Waits started off with a traditional wounded, boozy, New Orleans feel and then progressed towards the more loose and avant-garde - sounding something like a giant, red circus tent with straw flung across the ground, silver shining stars stuck to the roof and the smell of whiskey mixed with elephant dung hanging about your ears. Tex's sound started off more experimental, bawdy and bourbony and has slowly made it's way to traditional and nontraditional Country, with little pit-stops for disco, ladyboys, drum machines and heroin-addled-bluesy-funk.
I don't have a lot of heroes, but they both hold firm places on that short list. The music isn't the reason. I love lots of music without feeling the need to attach a 'Hero' label to the performer. There's levels - I can 'idolize' a 'heroic musician' and yet still keep them off said Hero-List. Tex and Tom fit into this small club not because of the songs, but because of the men they are. The men they were. The men my mind sees them as. I feel connected to them. They are great and elevated but not untouchable or off in the distance. They're aren't characters of fiction. To me, they are real men who walked the same streets as I. Literally.
Tom Waits is most associated with East Hollywood. He grew up around Echo Park, spent time in Silverlake and wrote, played and recorded so much of his early stuff within the shadows of Sunset and Vine. Tex starts off in Darwin and begins to find his voice down the dark, side alleys of Sydney. But it is in Melbourne – specifically St Kilda – where he really explodes. Whilst there are many St Kilda musicians out there that do well to express part of what the sea side suburb means – The Birthday Party/Nick Cave, Crowded House, Cut Copy, Paul Kelly, Tim Rogers, Freddie Negro, Ian Rilen, The Living End (Jet will try to tell you they're from St Kilda, but to me they'll always be from Mentone..... fuck em...) – no one 'is' St Kilda like Tex. Anything he has released in the past 20 years makes me feel like I’m sat up inside the famous Espy Hotel, eating a bagel with rich, wet scrambled eggs, nursing a perfectly sweet and bitter coffee and patiently waiting for my heroin dealer – one of the local Detective-Sergeants. He is as St Kilda as that.
I feel connected to the physical concrete, grass, tar and palm trees of the neighborhoods that are both of them. I’m here – or am from there. They are real people to me, cause I’ve read their street signs and know my way around. That's why they are heroes: they and their foundations are real to me. A hero needs a journey towards their heroism and I can only connect with a road and a travel I have experience with myself. They are not lofty enigmas up on a golden hill – they have their hands dirty down in this here valley.
Sometime a decade or so back, Tex moved back in a northerly direction and up to Byron Bay. I wrote about Byron a few posts ago. It's about halfway up the Australian east coast. What I wrote was about one the beaches up there. Heading back from the beaches, lies the type of sprawling mountain range that Australians would call 'The Hinterlands'. Most towns up the coast have their own set of hinterlands, each with their own set of charms and character. Byron's rambles up and around, as if it was a bit unsure of where it wanted to settle – a bit like the people down in the town below. It's not quite subtropical up there. There is the odd palm tree, but it survives in my mind's eyes as a melange of wild, dark green ferns and motley, scarred Mountain Ash trees. Parts of it was cleared a century back for dairy farming, whilst other parts are so overgrown with brush, that one would swear that they can hear the hissing of thousands of deadly Brown Snakes coming from the thickets beyond.
Tex lived for a while up in those hinterlands. I know this for two reasons. The first is that he built a studio up there and then used it to record a couple of the greatest albums of all time. I devoured – and still do – every part of these recordings, including the liner notes of the CD cover that clearly credits the studio and home it lies in. The second reason – and this is out of chronological order because this actually happened before any of those albums ever came out – involves a story. Do you like a story? I hope so - otherwise why the fuck would you visit this blog??
Over ten years ago, a couple months out from the big Y2K moment, my housemate starting talking about getting out of Melbourne for the New Year's festivities. Years earlier, he and some friends made a small tradition of spending that calendar-changing, midnight hour up in Byron. Byron sits on a little outlet, that extends out to the very most eastern point of Australia. This makes it the exact part of the continent that is first exposed to the morning sun – the first part to bathe in the sun rising over a new year. This loosely spiritual fact, combined with Byron's 'alternative nature' (read as: lots of easy access to lots of drugs), make it the most perfect place for young folk to bring in the new year.
At the time, we were spending a little time hanging out in and with the 'Psy-Trance Scene'. Now I’m not sure what that would mean in today's day an age, but back then that meant outdoor parties in the woods, stomping, beat-heavy, acid-drenched music, lots of shit that glows in the dark, paranoid sunrises over primal scenes, massive amounts of every kind of hallucinogen, bizarre attempted recreations of the great outdoors in tiny, inner-city nightclubs and Israelis – lots and lots of Israelis. Due to the requirements of weather and such, the scene had a specific season. By the time the middle of December rolled around, every weekend provided another party - either the big ones advertised by side streets plastered with posters or the secret, illegal ones that required a mobile phone number and a password in order to procure directions and details.
