Gonna take you for a ride on a big jet plane
Hey hey
Gonna take you for a ride on a big jet plane
Hey hey
Continuing the ANZAC theme, it’s funny, but I never really had that many Australian friends when I lived in New Zealand. I remember this guy in Form 2 (whatever they call that now, I was 12 at the time), Paul, who lived in this big house on Bolton Street. I think maybe his father was a diplomat, anyway he was here for a year and then they moved back. Poor Paul, we gave him hell, purely for being Australian. Mocking his accent, sheep-shagger jokes, the whole nine yards. Makes me a bit squeamish when I think about it.
Through high school and uni, my networks remained resolutely kiwi. Even on my OE, I may have met one or two Aussies, and maybe I even went to the Walkabout once or twice, but apart from my British friends, I remained firmly in the kiwi ghetto. I came back to New Zealand and very few Australians crossed my path, or if they did, they kept pretty quiet about it. Oh, and before anyone points out that I lived with an Australian for the better part of six years, can I just say that being born in the land of Oz does not make you Australian – as far as I was concerned they don’t get more kiwi than that, culturally and ethnically speaking. Anyway.
I had the odd trip to Sydney, the Sunshine Coast, and Melbourne here or there, but I could never get excited about Australia the country. Sydney was just a bigger version of Auckland, with a slightly better waterfront – Noosa Heads was for reliably warmer beaches, although it rained the whole week I was there – and Melbourne was the poor man’s Europe as far as I was concerned.
I never really thought too much about Australia, my focus was always on Europe. If it crossed my mind at all, at least three of the top five tropes the NZ media repeat about Australia reinforced the criminal stereotype. After all, they tried to claim Crowded House as an Australian band. As if! Everyone knows Neil Finn is from Te Awamutu. And they tried to claim they invented pavlova. And don’t get me started on underarm bowling…
And then I moved to Paris. Working at eServGlobal I met Simon, who is now married to Jo from Sydney. Jo introduced me to Karen and Q, from Melbourne. When I left eServ, I recruited Sally as my replacement. Sally is also from Sydney, and she introduced me to Alison from Newcastle, and Skye from Adelaide, and Janey from Sydney. Now I count half a dozen Aussies as some of my closest friends, and they're all gorgeous, warm, adventurous people. I am astonished that this didn’t happen sooner. But I think Paris itself had a big role to play. Instead of the Tasman dividing us, we have a common experience of coming from the other side of the world and discovering the sharp edge of being a foreigner in France. For more about that, make sure you read Almost French, by Sarah Turnbull, if you haven't already done so.
And this has opened up a whole new culture for me to discover. I mean, Dad had already switched me on to Paul Kelly, and I knew a little bit of Hunters and Collectors from the Crowded House cover of Throw Your Arms Around Me, but the last two gigs I’ve been to have been Australian bands. And both very different from eachother.
Heart That Races
Architecture in Helsinki is an electro-pop band from Melbourne. They’d been through Paris four years ago, for an outdoor gig as part of the summer festival programme, but I missed them. This time they were playing at the Gaite Lyrique, a newly opened “digital venue”, which seems to mean a theatre for gigs with a multimedia centre downstairs.
Just as an aside, the Gaité Lyrique is a fabulous venue, an old theatre that has been gutted and a modern concert room inserted, but the grand bar has been lovingly refurbished, and overlooks the leafy square below – but it belongs to the city of Paris and is run by public servants, so the “customer service” leaves something to be desired. Officious door staff causing bottlenecks at the staircases, closing the multimedia centre at 8pm when most people still haven’t arrived, and then clearing us all out straight after the gig.
I’m so used to things starting late, but the last time I went to a gig with no assigned seating, I took my time over dinner and then rocked up quite late to find that the main act was already on, and the only room left was standing room at the back of the balcony, where we risked overheating. This time, I turned up bang on time to find the place deserted and the first band not starting for 45 minutes...
Anyway, the gig itself was fab. It was part of the Gaité Lyrique’s “Musical Epics” series, featuring young up-and-coming bands. We missed Breton and La Femme because we were too busy chatting in the gorgeous bar and trying the vegetarian hotdogs (a mistake), but Clock Opera, from the UK, were very funky.
Architecture in Helsinki are fantastic live. At various points, they were channeling early Madonna, The Cure, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Their big hit is ‘Heart it Races’, but I’m trying desperately to identify the other songs that really struck me – That Beep, Hold Music, Like It Or Not, The Owls Go… terribly terribly catchy all of them.
Here’s a clip of them doing Heart it Races live on the streets of Paris with locals accompanying on percussion.
And The Boys
And then last night I got to see Angus and Julia Stone live on stage at the Trianon. Now the Trianon is a slightly better-run version of the Gaité Lyrique, another beautiful old theatre, this time with the circle and balcony left intact. But they could have installed some airconditioning – we got there a bit after the doors opened to find all seats had gone and we were shunted into the stalls, which was in fact standing room only. Just goes to show – always turn up early! You can always go for a drink once you get inside. And I mean always. Private enterprise works well – when there’s a captive audience, god forbid they should not be able to spend money.
Anyway, the gig was great. Steve Smyth did a good imitation of a country/blues wild man for an opening act. And then the brother and sister from Newport ambled onto the stage. Julia sat down and started plucking gently at her guitar. “All of me, why not take all of me…” segued into two verses from Over the Rainbow, and then we were off into their own tracks. And the whole evening was like that – little nods to songs they enjoy. At one point the lights went down, the backdrop lit up like a starry sky, and the man in the moon came out. “I’ve got chills, they’re multiplying…”
Yes, it was “You’re The One That I Want”, from Grease, but done in Julia’s own particular style. If you weren’t familiar with the song, you would never have recognized it – but our generation has grown up with that soundtrack in our DNA, so when she said you can sing with me, the whole theatre was softly hooting along to “ooh, ooh, ooh”.
Their album Down The Way is gentle hippie folk, but they also have a funkier side. Julia displayed her trumpet skills on “Private Lawns”, from their debut EP - “Just blew in from the windy city, the windy city is mighty pretty, but they don’t got what we got, they don’t got what we got”. Check it out.
They played for over two hours, which was fantastic, but by the end of it I was overheated and badly needing a sitdown. We took refuge in a little neighbourhood bistro round the corner, where the kitchen had closed but we could still grab a drink. This was a great location for people-watching, until a strange little man walked in, dressed like he’d run away from the circus, and started tap-dancing. Yes, tap-dancing. In a small space, the noise was overwhelming. So we paid and fled into the night, an Aussie and a Kiwi united in adversity.
Of course, come October, I fully expect to be shunned and ostracised when the All Blacks knock out the Wallabies in the semi-final. But that's ok, it'll be worth it.
