Peter Thornton Writings

Inner-West girls? Who, Emma Tom?

2009-02-01T19:35:00.004Z

Republished from butterboxmedia.com

Dave McCormack & The Polaroids: Hopetoun Hotel. Saturday 12th December, 2004.

If I didn’t know any better, (granted, an unpersuasive opener) I’d declare covers the new black. Not cover bands, which whatever colour they come in - and puce immediately springs to mind - are insipid and toothless. But cover versions of mutant translation that tint a set with diversity extending it to the stars and creating an engaging musical mongrel. But then, ain’t that new black thing kinda redundant?

During their set Dave McCormack & The Polaroids covered Iggy Pop’s, “I’m Bored” and, “Sister Golden Hair” by America. Dave also downed tools to harmonize for Miss French during a melancholic rendering of Wham’s, “Last Christmas.” “Living La Vida Loca” closed the night’s bill as Dave fronted Astro Tabasco who had reappeared after a speedy setup following The Polaroids’ encore.

In searching for integrity Dave’s knack of writing graphically about his past in terms of the present blows out to barbwire hilarity on his latest album, The Truth About Love. From which a few songs were incorporated into the night’s set. While the remainder came from the alien-in-paradise miscellany of its predecessor: Candy [DasKong p/l; 2002].

From the blood-on-the-ground stance on gender relations he took on his previous album, Dave’s emerged with a poolside repartee-type of dryness on this latest release. Still, they’re a great bunch of stories, if only crying out for a coherent thesis strong enough to hold them together. He consciously frames obsession around the inevitable fact that he isn’t a wartless paragon in concise and approachable ways without overwriting, but their live auditory interpretation failed to rile up the emotional core like the songs from Candy did. And particularly like the stuff his earlier band Custard once did. Standing against the Hoey’s brickwork, below the sign announcing what feedbag possibilities are available in Tong’s Kitchen, these new songs sounded to me like a 50-something hormonally ‘challenged’ woman of low self-regard, bolstering her self-imposed mediocrity by complaining, unconvincingly, to her equally barren peers about some received (and sought, obviously…) attention from past lovers. Admittedly it’s a role reversal, but still, it’s a narrative and analytical equivalent of crying somewhat incoherently into a beer. Despite this periodic ungainliness, his music, particularly at the top end with its emphasized melody over the steady beat of drum and bass lines unquestionably suits his voice, which hacks its way sentence by sentence through blues, R&B and soul towards pure rock and roll, (where there’s always gonna be a little quasi-noble bitterness anyway). To me though, the earlier girlophobia stuff showed more honesty on the night than The Truth... did.

The song, “The Inner West,” with its implacable bass and sixties-style organ sounded great. Demonstrating many of the details that made (shrewd observers may notice the unfortunate use of the past tense) rock so genuinely powerful. Like when a situation specific to the songwriter is turned into a universal while narrowly avoiding the tag of perpetual (Pop) adolescence. With a credible human understanding - all of his own too - he sang as if the song were new to him when he intoned gravely, “The inner west man, they (sic) got the beautiful girls” and then, in a side-of-the-mouth deference to first person preservation he added “And I wish I’d never seen them.” All the time his Strat’s notes fell forcefully into the air as his innocence curdled into cynicism.

The set’s ducking, weaving and surmounting despair disappointingly gave way to fraudulence as uneven as a failed Vegas lounge act doing folksy shtick at a seaside hotel. In fact, it was so cover band it belonged somewhere else entirely. (At this point I’ll forgo suggesting North Sydney’s Rag & Fanny Late Bloomers Late Night Lonely Hearts Club, but it’d be a likely starting point).

Kurt Cobain once remarked that the difference between Indy music (in the strictly genre sense) and rock music (in The Rock sense) was: Indy bands usually title a song with no reference whatsoever to its subject matter. It’s a manifestly obvious opinion, or at least it was. These days however, especially in the area of performance, it’s a complication. Dividing preconceptions - those of the artist and his or her audience - can overlap into a variety show format tightrope walk that often drags a good rock show down. Anyway, coupled with a vastly annoying and pointless monologue, Dave launched into some kinda Harpo the Hypnotist enterprise hinting to the girls in the audience that nirvana would be found in his eyes if only they’d gaze, longingly, into them. A joke no doubt, but with his complaints about it being, “Too hot to play…” (from someone who proudly announced his BrisBoganVille - that is to say: sub tropical heritage) and a throwaway line about how his fellow band member had, “Wrote this next one in the van on the way over tonight,” (said twice in case the implied piquancy fell on deaf ears) the gig derailed and, erm, shortsightedly, the opaqueness of his conviction acted as a counterforce to the desired continuity of rowdy rock resonance. In a sense it was one of those music-biz betrayals, in my opinion it was more laziness than anything else.

Anyway, backed by Astro Tabasco and taking a stroll through the crowd during the final songs he closed the night. I decided to temporarily abandon the age-old joy of picking who was a fake and who was for real in favour of some real tongue-in-cheek fiction.

- Peter Thornton November, 2004

If Bush's enemy was so powerful, how come it only took 2 weeks to take their country?

2009-02-01T18:56:00.005Z

Republished from Butterboxmedia.com

Marty Willson-Piper and the Mood Maidens: The Hopetoun Hotel. Wednesday 3rd November, 2004

As the information broke that the extended Wars-R-Us family had negotiated yet another term of office, (it’s back to the business of achieving those sales targets - with extreme prejudice) Marty Willson-Piper took his blast of rage and love to the Hopetoun Hotel for a mesmeric midweek gig.

Picture a girl with flowers in her hair circulating the room offering incence sticks to punters. Or Marty, all Macleans smile and white cat heat, reluctantly interrupting the background muse of Deep Purple (what? No Sgt. Peppers?) to weld the direst cliches of vaudeville onto a few small declamatory non-tunes of his own.

The abiding discontentment created by the Bush mission statement-style of rhetoric - a wretched squawl that has made me most aware that I am alive in hell over the last few years - encouraged the fiendish Manchester wordsmith to wear his hip taste upon a sleeve threadbare with the punk dichotomy of vicarious pain. It’s the only reasonable assumption I can make after listening to him, unless of course I subtitle this with Willson-Piper’s own off-the-cuff aside: “the man who read poetry at The Hopetoun Hotel.”

Breathing life into “The Pest” from John Cooper Clark’s Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt, his razor wrapped in silk delivery cut into both sides of the moral axis with a fluent mix of self-conscious artiness and rich, nimble glee. His throwback style helped garner a few positive mumblings from the crowd with its quasi-noble resurrection of past heroics and wound-up, unbridled passion. Marking the early part of the set with a big, blind enthusiasm for stomping on the self-styled social moralizing of the imbecilic and treacherous la famiglia Bush, Marty’s brazen talent had a presence of such finely exaggerated melodrama he reduced the whole burlesque fiasco of strained relations between Bush Snr. and his loose-screwed (as in an Ikea wardrobe) son down to the self-indulgent pantomime it really is.

During the 80’s, Willson-Piper’s band The Church made a comfortable living with some largely indefinable room spray that had us kids of the day reaching out for the things we didn’t quite understand, but felt as if we’d like to. Their finely honed observations of pompous social sentiment helped turn the prevailing epidemic of dinosaur proportions: punk’s boredom and indifference - back into the icy cave of capitulation where it belonged. Despite classic rock radio stations shamelessly anointing The Church by soundtracking their eye-in-the-sky traffic reports (or some other crap) with the band’s ‘hits’, The Church helped channel Punk’s late 70’s Us v Them derailment from becoming something so mindnumbingly boring that its own narcissistic righteousness threatened to never get off the hypothetical shrink’s couch it had embedded itself upon. I mean, go vomit on yourself for a principle and see how many people it inspires. (I know, ’cause I tried it.) The textured, sonic statements of possibility created by The Church were anathema to much of the pasteurized hedonism of the day.

However to paint a complete picture of the the night, (an abstract one OK) young Marty showed a touch of the recluse revolutionary scribbling subversive pamphlets in a darkened cellar kinda thing. Occasionally, he’d stop strumming his 12-string to wistfully remonstrate the sadness of deleted recordings (his own, of course). Then, to drive home what seemed to be his point (”nobody understands me?”) he urged the theoretically lamebrained crowd (who were closer to 40 years old than 30, and a few were over 50) to, “Listen to the words!” Well, fair enough dude, I thought, as I ‘listened’ to the sheer logic (if not poetry in motion…) of the arse standing in front of me as she enjoyed a glass of Champagne, but remastering those deleted items would soon morph ‘em into headphones CD’s, and ya gotta still have bucks left over from that 55 date world tour The Church played back in 2002.

Throughout his citadel of verbal overthink, accentuated by a lingering flourish of spoken French, Willson-Piper did, to his eternal credit, admit to being pretentious. Which notably contributed to the whole night’s shebang an unrehearsed bit of jive business punctuation that other bands of a similar vintage & body of work try choreographing into their own airtight and ultra-formulaic sets in mostly unsuccessful ways. Its like reaching a point in the creation of something when the trappings and the tinsel and the construction become so important that it doesn’t really matter at all what’s inside. I witnessed as much a while back during a string of INXS gigs when Jon Stevens fronted them. The shows were vacuous, but because Andrew Farriss had welcomed newbie J. Stevens with a staged handshake takes # 1, # 2 & #3 (Newcastle, Shellharbour, Wyong), the crowd went away happy with their intimate little moment. Show biz is funny like that.

Marty paid tribute to the late and wonderous Jeff Buckley with a cover. And, as befitting the news from America, advised all those present to either, “Take lots of drugs” or, “Flee to the country and hoe the ground.” (Presumably, he wasn’t talking to any phantom hookers in the crowd about a 10 day ‘business trip’ to the Gold Coast.) And while the credits are rolling, i’d be goofing off at the keyboard if the beauty of the female form (his words) were not included: the effortlessly on-target Mood Maidens contributed the aforementioned aesthetic plus a gossamer light accompaniment with their intensely moving (according to your mood) piano and cello during songs from the Sparks Lane album and 1992’s Spirit Level. They remain, along with several million others like them, two of the most convincing arguments for not commiting suicide I know.

