..month stint bashing out covers in three states non-stop. Actually, it seems we couldn’t resist adding a few new songs of our own to the list of covers, written by myself and by former Ariel keyboardist Tony Slavich, because at some point we must’ve gone into a studio and recorded a bunch of them to take with us to tout to various well-positioned expats on our holiday.
I’ve had the quarter-inch tapes of that session sitting around here for over three decades now with no means (or reason) to play them, but since Laneway Music’s Vincent Donato got interested in re-issuing all my back catalogue I dug them up to see if he could salvage anything useful before the tapes completely disintegrated.
A couple of weeks back Vincent sent me the songs he managed to retrieve on mp3 and as I listened to them on my lo-fi PC speakers they brought back memories, principally of playing the Instant Replay tapes at Tom Scholz’s (Boston) home in LA and, hearing them in that context, thinking how regional or even colonial they sounded. Our songs couldn’t have sounded less American or less anthemic by comparison to Boston’s More than a Feeling for instance, which inevitably got a play as we gazed down at the city from Tom’s Laurel Canyon mansion.
Although Punk and New Wave had made little impression in the States form what I could tell they were definitely in vogue in Oz and you can hear the influences on both Tony and me. Having said that, Tony’s songs were infinitely cleverer than mine, but all in all it just wasn’t a convincing phase we were going through. Still, on the plus side it was danceable and it kept us in work even though we later got pilloried for our masquerade in the vitriolic agency wars that were going on in Melbourne at the time.
Bill and I went over to the States together and as well as playing the Instant Replay tapes to whomever would listen our aim was to hit as many music bars and clubs as we could and just get a feel for the place. Tony Slavich and the band’s cheerful drummer Manny Paterakis also came over and we all hooked up at various times, first in LA and then New York.
Now we were in New York. Bill had contacts in Connecticut from a previous trip and as a result there was the occasional joint to leaven the constant drinking we were indulging in most nights. Then Bill went back to LA leaving Tony and me to enjoy the high life in New York, New York (‘so nice you say it twice’) and the supply of weed promptly ran out. It was then that I actually contemplated going down to 42nd Street, (aka The Deuce), which wasn’t far from our crummy hotel in West 44th Street, to attempt to score some weed from the local dealers who would openly offer dope to passers-by on the street, especially if they had had long hair.
Remember this was the ‘70s and there was a sense of naïve optimism about the use of marijuana and other substances, but to put yourself at the mercy of street dealers in a foreign city without any local guidance is a dumb thing to do - period. My only excuse is that we were dope-less dopes a long way from home and it seemed a harmless enough adventure at the time.
Anyway, we duly made contact with a West Indian dude on 8th Street and chatted to him for a couple of minutes before he asked us to come with him for a bit of a walk, whereupon we were joined by his mate Winston, who materialised from the shadows behind us.
We walked back to 42nd towards Broadway and ducked into a coffee shop where we concluded the details of the deal. Winston (who was from Jamaica and into 1955 vintage Windies’ cricket) took my money and disappeared, promising to return in ten minutes.
It seemed more like thirty minutes than the promised ten and by now we were more concerned about being sprung by undercover cops, who we now imagined seeing everywhere, than just losing our money.
Winston eventually came back with the goods in plain brown paper bags and we fled back to the hotel with our hearts in our mouths all the way.
Safely back in our hotel room I opened my plain brown paper bag.
Inside was a plastic bag partially filled with what looked suspiciously like pencil shavings. It didn’t smell like weed, more like aromatic hippy tea.
I rolled a joint anyway and smoked it.
I got a headache.

The moral of the story is that if you’re offered a bag of herbal tea in a strange city, check local customs before you smoke it.