|
March 16th, 2010
12:22 am - Horticulture
i'm being tested on wednesday on the following plants:
Abelia x grandiflora & cvs; Glossy abelia. Family: Linnaeaceae
Agapanthus praecox &cvs; Agapanthus. Family: Linnaeaceae
Bougainvillea; Bougainvillea. Family Nyctaginaceae
Hydrangea macrophlla; Hydrangea. Family: Hydrangeaceae
Lilium spp, Taiwan lily. Family: Liliaceae
Lophostemon confertus; Brush Box. Family Myrtaceae
Nephrolepis exaltata; Boston Fern. Family Filicinae
Plumeria; Frangipani. Family: Apocynaceae
Pinus Radiata; Radiata Pine. Family Pinaceae
Robinia pseudoacacia; Robinia. Family Fabaceae
Salvia splendens; Scarlett Sage. Family Lamiaceae
Syagrus romanzoffianum, Cocos Palm, Queen Palm
I also have to know their leaf shapes, flower types if any, general plant noncementure &c
Whether the plant is anangiosperm (flowering plant) or gymnosperm (pine) or a filicinae (fern)
whether its a monocotyledon or a dicotyledon in the case of angiosperms.
i have to know leaf shapes, (elliptic, cordate, linear, ovate etc), leaf margins (undulate, serrate, serrulate, entire, lobed) whether its a compond or simple/single leaf.
i have to know flower shapes and types (inflorescences, umbels, labiates, tubulates, stellates etc)
what is a stamen? what is a stolon? what is a soft wood perrenial and what is a hardwood evergreen? and can perrenials be deciduous?
functions that vascular systems, roots, stems, petiole, leaves etc perform. transpiration, photosynthesis etc.
|
March 8th, 2010
12:50 am - still in the day
one of the happiest nights of my life in the last 10 years.. and maybe then some. i know what veterans feel like. to an extent. the thousands of stories in the townie alone, before the debacled overcrowded sweatbox. we should have stayed there. i was sitting with blokes who don't realise were almost heros to me as a teenager. embarressing as that sounds. but mods ..... its a very difficult thing to express in this day and age. our own world. our own rules. our own laws and our own codes. our enemies and our friends and our brothers. you knew who you were and what you were there for. i knew it from that 1st moment at newtown leagues in early 1984.
mr chase reminded me of something id forgotten and taken for granted from that night. it was "the go's" 1st gig. they mustve also been the 1st mod band i ever saw as well, because the other band that really stood out for me that night were "the rescue squad" i can't see how the go would have been billed after those guys at their first gig. both bands were cool as fuck, as was the crowd. i felt like a kid really, theyd all been around a few years already and guys who looked 30 were 19.. live fast, die young. sadly true for a small number... well over the years the scene, our world, took its toll one way or another. some lived much faster than others, some will kill ourselves slowly.. from last nights congregation, not many of us have really slowed up. the energy and the ecstasy of the night was a feeling as strong as it was in the day. as stong as most of the personalities involved. and is only there when we're all together. just as mesmerising and just as serious and just as funny. that atmosphere, created by characters of strong convictions and substance, is appallingly absent amongst the new guard.. and the tweens.. the guys who are in their 30's still, and had the shit 90's debacle as their era. suck shit.
once a month club, nice. the occasional gig... ok. and it seemes to be getting a bit better in some ways than a couple years ago. its still very sterile. a bit more to do.. a bit of a range. the same fresh but blank faces rattling off the official history of mod/skinhead/punk etc at you. or just getting awfully confused.
andy reminded me of something else. he reminded me that he and kevin kind of took it on themselves a bit to make new mods seem relatively welcome. they showed interest and asked questions. and fuck yes they would take the piss if you left yourself open. we had chosen, after all, a lifestyle. everyone had to be jack the lad in some way or you didn't survive. andy's comment, because he remembers that gig for his reasons and me for mine, triggered memories. i remember him and the other singer, kevin, actually asking me what i thought of their set. my god. cool as fuck, as i said earlier. i had already grown up a year or 2. this is why. i was drawn to the ska/skinhead thing as a 16 yo.. a bit before i was 16 maybe. but that had its own scene and it was great. and you can only take so many covers of wolly bully before you need to listen to something else. i had a great music pedigree. my mum had raised us on the stones, the who, them, the kinks and the animals. here i am still 17 and thinking mum would think this was cool, and then laughing at the thought.. and then it somehow felt like home. i thought my mum and her music tastes were very cool anyway. but they were genuine in wanting my feedback, i think i said they reminded me of the animals and had no idea if that went down at all well. turns out they eventually added a couple animals songs to their repetoire. so i spose it mattered.
kev and i hit it off on other levels. we both grew up in the same area more or less. i went to school with his cousins. we both had family in a certain bikie gang. we both had the same sort of street smarts. and from the day nighter at newtown on, i looked on him as an older brother.
he had the same sort of humour as me and i was proud to eventually call him one of my closest mates and that will always be the case.
so kev and andy made a lot of us feel welcome and guess what? we became their number one fans.. about a hundred of us, all the same age.. around 17 or 18 at the oldest on the whole. we followed them everywhere, luckily they had a long residence at the trade union club. 1st floor and wed be packed in like sardines, all in suits, the room buzzing with energy. speed and alcohol and 100 jimmy coopers. we chanted "go! go! go! go! go! til they played an encore. most gigs. sometimes we yelled insults out to them and copped insults back. and laughter and loud, overdriven, fast, fuck off rhythm and blues. 2 singers a guitar, bass and drums. suddenly a mate, dave was in the band. rowan left and dave was in. and dave too was fuckin great. fuck they tore it up. the thrashy punk/oicore shit can't compare in pedigree, intensity or meaning. because its forced. its emo for non emos. why scream and growl otherwise?
to watch this band at eye level was usual. in the corner at the trade. 2 feet from the front row staring andy and kev in the face. and they relished it. and we all lived it. the go were the lads band. youd get 90 blokes and 10 girlfriends. it was almost secret mens business. we were the outcrowd and we were proud of it. a scene within a scene eventually. god, umm, matt, big karl, big mick, all the kevs, sweet william (it was great to see you will), paul, scott. john, dave, dave, pig, wilson, rod, the donny, al... names i'll never remember too..it goes on and on. we were all brothers. we all acknowledged each other, acknowleged each others suits (the essence of the whole thing in many respects. lookin good) were happy to all be there. and brothers we were.
thats not said lightly. girlfriend bustups, fights, internal and external, police trouble and worse. drug problems. alcoholism (in my case for a few years in the early parts of it) a slight to one of us was taken personally by all of us. it was a volatile crew in crazy times. we were all heading at 100 mph all the time. more nights than not in any given week we had bands, clubs, pubs and parties. all of it every week. maybe a band or dj thursday night, friday was usually pub night, unless a band was playing. but a lot of us would meet at the pub 1st (by my time the quarrymans) then the gig. saturday shopping for records and clothes, maybe a couple drinks at the star and lunch. definitely a band saturday night. sunday was often recovery as youd expect, but sometimes we had a band or a dj.. or a party. a bunch of us dancing in someones parents loungeroom to records.
