Stranded

Sitting here, typing these words, listening to The Saint's I'm Stranded on full blast through my headphones that I've used to the point where the foam's falling off, I know that even if I felt stranded, that I've made the journey back home, back to what really matters.

I already heard those familiar lyrics in my head. I heard it when I was sitting on the asphalt pavement in front of 296 Stanley Street Wooloongabba where I just knew that I lived it.

I had the idea of what it would be like to live it. It comes ringing back to me whenever I've gone to gigs I've went to where I just knew it would be history. I feel it when I've spent an entire day in my room rehearsing to the point where I can breathe in the fermented sweat The Saints must have breathed in at Club '76. It was christened that after some fucker threw in a brick into one of the glass windows of their improvised gig venue which also tripled as a sharehouse and rehearsal space and they just boarded it up and wrote Club '76 on it to make it official.

4 Petrie Terrace, the place where history was made, literally had their drum set coming within milimetres of the walls. They played the wrong chord sometimes. They played to less people then the amount of people in their band sometimes.

It all goes to show that the execution may not be align with our expectations. But that doesn't matter because we make do with what we have. We, The Scene, do things because they're the truth. What matters most is feeling good doing it. Everything else is bullshit.

The Saints saw how there wasn't anything that mattered. In early 70s Brisbane, bands were playing shit not because they liked what they were doing. Instead, they played shit to make money and fit the 'industry standard' based on what was going on in England or America.

Venues didn't want them to play because they swore 'a lot', wore 'the wrong' shirts and trousers and had 'too long' hair. Venues didn't want them to play because they said what was true in a world of lies. Think living under the current regime is rough? Read up on what

The Saints said fuck. It. Fuck it all and fuck it loud and proud. They hired out community halls and whatever place would let them be in and didn't care if the venue "didn't" want[ed] them 'back', it happened, and they didn't care about what those people thought because they lived a lie. What mattered was the people who were living the same truth they were living and became a part of what was to become The Scene.

Then they decided to cut the shit, realised what they had and that they could make it work, and created their own venue. What happened at that venue is history.

They used their knowledge of how much it actually costs to press records which they learnt from drummer Ivor Hay's experience being a technician at a record pressing plant, to save up enough money to press so many copies to the point they could sent out copies to all the pop music mags around the world. They had enough excess records on the floor for people in the crowd to stop on.

The Saints did the most they could with what they were given and they got, and got an outcome that felt right to them, and felt right to their audience. Their audience that through the continuous handing-down process that keeps the torch of the scene burning bright and furious is us.

The Saints went on to England, where the industry was more cooperative only because they saw how 'punk' made good money. The Saints didn't describe themselves as punk because it wasn't a term that felt owned by them. They saw themselves as simply playing rock and roll. They didn't realise it, they made it big but every new song they wrote because they were obligated to write one and every 'performance' they had to put on every night slowly made what they were doing a lie. The Saints burnt out. The Saints did not fade away.

Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek articulates what all musicians in The Scene feel in an interview with Thrasher Magazine:

Up until the late 1960s, the business side of the industry was run by people who liked music, so there was a degree of edginess and people were willing to take risks. By the early 1970s it was all accountants and business suits that cared only if the music sold as a product. They looked for safer music when money became the raison d'etre. You had to go underground to find the good stuff.

The Saints live up to their name not because they did things that meet an 'industry standard' or 'expectation' but because they did things that were hungry for but never knew they needed. They live up to their name because they didn't feel as if they needed permission to just do it.

I lived the words 'Like a snake calling on a phone, I've got no time to be alone, someone's coming at me all time, yeah babe I think I'll lose my mind, cus I'm Stranded on my own' when I was setting up equipment for The Big Break and had to run two minds and had people rephrase 'questions' to manipulate out of thin air my hollow 'implied agreeance' to whatever bullshit they said.

Chris Bailey didn't care and likely didn't even know that some people, like me on their first listen to that song could barely register what specific word he sung. But it didn't matter, because what he sung was right. I understood exactly what we was saying. I've felt it and now I've lived it.

I've lived the words 'living in a world insane, they cut out some heart and some brain, they've been filling it up with dirt. I'm sitting here feeling it so heard I can hear it going through my mind.

Caked in my sweat from a day I'll never forget til the day I die because I wanted to capture The Moment while it was happening, I no longer feel stranded. The Moment is something we've all experienced, it's something Findaway captured in their song 'The Moment'.

