Hi friends, it’s the Love Wombat here. What is the “chute”? Weeeelll… it’s a tipping point where you start to feel like there’s an inexorable slide down towards the end of the year. There’s just SO.MUCH.GOING.ON and you’ll feel like you have less and less control over it all as the onslaught of parties, events, deadlines, festivals etc form such a critical mass that they exert an accelerating gravitational pull on you dragging you down until you burn up on re-entry while all you really want to do is drink a cup of tea and reflect on what a crazy year it’s been.

But you can’t because it’s not the end of the year yet. It’s barely the end of the third quarter and you still have to talk about what’s coming up next.

So with that in mind… SAVE THESE DATES!

It’s not the years it’s the mileage

Ok, so maybe I’m not using that expression properly (inconceivable?) but I couldn’t think of anything else for the subheading. Yes, the band only has three more shows this year (and not until late November either) but an Offtopics newsletter wouldn’t be what it normally is without talking about a lot of other stuff that’s going on. And there’s a LOT to talk about. There’s non music stuff to talk about like my recent success coaching a fifth hockey Grand Final win for The Old Carey Hockey Club, there’s also the forthcoming Voice Referendum (spoiler: The Offtopics are all voting “Yes”), there’s an overdue reflection about the Comfort Music season at La Mama and then, there are all the “family gigs” by Offtopics players in their other bands. I’ll give them each a spruik at the end of the newsletter. So it’s not only our stuff that’s pouring into the chute for the last quarter of 2023.

But first… our gigs coming up!

Friday Session at The Post Office Hotel

The Offtopics return to The Post Office Hotel in Coburg for a fabulous Friday session. Two sets, free entry, beer, funk, rawk and good times. Last time we played there The Matildas won making the nation deliriously happy. We’re not saying the events are connected but according to most people on social media these days, causation and correlation are the same thing. You want the nation to be happy don’t you? Don’t risk it. Come to the gig. At the very least you’ll make the Love Wombat happy as it’s his birthday around then.

If a Facebook event is of any value to you, you’ll find one here.

There’s gold to be found in Eldorado

Musical GOLD that is. The Offtopics are returning to make an appearance at The Festival of Folk, Rhythm and Life in the first weekend of December. Eldorado is a tiny township just outside Wangaratta and this is the 27th year of the festival.

Speaking as a Wombat… I heartily endorse the efforts of the FRL Echidna (see above). My first appearance at FRL was back in 2004 and it was a little shakey, to say the least. We were there as The Grenadines (you can find their work on Spotify.) Later, that band matured into The Deans of Soul but back then a fledgling band rocked up for their first festival appearance only for the drummer’s stool to collapse as he got a cramp in his forearm. The bass player got stoned off his head and squirted the rhythm guitarist with warm lemonade. After that one of said rhythm guitarist’s patch leads died. By the time we sorted that out I think we’d managed to play one complete song before we were ushered off the stage. Somehow we survived and were invited back.

Since then, FRL has grown from a hedonistic party with some bands around a bonfire in the Skermer family back yard to a mature festival attracting approximately 3000 attendees of all ages. Over the years they’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Mittagundi Outdoor Education Centre with music, food, talks and children’s entertainment. It’s a solid weekend if you’re into live music and camping.

I recommend you see if you can get some tickets here.

The last gig for 2023 at The Coburg RSL

The last Offtopics gig for 2023 sees us return to The Coburg RSL on Saturday 9 December for an afternoon show. Free entry and two sets of free ranging, danceable choons will be on offer. If the weather’s good we’ll play outside and everyone can enjoy sunshine, food, music and the RSL’s excellently curated list of local beers.

We’re really looking forward to this show as it’s going to let us see out the year in our preferred laid-back and groovy style.

You can find a Facetious Book event here but honestly, I think we all know how diaries work by now. Just put it in your calendar and come along for a drink and a boogie before the end of the year.

Winners are grinners…

Some of you might not be aware that I have a parallel life in community sport – specifically hockey. I’ve been a player most of my life (there’s probably either a rap or a country song in that…) and a coach for the last decade. The 2023 winter season ended with my team winning their Grand Final. Here’s a photo of the team looking very pleased with themselves. I’m quite pleased too… but mostly I’m relieved. Someone once asked the legendary Australian Olympian, cricketer, parliamentarian and coach Ric Charlesworth what coaching was. He replied, “what’s coaching? It’s taking pressure and stress onto yourself to help other people succeed.” I’ve always remembered those words and I try to derive as much pleasure from having a part in other people’s success as winning my own. In the performing arts we usually don’t have much control over our own success. It’s all highly dependent on other people, what else is going on – even the weather plays a role. But we still get a full helping of stress and pressure. Sometimes the pressure is accidental and sometimes we make our own.

This year’s been no different. I got hit with a hockey ball very VERY hard in mid-July which resulted in an undiagnosed sub-chondral fracture of my femur. This meant that I ended up doing my sold out season of Comfort Music at La Mama standing on one leg. (Cue old man rant: kids today don’t know what it is to really push themselves. insert either or any of “soft”, “woke”, “snowflake” in the rant etc etc. Full disclosure here: I tried getting ChatGPT to write a rant about how “kids today don’t know how to work…” and it kept trying to placate me with:

“I understand your concern, but it’s important to approach this topic with a balanced perspective and avoid making sweeping generalizations about an entire generation. While it may seem like some young people today have difficulty with work habits, it’s crucial to remember that not all kids fit the same mold, and there are numerous factors at play.”

Bloody hell! I was looking for a piss-take and I got something more reasonable than anything you’d find in the letters column of any of the tabloids today! AI’s not replacing human creativity any time soon…)

So anyway, I’m proud of my stick to it-ness despite being injured. I wouldn’t have been so proud of myself if I’d pushed myself to the point of necrosis in my femur – but it turned out ok. By the time I got an MRI it had virtually healed completely. The season went great and I got a lot of warm responses. What next though?

