The Pooty Tourby R.J. Cardy
March - April ‘96
Say "bumm-titty, bumm-titty," over and over to yourself; that is the rhythm you’re aiming at.
---advice from a banjo instructor
THE START. Wednesday. Woke up with burns on the palms of my hands and skulked into the van. (Usually I move out of wherever I’m living the night before the tour so as not to have to pay any rent while away but after last night’s party I could barely remember my name never mind my address and wound up sitting on someone’s couch with my best friend watching a huge tv in a cloud of nitrous oxide before wandering around in the moonlight, both of us hot for some last minute lovin’ but also fairly itching to give each other the heaveho - so although our parting words weren’t "Well that’s that, then, now f*** off, you smell," they pretty much conformed to that general semantic thrust.) Hit Waikato Uni about noon, started into a hot outdoor set we shortened due to the fact we were interrupting a nun’s funeral. My daughter Louise fell about laughing everytime I pointed at her. Headed for Wanganui after the first of many free lunches. Dinner at the Clansman that night was steak, chips, salad and beer on the house. About three punters hung around ‘til late, more to listen to fatrocious soundalike hits of the 60s from the pub jukebox than to dig Shaft. Nobody recognised our cover of "Birthday." Back at the motel later Skinny fainted from too much tea.
Thursday. Set up at Massey Uni about noon. While playing to a sizeable crowd on the concourse, a Coping With Suicide seminar was being held beside us in the Kiwitea Lounge. More free lunch and a chat with a git at the radio station whose mullet had us all in stitches. That and the fact he sang along with a Bailter Space track. Got Nat King Cole’s fabulous ST LOUIS BLUES lp at a junkshop for $3.50 and got told to get a haircut by an irate kerbcrawling agriculturalist. Sat around outside the Barrista Cafe reading old Story Of Pop mags. Free "Hunter’s Stew" courtesy cafe-staff followed by smallish crowd enlivened by bunthrowing dancing femmes. Off to Wellington late that night.
Friday. Set up at Victoria Uni inside the cafe. Crazy orange plastic chairs and fluctuating blood-sugar levels combined with finding no ham whatsoever in my socalled ham salad roll possibly accounts for my tetchiness during the Radio Active chat. That and being quizzed about my pants. Day improved markedly that night, as it does. Z Bob’s brother Stefan shouted us crocodile meat pizza at his One Red Dog joint and we chased that down with a chicken cranberry & brie number and cold weissbier. Such a slapup feed absolutely accounts for rocknificent show that night at Barbadago: played about 30 songs, sold a s***load of cds and my 100% mozzarella sweat drove certain submediterraneans gaga. Wandered around Cuba Mall in the wee small hours subjecting goodhumoured locals to the old twodollarshop whoopeecushion handshake routine. NB: taxidrivers in Wellington do not stop for my pal Dragan Stojanovic, ever. Fact. Wound up back at Andrew Tolley’s with Tony and the two bunfighting Palmerstonians in a spontaneous slumberparty situation.
Saturday. Up real early and off to catch the ferry. Pulled the old 6 for the price of 4 switcheroo with Skinny and Pants hiding under piles of rockband detritus in the back of the van. Slept through the crossing and dreamt I was a waiter at my niece’s wedding over the snake road to Motueka. Rained in all day at Hot Mama’s Cafe, bandwide misery mostly shaken by free fillet steak, ratatouille, spicey wedges and corn. Started off softly into our frozen-snot Grand Ole Opry set with little to no reaction from the unnaturally tall face-feeding punters. Went off like last week’s milk once we hunkered down and revved up, Pants getting some fall-all-over-the-place & knock-down-that-amp action happening. Got taken home and tucked in by migrant apple pickers. Touched briefly by vomiting hostess & naked boyfriend scene set to Louis Prima singing "The closer to the bone, the sweeter the meat." Rolled over and slept on the classiest carpet of the whole tour.
Sunday. Gig in Nelson cancelled. Drove to Christchurch killing time coming up with Chills answer-songs e.g. "Go the F*** Away" and "Song for Gary Newman," "Song for Randy Van Warmer," etc. Arrived late at the Space Dust/Brother Love motel chain and caught up a little with old friends.