We are The Saints. We, The Scene, do what we to do because it feels right to us, and we are going to KEEP DOING what we do because it's right.

To all the naysayers and people who have done copious amounts of lying to themselves so that they continue to 'live' the lie that they call a life even when it just doesn't feel right, good, keep it that way. Keep living your lie. You seem to be pretty good at it; doing things that feel true are already hard enough. Doing bullshit requires a particular level of insanity, and it sure does take a hell of a lot more work to do.

Just ask Piss Off's Arran McKenzie. He wrote their song Geography Class about a class he had to take that was utter bullshit. Busywork galore. Didn't even mean shit for getting a diploma because of how fucked up the QCAA is.

The Chimpeltons, a band with a name people get wrong consistently but doesn't matter because it gets the point across, it's The Chimpeltons with a pel not a ple, wrote an entire song about those self-assured brats, just one part of a cog in the machine of Control that tries to kill the truth through mindthink, which obviously hasn't worked. I experienced it live, at a gig with The Amphetamines and Ambrosial, the latter of which have become history. It was sublime.

Unless you actually want to get a life. And that means is going to where things are HAPPENING just to have a good time. That means really hearing and owning the reality because it's the truth. It's when you decided to stop saying more shit propped up on your lies you call beliefs and the live the truth.

Something I've learnt is that you can tell when something you've written is right. Replace every period with an exclamation mark. You can tell when what you've written has hedging or is not coming out of your soul when it sounds weird when you replace the full stops in it with exclamation marks.

Sitting here, at 3:11 am, having had The Big Break become reality and having this all typed up on a word document with the only thing left to do being to put it into Indesign to have the typography and layout match the excellence of what I'm doing, I feel supersonic.

As my friend Ace, who I can tell you does everything to the absolute best given what she was given in life and who was just one person out of all of you who are THE reason I made it through my creative-interpersonal-inner crisis that stretched from when I stopped going gigs, which is the backbone of our scene, to just have a good time and started doing things that were propped up on hollow 'values', 'beliefs', 'goals' started June/July 2024 right up to right now said when I asked her the same question I had an expected a different answer:

Life's what you make of it.

chapter one: stranded

Sitting on the pavement of 296 Stanley St, Wooloongabba, with the searing LED sign of 'BRISBANE HOTEL' beaming down on me, fragments of glass beside me, surrounded by people, that's what community really is, fourteen kilometres away from home with no way to get home, never before have the words of "I'm Stranded" by The Saints pierced through the utter foundations of my soul.

So what really happened tonight? I could give you a million answers, all false. The truth is that the night didn't happen how it wanted it to happen.

Never before have I felt so grateful to be alive. I saw death glaring me down at point blank range, with its bloated, sneering, self-assured ugliness right in front of me. And I realised that that, that evil, is not something I want more of in the existence I've got.

From the day I was born, I didn't feel like I had a life. I was put on planet Earth, meant to do all these things I'm supposed to do, and interact with fellow Earth inhabitants and form these things we call 'relationships' just to not feel bad.

I never had anyone to show me how I was supposed to do that. Nobody has. We learn by doing. My parents? They were absent, and never really understood how I felt or what it's like to me be. Even when they did hear me out, in was always in the context of the objective goal of 'ACCOMPLISHING SUCCESS' rather than what the reality is, which is that you've gotta make do with what you've got.

chapter two: the big takeover

When I went to my first gig in the scene I didn't do so with some intent of 'GAINING CONNECTIONS' or 'CHANGING THINGS'; I went to it because I didn't feel like I had a life. That night, the 4th of May, 2024, one day before my 14th birthday, was the first day where I just knew that I wanted to be on planet Earth; whenever I'm having a crisis or existence just feels like it's too much to take, thinking about that night brings me straight back to what really matters even when I just know that how I've acted and how I feel doesn't align with what that demonstrated to me.

That night, seeing people give it all they got given what they were given, and saying it LOUD, and singing it PROUD, is history. Being with PEOPLE, talking with PEOPLE, hearing PEOPLE, that was when I realised: 'hey, this interpersonal relationship thing may not be as complicated as I thought it would be'; that was what it meant to me.