- Peter Thornton November, 2004

'hard hitting journalist, says he's a communist, says he believes in WW3!'

2009-01-27T21:52:00.005Z

Republished from butterboxmedia.com

Rule 303: The Annandale Hotel. Saturday 30th October, 2004.

Malcolm McLaren’s famous line from his art school days, “Frustration is one of the great things in art; satisfaction is nothing”, looped around my dirty ashtray of a mind during this night of hard core Aussie punk rock. Billed as: Bring Out Your Dead - Rock’n'Roll Resurrection, the gig saw four excellent bands funnel their deep mistrust for social progress into a crowd as approving and welcoming as the bulky white cliffs of Dover. The once potent symbols of brazen effrontery were proudly displayed with sheer exagerrated fun as freshly shorn Travis Bickle mohicans and leopardskin jackets merged with the occasional sightings of dentally challenged statesmen who were repeatedly toasting the faith with ample and salutary beers.

Emerging from the bottled up chrysalis of the now defunct Cruified Venus, Rule 303 boldly held the ground for the early arrivals with thirteen of their explosive songs. Opening with “Ross River”, the Rule’s driving gits of Nigel Maggot and Jimmy Fliptop effected a furiously tight clamp on the audience and quickly gained favour with a pair of pre-mosh ladies who replied to Garry Campbell’s invitation:

“Come closer, we won’t spit on you.”

With a, “Awright, we won’t spit on you, either…”

“Mad Man” followed, and Campbell’s shrieks of outright hostility multiplied the song’s implicit anger one hundred fold with an all-cards-on-the-table sincerity.

+++++++++

Hindsight creates questions giving us perspective and knowledge.

In considering the comparison between the following ideas of:

# 1 - the bedrock pop psychology: kids might see Punk for the first time and not be sure about it, but then they’d hear their parents whining about, those animals, those filthy violent animals, and suddenly be converted, they’d identify like mad.

Versus:

# 2 - the original commitment of Punk to attack the generation of World War Two, and to flaunt in the face of that generation all it could not express.

One certainty comes to mind:

Punk is responsible for much of the present vigour in the music industry; the same industry that actively discouraged and actually banned it in some areas during the mid 1970s. It helped turn necessity into a virtue through its underground distribution and production network establishing the platform of D.I.Y for today’s indy, pop and mainstream acts. Even those self-conscious handjobs consigned to idol Squaresville benefit enormously from this early genre that basically said: 'It’s easy and cheap, go and do it.' To which the later group obviously added 'All that now remains is for the media to diffuse it…'

+++++++++

A litany of worthy lyrical subjects - both onstage and in front of it - was paraded next with the songs “ICD”, “Gates of Hell” & “Loud and Proud”. The band remained true with an immediate physical and personal impact of ground-level directness and honesty. Concise and distinctly nonfrivolous, Garry’s gymnastic thunderbolts connected with the audience like jolts of shock treatment (definitely guessing here…) And a stark cover of The Angels’ “I Ain’t The One” was the perfect foil to describe the speed once required to extract rock ‘n’ roll from the moth-eaten, hippified grave it fell into back in the day. As the band tore into “War Pigs”, dedicated to the US Government god love ‘em (it’s His nation apparently), the hysteria of America’s continued psychodrama with hate and Punk’s sudden, bitter demise emerged with a sharp self-mocking relish.

Rule 303 explode the politics of rock ‘n’ roll by replacing its second-rate greyness with a pure outside-of-self-frenzy.

The Meatbeaters and The Aampirellas both played brilliant sets. Bassist for Rule 303, Kenny Archibald undertook service with The Kelpies during that band’s phenomenal set.

In memory of The Kelpies longstanding bassist: Con Murphy, who passed away this week.

- Peter Thornton October, 2004

Garage daze.

2009-01-27T21:28:00.008Z

transferred from butterboxmedia.com

Le Doogan & Seismic: Mona Vale Hotel. Friday 3rd September, 2004.

To me, the embodiment of late ’70s violent musical energy being handcuffed by a progressively watered down ’80s rock emerged at the Mona Vale Hotel back when I watched Alex Smith from Moving Pictures use that What About Me chorus as a drink order. Besides sounding so out of key that he would’ve had to hotwire his car if he’d planned on driving home that night, why didn’t he simply just take a bottle onstage like everyone else?

Since the irritatingly slow departure of those brown rice, karma and Rhinestone hippy days some major renovations have transformed this Northern Beaches pub into The All New Mona Vale Hotel. At least the parallel horrors of acres of polished floorboards, burnished metal portico and such have so far been avoided. Instead there’s live entertainment in two areas, copious TAB outlets, plus a sunken dining area offset by limpid sublit pools with some of those extra large indoor garden chairs. Upon said chairs long-legged beach beauties occasionally settle, which elicits the convincing evidence that life affords for the existentialist principle that we cannot be something without first pretending to be that very thing.

Le Doogan aren’t tethered to any cyclic detritus of new rock. They wander the undulating ground of cleanly defined rhythmic permutations that are relatively impervious to the mercurial swings of taste often sending followers of fashion spiraling into obscurity. Their string-bending, country soul sound is delivered with a barrage of rockabilly drumming by the indomitably hard working Johnny McBryde. The dynamics of tone are strengthened by the dark brown blues vocals of Paul Przybyla and Luke Munro. And the clever observations made in the lyrical themes of loss, longing and betrayal are given a frisson of pleasure by the crying strings of Mark Histon’s lap steel.

A four-track EP entitled BreakDown was recorded at Homebush West’s Keynote Studios and released last May. Working closely with studio owners Dan Rossides and Tony Hysteck was according to Paul, “Amazing in what we didn’t know about production.” The effect is a varied palette upon which the band’s idiosyncratic strength and atmosphere of a particular place are sensitively augmented by the non-intrusive dabbles of Hysteck and Rossides.

A mere two songs into their vigorous eleven number set, touring Canadian band Seismic offered the first five people who approached the stage with five bucks a copy of their Portions CD [Coqi Records; 2003]. Bassist from Ottawa Jason Leen looked almost melancholic as I shrewdly materialized from side stage and availed myself of this highly favourable transaction. In much the same way, the alchemy of Seismic’s narratives remained submerged until the sonic force of their live arrangements recapitulated. Only then did the high-indie nostalgia and apparent enthusiasm about negative social values appear in frontman Dean Watson’s lyrics. Once the textual, atmospheric sounds emptied out some of their luxuriously arty historical associations (think Uncle Tupelo’s first three albums), the lyrics begin to frolic around in all the usual enviromentally friendly ways. And for a little life support, a smattering of evil empire exhortations on the prevailing culture are thrown into some rather obtuse skepticism about desire and responsibility.

Of course, i’ve listened to Portions several times. The bar band’s lament, as bewailed by the bar patrons, is that it’s hard to connect without knowing the songs. Set opener “I&I” was followed by “SOS” and both songs showed mournful, hollow-bodied (at times) sounding compositions transcending the usual melodic swaggering so many of their brutal alt-country cousins possess. They’re not deconstructing emotional openness, but highlighting rhythm in a sometimes surprisingly stark way. There’s a certain easiness between the abstract and the concrete that isn’t some ambitiously renamed malfunction.

Loon mentioned they’d rehearsed fairly constantly of late, and the evidence of repeated instrument-switching onstage confirmed this. Although they’d awkwardly though competitively sold their four-year-in-the-making CD at exactly the same price as Le Doogan’s debut EP, they played a showcase set before peelin-out to the next of their fifteen-gig barnstormin’ of Australian pubs. With an abundance of effects pedals and assorted technowizardry in front of them, they weren’t, however, upstaged by any style over substance. The significant touchstones of a talking soul weren’t lost on the walking wounded present as fake authenticity made a brave comeback.

+++++++++++++

In other news from the Tasmanian end of the city, (joke-joke! But technically, anywhere north of St Leonards) Nick and John from Discovery Records at Hornsby will relocate to Glebe during October. Occupying two locations at different times over the past decade, this much-loved vinyl collectors paradise is an essential service for technological fringe-dwellers on the delta of alluvial land that surrounds the Hawkesbury River.

Under the new name of Ready Steady, the same delectably collectable copies of rare, cheap and moderately priced vinyl ‘n’ books will be made available to the ears and eyes of the Inner West. A second store, born from the same Discovery partnership, will soon open at Erskinville. This store, along with numerous uncommonly seen records, features the selling and buying of old wares, objet d’ art plus relics and will be named Relvolve.

- Peter Thornton September, 2004

Well-read nerds.

2009-01-27T16:07:00.006Z

republished from Butterboxmedia.com

The Devoted Few: Annandale Hotel. Thursday 16th September, 2004. Supported by Derwent River Star & Sounds Like Sunset.

Derwent River Star won the 2004 Sydney University Band Competition. The miniscule portion of their cello-infused set I heard was given an atmospheric, rickety lushness by the big fiddle that was both endearing and, thankfully, non-neo-classical. Listening to ‘em prodded me into an almost requiem-like remembrance for the former transcendent quintet: Smart Went Crazy, from the mid-90’s Washington DC scene, which is admirably documented on the Dischord label.

The intricate melodies of the D. River Stars were instilled with a stabbing intensity that oscillated between tightly structured and delicately subtle. The gliding vocals sounded clear, soaring and intermittently impelled by some elegantly heartbroken tangents. All of which went to defy the stigma of despondence that usually haunts me whenever recalcitrant stringed instruments run away to the circus of rock. I look forward to their next gig.

