A couple days just wasn't enough time in the George. Missing it. Even though our house is totally old and crumbly... with no shower, only a claw-foot bath... and the halls are piled with old books and yellowing newspapers and boxes of old junk. It's home and there is nowhere else like it. Mum and dad love pottering in the garden - dad with his vegies, mum with flowers and ferns. A few years ago a plot of mint went crazy and spread throughout the lawn. Now, every time dad mows it's like living in a mojito. Delicious.
Our house is opposite the town fire station, and every Monday evening the firies sound the alarm to practice their moves. The siren is weirdly pitched and drives all the dogs in the town crazy. It's probably close to a decade since Jack, our imaginatively named Jack Russell Terrier, met his fate beneath the wheels of a passing motorist. But to this day, every time the siren starts up I still expect to hear Jack's whining bark at the front fence.
“Monty was a very nice alpaca, though he could be quite stubborn at times. He requested only the finest brown M&Ms and edible anal beads.”
Trawling through old files on my laptop, I just found some notes from an interview I did with My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, back in late 2006. It was only an email interview, which is probably lucky as I may have passed out from nerves if I’d had to speak to Jim – if pressed to name a favourite band, MMJ would be it. And because he also seems like a pretty weird guy.
The band were promoting their double live album and DVD, Okonokos, in which a searing MMJ concert was bookended film-student-style with random scenes of an old-time guy and an alpaca. Hence, Monty.
It’s a weird pattern that I never love bands more than in the incarnation in which I first discover them. For example, You Am I’s #4 Record isn’t perhaps as canonical as Hourly Daily or Hi Fi Way, but ever since I fished it out of a $5 bin at the St George electrical store in the late 90s it’s been my favourite of their albums.
Similarly, as talented as Jim James and co are, I think I’ll always feel they peaked with the first song of theirs I ever heard: "One Big Holiday" from their third album It Still Moves (2003). It was one of those moments when you're stopped stock still by a riff on the radio, immobile until you can put a name to the magic.
It’s hard to describe the band’s sound because it’s changed so much over the years. Their earlier albums were at once as sparse as the Kentucky horizons that spawned them, and intimately humming with their trademark lashings of reverb. I always remember a reviewer described The Tennessee Fire (1999) and At Dawn (2001) as sounding as though they were recorded in a grain silo.
From the reverb-soaked freak-folk-rock-country of the early albums, they sharpened up their sound to make rousing balls-and-beards rock with It Still Moves, their first album for a major label. 2006’s Z saw a further, freakier evolution into stadium-sized belters like "Gideon" and "What A Wonderful Man", with more than a hint of soul influences creeping in, and even touches of reggae (“Off The Record”). Haven’t yet spent much time with their latest, Evil Urges, but from what I’ve heard Jim’s embraced the soul falsetto even more. If there's one consistent way to describe MMJ? It's real, honest, earnest American rock and roll.
The band have a reputation for killer live shows – they once played a four-hour set at Bonnaroo – so when I finally got to see them play in New York, ringing in the new year of 2009, it was on. Never mind that I knew no one – I was not going to miss this gig. In the end I met some wonderfully friendly bogans from Boston, who were perfect to share the moment with. In fact they were so generous with beers and the odd sneaky joint, now that I’ve found the setlist from that night online it’s bringing back all sorts of memories... And oh wow - you can actually listen to a recording of the set: (there are 36 tracks!)
That night, MMJ played an epic couple of hours. There was even an intermission, and as well as all their hits they covered Curtis Mayfield, Kool & The Gang, Marvin Gaye and “Islands In The Stream”. By the time they closed with “One Big Holiday” I was screaming every word. It was one of the best moments of my life.
“I am in Tennessee, out in the middle of the woods, staring at a computer screen. The perfect blend of tranquility and technology,” wrote Jim in that 2006 interview. Through both his love of soul classics and the spiritual references that often creep into his own songs, he seems like a very spiritual, philosophical guy. But my favourite quote concerns the band’s reputation as extremely hirsute dudes – I think I’d asked whether the beards held some Samson-like strength.
“I try not to think about my beard that much… but I do love it and believe every human looks best with his or her god-given beard. I believe one’s powers lie within and no change to physical appearance can stop that!”
In 2005 my very best friends Reboot and Emily came out to the George to help celebrate my 21st birthday. It was a sultry November night and the annual fete at my old primary school was on. So we drank beers, and danced with my old teachers and the people I went to kindy with, before going home to eat the cake Reboot had painstakingly decorated.
It was the Women's Weekly Birthday Cakes cookbook's typewriter cake, with smartie keys and a musk stick return lever and mint-slice paper rollers. I think most of it ended up in our faces and hair when we had a food fight, but it's still the best cake I've ever had.
A lot's changed since 2005! Degrees done and dusted, towns and cities plundered, jobs and lovers earned, spurned and burned. Last weekend the three of us were together for the first time in many months, if not years.
Emily now lives in London with her new husband Ed. I'd been a little worried the UK's soggy climate and lack of career opportunities for agronomists might have been getting her down - but seeing her and Ed visibly radiating love and happiness I realised she's in great hands. Theirs is that ageless kind of love you occasionally see - on a dancefloor they're like infatuated teenagers at a school disco; in a quieter moment they could be a couple who've held hands in silent contentment on the same verandah for decades. And Reboot? Only the strongest, and funniest, girl I know. And, um, glamazon much?!