but that feeling of knowing that as long as we were all together we'd be ok. somehow. we watched each other's backs, kept an eye on each others welfare, just the way we were dressed made us targets. fuck, we had to watch out for each other, we were all in the same boat. often it was just by sheer weight of numbers, as at manly or a famous gig in dee why. another lost memory was regained last night. big mick reckoned it was his acceptance and the start of his reputation, which was thoroughly deserved. fought on with a broken nose. ok, we both agreed last night that the pain involved in a broken nose (and in my case, fractured eye socket, fractured facial bones and a smashed nose last time) isn't very bad really. i was proudly saying ive had mine broken 3 times when mick piped up with 7. i had to laugh at myself. but point is i already knew this of mick, it was now satisfying to know that a lot of the older blokes knew it. i will mention this one again, id already seen him a couple years earlier committ the singlemost act of courage ive seen from anyone i know or have seen in person. it involved a surfie, a skateboard, a broken jaw and a helmet and ive told it before. in manly i was in awe. but i was actually fuckin proud of him that night at dee why. and happy we were mates. that was a memory relived.
and this is why mick and i hit it off i think. we were both "ex" skinheads. like i said once, its like being branded or being catholic. it never completely leaves you. and when we both entered the mod scene at the same time, it wasn't long til we were engrossed in talk when we were out. and he kipped on my soda. i wouldn't call him a loafer. but my beautiful girlfriend at the time, suzie, who i lived with in ultimo, pretty much adopted him. after all, she had fallen in love with a skinhead and she cared deeply for him and all our mates. and fed us and made sure we were ok. we had a nice little flat in pyrmont and we often had mates sleep over, it was so close to town. mick and i mustve got home after a night out and watched madness's "take it or leave it" a dozen times. on the beat pete and the light sabres was our favourite bit.
but besides that we could sit knowing that with me looking over his shoulder and more impressively and surely more reassuring, he looking over mine, we were going to be ok. that street smart that you have as an instinct. we were the blokes in the pub who liked to sit with a back against the wall with a view of the door. so we were always sitting together by default. i'm not being cocky in talking about street smarts. my father's very cagey and instilled it in me at an early age. and for those who don't know, he was in his 1st war at 17 and holds the record for the number of trips to and from vietnam by an enlisted seaman (shut up) with 9 tours. only his captain with 11 i think did more tours. and was drunk everywhere in the world from sydney to perth to vung tao to honkers and singapore etc from the age of 16. so he had to be cagey to survive. anyway mick and i would just glance at each other and wed both know we were keeping an eye on a stranger in our pub or we were gonna make a move or he was gonna hit someone. although sometimes that happened so quickly you only sussed it as it unfolded. and some of it was just hilarious. (see the post re the shrinking gene pool/subculture puddle) and it fucking happenened last night. not the hitting, the old habits. i realised something was wrong but couldn't figure it out. then it dawned on me. i was sitting in the middle of a room and wasn't checking over my shoulder every few minutes, or more often than that. in fact i felt completely secure. as i realised it and said "i'd usually feel better in the corner, where i can see etc etc" mick cut me short and with that same look interjected at "i usually.... with " i got your back", and the look finished the sentance. and it was the same with kev.. the 3 of us were pretty switched on like that,, and that to me sums up what i mean by back in the day.
it left a void for all of us. some of us have had massive problems including depression, anxiety, drug addiction and alcoholism. anger and hate and self destruction and pain. says something to me about the people it attracted. there was no counselling or therepy. we were all outcasts on some level, and had chosen to be. and never felt more at home than at the tradie or on a scooter or hearing loud, loud r n b.
an obsession with clothes and music. isn't that typical teenage behaviour? we did it til we were full grown men. and still do. style is timeless. but the fastidiousness is well documented. what posses a tough/crazy/angry/sensitive or just fucked upkid to adopt this? i think that there has honestly been nothing in the history of youth culture that was so essentially anger fueled. not hatred fueled, anger fueled. internal anger and resentment at ....something. there's no one answer. and thats the beauty. we all had our reasons, but it struck a chord so deep it engulfed and consumed us. our every waking hour. glory boys.even the music was angry, played with spite and edge. from deep inside. we meant it. that was the common denominator.
i went there last night to essentially see mick and kev. as kev said a couple years ago, when mick stood up for any of us, his heart would swell with pride and just love for the man. and that was correct for me too. as for kev, i have never felt more accepted for who i am from a 1st meeting to this day. a bloke who i also love, who i saw as a big brother and then as a mate. and feel priveleged when he ever calls me his mate. and the same looks that used to make me piss myself laughing when he thought the same thing at whatever we'd noticed someone say.. or before a deadpan delivery of a one word comeback.
back in the day eh? ive had 5 hours sleep in 45.
|
March 4th, 2010
08:31 pm - alistair hullet lyrics
uisge baugh
a dram will drown the weather, and fortify the soul
theres more worth in a drop of whiskey than you'll find in a lump of coal
it puts a swagger in your step and a poet in your tongue
it makes the young men older, it keeps the old ones young.
uisge baugh, the water of life
uisge baugh, keener than a flick knife
uisge baugh, bring me to my knees
uisge baugh, same again please.
now jesus was the man for turning water into wine
they put him on at weddings, to perform his holy sign
the fathers in the gaeltacht went one better than the lord
they turned water into whiskey, and down their throats it poured.
the irish have their jamesons, the scotts their johnny red
if ye cannae have the one thing, the other's fine instead
you can drink it from a bottle, you can drink it from a flask
if you live up in glenlivet, you can drink it from a cask
uisge baugh, the water of life...
destitution road
in the year of the sheep, the burning time
they cut our young men in their prime
the old scott's way was a hanging crime
for the gaels of caledonia.
there's a den for the fox, a hutch for the hare
a nest in the trees for the birds in the air
in all scott-land there's no place there
for the gaels of caledonia
but there's no use getting frantic, it's time to hump yer load.
across the wild atlantic, on the destitution road.
the bailiffs came with a writ and all
the gallant lads of the ___ war
they drove you out in the sleet and snow
the gaels of caledonia
when your house was burned and your crops as well
you stood and wept in the blackened shell
and the winter moors were a living hell
for the gaels of caledonia.
the plague and the famine dragged ye doon
as ya made yer way to glesga toon
you heard of a ship that was sailing soon
for the shores of nova scotia
and you sold yer gear and you paid yer fair
with your' head held high tho your heart was there
and you said farewell to a ripper mare
and the glens of caledonia
the land was cleared and the deal was made
with an english lord in a tartan plaid
he stops and stares as the memeories fade
of the gaels of caledonia
and he hunts the deer, in a lonely glen
that once was home to a thousand men
and the wind on the moores sing a sad repent
for the gaels of caledonia.
the cat amongst the pigeons from the killing fields of viet nam, to the backstreets of old derry town,
they ring us round with tanks and guns, to keep us in or station.
from the coalpits of northumberland, and down below the rio grand,
they bind and break the workers hand, with hardship and starvation.
oppression is the bosses creed, and profit his religion.
whe're the ones who dare to set the cat amongst the pigeons? (trad) mary mac's mother's makin mary mac marry me
and my mother's makin me marry mary mac
i'll need ta marry mary, cos my mary'll take care o' me
we'll all be making merry when i marry mary mac. a brown wee lass an 'er name is mary mac
and mak nay mistak she the lass i'm gonna tak(e)
a lot of other lads wanna get her on her back
but i'm thinkin now they'll need to be up early mary an 'er mother gang an awful lot together
in fact you you'll very seldom see the one without the other
when we're gannin down the street, the lasses all shout
is it mary or her mother that yer courtin'? mary mac's mother's makin mary mac marry me
and my mother's makin me marry mary mac
i'll need ta marry mary, cos my mary'll take care o' me
we'll all be making merry when i marry mary mac.