Objectively, Sounds Like Sunsets can’t yet stake much of a claim on the cinematic space-rock space. Maybe the naive constituents of Umina’s ‘mean streets’ that frontman (what’s-his-face) claims to ‘run’ can be flogged such gravely unmemorable effects pedal fodder. But it was a bloody chore listening to this kinda shoegazer stuff back in the early ’70s. And only then when it was performed with some resonable understanding of the genre. Christ only knows just how many of these spirit of Rimbaud journeys into the derangement of the senses kinda-things I witnessed on a fortnightly basis at Forestville RSL Youth Club dances. Ingeniusly lit by a single, relentlessly flashing strobe that some clown had gaffered into the 'on' position.

As we’ve come such a long way - all of it backwards, it seems - why don’t Sounds Like Sunset take these excruciating recitals to the cover band wonderland of North Sydney? In that bone-coloured universe of cultivated mediocrity the masses are famished for such aural flagellation. Hell, who am I trying to fool? I can’t be objective, their music sounded truly awful.

The Devoted Few were launching their sophomore release Billboard Noises [nonzero/Shock; 2004] and played a 12 song setlist that diverted only slightly from the CD’s tracklist. In pop terms, it’s probably relevant to describe Ben Fletcher’s historical band derivation; and that information is reliably chronicled elsewhere. But at a time when promising talents abound all over the sunburnt country, anyone who compresses the atmosphere of a current era into a dozen songs that so crystallize the surrounding landscape without overstatement must surely rank above that of a mere metaphor-slinger. And these songs, born from the input of individual band members rather than the pitfalls of a democratic writing imperative, certainly demonstrate an affinity for the lie in the land’s heart.

Set opener “Misery Loves Company” was a slyly soulful ramble capturing the sense of failure felt when hugely enlarged realities, verging on complete fantasy, remain unfulfilled. It unrolled a beach scene at dawn to me, whereupon a couple of self-help group refugees strip away their illusions over endless cigarettes and shared pain. The tempo of the set increased and the band bled into “Counting Cars.” Although the feel and sensation contrasts widely here, the intelligence of the lyrics never becomes too oddly fascinating. Unlike some dude in a department store record section, (or, more commonly, the contrived use of a hyphen) I won’t be a category enforcer and condescend to welding The Devoted Few onto any perpetual style. But their youthful themes of longing and desire have a pop ethic without its excessively deluded vernacular strategy.

At this point, Tanith Sherman stepped up to the mic to harmonize for a song. She returned later with another couple of friends yanked out of the crowd for a cresendo of la-la-la-laa-ss on “Your Face Burnt a Hole in My Memory.” The extra voices provided a poignant, emotional counterpart that was far less fist-pumping or anthemic and conveyed a touching message full of resigned optimism.

And all the songs on this album excel for such reasons of displacement, by neatly illustrating the gap between irony and pathos. If a line like, “And the ghost will sing another line” from Desolation Angels doesn’t convince, then, “And if she could be anywhere today, it would be yesterday..” certainly could. The effect of pop awkwardness made more bold by the rock ‘n’ roll predictability: maturity, reassuringly adds a touch of the everyday. But for all their sturdiness and fun, the songs are also contemplative, dreamy and childlike. Just like the kindergarten picture used in CD’s artwork.

The endurable guitar riffs sounded excellent on The Annandale’s brilliant audio set up. And the divine lighting offered eternal hope for the restrained use of strobe. But the sentimental bloke moment belonged to a shaggy-haired dude pulled from the crowd who clutched the mic stand while wailing the chorus during the last song. He reminding me of just how commanding a few devoted moments of unadulterated happiness can be.

- Peter Thornton September, 2004

It was long ago and it was far away...

2009-01-27T15:40:00.005Z

republished from Butterboxmedia.com

The Suits: The Hopetoun Hotel. Friday 24 September, 2004 - supported by The Cyclones & The Pyramidiacs

Not far below the surface of their ferocious rock delivery, biting Melbourne three-piece The Cyclones come indelibly stamped with a gritty, true-blues DNA. The piston-like beats, thunderously interspersed with a torrential clashing of cymbals, nuzzle together with the rumbling growls of bass that prowl around the bursting shards of splintered glass riffola of a Les Paul Epiphone.

Remove The Cyclones tag from the above two sentences and you’re left with the default (though flowery) critique for any half-talented band that dwells closer in description to garage rock than council car park. And that’s why The Cyclones were so enjoyably yawn-proof. I mean, here’s music that should be played not produced. The least desired thing this concrete structure needs is for some inspired DJ to come along and trick it up as a sonic backdrop for the Chuppa Chup and Glow Stick crowd.

Looking the absolute picture of sassy rock-babe was the bass playin’ Jules. She sang a gorgeously sultry song called “Batteries” and in between numbers feigned straight chick to Jason’s (of the Epiphone) on-cue one-liners, like:

Jason: “This next song highlights the rhythm section”

Jules: “They all do…”

And given that it’s the drummer’s first gig with the band the question begs (to me, anyway): what’ll they sound like in six months time? Well, apparently, copycat fashion crimes in Melbourne were outlawed well before most other unethical infringements, so fortunately there’s little chance of adding to the gathering portents of John Bonhamesque reverbed compression. However, now we’ve acquired a thrilling new Claptonish (the Cream years…) dimension that’s gotta be like, you know, worthy of milking. Therefore, the only proper response would obviously be to drag along to their next gig the first A&R dude to pull a blank cheque from his conjuror’s pocket. In such a long journey there are bound to be occasional deviations from the road, but the course has been set.

Earlier this year at the Hoey I spoke with Bill from The Pyramidiacs while watching The Fauves launch their well conceived album, Celebrate the Failure, which features the sardonic single: “Dogs Are The Best People.” I wasn’t even aware he played bass, let alone played bass for this long standing Sydney group. However, prompted by my own feelings of horizontal awkwardness as I watched a couple of partially vertical (& partially clad) girls seamlessly mingle into what I like to consider my natural habitat, I mentioned to him and, short-sightedly, to the girls how inside every tall person there’s probably a small person dying to get back in. Well, both he and I laughed anyway…

Despite their first release dating back to 1993, and having a healthy following in Spain and France where they’ve toured three times plus sold out a fair sized venue or two, buying a Pyramidiacs album locally represents one of the greater urban challenges. It’s almost like they’re pushing to become the ultimate “cult” act: a band that more people have heard of than actually heard. It’s quite rock ‘n’ roll I suppose, a bit irritating though. This appalling bind is soon to be corrected with an anthologically styled compilation due for release during October 2004 on the Reverberation label.

Irony or not they presented a blistering set that showcased the trademark melodies they’ve cultivated over the years. The tightly focused punch of their power pop comes from an understanding gained by playing together for so long. Its put them right on the heartbeat with harmonies that were distinctly isolated but elevated at the same time. The crunchy and dynamic guitar-drenched sounds of guitarist and vox bloke Owens indicates he’s the kinda guy who’d have more strings to his bow than he lets on. Even more than the vintage twelve string he used for the last song. His contribution is like the fly caught in the shimmering web of sound The Pyramidiacs weave into the rich pop tapestry of acid-tinged barber shop quartets.

The following Sunday, while listening to The Suits debut EP, International School of Dance [Reverberation; 2004] I was walking along the beach towards the Sydney surf spot made famous by Brian Wilson. Not for the first time, I was struck by the heart-on-their-sleeve, nothing-to-hide honesty in the lyrics. They’re all ’80s nostalgia with a raucous and danceable potency. And in a good way. This alkaline attitude suits the snarliness of the guitar and lends the vocals a combination of toughness and vulnerability.

I had a brief conversation with the charismatic guitarist for The Suits, Danna as he was casually undertaking light duties at the Hoey’s merch table. With the same blend of helplessness trimmed of excessive generic phrasing he said he was, “Conserving energy” before the band’s set. It was a 4am wake up call for The Suits that morning, followed by the long drive up from Melbourne for the two show lightning raid on Sydney. Prolonged cabin confinement plus breathing other people’s air had induced a wistfulness in Danna’s response to my question about a future full length album. He replied the band were, “Recording everything they wrote at a basic level to cull sometime in the future.” Mention was also made of the high monetary cost involved in recording, which in one way or another illuminated the pleasures and the pains, the perils and the pitfalls of being in a group whose national profile would just as likely skyrocket under more dependent circumstances.

The drive home to a backward day job has been navigated with a similar refrain by numerous bands who pivot on the dynamics of independent enterprise. At a time when remaining loyal to nonpartisan promoters or simply to one’s own disaffected spirit are made to look increasingly quaint, I wonder how many young bands would place themselves on the chessboard of ‘artist management’ if their own particular vision of a decadent future - complete with a solemn projection of their broader social concern that included, of course, the unfurled subversive flag - were offered? At a time when the unruliness of rock is now aided, abetted and funded by corporations, that is to say, when it’s Hip Hop, where is the cultural form of rock ‘n’ roll headed? How much further can the central fantasy of rebellion be exploited?

Anyway, a set list of eleven songs was opened with “Overcome,” which blanketed those present in a ray of blessed sunshine. Then came “Rug,” which was followed by “Everyday” from the EP, and the song sequence from then onwards seemed crafted to warm up the crowd. The audience clearly appreciated The Suits driving take on weapons grade jangle pop, keeping pace with the awe-inspiring noise by shaking its collective furry paws as testimony. The hooks of Danna’s stomp and soar fret work intensified, and a hip-swiveling throng of international dancers covered the space directly in front of the band. When the first hectic chords of “Strait Line” were played a lone, well-oiled Brit soldier was regaining the warmth of life with a pair of lovelies from the land of the rising sun. He told me later on (but not that much later on) that they had said he was, “All sweaty…”

“Last Plane” followed, and the cheerful mix of industry insiders, small label big guys and members of other bands were pumped by The Suits hard, loud and contagious energy. While they played a passionate set, i’ve heard them sounding much better at The Hoey. Although, I suspect the overtones resulted from being located directly in front of the band, which usually eliminates many of the nuances of sound I generally enjoy. But they tapped into that attractive, vicious cynicism without a hint of menace, glam or meat market.

