REVIEWS

“A most unusual thing to witness”

Mark Mordue

PHOENIX WEGENER GORMLY

live at Lazy Thinking, Dulwich Hill https://www.facebook.com/share/p/189Mh7affN/

Every pirate ship that ever hauled anchor and sailed the line through Darlinghurst, Chippendale and Newtown between 1984 and 1989 dropped its cargo here…

Red leather, mad hair, chemist sunglasses, hopeless handclaps, people shouting out over the clatter and drone about ‘free love’ and ‘broken horses’, drunks holding on to the bar with fingers like a jewellery store heist, heaped flannelette shirts thrown about, dreadful skin on display, a sleepy quietude or wild humour the accepted currencies of what might have passed for conversation.

Before this dubious and treasured cargo, Ahab Phoenix sung like she was looking for a good time called Trouble.

Starbuck Wegener played the drums behind her, his rhythms both a warning and an encouragement to Ahab regards chaos and ecstasy as two different sides to the one spinning coin.

Queequeg Gormly played the bass, casting notes like bones across the deck of each song, quietly reading the signs as Ahab and Starbuck wrestled over their coin and who had spinning rights.

Ahab eventually started singing to the dead and they rose out of the floor smoking cigarettes and chewing gum. Old friends and comrades we had considered long gone.

The natives present among us applauded this enthusiastically, drinking a local concoction of beer, red wine and vodka that sent them only half-mad. We drank with them.

Women walked around as the music played like they were contained in a dream they had woven and were now unravelling. Ahab sung on with hedonistic glee.

Eventually the men’s eyes glazed over and they ran into the street, taking off their shoes before walking out further on to the road itself where they sought to pick fights with oncoming cars, using only their bare fists as weapons.

Once outside, you could see that the name Lazy Thinking had been written over a series of scratched out and ancient letters that appeared to say ‘Pequod’.

By then, the night’s strange raucousness had passed over everyone like a memory. It was a most unusual thing to witness and be part of.

Phoenix, Wegener and Gormly, they came from another time, a foreign shore. We joined them here, good sailors all, pirates of pleasure with only the stars left to help us find our way home.

~ Mark Mordue

“Call me Ishmael”