Pat The Dog

One of the oddest things about being in between jobs is that there is suddenly so much time to fill, and when you’re used to working six days a week, and when you enjoy working, it’s not an easy adjustment to make. Therefore, I’m spending a lot of time these days working on a story idea I came up with in the middle of last year. Most of the writing has taken place here in the office at home, where I am writing this, but occasionally I like to grab the laptop and go somewhere else to write.

Yesterday, for example, I sat down three times to work on the first draft of what I imagine will be chapter eight. The first two times, I sat there going “hmmm, this is a tricky bit of the story to start drafting, I’m not sure how to begin this chapter – oh look! – someone just messaged me on Twitter!” The third time, around 3pm yesterday, that I sat down to have a crack at it, I got nothing so I grabbed the lappy and went to Leederville. (This is as close to writers block, I’m pleased to say, as I tend to get. I’m reminded of the story of a guy I knew who used to run Seaworld. He told me that whenever he was having a tense meeting and had reached an impasse he would go directly to the rollercoaster with whoever he was having the meeting with and as soon as they got back to the office they’d nail the rest of the meeting in no time. In other words, sometimes a change of scenery is all it takes to shake the next idea out of your head.)

Leederville is a great part of this city. It’s one of the few suburbs that remains open after sunset. When I leave town, and there will be more on that topic in my next blog, Leederville is on my list of ‘things I will miss’.

So I rocked into Sayers, grabbed a coffee and a caramel slice, and for $8.50 I bought myself an hour and a half at a quiet table, where I’m pleased to say the first draft of chapter eight practically fell out of me.

But… (come on, you knew there was a ‘but’ coming!) there’s always one guy who has to come in to the coffee shop talking at the top of his voice through his Bluetooth earpiece, right? Of course there is! And yesterday’s shining example of self-importance rocked into Sayers practically yelling down the phone something or other about a roller-door. I looked at the facial expressions around the room, and I think we all wanted to thump this dickhead. But on and on and on he went… I was pretty tempted to say something to him, but I’m just over a week into Nicotine withdrawal, and I really need to avoid confrontation until I can trust myself not to commit homicide.

So, I ignored him and kept writing. Really, it was a non-issue, but I did just want to point out to anyone who wears one of those Bluetooth earpieces that YOU DON’T SEEM TO REALIZE HOW LOUD YOU ARE TALKING WHEN YOU’VE GOT THAT THING IN YOUR EAR. JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP, FOR FUCKS SAKE, BECAUSE NONE OF US GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR CONVERSATION.

Next time I get stuck, I’m thinking of going to Freo, but I’m unemployed right now so I doubt I could afford the parking.

Gav
x

To be honest, I think the noughties were a pretty awful decade for music. Between the pitch-corrector (I suspect that’s Madonna’s fault – she started it with “Music” in 2000… Then again, maybe it’s Cher’s fault for “Believe” back in the 90’s?) and the god-awful bland repetitive contrived stadium rock (Nickelback, et al…) that has ruled the airwaves for the last ten years, it’s been a pretty hard task finding the good stuff in amongst an enormous pile of shite.

And don’t even get me started on what they now call R & B (Can anyone else hear the R or the B? I can’t…)

So, with that in mind – here is my official hitlist for the Noughties…

Coldplay – Don’t Panic
Destiny’s Child – Bootylicious
Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
The Hives – Hate To Say I Told You So
The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Christina Aguilera – Beautiful
Outkast – Hey Ya!
Jet – Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Kings Of Leon – Red Morning Light
U2 – Vertigo
Gwen Stefani – What You Waiting For?
Snow Patrol – Run
The Killers – All These Things That I Have Done
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
Kaiser Cheifs – Every Day I Love You Less And Less
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
Amy Winehouse – Rehab
Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
Mika – Grace Kelly
Silverchair – Straight Lines
Pearl Jam – The Fixer

Happy New Year!

Gav
x

gav@patthedog.com

March 4th 2009.

The view from my office window continues to improve as the hanging baskets multiply, and, I am pleased to report, water themselves now that I, reticulation man, have worked my special breed of magic because the palm tree on the lawn has grown quite a bit, the frangipanis are doing beautifully, and the place is looking pretty lush generally, a definite improvement from last summer’s frantic efforts to keep all the baby plants alive, an effort which failed dismally, but never mind ‘cos this is quite possibly the longest sentence I have ever written, so at least my struggles in the garden last summer, the ones mentioned earlier in this sentence, did not go to waste, which is nice.