They finished their plush set with “Duet,” accompanied by turbulent shouts from the encouraging crowd. I heard one pissed guy making censorious comments suggesting approval would be disloyal to an intractable musical make-up he supposedly had. If so, surely he was persecuting the wrong person. This new youth pop is rootless and raceless and all the better for it.

- Peter Thornton September, 2004

Obviously there's an A&R dudey out there who didn't do their job properly.

2009-01-27T15:19:00.007Z

Republished from Buterboxmedia.com

Red Riders EP Launch: The Hopetoun Hotel. Saturday 22nd August, 2004.

When the weekend supplements from the broadsheets print one of their breathy, ironic pieces on a subject that’s close to my heart - as happened yesterday, and will again next weekend ad-infinitum - it becomes crystal clear to me that a shrewd analysis of the status quo is long overdue. Thus, when the house full sign appeared at the Hoey by 9pm last night, it was the door girl, lady or even babe, whose graceful hand hastily scrawled the message. Anything, at all, but the media diluted: door bitch.

Such transparent exposures on the bubble of celebrity are hardly surprising since our world’s become one big VIP lounge. Hostesses (a hostess is a waitress who only carries plates to celebrities) pontificating on celebrity recording artists doesn’t change the way we view the artist. However, if a hostess complains about the celebrities to who she’s banging plates down in front of long enough she apparently ends up with her own reality TV show. It’s the glass age we live in. And it’s also the name of the first support band tonight.

Frontman for the Glass Age, Ben Maher looks the business. Crowned with a semi ‘fro he’s more Leo Sayer than Peter Frampton and appeared quietly imposing without his guitar rather than with. Still, he is young and “The Watch” showed promise without the repetitive servility towards ham adolesence inhibiting parts of his band’s bracket tonight. (The drummer with a cigarette dangling from his lips is a fine rock ‘n’ roll image, providing he looks to be a genuine smoker.)

The set included all four songs from their Yellow Demo EP, which as well as being offered for free on the night, has made the 50% Australian content playlist of FBi.

While following through from a reasonably good start so far eludes many of the ideas of The Glass Age, a change of musical direction - spoken about in between songs - could help balance out the brightness of those fifth-hand philosophies with a little sepia-toned darkness.

Paul Ward is the keyboardist for The Tranquilizers, whose clearly been listening to his fair share of Brian Wilson. His voice is full of attractive little tricks and mannerisms which mostly sound quite convincing. He also bears a passing resemblance to Tim Freedman from the Whitlams and with a couple of his Kiwis mates has relocated to the musically adventurous city of Melbourne. Their first single for the night is: “Stop, Go” and was cut back in 2002.

Considering its the first time they had been in a recording situation its arrangement resonates with a low-density deadpan. It appears on the Shake Yer Popboomerang Vol. 2 compilation, which was launched earlier this year during another rollicking night of delight at The Hopetoun Hotel. The Suits and Tamas Wells also played at the launch, and both appear on the same feisty recording. Tonight it appears that The Tranquilizers, while gliding up the Hume Highway, burned a few copies of a pensive self-titled five song EP for the Hoey’s merch table. The label name on the EP is Walk With A Swagger and for all I know, might maintain their offices in a Tarrago. Ward’s maudlin voice quavers the harmonies well enough, but the set sounded too coyly artistic at times. It came across exquisite when the fragility worked, but awkward when the patronized ingenuity sounded solemn. Paul mentioned that The Tranquilizers try to let the instruments create the sound. Which if I understood him correctly, complicates things a bit. An urgent dilemma around artistic development can wedge a band in if they become too hooked on cloying experiment. Musically though, several thousand more road miles might be their best antidote to stagnation. And for sharpening those small snippets of surrounding heroics they’ll continue to gather along the way.

It might simply have been a Saturday night thing but the centre-of-hip status currently being enjoyed by The Red Riders looks like it began life in the traditional way. The place was lousy with sturdy framed art college girls from nice families doing the one-night-of-their-life at the Hoey shuffle. Image has to start somewhere I guess and together The Red Riders look so complementary without being ludicrous that in time they may manage to appeal to almost everyone. Their souped-up rock sounds like its been seived through the Cheesecloth Age of their parent’s Foreigner albums, and its competency brought some desperately needed guts into the night. The anti-star, anti-pretension function hardly ever misses, particularly when the estranged malcontent element is left out. The instantly attractive melody lines and non-pompous dry wit of single “Tune In/Tune Out” isn’t greatly imaginative but still offers a dramatic splash of bitchery anyway. Drummer Tom Wallace looks a model of zen-like composure and his meticulous, bedrock strokes goad a leaping, metrical growl from Mark Chapman on his Rickenbacker bass. Adrian Deutsch struck some unashamedly early - that is to say: sincere - Timmy Farriss moves, and throughout the set was the authoritative voice of his deeply switched-on cohorts.

The unbridgeable gulf in the music industry between conformist trash and elegant, enlightened triumph is bossed by producers of empty, tricksy and emotionless safe bets. The true monstrosity of this sad fact isn’t just the earnest snob appeal that first appeared, and then idolized our new breed of conveyor belt popstars, but the way in which they serve to castrate our live music scene into inertia.

++++++++++++

The Red Riders self titled EP is on the Reverberation label. They will be appearing @ Newtown with theredsunband on September 4.

- Peter Thornton August, 2004

Not forgetting Noel Crow.

2009-01-27T13:45:00.009Z

Republished from Butterboxmedia.com

Noel Crows All Stars: Queen Victoria Building. Sunday 15 August, 2004

Post also contains an interview with Mr. Crow

Last weekend, the plush backdrop of Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building set the stage for several inspired performances by some of the most prominent names in the Australian jazz scene.

The magnificent accoustics of the cathedral-like QVB greatly enhanced the distinctive, Chicagoan-style improvisations floating beautifully from Noel Crow’s clarinet. His stellar line-up of Allstars featured ex-Don Burrows pianist Ken Crawford, bassist Ed Gasson - from an earlier Bob Bernard quartet, Drummer Tony Hicks, trombonist Jim Elliot and trumpeter Dave Ferrier. The crowd of onlookers were visibly stirred as Noel & his band executed moving renditions of several timeless standards including “Basin St. Blues,” “Ain’t Misbehavin” and “St Louis Blues.” Twinkly-eyed Jim Elliot’s honeyed vocals on “Ain’t Misbehavin” had a few of the nearby ladies practically swooning with happiness.

Over two days the Jazz In The City programme featured such celebrated artists as James Morrison & Emma Pask, Galapagos Duck, Grace Knight and The Bakelight Boys and several other renowned musicians.

+++++++++++++

This writer briefly interviewed Mr Crow on Tuesday August 17th 2004.
A portion of the transcript from that evening’s very relaxed discussion follows.

PT: What’s your first memory of hearing jazz?

Noel Crow: It was about 1955 and I was growing up in a small country town in the north east of Victoria called Wangaratta. I went to a movie called The Glen Miller Story. In fact, I was so enthralled with the movie that I finished up watching it nine times! Following that, a few months later, I went down to the Palais Theatre in St Kilda to a dance and also to hear The Louis Armstrong Allstars. Louis, just blew me right out of the earth… From then on, I was a devoted jazz fan.

PT: What was the one thing that you liked most about jazz?

Noel Crow: I think the fact that it was freewheeling, and also the expressions that were found in each guys talents. You know, for example, if you were locked into a concert orchestra, or something like that, you’ve just gotta play the notes. But in jazz I found the improvisation just locked me in. I was so impressed by it.

PT: How did you learn to improvise?

Noel Crow: I was mainly influenced by my mother who was a piano teacher on the farm south of Wangaratta. At fifteen years of age i’d be in the lounge room with her as she was playing the piano. She’d be vamping the chords while i’d improvise around them. She was most influential to me.

PT: You’ve played in many different places all over the world, what are some of your more memorable gigs?

Noel Crow: Well, with my band I played for six years at Sacramento, which is the capital city of California. Probably that festival - (Jubilee Jazz Festival - PT) is the world’s largest jazz festival. Attendance-wise, it outrates anything that even New Orleans puts on. Sacramento would be the most exciting. However, i’ve also appeared at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival in Scotland to great success. And i’ve been very, very fond of appearing at Vancouver and Chilliwack in Brittish Columbia, Canada. Also, having said that, on Vancouver Island there’s this marvellous town called Victoria where i’ve played as well, many, many times.

PT: Do you have a favourite style of jazz that you would rather listen to or play?

Noel Crow: Yes, my favourite style is what they call Chicago style. I know we’ve got New Orleans style with a lot of those wonderful New Orleans people that grew up out of there, but many of them gravitated up into Chicago. Chicago-style sort of began to gradually mean more to me than anything else. There’s a term called mainstream that hems these two together. I’ve become more of a Chicagoan. It’s that style of mainstreaming music I prefer.

PT: Where does jazz look to be heading?

Noel Crow: Graham Bell, father of Australian jazz and the most famous Australian jazz man has been quoted as saying: “jazz, might be a twentieth century phenomenon.” Which he also qualified by saying: “I hope i’m wrong.”

PT: It looks like he was…

PT: You’ve devoted a life to music Noel, and you have a real love of it. Do you have any regrets about that?

Noel Crow: No, not at all. It’s the wonderful fulfillment of the whole thing.

PT: It’s something that money can’t buy I guess isn’t it?

Noel Crow: Correct.

At this stage of the interview I poured Mr Crow the final glass of his ‘fee.’

+++++++++++++

Noel Crow hosts a weekly jazz radio programme on 2NSBFM 99.3 Wednesday 5pm.
He also writes a weekly jazz column appearing in the Friday edition of The North Shore Times.

