.. that Bad doesn’t get the girl in the end, but he does get his song-writing groove back .
And about the songs, I was almost surprised that I liked them quite a lot. Stylistically they were veering towards country-rock for the most part, but they were consistently better than average with smart, self-deprecating lyrics. (I fancied I heard something of the Melbourne band Lost Ragas in the songs. The Ragas recently released a snappy country-ish with Traffic undertones version of I’ll Be Gone).

In other news Maria and I are starting to pack up our belongings at Mt Waverley in preparation to moving to another Melbourne suburban mount, Mt Evelyn. I should say that it’s actually Maria that’s been doing all the packing up to this point while I try to keep some sort of routine happening that doesn’t actually involve packing.
I have disassembled (mostly) my studio though. I’ve labelled everything so that I can re-assemble it in its new home without having to actually figure out what everything does. I suppose that’s a sensible strategy whatever your age might be, but these days I find it’s not just sensible - it’s absolutely crucial.
I suffer from some other symptoms usually associated with senility as well, but I have one self-inflicted problem which seems to be getting worse despite the females in my life from my mother onwards imploring me to fix it up. No matter how hard I try (which isn’t very) I just can’t seem to get into the habit of putting things back where I found them.
(It’s always the women who do the imploring because women for centuries have been lumbered with having to mop up men’s messes after them, starting around the home and then later around the workplace).
The not-putting-things-back problem combined with short term memory loss is bad enough in normal circumstances, but when a good part of your professional life is conducted in the public eye it can have seriously embarrassing results.
Like this.. (Anecdote warning!) I’d been booked some months ago to appear in the pleasant seaside township of Mornington with a couple of Melbourne’s seriously virtuosic blues guitar exponents, Geoff Achison and Lloyd Spiegel.
The day eventually came and the day was hot but I was convincingly early for the sound check by a good hour. So far, so good. The format of the show was unusual in that it was set up like a round robin with the first half being acoustic and the second electric, but I’d got used to the idea.
A Sydney singer-songwriter, Cass Eager, made up the quartet of performers shuffling on and off the stage. A rhythm section comprising bass and drums was added for the electric set.
Everything went pretty well in the acoustic half. I was worried about my solo song, Old Black Dog, because I’d been interpolating a line from the 2nd verse into the 1st verse when I had rehearsed it and in the event that’s exactly how I played it (never rehearse mistakes) but either it didn’t really matter or nobody noticed.
The last number for the acoustic set featured Cass singing her song, Dave’s Place, that we’d planned for me beforehand to accompany her on my E harmonica. I was looking forward to playing some random harp with Cass after the tension of my solo song.
Anyway, Cass introduces me, I amble out onto the stage, look at the top of my amp where I’d earlier stashed my harp – only to find it wasn’t there.
Cass saw my confusion and kept talking. I charged to the back of the stage where all my other harps were smugly sitting in their harp case. Not there.
After more frantic searching I spied it in my effects pedal board where I had decided it was safer than on top of my amp.
But that’s not all! There was quite a bit of hanging round till I was due on stage again, this time with Geoff Achison to play Willie Dixon’s I Just Want to Make Love to You.
Geoff gave me a respectful intro and I wandered out onto the stage, plugged in – and nothing. Not a peep out of my incredibly reliable - till now - Fender Hot Rod amp.
I thought I remembered a crackle when I took off my guitar after doing diligence earlier in the day tuning and checking all my pedals, so I tried another guitar lead.
Nothing. Geoff was looking bemused as I began to panic ever so slightly. It seemed like an eternity was passing in the gaze of an expectant audience.
I looked across the stage and saw Lloyd’s amp unattended and, ridiculously, asked Geoff if he thought it would be alright to commandeer it while my amp remained utterly mute.
He shrugged, which I took to be assent, and I plugged in to Lloyd’s Fender Twin. Lloyd suddenly appeared from nowhere and got me going and that was that.
Or was it? Although our host Patrick hadn’t mentioned it and there’d been no chatter about it on email, there seemed to be an implicit understanding that we’d all join in for a version of I‘ll Be Gone at the end of the show.
The others seemed to have practised it and Cass even offered to sing the second verse so I was happy to oblige. This time I’d put the appropriate harp in my pocket so there’d be no unseemly confusion.
I pulled it out of my pocket triumphantly. I let the audience know they were expected to join in my special song and put the harp to my lips.
I got the first note out OK, but the second refused to sound. At all. I blew and sucked vigorously off mic and the piece of pocket fluff gumming the reeds up moved sufficiently for some sort of note to emerge - and I was off on the four millionth rendition of the only one of my songs everybody knows.
Show biz – ya gotta love it!