THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UNPAID GIGS

Snippets from the archives of a bygone era

Some of my early band performances weren’t quite up to speed, but there was a lot of work around in the ’70s, even for garage bands, and you got paid! Then there were those unpaid support gigs that bands did just to get on the card with the more notable bands so as to get some exposure and attract agency attention. And the most extreme debacle for my second band unfolded at one of these unpaid support gigs.

The Stage Door Tavern was a basement venue close to Central Station, Sydney. The venue featured headliner acts and was run by the legendary Pat Jay, whom we approached personally in 1978 for a booking. I recall Jay boasting about packing 600 people into the venue, which was only licensed to accommodate 200. I can’t remember the main act but we were treated with disdain, even to the point where the sound operator demanded a payment before allowing us to use the PA. Being unpaid we refused and a bitter quarrel ensued, before Jay intervened and we were reluctantly allowed the privilege of playing without paying for the PA.

The mix was terrible and the foldback barely audible. So, half way through our act I thanked the lighting guy and sarcastically omitted the PA guy, who then pulled the plug. However, I continued singing through a megaphone, which was one of our props, and of course I directed a few taunts to the PA guy. We got little sympathy from Jay who was more aggrieved about my diatribe than the PA guy terminating our act.

The Stage Door Tavern was shut down two years later in 1980 for breaching licensing laws, with Midnight Oil playing the final gig. A poster for the final performance read, “Midnight Oil Destroy! The Stage Door Sat April 12.” Inside, the place got trashed while outside riot police were waiting, some on horseback, expecting the worst in light of Jay’s provocative poster.

Not all support gigs were painful. In 1977, one year prior to the melee at the Stage Door Tavern, we got a support gig in Wollongong, NSW with Finch. Mark Evans had just left AC/ DC and joined the band. This was also the time when guitarist Bob Spencer left to join Skyhooks, and later, The Angels.

We were already big fans of Finch and AC/ DC, but there we sat gobsmacked in the band room while Mark Evans told us tales of touring with AC/DC on the same card as Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow; and to us Ritchie Blackmore was a guitar God.

After our set we watched Finch from the wings, then with only a limited amount of gear to lug out, we made our way to the stage door exit where there were girls waiting to greet us. Once again my caustic wit couldn’t be contained. “Sorry girls, but you’ve got the wrong band.”

“No, we’ve been waiting for you guys,” said one of the girls.

Prior to plunging headfirst into the PA hire business, I’d purchased 8 par cans to light our band, and when the band eventually broke up I began taking them out for other bands for a minimal fee. I was unaware at the time that this would serve as a kind of work experience for my future PA and lighting hire ventures.

One of those lighting gigs was at The Grand Hotel, Broadway, Sydney in 1978 for The Clones, who were at the time a ’60s covers band managed by David Keogh. I’d met Keogh some months earlier. He wasn’t a musician but had a psychology degree and aspirations of putting together and managing the first Beatles tribute band in Australia. I auditioned and got a part in the hapless venture, which fell over after only a few rehearsals. Keogh went on to manage The Clones who had a chunk of Beatles songs in their covers repertoire.

The Grand Hotel was a punk band venue that could barely pack in 120 people. The stage, which was made of wooden pallets and packing crates was graced by bands such as Johnny Dole and the Scabs, and Tommy and the Dipsticks. Entry was $2.00, which included a meal, usually akin to prison cuisine slopped onto a paper plate.

So, here were The Clones, a ’60s revival band booked into a punk venue where they were spat on by the punters. Being spat upon in such venues was by no means an unfavourable response. In fact, it was as well-intentioned as the beer that some of the regular punk bands spat back at their beloved patrons.

During the performance, where members of The Clones had to continue playing, some of them with spit dripping off their faces, the venue manager approached me. “Something’s burning,” he said. Whilst pleading innocence I noticed that one of my lighting gels was on fire.

These were the original el cheapo gels that came with the lights, not the flame retardant Lee gels that I was yet to learn about and would exclusively use in the ensuing years.

The ’70s was an era where you took your life into your hands playing at certain venues. At the Bayview Hotel, Woy Woy, NSW a full schooner of beer spilled into our mixing console during a drunken brawl sending the poor Canary mixer to its frothy grave. And for the evening’s encore, during the load out we were treated to the spectacle of an amalgam of three punters and a German Shepherd in a cartoon-like brawl, rolling around in the carpark.

I mostly have good memories of my last band, Main Earth. We played most of the regular venues like the Stardust Hotel at Cabramatta, Penrith Panthers, Enfield Boulevard Hotel, and lots of western suburbs hotels. However, our most loyal fans came to see us every Saturday night for the best part of a year between 1980 and 1981 at the Brooklyn Hotel on George Street, Sydney. The fee was $80 for the entire band. We played on the floor as there was no stage and the only mishap I remember was a punter falling into my wedge monitors, which had no grille protection and were subsequently destroyed.

By the early ’90s a lot of venues either closed down or became gaming establishments, which mostly catered to duos, trios and one-man-bands. I followed Main Earth’s lead guitarist, Joey D, in doing a one-man-band act. However, with the lack of band camaraderie I found most of the work depressing, with the worst of these gigs being at a trendy rugby union club somewhere on Sydney’s north shore. It was one of those haunts where the club kowtowed to a group of regular patrons who considered themselves above management (we’ve all seen this). “We don’t like live music here, so just keep it down,” was an instruction from such a group even before I started playing.

During the performance I was constantly taunted by these buffoons with one of them even mounting the stage area and shouting his disapproval over my microphone. My complaints to management were ignored, so to piss everybody off I not only turned down the sound but I dialled my Roland sequencer down to roughly half-speed. My 60s rock ‘n’ roll repertoire must have sounded absolutely ridiculous at 74 BPM, but nobody even noticed!

My very last gig with other musicians was a one-off performance circa 1991 at Sutto’s Rock ‘n’ Roll (nicknamed Slutto’s), formerly Skelsey’s Nightclub on the Hume Highway, Lansdowne, NSW. I joined a singer/guitarist, who arranged the booking, and a female keyboard player to form a trio for the grand reopening of the venue under new management.

Whilst it was fun to play with people instead of a sequencer, we performed to an empty house. Not one single person came through the door. As the manager gingerly approached us I remember the keyboard player asking, “Are we still going to get paid?” Fortunately, we did, and we could well have been the last act that ever performed at the historic venue. The ‘landmark site’ was sold at auction in 2009 and subsequently demolished.

In 1986 at Now Studios I ran into ex Finch member Bob Spencer, whom I’d briefly mixed in 1982 when he did a set at a Gold Coast venue where I was mixing the Chet Reynolds Band. Now Studios had engaged me to mix The Booze Brothers tribute band at one of their gigs. Prior to the booking I was given a tour of their rehearsal studios where I saw Bob Spencer rehearsing with a band. We began to chat but it was obvious I was holding up rehearsals. “So who’s this band you’re with now, Bob?” I foolishly asked.

“Ah, these are The Angels, Brian,” he said.