- Peter Thornton August, 2004

Why is it tempting to only shoot the big fish?

2009-01-27T10:54:00.008Z

Republished from Butterboxmedia.com

Andy Clockwise: Classique e femme - @ Newtown. Friday 6th August, 2004

I only heard the last two songs played by Brisbane band The Daybridges. Both, however, were punctuated with the occasional theremin solo. This bizarre piece of equipment resembles a primative contraption from Stalin-era Russia with its vertical and horizontal antennas for controlling pitch and volume.

The hands of the thereminist deftly orbit these sensitive extensions in an approaching or receding fashion coaxing from the instrument its spooky theme-from-the-Addams-family-like noise. Actually, watching a soloist crank the theremin was less awkward or conflicting than i’ve suggested. The owner of the highly developed ear and classically trained violinist hands responsible for the precise wrist action was Silas. His playing augments a simultaneously brutal yet incredibly delicate force to The Daybridges’ take on straight-ahead rock. It also revealed a minor theme for the night as Silas shares a formal education in music with Andy Clockwise and some of his lineup of ex-cons - that is to say, ex-conservatorium students. Andy was recipient of the prestigious Dame Joan Sutherland Musician of the Year Award

A recent gig at the Annandale saw The Daybridges support The Camels. The clearly cultured Silas mentioned this fact while gathering names for an email list post-gig. The Dale’s eatery also scored a big plug along with the band’s new soon to be released EP.

Bertie Blackman has a voice that is curdled, hurt and quite magnificent. It levitates towards the ceiling with all the buoyancy of thick blue smoke exhaled from the mouth of an agonized angel. She is part of the spirited evolution of Andy Clockwise, and he a part of hers. In the ever-changing public persona of the: it’s-all-happening-right-now year of 2004, her lyrics and his arrangements hang in time with elaborate fermenting. The uncompromising 2002 release “Criminal of Desire” was lyrically perfect, while melodically, the deep, super-smooth, penetrating beat of “Very Well”, from the same Blue Sky Pueblo EP, added a comfortable air of city girl lushness to her set of heart-and-humanity personal confessions.

There is no doubt that something in the styles and personalities of Bertie and Andy creates a chemistry which neither of them, so far, has quite been able to create with any other person. In a genre (urban pop, apparently…) where restraint can at times be desperately abandoned for some overly sentimental campfire indulgence, her narratives create a welcome shift in tone giving listeners something pragmatic to consider aside from the quaintly radical.

She also performed material from her new album, excluding the instantly identifiable - but not nauseous - pop of “Favourite Jeans.” The album, launched fittingly at The Vanguard in Newtown on the 19th of this month is called Headway.

This week Andy Clockwise told Ross Clelland from Drum Media how he, “still hasn’t found exactly what his style is.” The audience obviously profited from this tactful strategy as he segued from some frightful technical contretemps plaguing the venue all night into a relatively sparse arrangement of “Middle Man.” The youngish crowd looked enthralled as he drove home this stripped-down but captivating example of musical academia meets off-the-leash Vegas lounge act.

The night was billed as Andy’s stage show: Classique e femme. With Sandy Toggs, This Choir Kills Facists & a mini orchestra. La Toggs & her guitarist opened with a cabaret-style lip-sync of “Home,” which resulted in a little uncertainty from the future knockabouts present, who were nervously checking out each others leers. If the dudes in attendance appeared in some ways a little naive to all of this action, the girls were indeed razor sharp. The melodrama of drag has no middle ground, and what might have looked all very Oxford Street Saturday night, (circa ‘84) actually spoke volumes on the current state of youth-oriented radio programming. But then, the tricky @ Newtown hydraulic runway was whisked away and Andy, complete with mini orcheastra, began negotiating the surroundings that were to cause his low-level frustration.

When finally, the audio behaved with something approaching consistency, most of the brassier numbers from his mini-album Song Exihibition [Shock; 2002] were given a run. Right from the very moment I heard this debut - approximately one year ago at the Hopetoun Hotel “Every Song” video launch - I was absolutely convinced by its beautifully arranged landscape of sincere hooks and distinctive instrumentation. Such contributions to the derivitive nature of musical advancement oppose the ‘create a situation in which a band can happen’ ethos of pop and instead, set about presenting music that’s been put through a sieve of pop with wit, charm and intelligence, and without the frequently seen sense of autopilot insecurities. However, the lavish sound isn’t readily explained away by the usual ‘cast of thousands onstage’ theory. Each delivery of proclaimed urgency is divided by its own flourish of city block-size instrumental definer.

Unsurprisingly, Andy replaced the resignation he felt for the sound glitch, “This is the gig from hell!” with an organic intimacy evoking an urban opera. First, he questioned the cross-legged, audience seated directly in front of him with a well deserved, “What’s all this shit about?” Then, he pummelled them with every note from an insanely tight rhythm section, thickly enriched by the dizzying conscious of the mini orchestra. If the earlier songs were merely captivating, the final ones flowed like an absolute torrent of hormonally stirred blood.

The arduous and complex life of an elderly gigster (revealed to be somewhere over the age of 25) requires certain tactful obligations to the mythical standing of cool. Should one, for example, mosh? How much real moshing really occurs these day anyway? Have I chosen an act where moshing is expected? Or, would I? (And you thought the 50 sub-genres of pop were a little confusing.)

Ultimately moved by the rhythm into shaking my ass, and finding myself lodged in between some prime examples of what Dave McCormack accurately described as, “the beautiful girls” on his single “Inner West”, I purged my pointless chin-stroking to a far better end during “Sarcastic Boy,” “Every Song” and a very isolated improv of “Milkshake.”

+++++++++++++

In common with both supports acts Andy Clockwise will release a new studio album shortly. A recording of Classique e femme was available for purchase on the night by subscription.

- Peter Thornton August, 2004

The Royal Motor Yacht Club

2008-01-01T12:18:00.002Z

21 Wunulla Road POINT PIPER
Phone:93276828

Review originally posted on the 19 January 2003

Water obviously finds it’s own level. Now I’m about 80% fluid, and I’m at the Royal Motor Yacht Club of NSW, and, I'm not here to carry plates either.

I’ve found my billabong. It’s damn good.

People often despise regal shacks like this until they actually go inside and enjoy some camaraderie.

I doubt whether the “celebrity culture” holds much sway here. Although, its currency of accomplishment whispers like lovers do.

Inside I was amongst several invited guests celebrating the union of marriage.

Breathtaking nautical outlooks were no match for the gorgeous bride and her groom, heralded into their future happiness with O Mio Babbino, Mozart Clarinet Concerto in G, and Crazy Love by V. Morrison. Strengthening a commitment shared already.

And didn’t the bridesmaids look lovely? Yes, but it was the food that filled my heart.

Salmon was with soba noodles, or, “perhaps sir” an anti-pasto stack to start. Nicer than goopy vol-au-vents or hazardously smoked chicken. Banged down in front of you by some chinless specimen. Here the youngsters are civilized. Not the listless progeny of some arduous committee member.

Mains brought a rack of lamb, otherwise, 'a wild barramundi fillet.'

Well anyway, I’d traded away my salmon earlier and sorely required something in possession of fins. A roma tomato escort of immense sweetness outfitted my fish, as did smashed, (almost crushed, nowhere near mashed) potatoes sidle alongside the rack.

An error of judgment on my part resulted in absconding before desert.

I’ll never live it down.

These things remain silent in polite society.

You can dress me up, but you can’t take me out.

I am sorry Justin and Nicky.

- Peter Thornton January, 2003

Una's

2008-01-01T11:25:00.001Z

340 Victoria Street DARLINGHURST
Phone 93606885

Review originally posted on the 28th of December 2002

Hans Mohr crystallized the tiny space in Sydney. An old butcher shop on the inner-city fringe became a fish cafe with a dozen chairs at the counter plus four tables. The pub next-door improved delays encountered as Mohr's wait staff maneuvered punters through the door, menu and then out the door again. I read Mohr was expanding into meat and thought I'd investigate. However the fish cafe was closed and extensions were still builder's rubble so I kept walking towards Victoria Street, Darlinghurst.

I always feel sartorially clumsy in these frostily cool city precincts. I may wear the new black, but it usually looks too black, and my shoes also seem to shine with surplus obligation. Whereas on me, the studied look of nonchalance suggests hobo.

Una's replenished my jaded spirit. It's been around for thirty-two years. Ancient by our standards. Serving Central "continental" food, there's goulash, schnitzel etc., plus pasta for that metropolitan touch. Considering two out of four reviews recount this style of cuisine, maybe it's the new black.

I then planned a coffee at Latteria just a few doors up. Where one couldn't swing a slender cat without hitting a model, or somebody in broadcasting or something. But it was also under renovation. So instead I hit Coluzzi, est. 1957, where they pour superior coffee and are deservedly famous for just being there, too.

The Inner-harbor ferry back to Greenwich, where I'd parked the '82NV (non-vintage) Mitsubishi, corrected to the last notch the woozy fatigue I always feel after spending a day amongst the sophisticates.

The sainted creators of LoSaB have installed a star system of ratings. In addition, I will contribute a lateral assessment of locations visited:

Mohr: Proximity to pub: Next-door
202 Devonshire St. SURRY HILLS
Phone; 93181326

Una's: Proximity to "the life": Next-door.

Latteria: Proximity to Una's: Next-door.

Coluzzi: Proximity to pioneering prominence: The buck started here.
323 Victoria St. DARLINGHURST
Phone; 93805420

All inference is as broad as a brewery horses bum.

- Peter Thornton December, 2002

Stella Blue

2008-01-01T11:07:00.000Z

18 The Strand DEE WHY BEACH
Phone 99827931

Review originally posted on the 1st of January 2003

My family schlepped across town from Belmore to Harbord back in the 60s. Dear old dad had brought himself a milk run.

