Low on gig info this week but the first thing i can point you towards is Sunday, March 14, when SWEET BABY JAMES & ROB EYERS will be playing at the Semaphore Worker’s Club, featuring songs from their new album - Double Voodoo. Live music kicks off around 5.30 pm.

 Also on Sunday March 14, you can catch Rhumboogie in a special Fringe Event at the Coopers 1862 Bar - the Wine Undergound - Pirie Streeet, the city. LIve music wafts out the door around 5.00 pm. Seems like we're doubling up on the bluesy rootsy gigs on a Sunday but that's what we're here for.

Now, speaking of doubling - 'Dublin' up, that is -  Panic, the boys that couldn't be stopped with a horse's handbrake, will be doing a 'Dubble-in' shift at the Daniel O'Connell Hotel on March 17!  Yes, Saint Fekken Pady's day, where the earlier band called stumps before time! So.... 0pan!c gets to doa double shift. Come along and buy the pan!c boys a Guinness for feck's sake, they'll fekkin' need it after five.... count them...  F-I-V-E fekkin' hours of music that will make you understand why the guy that sang It's a Long way to Tipper-fekkin-rary wasn't in much of a hurry to get there.

 Now...if you love yer blues and roots music - and who doesn't?? Eh??? well, the big arsehole next door doesn't, he chucked a brick on my roof the other night when I was playing my George Thorogood recordings through a concert P.A. in the shed. But he, as i said, is prolapsed colon. Normal arseholes - like you and me, however - should get down to the Gilbert Street Hotel on Thursday night, March 18, to be with SWEET BABY JAMES & ROB EYERS as they mown and whale through three - count them one -two-three - sets of hot blues. Bring your own bricks to chuck on the roof; I found some old breeze bricks that will do the job admirably but I'm not sharing.

 Some news:  Dave Maton's new single “earth hour” is on you tube, you should have a look, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTF2HasbEXU
The single is available for download on itunes.

And his short film “Spas Like Us”  got one of 10 Highly Commended gongs at the Indie short Film Festival in the USA. Go here: http://www.indieshortfilms.net/2009winners.html

And, here: www.blueringrecords.wordpress.com for information on Earth Hour.

 And, if you have ten minutes, read the item below. Because I want you to. 

Anyway… I was interested in this stuff and went to see a psychometric extrapolator or whatever they are. She lived in a gypsy caravan and did the readings there. My, ahem, friend went there and did one of them time warp things and found out that in a past life she had been a handmaiden to Queen Arabella of Phrenolia and before that she was a royal cat in a Cretan crypt. Crept in for a crap but was lucky enough to creep out again so continuing her line.

I wanted to know what salubrious positions I held in a former life.

It’s marvelous the way they do it. They put you in a trance and then do a core sample of your wallet or something. Anyway, she couldn’t put me in a trance ‘cause I kept trying to eyeball her cleavage that was somewhat exposed by her voluminous, semi-transparent caftan thingy. She snuck round behind me and just when I thought she was going to massage my neck she whacked me on the back of the skull with a frying pan off her stove. I fell into a trance.

Then she went to work on my wallet. I’m guessing she probably found my dole cheque because in a former life, I, apparently, instead of being the King of Sweden, was a lowly arse-wiper to a councillor in some TurdBerg of a joint just before the beginning of the Dark Ages. I think it was the Forgot To Pay The Light Bill Ages. Anyway…. I survived the black plague because I had handled so much shit I was immune to every germ known to Middle Earth at the time.

I wasn’t, however, immune to being whacked on the skull with a sock full of wet sand and shipped off to the colonies. But I’m ahead of my self.

She also found out that I was a shitkicker way back in the Roman days. My job was to kick the horseshit out of the way of the important people coming behind me.

Then, In the Still Light Enough To See Ages, I was the news reporter when King Canute held his audience with the sea. Canute was a proper cnut and shouted at the sea, “Look here, you useless bucket of fish piss, stay out of my rum or I’ll kick arse so hard you won’t be able to crack a sand bar for weeks.”

The ocean was no slouch and answered back smartly: “Dial this toll-free number for immediate delivery of your circulation machine to get rid of ugly cankles. And make sure you have enough life insurance but not enough to constitute a death wish.”  Then it lifted a watery arm and threw a stinking lump of ambergris in his face. Of course, the subbies at the paper had a go at the story after I filed it and it was watered down somewhat as history tells but you can take it from me, etc, etc.

Then, after I was transported to the colonies. Look, if you can’t follow this I will explain. A person’s time-line is like a piece of string. And mine was left in the third drawer down in the kitchen dresser so it is pretty tangled and knotted. Now, shut up and let me get on with it.

Right!  Ned Kelly. No!  I wasn’t Ned Kelly. I was the receptionist at the dentist surgery where Ned presented himself with a raging toothache.  

“Take a seat,” I said, flinging Colonial Times at his bucket, “…and read this – if you can. The dentist will be with you in five minutes.”

Ned sad down, whingeing and griping and sniffling like a feckin’ schoolboy.

“Mr. Kelly,” says I - in my former life - .”…the handle is still on the bucket, is it not?”

“Aye,” he said, shooting off both my ears with his revolver.

“Well,” says I, in my former, life, “… if you take the handle out of your gob your teeth might not give you so much grype.”

“To be fekken sure, you handsome betch, you’ve saved me a pretty penny as well as a Bob and Zac, Iff'n I know this thieving hound of a feckin’ gum butcher you work for.” Then he shot me in the inkwell with his rifle and rode off.

Just then, the dentist came back from the pub and fired me for losing him the money to pay the next instalment on his Cobb and Co luxury coach. Shamed and prostituted, I threw meself off the Sydney Harbour bridge and landed on an old sea captain having a tug for morning tea who gave birth to the next generation of us, which eventually became me in this life: A worthless shitkicker.