L-Plate Learning

Talk With Everyone – Even With Limited Head Space, November 2015

Overheard Productions L-Plate Learning, Miscellaneous, Music general ,
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Sitting like The So Not Littlest Hobo on Oxford Street, writing a story about an indie band.

This is Limited Head Space.

It’s fairly descriptive of how I feel right now!

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Image courtesy of Limited Head Space

Dashing up Oxford Street tonight to get to the BWS bottle shop by 9.55pm, because NSW liquor licensing doth sayeth thou shalt not serve takeaway alcohol one second after 10pm.

Google Maps said I had 3.2kms to cover in 45mins. Yeah, try roughly a kilometre. I stopped and asked a Security dude outside The Paddington Inn at about 9.27pm how far it was, and he said, about 100 metres!

And it was at Paddo BWS that I met Denis serving behind the counter, and he told me about his band, Limited Head Space.

And he wrote the band name down on the back of a docket.

Right now, Denis and his mate, also in the band, have just shut up shop. It’s 10pm and the grille went down at 9.55pm. NSW Liquor Licensing laws: thou shalt not vend takeaway alcohol after 9.55pm. I may have mentioned that before.

BWS are all over this like a cheap suit. I have been that guy who stormed away at 9.56pm, stormed back at 9.57pm, then fumed off into the night before the sweep hand had time for another full revolution.

BWS St Leonard’s, April 2014. Ah yes, I remember it well.

The original text above cut out because in the 36 minutes that I was sat there outside Astton Shoes and some indie Bed, Bath and Table shop, my browser had fallen over nine times.

Ten times. I’m going to embed their video then make this thing pretty later.

Eleven times. Farouk!

My wine đŸ· is getting warm!

Bill Quinn with “Neville” the Labrador
Oxford Street, Paddington
22:22 Saturday 21 November 2015

12 times!

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[MUFW* Video] Cooking At #36 with Billgella Lawsoote – Episode 01: Shredded Wheat/Blowing Mayo [MUFW], November 2015

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* Mildly unsafe for work

Cooking At #36 is a new series launched today from kitchens around Australia, eventually the world.

This innovative, jerky-handed phone camera series takes you, the poor, ignorant, unclassy, unclassified, joke of a wretched wastrel, awash in a sea of processed mediocre food, TV dinners, and fast food that’s slowly filling you up with salt and plastic — we take your sorry arse pics…

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again.

We take your sorry aspic, and sauce a better way to cook.

And live!

Episode One (Shredded Wheat/Blowing Mayo aka Resilience Is Useful).

The pilot was produced in a secret Holsworthy kitchen. Another pilot was picked up in a Moorebank Sports Club – she was either Randy or Chastity; such a fine line betwixt and between, I find.

Road-tested on six selected Overheard Productions friends and strangers who all were unanimous in their reviews:

Greek Fetta Chorus: “We’re calling the Critical Assessment Team. Put down the phone and step away from the maple syrup.”

Actually, they said lovely things, but I’ll add the reviews later.

There’s time for one. “Alison from Athenry” says, ‘Show us your chips, Billgella!”

And another: “Axminster Al from Barking in Essex” says, ‘What’s with the fruity 80s English accent?’

Well, Matt, I mean, “Al”, I left Herefordshire in 1979, so blow it out your East End!

Genog! Enough! Basta! Roll tape!

Thank you for watching, and I sincerely hope you all out there get a bit of Mayo Action tonight.

Goodnight!

Billgella Lawsoote
For Cooking At #36 with Billgella Lawsoote
A Division of Overheard Productions
A 36 Steps to ? Enterprise

11:00 AEDT Saturday 14 November 2015
Wattle Grove Shopping Village — see Michel’s Patisserie’s new drive-through (but only on Thursdays)

Billgella Lawsoote eating out -- one of my FAVOURITE things to do. I LOVE eating out!
Billgella Lawsoote eating out — one of my FAVOURITE things to do. I LOVE eating out!