playing for the traffic
you coulda seen him any day at the back of martin place
in a battered sunday suit, that's seen far better days
blowin on the mouth harp, with the kind of wit and grace
that'd bring a smile to the face of a broken clock
and there was not a verse or chorus the old bugger didn't know
from mother kelly's doorstep, to the banks of the ohio
the typists and the tellers, they weren't to bloody know
dealing with their dose of future shock.
he was playing for the traffic and the 9 to 5 ers
tooraloo youre bound for botany bay
and he gave more to this world
than all the penny pinching bastards
who turned around and looked the other way.
well i stopped a while to listen. he played the thing with ease
but the crowd that day were tighter, than a pom at a wine and cheese
maybe they were hard up, or just plain hard to please
but no one threw a single cent his way
i reached into my pocket to even up the score
and dropped a pile of change into the tin plate on the floor.
when you work the streets, they treat you like a whore
and no one ever ought to feel that way
he was playing when i left him with a new crowd to convince
ive often looked there for him but he's not been back there since
did anybody notice? does anybody wince?
at some old digger pickin through the trash.
christ in this land of milk and honey, where there's more than enough for all
why did he spend his whole life with his back against the wall?
did he fight in 2 world wars to wind up with sweet fuck all?
humpin on the streets for a bit of stash.
he was playing for the traffic and the 9 to 5 ers
tooraloo youre bound for botany bay
and he gave more to this world
than all the penny pinching bastards
who turned around and looked the other way
|
February 11th, 2010
01:14 pm - the ever shrinking gene pool.. or subculture puddle
without the 2 Tone ska revival in the late 70's/early 80's, there would be no skinheads in sydney right now. nor would there have been "bands" like agnostic front (what does that even mean?) the cockney regects or the fucking exploited. (how can you expoit shit?) because it was the ska revival that had old, real, die hard skinheads left in england hooked in and it attracted them back and more joined.. that 1st explosion in 79 was ska revival based. 10 years after the 1st one, which was reggae based. notice a common thread?
skinheads, both in the late 60's and the late 70's/early eighties were typically 15 or 16 when we pulled on our 1st pair of boots. the haircut always came 1st. then the boots. and you felt 10 feet tall. but it was essential you were a kid. a teenager at least. to show up as a 24 year old new skinhead wasn't on. or even a 21 year old "skinhead" you had to do the apprenticeship. it was an integral part of it. if you weren't a bit street smart to start with (and what is street smart? i'll get back to that.) youd be savaged by older, and by older i mean 17, 18 or even 19 yo skinheads. if you had the guts to come back, you made fucking sure you were dressed right. as not to disgrace or offend the people who had earned the right to call themselves skinheads, or even rudeboys, or mods. new people usually got a chance. but not always. as a mod i saw a guy try to make an impression on us by pulling a hammer handle out of the sleeve of his parka (the prick was wearing it inside) and smash a mates nose with it. (burndt, sorry for the wisecrack at katrinas party that time, i said when introduced to you "he doesn't look that bad. i was 18.. )
maybe he saw quadrophenia and just thought it was a free for all amongst psychopaths. (it was sometimes, but..) or maybe he tried too hard and got upset at the rejection. we weren't social people outside the mod scene really. once you were in, you kept it guarded and tried to keep fuckwits out of it. natural selection. they showed themselves to be fuckwits pretty quickly if they were. just clueless. anyway the poor bloke copped a hiding. and rightly so. and he wasn't a punk or the wrong type of skinhead (more on that later) he was i guess, trying to be a mod. and he got what he deserved.
there was a definite period of pre acceptance. mods seemed elitist but really, once in, they were fucking great. we treated every new mod the same, i got it. it was easier for me as id already gone through it once. they either had nouse and were accepted, had a good idea and were tolerated, with some piss taking, or they were dragged outside and thrown away.
the mod thing isn't present in sydney any more to my knowledge. its a shame. but that sort of appreciation of classic style combined with a tough upbringing and the coolest music on the planet is a rarity today amongst people of between 15 and 25. it barely exists at all. the mod scene, and make no mistake, to me i missed the best years by a year, was just phenomenal. from my 1st contact with it in 1983 as a 16 year old, right through to the death at what i considered as being the last native rose occupation. the teachers club after that, doesn't count really.
that post punk period flourished with an explosion of tribes. i had a times magazine at the time with a big article "the tribes of britain" (or england) it had a fucking punk on the front, as youd expect. more about those clowns later. it covered mods, teds, rudeboys, skinheads, rockers, punks, new romantics, even sloane rangers. maybe more, i can't remeber. i do remember photocopying pages of it in the library. and a teacher asking "getting up to date with the latest fashion, mr kelly?" i'm standing there with a number 3 crewcut, button down shirt and tie, grey pants and doc boots and i wished he was some fuckwit in a pub. to say anything was futile. so i just let him assume...
mod: a way of life. skinhead: a way of life. punk: a way of life. teddy boys: a way of life. rockers: a way of life.
we thought like that. we lived it. lived it....
i was standing in a queue to a nightclub that doesn't exist any more, plastic inevitable. mod, soul, rnb, blues. cool as fuck. were all in suits.
probably 1985. in the queue with me was the most dangerous skinhead i ever knew. we'd both grown our hair out by this stage and were mods for all intents and purposes. we had both been skinheads tho, and thats like being catholic. we still listened to a lot of ska and reggae. and some old punk stuff...
punks. we didn't tolerate them. so it was no surprise that the following happened when one walked past. and remember its 7 years after punk died, so this is a studded leather jacket, mohawk, 14 hole docs and black army pants london tourist "punk". the abovementioned mate was only 16 at the time, but big. a big, strong man. this parrott head walking towards us is about the same size, but in his 20's.
he mumbles "fuckin mods". that was enough. without a word, old mate is dragging this prick down the alley next to the club. i laughed and thought "i love this shit" by now the parrott was on the ground, about halfway down the alley, and my mates giving him a fucking pasting. by himself. he did it for fun. the last i saw of him as i went into the club after one last look, was by now he'd found a 10 foot length of orange telecom pvc pipe, about an inch and a half across, and was flaying this wanker to within an inch and a half of his life. good times.
i didn't see him after that. number 1, streetwise. assess the risks. assess your strengths. take action. he left the scene of the, not crime, community service. anyway by this time i knew hed be fine and didn't give it a second thought, id seen it so many other times it didn't matter.
until the next morning.. well, when i was woken at about 1pm by my phone...
"jamie?" it was old mate. "you ok?" we were blood brothers.
"yes mate", i replied, a little puzzled and hung over. "are you ok mate?"
"i dunno"
"fuck. why? whats happenened"
"well i don't remember. i have bruised hands and ive been bitten"
it started to come back.. i started to laugh. hed blacked out.
"you obviously know something jamie, what happened?"
i filled in the blanks. he started laughing.
