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Hey Rich. Melbourne, at last! Initial impressions are as follows... (i) The trams. Fucking great. Not only do they make you feel like you're living in old school America (in much the same way Americans gather their impressions of the English from Dick Van Dyke in 'Mary Poppins", so we will eternally think Americans in the '50s were like Michael J Fox in "Back To The Future") but they're also clean, cheap, very regular and everybody on them smiles at you - not just from wind. Conversations strike up between an in transit 100 per cent non-local population, mostly along the lines of "Which way to St Kilda?" (they're in St Kilda) and "England, yeah I've stayed there". (ii) The music. Fucking great. Last night I watched Bis jump up and down with great enthusiasm in front of an equally buoyant crowd. I like bands who jump sideways with regularity even if they have been too influenced by the Beastie Boys, and their female singer looks too thin. (Press-driven anorexia: oh, I'm so proud to be working in this industry sometimes.) The clubs, the bars, the streets... all seem to be filled out by the presence of this one man, this one ginormous social butterfly we live with - Wally, and his 30-strong rentaparty which accompanies him everywhere. On our first night, we saw a Pavement-style band (Automatic, who've clearly liked Girls Against Boys at some point in their short, heavily ironic lives) and a '60s British-influenced band (Wally's Even, who lost Brownie points for namechecking the Posies but gained them back in spades by inviting 50 people up on stage for a drama-laden, Stone Roses/Beatles-segued encore). The crowds behave like they haven't discovered either MTV or cynicism. I like. (iii) They're bloody playing Paul Weller - the patron saint of Internet cafes - right now. Yes, I'm in an IC, but the coffee is good and the guitar solo only mildly nauseating. (I tell a lie: it's now 10 minutes later and he's still playing the same damn solo. It is fucking bad. I swear I've grown a beard since he last uttered a line.) (iv) The space, the size, the cheapness, the artsy communities, the heroin addicts jacking up on stairwells and in railway stations, the music, the rain, the air of prosperity... you know which Northwest American city I'm going to compare Melbourne to, don't you? Don't make me say it... (v) We live on a second-hand mattress and rest in a third-hand couch. Grey hallways echo with the distant footsteps of those who passed through here before and took all the furniture with them when they left. I've wanted to be a student all my life: finally it's happening and I can't get any damn sleep. One flatmate condemns us if we even look at a MacDonalds sign, the other switches all our groceries from one cupboard to the next on a whim. Our music is supplied courtesy of a second-hand radiogram which doesn't work, and our heat comes from a tiny second-hand fan heater. Yes, we are one step above The Big Issue, but our flatmates are cool and well-travelled, and there are only a handful of junkies woefully trying to steal cars on the corner. Rent is almost non-existent, and if we can overcome our natural distaste for Australian grunge (Silverchair, Powderfinger, Polyanna) we will be set. (vi) Everyone here moves and talks and dresses like they're set in some approximation of the middle England dream circa 1967 (not only hippies, but also post-war, post-depression archetypes). It is extremely comforting. Just the right place to see "Star Wars" and Orson Welles' "A Touch Of Evil" and "Gone With The Wind" again. (Films get to Australia kind of late.) Come and join us. It will be very merry. Cheers, Everett |
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