Along the way, I just knew that I fell off the track that I wanted to go down. My reason for going to gigs wasn't to feel alive anymore. It became a relentless pursuit of a goal. What goal? The truth speaks for itself; I went to gigs to GET CONNECTIONS, to feel as if I've earnt the badge of 'YOU SEE? I AM BEING IN THE MOMENT'. But all of that was part of a cold, clinical front I presented to people to hide the hollow inside. Sure, I've now seen what it's like to be ALIVE, but how can make sure that I feel like that every moment I experience until my heart stops beating?

You don't 'get' connections by 'getting connections', by knowing 'big' people or by putting on big events. You get connections from doing the things that make you feel alive and doing them with other people. That's the meaning of my life: To get to do the things I love with the people I love; to get to be on my deathbed one day, surrounded loved ones and photographs of moments from the existence I've had, and go out with dignity, knowing that given what I've got and what I've been given, I did the things that I wanted to do, that's all that matters to me.

What's happening, right here, right now in the scene we all know and love? This is history.

chapter 3: the big break

What happened tonight? It happened.

What am I going to do? I don't know; you can't plan out a big 'masterplan' in your head and not expect it to not happen the way you wanted it to happen considering how it's been bounced around in the echo chamber of your own mind. The reality being that we will meet people who will try and cut out our hearts and our brains and fill it all up with dirt. We will meet people who try and sear evil into our lives.

When I ran out from Death himself in that basement, I had a choice. This day could be the day that I say: 'I gave it all I got but I still wasn't enough; I don't want to feel' and have it be the day I died;

The day I say to myself that maybe it really was one big dream. A dream that ended.

But I had another choice. I could choose to maybe feel the utter FEELING of how I felt and talk to PEOPLE to really see if what Evil said I should believe, that it was 'fucked all up', 'ruined', 'and smacked all up and under' was really grounded in reality.

Turns out, what Evil wants us to believe is just part of one big lie we tell ourselves. What is really is is just a repetition of the lies we've been told by other people who want us to think what they want us to think.

That we're not good enough. That we 'fucked it all up good and proper', that we are the sum of our past and that the present; what's up to us to choose right here right now considering what we've got and we've been given doesn't matter and that we should give up. End it.

chapter 4: The Moment

Every person in the scene knows the moment we realised that we are living. The moment we just knew that hey, maybe this life thing isn't so big and complicated, and that we've already got one, and that we actually did a good job at it. The moment we realised what we want our lives to be like and decided to start doing.

The moment we realised that other people can TRY TO dictate and reap evil into whatever it is they're gonna dictate and reap evil into but that it's just one BIG crummy, fucked-up exterior that is their 'dream', their values, attitudes and beliefs, which are rotten and can be replaced but which they don't want to replace, propping up an utter catastrophe. The moment we realised we don't need permission to live our own lives. The moment we chose life.

What I'm going to do next? I'll sort it on the fly, because the best decisions are made based on what works given our circumstances and what we're able to do. Writing 'A Complete History' was me reflecting on what built before us by all the people and how great it was, and knew that we will write a new chapter. My gig reviews, interviews, reviews, editorials, all of it, was me being at where things happen but being there for the wrong reasons.

Writing 'The Rise And Fall' was me looking back and just knowing that I've fallen off the wrong path. That my relationships with people who were important to me just weren't in a state that felt right. Some say 'what are you going to do about it'? Writing that piece was my way of doing what I knew would create change in my life which had lacked that type of change that makes things feel better. I said what I said given the state I was in and how I felt about it. Did what I say feel right to me? Absolutely. Did I say it the best way I could? No, in that moment I could have said it for what it really was; how I felt regarding how I perceived my relationship with the scene.

Am I proud to have said it? Absolutely. It was the first thing I said that really demonstrated how I felt inside. In all it's emotional, heavy, complicated glory. I'm proud to have shouted into the void of what I thought I thought the scene was, and have it shout, loud and proud in my face, snapping me back to what the reality of what it's all about. That even though I felt dead, other people didn't.

I didn't know the answer to my existential question of 'how can I feel the way other people do?' at that time, but now I do. It's an answer that I can say in words but which isn't true for you unless you've experienced it.

It's when the people I've looked up to because what they did made me feel alive say what really happened from their perspective, and when I just know that what they say is right. It's when you get the answer you don't want to hear but that you know is right. And what is right is that tonight was a success.

Not just a mere 'proof of concept' as that would mean dismissing your dreams and playing down the time, effort, and work to make that dream a reality. Not just another 'missed opportunity' or 'something I fucked up' because what matters more is how I feel, not what other people want to try and make me feel.

