15th January 1992 - The Big Ticket - Supporting The Mandelbrot Set

The biggie, and as far as I was concerned, the baddie. I wasn't feeling that great beforehand, and coupled with a few other things, meant I put in a shocker. I don't really know how everyone else felt as I left pretty much as soon as we had finished.

We overkilled on lighting effect. As the Mandelbrots had their customary white backdrop we decided to use slides. We had a slide for every song, mostly marine shots, with one that Andrew and I found in the library of a cyclone. We tried it out at rehearsal on Monday, but the projector jammed a few times. Thus we didn't know if we should change slides, just using the same slide for everything. I don't know what we eventually did as I was to busy playing to notice. We also had a bubble machine, and eight scanner lights. This was in addition to the lights already there, which would have been adequate. Thus we wasted plenty of dosh (money). The bubble machine was pretty piss weak!

We didn't get a soundcheck, so it was basically a minute stuffing around to check the sound and then into it. Right away I realised I was too quiet, as was confirmed later when our mixer Simon said he had me up full on the desk, and he didn't even have Wayne going through it. My guitar was totally out of tune after about three songs, so I thinked I subconciously gave up. I remember thinking for the first time that Led was boring. In Said August I completely stuffed up the lead bit, and Haunt was disgraceful.

The songlist was:

This peaceful place
Jupiter Girl
Circle she is
Led
Said August
Sunday
Haunt

In TPP I was too heavy handed and couldn't pick the notes properly. JG went quite well, except Andrew came into the chorus too early, but got out of it OK. CSI I don't really know, I couldn't hear a thing I played in it. Led just seemed boring and too long. SA was pretty awful. Sunday came out relatively unscathed, but by that time I was just disinterested. Haunt was bloody terrible. I improvised heaps, and it didn't work but I didn't care. To make matters worse, as I left the side of the stage I went ass up. What an appropriate ending.

Afterwards I just loaded my gear into the car and left. Some Mandelbrot hanger onner said we were good, and said he liked Circle, but I just couldn't bring myself to say anything to him. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible!

I subsequently found out we got ripped off again. Apparently the Mandelbrots were given $200 for both bands. Their manager reckoned we were not entitled to any of it. But Andrew and Wayne pestered him, and we got $60 in the end, with the Mandelbrots claiming they didn't know what was going on, like they did all the time before the gig when we requested info about it.

I think I have managed to cause aggro again, as a result of my early departure.....

Postscript:

This gig resulted in our first mention in the local music magazine dB. Hardly a glowing endorsement. And this was not the only time we were linked to Ned's Atomic Dustbin - unfortunate (for me), as I felt Ned's were possibly the worse band in the universe!

10th January 1992 - Le Rox

Because 5MMM had finally got around to playing our demo masterpiece "Haunt" we were very conscious of trying to impress, as we thought that some people may have heard the demo and come to check us out. Plus it had got some pretty encouraging reactions from the DJ's. However, we were not really pleased to be playing this gig because of the way Le Rox have stuffed us around in the past, and were only doing it to get the money to hire some decent lights for our big show next Wednesday. The combination of all these things, plus an incident immediately before we started meant that as a band, we probably played our worst gig. It just so happened however, that we were playing to the biggest audience we had ever played to.

As noone else wanted to soundcheck, we went through four songs. It felt really groovy, and we were raring to go. However, as we were onstage getting ready to play, the fuckwit DJ stops the music and we are left on stage, just standing there, with Mark not even at his kit, and none of our amps turned on. That freaked me out. For the first song I was a wreck, and I really thought I was going to lose it, big-time. I got through the song OK, and then relaxed, and enjoyed the rest of it. We got our first heckler! Said something like "Lift the tempo". Andrew retaliated quickly with "Put down your bottle", and then later, when we did lift the tempo, said "This is for the guy that yelled out earlier".

As we were playing with Capital F, it was our first gig in front of any moronic thrash types, so I guess it was bound to happen. We were going to play a ten song set, but due to no one being entirely happy with DLD, and the fact we have all grown to detest "Time spent", we did our customary 8 songs, with two newies.

The set was:

Said August
All one moment
Sunday
Jupiter girl
Haunt
This peaceful place
Circle she is
Led

Definitely our best set yet. Although I don't think JG is that hot, Circle is cool from the point of view that it opens an entirely new direction both in a guitar sense and a song sense. The high pitched distorted sound blends well with the clean sound, and also adds a bit of aggression. I can't wait to start combining the two in songs, something I am just starting to try. Both the newies went down well. Carelessness meant I botched up the sounds in Haunt and TPP, but they probably both survived anyhow. At the end of Led, we did a U2 walk-off which I don't think really worked. We planned to do it on Wednesday too, but I am going to push not to do it. All one moment was its usual servicable self, the last surviving of the "thrown together" songs.

