We're Not The First, I Hope We're Not The Last...

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    We're Not The First, I Hope We're Not The Last...
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    I was about to finish (just) year 8 of high school, my music taste had quickly become only punk rock and everything else was ‘fucked’. It was about a year since I’d seen my first ever live band The Living End, which had prompted me to both start a band and start playing the electric guitar, literally the next day. From memory we had four guitarists because the first four people I asked at school played guitar.


    A new kid had started at school and he was cool as all hell. Epitaph seemed to send him heaps of kick arse stickers to deface his diary with, which I immediately envied. Naturally we become best mates in not too long. We both played in some pretty terrible bands who we imagined to be ground breaking at the time and spent nearly all of our time at a venue called The Gabba Hotel that had a very scummy all ages room where heaps of punk bands played every weekend. At this point most of the other kids at school were enjoying blue light discos and having their first taste of cigarettes, sips of UDL’s and shitty urban music. (A little different from cartons of throw downs, boxed wine, drugs and some of the shittiest punk/hardcore bands you could imagine.) At this point we were both failing miserably at getting our bands on shows as we were terrible. The only options were government funded youth venues and PCYC’s which were lame, well lit, bursting with parental supervision and were pretty well the worst atmosphere for playing the kind of music we were obsessed with. We wanted to turn it up loud enough to piss people off in a dark as hell room where you could easily underage drink and cause trouble.


    We were sitting at this creek at school and my mate suggested we should throw a gig on a boat so we could both have a show to play that was actually cool. (I think he had just started getting into Sex Pistols so I dare say we have them to thank for the idea. Google it.) We had a budget of about $100 and no idea what we were doing. The positive was we were determined little buggers. We went to look at some boats and found the perfect one. An old city ferry that had been decommissioned and had a very, very, very dodgy owner. At this moment was when I first learnt how to negotiate in the world of budget DIY music. We managed to get the boat for free and he was going to get a cut of the door. I think we told him some famous American band was coming or something and it would definitely sell out. Next thing we needed was a name for the event. We called it ‘I Paid Ten Bucks To Sink’ and made a poster on Printmaster gold that my Mum had on her computer. It was one of the worst posters I have ever seen (see left.) I then rung up both the street presses and told them I wanted a free ad because I was 15 years old and made $4 an hour at the local bakery. One of them told me to get fucked the other one told me to send them the artwork but it probably won’t run. Luckily for us the next issue was a little light on and they would run it for $50 but they wanted to redesign the art because I quote ‘this artwork is so bad it would be embarrassing to run it.’ Naturally we thought it was a smart idea to spend 50% of our entire budget on 1/8 of a page ad at the back and we ran it. We printed off a bunch of posters at school and friend’s houses and hit the streets. At this point we had no idea how to make wheat paste (corn flour glue that will keep your poster on a wall for years to come.) so it was all rolls of packing tape and staple guns which we’d swiped from school. We put up literally thousands of posters and put hundreds of flyers face down on bus seats with doubled up tape so they would be stuck to hundreds of arses around town.


    It was getting closer to show day and a couple of things were missing, booze and a PA. Remember when you had to organise getting someone who was over 18 to buy booze for you? what a hassle! We had about 50 bucks left and renting a PA was nearly 5 times that. We came up with the ingenious idea of hiring a rehearsal space for $30 for the arvo/night (which had a PA in the room). We pinched the PA and thought we’d sneak back in early in the morning and put it back. This ended up proving to be a terrible idea which you’ll hear about in a moment. We got a mates brother to buy a couple of cartons of beer and I think bourbon premixes. We decided the best way to smuggle them in was inside a kick drum case. Hilariously we loaded onto the boat with a kick drum case and a kick drum, everyone was none the wiser (or perhaps didn’t care.)


