Sunday, May 10, 2020

Great Wog Boozes of the Inner West: Special lemonade, Tia Maria and Black Charlie



Extract: On the weekend after blowing some wages in a smoky Burwood TAB, dad would get together with me and cook up some bespoke alcohol. What could be more wholesome for a child than to help his father make illegal spirits?






“Well, you play that tarantella,
all the hounds will start to roar...”
Tom Waits, ‘Tango Till They’re Sore’


When I was a kid there was a whole underground world of ‘New Australian’ booze-making that I fear has disappeared.
Today when I see folks discussing their wine with sommelier-like crapulence I know I’d rather a Vegemite jar of Black Charlie poured from an old DA bottle, followed by Mrs Polluzzi’s duck egg linguine, all washed down with my father’s home-made limoncello or an espresso stained with his bespoke sambuca or amaretto.
Back in the day ‘special lemonade’ is what you used to ask for at a particular bottle-o in Strathfield, or a delicatessen in Leichhardt, and various other locations around the inner-west where you could get the key ingredient for home-made amaretto, limoncello, sambuca or Tia Maria. This was part of growing up on the edge of Sydney’s Inner  West – home-made Italian alcohol.
My father slaved away all week at a biscuit factory. First at Peek Freans in Ashfield (now the ginormous Bunnings on Parramatta Road) where he’d been tied to their wagon wheel, and later at Arnott’s – just a 15 minute walk away at dusk or dawn, depending upon the shift. We had all the Tim Tams we would ever need in the spare fridge down in the garage. The other thing the spare fridge kept, beside the odd leg of prosciutto, was booze.
Dad had his booze work-bench – an old desk he’d picked up somewhere – and on the weekend after blowing some wages in a smoky Burwood TAB we would get together and cook up some bespoke alcohol. What could be more wholesome for a child than to help his father make illegal spirits?
First of all you needed the ‘special lemonade’, which was essentially pure alcohol. Where it was distilled nobody seemed to know or care. But at around $6 for a 1.25 litre recycled-lemonade bottle of it, from which you could blend three or four bottles of liquor, it was good value.
Once you’ve got your alcohol base you grab your flavouring agent. These came in the form of little packets not much bigger than a box of Redheads called La Strega (The Witch). The Redheads comparison is appropriate as traditionally redheads, especially ones with green eyes, are considered witches in parts of southern Italy. La Strega packets had the classic hag-witch visage on the cover. Looking for these distinctive boxes as you perused a deli, bottle-o or shoemaker was one way of knowing whether or not this establishment might have ‘special lemonade’ under the counter.
Now you have your main ingredients you get yourself a pasta pot, fill it with boiling water, and stick a shitload of sugar in it. Half a supermarket packet, or something like that. My dad was usually availing himself of the spirituous produce of previous cooking sessions during this mixing process – measurements were intuitive, to say the least. However my father assured me that as a professional biscuit factory boilermaker he knew what he was doing. The Di Fonzos, after all, had survived the war through their alcohol-making talents. My father still relates the tale of how as a child on my great-grandfather’s vineyard in the Abruzzi mountains during World War II, when the occupation by first German and then American troops meant the staples of life were in short supply, he would be sent by his nonno to the chef of the occupying army of the day with a jar of Di Fonzo home-made grappa. The army chef would always readily barter for with ingredients from the army stores. Money might talk but in times of war a good shot of grappa screams.
Back at the work-bench you’re dissolving your shitload of sugar in your pasta pot of water boiled in the grease-stained garage kettle. Now you’re reading to mix in a portion (maybe a third or quarter) of your ‘special lemonade’ and then pore it all into a bottle. Preferably an old Galliano, whisky, cognac or at least wine bottle.
However as production increased, and with the introduction of Black Charlie wine (who we will touch upon later) such bottles would run dry, so my father had, in a moment of full assimilation, bought himself a beer bottle capping machine from a home brew shop. He wasn’t averse to an ale himself, especially after working on the house or yard, his shirtless back peeling layers of burnt skin in days when we never knew the word sunscreen. Empty longnecks were always around.
If he ever ran short he could shout over the fence to Mr Polluzzi who always had a ready supply of empty Resch’s DA (Dinner Ale) longies available. Dad joked that a lot of ‘New Australians’ bought DA because it was the easiest one to pronounce. He had a lot of lines like that.
Along with one-liners he had the odd song of his own he used to sing. He didn’t believe in having a radio in the car, they distracted from driving (of which he still boasts an unblemished record despite his cabby years). Hence our fire-engine-red Holden Belmont forever had the plastic radio compartment-cover sealed tight like it was the day in 1972 when we bought it down Parramatta Road. If music was needed on a drive he could pump out his infamous ditty about my Irish-Australian mother. All were encouraged to sing along with this delicate tarantella that went…

“Yackety-yack, blah-blah, blah-blah.
Yackety-yack, blah-blah, blah-blah.
That’s all I hear all day.
Yackety-yack, blah-blah, blah-blah.” (repeat till bored.)

Naturally he meant it all in a loving way.


So now pour your sugar, alcohol and water mixture into an old bottle and choose your La Strega flavour packet. Sambuca was the reg
ular go-to, followed by Amaretto. Among others we tried were the whisky flavour, which created what was to this day the worst whisky I’ve ever tasted. Best do like a band at La Gondola Reception Centre in Five Dock and stick to the trad Italian numbers.
Of course if you’re making limoncello, arancello or Tia Maria a different process takes place. For limoncello you replace the water with freshly squeezed lemon juice, no La Strega necessary. Arancello is the same thing but with oranges. My father insisted on only home-grown lemons or oranges from our backyard, which meant braving the heat, spiders and stink-bugs whilst picking them.
Likewise Tia Maria involved replacing the water component with espresso. What with the strength of the alcohol, which I would estimate at around 50%, and the espresso coffee, the Tia Maria hit you like a speedball with your body not knowing whether it was coming or going.
There were no preservatives in the limoncello or arancello. Hence a worrying skin of mould sometimes grew on the citrus pulp floating atop if cellared, or rather garaged, for long. A good shake of the bottle hid this from any guests and my father assured me once again, as a professional biscuit factory boilermaker, that the alcohol levels would be more than enough to kill any pesky fungus.
My father insisted that all his spirits be aged for at least 15 minutes, sometimes longer. This aging process was measured by my father puffing on a Dunhill red whilst using the never-washed garage knife to slice prosciutto or secure an anchovy.
A nice shake of the bottle, and some chilling in the case of limon or arancello, and it’s ready to be given to the first person who sets foot on the property. My parents are now in their mid-80s and too old for such shenanigans. But until these last few years no one could visit Conway Avenue without taking home a few bottles of home-made sambuca, amaretto or limoncello after a fine tasting and a meal that would bloat a boa constrictor. And perhaps a bag of slightly-askew factory-reject Tim Tams.  