An older sister and her MG'n'Malibu crowd lodged the rogue surfer seed in me and recreation always meant the beach at Dee Why.

During the 70s i defected to Long Reef. Northernmost point on the same stretch of sand. The Strand at Dee Why had very few restaurateurs back then. The "hood" in neighborhood probably discouraged them. Nowadays you couldn't fill up another eatery.
Memories still flood back whenever i'm on the promenade at DY.

OK so it's the first day of twenty zero three and the midsummer's rain is well dispatched. The staff at Stella Blu act like staff. Consequently, the owners behave as only owners should. It has tables across from the beach, where no loony's edge too close threatening death with concealed incendiary devices. The interior tables look exceptionally civilized. And the menu is determinedly well mannered rather than strenuously polite.

Hearty, aromatic and Calabrian inclined melanzane parmegiana and about eight other possibilities worked backward to delicate. Bresaola, oysters or nannata, otherwise asparagus came with marinated capsicum and goat cheese.

Robust mains come free of chichi. A cornucopia of garnish wedded prudently with ocean trout. Lamb, scotch fillet and non-factory bird are all beautifully sourced in-laws to game. Prosaic side dishes, yes, though daily, an extraordinary contemporary regard for cooking struts a sincere integrity.

Deserts were declined in favor of napoli and Illy coffee.

A panorama of activity - and it rained on my visit - make Stella Blu an ideal first date place. If prices are considered an indication of your intention by the squeakier sex, the bright sunbeams of your future should quicken to illuminate your path.

Pino Pizzeria

2008-01-01T10:49:00.000Z

49 Willoughby Road CROWS NEST
Phone 94392081

Review originally posted on the 26th December 2002

I nearly ran a spot the mistakes in my reviews contest with some prize thingy for the winner. Ahh! And what, you may ask, was the prize? Not much. I'm not a real journalist, you know. So the Golden Century review needed "here there eaten," to read, "here they're eaten," and "taste and bujet," spelled correctly. A clandestine ring would've infiltrated the field anyway and... Oh the humanity!

Pino's Pizzeria sells pasta fresh from a factory above itself, which is also operated by the benign, nurturing and twinkly-eyed Pino. A continuing joy of generations has passed through the front door since 1973.

I find most suburban interpretations on Italian food entirely resistible. Pino's possesses a deftness that is rare in Crows Nest, where the indistinguishable sameness of the Italian restaurants is underwritten by the kitchen-hands shopping for ingredients at the local Woolworths. And that's after they graduate from the wash-up to the burners. That's not to say it's a bad area to eat Italian or Indian, but Pino's serves straightfoward, fresh, authentic dishes at admirably low prices.

Have some pasta. It is luxury on the cheap. Celebrating prosperity but not pretension. Ravioli filled with mushrooms or fettucine capriciosa with prawns and clams. Tortellini, tagiatelle, rigatoni et al.

Pizza is obtainable in sixteen types, small or large. You may create your own. Starters include garlic calamari or prawns. With bbq'd octopus, scampi or prawns essaying proudly the essential tenets of flavor over fashion native to Pino's. Specials of lamb rack, quail, veal shanks or risotto are less chancy than similar offerings made jaundiced by bleak competitors.

My phone inquiry returned a twelve-page fax describing set-menu options for groups within a comprehensive, albeit, mammoth document.

No drizzling or other scrupulously contrived artifice occurs here. I've seen Angry from the Tatts, Andrew from INXS, or the common type of boofhead i knockabout with eating at Pino's over the years. The experience remains remarkable and just.

The Golden Century Seafood Restaurant

2008-01-01T10:07:00.000Z

393-399 Sussex Street HAYMARKET
Phone 2123901,2811598

Review originally posted on the 22nd of December 2003

Any joy that accompanied freedom from editorial intrusion lessened minutes after hitting the post button for that Kaiser Stub'n review. The sentence: "The Terrey Hillbilly crew was bussed in during my formative years," omitted one important word. Well one and a half really. It should have read, "were bussed into school." Obligatory apologies are required, although I'm too impatient to footnote. It's not the same i know, but then what is?

Never mind, I'm a sentimentalist at heart. Usually in the twilight hours too, and after strutting around a dining room half the night for wages i need sustenance.

Pertinent fact#1: The Golden closes at 4am.

PF#2: Twenty four tanks hold a variety of those soon to be comatose sea creatures one generally avoids. Here, they're eaten well before oxygen deprivation gives them more screws loose than an Ikea wardrobe.

PF#3: The Golden takes all comers. The row of deuces against a wall where i sat overlooked five tables occupied by large groups.

PF#4: Go Bo tea is available, (infinitely superior blend of Chrysanthemum based tea) ask for it and watch the waiters dial light up.

PF#5: Excellent value. My congee, fried bread, cha and fruit to finish came to fifteen bucks with tip.

Warp-factor cooking far removed from self-conscience, 'burban-bland is crafted here nightly by master chefs. To highlight a mere bagatelle: Pippi's in XO sauce, or anything from the tanks. It'll run to money, though not grandly so. Unctuous, slow roasted meats, or communicate your taste and budget. A repertoire of over one thousand dishes is acquired during any half decent Chinese cook's formative years. Sit back and watch the miracle of timing and organization required to serve the passing throng.

Saturdays are packed to the gunwales, and i arrived at 12:45am, but busy always.

This is the circus i was never taken to as a child.

As i left some tanked-up fish tried to lay a guilt trip on me. I silently mouthed the word dominion and fled.

J&L Catering at Gore Hill TAFE College

2008-01-01T09:49:00.000Z

Pacific Highway GORE HILL
Phone: 99420671

Review originally published on the 8th of February 2003

There was enthusiasm, disappointment, queuing, and humor. Plus deception, romance, reinvention and rage. Everything, in fact, that serves to mitigate known evils appeared amidst a sweltering summer heat. Welcome to enrollment day at Gore Hill TAFE College 2003.

The Basement Café previously catered to a potential of nearly eight thousand students. It was tucked in behind the quadrangle next to a cleaner’s lean-to. The cleaners, incidentally, deserved far better billeting than next to a bunch of students… Two years ago plans were hatched for the new venue that today is called J&Ls Catering (irritating abbreviation isn’t mine). Anyway, in I go and instantly I feel a major sneer attack coming on. It’s ferociously modern for a TAFE college. There’s burnished stainless steel, anodized aluminum and plenty of glass. Ceiling fans and industrial heaters glued to the walls, with louvers allowing a cross-flow ventilation to waft through. Together with an outdoor eating area where the presence of a maitre de wouldn’t appear inconsistent.

TAFE food is largely about instant gratification. A quick shot of invigorating coffee, chips and iced factory cakes. There’s no sense in advancing an indulgence. It’s not as if many students want to actually learn anything. However, in spite of my squeamishness, I sauntered up and hollered.

It was all there: focaccia, salad, pasta, stir-fry (sans-wok!) and enough Mars Bars, Cherry Ripes and Snickers, incongruously dispersed to appease the most jaded of pupil palates. Plates ranged in price from $4.80 to 6 bucks, and the J component of the J&L consortium claimed a diverse student body supported a wide choice of food predilection. Nothing at all wrong with my Greek salad, and I am a feta-shist for that country's cheese. It was plentiful and good. The J&L squad operated at Crows Nest TAFE before bringing their “usual table” style of operation here. The theme is maintained with Segafredo coffee and when leaving I was reminded of the pancake story:

A daughter asks her mother why the pancakes are so good. The mother replied, “I add cold tea to the batter.” “Why?” Asked the daughter. “Granny always did.” Replied mum. The daughter then asks her grandmother why she always added cold tea to the mix. “Because my mother did.” Said the octogenarian. “And why did she do that?” Probed the girl. “Well, once, she was all out of milk.”

Kam Fook

2008-01-01T09:38:00.000Z

LEVEL 6 SHOP 600 WESTFIELD SHOPPING TOWN CHATSWOOD
Phone 94139388

Review originally posted the 7th of January 2003

Two visits to Newtown last week included some research for yet another pithy review:

"Frenetically paced urban ecosystem located next to a university with blow-in youth who fallaciously presume eternal uniqueness."

But generally, one can find this same streetscape anywhere. The laughs double already. Bloody students eh?

However, in silence comes God's meaning to the heart. So the smouldering tyre-rubber, burnt cooking oil and stale vomit remain the only facts checked with any thoroughness.

Kam Fook Shark Fin, on level 6 of Westfield Chatswood, soothes the shopping mall angst. This hayloft of a place serves yum cha daily and dinner at night. It's usually necessary to bivouac around the entrance after announcing your own arrival, but only briefly. Then the clever staff will allow you to hover over a table like a trainee waiter while the-soon-to-be-previous occupants settle-up. Inside there's tables of elderly Chinese, all sentient calmness. And suited senior waiters are all maximum correctness. Some thrillingly pleasurable offerings roll-by aboard the dim sum trolley. And the bloke who looks like a dish-pig (but is probably one of the owners) industriously re-fills the tea pots. All this is interspersed by tables of visiting western chefs trying to surpass each other in knowledge of the cuisine, or discussing the latest exchange of pornographic videos.

I embrace yum cha often. I once earned wages in Chinatown for a year. Plus I lived with a Chinese girl for six. I disclaim any conclusive comprehension of Chinese culture. And view skeptically any non-Chinese who do so.

Baby calamari was cautiously poached, and prawn and vegetable har gau were in gummy rice flour skins. Some braised tripe tasted gelatinously sticky and the pork-filled northern dumplings were harmoniously honorable.

All the egg tarts had vanished before we could have a crack at them. But an offer to prepare more showed remarkable willing.

Twenty-five bucks included the customary Go Bo tea. Bargain!