The Woodford Files 2014-15: Care Yourself*

Overheard Productions Festivals, L-Plate Learning, Miscellaneous , , , , , , ,
An ounce of prevention beats a buttload of cure
An ounce of prevention beats a buttload of cure

Many festival survival guides are out there on the world wide weird, and sparticularly in the blogosphere. (Note: blogger roughly translates as, “I coulda been a journalist, but couldn’t be arsed to do a 3+ year degree in it.” WFJ Quinn, BAComms – not a journalist.)

So I don’t intend to replicate, duplicate, spiflicate or update those tomes of great wisdom, but I do want to share a few insights into preventative healthification gathered over many, many years spent curled up in tents and the backs of cars in far flung places.

Have you ever gone to a festival or been on the road and woken up one morning feeling like a rather large, furry toad has crawled into your larynx and is now doing early morning Zumba on your tonsils?

Or have you started heading into that long night when you really want to sit around the campfire singing 36-verse ye olde Englishe folke songse til the dawn breaks, but find you’ve started a coughing fit that might wake the dead? And you envisage joining the souls of the dearly departed in the not too distant future? đŸ’€â˜ đŸ‘»

The dirty little secret is something that one of my many, many former employers (at a medical Not For Profit/Public Beneficial Institution) will tell you about in great depth and detail under the banner of ‘antibiotic resistance’:

Some lurgies exist that you just can’t duck because they’re viral, and the best you can do is to pump up your general levels of healthiness and wellbeing, and look after your immune system.

The bad news on that score for folkies is that to best keep your system in good health, you should:

* avoid coffee
* avoid or limit alcohol intake
* avoid fatty, salty, sugary foods
* get lots of sleep
* don’t stay out at night in the cool air ingesting campfire ash
* don’t strain your vocal folds
* don’t sleep on uncomfortable, unsupportive mattresses or straight onto the ground
* and other stuff your mum told you, and
* always wear clean underwear.

It’s pretty much the anti-folk menu.

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Surely Goodness and Kindness: Talking With Brian on Manly Wharf

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Manly Wharf, New South Wales, Australia
Manly Wharf, New South Wales, Australia

I overheard a man on Manly Wharf beach one afternoon and his story became one of the most compelling interviews.

Let’s get there, unlike the Manly Ferry which darts out of Circular Quay and pretty much makes a beeline for Cabbage Tree Bay.

Let’s take a slightly circuitous root.

I grew up in the mid sixties and seventies with something of a hefty disdain for Manly.

It was a disdain maintained from a distance of about 366kms away in Canberra, and it was all based on the eternal battle between the mauve of the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles (‘Silvertails’) and the Black and White of my beloved Western Suburbs Magpies (‘Fibros’). Rugby League, for the uninitiated.

My family hailed from the west: Parramatta, Harris Park, Guildford and Baulkham Hills. My anti-Manly bias was born of those silly tribal rivalries that sound so pointless in smaller towns like Canberra where I have never been able to take the north vs south thing seriously.

“We’re not that [farnarkeling] big!”

Cliff Notes: I’d never spent much time there, and while visiting friends in Fairlight and on other trips, I was looking for reasons to like the area.

Yes, we’ve fast-forwarded to 2013, and for some reason one day, I’d gone across the briney foam from Circular Quay to Manly Wharf and drifted up and down the Corso and around the back lanes and alleys.

And fell completely and totally and hopelessly in love with the place.

When you get just a little bit out of the centre of Manly, things get a little beige, bland and neo-conservative. But right in the middle of town, it’s like a little melting pot, albeit a flashier more glamorous pot than some other localities that host meetings of many cultures within the scope of what is loosely termed ‘Greater Sydney’.

Me, I love them all.

Walk from Punchbowl train station to the Boys High School (which I did when I first moved to Sydney in March 2013, to interview the assistant principal) and you see pretty much no white faces, hear no Australian spoken, and smell smells that don’t feature in, say, the main street of Miranda.

Take a walk along Forest Road in Hurstville CBD and to have a conversation or transact some business, a working knowledge of Mandarin, Cantonese or Korean would serve you well.

Hang out around various parts of Liverpool and a little Italian will get you a long way.

I know a little Italian. His name’s Marco and he’s a retired jockey.

(Dips the hat towards the film ‘Top Secret’ for that gag. I’m here all week, tip your wait staff, try the risotto.)