The other bottling involved the aforementioned Black Charlie. Once a year my father and uncle would drive out to Liverpool to visit an old Sicilian known as Black Charlie who made the best vino, out there in semi-rural suburbia. There seemed a theme, even at Homebush Boys’ High, of Italians of Sicilian heritage being nicknamed ‘black’ because of their darker skin. There’s a joke from a Tarantino script there but I’m not touching it.
Black Charlie made his plonk on his farm probably not too far from where the Milat brothers sheltered from their Croat father’s beatings. in a farmhouse with no door or window facing the street. Perhaps the Milats drank Black Charlie? If so I wouldn’t hold it responsible for anything. The Tia Maria on the other hand…
According to my father, every Italian in Sydney knew when it was time to make the long, hot drive out and pick up a couple of barrels of Black Charlie. There was Black Charlie red and Black Charlie white. Nobody seemed to know or care what kind of grape it was. Following the European geographical system they would both be termed  ‘Liverpool region’ in style. Personally I can’t imagine the fine burghers of Mosman ever arguing over the pros and cons of a room-temp Warwick Farm versus a chilled Casula.
The barrels were around 50 litres and looked like the barrels industrial cleaning chemicals came in (I’m sure it was all perfectly sanitary). And this is really where the beer bottle capper became necessary – the wine had to be sucked through a tube and then into a DA bottle on a non-liquor-making Sunday, just as God intended.
In later years, when I visited my olds they would give me bottles of Black Charlie which I enjoyed taking to parties in Newtown just to see people’s reactions to its taste. You either loved it or hated it. It’s what wine must have tasted like in the days of ancient Rome when it was drunk in lieu of the filthy water, and when there were no such things as preservatives, chemical flavourings and health regulations regarding feet. It was basically old grape juice, and that’s pretty much what it tasted like, but you could feel the devil alcohol dancing underneath.
People still ask me at parties when I can get another bottle of Black Charlie or my dad’s limoncello. They say they never tasted anything like it before or since. I think they mean it as a compliment, but sadly Black Charlie has gone to the great vineyard in the sky. Dad’s still alive but his Holden Belmont was sold a few years ago as his days of driving and cooking liquors are behind him. The car was in great nick, having been garaged for most of its 40-odd years. I’m sure it was the only Belmont sold with its radio-compartment still sealed, the faint echo of a politically-incorrect tarantella forever echoing through the seats.

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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

benitodifonzo.com has been updated...

All my latest projects, such as the hit show "Hidden Sydney," which has received a second season after glowing reviews, and our Sydney Fringe 2016 hit "The Giant Worm Show," which recently received a grant to travel to Adelaide Fringe Festival 2017, have been added to benitodifonzo.com, as well as my show from Adelaide Fringe 2016, "Noir Revue," so go now and click through. You know you want to...

Click the screenshot below to go there...


Friday, March 04, 2016

“Will Sydneysiders Soon Have To Declare Themselves Cultural Refugees?”


 
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews recently tweeted, “Lockout laws. Compulsory IDs for cyclists. Next they'll be handing out floaties at Bondi beach.”

So will Melbourne set up camps to accept a flow of cyclists, musicians, hospitality workers and, essentially, anyone from Sydney who thinks there's more to life than driving an SUV from your suburban home to your 9-5 job, getting an early alcohol-free night, and then going a little crazy at the casino on the weekend? This appears to be the Sydney that Casino-Mike Baird wants to make, and he's succeeding.

First they brought in the restrictive anti-entertainment laws. Want to go to a private party? Tough, bottlo closed at 10pm. Want to go out to dinner after a show? Tough, bottlo closed at 10pm. I'll just get a kebab on King Street then? Nope, can't even do that. Want to see a band? Nope, all the venues have been shut down because of restrictive licensing laws. Want to ride your bike safely through the city? Get ready for ridiculous anti-cycling fines, or risk your life in streets where Casino-Mike has ripped up the bike lanes. Anyone who has ridden a bike in Sydney knows that, due to the dire lake of cycling infrastructure, one has to pop onto the footpath in various places for fear of being an easy target for the killer machines that have hijacked our highways. But do that now and you could get a fine equivalent to many people’s weekly pay-cheque! And riding on roads of the inner-west will only get more precarious if the travesty that is WestConnex waddles in. Essentially, safe cycling is now illegal in Sydney. Likewise wanting a bottle of wine with your dinner after 10pm. Likewise taking a drink to a private party. Likewise wanting to run, or work in, a live music venue.

Casino-Mike Baird is killing Sydney, and for people like me Melbourne begins to look like the only safe haven. Writer-performer, and former Simon Townsend's Wonderworld reporter, Wednesday Kennedy used the term 'Cultural Refugee' to describe why she felt the need to leave Australia during John Howard’s Prime Ministerial reign. The idea that one's cultural values were not only disrespected, but actually trampled upon, to the point where one's home becomes unliveable. I don't want to belittle those who are refugees in fear of their lives. I am not in that category - I can stay alive in Sydney, as long as I don't try and express or experience my culture. Nonetheless I'm beginning to feel like a cultural refugee. I can't ride my bike, I can't see a band, I can't even buy a bottle of plonk FFS! And of course, as someone who has often supplemented my meagre artistic and writing income by climbing over to the business side of the bar on occasion, my chances of work diminish with every venue that shuts down, seemingly daily.

What can I do? Will the Victorian government welcome us as we stream across the Albury-Wodonga border towards the promise of cultural freedom in Melbourne? Premier Andrews seems to understand our fears. Or do we just need to fly out of Oz altogether?

I don't want to leave Sydney - I have a life here, and furthermore a really good, rare deal on my flat, but when the sirens begin to wail, and you know the Casino barons’ brown-shirts are on the streets baying for miscreants like you, and you're stuck, unable to move for fear of fines or just having every option shut down in front of you, what can you do?

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Kinives, & Newtown - an unpunctured-prosepoem...