In 1995, when I was living in Brisbane, Courtney Love was about as renowned a rock star as you could hope to find on this or any other planet. She couldn’t really play that well, and her voice was certainly nothing to write home about, but the songs on the Live Through This album were pretty good, so good in fact that I still to this day believe that Kurt secretly wrote most of the music on that album shortly before he took that Mexican black-tar heroin and shot himself in the face.
Hole filled an obvious gap in the market at that time. Kurt was dead but the grunge thing was still huge, with your Soundgardens and your Stone Temple Pilots and your Pearl Jams. (That was before Pearl Jam outgrew the grunge thing, hired an unbelievably great drummer, and became one of the greatest live bands in history.) Chick grunge was the obvious offshoot which required exploitation, and Hole, um, filled one.
This was also back when there were a bunch of record companies in operation that have since ceased to exist. We had Polygram, Liberation, Mushroom, Sony, Warner, EMI and BMG, who I believe Hole were signed with. I got invited to Hole’s gig at a nightclub called The Roxy. From memory it was a fairly dank room, which suited the mood created by the headline act perfectly.
Courtney looked fucked-up on stage. Dangerously fucked-up. That dark kind of completely-off-the-rails kind of fucked-up. The kind of fucked-up that makes you spend most of the gig trying to work out what she’s on. Not a pretty sight, but fascinating.
She could barely play, her singing was atrocious, and the whole thing was just barely being held together by a band who looked only marginally less out of it than Courtney herself. It was still a good gig to see, mainly for the fact that in pop culture terms being in the same room as Courtney Love was about as cool as it got in 1995. Never mind the fact that she’s screaming over an out-of-tune guitar, that’s Courtney! Right there on the stage in front of me!
I wasn’t expecting a meet and greet backstage that night. It’s honestly really uncomfortable for all concerned doing that schmoozy shit anyway. I mean, come on, what are you supposed to make small-talk about? “Great show! Aaaah… are you a dog person or a cat person?” The vast majority of people would be just thrilled to get to hang out in backstage areas, but once you become a jaded broadcaster-type the meet and greet becomes something of a wank which is usually best avoided if possible. So, having said all of that, the record company guy asked if I would like to go backstage after the show and meet Courtney. All thoughts of the whole thing being a wankfest immediately evaporated and i said yes at once.
That’s when things got interesting. There were about six of us that went backstage. A couple of record company people, a newspaper reporter, a couple of other jocks from different radio stations in town, and my sweaty self.
The first thing I noticed when we walked into Courtney’s backstage lair were the candles that had been placed all over the room. At least thirty of them. I’m guessing Courtney did not have to light these herself. The second thing I notice is Courtney Love, the queen of grunge herself, laying on her stomach on the floor in front of an old record player with the bottom half of her legs waving around in the air.
She was listening, I shit you not, to an LP of the wedding of Charles and Diana. She was holding the album cover in her hands as her legs waved about like a kindergarten kid, lying there on the floor listening to Diana take her wedding vows through the shitty old speakers on the record player. This was, as I’m sure you can imagine, quite a scene to walk in on.
“You can tell she doesn’t mean it!” she wails in response to Diana’s wedding vows as the chosen few file into the room to meet her. She is ignoring all of us as she continues listening to Diana’s vows and waving her legs around. This alone would be enough to have this night forever remain in my memory, but this was merely her introduction.
Suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, Courtney jumped to her feet, letting the LP cover adorned with Charles and Diana’s headshots hit the floor as she swung around to greet whoever happened to be there, which just so happened to be me. I had somehow managed to be at the front of our little pack of hangers-on and therefore I ended up being the only person Courtney spoke to backstage that night.
She goes “Hi I’m Courtney!” as she sticks a bony hand out. I extend my hand, shake hers carefully (‘cos she looks pretty pasty and fragile, and I wouldn’t like to rip off the hand of the rock star that’s feeding me, so to speak) and say these exact words: “Hi Courtney, I’m Gavin.”
Now, this didn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to be saying at the time, at all, actually. Her response was therefore a bit of a jolt. She sneered at me, uttered one sentence followed by the word “Security!” and left the room so fast it was as if the whole thing never happened.
The great part of this story, the bit that I have told both on and off the air so many times since then, is the last thing Courtney Love said to me, and the way she said it.
It’s impossible to adequately describe the cadence that made what Courtney said so cutting, and therefore so damn brilliant. Just know that within Courtney Love’s sentence of doom, the following words are said with complete and utter disdain: Gavin, Thanks, Radio, Whatever, and especially the word Do. The way she said Do still kills me.
So, the last thing Courtney Love said to me before she left the room was “Well Gavin, thanks for playing my record on the radio, or whatever it is you do.”

Email me at gav@patthedog.com if you have a comment, or if you are Courtney Love and you want to be friends now.