    Show day came and I remember being massively excited while more honestly thinking that hardly anyone would show up. We grabbed the PA in the arvo, loaded onto the boat with all the bands and were to pick up the punters at a different location. The boat was such a dog, took ages to get the power going and when we finally did the PA wasn’t working (mostly because we had no idea how to setup or run a PA). We had to call the guy who owned the practice rooms and fess up. Luckily he took it ok and we actually     convinced him to come down to the boat and get it working for us. Yep, you gotta plug the speakers in, fatal mistake. The boat fitted 150 people including staff and bands. When we finally rocked up to the wharf to pick up everyone else and there was about 300 kids there. It was off the chain. Now I’ve mentioned this before but the boat owner/captain was dodgy as anything so he chucked the rules out the window and loaded as many of these little bastards as he could onto the boat. (remember he’s getting a cut of the door haha). Ended up fitting about 280 people in the end, literally jammed with everyone hanging out the windows. The boat finally took off with what seemed like a few complications and a bunch of trips below by the captain to ‘fix the motor’. Within 10 minutes the boat broke down in the middle of the river. My friend and I were shitting ourselves, we’d named the event ‘I paid ten bucks to sink’!! They decided to just drop the anchor right there and stay there for the night and get another boat to tow us in later. The bar ended up being run by the captain and one other guy and they served alcohol to whoever had the money, it was like international waters! It was bloody perfect and everything we were looking for at the time. Dark, extremely loud, punk rock bands, next to no one to tell us off, plenty of boozing and mischievous activity. Everyone got well loose and it’s fair to say the fish in the Brissy River got plenty to eat that night.




    The next day we had pretty sore heads but I knew we were definitely onto something. The word spread pretty quickly about this insane punk rock/party boat cruise and we started throwing them all the time. We’ve done a few each year since then and they’ve always been successful. I’m 26 now it’s not as dodgy as it used to be and the original boat owner is long gone. I am left wondering though, what are the 15 year olds of this world doing now? Would I even know? Local music seems to have gone in a much safer musical direction now which doesn’t bother me, every generation is different and wants different things. I do think one thing has definitely never changed though, teenagers want to cause havoc and be reckless and I just hope they are still managing to pull it off.

     



     

    153436
    Tags:
    Brisbane, punk rock, The Living End,
Submitted by Site Factory admin on




 

I was about to finish (just) year 8 of high school, my music taste had quickly become only punk rock and everything else was ‘fucked’. It was about a year since I’d seen my first ever live band The Living End, which had prompted me to both start a band and start playing the electric guitar, literally the next day. From memory we had four guitarists because the first four people I asked at school played guitar.


A new kid had started at school and he was cool as all hell. Epitaph seemed to send him heaps of kick arse stickers to deface his diary with, which I immediately envied. Naturally we become best mates in not too long. We both played in some pretty terrible bands who we imagined to be ground breaking at the time and spent nearly all of our time at a venue called The Gabba Hotel that had a very scummy all ages room where heaps of punk bands played every weekend. At this point most of the other kids at school were enjoying blue light discos and having their first taste of cigarettes, sips of UDL’s and shitty urban music. (A little different from cartons of throw downs, boxed wine, drugs and some of the shittiest punk/hardcore bands you could imagine.) At this point we were both failing miserably at getting our bands on shows as we were terrible. The only options were government funded youth venues and PCYC’s which were lame, well lit, bursting with parental supervision and were pretty well the worst atmosphere for playing the kind of music we were obsessed with. We wanted to turn it up loud enough to piss people off in a dark as hell room where you could easily underage drink and cause trouble.


