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Stuff It, It's The Spys!!
Dec. 29th, 2007 02:34 amSometimes I find myself in the strangest places...
Like the Golden Sheaf pub in Double Bay ~ a pub once, & for all I know still, the favoured hangout of both students & teachers from my Alma Mater up the road in Bellevue Hill. It's a strange place this one... one of those pubs in the Eastern Suburbs that always seems to be full of yobbos ~ a mixture of the young & feckless & the rich & fatuous. Ex-private school rugby forwards positioned under the outside cast-iron stairwell to take full advantage of the view as girls go up the stairs in the latest designer micro-dresses... Over-made-up or expensively reconstructed 30(40? 50??)something women with nips, tucks, plumps & pumps, tanned to basted perfection, all mingling with a curious assortment of dregs & drongos who wouldn't be out of place at the Wetherill Park Tavern...
Especially tonight, as Spy Vs Spy were playing. Except they weren't... Well, they kind of were. There were one & a half original members (their 2nd drummer now plays rhythm guitar & sings), with a ring-in rhythm section half the age of the other 2 & no C-C-Craig Bloxom on lead vocals & low-slung bass!! It was actually a good show though... Mike Weiley still looks like a dag but plays great delay-laden guitar lines at excruciating volume & Mark Cuffe was starting to sound like C-C-Craig by the end of the 2 hour set. The young blokes were competent enough to not be noticed...
The dance floor gradually filled with a microcosm of the Sheaf patrons & the dances were just as varied. One guy was ensconced at the front of the stage taping (yes... taping!) the show on a Walkman, getting up occasionally to do a version of the Robot ~ the way Marvin from HHGTTG would... with a terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. A modified Mullet in skinny jeans & t-shirt did every bad 70s & 80s pubrock boogie move except the Birdman Cockroach, while a filly in expensive dress & more expensive shoes shimmied in one spot. There were 2 stage invasions ~ one from a guy whose birthday was today... or tomorrow, it didn't really matter, he stood on the small stage playing air everything to "AO Mod", stealing Mike's hat & hugging every member he could stagger to. The other was immediately after, but he didn't last as long ~ especially when he asked the guys to play "AO Mod", as he hadn't heard it in years... or in this case ~ seconds . Mark Cuffe took it all in stride, occasionally making the obvious jokes about Double Pay in the Eastern Suburbs & every 2nd song saying "Stuff it! We'll play one more!!", in between doing battle with a wayward spotlight gaffa-taped to the ceiling.
It felt like the mid-80s at any number of long-gone pubs, like the Manly, Manly Vale, Bondi Lifesavers, Lansdowne (okay, it's still there, but it's an "Entertainment" venue now, not a band pub...) & the assortment of inner-city venues which changed their names, owners & decor each time the licensing board shut them down for breach of whatever regulation they could think of... then sprang up from the cellars again.
I left after the show when the 80s video jukebox threatened to play Wham! at me...
And now, home. Awake. With a slight ringing in my ears & the inevitable insomnia for company.
Like the Golden Sheaf pub in Double Bay ~ a pub once, & for all I know still, the favoured hangout of both students & teachers from my Alma Mater up the road in Bellevue Hill. It's a strange place this one... one of those pubs in the Eastern Suburbs that always seems to be full of yobbos ~ a mixture of the young & feckless & the rich & fatuous. Ex-private school rugby forwards positioned under the outside cast-iron stairwell to take full advantage of the view as girls go up the stairs in the latest designer micro-dresses... Over-made-up or expensively reconstructed 30(40? 50??)something women with nips, tucks, plumps & pumps, tanned to basted perfection, all mingling with a curious assortment of dregs & drongos who wouldn't be out of place at the Wetherill Park Tavern...
Especially tonight, as Spy Vs Spy were playing. Except they weren't... Well, they kind of were. There were one & a half original members (their 2nd drummer now plays rhythm guitar & sings), with a ring-in rhythm section half the age of the other 2 & no C-C-Craig Bloxom on lead vocals & low-slung bass!! It was actually a good show though... Mike Weiley still looks like a dag but plays great delay-laden guitar lines at excruciating volume & Mark Cuffe was starting to sound like C-C-Craig by the end of the 2 hour set. The young blokes were competent enough to not be noticed...
The dance floor gradually filled with a microcosm of the Sheaf patrons & the dances were just as varied. One guy was ensconced at the front of the stage taping (yes... taping!) the show on a Walkman, getting up occasionally to do a version of the Robot ~ the way Marvin from HHGTTG would... with a terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. A modified Mullet in skinny jeans & t-shirt did every bad 70s & 80s pubrock boogie move except the Birdman Cockroach, while a filly in expensive dress & more expensive shoes shimmied in one spot. There were 2 stage invasions ~ one from a guy whose birthday was today... or tomorrow, it didn't really matter, he stood on the small stage playing air everything to "AO Mod", stealing Mike's hat & hugging every member he could stagger to. The other was immediately after, but he didn't last as long ~ especially when he asked the guys to play "AO Mod", as he hadn't heard it in years... or in this case ~ seconds . Mark Cuffe took it all in stride, occasionally making the obvious jokes about Double Pay in the Eastern Suburbs & every 2nd song saying "Stuff it! We'll play one more!!", in between doing battle with a wayward spotlight gaffa-taped to the ceiling.
It felt like the mid-80s at any number of long-gone pubs, like the Manly, Manly Vale, Bondi Lifesavers, Lansdowne (okay, it's still there, but it's an "Entertainment" venue now, not a band pub...) & the assortment of inner-city venues which changed their names, owners & decor each time the licensing board shut them down for breach of whatever regulation they could think of... then sprang up from the cellars again.
I left after the show when the 80s video jukebox threatened to play Wham! at me...
And now, home. Awake. With a slight ringing in my ears & the inevitable insomnia for company.
