Dedication
To my greatest supporters, my parents
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Begin Reading
Recommended Listening
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Mandy
I always enjoy a bit of drama over breakfast. Yelling. Screaming. It’s all good. I especially like it when the drama has nothing to do with me. In fact, it’s someone whose name I can’t remember doing the yelling. Someone on Jerry Springer. Say what you want about Springer — everyone does — but he sure knows how to ease me into the day. Sure, it’s almost one o’clock, but I always feel you shouldn’t rush things.
Sometimes I feel kind of guilty about sleeping in so much, but not today. I’m curled up on the couch in the same David Bowie T-shirt, faded cargo pants and stripy socks that I’ve been asleep in for the past sixteen hours and I’m feeling alright. My older sister, Heather, is working today and my step-mum and dad are still away, touring the country in a caravan, so I’ve got the place to myself for the day.
It’s not a bad place to have to yourself for a bit, I have to say. It’s a nice old house a couple of blocks from the train line in Summer Hill. The sun comes flooding in during the early afternoon and makes the room glow. It makes me feel so mellow that I could almost just sit here all afternoon and not get ready for this gig that Alice is taking me to tonight.
She’s a sweetie, Alice, my best and oldest friend. She’s also the only person I know who is as obsessed with music as I am. The last band she got really excited about and told me I had to listen to, like now, was Vampire Weekend. So when she tells me this guy who’s playing tonight is shit hot, I’m inclined to believe her. And besides, she’s been a bit lethargic lately, sad and aimless since her boyfriend broke up with her. It would probably do her good to get out of the house.
Tim
I can tell you exactly when I first knew I wanted to be a musician. I was standing in the hallway upstairs at the Annandale Hotel, waiting for the guitar player from a band I used to like. He was messing around in the band room, and I was waiting outside, hoping to get a chance to talk to him when he came out. I wasn’t going to try to get an autograph or anything lame like that. I just wanted to say hi and maybe ask him a couple of things about guitar effects pedals. I really wanted to know how he got a certain sound that I was always trying to pull off with my old Rickenbacker and never quite nailing.
Anyway, I’m standing there, and he stumbles out of the room looking a bit dazed. He looks straight at me, and I’m just kind of clearing my throat to say something, and this heartbreakingly beautiful girl in a flannelette shirt with silver buttons and skinny black jeans walks straight past me and goes up to the guy and says five magic words. Wonderful, poetic words that convinced me that being a musician was what I was born to do.
She said, ‘Would you sign my tits?’
It was awesome.
Mandy
By about four in the afternoon, I think I’ve watched enough bad TV for one day, so I move out onto the balcony for a cup of tea and a smoke.
I’d sort of given up smoking a few months ago, in those in-between days of summer after school ended, but then I just found myself doing it again and I’m kind of not bothered about quitting. Lazy, I know, especially as I’ve never actually enjoyed it. I guess I started because I liked how old movie stars looked when they smoked in black-and-white photos. But sitting around watching TV half the day and working in a fast-food place isn’t really as glamorous as being a Hollywood star, so I don’t look as cool as the movie stars did. But smoking has become a habit and it’s one I can’t quite kick. I light up, and put my feet up on the iron balcony fence.
Tea, on the other hand, is something I never want to give up. Today I’ve got some mint tea I bought from Paddington markets, with a little honey in it. It’s divine, the taste so clean and fresh and somehow comforting. I watch the clouds drift over the suburbs, white and grey on deep blue, for what could be a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes.
And then I see Alice, my great tea-drinking companion. She works in a children’s bookstore and wears op-shop frocks, and carries around the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’ handwritten on a piece of notepaper in her wallet. She is the most gorgeous thing ever.
She’s standing in the street and looking up at me, wearing a cute red polka-dot vintage dress with white stockings and black school shoes, and a stud in her nose so small you can only see it in a certain light. She looks way too dressed up for an overcast Thursday afternoon. It looks like she’s just stepped out of a beauty salon, but the expression on her porcelain doll’s face is completely blank.
I wave at her and she stares back.
Tim
I never sleep the night before a gig.
Too nervous.
I’m not sure what I’m nervous about exactly.
But I know I’m nervous.
Maybe I kind of think that people are going to judge me and that I’m exposing too much of myself. Pretty much all of my songs are about old girlfriends, or girls I wanted to be girlfriends who never were. I wonder if people will look at me and think I’m some kind of loser who can’t get girls. I can get girls. I just can’t keep them.
I try to tell myself the people at the pub won’t be focused on me to the point where they’re analysing lyrics and picking apart my personality. Mostly they’ll be too busy playing the pokies.