"that explains the broken, 2 foot length of pipe on the end of the bed. its orange."
thats all that was left of it..
i fucking howled laughing, hed pissed off and taken it with him. for fucks sake.
maybe he was worried about prints. like me, his were already on file.
but the point is. almost rule number one. skinheads don't like punks. never have, never will. at around this stage oi was becoming more popular, attracting of course, the far right. early bands like cockbey rejects loved the packed houses of zeig heilers and played to them. until footage got out and record sales went down. the exploited and agnostic front (what does that even mean?) all went through the same round of playing up to it (the far right/ n/a) got busted and distanced themselves with frantic spin about not believing that nonsense etc. and the "skinheads" today, the ones that "join up" believing that crap.. the spin. to the point of complaisency. half of them couldn't interpret the thinly veiled lyrics if they tried anyway. but these bands and their exponents re wrote history. and i know, i saw it happen. these skinheads were nothing but bald punks, hanging round punks, with right wing associations. whether memebers of n/a or just full of hate. so we beat them up too. as matter of honour. theyve hijacked our name and our identity (which reminds me of someone) and turned it into a tag for fucking idiots. sheep. filter this over 20 years, and your left with crap in a sickeningly over concentrated form. and fuck, yes i'm 42. but these kids, which is what they are at 21 or 25, have swallowed every last drop. to the point that rather than get a nice oxford button dow, they buy hundreds of those poor excuses for ben shermans right now. so far from the roots that they follow the label, not the style. STYLE= timeless
fashion (wearing labels) = trend. THEY WANT TO BE "IN"
its become a uniform.
and they wouldn't get it if you told them.
and on it goes.. ex emos, (yes, i mean emos, the sleeve tatts, the ear plug earrings) ex goths, ex punks.. have all re invented themselves. some are so panicky to be accepted in this scene they tell everyone just what they want to hear. others make up things about themselves, their pasts. and go to elaborate lengths. i know a "bloke" who says he was a punk in the old days.i don't remember beating him up. dunno what the old days refers to. thats what he told me he was about 3 years ago when i met him. hes bald, so guess technically, he already is a bald punk as it is. but anyway. hes read all this propaganda, he didn't see the reality of sydneys streets as a punk anytime before 1986 at the earliest.. if at all.
but one of the terms oi propagandists put out back then was a label they gave the music. "street punk" oi is street punk with..someting blah blah lyrics. they branded this form of music as street punk. i guess it means running round the streets, causing trouble.. wow! just like the trouble my mate caused in the above yarn? whos favourite band incedentally, was madness..(he never needed thrash psych up music to get angry etc) anyway its doubtful. knocked out in the street by the same mate was far more like lt at the time, and covering a span of about 12 years non stop.
street punk. a music label. the "bloke" who says he was a punk in the old days, mustve read this along the way. and hes taken a label for a music genre and now describes itself as a "street punk" so youre a recording? probably. but using this label has enabled him, no questions asked, to call himself a skinhead by some sort of weird default. again, street punk? i knew (and even slept with) some real (for the early 80's anyway) punks back then. ive never heard that term used. not in 26 years. until a few months ago. its not a real thing, as a person or character, or sub, sub culture. its like saying i'm a river mod. or i'm an indoors rudeboy. or a railway station goth.. i mean???
watch out, here come the intersection teddy boys!! but they all swallow it as gospel.
maybe he lived in a street back then. maybe all the other punks lived in avenues, and its an unknown punk thing. i don't care.
because viola! he's a "skinhead"
apart from that, being tribal, theres friction for the people who were there. in the real decade. . and here's the rub. in this shrinking subculture puddle, were now all lumped in together. resentful of oi/ bald punks, let alone real punks. or rockers. or dickheads. or those non descript
bits of people, part rocker, part punk, part skinhead etc with emo kid sleeves and not a fucking clue. the ones that all thought rankin roger was lead singer of the beat. the ones that ask "wheres the skank?" when you talk about dancing. its not a skinhead scene. its not a mod scene. its not a rudboy scene. its a trendy scene. its a scene where anyone can walk in and call themselves whatever the fuck they dream up. or pick up from other people. or just make up.
drinking with and socialising with people i once called enemies, because of very strong convictions, is against the grain. and the conviction that kids tell you exactly how it was back then, when you were not only there from 15 or 16 onwards and saw everything, because it was youre whole fucking life, is just insulting to anyone with intelligence. where are their stories? what are they living once or twice a month?
what happens? sweet fuck all.
experience is everything. and i'm priveleged and grateful to have experienced what i have.
because the real thing has disappeared forever. and only us that were there will know what i'm talking about.
|
February 7th, 2010
01:19 am - stella
the sussex hotel was probably the most famous mod/skinhead pub in sydney. the lismore was 1st (?) but the sussex was biggest, best. the allniters played their 1st few gigs there, but i was only 14 or 15.. i had to read about it in fanzines and wish i was a couple years older...i missed the biggest days of the sussex by about a year or maybe 2.. but by the time i arrived in winter in 1983, the scene was still enormous.. i can't accurately estimate the numbers.. mods.. i dunno about 400 i spose..skinheads.. its hard to say.. hundreds.. not all in the pub at the same time obviously.. many....including kids from the suburbs like me, waiting to join in and keep it going..so i guess a few hundred regular, adult, hard "core" of mods and skins and the tickets..kids.. they were all scattered throughout the suburbs.. put it this way, when i saw strange tennants a couple of times, they were playing to crowds of 300.. all skins and rudies..and mod crowds were around that when stupidity played... you wouldn't go anywhere without seeing a mod or a skin in 1983.. we were everywhere :D
back to the sussex.. an old lady, thats not it, a sweet old lady, a real lady, but tough and old fashioned. stella her name was.. she ran the sussex.. and later she had the star, at the end of china town.. the one i was drinking in the night i got arrested when i was 17.... stella was tiny.. about 4ft 11 or 5 foot 2, something in between probably.. and firm with all the nutters in the pubs she ran.. they all respected her .. she never had much trouble.. put it this way, with 200 mods in and around the pub and 70 or so skins milling around, you didn't need bouncers.. the feeling that it was our pub, when we knew very well it was stellas, just seemed to keep things all in order .. most of the time anyway. she would scold you like your own grandmother and she was treated with that much respect, so it worked well. these are my observations.. people who knew the scene, and stella, better than me have confirmed these observations to me tho.. we still talk about those types of aspects of the scene, how tight we all were with each other etc.
i was getting a lift home from football training with my mate kirwin one saturday morning.. well his parents.. we were 16. they dropped me off and a car that had followed us pulled over as well. they had seen our shaved heads and followed us, they were skinheads too. it was yagoona and we were a rarity.. the total sum of us in the bankstown area were, from memory, shit maybe 20 kids altold. so when we found each other we all became friends. a bloke, a skinhead in a black bomber and huge number 10 docs, called rob the yob, introduced himself.. after some chat we established we both knew jorge, another skinhead who lived near me.
anyway, long story short, i found myself at jorg's place that night (after lying to my mum about where i was going) with rudy, my best mate at the time.. jorge, rob, some bloke called steve, a rudboy a few years older than me and adelle, jorge's girlfriend, julie, this normal chick i was seeing (she was in for an eyeopener, poor thing) and steve's girlie all piled into adelles holden gemini and steves chequered vw (thanks for reminding me, theo) and head off for the sussex. all the others were known there. me, rudy and julie were new. as we went over the old pyrmont bridge, madness' swan lake came on on the car cassette player. jorg, in the front passenger's seat, turned it up.. the lights of sydney shone, spread out before us like a scene from the future.. or like a real city. it looked huge.. the old bridge was the only way across then, the one you walk across now, with the monorail going over it. rudy and i looked at each other and smiled like a pair of mental cases... the song, the scene in front of us and what we were about to (try to, we were underaged) do was too much.. he let out one of his hysterical, screaming laughs.. we all howled like idiots.
