Hill of Content

You can smell a roadie prank from miles away. It almost always involves luminous green or yellow tape and occasionally a flashlight, and they are usually pretty enterprising. In this case there was a path of arrows that led straight to Andy's door. When I was going back to my room a gaggle of drunken ladies were following it down the hall just to see where it led. I'm sure he got a lot of that that night.

I always have a great time in Australia. It really felt like home, especially since I'd been there 3 times so far this year. It was still the tail end of winter down there, so it was about 30 degrees cooler than the previous few weeks of the tour. Sickness was pretty much a given considering those circumstances, but it was only a week and then it was home for us all.

To acclimate myself, and fight off a bit of residual travel restlessness I went for a walk around Fitzroy, the Eat Berlin of Melbourne. The rain let up, I had some amazing coffee and Nick and I wandered into one of the best bookshops that I've been to.















I finally managed to score a copy of this Chris Connelly book that I'd been looking for. It's a tour diary of sorts about his days with Ministry and RevCo. Sort of like Get in the Van,  but with more laughs, more drugs and less pretense. It was strange to read while on tour, and knowing many of the same places and people made me pretty glad to be doing what I do. The fascinations and the hardships seem to be pretty universal which is, for some reason, pretty comforting:

A 2001 tour with Pigface made me realize that I had come to dislike touring. It was just a series of episodes where you tried to find a clean bathroom and something to eat that won't poison you.

In that spirit we were shot across Australia half in an airplane and half in a van gorged and bursting with luggage and equipment. This is Ben, our Aussie minder opening the door and getting caught on the landslide.

The show in Fremantle was at one of my least favorite places on Earth. This strange little club is horribly ill-equipped to host any band with more than a banjo and harmonica in tow and the stage, which they refuse to cover, looks like the door to the X-men's secret lair. Brutal. That night, the same as the last time I was here I walked straight out the back door of the club, still listening to the ringing feedback of an amp on stage, and right back to the hotel. It is pretty defeating most everything seems that way when you are tired, hungry and worn out.

The last show was in Brisbane. I'm not even sure how it went, but I did get to see my friend James, who's wife just gave birth to their first child (and who they named Frankie Trouble). He was holding it together just barely. He treated a few of us to beers and his version of 'tapas' at his bar. After we gorged ourselves on 2 plates of all things fried we watched the Hoodoo Gurus play a few songs and then called it a night.

And just like that we were done....