So I’m not exactly a massive star in the music scene yet, but, to be fair, I am still in school. And tonight is my biggest gig yet. I’m playing in a band competition at the Old Canterbury Hotel, a proper music venue, not just some depressing old place with carpet that smells like piss and horse racing on the TV. There’s going to be real music fans there tonight, I’m sure. Kids heading out into the night with hope in their hearts, looking for something to connect with. People who want to listen to the words I write.
Mandy
We mess around in my room for a bit, me and Alice. She watches my goldfish, Alex Chilton, as I paint my nails and fix my hair. I experiment with bows and hair bands. Eventually I settle on some clips I bought at Paddington markets. I mousse my hair slick and neat, then decide to ruffle it up. That doesn’t quite work so I use this other product to give it a just-woke-up look. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to look like you don’t care.
‘Love the clips, babe,’ Alice says and goes back to looking into the fishbowl. ‘Do you think it’s true what they say about goldfish not having any memories?’
‘I guess so. It doesn’t seem like something someone would just make up.’
‘I wonder what that’s like.’
‘Are you alright?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, no. I think so.’
I’m not super motivated tonight, but I’m ready to go. Alice wanted to go to this gig because a friend of her workmates’ is playing. I find it hard to believe that someone super amazing is playing on a Thursday night at the Old Canterbury Hotel. I mean, sure, it’s the place to go if you want to win a meat tray in the Sunday afternoon raffle, but it’s not really known as a great music venue like the Annandale or Goodgod or the Oxford Art Factory.
Still, I’m kind of curious and perhaps even a little expectant as I lock up the house and we head out. You never know your luck in the big city.
Tim
I get to the hotel early, about six or so, and just kind of hang around, pretending to know what I’m doing. I like to do this before I play, to kind of get a feel for the place. I don’t really talk to anyone much before a set, and if people try to start a conversation with me
I usually use one of the classic muso excuses to leave, like I have to go and set up or I have to check some stuff with the sound guy.
I glance around the room, which is pretty small, with the stage raised about half a metre above the floor. There’s maybe two dozen people who look like they’re going to be watching the bands, mainly mates of the people playing. There’s a crappy PA system with no bottom end at all, and a microphone that looks like it was purchased at a garage sale in 1987. All in all, it’s easily the best venue I’ve ever played in.
Ned, my uncle and housemate, walks up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. He says that I’m going to be great, and I’m going to win the money, but I can’t really concentrate.
A couple of friends I once worked with in a fast-food shop wave to me from across the room. I’m glad they made it. Nobody else seems to have bothered.
The dude organising the competition comes up to me and says, ‘You’re on second-last, Jim, at about half-past nine.’
Second-last? Great, only another three hours of hanging around and wishing it was my turn to play already. And did he just call me Jim? Fricking hell.
Mandy
The guy we came to watch is terrible. I can tell after about five seconds that he’s going to be a complete waste of time and I was wrong to get my hopes up. All he plays are cover versions of songs I didn’t need to hear in the first place in this really uninterested way, as though he’s too cool for the songs, too cool for the place, too cool for us.
A few older guys down the front are pretty drunk and getting into it, and start yelling for him to play some Cold Chisel. He ignores them. Alice and I stand just inside the door and wonder where her friends have gone.
‘Is this the guy we were meant to be watching?’ I ask. I can hear a sour note of disappointment in my voice, as much as I try to hide it.
‘I think so,’ she says. She curls her lower lip up and bites into it softly.
Silence.
‘I’ll get us some more drinks,’ I say.
Tim
Across the room is the saddest-looking girl I’ve ever seen, this wispy blonde in a second-hand dress. Then I see her friend, all dark hair and cheekbones and shiny red hair clips. The effect is mesmerising, a one-two punch.
I sip my beer and sit on the edge of my stool, resting my elbow on a poker machine, and wonder what I can say to her, the brunette. I instantly know, somehow, that it’s her that I’ll talk to. And, crazy as this sounds, that I’ll always remember this moment.
Before I know it, I’m walking towards her like some cult believer walking into the light beams coming down from the mothership. And I’m wondering what I can say that will be memorable enough.
C’mon, Tim, I think, how many hundreds of people have you met in your life? How many girls have you talked to over the years?
But it’s like everything I know I’ve forgotten.
My mind is racing.
I can’t form a sensible thought.
Everything feels brand new.
Scary.
Exciting.
I try to gather my thoughts, remind myself not to over-think this, to get on over there and say something, anything. Be confident, I tell myself. You’re a muso, after all. And girls love musos.