And how I feel is right. Having a good time with the people mean a lot to me is what matters. And I did it. For the time in months, in years, I get to see these people again, have a great time, and really have a mutual understanding.

For the first time in a long time, I have an experience which other people have shared in, which is the literal foundation of connection, and I know what I have to do if I don't want to feel like shit and to feel lonely. The truth of that means talking to people. It means HEARING what they have to say and not trying to hedge or speak in a 'calm', 'diplomatic', Clinical way to try and continue living the big lie that know deep down inside isn't the way we want to be.

That big lie which is really only our way of trying to make failure become a reality. I know what the truth is. It may not be what I want to hear but it is what I needed to hear. And I've heard it and am at the entrance to this path that is new yet feels familiar because it harkens back to my first days being in the scene.

And right now, I feel that same feeling I did when I went to my first gig. I'm not just some guy in the audience writing and thinking about it anymore. I'm a doer. I'm the guy who talks to people. Who ran The Big Break. Who has a rough idea of where to go and where I just know that good things will happen because I'll be going to places for the right reasons.

Where am I going? To gigs. To see the scene for what it is, even when the bands have 'weird' music but which after a few listens or experiencing what their really on about with their songs, LIVE and DIRECT, and even when the tickets actually cost money, because running an event costs money.

I already know what going to gigs for the right reasons has to offer. I'm gonna do exactly that. On Saturday, April 11th, Delphic Afterparty, Heatstroke and Liasis are going to be playing a gig. It's free; I've got tickets. I'm going. A lie I've been telling myself is that other people doing similar things as what I'm doing is 'competition'.

The truth is that they're just people, and hey, the more's the merrier given how we all want more all ages gigs in THE CITY. The city that can leave you stranded, like Ed Kuepper was when he was writing "I'm Stranded", he wrote that on a midnight train ride from Roma Street Station to his parents' house in Oxley after a particularly ALIVE night at 4 Petrie Terrace, a sharehouse, rehearsal space and live music venue for The Saints. I understand more than have understood, what Ed Kuepper was saying through that song. I lived it. I lived it when I put on and event and shouted out, and people came because it was what they were looking for.

I know what I'm going to be doing, and it will not be at Season Three. What I'm going to do is do what feels right at places that make me feel right, with people who are right and make me feel right with them. As Arran McKenzie who is one of those people right up there for me given the role he's played in my life put it in the second interview I ever did:

I don't care if your recording sounds like 'shit', because if your songs are good, people will listen.

When I was sitting there, trying to sort out how I was going to get home and how I will remember what I did today, I knew what to write. The words came to me in the moment. I just put it down to type.

But there is a voice I'm hearing right now. The voice of evil. The 'voice' that has only held me down from what I was supposed to be.

It's trying to tell me the lie that what I've written isn't 'sharp' and 'polished' and 'well written'. I'm holding that thought alongside with the thought that what I've written just reflects the complicated, subjective, HUMAN nature of what I experienced. The latter is what feels right, The former is bullshit, and now, it's history.

When I wrote The Complete History, I had it written out although I ended up writing and rewriting to try to say what I already said. But then came a moment where I read it over, and I just knew that waiting any longer would only make it feel less right.

I lived it when I when I was sitting in front of 296 Stanley Terrace, having a chat with people, Jackson and Alex from Pimp, Guy from Findaway, Arran, Nate and Isaac from Heavy Liquid, who mean more to me given the experiences we've shared, and other people who happened to be there and will mean a lot more to me in the coming days.

Some people try and make a big deal and downplay change; as if its something that you have to feel bad doing and which takes work. No. The changes that matter are the changes where you have felt wrong for a long time and then BAM. Life is lifing so hard at you that it nudges you onto the right path.

What's happening now, the process of living something that's even more right is the meaning of life human being can attest to. The journey's apart of it. Just ask Mark Renton why he did what he did at the end of Trainspotting.

For all of you naysayers and wannabes, you're just jealous because we're young and in love. If you wanna say I fucked up, I sure did. I fucked up good and proper like Spud fucking up his job interview. It felt fucking awesome. Hypocrite.

And hey, for all you true blue supporters who have been with me for when I posted my piece Personal Pissings where I asked you guys to literally comment down a fuck you directed at an utter asshole in my life at that that time;

Comment 'fuck evil. choose life'.

To sum it all up?

People will never, ever forget the way you made them feel.