Monday. Our official day off. Segovia is away with an old mate somewhere and the rest of the band are intent on a pilgrimage to Ringo’s. I’m homesick, first of all for my Auckland routine and secondly for days gone way-by here in Christchurch. I basically hated living here back in the mid-eighties but it wasn’t all inadequacy and humiliation - or maybe it was, but at least back then I had the distinct feeling that all my friends were equally f***ed up and truth is I find that enormously heartwarming. For oldtime’s sake I lurked about in Smith’s bookshop all afternoon and came away with a paperback of Nathaneal West’s Collected Works. His THE DAY OF THE LOCUST is the novelistic equivalent of a free all-you-can-eat barbecue-with-beer at a worldfamous restaurant. Sample from dialogue: "That dame thinks she can give me the fingeroo, but she’s got another thinkola coming." I’m a sucker for trashtalking dwarves, no two ways about it. Met up with Violet from the Dust and the rest of Shaft and tried en masse to make the Casino scene but flunked the dresscode. (Later Z Bob got in on his own; I kinda caught some contact-jollies from his descriptions of transactional abandon but I guess at heart I’m more of a TAB hound.) That night at Violet’s we had a fantastic noodle meal with lots of beer and while my and several others’ vitamin c levels slumped dramatically we mimed to a light-orchestral version of "The Ballad of John & Yoko," failed utterly to get the whopeecushions to work and came over all cinematically semi-involved with a nth-generation video showing of BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - home to the immortal line "You’re a groovy boy, I’d like to strap you on sometime" among others. (Little sleep that night and my memory has lockjaw so I’ll resort briefly to my notebook: The Brother’s Taxforms (?) - Bywater’s Louis Jordan lp (!) - Chinups - Cartwheels - Jane’s garden - James’s suit - Half Japanese vs ACDC (?!?) - Uncanny absence of snoring...)
Tuesday. Set up at Canty Uni. Cool outdoors stadium affair fired up by combination of pals in the audience and unexpected near-altercation with cafeteria staffpersons over size of coke-containers permitted for refilling with watercooler-juice and price per thereof. Cosey like an old shoe chat with the rubberneck guy out of the Bats and second unexpected near-altercation with stress-affected RDU tearoom minder. Poptacular choc-chip cookie-ettes and coffee courtesy the Students’ Union and a most Twilight Zonesque conversation with the guy who wrote the book about Buster Keaton. Christchurch is never not strange. On the way to Oamaru we drop in on Rich’s folks in Temuka. They tell us some great travelling tales and for the rest of the tour we often catch ourselves repeating "Great day to die!" and "If you’ve got a dog you don’t bark yourself." About 7.5 people turn up to see us play at the Penguin Club, among them one hirsute local who kept yelling "I’ve got Frankenstein boots!" Got domiciled with some friendly young student-cum-Goths. A guy in denim just visiting that evening needed to know what kind of stuff we smoked in Dorkland and Z Bob told him "Skunk, man." That impressed the whole evening out of me though I did my best to strike up a couple of conversations, to wit, "Do any of you guys ever feel like running down the main street and breaking all the shop windows?" (no reply) and "Hey I really dig your Sepultura t-shirt, so tell me, are you into gladiator movies?" (pause, no reply). I suggest sotto voce to the rest of the band that certain southerners have evolved way beyond mere conversation.
Wednesday. Stopover on the way to Dunedin at Moeraki, home of the big boulders. I refuse to get out of the van due to traumatic teenage memories of an awful night’s hitch-hiking run-in with buttrape-bragging bikies. Even now I get the willies sometimes just looking at a bag of marbles. Dunedin on the other hand though also potentially painful always delivers its fair share of attractions. I can still smell smoked fish pie on that corner of the Octagon even though the bakery is shut, and I practically keep having to turn around and wonder where my dog has gone. The gig that night at the Loaded Goblin has its moments, people watching tv in the lounge bar and some embarrassingly awkward dancing from semistupefied students, but mostly I’m carried away by having had the band meet my parents that afternoon and scoring a hot place to stay for us all with Tanya, Olive and Paul in Stuart St.
Thursday. Did the radio chat thing and an instore at the new Fire Engine record shop. That was especially good because my Dad came by for a look while I was bent over backwards with my guitar on the red floor in front of the shiney firepole. I like to show off in front of my old man, it’s a buzz-and-a-thousand. That night at SWIM was probably pretty f***ing great but we ate a lot of mussels beforehand and drank a lot of wine and I got to feeling very romantic and ended up bumping into a bunch of old friends and having personally-speaking so much of a good time that I didn’t really remember to notice whether everyone else was getting off or what. Dunedin is never not familiar, but it can sneak up and surprise you in a consenting-adults way.
Friday. Visit the Dunedin Sounds exhibition at the Settlers’ Museum and feel like I wanna get all dewyeyed but honestly those weren’t the days. Got coffeed up and popped into Roy’s record shop, chatting funnily enough about records of all things. Got a bunch of compilation cds from my mate Agalbraith and split town for Timaru. By the time we do the Rhino Records instore thingy I have lost my voice. Cool crowd gathers and we all get pointed at walking the streets. Bloody nice dinner but since it wasn’t free I won’t elaborate. Segovia scored a dirty r&b cd with both parts of "Butcher Pete" and that really filthy Jackie Wilson track. The night gig at Subterranean goes real well e.g. we make heaps of money on the door, two women punters have a big pash during our third song and then a guy gets up with his girlfriend and they start feeling each other up during another one. Lots of tongue-in-mouth action which I can never see too much of. It was that movie CINEMA PARADISO in a stinky little port-town dive. Postgig recreation was a visit to Mr Easy Tea for late nite snax. Tony got picked on by a local lad who took offence at his supposedly outrageous trousers. "What kind of pants do you call those," gibed the Timaruvian, oblivious to the fact that Tony was eating and it’s just not right no matter where you are to rag on a guy’s rig while said guy’s masticating. "I call these average," answered Tony a.k.a. from that moment on Pants. Stay in superb comfort at the Rhino Records guy’s house and catch a severely untimely cold.
