read on for Kates version of events)

Kate writes from the road about the Roadtrip to Pop Tarts in Sydney (4.6.02)

This is a story I like to call: BEN LOPEZ AND THE POWER OF SUAVE

So far as I can see, the blame for Tuesday night should rest solely with a little guitarist known as Ben.

Ben decided to enact all his powers of suave and finesse and make his approach toward Robin Luao formerly of teen pop band Girlfriend (otherwise known as G4).

His casual line was:
'Hey, didn't you used to be in Girlfriend? I used to have a poster of you on my wall.'.

It was all downhill from there. With one swift roll of her eyeballs, the pop songstress gradually backed away.

"Oh.....how....sweet...." she murmured as she made a hasty break for the door.

Little did Ben know that the all high priestess of pop, Amanda Easton, was looking on and caught the exchange. After packing up our gear she farewelled us by saying, "Have a safe trip home. I hope your alternator holds out".

No-one noticed the green flash from her retinas as she walked slowly outside. No one heard her murmur something about an evil clown.

Karma was to have its vengeance on the hapless Ben. On the way home the car broke down on a narrow bottleneck where they were doing some roadworks and it was only single lane on a bridge. Not only did the car break down, but the hazard lights decided not to work. So Chuck, Ben, and I sat in the dark waiting for the NRMA for an hour and worrying about getting hit by a truck or worse still being attacked by evil murderous clowns.

We also entertained the nightmare that the lady who had just served us at the Mobil (she had boils on her lips like Woogie from Something About Mary) would turn out to be the NRMA fix it person. This would have been bad, because Ben made an inappropriate joke about her looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall when he is disguised as an ugly old lady in an airport and yells out "Get ready for a surprise!". Of course, when we got to the counter he yelled out "Get ready for a surprise!" and, as it was 2.30, in the morning and we were very tired we got engulfed by hysteria. Chuck only made this work by saying "Stop, revive, get ready for a surprise!" at various intervals.

Evil karma mounted as a result. Anyway, I was pretty sure she had cottoned on to our little joke and was very worried that she might turn up with an army of evil clowns riding on those weird little up-and-down bikes and she would hack us to death with a splade.

As luck would have it, she was not the NRMA lady. However we did pay $200 to get a complete moron out to have a look at the car. In his esteemed opinion it was 'fucked', so he called a tow truck.

Then we waited another hour for the tow truck guy. When he got there we tried to call a motel, but the entirety of Mittagong was booked out (we think it may have been an evil clown convention). So we decided that seeing as there was only about three hours until the sun came up we'd just sleep in the car.

This was not a good idea. Fucking freezing!

I thought we might really die of hypothermia. Chuck only had a t-shirt with him, and Ben only had a t-shirt under a parker, and we couldn't turn the heater on because, as the moron said, the car was 'fucked'. So Chuck pulled the sheepskin cover off his driver's seat and he and Ben snuggled under that (an experience which some might say they enjoyed a little tooooo much).

I lay in the back seat and successfully jammed my head between the door handle and the seat which was uncomfortable to say the least. After about half an hour we were all freezing to death and my feet were all cold and wet. It felt like someone had peed in my shoes, but not nice warm pee, cold evil clown pee.

Chuck and Ben became delirious and started a game of shouting out normal words that sound funny - e.g. "Bush Tucker Man" or "Squashball" or "Bosch" (which they have decided is German for Bush).

I fell asleep around the time they started in on "sack", "sack race", and "big red santa sack", which turned out to be a blessing because I got about an hour's sleep and was able to drive home the next morning while the two of them were having microsleeps and babbling on about shit.

The moral to the story? Always respect a Pop Tart, or they'll pop your alternator.

Ben writes from the road about the Roadtrip to the Frankston International Guitar Festival (27.3.02)

In a hotel room in Albury, I was wrestling with kate (she was on a top bunk, i was on the bottom) and just as I (jokingly) said "I'll pull you off the bed", the side rail of the bunk snaps off, she falls out and lands on her head! She also took out a bedside table with her ass as she fell. Her ass is now black on one side, and she had trouble walking the next day.

Man - I was stressing out - I had images of Christopher Reeve being the new MEATBEE vocalist, and me being lynched by the rest of the band for my 2nd degree stupidity.

If that wasn't a downer enough for the first day, a truck sideswiped our hired Tarago and smashed the side mirror into a billion pieces, and being an electric mirror, they cost $350 to replace - if you can find one.

Luckily, after spending 2 days being laughed at by wreckers and Toyota dealers, Dan remembered he has a friend who works for toyota and we got one (still for $250!).

Then, as we had called the dude at the hire place to tell him about the van, he kept calling every few hours when he knew we were on the road to check his Tarago was OK. Im driving along and he calls Dan whos in the passenger seat. Dans saying "...yeah, Wayne everythings fine... we'll be back in town in about 45 minutes".

At that point, while the hire car guy is still on the phone, this commodore ute in front of us is towing this big cage covered trailer filled with fridges and tyres, and the trailer starts fishtailing all over the road, the ute starts swerving all over the place, then the trailer starts rocking from side to side and eventually bouncing from wheel to wheel.

This inturn makes the ute start rocking from side to side and eventually onto 2 wheels. Meanwhile crap is flying out of the open top cage, a hubcap comes off the ute, soon enough theres stuff everywhere (mind you this is all happening at 120km/h).

This guy is still on the phone to dan, were all screaming and going "faaaaaark" "holy shit" the others are going "look out - dodge the tyre!" (in a slow motion voice) Im going "Shiiiiiiit!" slamming on the bakes while the others are trying to stop all our amps and stuff from flying forward and killing us all.

Finally, a dog jumps out the window of the ute, so I hit the brakes harder, causing our tyres to go SCREEEEEECH.

Dan says to the hire car dude in an ultra calm voice: "na na, Wayne. Everythings fine. Well see you soon"

All this and more in a space of 3 days!

Oh yeah: we played some gigs too, but the misadventures are what band camp is really about isnt it?