We were sitting at this creek at school and my mate suggested we should throw a gig on a boat so we could both have a show to play that was actually cool. (I think he had just started getting into Sex Pistols so I dare say we have them to thank for the idea. Google it.) We had a budget of about $100 and no idea what we were doing. The positive was we were determined little buggers. We went to look at some boats and found the perfect one. An old city ferry that had been decommissioned and had a very, very, very dodgy owner. At this moment was when I first learnt how to negotiate in the world of budget DIY music. We managed to get the boat for free and he was going to get a cut of the door. I think we told him some famous American band was coming or something and it would definitely sell out. Next thing we needed was a name for the event. We called it ‘I Paid Ten Bucks To Sink’ and made a poster on Printmaster gold that my Mum had on her computer. It was one of the worst posters I have ever seen (see left.) I then rung up both the street presses and told them I wanted a free ad because I was 15 years old and made $4 an hour at the local bakery. One of them told me to get fucked the other one told me to send them the artwork but it probably won’t run. Luckily for us the next issue was a little light on and they would run it for $50 but they wanted to redesign the art because I quote ‘this artwork is so bad it would be embarrassing to run it.’ Naturally we thought it was a smart idea to spend 50% of our entire budget on 1/8 of a page ad at the back and we ran it. We printed off a bunch of posters at school and friend’s houses and hit the streets. At this point we had no idea how to make wheat paste (corn flour glue that will keep your poster on a wall for years to come.) so it was all rolls of packing tape and staple guns which we’d swiped from school. We put up literally thousands of posters and put hundreds of flyers face down on bus seats with doubled up tape so they would be stuck to hundreds of arses around town.


It was getting closer to show day and a couple of things were missing, booze and a PA. Remember when you had to organise getting someone who was over 18 to buy booze for you? what a hassle! We had about 50 bucks left and renting a PA was nearly 5 times that. We came up with the ingenious idea of hiring a rehearsal space for $30 for the arvo/night (which had a PA in the room). We pinched the PA and thought we’d sneak back in early in the morning and put it back. This ended up proving to be a terrible idea which you’ll hear about in a moment. We got a mates brother to buy a couple of cartons of beer and I think bourbon premixes. We decided the best way to smuggle them in was inside a kick drum case. Hilariously we loaded onto the boat with a kick drum case and a kick drum, everyone was none the wiser (or perhaps didn’t care.)


Show day came and I remember being massively excited while more honestly thinking that hardly anyone would show up. We grabbed the PA in the arvo, loaded onto the boat with all the bands and were to pick up the punters at a different location. The boat was such a dog, took ages to get the power going and when we finally did the PA wasn’t working (mostly because we had no idea how to setup or run a PA). We had to call the guy who owned the practice rooms and fess up. Luckily he took it ok and we actually convinced him to come down to the boat and get it working for us. Yep, you gotta plug the speakers in, fatal mistake. The boat fitted 150 people including staff and bands. When we finally rocked up to the wharf to pick up everyone else and there was about 300 kids there. It was off the chain. Now I’ve mentioned this before but the boat owner/captain was dodgy as anything so he chucked the rules out the window and loaded as many of these little bastards as he could onto the boat. (remember he’s getting a cut of the door haha). Ended up fitting about 280 people in the end, literally jammed with everyone hanging out the windows. The boat finally took off with what seemed like a few complications and a bunch of trips below by the captain to ‘fix the motor’. Within 10 minutes the boat broke down in the middle of the river. My friend and I were shitting ourselves, we’d named the event ‘I paid ten bucks to sink’!! They decided to just drop the anchor right there and stay there for the night and get another boat to tow us in later. The bar ended up being run by the captain and one other guy and they served alcohol to whoever had the money, it was like international waters! It was bloody perfect and everything we were looking for at the time. Dark, extremely loud, punk rock bands, next to no one to tell us off, plenty of boozing and mischievous activity. Everyone got well loose and it’s fair to say the fish in the Brissy River got plenty to eat that night.




The next day we had pretty sore heads but I knew we were definitely onto something. The word spread pretty quickly about this insane punk rock/party boat cruise and we started throwing them all the time. We’ve done a few each year since then and they’ve always been successful. I’m 26 now it’s not as dodgy as it used to be and the original boat owner is long gone. I am left wondering though, what are the 15 year olds of this world doing now? Would I even know? Local music seems to have gone in a much safer musical direction now which doesn’t bother me, every generation is different and wants different things. I do think one thing has definitely never changed though, teenagers want to cause havoc and be reckless and I just hope they are still managing to pull it off.

 



 

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punk rock
The Living End
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