| Crowd not terribly responsive, except for during such upbeat songs as "I Get High," "Gough," and "Louis Burdett," which get them up and dancing. Tim introduces "Band on Every Corner" with, "Where we come from there are so many bands on the streets, but I'm not in any of them, so I hate them all...just like I hate all the people sitting in the corners tonight." Derek and I waltz around the mostly empty dance floor to "Band." Tim flubs the lyrics at the end, and the guys exchange brief looks. Jude laughs. A guy with a shaved head and a black feather boa around his neck asks her what's so funny; they get into a conversation about the band, how she knows them, how he heard that they were an "alternative" band, but he doesn't agree. She says she would call it pop, but good pop. Feather boa guy concurs, saying, "It's like gay pop, with class." Jude is slightly nonplussed by the concept. |
| During "No Aphro" Tim leaves out the "red hair, no hair" lyric, much to my disappointment as a redhead. Feather boa guy comes up to Jude, puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, "Wow, this really speaks to me! There's no aphrodisiac like loneliness! It's just SO true!" This will become a running joke between her and Derek for the rest of the weekend. Jude encourages him to buy a CD. |
| After the show, Tim shakes our hands and tells us we'll have a chat after they pack up their gear. He leads us to the back bar counter and offers to buy us drinks. I ask for a white wine, Jude asks for a gin and tonic, and Derek asks for a beer. At one point Tim asks Jude to remind him of her name; mishearing him because of the cool-and-swinging-but-loud musical stylings of Big Rude Jake, who have taken over the stage, she says, "Gin and tonic." Tim replies, "That's a funny name for a girl!" She relates the story of feather boa guy to him. | 
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Jude: He said it was like gay pop with class. Tim: Gay pop, huh? Jude: With class! Tim: I don't think we'll be repeating that one. |
| Luckily, he doesn't have to. He's got me to do it for him. No need to thank me. |
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Bill wanders over, introduces himself, and hands me a Molson, which I drink to wash the taste of cigarette smoke out of my mouth even though I don't like beer. Clayton and Ben come over to get drinks as well and introduce themselves. Stand around chatting for a while about the Canadian tour, politics, Boston, what we do for a living, and stuff. They seem impressed that we would drive six hours from Boston to see them. I think it's the least we could do, seeing as how they flew 22 hours to Canada and spent the last couple of weeks crisscrossing the country by bus. Besides, I'm only doing temp work at the moment and this is much more fun than temping. Tim goes outside for some air. It is quite smoky inside. |
| After a little while we also go out for air. We shoot the breeze with two women outside, one of whom, it turns out, lived in Melbourne for a few months. Bill comes up to the five of us and we chat some more; he tells us about being taken to play American football that morning after having had three hours of sleep. The bismuth-pink Durex Condoms tour bus is parked across the street. I make entirely unoriginal joke about them getting free samples. One of the other women asks if she can get him to sign one of the posters from the club, so Bill rips one off the door for her and invites us all onto the tour bus for a while. Wow! We feel like real groupies now. |  |
| The rest of the band and Greg are hanging out on the bus. We get to talk some more with the band. Comment to Tim that it must be kind of weird to play a gig such as this, where people aren't very responsive. He reminds me that he's used to that after about ten years of performing. Duh. I ask Tim if he ever plays "10 or 11 Drink Clown" in concert, to which he replies that it's too hard to play live. Bummer, I love that song. |
| We talk about a 1997 Moody Jews gig that Derek and I had attended at the Hopetoun Hotel in Sydney. I tell Tim that we went to that gig solely because we'd just moved to Sydney and were intrigued by the band name. He says that a whole bunch of people showed up for the same reason, but there was no Jewish connection except for one song which was had something to do with Chris Abrahams, whose great-grandfather or something was the Abrahams from the movie Chariots of Fire. | 
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He asks us if the three of us are Jewish, which we are. Tim and Ben both have Jewish fathers, but only Ben actually had a bar mitzvah. I talk some Jew stuff with them. Suggest that they go have real bagels in New York City and find a Lubavitcher Mitzvah Mobile, where the Chasidic men will put tefillin on them. Explain to Tim what tefillin are. Ben actually seems interested in finding Jewish stuff to do while in NYC. It then turns out that the two other women are both Israeli-born. I comment that it's just a bus full o' Jews and find this fact very amusing. Who knew? |
| Big Rude Jake finish their set and we are informed that it's bedtime for the boys. We thank them for their hospitality and skip back to the hotel feeling mighty chuffed. |
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All text, photos, and illustrations by Laurie Brunner © 1999, EXCEPT the FOW T-shirt gif and FOW logo, linked from the Whitlams home page.