tote

_{Tamara and Evil Dick.  Caroline Burston photo}

In a parallel historical universe the vast southern continent now known as Australia might have been conquered by France.

While France was still a functioning monarchy at the time Captain James Cook invoked the now discredited legal fiction of Terra Nullius to claim the territory on behalf of the English throne; by the time Arthur Phillip lobbed into Botany Bay in 1788, France was starting to buckle in the face of rising bourgeois unrest, and had bigger internal fish to fry (or heads to lop, as the case may be).

X
Tote Hotel, Collingwood, VIC
Saturday, September 10, 2022

Hello Barflies. Some things don’t change. There's |still nothing finer in old Melbourne town than The Tote Hotel, Collingwood, packed full of like-minded punters with a single purpose of getting their rocks off. And let me say that this Saturday night was no exception.

X were exceptional. I mean, they were just so “on” and tight. And so fucking dirty sounding. Steve Lucas just ripping his guitar. Man. he hits those strings hard. What a sound! I was literally two metres away from the great man.

X were celebrating the  40th anniversary of the classic album, “X-Aspirations”, playing the whole album in running order. How good it was. “Suck Suck” just busted out of the house sound system. Which is where I found Steve wrestling with earlier in the night when I dropped by to pay my pre-gig respects. He and soundie Dazza were in a state, trying to figure out said system. Thank fuck they got it sorted. Onya Dazza .

Kim Volkman (bass) was flashing the coolest pair of shoes I've seen in many a good year. Simon The Drummer was playing his third gig with X and second with Kim. He bashed and crashed through, locking in with Kim as a rhythm section that sounded like they’d been playing together for years.

These Immortal Souls
The Tote, Collingwood, VIC
Saturday, 12 November 2022

These Immortal Souls didn’t really have much of a physical presence in Australia, at least during the band’s creative peak. Rowland S Howard had first conceived the group in the immediate aftermath of The Birthday Party, though it took a false start with Barry Adamson, Chris Walsh and Jeff Wegener, and a brief tenure in the European incarnation of Crime and the City Solution, before

These Immortal Souls took permanent form with Howard, Genevieve McGuckin on keyboards, Howard’s brother Harryon bass and Kevin Godfrey (aka Epic Soundtracks) on drums.

For much of its time, These Immortal Souls lived a penurious, underground (literally and metaphorically) existence in the United Kingdom and Continental Europe. An Australia tour over the summer of 1988-89 would be the only time the band would grace these shores until the band’s repatriation in 1994.

By late 1998, These Immortal Souls had departed into the dustbin of history.

_{Garry Gray and The Sixth Circle owning the stage at The Tote.  Ripley Hood photo}

I don’t think I could ever live in Melbourne

Not unless I wanted to exist on on liver tonic and could handle being out seeing bands most nights of the week. The previous evening in Melbourne I was at HITS and maybe the mistake was to have my first beer at midday at Sydney Airport. The carnage that followed lasted long after midnight with visits to all the cool bars along Smith Street, Fitzroy.

My fellow fiend in booze and rock and I wandered into Ya Ya’s (a sleazy place at this time of night) and watched on from upstairs as another band hit the stage at 2am. It was either that or take a cab to the Cherry Bar, which is still having bands till the early hours. It all reminds me of misadventures of a long, lost Sydney live music scene.

"Execution Days, A Celebration of the Life and Music of Spencer P. Jones"
The Escape Committee 
+ Adalita, Penny Ikinger, Sly Faulkner, Phil Gionfrido, Digger & The Pussycats,
The Pink Tiles, Claire Birchall, James McCann, Jules Sheldon, Foggy Notion,
Henry Hugo, The Last Gasp Horns
The Tote, Collingwood, Melbourne
Saturday 9 April, 2022
Photos by Michael Barry

Before we start, a disclaimer: I am a close personal friend of Patrick Emery, the author of "Execution Days: The Life and Times of Spencer P. Jones”and organiser of this gig. So therefore all objectivity is likely to be thrown out the window.

Patrick and I first saw the Beasts of Bourbon in a relatively small venue, Le Rox, in the city of Adelaide in early 1992. After the first few bars of the opening song, "Chase the Dragon", singer Tex Perkins kicked over the mic stand, the band abruptly stopped playing and Tex stormed off the stage headed towards the mixing desk. We were standing roughly in that area as he came charging in our direction and I was genuinely in fear that he was about to wreak some savagery upon us as part of the collateral damage of castigating the sound guy.

_{Liz Pommer photo}

The Johnnys
The Tote
Friday 14 October 2022

There’s some audio of The Johnnys live at Le Tote sometime in 1983, couple of years after the Doherty family had decided to host bands in the band room of The Ivanhoe Hotel in an attempt to address the pub’s precarious financial future.

The set is good ol’ sloppy cowpunk fun, replete with lyrical signposts to The Johnnys’ inebriated schitck and irreverent celebration of country music. “You know why we’re having fun?’, guitarist-singer Roddy Radalj calls out rhetorically. “Because we’re drunk!”

_{Tamara, Richard and Stacey on-stage at the Tote. Matthias Baratheon O'Meara photo}

It has now been six years since was lining up at the Excelsior Hotel in Sydney when Jim Dickson (New Christs and Radio Birdman bass-player) told me about this band from Brisbane that I had to check out. Knowing Jim for three decades from his time selling Indian food down at Max’s in the late ’80s, I had never heard him express how blown away he was by a local band.

It’s 25 HITS gigs later for me. I’ve been seeing them from a time when only about five of us living outside their home of BrisVegas were convinced that they could be the greatest exponents of dirty, street-level rock ’n’ roll in this country.

Nowadays, HITS are the band on everyone’s lips. That’s why I am flying down from Sydney to to see my favourite Aussie band to play The Tote in Melbourne, not long before they’re due to embark on their second tour of Europe.