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A Punter’s Perspective March 2014: No Such Things As Mistakes

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A Punter’s Perspective: Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage

No Such Things As Mistakes Part I

First published in Trad and Now magazine, March 2014

As has been the case from time to time in the seven years plus of A Punter’s Perspective, ’tis the night before deadline and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a half-decent idea for a folk music magazine article.

Realising my dilemma on the train to work today, I turned to the world’s font of most knowledge (and funny cat videos): Twitter. And I asked publicly to all, and pointedly to three or four music bloggers, what might a good topic be.

Image courtesy of The Dutch Guy
Image courtesy of The Dutch Guy

The answer came from a former radio presenter now blogger/vlogger (a kindred spirit, then) from the Netherlands who goes by the title of ‘The Dutch Guy’ (@DutchGuyOnAir), and he suggested:

“How about talking about some mistakes indie artists might make?”

By curious coincidence, this is a topic I’d considered before and only pulled back from it at the risk of causing offence.

Causing offence is a service I do occassionally provide — usually unintentionally.

I’ve put enough noses out of joint in the music world in the past nine years by commission, omission, or at the very least, blind stupidity, and have no need to add to that tally by more inadvertent misadventure.

I often say that I can have my intelligence insulted without willfully watching certain TV programs or listening to certain radio stations. (And that I didn’t mention them by name is at least a sign that I’m learning — slowly.)

Therefore, some disclaimers.

I am totally in awe of musicians, artists and singer-songwriters.

The concept of playing a three to 20-stringed instrument (or one you blow, slap, or pump) while singing and possibly dancing (or at least a little light duck-walking), and then doing that from 20 minutes at a time, for up to three or four hours, leaves me absolutely breathless.

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Aboriginal Tent Embassy: are we looking at it the wrong way?

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Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Parkes ACT
Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Parkes ACT

Aboriginal Tent Embassy

Some reflections for Reconciliation Week 2012

Last Sunday, about a week out from Sorry Day 2012, I had a not-so-chance interaction at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Old Parliament House, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

It galvanised for me two of the things that are most core to my being:

1. My favourite word in the English language (and several others I either speak or have some capacity with) is ‘diversity’.

Diversité. Diversiteit.

We can identify, celebrate, and understand our differences.

The more we can resist saying, ‘I don’t understand’, and the more we can say, ‘Help me to understand’ when it comes to differences, the better off we can be.

In my very humble opinion.

2. Never assume. I offer this as a serving suggestion. You can do whatever the hell you like. I suggest that to assume anything is to cut off so many fruitful opportunities.

The older I get, the more I have grown to dislike the word ‘assume’ and all the connotations around it and others like it.

‘I assume, I presume, Obviously, As you are aware’: they’re all illegal in my book. It’s like aversion therapy just being on the planet some days, hearing these repeated ad nauseum. Keep some tally marks today as they’re trotted out around you.

I can hear the words of my late father ringing in my ears: ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Billy; you’ll break your leg’.

Intruder

On Sunday evening 20 May 2012, I was walking back from Manuka qnd Forrest, after catching up with some friends. It was one of those wonderful, clear, crisp Canberra nights in late Autumn when the air is still; and so long as you have a warm jacket on (preferably in an outrageous 1950s pattern) and an over-sized beanie, you’re sound as a pound.

Sorry Day Bridge Walk poster. I tried to ressurrect it but couldn't find anything to hammer it into the ground with. Sorry.
Sorry Day Bridge Walk poster. I tried to resurrect it but couldn’t find anything to hammer it into the ground with. Sorry.

As I walked through Parkes (the Parliamentary Triangle) and passed the statues of former Prime Minsiters Chifley and Curtin, I got to thinking about reconciliation, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and the coming Sorry Day.

Earlier, while walking from the city out to Manuka, I’d happened upon a sign advertising the Bridge Walk this Friday and had spent some time (ultimately unsuccessfully) trying to re-plant it by the side of the road.

So this was all buzzing around as I approached the tent embassy along King Georges Terrace at about 8pm. I could have stuck to the path and the streetlights and headed off towards Commonwealth Avenue, but something drew me towards the ceremonial fire and I’d just descended one or two steps when a resident called out from the shadows:

‘Hey, where are you going? What are you doing?’ Continue reading →