Emily told us that in their London flat, she only has one photo on her dresser. The one from the night of the typewriter cake, where we're all pissed on XXXX Gold and hideous but so, so happy.
Making new friends is great. But old friends never go out of fashion. Love you guys.
They don't call it the sport of kings for nothing. Racing has it all - magnificent animals, intense competition and consummate sporting skill. All heightened by the faint but ever-present risk of danger and a distant whiff of corruption.
Nothing beats being there trackside, where anything can and will happen. Where fortunes are won and lost, hearts filled and broken, and the manicured and coiffed get horrendously drunk and fall over. I'm by no means an expert, but I have spent a little bit of time at Royal Randwick, Eagle Farm and Doomben, and loved every minute.
There are few more piquant outlets for people-watching, as young and old alike succumb to the lure of easy money and overpriced alcohol. As the day wears on, see fascinators slump lopsidedly, high-heels become untenable torture implements, and unruly cleavages threaten to spill forth from their double-sided-tape shackles at any moment.
Witness as the unfortunate side-effects of a few too many beverages, usually so well-concealed, become commonplace and public: the removal of shoes, the pashing of unworthy suitors, teary emotional outbursts and, let's face it, vomiting. God, the races are great. All the folly of the sozzled human condition writ large.
But there's one thing that's perhaps even better than stumbling off the packed train to Ascot, heaving with goonbag-clutching students, into the heady aroma of fresh-baked-fake-tans, hairspray and horseshit. And that's a country race day.
Forget manicured lawns and meticulously maintained track. Your average country racetrack gets a workout once or twice a year; it might even be in someone's back paddock. There'll be a rickety rail, and once the nags jump the only way you can tell where they are is by looking for the large cloud of dust. On the way in, pay a few bucks for the race book - it won't take too long to read and will be filled with novelties like seven- and eight-year-old horses doing their last dash before the glue factory.
The Flinton Easter races are held on a station a few minutes out of Westmar. There's a shed, a bar, and the stables and betting ring are simple structures with rooves of box leaves and branches, added to year by year. A handful of bookies make the trip out and run the odds old-school style - all pens and paper and gladstone bags, no computerised systems and (I could be wrong) no trifectas for gawd's sake.
The mood is somewhere between a bush school fete and a B&S - little kids queue up for the foot races, which have suprisingly lucrative cash prizes. Nannas catch up on gossip over checked tablecloths and styrofoam cups of tea. For every girl in a flawless outfit there's one who hasn't worn a dress since their school uniform. And for the blokes there are no ironic trilbies or faggy fedoras - your work Akubra will do just fine, thanks.
After dark the band kicks in and the dancers kick up the dust. In past years rains have turned the event into a mudbath, but this year the air was thick with dust and insects buzzing halos around the floodlights. The only beer is XXXX Gold. The wine ran out hours ago. Your phone has no reception. If you're a vegetarian, you had better have packed your own food, and if you don't like Cold Chisel you're out of luck. It's heaven.
Later the Lions Club volunteers will flick the lights off to try to dissuade bleary-eyed punters from the bar, and the party will move to the carpark, where the age-old battle of the car stereos will rage. Swags will wriggle with dalliances as short-lived as the few bucks you made on the Cup. Mozzies will bite, boys will fight and those red dirt stains will never come out of your dress. All too soon the sun is rising, someone is retching metres away and you're cursing those last seventeen drinks. But you'll do it all again next year.
From St Kilda to Kings Cross is 13 hours on a bus, sang Paul Kelly. Well apparently, from Sydney to St George is about four days in two cars and with a range of companions. Aimee was a total gun on the driving, and especially entertaining when she got excited every time we drove over a bridge. (Spoiler: we drove over quite a few bridges).
After driving from about 1.30 to 8.00pm on Thursday we stopped for sleep and steak sandwiches in Coffs Harbour. That is one sleepy town! Even the lure of a cover band that sounded like karaoke couldn't keep us up.
Friday morning we continued northward, via all the Big Things - the Big Prawn and the Big Banana. Caught glimpses of the ocean through the gorgeous lush hinterland around Ballina and Bangalow. Detoured through Byron Bay, where Bluesfest patrons were still guzzling their morning soy lattes and wheatgrass shots, and hippy buskers lined the streets. Finally got to Brisbane, where I bid Aimee adieu and spent some quality time with young Louis. Friday evening set out from Brisbane with my mum and sister in our car The Dominator. (So named for its enormous stationwagon length and girth). Dining options were limited on Good Friday in Toowoomba, where we stayed that night, so don't tell Jesus but we might have accidentally eaten some bacon on a pizza.
Saturday morning dawned and the Fletcher girls hit the highway bound for Easter races at Flinton station, which you hit about an hour before St George. With a few decades of practice under our belts, it's a road we could drive in our sleep, though that's generally not advised as safe driving practice. After the recent rains the views weren't as dry as usual. But in stark contrast to last year's Flinton races, at which afternoon drizzle became late-night-dancefloor-mud-bath, it was a dry, hot day and dusty night. Will post more about the joys of country racing soon.
Camped out Saturday night, woke on Sunday to a carpark full of walking wounded, walk-of-shamers and the sounds of heinous hangovers. Finished the final hour's drive back to the George while eating chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. And finally, four days later, I was home.