We only got 24 people in, as none of us really bothered distributing tickets. But it meant we made $82 when we took out our stand-in mixer Simon's money out. The general consensus was he did a good job. I like him better than Peter, so would probably prefer that he continued, which he may well. We got Andrew's friend Mark to do the lights. I thought he did alright, although he was less than impressed with his performance. Mark, Wayne and myself parked around the back where the gear is loaded in. We all manged to get $33 fines - a fitting epitaph!

13th December 1991 - Le Rox

Black Friday.

Well, not exactly. It was something of a minor miracle that we actually played this gig. No one was sure if there was going to be a band around to play it. But we weathered the storm, and hopefully this will provide some sort of turning point.

We were meant to be playing with Just Kidding. However, they pulled out, and Le Rox, god bless their cotton socks, decided to make it into a 5-band thingy, without telling us, with us, The Suedeheads, The Millards, The Daisy Heads and The Happy Patch. Le Rox got our name wrong again, calling us Lucid Ocean Curl, which I guess is better than Weird Ocean Curl of Lucio whatever! We only found out that The Happy Patch were in fact Wintermind (Wayne's old band) on our last rehearsal before the show. It made me sit up and think, although I was probably more pleased than upset about that, although I was feeling both those emotions. Because of the unrest, we played the same songs we played for our last two shows. I had double my normal number of guests, getting Paulus (my brother) and Philbert (see earlier posts!) in addition to Deb (sister) and Michelle (sister's friend. As an aside, I still hadn't invited any of my "non music" friends to a gig at this because I didn't consider we good enough!) 

As we put l0 pm as our start time on the flyers, we organised to play at l0 pm, making us the first band on.

The setlist was:

Said August
Sunday
Time spent
Led
Darkest Lightest Day
Haunt
All one moment
This Peaceful place

We did Said August in soundcheck, and I totally fucked the lead bit at the end. So I was horrified at having to start with it, but we played it pretty cool. Then the first drama. Andrew, as always, decided to introduce the next song with me still to get the appropriate effect ready. I didn't come in until way after I was meant to. I actually enjoyed playing Time Spent this time, but I'd still rather not do it! Led was cool as usual. I played DLD a bit differently, but it still didn't really work. It definitely needs to be altered. Haunt was cool, except I managed to brake my top E on the last note! Which meant I had to use the dreaded Ricky (Rickenbacker) for the rest of the set. As I hadn't played it for about a month I'd completely forgotten how to play it. As a result I stuffed All One Moment up a bit, but I don't think many people would have realised. TPP was OK. I was reasonably happy with it. We got some good reactions, with some bird who organises Le Rox gigs saying we could headline next time, and Tim from the Mandelbrots (The Mandelbrot Set) asking if we'd like to play with them in January.

24th November 1991 - Astor Hotel

This was a gig that Mark organised. The manager wanted us to play for 90 minutes. Since we only have 45 minutes of stuff we like, we had to get another band to play with us. We tried to get The Always, but they wouldn't do it. So we got The Suedeheads to do it. Wayne produced some cool looking flyers which I put up around Uni. The Suedeheads played a mixture of covers and originals, which I didn't really think much of.

We decided to change the song order around a fair bit. The set we played was as follows:

Haunt
This peaceful place
Led
Darkest, lightest day
Sunday
All one moment
Time spent
Said August

I wasn't really very happy with it. I fucked up Haunt a fair bit, but I don't think anyone would have really noticed. I screwed up DLD again, not as badly as the last gig though. I thought we were probably better than the last gig, but still not good enough.

The reaction was generally favourable. I got Deb (my sister) to tape the gig, and I listened to it when I got home. Although it was a shit recording, it sounded really alive and vibrant, and I was pretty surprised. It made me feel a whole lot better. It is interesting at the start as Andrew introduces Haunt, when I'm
still getting my gear together. You can hear me yell out "hold on" a few times! And then at the start of "TPP" it happened again, and he said we'd play it when "Dave gets his shit together!" This time, we didn't get ripped off. But we still made a loss. We are now in debt by $10! We only made $84 on the door, when the PA cost $100, and we had to pay for our mixer, an associate of Mark's who we laughed about at the last
gig because of his appalling dress sense!

Postscript:

The main thing I remember about this gig as that we all turned up wearing white T-shirts. It unfortunately made it look like it was a conscious decision - like we were the Beach Boys or something!

Nom de plume

I guess it's time to drop the big bombshell.......my name is not really Ralph. And my surname is not really Dodger.

In the finest showbiz tradition, I've used this nom de plume as the name my mother saddled me with is much less interesting.....David. Which just happened to be the most popular name for Australian babies in the year I was born - and an act my mother repeated two years later when my brother was born! Can you imaging my pain and anguish, attempting to eke out an existence as an original and alternative entity when saddled with the most common name in the whole motherfucking universe?

Thanks mum!

I mention this now as now as it may help with some of the following posts......