Kaiser Stub'n

2008-01-01T09:23:00.000Z

205 Mona Vale Road, TERREY HILLS (Corner McCarrs Creek Road and Mona Vale Road.)

Phone 94500300

Review originally posted on the 21st of December 2002

Kaiser Stub'n means emperors living room. Franz Josef, the Austrohungarian ruler, served the people well by remaining one of them. This Terrey Hills restaurant celebrates in decor and spirit his reign, love of hunting and his love for drinking beer. Should you be seeking land - remembering this sites name - it's spread out far and wide in this North Shore suburb made famous when Hoges and Dick Smith added value with Helipads and cee-ment ponds.

The Terrey Hillbilly crew were bussed into school during my formative years spent in French's - rather than The Black - Forest. But a sprinkling of Austrians immigrants back then has grown to support an enthusiastic following of Germans, Central Europeans and Hungarians nowadays.

This is not peasant cooking. That's for people like me: blunt-edged amateurs avoiding inedible fast food. Hunks of pork knuckle, halves of roasted duck, sliced veal and beef fillet all may appear elemental until tasted. The skills deployed in cooking these meats almost earn a wink from the mounted boars head on the wall and are accompanied by things such as bread dumplings, red cabbage, spaetzle and a sauerkraut of galactic & bona fide lightness. Two dishes served tableside also show warmth rather than retro kitsch, and a schnitzel overlaps its plate.

There are Austrian wheat beers ranging from fine yeast to dark, crystal clear and Pikantus dark bock beer from Erdinger. Served in timelessly tall glasses that preside euphorically like the totem of a friendly higher civilization. Senior, (and junior) staff who appear to actually like people, and a value for money many gastro-pubs of secondary importance would crawl over themselves to obtain.

The effortless grace all this occurs with may not always suggest a better age, though it certainly does indicate a more dignified one and merits a stop going to or returning from the Palm Beach Road.

European Taste Delicatessen

2008-01-01T09:06:00.000Z

19 Hill Street ROSEVILLE NSW 2069
Phone: 98848055

Review originally posted on the 14th September 2003

Unfolding in my previous review entitled: The Upper Crust, was a development that I am hopeful will continue here. One that sanctions the commercial dining room as anything I can be arsed writing about.

But if it's food you want to read about, then read on.

Nestled within an unassuming series of suburban shops with a sign announcing delicatessen suspended from the overhang is lodged the European Taste Delicatessen.

The owner is from Poland. Likewise are the exquisitely gorgeous females whose lives have been shaped by this food; and who'll answer any product query enthusiastically and knowledgeably.

You know how there's bacon, but then there's bacon? Yeah? Well, eating meat or cooking meat is like that too. And I'm all for a big resurrection in the eating of meat. Everyone can knock up a quick pasta dish, stir-fry some vegetables, or typically, burn their toast. But cooking meat properly takes an accomplished skill rather than the sheer justification brought about by hunger pangs.

Smoked meats, sausages of quality, and specialty products ranging from impressive pastries to velvety smooth confectionery are all tinged with a Polish nudge here. They're spread throughout this superb shop in quantities as profuse and flowing as the stream of weekend customers crowded around the display cabinet. Customers, who'll trek from distant suburbs often representing several families and then return home laden with a wealth of luxury appropriate to their discriminating taste and discerning eye for value.

Weekly, my growing list of provisions from here includes a slab of speck that is a blueprint for bacon. Whether cooked and smoked or merely smoked its fragrant aroma creates anarchy amongst my housemates every time I fry the stuff.

I hope I'm not relating this place as some sort of modishly groomed food-hall clip joint. Yesterday, while walking around such a place, I watched just how far removed from practicality the old gravy train to Foodieville has become. Aimless browsers like me similarly made mental notes of things like Tarago River marinated Chevre at $63:95 per Kilogram then brought a bakery item like my German Bretzel (spelt with a B apparently.) for $O: 85c.

A floorwalker, whose job appeared to be reassuring people how they've really made it couldn't kiss enough babies at such stratospheric prices. Furthermore, Isn't a floorwalker an antiquated philosophy?

Let's claim some progress and derail this loco-motionless before Casey Jones drives us all to the end of the line.

Anyway, this deli is splendid.

Bill and Toni's Restaurant

2008-01-01T08:53:00.001Z

74 Stanley Street EAST SYDNEY 2000
PHONE 93604702

Review originally posted on the 21st of January 2003

I sat inside Bill 'n Toni’s restaurant and looked along Stanley Street. The inheritance of bistro warmth has evolved comprehensively from Italian immigrants and boarding-house accommodation. The former reinvented the later with amiable savvy, and have stuck around to keep an eye on their work.

The vibrancy of the precinct remains, and the youthful fusion is co-dependent with the graceful Neapolitans. It’s kind of like that friend’s place you always hang around on Sundays. All black tee shirts, studded-belts, and low-slung bass guitars. Then the landlord comes around to collect the rent and joins you in a beer.

I’d nabbed a balcony table and received the reverential bread and supplementary flagon of cordial. Today it’s pineapple.

The dishes tend towards simplicity and prices are on the side of the customer. An assembled medley of pasta or meat cuts satisfies local devotees. The straightforwardness of napolitana or bolognaise stay unembellished save for your choice of spaghetti or penne. Schnitzel comes with cheese and there’s scaloppini pizzaola or else meatballs. Otherwise roast chicken or veal grills including fish, sausages, beef fillet and a pork chop. An ensemble of pasta and any main costs fourteen dollars. A starter of pasta followed by a main is eighteen. Pasta or soup alone is only eight. Seven day trading of lunch and dinner and a brief hiatus between resets indicate enough flow to keep things unsullied.

Aww shucksie service, like '80s stadium rock, is altogether avoided. Mr. Caesar downstairs pulls majestic coffee for the mix of gym heads, suits and young icehouse flowers that have probably just rolled out of bed. They all troop in, so after eating submerge and absorb yourself into the atmosphere.

The street’s manifold kitchens - and I’ve worked out front of three of 'em - suggest a renaissance designed to please the customer and not guide books or egomaniacal chefs. Food described as courteous must therefore uphold a notion that customers are not unwitting exhibits in an impromptu performance. Do I have to write the next line?

The Upper Crust

2008-01-01T00:06:00.000Z

1003 Pittwater Road COLLOROY
Phone 99715182

Review originally posted on the 19th of August 2003

Mentioning the Upper Crust’s alfresco eating areas might ingenuously calm any hostile sentiment felt by hearing that it’s merely a pie shop. For those of you affected with such an inflated view of things, certainly, there are cast-iron tables and chairs sitting upon the paved entrance, plus trestle seating and cross-sections of logs that are used for tables on the front lawn. I sat there recently, dreamily remembering my past summers. If I subtract both the garden furniture and about thirty years, then add a creaking fly-screen door for atmosphere, I’m transported back to my debonair youth, circa 1973. It was here on the grass, so to speak, that I spent several miscalculated moments.

Regularly back then, there’d be a morning’s surf followed by the indispensable pre-lunch debriefing session in the office – a purpose-built cubbyhole within the Mangrove swamps surrounding Dee Why lagoon - Next, inspired by the munchies, several grommets and myself would set off to bridge the gap between hunger and nourishment, while at the same time narrowly avoiding golfer’s badly aimed balls as we crossed the Long Reef golf links. Triumphantly, we’d spill across Pittwater Road where our trek culminated in an encounter of the sumptuous kind always found when arriving at this baking oasis. Mesmerized by our good fortune we’d then glibly order the elegant trinity of meat, pastry and gravy. My lifelong admiration for the humble pie began on this very same council nature strip where I sat most recently. These days, my palette no longer being the anesthetized organ of taste it once was, I didn’t eat my fill of pies, sausage rolls, apple pies and cream horns. That, however, left a tendency afterwards to wander down Anzac Avenue for a stroll along Fisherman’s beach. With a smidgen of extra energy, or about half a chocolate éclair’s worth of kilojoules, one could easily ascend Long Reef headland for a spectacular view of the coast.

This shop, once known as Kerslakes, still radiated warmth and doting from the moment it appeared in my cross hairs. Mrs. Kerslake is still around, although the enterprising next generation of bakers now serve the patisserie’s evolution. Pies are categorized into chunky meat, beef or lamb. And ground beef or chicken’s breast or thigh. A vegetarian selection is also included. Each section has at least seven different types. The sausage roll, formidable during the Kerslakes epoch, now comes in two styles that have developed a refinement in their maturity. The outstanding pastry extends to apple pies and the chocolate éclair features the airiest choux imaginable. The unassuming vanilla slice unites ingredients into what is potentially one of the world’s great, though elusive, pastry combos. In lesser establishments this delicacy alternates between brightly-yellowed congealed travesties to saccharine sweet dross. The Upper Crust’s version displays a prowess and subtlety that is characteristic of every bakery item exiting from this popular Northern Beaches landmark. On one interior wall there are felt-tip marker pen endorsements from celebrities and pie loving folk the world over. Even a dog riding shotgun on the back of a builder’s truck barked as it swung by.

Kowloon BBQ Restaurant

2007-12-31T23:47:00.000Z

302 Victoria Avenue CHATSWOOD 2067
Phone 94112988

Review originally posted on the 4th of March 2003

A sign on Victoria Avenue Chatswood tells me the Kowloon BBQ Restaurant, situated directly opposite the Chatswood BBQ Kitchen has, so to speak, hung out its shingle.

What’s in a name? More than is in a sign, apparently.

The signage supplier to Chinese BBQ restaurants wearily maintains integrity to that archaic western perception of all things Chinese ie they all look the same.

Such an invariable format makes it impossible to distinguish one, in terms of potential quality, from another. That’s assuming the westerner is brave enough to enter at all. A national dread for eating anything but spring rolls and dim sims has become a heritage of our unwitting prejudice. Although, it’s keeping an important division of the chemical companies going - the fast-food industry…

The Kowloon kitchen's fixtures and fittings show refinement. Five cozy booths hug the right-hand wall, and a center-aisle runway has the narrowness of a cricket-pitch. A cleaver-wielding cook removes carcass parts from some vertically suspended hooks on one’s left, and further down, towards the batsman’s end, more tables are positioned outside a kitchen door.

