A Separate Reality

	The bits of stuff that fall in the cracks between Life, Music and outrageous fortune.



November		Close this window to return to Mike Rudd & Bill Putt's Stop Press

1) Dick contemplates lunch with Mick 2) Point taken - so let's do crappy graffiti instead

3) Chris contemplates life without Choclatté's Adam

The week that wasn't.. (exactly a week, that is)
24.11.08 - I met up with Dick for lunch on Wednesday (pic 1) and very pleasant it was too - we even forgave the watery NZ pinot. I had to pick up some CD supplies from Aztec and visit a friend in St Vincents, but aborted a visit to the new offces of the NFSA (National Film & Sound Archives) as my contact wasn't in. I did all this on the carbon-footprint saving tram, and was greeted by the well-intentioned graffiti at my home stop. (pic 2) I dropped my phone as I took the pic and lost some functions, which kept me hunched over the phone for the next two days..
I met up with Chris (pic 3) on Saturday and he gave Adam a chatty send off to his new managerial job in Queensland. Don't worry Chris - Adam will be back!

1) Carrie carries on sewing 2) Rosemary and Bill at the market

Mike & Bill's Qld holiday
17.11.08 - Five years ago Bill and I were flown up to the outskirts of Eumundi to celebrate Phil Jacobsen's 60th birthday, (see Stop Press whatever) and so last week we flew up again to celebrate Phil's 65th, only this time Bill brought his partner Rosemary with him. I'd been in constant contact with the resident farrier-cum-band manager Jonathan Lister-Smith trying to sort out what gear we might need, but in the event we just brought up a couple of Bill's guitars and some harps and didn't get close to the Jet Star baggage limits. We were staying at Jonathan's cottage, and he was most generous and.. (scroll down)

3) Jan Simon and Phil contemplate breakfast 4) Lee Simon chats to Robbie Williams and Ed Whitely

5) Doesn't that Noosa Beach water look inviting? 6) Bernie Bojangles and the 'old man'

7) Bill points out Premier's Gerard 8) Colleen Ironside leaves the room for a smoke

9) Bubs takes a breather 10) Cameron plays on while the party rages all about him

11) Phil holds his breath 12) Vincent Donato had some interesting Nightmoves news

13) Rosemary tells her story to the party photographer 14) William is out of his skin with excitement at the BBQ

15) Maxine's pineapple 16) Bill and Jonathan Lister-Smith

Mike & Bill's Qld holiday (cont.)
..accommodating - just like he was the last time, in fact. He took us into Eumundi that night and we ate at the local Thai joint (which accommodatingly advertised fish & chips) and and we all stood out on the main street in the balmy night air and had a post-meal smoke (I botted a cigarillo off Jonathan). In the morning, Jonathan took us back into Eumundi to do breakfast and sample the Wednesday edition of the famous Eumundi Market, but after about an hour we were bored with that and were grateful when Phil rescued us and took us into Noosa where he regularly walks the boardwalk up the beach and back again as part

of his daily exercise regime. I managed to talk to Bernie Bojangles (pic 6) about the DJ system he was bringing into Sails that night for the party and organised a soundcheck for just before 5.30.
Phil said he felt like breakfast, so we adjourned to a café just down from Sails where we ran into Sue Righi (and her well-behaved children), and Lee and Jan Simon (pics 3 & 4). Two breakfasts did me in, so I went looking for a sun hat, after which Bill and I went for a paddle (pic 5) before Phil took us back to the cottage again to prepare for the party.
Naturally Mr Bojangles arrived too late for us to check anything, but Bill and I managed to acquit ourselves to general acclaim. Phil was seething at a couple of prominent absentees, but Michael Gudinski, who'd not been able to attend because he'd broken a bone in his foot in a domestic mishap, turned the situation in his favour by hiring a town crier to turn up half way through proceedings and apologise for his non-attendance and to (humorously) flatter Philip on the occasion of his 65th birthday. If I had to quote one example of why Gudinski is where he is today (and of his political adroitness), this might be the only one, but it was a revelation, to me at least.
Various of Philip's friends in the music and racing industries got up during the night to recount their Philip Jacobsen stories - nearly all of them hinting that there was far more left unsaid. Bill even got up and related how we'd met Philip for the first time nearly forty years ago, which makes us Philip's oldest friends - and thus responsible for unleashing the monster on both industries.
It was a fun night, but Philip being Philip decided at 11.15 it was time to leave, so he gathered Bill, Rose and I together, and as the heavens opened, we headed home in Philip's car - thankfully with Bill at the wheel and Philip allegedly navigating. Of course we ended up going round the same roundabout three times before we settled on the way we'd first thought of, but all's well that ends well, and we at least got home safe and sound.
The next day was supposed to be the big BBQ at the local Verrierdale hall, but most of the interstate party had headed off home, and so it ended up as mostly a family affair and a very pleasant way to wind down from the excitements of the previous couple of days. While the weather was showery for most of the time we were there, the temperature was constantly warm and the high humidity energy-sapping. Philip overcomes this typically by having his home (and car) air-conditioned to a cool 18 degrees, but the cottage has no such luxury, so we temperate-clime Victorians spent a lot of our time napping. And so it was that it quite literally ended up being a very restful holiday for the three of us.
The next day Philip dropped us off (perfunctorily, of course) at the airport on the way to his Noosa beach walk, just meeting the requirements of decency, which, forgetting his infamous lapses of decorum, is the way he's going to be remembered by a lot of people, I suspect. I'm fortunate to know him a bit better and to have been the beneficiary of his loyalty and occasional unsolicited generosity, attributes effectively screened by his notorious Phily-bluster. All in all though, it was good to catch up with the 'old man' and the hyper-active Maxine, not to mention Emma and Kate and families. We'll look forward to doing it again in five years' time..