we parked in sussex street.. i remember walking in, past a few dozen scooters parked outside.. the 1st big group of mods i'd ever seen.. i would end up with many of them as the closest friends i'll ever have, but i didn't know that then. we walked in..
the front bar was dingy with a kind of, from memory, half oval shaped bar, an old tiled pub. the bar was almost empty, most of the mods were outside.. but there were a dozen or so sitting around in 2's and 3's. what struck me 1st and made me stare, was the 4 or 5 teddy boys across the bar.. they were all in their 30's and were the real deal. jorg stopped and introduced me to stella.. the 1st thing she said was "now i know yoou, i'll always remember you, i never forget a face" (she was famous for knowing everyone.. when i walked into the star a year later she remebered me, fair dinkum. a few mates tell similar stories) the second thing she asked me was "is she 18?" pointing at julie.. without missing a beat i answered "she's 19" stella said she hoped so, she didn't want to lose her liscence.. we weren't the only ones tho.. a lot of the kids in the place were underage..
we walked through to the back bar.. i stopped and took it in.. there were a hundred skinheads, .. all in the same bar! they kept arriving.. we quickly got to the crowded bar and got a beer down us, rudy and i.. we couldn't stop smiling...
the jukebox pumped out a mix of old ska, current mod and 2tone.. it was heaven... we talked about fuck knows what, i was too excited to know what happened. i must have met 20 or 30 skinheads that night. i got pissed and have lost half of it forever. but i distinctly remember a skinhead patting a dog which had wandered into the pub, a big red setter.. the fuckin thing bit him right on the face.. another skin, who was a male nurse, stitched it up for him right there in the bar... i also remeber feeling like a scared kid.. these guys were big and mean lookin alright..
we had to leave pretty early, rudy, julie and i.. and get back to bankstown by midnight..we were lucky to have gotten away with what we had. we'd had four hours of the original revival scene, 4 hours. shortly after the sussex closed. a freeway and the darling harbour development meant a lot of buildings round there were lost. the scene went on very strongly.. with even more kids at some stages, for another 5 years.. but the sussex was an end of an era. i was priveleged.
a few years later, at the star, stella was murdured by her prick defacto, dennis. with a hammer. in her sleep (hopefully).. the cunt gambled and was a complete bastard to her, a bludger. he had a habit of rinsing his dentures under the rechs tap. may he rot in hell. he used to turn our jukebox off to listen to the races (till stella camedown and yelled at him) she was a frail old lady by then.. i loved talking to her, every saturday afternoon at the star.. she was a real sweetheart. she deserved better.
i wouldn't claim to be part of the scene at the sussex.. 4 hours doesn't make a "sussex skin" but it was the start for me.. the true initiation..
we were in ;)
|
February 6th, 2010
11:43 pm - we are the mods...manly scooter run
when i was just 18, barely, (fuck i might have still been 17..i'm pretty sure i was) the sydney mods organised a huge scooter run to manly. from memory its was may day, but i could be wrong. all i know is my girlfriend at the time, suzie, was still 17 and couldn't go. turns out just as well. it was quite a day.
those of us from this side or the bridge who didn't have scooters met at circular quay pretty early that morning. i think it was the monday public holiday. again, anyone else who was there and remembers let me know. i remember what i wore. a white fred perry shirt, grey stovepipe trousers, white socks, black dm brogues and a trilby. my jacket was a blue spicer, the one with the elastic collar and cuffs. i looked very sharp for my age. i met a guy at the quay who id met a couple months before, when i was still 17, at a daynighter at newtown rsl. he was singer in a band i liked, the go. his name was kevin. i knew him to say hello. i looked up to him, he was one of the faces. he was wearing black brogues, black stovepipes, a white button down and a black harrington jacket, we looked cool standing outside .. the ship inne? it was an early opener anyway, because at 8 or 10am roughly, i was having my 1st ever heineken, on the footpath, in the gutter, with kev, whod bought it for me. i felt ten feet tall.
i didn't know it then but kevin and i were to become close mates in the following months and years. in fact i think it was kev who told me about manly and to meet at the quay etc. but for the time we were living for that day and that day only. soon other mods started to appear. i knew a few more to say hi to, but being with kevin helped. i felt legit, not like a new mod at all. a couple more heinekens and i was a face!
my mate brett (the donny) showed up. we sat with kev on the ferry. brett proudly displayed the 4 or so knives, the small steel rod up his sleeve and the improvised knuckle dusters, bashed out of a steel bin handle.. i remember kevin laughing and saying you might fucking need them. we didn't think (well i didn't) that it would come to that. it was incredible to see 100 mods on the same ferry. i remeber seeing the manly fun pier and laughing at the thought of getting on any of the rides.. there were more mods already there.. and the scooters all arrived in a big convoy at about the same time. by this time its nearing midday and manly was bustling and warm. i remember cursing taking the jacket with me. we wandered around the corso briefly, hung around on different corners, went into shops and generally pissed off the locals with our weird clothes and obnoxious behaviour. the early 80's were uniquley tribal. mods, punks, skinheads, rudeboys, rockers, teddy boys, headbangers/metalheads, early goths.. and sub species.. rudeboy surfies. etc .. and surfies themselves, just as legit and as real as any of us freaks. their own music, clothes, magazines movies etc
and we were in surfie central. and shit, they resented us being there.
its funny how whoever the days freaks are, are often referred to as "uni students" my taxi driver yesterday said as we were heading up king st and upon seeing a bunch of goths.. "i see all the uni stidents are hard at work" .. whatever that meant.
so wed be called everything from poofters to uni students. it was the uni student part i found most offensive. i was a blue collar background guy, with no interest in higher education. and still believe the system is against the talented. the truly talented. i guess i'm more a communist than a uni student if anything. we started to cop that, scuffles broke out. police showed up. then more. then helicopters! (which will be the subject of my next post). anyway it turns out that there were pockets of action all over the place which quickly turned into running battles with locals, police and the media for the rest of the day.
and at 18 in only a few months association with the mods, i had seen quadrupel the violence id seen in 18 months with skinheads and rudeboys. pfft, these guys were the real deal. things got very ugly and will be left untold except by those who were there, to protect the just.
i realised pretty quickly things were errupting out of hand. i already had a juvenile record, any breach of that and itd be a 2nd offence, id be off to boystown for 6 months, if they didn't put me straight into an adult gaol.
and i was far too pretty for that.
thank god for brett. the following is something i have felt shitty about for years. on and off. but the conflict is still there, a few demons. brett and i were already thinking wed better get away. we would be picked up otherwise. and like me, he hadn't been an angel. and the boofhead was tooled up. we were standing on the main road near the ferry. i don't know what its called. we were on the footpath and a few scooters pulled up. apparently the cops had asked them all to park somewhere in an alley, then started writing them all tickets for illegal parking. anyway my mate mick was on the back of a scooter. i have no idea who was doubling him, but he mustve been a strong bastard with that big bastard on the back. as i'm standing there, a surfie dude runs straight up to the scooter, and smashed his fucking skateboard straight into micks face. i think mick wasn't even 17 yet.(ive since learned he was 15, making me 17). he was wearing an open face helmet of course, and the hero had smashed micks jaw, he looked at me and went to speak, and his mouth just fell open and blood poured out. i started to runa few steps towards it, and i was grabbed from behind, by the shirt. it was brett. by this stage mick had hold of his attacker, had got his helmet off and was flaying this prick with it. we took off into the pub. from the front window we watched the scene unfold, police, mods, surfies.. we were joined by fugitives from both sides. the pub became neautral territory for those of us that didn't want to play any more.