I awoke at 8 and was edgy, but then she seduced me (not that I put up a fight) and I fell back to sleep like the cliché I am, then it was 11am, I’d been snoring apparently, so I jumped out of  bed, put on my clothes from the night before, cut a slice of hard cheese on the counter, then put a pear in my pocket, and bid farewell, and I was off, into a storm-cloudy King St on a Saturday, where the streets were full of suburbanites on holiday, mixing with inner western freaks, and yuppie bankers who had bought in, and a women said she didn’t know the way, but if they were in Paddington she would (though I don’t know where they were going) and then I caught the bus outside the gay chemist by the Martin Luther King mural and at the next stop, bus packed for a Saturday, a local bag lady got on, and I was glad, because it felt like old Newtown, she had a dirty ocelot-print blanket around her and hair like a share house bathmat and she smelt like a week on the street and it was a gorgeous aroma within it’s context and she asked the driver pleasantly for a ticket to Broadway, and handed over $10 and because it was the weekend he didn’t tell her she needed a prepaid Oyster or Metro-Ten or some other inconvenient crap designed to make public transport less attractive and out of the reach of the poor, but I’ll get off my soapbox, because behind her, in delicate juxtaposition, was a family of three, and the father asked awkwardly if the bus went into the city, and he said, Yes, and they were a little freaked-out having stood behind ocelot print lady, but they got on, again with cash, and danced past her, she was sitting behind me, I could tell, and then I got off at the pool and did a quick 25 min swim, to sweat out the vino and relax the muscles for drum practice at home that arvo, and cool the nerves so as to freak-out just ever-so-slightly less about ‘that’ play, and about the conditions of my casual day gigs (one of whichs [is that a word?] conditions had candidly soured that week, boohoo, yeah) and it was the worst time to be at the pool because one side was taken up by seniors aquaerobics, and another by kiddie swim lessons, and ran into a friend, Glen, and other breeders whose morning (well, it was midday now) was ruined by sitting next to a pool watching their sprogs paddle, but there were three lanes in the middle, and I got in one, and as I swam I thought about how juicy that pear was that I had eaten from my pocket on the way, and would it be late enough to jump straight to lunch, bypassing breakfast - a nice, hot curry perhaps - and I was halfway through my 25 min swim and then before I knew I was under the shower and then the change rooms where nobody looks at one another, awkwardly (this seems an awkward planet for many people) and back out under the darkening sky on the bridge towards Abercrombie Street it was starting to rain, and I ran into old compoetriate, Tug, and my godson, Rock, and they were retreating from tennis against a wall, what I would have called two-touch as a kid, but done with a soccer ball, and they seemed not to know what I was talking about, but they offered a cup of tea as they climbed towards their garage door but I was in a rush to get home, for lunch/breakfast, and coffee/tea (as I’d not had that yet either/either) so I strolled through Redfern, which was looking more and more like Newtown every day, but that’s OK (as long as my rent stays stable) and noticed that the Newtown Vodafone shop had moved there, and seeing as my phone had been playing up and I was out of contract, I dropped in, but there was no shop assistant, and I waited another five minutes, spending the time trying to tell the difference between the seemingly identical phones (in fact they all looked the same as mine, which was shit, so why would these be any different?) and after briefly considering ripping off all the display phones (although they were probably just shells, and empty) I left, and things where uneventful (even more so) until I was walking through Australian Technology Park (what a ridiculous name for an old train works) and there was an enormously portly (OK, fat) man waddling towards me and I said, Hello, as we passed (rather uncharacteristically, perhaps I was still drunk? unlikely considering the swim, but I digress...)  and the portly man nodded and said, much to my surprise, Are you going to look at knives? And I stopped, and said, Excuse me? He said, Are you going to look at knives? I said, No I live around here, I’m going home, Oh, he said, OK, because if you were I was going to offer you my ticket, and I realised there must be a knife show in the old carriage sheds, a trade show sort of thing, but for knife makers (knifesmiths?) so I smiled and said, That sounds kind of odd out of context, and he just looked at me awry (though not awkwardly) and turned and waddled off towards Redfern Station, and that’s when I saw the sign alerting me that that there was indeed a knife show and I thought, why not, so I went into the old metal-works bit at the beginning of the Eveleigh-side of the old train carriage works (where my grandfather on the Irish side had once worked, and which I live next to) and I watched a blue-overalled blacksmith (knifesmith?) lady stick a metal pole into a gas-fired furnace and then pull it out and bang it down with some kind of foot pedalled industrial hammer straight out of a 1950s Warner Bros cartoon where the anthropomorphised hero or heroine would be getting crushed, and then another dude, older, perhaps her dad (because we like to think of quaint trades-people as family, and ignore the horrible TAFE course they probably met at) and he was banging some metal bit into a fire-place poker type thing and I thought, Oh, that’s how they make knives and shit. Makes sense. 
 
PS: it appears I left my swimmers at the pool...
PPS: next day, picked up swimmers from Sydney Uni pool where they'd been put in a box in the basement with a tag that said, "Vinito - will pick up Sunday"

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Molly #35: unpunctured prosepoem about a shit park in St Peters...


I woke her at one in the afternoon, and she still couldn’t talk, but I’d brought her lemonade and soup, and then we finished her articles and while the sun was still up I dragged her into the light (what there was of it) and we examined the Indian and Fijian markets of the Paris end of King St, (true), then we wandered through St. Peters where we found a secret café and yoga and salsa studios before settling in an ugly suburban park, where the oval was closed and flooded and a father and daughter played basketball on the saddest court you’ve ever seen and dusk came on and people walked home from shit jobs and I climbed over a dumped TV and sat on a filthy water tank with a rainbow behind me and recited a poem about how shit this park was (accompanied on a Hohner harmonica) as the trains rolled by and the planes flew over and the dogs shat steamy on the field and she laughed a sexy pneumonic laughter, and then it started to rain so we hid in the greasy 80s canteen and then we strolled up the back streets and looked at houses we wished we could afford to rent and bought some Fijian accoutrements and then we got home and did more work on the articles and opened the wine from the night before and everything was perfect. She took her antibiotics and we watched a documentary about dwarves. Then I walked home. Who needs a vacation? 

Friday, June 21, 2013

BenitoDiFonzo.com goes live!

Benito Di Fonzo's new website is now live at www.BenitoDiFonzo.com

Whilst Benito will be maintaining this blog be sure to go to BenitoDiFonzo.com to a fuller overview of Benito's latest and greatest schtick.


Monday, September 10, 2012

Benito sailing down the Amazon.com

NOVELISATION OF THE CHRONIC ILLS NOW AVAILABLE FOR ONLY $2.99 ON KINDLE, BARGAIN!