The Comfort Music team are forming loose plans to do a tour of New Zealand in April 2024. We’re very much in the planning stages right now.

Comfort Music on Tour!

Between us we have a few contacts in Whangarei, Wellington and Queenstown. The show is basically me and an acoustic guitar telling stories. It doesn’t need a lot of tech so it can go anywhere really.

The show is SO low tech that it can be done in people’s homes. In fact, I’d always thought of it as a parlour show rather than a theatre piece. In the coming weeks we’ll be adding a page to The Offtopics’ website and you’ll be able to see what it takes to host your own performance of Comfort Music. It’s pretty easy really. All you have to do is get twenty or so of your friends together in your lounge room, have enough places for people to sit where everyone can see the show. It goes for about 50 minutes and then afterwards we can have some drinks and nibbles. Who needs to go out when I bring the entertainment to you?

Why we’re voting Yes in October

If we don’t often weigh in on the issues of the day it’s because we’re more focused on people having a good time. Our mission is to help you laugh, dance and clap your hands. BUT – it’s not accurate to say that The Offtopics are apolitical. It’s just that our politics are implicitly progressive rather than made explicit. It’s more by accident than intention that you haven’t seen The Offtopics at a benefit gig lately. (In fact, we were asked to play at a couple of events supporting the Yes campaign but the dates didn’t work for us. Huw and I were performing at our good friends’ wedding for one of them – see below – while I’m going to be on a flight for another.)

It’s also not my style to directly tell you what to do or how to think. Indulging in long, uninvited rants or lecturing people about the historical context of something… well that’s different – but I don’t tell you what to do after that. In this case, let’s just say, we are all voting Yes and here’s why.

Firstly, you might think that you don’t know any Aboriginal people and therefore this isn’t all that relevant to you, but you do know someone. Our drummer, Linc, is a Goreng Goreng man from Brisbane. He’s pro-Voice himself, but that’s not the reason I’m voting Yes. Linc and I have made music together for 20 years and we disagree about things from time to time but we agree about this.

You might think that us Offtopics are all bleeding-heart, inner city lefties who went all goo goo at John Farnham singing “You’re the voice” (what a banger, though) while Cathy Freeman won the gold and that’s why we’re voting Yes. Nope. Appeals to emotion or other normative arguments usually fail with us. We like facts. We like evidence. We don’t buy into scare campaigns based on questionable assertions.

The biggest reason why we’re voting Yes is because we hate corruption, waste and lack of transparency. We all remember when there was an institution that did some of the work the Voice would do. It was called ATSIC but the government of the day found it inconvenient and got rid of the entire body on the flimsiest of pretexts because they didn’t like the chairman. Imagine if ICAC was able to do the same in NSW? It would be like them saying “Gladys Berejiklian is corrupt” and then doing away with the entire NSW government. If you want to know why the Voice has to be enshrined in the constitution – that’s why. It’s to stop the political parties that are closest to the mining sector from doing away with it as soon as they’re in power.

Some people, particularly on the so-called progressive no side, have been saying, “The Voice will be powerless so it’s all pointless anyway” but that simply isn’t the case. While it’s true that the Voice can only advise government, even conservative constitutional scholars agree that there’s an implied obligation to listen to the advice. This doesn’t mean that they have to follow the advice but in practical terms it does mean that governments and bureaucrats have to justify when they choose to ignore what the Voice says. At the very least this leads to greater transparency around decision making. It avoids scenarios like the one in which a functioning alcohol detox centre in remote Queensland is shut down for no good reason while another is built a few kilometers down the road. Why did this happen? Well, as far as I could tell when I was looking into it was that, post election the new State government didn’t like that the centre had been built by their predecessors and there was an opportunity to help out the building contractor (who also happened to be a party donor). This kind of thing happens quite a bit and if you want to know why so much money that’s meant to help Close the Gap gets wasted, stories like this are the reason why.

The No Campaign say, “If you don’t know then vote No” but we say, “If you don’t know then find out.” and here’s a good place to start.

Offtopics Family Shows

Someone extremely ignorant said to me today, “In case you’re unaware, most musicians have different acts going on simultaneously”. They were being passive aggressive obviously. Normally I deal with passive aggression by pretending it doesn’t exist, but in this case, I’ve subscribed that individual to this mailing list, quoted them verbatim and soon I’ll be sending them this newsletter. How’s that for passive aggression?!

Will that individual immediately unsubscribe?

Probably!

Am I being petty?

Absolutely!

But if I wasn’t petty from time to time how would you notice the contrast when I did something altruistic? Speaking of which, here’s me promoting some other people’s shows.

First cab off the rank, Linc and the Deans of Soul are playing that Yes Campaign Benefit we couldn’t do on the 1st of October at Bar 303.

Huw and Chicha Ye Ye have a couple of shows coming up. One this Thursday night at Bar Oussou and another on the 10th of November at Brunswick Artists Bar

Rich has a Merlo Shindig with Short Order Schefs on 11th of November.

Tim’s band Johnny Longshot are playing in the Jamaican Music and Food Festival on 2nd December (after which he’ll haul his Holy Arsebutts up the Hume to FRL)

Hope to see you at one or all of these gigs!

That’s all the goss for now. There’ll most likely be one more newsletter for this year where we reflect on the highs, lows and medically induced in-betweens for 2023. Hopefully there’ll be some more to say about the 2024 NZ Tour and maybe even some teasers of future recording in the works. I might even have something to share from my collabs with La Auldist, but until then…

Love Wombat aka “The Funk Dynamo” burrowing out!

xxx