ive always felt like shit for not tackling that bastard and helping mick. he took off, mickand the scooter took off, and the next time i saw mick he had his jaws wired together. in retrospect at the time i was afraid of more trouble with the law. i thank brett in one way, but think sometimes, fuck it. i should have. as it turns out, that occasion when i was locked up overnight was enough to tell me i never wanted to be locked up again. so to continue to hang with these characters id adopted as an extended family, we all had to be cautious to an extent. well, some of us. some of them were so wild they did pretty much whatever the fuck they wanted. at different times we all did.
do i remember dave bloch telling the cops he was a cop as well and being charged anyway? we were starting to be rounded up by the police. cars from 4 stations had been called in and as well as the police chopper, there were news choppers, news crews, gawkers. the cops just wanted us all gone. there mustve been a few hundred of us. it took them all day to get rid of us. they were hearding the remains of us, kevin included, on the afternoon ferry. as we were getting on the cops were searching some of us. brett chucked all his nice knives etc into the harbour. of ncourse they let him on and searched me instead anyway. i was clean thank god.
about 30 of us caught the train to redfern, walked up to the native rose (now just "the rose") in clevelend st, drank and cheered as we watched ourselves on all 4 channels on the news that night. on the way up, in one of the backstreets, we started chanting "we are the mods" .. a sleeping afghan hound on the road got up and ran away. kevin raised his fists and yelled "bonzo!" .."hey BONZO!!!"
id come home almost 2 years earlier with my 1st crewcut. i got home to the same reception from mum this time. "were you in manly today?" "why?" "when are you going to grow up?"
questions she still asks me. :)
|
January 22nd, 2010
03:07 pm - Staking a claim to Eureka?
Staking a claim to Eureka?Mick Armstrong Myths and legends are an important part of the ideological battlefield in society. The way a symbol like the Eureka flag is used, tells you as much about politics today as it does about what happened in Ballarat in 1854.
Virtually every political current in Australia - from fascist groups like National Action to militant trade unions like the BLF to the founders of the ALP - claims to be the heirs to the spirit of Eureka. And now the tourist industry is trying to cash in on Eureka.
There are three main legends about the revolt.
Firstly the old radical legend - that Eureka was a heroic working class rebellion, the beginning of the revolutionary movement in Australia. Then there is the fascist myth that Eureka was where "White Australia" was born.
Finally the reformist myth - that the rebels were in the spirit of the ALP. Taking up arms might seem a bit extreme, but there was no parliamentary democracy then. Thanks to the rebels we have our much cherished vote, so mass revolts are nolonger necessary.
Let's get the racist myth out of the way first. When the Eureka flag was unfurled, the Italian revolutionary and key leader of the revolt, Raffaello Carboni, declared: "I call upon you, my fellow diggers, irrespective of nationality, religion or colour - to salute the Southern Cross as the refuge of the oppressed from all countries of the earth."
Hardly the declaration of a fascist sympathiser!
Standing beside Carboni was his close supporter, the black American miner, John Josephs, who was tried for treason for his part in the rebellion. Acquitted by an all white jury he was carried in triumph through the streets of Melbourne.
While anti-Chinese racism did flare up on the goldfields, it was not an issue at Eureka. The miners were united in a progressive struggle against the British government and the police - their real enemies. They were not distracted into scapegoating Chinese.
So what actually happened at Eureka?
At 3.30am on 3 December 1854, British troops stormed the stockade that rebel miners had established on Bakery Hill. Thirty miners were killed, 114 taken prisoner.
It seemed the revolt had been totally suppressed. Yet within a few months the colonial government, in the face of growing agitation, had conceded the miners' demands.
Police were withdrawn from the administration of the goldfields, the hated 30 shillings a month licence fee was abolished and Colonial Secretary Foster was forced to resign, "to stay the rising tide of revolution". Juries acquitted all the rebels and by 1859 male suffrage had been introduced.
How had the miners won such a stunning victory?
December 1854 was the fourth year of the gold rushes. Victoria's population had exploded. Some of the migrants had radical backgrounds - having participated in the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848 or in the Irish revolutionary movement or were Chartists (working class radicals).
But while many miners had been wage workers - sailors who had jumped ship, farm workers who had abandoned the land, building workers the cities - on the goldfields they were self-employed.
This is an important corrective to the radical myth. Not being wage workers, the miners could not take collective industrial action to win their demands.
They could not take over their workplaces and run them democratically under workers' control. They could take up arms to overthrow a government - but their revolution could not abolish capitalism.
Hundreds of thousands flooded the goldfields but only a few found a fortune. A key grievance of the miners was that they had to pay a licence fee of 30 shillings a month (when a good wage was 8 shillings a day) whether they were successful or not.
The government imposed this head tax to try to force miners back to work. Employers were screaming about workers abandoning their jobs. They had to offer much higher wages to get even a few to stay.
The first successful revolt on the goldfields occurred when the government tried to double the licence fee. During 1852 and 1853 unrest was contained, partly because there was still a degree of prosperity and partly because of the lack of organisation of the miners, as they rushed from field to field in search of El Dorado.
This all changed in 1854. The arrival of a new British governor Sir Charles Hotham sparked hopes of reform.
But Hotham was no reformer. He had explicit instructions from London to crack down.
In a private letter, the head official at Ballarat spelt out the new strategy: "we may be able to crush the democratic agitation at one blow, which can only be done if we find them with arms in their hands."
The authorities may have succeeded but for two things: the miners' resolute political leadership and a growing social crisis. There was a sharp rise in unemployment in Melbourne, wages plunged, the government was undermined by corruption scandals and anti-Imperial sentiment surged over an attempt to reintroduce the transportation of convicts.
So when the miners took up arms they had enormous sympathy throughout Victoria.
Discontent came to a head in October 1854, when a huge crowd burnt down the Eureka Hotel. This was no mindless riot but a deliberate act. The notoriously corrupt publican, Bentley, had murdered a miner, but the authorities had protected him.
A Ballarat Reform League began to agitate around the miners' grievances. Initially it was dominated by the moderate Chartists, who today would be politically close to the ALP.
The most prominent was John Humffray - a Welsh "moral force" Chartist - committed to non-violence and "moral suasion", as opposed to left wing, "physical force" Chartists.
The balance of forces at this stage was reflected in the delegates sent to Melbourne to demand the release of the miners arrested for burning Bentley's pub. Humffray and George Black were moral force Chartists, but the third, Thomas Kenneddy, was less convinced of "moral suasion". His favourite saying was "nothing succeeds like a lick of the lug".
But by mid-November the movement was radicalising rapidly. Irish and German miners, with their stronger revolutionary traditions, were arming for a showdown. A convoy of troops was attacked and arms and ammunition seized.
The decisive turning point came at a 15,000 strong meeting to hear the delegates' report. The moral force Chartists argued for compromise to avoid confrontation.
They were howled down. The diggers voted to burn their hated licences and to physically defend anyone arrested.