Go to

http://www.amazon.com/Chronic-Robert-Zimmerman-Dylan-ebook/dp/B009243DCM/ref=la_B009296KS6_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345942343&sr=1-1

or just search Benito Di Fonzo on Amazon

Saturday, August 04, 2012

STAGES, 2SER-FM SATURDAY AUGUST 4TH. This week Benito Di Fonzo talks to Mitchell from Simon Stone's Ingmar Bergman adaptation "Face to Face" (STC), and Shannon Murphy Director of "Circle Mirror Transformation" (Ensemble). Also reviews of "A Hoax" and "Punk Rock" by Regina and Trisha. Produced by Regina Botros. https://www.facebook.com/stages.twoserfm (http://www.2ser.com/shows/stages)

Monday, April 02, 2012

CLICK HERE TO GO TO BENITO AT 2012 SYDNEY WRITERS' FESTIVAL

YES, THE FATHER OF FONZO JOURNALISM WILL BE WAXING LYRICAL AT THE 2012 SYDNEY WRITERS' FESTIVAL. AND YOU CAN GO! AREN'T YOU LUCKY?

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Benito & Gerri host a roundup of this week in Sydney theatre (with Benito even panelling this time.)

Monday, November 07, 2011

Newtown Cheat Sheet

Ciao Magazine (http://ciaomagazine.com.au/) recently asked me to do a Newtown for dummies type piece in the lead up to the Newtown Festival this Sunday November 13th (where I will be MCing the poetry event in the Writers' Tent at 11am.) If you can't read it my own (unedited) copy is below.



Ciao Magazine’s Cheat Sheet to Newtown.
by Benito Di Fonzo.

“I never knew where I belonged … [but] on King Street I’m a king…”
John Kennedy’s Love Gone Wrong, 1985.

Newtown essentially squeezes Melbourne into a suburb of Sydney’s inner west, sans the climate of course.

Victoria Park Pool, where we will begin our tour, has been referred to by locals as Newtown Beach with it’s musicians, artists and nearby Glebe backpackers sunning themselves amongst the summer ants. Some argue Newtown begins here outside Sydney University, although it is literally Darlington. More correctly Newtown begins at Gould’s Books. Here at what is now pricier North Newtown, Socialist activist extraordinaire Bob Gould spent many a decade eyeing loose-fingered students lost amongst the aisles searching disordered piles for their own cheat sheets, perhaps pocketing some vintage porn in the process.

Now walk on, trying to forget what you said to that dame at the Jeff Duff gig at The Vanguard as you stumble past it, and grabbing one of Sydney’s friendliest falafels from Rowda Ya-Habibi. If you’re pedalling get your bike checked at Cheeky Monkey as you gaze down the majestic Moreton Bay Fig-lined Georgina Street at the once grand homes of Colonial gentry, now trophies for lawyers.

You’re hovering around the 1980s artist’s collective Alpha House, now commercial apartments (Alpha’s residents pushed to South King when it was redeveloped). You may want to grab a quick hair clip at Noddy’s On King whilst here. It won’t matter how it comes out because in Newtown you’ll probably be donning a dead man’s fedora. You can wander to the nearby St. Vinnie’s but your chances are better at C’s Flash Back, next to the neat little vegetarian restaurant lined with Buddhas.

Time for your first beer since the Lansdowne, so have one at the Marlborough. This formerly grungy hole for locals is now more for tourists, but it’s close to RPA if you feel the need to get your liver checked. Likewise a little further south the Coopers, formerly The Coopers Arms, formerly The Shakespeare. The ‘Shakey’ was once riddled with local musos (The Whitlams’ Tim Freedman still lives a few doors down if you’d like a refund) with a lobster ($20) grabbing one a ‘foil’ of grass in the back room. The Coopers is now glitzier and more law abiding. However local artist Val Nart’s King Street mural (which legend says he painted over many months for beers) still adorns a wall of the roofless upstairs bistro, old windows giving a fine view of the wildlife.

Some pubs look like they’ve raided Fox Studio’s props department for their outfitting. Kelly’s Irish Pub for example, called by locals The McDonald’s Pub as it is on the site of that rare thing - a McDonalds run out of town. Likewise the ZanziBar (formerly The Oxford) looks constructed from leftovers of a Baz Luhrmann remake of Lawrence of Arabia. The Bank Hotel is more Moulin Rouge upstairs now than the tough Islander bar of past days. However The Town Hall Hotel (AKA The Townie) whilst losing it’s heritage horseshoe bar, still remains largely a locals’ late-night hole of choice, with bands several times a week and a great view of the camel toe of King Street and Enmore Roads. The Sando also, which lost it’s way during the Pokie plague, has under the steerage of Tony Townsend become one of King Street’s best music venues, with headliners playing upstairs and free bands downstairs. Let’s stop and have a cheap Sando Lager and catch Australia’s sloppiest band The Hoo Haas, fronted by dishevelled local painter, reprobate and Newtown cafe addict Phil Ricketson.

Speaking of caffeine you’ll need some by now to soak up the alcohol. You’re nearby Buzzzbar, with it’s regular exhibitions, but why not sit outside Corelli’s across the road, a much loved haunt of those who wile away whole sunny days over frappes.

Speaking of musicians it’s important to note that, like New York cabbies, King Street buskers will be expecting their share of your change - be it locally raised Ilya and his crew scat-hip-hopping over live loops, or Maddox the bearded jazz bassist killing time between gigs. Your change may take them down into the dark centre of South King street, the feral end most tourists avoid. Grab pastizzis at The Maltese Cafe, a show at Newtown or New Theatres, some kitsch at Faster Pussycat, or bands at The Union, behind which hungover artists count change in communal gallery, studio and hovels of the new Alpha House to get them to The Botany View for beer and Rockabilly.

You’re more likely to find affordable ironic 70s body shirts and 50s fedoras down here, as well as the better of Newtown’s ubiquitous Thai restaurants.

You could even grab a guitar from Pete’s Musicians’ Market and some concoction from the Happy Herbs shop and join the buskers!

Newtown ends as it began, in a park, this time the smokestacks of Sydney Park beaconing the deadly Hume and St. Peters.

The alternative route from Newtown Station would take you up Enmore Road for a show at Notes, Enmore Theatre, or The Sly Fox. Perhaps one of Ali’s fine pide at Saray’s, or a classier meal amongst candlelight at Banks Thai or from New York trained local chef Sophie at Pickwick’s.

New mini bars such as The Green Room Lounge sit alongside bizarre op-shops such as The Cat Protection Society’s.

After grabbing a book from Better Read Than Dead, Berkelouw's, Art On King, or Gould’s, best to end your sojourn by veering off King at Newtown Square (dodging Hare Krsnas and ad hoc flea markets) and head up Australia Street. Grab a long-neck at the Courthouse Hotel, then wander through Camperdown Park (where Newtown Festival will be gated) for a traditional drink in St. Stephen’s cemetery. Poets like the late Michael Dransfield scribbled here, reclining under the ancient Moreton Bay, or the grave of Eliza Donnithorne (Dickens’ inspiration for Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham.)