Saturday. Morning tea with Rich’s folks. Lots of pikelets and jam, tea and coffee. My voice is gone altogether and my nose runs so much the snot really does cake against my pants. Hit Christchurch intending to sleep solidly but end up driving round with Rich looking for a chemist. Eat lots of nigroids, Vocalzones and a bottle of green ginger wine. Catch up with our hosts but I’m not allowed to speak or smoke so I’m bitching bigtime by the time we fight over the vegetarian menu at the Dux De Lux. Not even spinach and feta pastries, garlic bread, salad and veges can convince me that this is not Hell and that big noise is not Booger Burns goin’ down. Cheer up enough to be able to grimace a tiny bit before I notice this guy in the audience at Space Dust’s set who has the smallest head I’ve ever seen on a human being. Now this has added significance due to the fact that prior to the tour, way-back-when it seems though actually just a week before, during a show in Auckland featuring Zero labelmates and allround filthy combo Ape Management (who, to pile unlikely staggering coincidence upon improbably mindbending fluke, also number amongst their rank ranks Space Dust’s guitarrer Brother Love) I spotted swaying disjunctively within the preposterously seated crowd of Leisure Loungees this woman with the biggest skull I’ve ever seen on a human being. So I am bearing this terrifying burden by the time we start into rocking and first of all I notice my f***ed voice is kind of soothing, more windtunnelly than sandpapery, then I notice how Xmassy the menthol-sputum-coated microphone can really be, then all of a sudden I’m goosestepping between songs, Segovia’s virtually wiggling his ass and a gaggle of seriously inebriated fancydress fruggers in duck suits and witchipoo clobber are ruckussing osten(Texas)tatiously all over the floor. Oh what a night: late December 1963 must’ve been cold cheese on toast compared to this; the night they drove old Dixie down must’ve been a mug of Horlicks compared to this; the night the lights went out in Georgia must’ve been 3 valium and a glass of lukewarm water compared to this. Anyway it was a cool gig and all apprehensions of freak-phrenology paranoia were completely dispelled. Not to mention I licked that cold, spent 5 minutes at a crusty yecchfest, 15 minutes at a designer dude’s cocktail wake, a cool car-ride with Patrice and her friends with the gigantic she-dog on heat, a brief reunion with a guy from Dunedin I hadn’t seen in 12 years (hey Simon, remember Hamish whose parents thought he was crazy because he liked punk rock?!), a vision of Zarakov eating pigs’ feet, a half-hour wrapped in a sweaty duvet convinced I was a ghost and hot laugh-out-loud sex like I don’t even dream about.
Sunday. On the way to Picton I dreamed I was drinking expensive champagne and that Aretha Franklin was tickling the palms of my hands with her thumbs. After I woke I kept having to squeeze my eyes shut to try to remember if I could see whether she was wearing little rubber thumb-condoms or not. I got into this habit of frenzied blinking (undoubtedly exacerbated by recent illness, lack of sleep, low bloodsugar and strenuous physical exertion) and when a woman on board the ferry saw my predicament she told me she was concerned about my eyes and would I like to borrow her sunglasses. Only my ears were very blocked and I thought she said she had burning bouncing thighs and would I like to fondle her funbags. For real, I don’t make s*** like this up! I slouched back to my corner and became one with speechlessness. Back at Andrew’s in Wellington we sat in front of a heater and watched incomprehensible sports action on tv. His band SOWPUSS did a radical version of "Devil Woman" that night before we played at Bodiddler among many cool things; they are spunky and moist as opposed to sexy and hot, and exceptionally well-dressed. This night we talked a lot, jokes and stuff, road stories, recollections of memorable meals and so on. Managed to play our peckers off as well and Rich started doing that kick all the drums over thingy he does so well again.
Monday. Drive to Napier after a great night’s sleep. Homesick again but I understand we’re going in the right direction. We meet Tony’s mother and brothers in Napier where we play at a place called O’Flaherty’s. Tonight’s show is awesome; after the last two spectaculars it’s positively hattricktastic. Shaft fall over a lot, always a good sign in my book, and the stage at this joint is conveniently situated beside a street-entrance making wandering outside and showing off at passersby a must. We probably played for as long as we did because we knew we were on our way back to Auckland and the daily grind of our hairdressing careers. Apparently we had a support band but my memory says not. I do remember there are a lot of nice people in Napier, many of whom turned up at Tony’s mum’s place after the gig and got me, for one, very drunk - a first for the whole tour. To the very friendly person to whom I joked "I’m a lover, not a writer," I have to apologise because in fact I am a writer, not a lover - that night I was more of a mixed up mess than anything else and I’m sorry for acting like a dick. Apologies also to Kumera Patch who were the mighty threepiece who did in fact support us; thanks, too. THE END.