Plum tree but a memory
5.11.08 - While the free world held its breath and waited for the US election results, I waited impatiently for Bill to arrive with his chainsaw and reduce what was left of the fallen plum tree to kindling. This he did - with prejudice - and then hobbled off into the sunset, only to meet me again later at the Mulgrave Country Club.

The Molly Award presentation

1)The 'manhorse' 2) Alan Howe hypes our CD to Buddy England - Paul O'Gorman looks on

3) Mike loses the plot 4) Jenny, the Molly, and a bottle of red wine with me on the label!

5) Athol Guy renders Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown 6) The best looking 94 year old in the audience

7) The whole damn cast gets down and dirty with I'm A Long Tall Texan

A very strange night indeed!
3.11.08 - It was a couple of weeks ago that Jenny (Jenny Klepfisz, Spectrum's former manager) told me that Alan Howe had invited us both to a Russell Morris gig in North Melbourne, and knowing Alan and Russell are good mates I didn't think too much more about it. Then on Thursday morning when I was having a sociable natter with Ed Nimmervoll in Prahran, Alan was suddenly on my mobile asking me if I could please send him the tab for I'll Be Gone. 'So, they'd like me to get up and sing IBG with them', I thought. Unusual

perhaps, but still not that untoward. As we drove in to North Melbourne I thought it a little ironic that the unnamed club where Russell was playing was just up the road from the Royal Park Hotel where Spectrum had been playing to half a dozen punters just the night before - and sure enough, as we walked tentatively into the foyer we could see the room beyond was filled to the gunwales with happily chatting people.
Before we could make our entrance though, we were intercepted by a dapper looking gentleman who told me I'd met him some years before and he was happy we were there and some other stuff that I lost track of as I tried to remember just where it was I'd met him before. He turned out to be Tony Cavanagh (the one in the very silly hat in pic 7) and he happily escorted Jenny and I to 'our' table where we were introduced to Sigrid Thornton amongst others.
There'd been no mention of food, so I was relieved when the musos' lifesaver (fingerfood) started to be delivered at regular intervals, but the evening certainly didn't look like it was going to be a typical Russell Morris gig and I was starting to get a little bit suspicious about what it was going to entail.
I won't go into too much more detail, except to observe that it was something of an IMT time-warp, (apparently it's an annual Cup Week function), variously compered by (racing identity) Tony Cavanagh (who delighted in changing costume every half-hour or so), Athol Guy, and Tony Healey, and featuring musical spots by Donna Fisk, Buddy England, Russell Morris, Dawn and Bryan Patterson, Athol Guy and his Rising Star protegé Stefanie - and a very weird manhorse. (pic 1)
It was nearing the halftime intermission when Alan Howe took the stage and mumbled a compendium of reviews that he's written about me and my bands over the years, garnished with a grab from a '60s radio interview on the Chants R&B CD. Then the Man in the Hat, Molly Meldrum, (after whom the award is named, of course), mumbled some complimentary stuff about me and my bands in turn, shoved the (bloody heavy) Molly Award into my hands - and then abandoned me.

Well, it needn't have been ludicrous, but I made the mistake of thinkng about what might say when I'd finally twigged what was going on earlier, and ended up tying myself up in knots. Thankfully Russell Morris and Sam See then accompanied me in a version of I'll Be Gone, which the crowd obligingly sang along with, and Hoochie Coochie Man, both of which were received rapturously on my table at least. So now I have the Molly Award I can be officially presented as Mike Rudd - MA. Things are going to change around here. Or maybe not..
When I got home it was starting to rain, and by the time I got up at about 5.00 to go to the toilet it was raining quite heavily. I noticed something looming out of the gloom as I turned on the toilet light and managed to make out that a good third of the plum tree had collapsed onto the lawn. Not entirely unexpected, given that the trunk on that side was virtually hollow, but inconvenient. Bill's promised to come over after school on Wednesday with his chainsaw. Where's the respect?

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