'As night falls you’ll be accompanied by a murder or emos or perhaps resident poltergeist Bathsheba Ghost who has haunted the cemetery since 1848. The former head nurse was once described to Florence Nightingale as a “Sluttenly alcoholic.” She fits right in on King Street.

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BREAKOUT BOX
Tribes of Newtown (in chronological order)

- The Ancient Greeks
Newtown was reputedly named after a 19th Century tailor on the ZanziBar site called New Town Fashions, but it was the Greek migrants of the 1950s that gave Newtown it’s cosmopolitan feel. The Greeks began moving out in the 80s but wisely kept the leases. Aside from a multitude of houses they still own sites such as The Hub, The Cyprus Club (with it’s backgammon basement) and the tram sheds behind Newtown Station. The sheds and station are being developed into shops and flats so no doubt alleged familial bickering over The Hub will eventually end. There are even still a few, formerly illegal, Greek card clubs.

- The Students.
Newtown’s locality to Sydney University has always drawn students to it, creating the basis for a share-house culture of bars, bookstores, bands, and op-shops. They grow into yuppies, or never grow up and become artists.

- The Artists & Ferals.
With the late 1980s gentrification of Surry Hills artists and their ilk moved west for cheaper rents. Warehouses such as Alpha House and share-houses became their garret-studios. The colour, excitement and vibrancy of these alternative life-stylists combined well with the Mediterranean feel, making Newtown Sydney’s Bohemian epicentre.

- Young Urban Professionals (Yuppies)
Ironically, by the end of the 20th Century the cosmopolitan bohemianism created by decades of poor migrants and artists made Newtown a smart investment. The accompanying rent rise, and Pokie plague, meant that many of those that had given the area it’s unique flavour were driven to Marrickville, Redfern or Melbourne (AKA Mexico or Shelbyville).

Perhaps continuing gentrification will make Newtown unrecognisable in coming decades, but the migrants and bohemians will just be somewhere else by then, waiting for the real estate agents to follow.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Artists, Exhibitionists and Underbelly Rediscover Sydney's Vicious Razor Gangs (CNN Go)







This article was commissioned by CNN Go and originally appeared at
Razorhurst | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/sydney/life/mums-word-razorhursts-female-gangsters-145199#ixzz1SQHq1gr0 (click blog post headline to go to the CNN original)



Mum's the word on 'Razorhurst's' female gangsters


A play is being staged in secret in former sly-grog shops and brothels around the inner city, as a book, TV series and exhibition see unprecedented interest in Sydney's sleazy days gone-by


By Benito Di Fonzo 3 June, 2011

The stylish East Village Hotel in Darlinghurst has gone up in the world since it opened in 1918 under the name that still adorns its façade, “The Tradesman's Arms.”

It was an underworld criminal capital in a time of partial prohibition. After the introduction of strict anti-gun laws, gangs fought for control of the sex, cocaine and sly-grog trades with cutthroat razors. Inner city Kings Cross, Woolloomooloo, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills were collectively termed “Razorhurst.”

It was a time when female gangsters, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, lorded it over their respective bootlegging and brothel empires.

The notorious 1920s and 1930s era is now receiving unprecedented, retrospective attention in Sydney.

A play, "Mum’s In: Stories from Razorhurst," is due to begin in the former sly-grog shops and sex dens around the inner city. True to its underworld content, Sydneysiders have to unravel the secret venue from the Internet and give a password to enter.

This year’s Underbelly TV series will be based on Larry Writer’s book, "Razor." A photographic exhibition from the era is touring and even an opera is rumoured.

The Six O’clock Swill

The Tradesman’s Arms was once, as Larry Writer records in "Razor": “A bloodhouse with sawdust on the floor to soak up the spit and vomit.” It was populated by “prostitutes, pimps, pickpockets, muggers, con men, SP (starting-price) bookies and drug dealers.”

At sunset, things grew ugly. Temperance movements, unable to achieve full prohibition like their American counterparts, had nonetheless convinced politicians to enforce a six o’clock closing rule -- resulting in the infamous "six o’clock swill."

“You could buy as many beers as you wanted before six o’clock,” explains playwright, performer, singer and songwriter Vashti Hughes, who performs in the upcoming "Mum’s In: Stories from Razorhurst." “At quarter to six you could say I want 10 schooners and they’d sell them to you, and then you’d have to try and skol them because they would kick you out and shut the doors at six.”

Anyone not content to follow church leaders’ suggestions and use early closing to spend more quality time with their families, or for those who didn’t have families, there was a huge hole in the market.

“People wanted someone to kick on to,” says Hughes.

The Female Gangsters


Notorious hooker Nellie Cameron, photographed by police on July 29, 1930.

Kate Leigh escaped to Sydney from her abusive family in Dubbo at the age of 10. Tilly Devine was a London prostitute by the age of 12 before emigrating "Down Under" with a Digger who claimed to own a kangaroo station.

The women became two of the wealthiest, powerful and most ruthless people in Australia.

Kate Leigh operated a score of illegal "sly-grog shops" during the 1920s and 1930s across “Razorhurst.” Tilly Devine became a brothel matriarch.

"Mum’s In." (That’s the password)



Vashti Hughes (and only Vashti Hughes) stars in "Mum's In: Stories from Razorhurst."

Leigh and Devine are two of several characters Hughes will bring back to life in her one-women show "Mum’s In: Stories from Razorhurst."

Hughes will embody in monologues and songs (co-written with partner Ross Johnston) the lives of Sydney criminals. Sly-grog queen Kate Leigh, brothel matriarch Tilly Devine, Sydney’s most sought-after prostitute Nellie Cameron, as well as the equally ruthless Frank Green and leader of the Darlinghurst Push razor gang, Guido Caletti.

Hughes will be staging her show amidst Tilly’s former brothels and Leigh’s sly-grog shops. In keeping with the underground nature of the original venues, audiences will have to find the location via a website (www.mumsin.com.au)

Upon reaching the door they will have to give the traditional password, "Mum’s in" before being allowed entry and sipping their first jam jar of sly-grog.

Hughes won’t be shying away from that violence either.

“It is comedy cabaret,” says Hughes, “but it’s got a lot of grotesque violence in it. Comic grotesque violence, with songs.”

Those who turn up in 1920s and 1930s clothing will receive a discount, which is appropriate given that both Tilly and Kate were seen as exotically glamorous in their time. In fact when Kate Leigh was arrested at the Melbourne Cup, her rich furs and jewels received as much attention as her crimes, and Tilly Devine was reported to wear twice as many rings as she had fingers.

