2

Brighton Jetty Bakery: a Eurovision black site

This bakery isn’t actually on the Brighton jetty. Where would they put the oven? Next to the crab nets? Atop the mobile phone tower? Adjacent to yoof soaring off the end in their best swimming jeans?

Browsing the menu board, I note the sweets are decidedly Germanic with strudel (okay, Habsburg Empire) and Berliner buns but as we know, gobble down one of these for morning tea and by lunchtime you’ve invaded Poland.

This is balanced diplomatically with the euphorically English in buns both London and Kitchener; the latter named boldly in 1915 as a South Australian act of wartime alliance to geezer field marshal, Lord Kitchener.

I’ve not witnessed such graphic geopolitics since Sunday night’s Eurovision voting with the UK again achieving the ignominy of yet another nul points (in the public voting category). This means their (lame) entry has not been awarded a single point just like Bluto’s grade point average in Animal House as declared by Faber College head, Dean Wormer.

Zero. Point. Zero.

How fantastic was the late Sir Terry Wogan as the British host of the world’s most kitsch event? I still admire his tradition of pouring himself a drink immediately after the ninth song and maintaining a ferocious pace throughout the final. During a telecast he once asked,

Who knows what hellish future lies ahead? Actually, I do, I’ve seen the rehearsals.

My roadside table is magnificently located with endless blue sky above, the skating rink flatness of the azure sea to my west and northwards, the uncluttered BWS drive through, advertising cheap wine and a three-day growth.

Munch. The roll’s pastry is oilier than Estonia’s hip-hop entry called, ‘(Nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi’ which as you can visibly tell concerns drug horror. Oddly enough the song finished in twentieth place, and I rank today’s pastry also at twenty on the list of snag roll reviews. This is a spectacular achievement given this is my tenth such evaluation.

Whilst substantial of girth, the innards of my purchase are excessively reserved in their representations of flavour and aroma. From the proximate gutter I get a whiff of crushed Bundy can and decide the roll could use a little of its aggressive tang. Australia’s 2025 Eurovision entry should be an ode to crushed Bundy cans, everywhere, performed by Chad Morgan. He’s always in brash costume.

Still, it’s been a delightful autumnal outing for which I’m most pleased. Although he was referring to Eurovision, maybe Terry Wogan’s words apply here to my sporadically disappointing sausage roll escapades

Every year I expect it to be less foolish, and every year it is more so.

Goodbye, Malmo! Hello Zürich!

2

Who gets the new ball: Seasick Steve, Derek and The Dominos, Chad Morgan, or The Big Lebowski?

chad

About two Southwark cans into the drive down the Port Kenny Road somebody pushed a cassette in. It might’ve been Snook or Jock. Or possibly Stink.

Chad Morgan started singing the “Banana Boat Song.” If under zombie attack, play this loud, you’ll be safe.

Years later, Chad performed in the Kimba pub. Heckled by a pair of Bundy-soaked punters he advised, “You shouldn’t drink on an empty head.”

Like my wife’s family, and Test cricketers Carl Rackemann and Nathan Hauritz, he’s from Wondai in Queensland. His signature song is “The Shiek of Scrubby Creek.” It’s vaudevillian, novelty. It evokes bush footy clubs and the unhurried Sunday BBQs of yesteryear.

The sheilas think I’m handsome

their fathers think I’m mad

their mothers think I’m a villain

but I’m just a loveable lad

Chad wrote it when he was sixteen. So for well over sixty years it’s been paying for his dinner and dentures. I’m more Vampire Weekend than weekend in Tamworth, but how fantastic is this?

At sixteen few of us do anything of creative consequence. Not many forge a career by drinking too much cider and falling into a bush.

Contrastingly, Annie Proulx was almost sixty when her literary life accelerated, courtesy of The Shipping News. Including “Brokeback Mountain” her recent Wyoming Stories trilogy is raw and remarkable.

And this brings me to Seasick Steve. In his seventies, and having served a colossal apprenticeship, he only found recognition in 2006 with Dog House Music. Among others, he uses a Cigar-Box Guitar, and The One-Stringed Diddley Bow. “The Last Song Is About A Rooster Who Ain’t Alive No Mo’…” from Cheap is great.

The intersection between fictional lyrics and autobiography intrigues me. Jagger sings of horizontal conquest with authority, and Seasick’s gravelly tales are lived in too. On “Thunderbird” he recounts

Going up north

Rootin’ potatoes

Freight down to Cali

Pick some tomaters

*

Newsflash! Fresh from his Sports Day success, our youngest, Max, breaks his wrist as I’m heading to the Marina Bay circuit. Ouch. Taxi. Hospital. Anaesthetic (son, not parents). Cast. Home.

No Seasick Steve for me.

I’m going to the Singapore Grand Prix with a friend who’s from Louisville, Kentucky. Not spotting a carbon-fibre conveyance won’t worrry me. I’m only here to enjoy some music.

Are the HQ Holdens racing? What? No Nitro Funny Cars? My interest in F1 parallels Fev’s passion for the Large Hadron Collider. Agreed, it’s like going to Glastonbury just to admire the tents. Trackside, Seasick Steve, I trust, takes the idiotically named Coyote Stage. Cultural hegemony anyone?

I’d love to visit Kentucky, home of the Derby, Hunter S Thompson and the Louisville Slugger. It also hosts the original Lebowski Fest, a celebration of the cult Coen brothers film. The Big Lebowski features the finest lines since Caddyshack.

That rug really tied the room together.

Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man.

Is this your homework, Larry?

*

At least climatically, the blues fits here, with its muggy airlessness suggestive of the Mississippi Delta. Ash Grunwald did an outdoor gig in Clarke Quay in April. With his whirling dreadlocks, Dobro and BB King-inspired voice, it was hot, and it worked.

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos was my initial excursion. As the title track was a constant on the then catholic SA-FM, my harmonica playing, air-traffic controller friend and I bought the vinyl during my final year at school. A critique described the seminal opening riff as a maelstrom. Scandinavian words (and images) are exciting to adolescent boys.

With a searing rock section, and the exquisite piano and slide guitar coda, “Layla” is incongruous on this blues album. Meandering across ten languid minutes, “Key to the Highway” still charms me as improvisation tsars, Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, have too much fun. It’s casual, soaring and laughably brilliant. A musical version of Darren Jarman, really.

Touring Adelaide’s beachside playgounds, I’d play Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs for my boys, supposing, like natural sugar, there’ll be enough pop in their acoustic diet. Only four, Alex’d ask, “Dad, can we hear those long songs?”

Where some see aural cruelty, I see schooling. The Wiggles are The Beatles for kids. Genius. But, without the blues’ swampy misery, how will they grow up happy?

One day I may even sneak some Chad Morgan on for them.

lebowski