The season's highlights that year was going to be the two parties around New Years up in Byron, one the week after down a little south from there and then finally two more over two weekends, that would be held out in the bush surrounding Melbourne. Our initial intention was not to attend all of those parties. I want to make that clear. Even then, without the wisdom of now's hindsight, we knew this wasn't an idea that would be 'prudently respectful' to our brains/minds/mental health. It just kinda worked out that way.
You see, what happened was that we spent a couple of weeks furiously looking to book any sort of accommodation up in Byron. We were going to go there for a week, attend just the New Year's party with a large group of friends and then fly back home. Accommodation wise, Byron is quite a limited place – especially back then. It's not just that it is small, but that also it is fairly enclosed by those hinterlands behind it and there's a quite finite limit on how much building can be done. Most summer vacation bookings are filled at least ten months in advance and everything is long gone by November. We were stumped and disappointed.
I’m can't remember who had the idea first, but I do remember it snowballing fast.
“A caravan (or as you might call it in America- 'a trailer')!! Why don't we rent a caravan and a car and we'll drive up there and try to talk our way into a caravan park??”
I swear , that tiny paragraph above, was the full extent of the brainstorming, consideration and conception of that plan. There's romance in spontaneity and stupidity in rashness. We were all sorts of mixed up in both.
Sometime between the end of November (when we hit on this plan) and the end of December (when we were to hit the road) we decided that, since we had the caravan anyways, why don't we rent it for the month of January and drop in on all those parties, as we slowly wind back down the east coast. I think you're starting to get a better understanding of our spontaneity/rashness thing.
There ended up being three of us packed onto that journey. I think it's safe to say nothing ever did – and ever will – effect our lives like that trip. This blog is a work of fiction, woven around small moments of non-fiction. As such, I focus hard on editing to protect the innocent. For this reason I cannot go into too much detail. However, just writing about this now has kinda tripped and caught me a bit. Consequence almost always strips away Romance.
Anyways, moving on....
There was a caravan park opposite the golf course that had a last minute cancellation and we got lucky and rolled straight in. It had its own private entrance onto Tallow Beach and we parked the car, threw off our shoes and ran straight for the sand.
That was the first time I saw her. That very first moment of the very first time I walked out on that beach. She was sitting up on a beach towel, way back from the water's edge, holding a book in her hands and staring out in the ocean. What I first noticed was a her shock of dusty blonde hair. It was all frizz and curls and if she wet it, it would have been long enough to fall well down her back. But here, dry and windy out on the beach, it piled up high from her forehead like a yellow afro, swaying and waving in the breeze in time with the dune reeds behind her.
She was completely oblivious to us. As the others kept running towards to water, I stopped still to stare at her. Part of me wanted her to turn her head, so I could catch more and the other part of me didn't want her to turn, so I wouldn't have to look away in embarrassment. The other two yelled out to me and both the girl and I looked over to the source of the voices. Shocked back into the moment, I trotted down to join them in the water.
She was there the next morning too. In the exact same spot, with the same book and on a different towel. I swam about in the water in such a way, that allowed me to keep facing watching her. She had no idea. Even from all the way in the surf, I could make out her deep brown eyes and raised button nose. Her face was friendly and mischievous - if, like me, mischief is your friend. She felt open. Welcoming. Like she would welcome an interruption from a brash, yet insecure young man. I have no idea what led me to this assumption, but I’m certain much of it was a projection – a hope of how she would be.
Something about those fresh waters emboldened me. I climbed out and came back up the beach towards her, dripping into my brand new beach towel. It was morning and the sun was in the east at my back, drawing out a long shadow preceding me up the sand. She felt this shadow upon her before I arrived and looked up, with the sun in her eyes, at the silhouette approaching.
“What are you reading?” I asked, as I furiously rubbed the dry towel over my wet body.
At this stage of my life, my skills in social contact with the opposite sex were, well, sub-par. I was afraid of women. Or to be more precise: afraid of what they would think of me. I often ran to cliché questions.
She saw. She realised my nervousness only served to demonstrate how attracted to her I was. So much so, that it defeated my own fears and insecurities in relating to approaching girls. Maybe there was something alluring about that. Awkwardness can be charming - I've been since told that, back then, it was my most charming characteristic. This delicate, glow of frizz and ease had none of my fears borne from seclusion, so she took the lead that needed to be taken. Ignoring my question, she instead invited me to sit down next to her.