Razor

Hughes is not the only artist pouring life back into the anti-heroes of depression-era Sydney. Australian TV screens will soon be awash with "Underbelly: Razor," the Nine Network’s adaptation of Larry Writer’s non-fiction "Razor," first published in 2001.

“To have two women crime bosses who were so tough and so ruthless ... They clawed their way up to the top in a hard man’s milieu,” says Larry Writer in "Razor," “They had to be tougher, smarter and nastier than the male of the species.”

Writer puts this renewed interest down to the death of the cultural cringe concerning our criminals.

“For so long,” says Writer, “there has been a feeling that our criminals and our heroes could not be as interesting as those overseas. All of a sudden there’s a realisation that in Tilly Divine and Kate Leigh and Guido and Frank we have some really wonderful characters."

"You can walk down Palmer Street, you can walk around Kings Cross, and though a lot of it’s changed, a lot of it hasn’t.”

Femme Fatale: The Female Criminal


Nerida Campbell, curator of the Justice & Police Museum’s nationally touring exhibition, "Femme Fatale: The Female Criminal," feels Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine may be perceived as being crueler because of their sex.

“I think society’s expectations of them were so much higher because they were women. They were expected to be feminine [but] these women were ruthless and violent.”


A journey into Sydney's sleazy foundations


“Mum’s In: Stories from Razorhurst,” 8 p.m., June 8–11 and June 16–18. Contact "Mum" at www.mumsin.com.au for secret Darlinghurst location. $30/$20 for those in 1930s attire –- cash only at the door (just like the old days).

Pan Macmillan will publish the “Underbelly” tie-in rerelease of Larry Writer’s “Razor” in July.

“Underbelly: Razor”
is scheduled to air on Channel 9 in September.

“Femme Fatale: The Female Criminal”
is touring nationally until June 2012. See www.hht.net.au for locations.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Benito talks with Simon Stone and Thomas M. Wright re "Baal" at the STC for CNN Go


Below is the unedited copy of an article I wrote for www.CNNGo.com
The edited article originally appeared at http://www.cnngo.com/sydney/play/perverted-drunkard-murderous-monster-sydney-theatre-company-brings-baal-back-life-178630

“Baal”
by Benito Di Fonzo.

It’s raining on the stage of The Wharf theatre, literally gallons of water galloping down upon a dirty mattress where five naked women and two men, one in stilettoes, caress and kiss one another. Facing them a sixth girl in dark glasses plays an electric guitar, standing upon an amp somehow unhindered by the storm splashing down. A man named after one of the Old Testament’s seven princes of Hell sings them a dark ballad from the opposing corner, then downs a can of bourbon and coke, before bludgeoning the head of his male lover. Welcome to Baal’s house.

At the tender age of 20 Bertolt Brecht, still a university student in 1918, penned his first play Baal. Baal is a beautifully dark poem chronicling the decadent downward spiral of an almost-famous singer and poet on Munich’s debauched cabaret circuit. Baal is a primitive monster, a fallen god from an earlier time, but of a different order to his Old Testament namesake.

“He’s a social misfit,” says translator and director Simon Stone. “We meet [Baal] at the point that he’s already an outsider and it’s unsure whether he’s ever got along in some socially condoned way with the rest of the world. By the time we meet him he shows no desire, as well as a complete incapacity, to live amongst people in a healthy, social way. He’s an antihero and really anti-social and that’s what a lot of his work as an artist, poet, songwriter derives from. He’s constantly questioning the way things in society are set up in his art, and people find that fascinating.”

35 years before Brecht penned his tale of Bacchanalian decent countryman Friedrich Nietzsche had written of the Übermensch, the Superman, a man beyond societal mores who creates his own life code.

“I have absolutely no doubt Brecht would have been reading Nietzsche,” says Stone, “but people get when they see this show that there is absolutely no condoning whatsoever of Baal’s behaviour. It is a desolate view. People love watching Don Giovanni, going ‘How many women has he slept with now, 3,042?’ And it’s funny, but Brecht had the bravery to paint a picture of someone who actually behaves like that and portray the reality of the consequences for someone who has chosen to opt out of the social contract. I think it’s not a mistake to assume that Brecht was being fairly scathing of the idea that there are certain people who are allowed to behave in certain ways because of a certain kind of socially important output they can give in the form of their creativity.”

However like so many other artists in the public eye – be it a Sheen, Manson or Cobain – the public disapproval is only equalled by their fascination with such a protagonist. Why is that?

“At a certain point in our upbringing,” says Stone, “we learnt that it’s easier to get on in the world by accepting the rules that adults were teaching us and yet there’s a massive instinctual part of us that wishes we could have just done whatever we wanted for the rest of our lives. So when we come across someone who actually never grew up, who never accepted the rules that were being laid down, who said no, fuck this, this is my way of living, if you don’t like it then move on, then there’s this amazing allure. You go (sighs) maybe there is a version of life where I don’t have accept to do things I don’t want to do?”

Thomas M. Wright who plays Baal adds, “Mike Tyson or Charles Manson or any of these people become like a fractured prism through which you can see a human being, they’re like a million pieces of shattered glass and we’re shining a light through it and watching it dance, these people who are eaten alive and eat back.”

Wright has no doubts about just how dark a monster he is embodying.

“I have people come up to me all the time and say ‘oh I’ve known a few Baals in my time,’ and it’s like this guy wakes up in the morning a rapist and a murderer and goes to bed a rapist and a murderer, he didn’t [just] sleep with your friend after he told you that he liked you!”

However while not condoning the actions of a man who Stone prefers to call omni or poly-sexual rather than bi-sexual –

“I think he wouldn’t necessarily turn down having sex with an animal,” he says.

“Or a tree,” adds Wright, “or the ground. The difficult thing for Baal to accept is why can’t we fuck plants? Literally, why can’t we?”

Brecht seems to be saying that it is perhaps part of the artist’s role in society to explore these dark, wet woods.

“I think what he’s saying about artists,” says Stone, “is that they sign a very dangerous pact with the devil. If you want to be able to bring the brutal truth, if there is such a thing as truth, to the surface, then you need to accept that that truth is going to start weighing on you and will start affecting the way your brain works. If you open yourself to the void the void will eventually swallow you up. And the dangerous thing in being an artist is that you do have to look at the incredibly dark parts of human existence because that’s what good drama is about, and if you do that too often you’ll go mad.”

“By the time we get to Baal,” adds Wright, “he’s so open to that black hole that it’s totally inescapable.”

“Yeah,” says Stone, “you’re watching a man in the last instance before he gets sucked in [to the void.]”

Composer Stefan Gregory has arranged Brecht’s original songs for electric guitar and Baal delivers these dark ballads in a style reminiscent of a meeting between Kurt Cobain, Tex Perkins and Nick Cave as he swings betwixt poet and caveman. Surely playing such a monster night after night must take a toll on Wright’s own psyche?

