Some years ago I reached a point in my life where it became necessary to refrain from further use of certain intoxicants.
I've found that the longer I remain on this path, the more aware I become of certain memories and scenes from my life that keep re-surfacing and replaying themselves like a song.
One particular scene involves a wine bar known as French's, that existed in Sydney during the 1980's on Oxford street in Darlinghurst.
French's was a late night hangout for punks, bikers and others who had much the same attitude, but couldn't be bothered to dress right.
In order to gain entrance it was best if you were partially drunk, or at least very brave, but preferably, drunk and brave. There was also the requirement of being somewhat stupid but I wasn't aware of that at the time.
Besides being a late night hangout for the punks after the pubs were shut, French's was also a music venue that was home to many up and coming Sydney punk bands who still have absolutely no recollection of ever having played there. Some of them had to be shown old gig posters and told how great they were before accepting it might have been true.
The thing I remember most though was the jukebox. It was a proverbial square peg in a round hole. It seemed like someone put it there in the 1960's and never so much as updated a single song on it right up until French's closed down sometime in the mid to late 80's.
I'd sit there with my old punk friends cursing that jukebox on a routine basis. Our ranting and songs of protest became almost as well known to ourselves as did The Monkey's 'I'm A Believer', Procol Harlem's 'Whiter Shade Of Pale' and The Animals' 'House Of The Rising Sun'. It was like a cosmic joke. These particular songs for which we had an almost psychotic dislike were of course the ones that were played the most… We never discovered who kept putting their money in that jukebox to hear those old songs and they certainly were very brave to keep doing so, but week after week, month after month, year after year, we'd keep sitting there cursing those songs and ordering more drinks…
But, like I was saying, the longer I remain on this path the more old memories resurface…
I started getting flashbacks to a scene a decade earlier in the 1970's where I was walking through the bush trails near my family home in St.Ives on the North Shore. This particular day, I was both fascinated and horrified to discover dozens of melted and warped 45 singles - you know, those old vinyl type records. They were scattered all around the bush. You have to realise that at the age I was, this was like discovering lost treasure. I'd pick up each single and pore over it's label. I remember titles like AC/DC's 'Jailbreak' and The Skyhooks' 'Ego Is Not A Dirty Word'. My head instantly became a vacuum of unanswered questions. Who? What? Why? How? And where did they all come from? I wanted to gather them all up and take them home but it was pointless. They were all hopelessly melted, twisted and warped…
As it turned out, later that day I bumped into one of the neighbourhood kids I used to hang-out with called Gary. Gary was older than me and a fine source of trouble. He had an older brother called John who was even more gifted in the fine art of making trouble. Gary and John lived across the road from us for a few short years. Their parents did not look like normal St.Ives parents. They wore cowboy boots, had long hair, loud cars, too much make-up and they never smiled. This particular day I wandered with Gary back to his house where he warned me not to go into John's room. He told me John was in a really bad mood because the sun had come through his window and melted his entire record collection…
Mystery solved. I had to have a look in John's room. I checked and the coast was clear. John was not in his room and neither was his record collection…
John and Gary's house, like ours, was built on the sloping side of a ravine overlooking the bush in the valley below. John's bedroom had a balcony that overlooked the bush where I had been walking earlier when I discovered all those melted 45's. More recently, this memory repeated itself over and over again as I imagined that angry kid across the street letting rip on his balcony and frisbeeing all his melted 45's. Records that seemed like the most important treasure in the world but were in fact just useless old broken songs.