It was not just the miners' militancy that was growing, the movement was changing politically. Alongside demands for the right to vote came calls for a republic and a break with British rule - a revolution on the American model.
The authorities threw down the gauntlet. The police began arresting miners for not having licences.
The miners resisted. The Riot Act was read. The miners armed in self-defence and assembled en masse at Bakery Hill to build their stockade.
With the battle lines drawn the moral force Chartists fled the scene. So much for the ALP being the heirs of Eureka!
The military brought up reinforcements and heavy artillery. Early on Sunday morning, when numbers were low, they launched their attack. The Stockade was stormed within half an hour.
But the miners' revolutionary stand provided a focus for the mood of revolt sweeping the colony. In Melbourne a giant mass meeting called by respectable middle class supporters of the Governor was taken over by radicals and overwhelmingly passed motions supporting the rebels.
To hold onto power the government was forced into a headlong retreat. An amazing victory had been won by bold revolutionary action
|
January 19th, 2010
02:24 pm - me
when i was 15, so, 1982, myself and 2 mates from school, who couldn’t relate to the top 40 crap, started listening to all the still new 2 tone stuff. well it was a couple years old by then, but madness and the beat and the specials aka were still going strong and releasing songs. the bureau and dexies were in the charts. and in australia we had a lot of ska bands. any weekend you could chose between 3 or 4 to go and see at different pubs or venues. the mod/skin scene was still huge. a thousand or so kids getting together each weekend, not counting teds, rockabillies, punks, haedbangers/metal kids.. goths (or swamp creatures, swampies for short).. and the other faction of skinheads.. the "ois" as we referred to them. we had fights/run ins/close calls with all of them.. god, we were kids. it was exciting and hilarious.
we were all pure tradskins in those days.. we listened to all the 2tone, all the original 50’s, 60’s and 70’s ska, current ska and reggae and oldschool, mostly 1st wave punk... and saw several punk and reggae bands, as well as ska and mod (rnb and powerpop) bands. for me, that stuff came a bit later, the mod stuff... at 1st it was all ska.. early 8o’s ska. most of it was great. some of it was crap. we also listened to original ol school punk bands, stiff little fingers being the favourites. as well as the pistols, the clash etc. they were still going too. rock the casbah was released round then. oi! music was very new and very suspicious to us.. i didn’t know anyone, out of the 50 or so skins i was on speaking terms with, who ever listened to it back then. a lot of the old ex 1st wave punks had become boneheads and to us, it was their music, not ours...
that doesn’t mean i won’t talk to you if you like oi.. i like some. ha but that only happened recently..
anyway
at that age, we were 16, sneaking into out 1st gigs.. we had fake id. no photo id then, so it was easy. we had no idea what we were doing at this stage, and were hassled and picked on by older skinheads a couple times.. we eventually got it right.. i’d had a flatop crewcut like suggs for a while, which my mum was ok with. one day i went and bougt a pair of 8 hole cherry red docs and got my hair cut to a close number 2. i got home with my new boots (id been wearing black desert boots til then, which looked ok, but weren’t docs) levis, a white tshirt and denim jacket.. and the hair. at this stage most men had longer hair as the fashion. i arrive home. dads away in queensland working.. a thousand kms away. mum’s reaction, that scene in this is england with cynthia, that was here reaction... LOL poor thing. she didn’t know she’d have the next 12 years straight of it.
after a couple years as a ska skin, what we’d call ourselves, i’d seen some great bands, had a few fantastic adventures and a couple scuffles with different opponents. it was wild and exciting. we were fit and young and did whatever we liked.. to a point :) up til then we’d seen some great bands. 2 of us had become skinheads and one a rudeboy. me and the other skin, kirwin, were from a poor suburb. the attitude struck deeply with us, the clothes were fantastic. we were proud of being skinheads..
eventually, i got arrested for malicious damage to property.. i threw a beer glass through a restuarant window.. i was so drunk..i had just turned 17.. i took off, but my mate rudy didn’t. he got caught. a couple skinhead girls i knew only to say hello too ran into me and told me rudy had put me in to the cops. i thought for years he had. ive since found out i was very wrong. anyway, i was arrested at town hall station, charges and tried. acquited, 1st offence. my poor mum.. it soured the friendship a bit with rudy. i was going through a lot as teenagers do.
after hanging round these characters a bit longer, kirwin moved away and rudy and i had a falling out.. stemming back to that night.. suddenly a few of his new mates got involved and i felt on the outer. silly in hindsight. now knowing more than i did then. anyway other mates remained and i know them to this day.
and rudy and i are mates too :)
eventually i went to a few mod gigs. that scene was bigger and there were quite a few skinheads in it/attached to it. not boneheads of couse, old trad skins. when i was 17, almost 18, i went to the 1st day nighter.. 6 or 7 bands, every mod in sydney .. it was huge and i made friends that became blood brothers.. honestly, these blokes were up a league. our crew within it had about 15 guys.. 13 mods and me and mick, 2 skinheads.. australian mods looked like suedeheads then anyway, a lot of my crew wore doc boots and perrys. for the next 10 years we went everywhere together, caused myahem and fought everyone. they were great days. i saw more fights in my 1st 6 months with the mods than the previous few years with skinheads.. these guys were a bigger league. it was a bigger scene with older guys. eventually mick and i became blood brothers and at the time i would have rated him as the most dangerous skinhead in sydney. he was 16. he was and still is, huge. enormous. some of the things i saw him do.. anyway.. another time :) mick and i would occasionally go see a ska or reggae gig.. as well as all the mod bands.. we were still skins after all.
the mods taught me about clothes. and scooters. and violence and speed. i had a few suits made.. 4 button skinhead suits rather than 3 button mod suits. we all looked a million bucks. ben sherman shirts sold for 15-25 dollars in sydney in thase days, and were everywhere. we had everything tailor made. i wore a trilby and a perry and boots and jeans during the day, a suit and bennie and tie at night... i’m still like that with clothes.. youve got to look tough AND sharp ;
in the mid 90’s i dropped out for a few years. the original scene had died and all my mates had moved away/got married etc. i didn’t really like 90’s ska/reggae or punk, hardcore or the "oi" that was around. a few years ago i saw the specials and neville staples in sydney. i got hooked again.. found out that old mates were back or in some cases still around.. and here i am
|
January 17th, 2010
07:12 pm - why asio can go fuck themselves
when i was 19 or 20, i was living in a small, 1 bedroom flat in ultimo, with the girlie at the time.. i had been a skin since i was 15 (well officially 16, but it all counts) and had already seen a fair bit.. along the line, i had affiliated myself with the sydney mods.. and made some very close friends i have til this day...