“No, you know, the show goes for an hour and then I go and have a coffee.”

#

"Baal"

written by Bertolt Brecht.

Directed by Simon Stone.

Sydney Theatre Company, The Wharf, Pier 4 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay.

Now until 11 June, 2011.

$30 - $77

(02) 9250 1777

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Critical Stages take on Chronic Ills for National Touring

Critical Stages are now handling "The Chronic Ills of Robert Zimmerman, AKA Bob Dylan (A Lie): A Theatrical Talking Blues & Glissendorf." Their first production was last years Seymour Centre season, after The Chronic Ills won one of two places in BITE (Best of Independent Theatre.) Info on upcoming productions will be posted here and on Critical Stages Chronic Ills page -

(insert below or click on title of this post)
http://www.criticalstages.com.au/page/the_chronic_ills_of_robert_zimmerman_aka_bob_dylan_a_lie.html



Friday, April 15, 2011

30 Great Short Stories30 Great Short Stories by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As a young man I read Somerset Maugham's novel 'Cakes & Ale' and it did not, from memory, make an outstanding impression upon me. Perhaps I was too young to appreciate it, or perhaps the novel is not Maugham's medium?



I have decided now that the latter is the case since, whilst on holiday in the Southern Highlands at the country home of a generous patron, I started reading Maugham's collected short stories (three volumes of the four volume set occupying the lake-side cottages small library) and was blown away not so much by the stories events as by Maugham's magnificently elegant writing style.



Reading one of Maugham's short stories is like lunching in the tropical sun with a glass of Pims or Pastis de Marseille (both of which were on hand in Burrawang, near my reading-hammock) whereupon you are joined by the most witty, erudite and charming person you're ever likely to meet. And then he tells you a tall tale.



I particularly like the way Maugham switches between long, almost ramblingly convoluted, many paragraphed, sentences. To short tight ones. A literary music of the highest order.



Upon my return to the big smoke I rushed to Gould's Book Arcade, Newtown, and finally, amongst the piles of mouldering tomes and kipping inner-western addicts that occupied the aisles of the last of Sydney's great second-hand book warehouses, I found this old hardcover. Whilst not the Complete I was looking for it is rather a selection of thirty of the best stories from the four-volume set. I will, at some later time read all four volumes, but this is a good start, and a great traveller.



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Thursday, January 20, 2011

A review of Keith Richards' 'Life' in the form of a 2,500 word monologueness spoof, AKA "One Day In The Life of The Human Riff.”

Life: Keith RichardsLife: Keith Richards by Keith Richards

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A review of Keith Richards' 'Life' in the form of a 2,500 word monologueness spoof, AKA "One Day In The Life of The Human Riff.”



So by lunch time we’re driving through Stangefruit, Mississippi. We’ve got three runaway Mexicans in the boot, each carrying 25 balloons of charlie up their jacksy, and a 15 year old transsexual Moroccan kid Bill Burroughs had left in the back seat with a beaker of smack in shim’s silicon tits. Just another day in the life of the human riff let me tell you.

We were stopped outside town by a couple of cops who looked like they hadn’t slept in weeks. When we explained we were preachers from England - hence the hair, the communion wafers, and the kid - they confiscated the vehicle and threatened to throw us across the pond, till my lawyer turned up with a drunken judge, the senator for Mississippi and a series of Polaroids of a non-descript scene involving a yak, seven acrobats, and a lawn trimmer. So they threw us back the keys and told us never to burrow through their borough no more, but I just spit and nodded, fucken coppers, all queers, and not in a nice way let me tell you. But that’s just the way life is when you’re the greatest rock guitarist of all time. I’m sweating, it must be the humility.

Let me find the 1 and begin at the in then.



I was born at dawn in a scum pit on the outskirts of Dartboard. We were beaten awake by the police and made to cover ourselves in the muck of the pit and make our way to the local school where they would teach us naught but how to be muck gleaners for the land owners thereabouts. With that soot and shit on my face from my early morn I knew in my heart I was a black man, never a proper pale English git.

By the morning tea horn, a sound our landlord created with a cat, a leather strap, and my younger cousin Nathan, I’d decided to do a runner, and by mugging a rich git I met on the tube and stealing his ration card I pretended I was an arts student called Jagger where I fitted right in amongst the reprobates of aspiring bohemia.

By lunchtime I was bored with the whole bag and teamed up with some likely lads who were playing guitar under a tree in the school’s yard. I beat them silly until they let me join their band and so that rolling bag of bones was born, Brian on sitar, Ian on keys, and me on a guitar I’d stolen off the local vicar. The teachers began saying something about getting back into class so that could get us gigs designing advertisements for Babylonia or some such guff, so we did a runner and moved into the basement of a pub on Dean Street, Soho called The Pirate’s Bitch. They wouldn’t serve me at first as I was naked but for the stain of black muck, so I wandered into the street, threw on whatever rags I found lying around, and went back in and told them firmly that we were the entertainment for the evening. When they asked where was our rig Brian was stumped until a boy named Wyman wandered in and tried to sell the publican a stolen PA system, to which we all plugged in and climbed the charts, wallpaper peeling.

We hung at The Pirate’s Bitch for much of the afternoon, sucking on the leaking pipes of Watney’s Red Barrel and eating the crisps that fell through the grate from the firm of lawyers what lived upstairs from us. One day the lawyers came down and informed us that through the magic of the radiogram what had been perfected during the war our last six jams where a hit in the United States, and they wanted to fly us over the pond. We didn’t have the heart to tell them they weren’t our songs, what with them being rather old negro spirituals and blues what white devils in the US had through some physical peculiarity bestowed on them by Jehovah been unable to hear until they was played by us sons of the dying Empire. An anomaly that still baffles biologists to this day, or so I hear.

The lawyers bunged us all into a plane so swiftly that I still hadn’t had time to wipe the pit muck from my features, so when we did arrive in the States there was still some confusion as to my native hue, and hence we were played on both the coloured and white radio stations, most Americans assuming London was some borough of Boston or some such guff. Charlie the maître d' at the hotel where they bunged us was short of a buck so we let him sit in on drums, and it turned out he had quite a talent for it, even though he admitted he hated the music. Likewise little Mick the bellboy who tagged along beside him, a thick git with a minuscule prick but elephantitis of the bollocks what gave him a unique style of dancing that strangely endeared me to him, god bless the little bugger.

