I’m still in a strange state of suprise from the peculiarities of last night.
I went to a gig at Spectrum on Oxford St to meet up with a friend. Arriving a couple of songs in to the Russian Brides set I regretted not bringing my camera to snap pictures of the sexy bass player and take advantage of the space down the front of the stage. They had a rough but lovely quality to their songs and despite technical difficulties (a guitar not working and the spare’s lead being incredibly short) they did a raunchy cover of I Wanna Be Your Dog.
Somewhere in Summer hopped on next with a handful of gorgeous tunes; one stand out was 2bytwo which I’ve now found a snippet of on their site. The violin and guitar-hip gyrations make them very watchable. One small down side was that a girl spent the whole gig snapping pictures on what looked to be a digital SLR camera but she used the flash constantly! Through out the set the bright white light was going off here and there and everywhere; pure rudeness in my eyes – if you need to use a flash at a gig take photos in one or two songs max to save the band from blindness and the spectators from the annoyance.
By The Sea were preceeded by an acoustic set from a girl calling herself Lo (however you spell that) who had a great voice but the set suffered from the late-on-a-saturday-night-people-catching-up-with-friends-at-a-gig-to-blather syndrome – one voice and one guitar can’t drown out the crowd. The headliners had energy and enthusiasm and a trombone and a saxophone and Lo came back on for some vocal stretching; all up a great gig.
As we were leaving, weaving past a few people trying to get in, I looked up and saw a face I hadn’t seen for almost 5 years! Last I’d heard was that he was living in Melbourne so I hadn’t even thought to try and track him down. So that was the first little surprise, memories flooding back of how I met him around 10 years ago, stupid things we did running around town. A quick little catch up and a swap of mobile numbers but he was heading in and I was heading out.
Up Oxford Street my friend bumped in to someone he knew ordering a slice of pizza and I was told I had photographs of him on my website from a gig I saw earlier in the year.
About an hour later, saying goodbye to my friend on Oxford Street a guy came up and stood with us and I when I looked at his face I realised it was someone I knew but hadn’t seen for probably 6 or 7 years! Quick catch up there as well.
I headed back down to Spectrum for a bit more of a chat and then home to sleep after a night full of good music and sweet little surprises.
Peculiar indeed. What’s even more peculiar is that recently my mind has been gnawed away by a desire to play a raunchy version of I Wanna Be Your Dog. First I think I oughta get a band.
Oh, and surely there can’t be *another* sexy bass player out there. Oh, hang on, I just looked at the site. *That* kind of sexy bass player. That’s OK then.