I should also mention that around this time we dropped the "Curl" from our name to become simply "Lucid Ocean".  We toyed with the idea of being "The Lucid Ocean" until we realised that most of our peers on the Adelaide scene also used "The" in their names. Within the bands inner sanctum we continued to refer to ourselves as either "The Curl" or "Lucio Ocean" - a name we intended to use in Italy!

Haunt demo

We were rehearsing at Tony Nesci's one Thursday, and out of the blue he just asked us if we'd like to record Haunt tomorrow night for nothing. We obviously said yes, as we were at the time contemplating spending $500 to record over a weekend.

It was pretty much a rush job. We did a few practices, then we played it, only recording the drums. Wayne, Andrew and myself were just audible on the drum track. After that, I recorded my guitar parts. I did about 5 takes, for which two were going to be used. I had a lot of trouble with the start, as Mark went slightly off. Then Wayne did three or four takes, with Tony telling him all the time that he was out of time. Then Andrew did a few vocal takes, and that was it.

Andrew and I came back the following Wednesday, to supposedly mix it. But Tony had already done two mixes, which sounded better than the one we did, and he then babbled on about musicians not being able to mix, and how they should leave it to professionals like himself! He then said Andrew sounded awful dry, without any reverb, which pissed Andrew off. But we were quite happy with what we had. We then sent it into (local radio station) MMM, who then never played it. But we got something we are all pretty happy with for nothing, so that's all that really matters.

Postscript: 

This is the best recorded version of our best song, as distinct from being the best performance of this song. Although the song didn't evolve much structurally between this recording and the time I left the band, the dynamics gradually evolved and improved. 

I played my Rickenbacker for this recording. Soon after I switched permanently to my strat, which I found more versatile and easier to play. But the Ricky worked well for this song as it was performed at this time.

I had the intro riff before I started in the band. I played it at one of my first rehearsals, and although Andrew came up with the first verse and melody quickly, bassist Hamish and drummer Andrew somehow conspired to turn it into a dirge! I resurrected the riff once Mark and Wayne joined the band. Mark came up with something close to the eventual rhythm almost immediately. Wayne worked out a bass-line pretty quickly, and Andrew improvised the second verse - and we suddenly had a new song. And one which we quickly realised up the ante!

Unfortunately, the only recording of this demo I have is the the one I recorded when it was played on local radio station MMM (now 3D Radio)....so they did eventually play it, despite my protestations above. Apparently it go to number 15 on the request charts! I was never able to confirm this myself but I'm happy to accept that it did!

Haunt (demo)

15th November 1991 - The Flagstaff hotel

The second gig. We supported Unprimitive man. Came about as me and Andrew went to Derringers (music store), where I bought a strat (so I could finally live out my Ritchie Blackmore fantasies!). As we were coming out we ran into Andrew's old housemate, Colin, who said his band were playing the following Friday, and couldn't get a support band. So we said we'd do it.

Played at the Flagstaff. We had to oragnise a PA, which we got from our good mate Craig at Showworld for $100. Peter, Wayne's buddy, did the minimal mixing (basically just vocal, snare, and bass drum). We hired some blue and white scanner lights which rotated form side to side, and a strobe. We didn't really play that well at all, but everybody we spoke to afterwards said it was better than Le Rox (our previous (and first) gig), although I didn't really think so. We didn't soundcheck or anything, so we played the first songs not knowing how the mix was, and as far as I was concerned, it showed.

We played the following set:

This peaceful place
Sunday
Led
Darkest, lightest day
Haunt
All one moment
Said August
Time spent

We only really got Said August into shape the previous week, so it was pretty loose. I think we probably all stuffed it up somehow, but it still sounded OK. I completely fucked up of DLD, when the distorted guitar comes in. As soon as we'd finished I decided it had to be changed, and we changed it first thing at the next rehearsal. I stuffed up the start of Led. I was just about to come in when I realised I was holding down the wrong chord! So I just missed out a cycle. Haunt was played really good. It has emerged as our standout song, and with the lights it came across really good.

I was pretty upset about it all later, but as everyone who saw the first gig unanimously said we were better, I felt a bit better. We ended of getting ripped off (again). We (naively) assumed we would get half the money. But we didn't, and ended up making $5 (!), which we gave to Peter for mixing us. Not a very savoury experience, but one that probably opened our eyes and gave us a good kick up the arse. I don't think we will go into this sort of scenario again being so blase about organisation.

Looking back, probably the most satisfying experience was the fact that we definitely got a better reception than the other band. Not that that was really a big deal, as they played some form of outdated rockabilly type shit.

Postscript - a few other things worth noting:

1) Said August was written after hearing Adelaide band The Mandelbrot Set (local Adelaide band that had just signed to Australian indie label RooArt) perform on Triple J's Live at the Wireless. I was so impressed with their song Lush that I wrote my own (and IMO better!) version of it.

2) We had our first heckler at this gig! Someone yelled out "play some Cold Chisel" (Aussie pub-rock legends). Andrew introduced the next song as "Bow River"!