She was an architect. Well, not quite yet. After the summer she would head back down south to finish her final year of university. I suppose that bit of information put her somewhere around the middle of her 20's. When she was was 6, her parents traded the big city ashfelt of Sydney for a seachange up in Byron. Less than a decade later, they had divorced, with her dad returning to that big harbor city and her mum staying put.
After graduating from the high school located next to our caravan park, The Architect moved in with her father and switched to city life. To my mind, she hadn't left town just to attend uni in Sydney. All those I have met that have grown up in the country in Australia, feel an inferiority to those from the city. This insecurity may vary greatly in intensity and display, but it is almost always there. The way to overcome this neurosis is to face it down. She traded dust, space and air, for lights, pace and the ever casting shadows of continuous neighborhoods. This hardly seemed like a fair trade, but it did serve her with a more filled out confidence. Easy confidence, that was even sexier than her brown, tight, delicate shoulders, peeking out of her blood red, one-peice bathing suit.
She was an architect. Well, not quite yet. After the summer she would head back down south to finish her final year of university. I suppose that bit of information put her somewhere around the middle of her 20's. When she was was 6, her parents traded the big city ashfelt of Sydney for a seachange up in Byron. Less than a decade later, they had divorced, with her dad returning to that big harbor city and her mum staying put.
After graduating from the high school located next to our caravan park, The Architect moved in with her father and switched to city life. To my mind, she hadn't left town just to attend uni in Sydney. All those I have met that have grown up in the country in Australia, feel an inferiority to those from the city. This insecurity may vary greatly in intensity and display, but it is almost always there. The way to overcome this neurosis is to face it down. She traded dust, space and air, for lights, pace and the ever casting shadows of continuous neighborhoods. This hardly seemed like a fair trade, but it did serve her with a more filled out confidence. Easy confidence, that was even sexier than her brown, tight, delicate shoulders, peeking out of her blood red, one-peice bathing suit.
Everything about her was new to me. Everything about meeting her was new to me. I had never before felt enough courage to approach a lone girl like that. Sure, The Architect was leading, but I was hanging tough and holding my own. She seemed genuinely interested in my little stories from the just completed road trip. She laughed at the right moments, asked questions I’d let her up to and leaned in when I spoke softer.
There's two mental images of The Architect I carry around with me. Even thought I haven't thought on them for years, they're still with me. I end up with them - like the music of Tex and Tom – when I need them the most. When they are there.
The first is of her on the beach, as I walk out from the water and towards her. She hasn't looked up yet and all I have is the combination of her colours and my craving to see her eyes. Her head leans forward over the book laying flat on the towel, allowing a sight of her neck running down to her curved back. Such a pose could lead to an unfortunate angle reminiscent of a hunchback, but in her, all I can see is sexiness, lean lines, light and ease. The exact red of her bathing suit, against the precise blonde of her hair, is tattooed into my memory like my parent's phone-number or the lyrics to a favourite song.
The second image is from the day after that. She took me up into the hinterlands, to a house of a friend of her mother's. He was a fifty year old fashion designer, who had moved out into isolation to escape a certain stigma. She wanted to show me his gardens, a portrait of her he was painting and the platypus that lived in the creek at the bottom of his property. She picked me up in a jaunty, little car, wearing a flowing summer dress with black straps and a red hair-tie pulled through her cascading curls.
As we drove out of town and higher up into the mountains, she highlighted out points of interest along the way. As we passed a letterbox, slanting off a wooden spike, she pointed to the driveway besides it and informed me that this was Tex Perkins' new house. This meant little to me at the time, but now it means more.
In Australia, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and when I looked across to where she had pointed, I got a perfect profile view of her now staring back up the road. This is that second image I spoke of.
Her back is straight against the driver's seat, which is pulled a little forward to accommodate her petite height. The sun-kissed, browness of her bare arms only serve to accentuate the softness of her limbs. There are no harsh angles of bones pressed out from her forearms, nor plumpness of fat hanging either. Those shoulders that had seemed so alluring the day before, reached the point of demanding to be lightly brushed today. Side on, the tiny pouting push out of her bottom lip is easier to notice, as is the way her front teeth rest on it. I follow the shape of her slightly upturned, short nose, up to the clear line of her forehead and get lost in that tangle of lively hair. She is quiet and knows I’m fully drinking her in.
What I see is the physical image. What I feel is sensuality without lust. Desire without possessiveness. Empathy without fear. Tenderness without desperation.