Halfway through the first set I realised I had no more Chuck Berry numbers up my sleeve and all the boys were looking to me. I said, “we’ll be back after this break,” and I ran to the bog only to find the destitute and whistling 300 pound form of Howlin’ Wolf whitewashing the johns in his paint-spattered overalls. As I spattered the rim of the bowl with a little of my own London smokestack I told him my predicament, and he in return taught me how to play the blues.

He said, “Just pick up that guitar Blind Boy Slim left by the water cooler and strum it with that broken bottle neck on the floor. You don’t have to know no chords or nothing, it’s in banjo tuning, open G slide, just wipe off the blood before you start.”

“What about the words Mr Wolf?” I said.

“Damn boy, make a little story over the top about how ragged, sad and horny life can be and you’re with it.”

So I wiped me arse, thanked the Wolf and stumbled back to the stage, grabbing said guitar from beside the water cooler. I grabbed it a little too eagerly, resulting in my breaking the sixth string and smashing the bottle-neck slide, so five string guitar in slide tuning it had to be, I’d just figure out the fingerings as I went along. And so it is and so it will always be.

Later after the gig when John Lennon dosed us on LSD and gave us a lift to the airport in his Bentley he verified that he’d had much the same experience, only with Muddy Waters in a Dole office in Liverpool while he was bashing McCartney for his milk money.



When we got back to Old Blighty we’d gained a few hours and a few thousand quid, but 98 per cent of it would have to go to Her Majesty for the sour milk we’d been given as kids and the new teeth my granpop had got on the National Health, or so Mick informed me, so I banged the poor blighter with a rifle I’d picked up in a Texas drug store and he has never walked the same again. I apologised as I put the dosh in a brown paper bag and we went looking for somewhere to hide it.

We decided on a place in the country, a straw thatched cottage outside Stonehenge, and hung there the rest of the morning having all the drugs and women we could eat. We had a dandy lot round for pink gins and a pet junkie that we milked hourly for heroin, everything a Englishman could need. But of course by the time we were telling Charlie what to cook up for lunch Mr Plod had to turn up and piss on the whole damn scene.

The cops dragged us up into the Old Bailey but it turns out they’d forgotten the pot. All they had was Marianne Faithful’s smack-soiled bathmat and some dead spliffs. The judge sentenced me to life nonetheless, deciding I was the ringleader of the whole shebang, which I was.

Luckily the prison van got a puncture on the way to Wormwood Scrubs and while the boys were changing tires Ronnie Biggs and I did a runner. We decided we better part ways to throw off the beagles so he went to Spain and I holed up in a lovely little hashish palace in Tangiers were Brian’s old bird Anita and I picked up a nasty case of Bill Burroughs for our troubles.

During a game of Missouri Lame Mule Snap I’d won a palace in the South of France from some dispossessed Russian royal, and when Anita and I arrived there we learnt that by providence both Charlie and Mick had gained employment once again as bouncer and busboy, so I pulled out the old Telecaster and we jammed on a few tunes whilst in exile in rooms in the basement.

Things got ugly however. Anita and I had become hooked on hummus whilst in Tangiers and unbeknownst to the rest of us she’d had a container load of the chickpea based junk flown in and transported by the portable studio truck back to our palace where she had had the engineers and photographers, who circumstance demanded we employ now, not to mention her bevy of pet tabouli addicts she kept in a mini-bus outside the East wing, fill the swimming pool with the Levantine Arab spread as an early afternoon surprise. But Brian, who we had left in a veterinary clinic outside Paris during our Moroccan sojourn, had jumped into the pool and drowned in the wheaten coloured sea of chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. He was found by the gardeners who immediately informed the gendarmes, so I decided to split.

I jumped in my speedboat, pointed it due South, and stuck my Telecaster in the steering wheel while I had a siesta. When I woke it was almost din-dins and I was on the filthiest shore I’d seen since that childhood holiday in Bournemouth. I wandered through the faecal sea-water and finding a young lady with a packet of Mandrax and an eye dropper lolling by the Pavilion I was informed I’d discovered St. Kilda Beach. So I claimed it in the name of Her Majesty and went back to this bird’s house on the outskirts of Melbourne suburbia. I must say I adapted nicely to suburban Australian existence that afternoon and within the hour I was signed on to the rock n’ roll and spending my first fortnightly payment on VB and pudding for her sprog what I done sit while she scoured the city for quaaludes and greens. It was a happy dinner indeed and I would have stayed the night if Mick hadn’t turned up suddenly with my suitcases and I realized the silly queer had been trailed the whole way by Anita and the bevy of gendarmes what now followed her, not to mention a horny black-faced Marlon Brando on a bicycle looking to gun down Terry Southern. It would be an ugly scene if they found me so I jumped back into my speedboat and didn’t stop till I reached a Jamaica, where I knew they wouldn’t let Anita in on account of her accent. It was late evening by then and the only light came from the crown of an enormous volcano above the beach from which a pungent odour emitted.

Suddenly I was surrounded in the night and I realized that I had been taken hostage by a band of vicious Rastafari pirates. All looked dire till I pulled out my five string and strummed a little Jimmy Cliff. I explained that I wasn’t really the white Babylonian devil I appeared but rather a brother musician blackened deep in his soul by the muck of working class London. The leader of the band, who called themselves the Legless Angels, pulled a reassuring smirk then passed me a hookah pipe that I observed went into the ground at the mountains feet. The Rastafari pirate king explained that this pipe went straight into the volcano. Jah, he explained, had seen fit to fill the bowl at the volcano’s crown with the most powerful cannabis plants in existence. This hierophant herb was constantly heated by the molten lava stirred by the white devils Jehovah had imprisoned beneath it, all for the medicinal service of the pirates and their kin. If I truly was a brother then Jah would grant me the power to pull the cone, but if I was a Babylonian devil attempting to deceive them Jah would see that I was sucked through the hookah the moment my lips touched it and hence into Satanic service in the volcanic basement.

It was quite an effort but I pulled the cone cleaner than Haile Selassie’s underdaks and a roar of cheers and drumbeats arose as they carried me to their mountainous kingdom on high where, they explained, no gendarme or Mr Plod of any proportion would dare take arms against them.

And that’s where I remained the night, smoking through till the morning and jamming for Jah with the Legless Angels. At dawn they had me pay for my board and whatnot by making it over to the USA in various guises so as to flog a few of my musical wares and the odd bag of weed. The shit I sold Mick was just parsley.



So that’s just a normal day in the life of a human riff, honestly, no exaggeration.

I’d love to chat but I’ve just dropped a blue, might be time for a kip. Catch you on the next tour, cheers, and if the Shepard’s pie arrives just wake me up.









THE END



by Benito Di Fonzo.



DECEMBER 2010/JANUARY 2011.







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