mods, and what we used to call ska skins (now trad skins i guess ..)... we were all respectively hooked in by the whole 2 tone thing/quadrophenia thing, so.. oi! still sounded suspicious to a lot of us, but i had always liked the old punk stuff, the pistols, slf, even some sham 69.. anyway i digress... fact was that whichever pub the mods set up shop in, the skins usually had the back room to the same pub.. the sussex, the royal george, umm, the quarrymans, the star, (although it was a skinhead pub 1st that one, i don't care what anyone says) eventually, as the scene faded out and guys all started to look like scooter boys, no matter who they used to be, it was the native rose in cleveland street, now called just "the rose"
so the interaction between the 2 subcultures was there, although usually a bit strained.. a lot of angry blokes.. the occasional fight, sydney was bigger then, there were northern beaches skins and a lot of what we used to call oiskins...mostly with black bombers on and hair as short as mine is now, that had no time for mods,the pricks usually hung round the fuckwit mob punks by this stage, "exploited" bumflaps and bondage pants.. gimps. and would beat mods or ska skins up if they outnumbered us. etc.. there was conflict between the 2 subcultures as well
into this mix is an old punk who was there from the start and was attached to the sydney mods..wayne smith was his name, better known as "bovva". anyone remotely in touch with either scene knew bovva, he knew everyone.. he was a mess.. but never did anything bad (intentionally) to me...to try to describe him would be futile.. there would be pics on line of him for sure.. as he is also famous for something else besides the hundreds of hilarious, tragic, twisted, angry, memorable events that made up bovva's life.. he was australia's 1st (to my recollection) and only political assassination victim... but we'll get to that, and how it impacted on my life, soon enough...
i can remeber him pushing a mate down the toilet stairs at the royal george when i was
17..(anyone who knew those stairs would be wincing) i can remeber him staggering out the front of a house party at strathfield, vomiting into the gutter, turning to me and saying "don't throw food!" then guzzling more bourbon straight out of the bottle, limping away on his walking stick (he'd broken his leg in 11 or 12 places in a bad scooter accident on the harbour bridge one night) and the most hilarious, immediate thing i remember was in the quarrymans at pyrmont one night (a few years before the crux of this story) and it was winter, and he was wearing 3, i shit you not, 3 denim
jackets (his weight fluctuated a lot, he had on what looked like a small, large then extra large levis jacket .. all at once)... and he pushed the chip machine over onto a middle aged, pissed italian guy that was trying to sing opera in OUR pub... fuck 'im...
and i remeber the night he asked a friend of mine .. jason, who was a mod, and happened to be of chinese descent, if he wished he was white and anglo saxon, like the rest of us.. prick. soon after, bovva joined national action.. the white supremest group based in tempe... he quickly rose through the ranks, as he was a complete fuckwit by this time..
one day myself and the afformentioned girlfriend were on the train on our way home from somewhere.. probably my parent's place. he got on at about mcdonaldtown i think.. we were all heading for central.. on the same line from lidcombe.. and his parents lived at merrylands, so via lidcombe, it was no surprise to see him.. he'd seen me thru the window anyway.. oi! boofhead! he yelled.. and staggered onto the train and sat with us.. "ello luv" he d said as he kissed suzie on the cheek.. he wasn't a mate.. we had known him for years tho by this stage.. pre nazi .. it was easier, usually to just humour him..
smalltalk and a bit of a catchup on the train.. i remember being nervous and shitty that he was there..... he was a little unpredicatable, but he always seemed to have time for us (back in the day, a few years earlier, i knew his ex , bec, very well.. suzie kinda looked like her, so i think he was always a bit smitten.. and he just liked me for some reason) he starts up in true bovva style after a few minutes (racist, embarressing, serious and violent stories) at the top of his voice.. i couldn't wait for central to appear.. it was terrible...
and it wasn't that bovva could fight.. but i knew he would if i did lose it and hit him... he never took a backward step, even if he usually got clobbered.. he was big and slow, but it'd be a handful anyway.. and he had new mates that wouldn't think twice about visiting you en mass and saying a nasty hello ... and besides, i'm on the train with my gf. i just wanted to get home.. i wouldn't see him again because i wanted to avoid him like the plague.
if you didn't humour bovva, he was a complete asshole..
so i was as amiable as i could be, and we all got off at central (the prick, on his way, pushed an old chinese lady back into her seat with her 6 or so bags of shopping as he walked off)
i arrived at work about 3 days later. i worked in an office in the city. i was waiting for the lift up and a man entered the foyer. i looked away and he said "james" as i looked at him, he pulled a camera to his face, took a picture of me, and ran off..
i was dumbfounded. then thought, well, you know so many dodgy chararters, but youve done nothing wrong. you'll be ok.
one morning, a week later, suzie and i were leaving the flat for work... about 3 metres from my front door, a neighbour is pulling something out of a wall panel in the hallway.. it was a camera.. pointed right at my front door.. it was 1985 or 86.. so the camera wasn't small... maybe half the size of a shoebox, cut lengthways..it had a battery hanging from it and a lot of wires.. and it was pointing thru a tiny little hole drilled in the panel.. straight at my door. someone.. or some group, was watching us.
we talked about it that day and that night and figured it was due to our mate, wayne. the group, national action, had been in the news a lot .. we figured asio was watching them, and in turn, us.. we mustve been observed talking to him on the train..
years later i found out we were right.. i'm listed with interpol as a "known associate" along with every other misdemeanour ive ever committed. not much, but still.. it's ok, the friend who got access to it says his own one is much worse..especially a couple of the characters he knew, for a lot longer and who were a lot closer. and he had clearence enough to look us both up :)
i told this story to an old mate recently, old mod, still around.. he turned white and asked me to tell it to him again... he used to live with bovva for a while .. hehe shit...
anyway, a few years after this, i think, its hard to remember, but i'm guessing.. within 5 years, bovva was dead.. accused by another NA freak of being a double agent/asio spy.. he was shot in the head with a .22 from memory... they (asio) had the place bugged and the whole transcript of him dying (apparently it took a while) while the guy who shot him kept yelling abuse at him was in the papers..
so is it any wonder with all that, combined with the fucking 90's"ska"/ the fucking hardcore creeping into it etc in the 90's, the fantasic mod scene dead.. that i eventually laid low for a while..? well , quite a few years..
why the fuck mention all this now? i figure, what the fuck can i do to make it worse? hahahahaha .. i'm sure i could muster up some credible character witnesses if i had to...i dunno .. they say you start to reminisce at about my age.. and the old "its not like the old days" etc starts to get said more and more.. on any given weekend back then you could have 1 or 2 comparable stories arise ... over a good 12 or so year span for me.. ive forgotten more than i remember, and this is just another thing that occurred..there have been no repercussions (as yet, we'll see what occures if i go to get a visa) but true, ive never been able to take it to anyone and tell my side of the story.. i mean, what can you do? post it on lj? :D
so that's a chapter that answers the question "what made you leave for so long? or partly anyway.. (i still had the attitude and hairlessness ;)
and that i have known (and still know) some farkin dodgy bastards... but not any (to my knowledge anyway) as "political" ... or as crazy.
a couple of years ago a "friend" put me in a situation that was completely fucking stupid on her part. she was living with me. she went to melbourne and ended up at a party full of melbournes best known boneheads. she came back home giggling, telling me OMG! it was scary and funny and blah blah blah. fuckwit i thought. i reminded her of this story and how in my experience, asio has those people very well pinned. and you were probably observed and identified, and confirmed that you live with me by asio or interpol. and then they look me up.. guess whos once again innocently been put in the frame (probably) by yet another idiot.
|
06:43 pm - why "hardcore" music sucks ass
i made my point and probably caused a buzz, or barely a ripple., my opinion of hardcore hasn't changed and never will. old friends backed me up.
but looking at what was this post was my impression of the depressing reality. i'm i don't wanna be depressed any more. so its gone. i meant every word. it was cathartic. you realise how beneath you some things and certain people truly are. and i know who i am, no ifs, ands or buts.
established 1983.
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
franciskin's journal