Here the cooking not the cook possesses primacy. 223 dishes on the menu demonstrate cuisine as craft by fine-tuning through repetition. This isn’t art, because cooking isn’t art. 16 menu sections run through various ingredients prepared traditionally. Braised pigs’ ears, tongue, stomach or intestine, it’s your choice, become less daunting surrounded by golden stock, ginger and lotus root. The swine’s knuckle, served with jellyfish, balances richness with slippery crunch. For the less adventurous salt baking of chicken revitalizes the bird revealing fat slabs of white meat. Or braised scallops with noodles are lush and buttery tasting. The subtle nuance of this large menu avoids clichés, but more importantly, nothing I ate tasted like the refrigerator.

One waiter, in traditional white sox, a food runner, and the owner crack jokes in Cantonese while gently and purposefully serving students or grandmothers. Various other assistants wander from, and then back to the kitchen. Meanwhile Chinese Consulate officials - I love the company of spies at lunchtime - nab the best booths. In a similarly set up western place, like the beanery that keeps dropping those naff flyers into my letterbox, a short-skirted bimbo, or a Stavros type asking the “beyoodifool laydees” is, “everything all right?” would generate half the business and cost twice as much. Kowloon BBQ Restaurant is defiantly busy. It’s attuned to an area of Sydney once known as the Kowloon side of the harbour. And all this occurs without a chef’s name on the sign. Appearing, as it no doubt would, in the possessive case.

The Australian Hotel

2007-12-31T23:35:00.000Z

100 Cumberland Street THE ROCKS SYDNEY 2000
Phone 92472229

Review originally posted on the 16th of January 2003

It is a truth universally acknowledged that cooking increases Serotonan levels; the terrific inbuilt feel-good agent carried by neurotransmitters. I can’t imagine why then people claim to dislike food preparation. (General jocularity.)

This same bliss is gained from eating and drinking.

Then why do nearly 40 eateries close or go bankrupt nationwide daily?

Furthermore, how come the hospitality industry grows by 8.4% a year?

I look for answers at the Rocks, in The Australian Hotel. A corner pub built in 1913 from an established license dated 1889.

Inside, it has a resuscitated though chintzy post-war feel. And outside, a corrugated iron canopy shades trestle tables right around the walkway. Attractive staff serves the vast beer selection, and undergraduate barmen patrol the perimeter in search of errant empties.

Beef & Bock pie with a glossy crust, those ubiquitous wedges, the “Rocks” Caesar, pizza (including a breakfast pizza...) and soup make-up most of the menu. With the exception of the pie, they exemplify our culinary crisis.

What the dumbing down effect considers ironic ie Pizza Tandoori chicken served with mint yogurt, or Pizza con-carne served with sour cream, guacamole and corn chips, (really!) is properly considered sarcastic by a confidently strong cuisine.

I mean it’s like U2 wearing sunglasses. Contrariness yes, imaginative? Not notably.

But I ate and enjoyed. At night the incandescent backdrop of the city lights would enhance greatly the pub's gastronomic interest.

A big index of appeal here is Scharer’s lager. Brewed in Picton at the George the 4th Inn by the riotously funny Scharer. The Bock beer used to braise the pie’s beef is another Scharer product.

It’s no gastropub, though the tables of striped shirted salesmen suggest a good meeting place for girlies looking to flirt. Neither is it the most potent symbol of Australian cuisine. But to carry on any more would be to sound like a pub bore.

The Coffee Shop

2007-12-31T07:16:00.000Z

97 Bay Road WAVERTON SYDNEY NSW 2060
PHONE 99554762

Review originally posted on the 31st of January 2003

Breakfast is a positive spirited meal during which the business of the day ahead falls into manageable perspective. The critical period in matrimony, so I’m told, is breakfast-time. Being single, I know this theory holds true. I want legroom from all the world's stage and its most trying auditions during the morning.

Something of a legend, thanks to its genteel clientelle and the panache of the cooking is The Coffee Shop (Pats) at Waverton on Bay Road. Pat is the mother of proprietor G. Harmsworth. The Coffee Shop was an earlier name, as was Witham’s. Witham however, still supplies the coffee… Keeping up?

In the sunlight it would be difficult to feel less than sanguine at Pats. There are harbour views for morning escapists while in the distance, one cup of the bridge formally known as Madonna’s bra points perkily skyward. Underneath market umbrellas whiskered men in Panama hats listen to body-piercing stories from the next table or to a husband protest that the mortgage money is being frittered away on Chanel. There are mothers with toddlers, business people, and Neutral Bay types negotiating the slicks of extra virgin olive oil in 4x4 vehicles. Balls Head Point is home to HMAS Waterhen, and on just a short stroll after breaking your fast, Froggart Lookout offers another ceremony of peace. This clearing within the thickness of Sydney Red Gums offers a maritime seascape rarely seen on postcards. The vivid bird life and strong handsome native flora is equally awesome.

Food? Yes, good too. Muesli, yogurt and Dallas Bakery bread, bowls of fruit, scrambled eggs or bagels. While wispy croissants are the work of a dedicated master with cool hands. Nothing entirely new, but fresh, disturbingly sexy, primitive and cool are the lot. Plus, every conceivable variation of tea and coffee makes the fair Pats a breakfast beacon and a testimony to G. Harmsworth and his vision of the best produce, handled simply. The welcoming attitude of the staff is the icing on the cake.

Truly a haven of tranquility, this place oozes charm.

Crowne Plaza, (The Florida) Terrigal

2007-12-31T06:37:00.000Z

Pine Tree Lane TERRIGAL NSW AUSTRALIA
Phone 43849111

Review originally posted on the 9th of January, 2003

I'm no reclusive. I'd end up with cabin fever. Usually within a day or two the sap begins to rise and my thoughts turn to summer, sweat and tenderness.

So, to the Central Coast with a stop over en route.

Symbolically, the holidaymaker who'd cleverly sewn a pinstripe jacket into a hippyish shoulder bag captured the mood at Terrigal. Amorous couples carrying surfboards and wearing Frangipanis strolled along the beachfront while assorted fry-cooks on stand-by looked on pensively. And the historically famous Florida Hotel distinguished now as the Crowne Plaza, where i was to cook my own steak, ultimately beckoned.

Chefs are all right, but they won't do. They're on show here. One of 'em grinned when the saucy minx at the bistro handed over my 350-g 'Stockyard' rump.
"So... I just add heat, eh? Alright then."

Quite a bit of bravado can occur at these self-cook affairs. However I glibly shared the secret of fire with a couple of builders who'd just arrived, which resulted in further consultancy work throughout the process. Very civilized, in fact, I don't think they ever went back to work.

The surrounding terraced courtyard completes one's immersion into the local culture without a hefty cost, but with comfortable, shaded tables and chairs and a soloist covering Cat Stevens without strangulation.

Caesar salads, nacho's, the Florida's 'curry of the week' were all exhumed competently along with further carcass parts and a pasta dish. The pumpkin pancetta ravioli with sundried tomato and pesto described the kitchens less is more so just add a bit more philosophy.

The food enhances and compliments the fireflies dancing on the beams of summer light, to misquote Richard Clapton, which is the Australian summer coastal town thrill. And The Terrigal Cake Shop, later on, turned the clock back to childhood, to a notionally better time. I was chasing the dolce vita one's by then.

However, a dip in the crisp McMaster's surf before heading home soon arrested this overindulgence.

Max Brenner. Chocolate By The Bald Man

2007-12-30T18:31:00.000Z

Level 1, Shop 135 Chatswood Chase 345 Victoria Avenue CHATSWOOD SYDNEY NSW 2067
Phone 94116962

Review originally posted on the 17th of February 2003

The name Max Brenner sounds like it belongs to the wheel man in a 1940s gangster movie. It’s actually the name of a chocolate shop found in a shopping mall at Chatswood. Mr. Brenner is also known as the bald man and he understands Theobroma cacao to be the compensation for love. The place wasn’t booming when I entered on Saturday morning, so I can’t say just how much chocolate ‘the man’ would sell here. But whoever sells the chocolate to ‘the man’ really knows how to sell chocolate. There are boxes, bags, sacks and blocks; together with beans, powders, brownies, and two giant sealed centrifugal chocolate machines churning molten white and dark chocolate.

An attempt to go slightly freestyle and move away from the retail therapy scheme was clearly made with Chatswood Chase. The deviation never really fooled me. No matter how much the glam is pushed it’s a shopping mall, pure and simple. Thus making it tainted and difficult. It’s similar to version number two of some crappy movie with the big bell of marketing. Great if you consider a tee shirt bearing the slogan “Nasty Models Inc” to be edgy, but otherwise worthy of a detour. But I wander into the Chase occasionally. The place is lousy with beautiful women.

The chocolate brown theme extends to the Brenner décor. One can perch at the bar, or alternatively, on a set of nursery sized tables and chairs, all as backless as a Bond bimbo’s dress. And there’s dark wood everywhere, too. Rough-hewn chunks of the stuff. Climbing the wall with the shelving, and hanging curiously from the ceiling.

My order was ferried to me on a wooden placemat whereupon a tea light heated a small ceramic crucible holding milk. A spoon that is also a straw accompanied a side dish of chocolate pieces. It’s your basic fondue arrangement. My choice of Peruvian dark was gorgeously rich and so perfectly itself. The Mayans really had a moment when they discovered chocolate 3500 years ago. And I felt the omnipotence growing as I ladled chunks of “the dark” into the brew. At $5:50 it’s a great substitute for love, and possibly what the whole retail thing is all about. The blessedly quiet atmosphere was a bonus. The last thing I need is some hyperglycemic brat peaking on sugar and cocoa. That’s what the rest of the mall is there for.