Mandy
Another band finishes playing, and I forget them instantly. Then I see a boy sitting by himself on one of the stools, wearing an ill-fitting leather jacket, skinny jeans and Converse high-tops, his searching eyes half-hidden behind a ragged bed-head fringe. I’m so struck by how sad and beautiful he looks that I can’t help wishing he would come over and talk to me. And then, oh god, he is coming over here, walking in this dreamlike way, and I try not to panic.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘My name’s Tim, and I’m going to be playing later on.’
He smiles at me.
I try not to smile back.
He asks us what our names are and shakes hands with me and Alice, and holds onto my hand for maybe just a second longer than usual. He asks us what we thought of the last band and we kind of laugh and say ‘Not much’. Before I know what’s happening, we’re all chatting away.
Alice tells him she’s studying history and French at Sydney Uni and he asks if I’m studying too.
‘Nah, I just um … I watch daytime TV mostly,’ I say.
‘Cool,’ he says, nodding enthusiastically, as if my answer wasn’t the most depressing sentence ever spoken by a human being.
He tells us he’s going to be playing some of his own tunes and some covers of songs by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (‘Turn Into’) and Jens Lekman (‘Another Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill’), and I say something really stupid like, ‘Oh, I love Jens Lekman, Swedish people are so cool,’ and then I feel I’m probably blushing pretty bad. I do that sometimes. But I’m pretty impressed he knows obscure stuff like the lovely Mr Lekman and doesn’t just play songs that are big hits.
In fact, I’m pretty impressed with him, with his big, dark, sad eyes and his mess of hair. We talk for a few minutes and it’s not enough. A moment after, I can’t really remember anything he said. Maybe it was more the way he said it.
I stand there, stunned, and watch him go and set up his guitar.
When he walked over to us, it was like the crackle at the start of a record, that first scent of salt when you’re driving to the beach, a parcel in brown paper on your doorstep.
He looks at me from across the room, eyes hidden behind shaggy hair, his face like a dog’s when it’s looking at its owner, wanting approval. We lock eyes for a second and it’s like a secret flash of lightning between us.
He is the night, the possibility.
I squeeze Alice’s hand with excitement.
She smiles at me.
I now realise that coming out tonight has been a better move than staying home and watching Inspector Rex, even though Austrian cop shows where a dog is the most efficient detective are all pretty awesome.
‘He seemed to like you,’ Alice says.
‘Maybe,’ I say.
‘Nah, he so obviously did. I reckon he’s cute. I wonder if his songs are any good.’
Tim
There’s some chintzy, piece-of-shit light machine going while I’m playing, and it’s just like one of those Blue Light discos I went to as a kid, drenching the girls on one side of the basketball court and boys on the other with its bright colours. There are moments when the chalk writing on the blackboard glows in the dark, and snatches when everyone is splashed blue or when the walls are purple and green, and then these precious split-seconds here and there when we’re all thrown into darkness.
In these moments, I can put all my energy into the song and block everything else out. The poker machines in the room next door, the people who don’t give a shit about my music, the dull hum and thud of traffic on the road outside, they all disappear.
When everything goes black, it’s just me, the music and her.
I can feel her watching me from the corner of the room and it feels alright.
Mandy
A few seconds into his performance I realise Tim is wasted playing band competitions on a weeknight at a venue where nobody cares. He is too good for this night, this room, this crowd.
He has one song called ‘Accent’ that starts:
She said, ‘I like your accent’
And I said, ‘I didn’t know I had an accent’
The rest of the lyrics I can’t really make out, but those lines just make the song for me.
Sometimes just one phrase or one line can make a whole song worthwhile. It’s like that bit in ‘London Calling’ where Joe Strummer yells: ‘Now, get this …’ The rest of the song is great, obviously, but that bit just seems so impossibly cool that I feel I’d like the song and even the whole record — even if the rest of it was completely awful.
At the end of the music, they give out the prizes for the night. Some bogus girl singing pop hits in a tight dress gets a hundred dollars, and another lucky punter, a musclebound douchebag with
a pencil beard, gets a voucher. The guy giving out the prizes says he can spend the voucher at the bar or in the bistro next door, but he can only spend it on a weeknight. Honestly, this is only slightly better than the prizes at the bingo night we sometimes go to.
Tim doesn’t win anything but he doesn’t seem to mind, and his friends and a slightly scruffy older man are crowding around him and patting him on the back.
Alice says she has an early tutorial for her course about Vikings tomorrow morning so we’d better split.
As we leave, I tap Tim on the back and say he was great.
A smile comes across his face and, unexpectedly, it breaks my heart just a little bit, like when you see a lonely dog that’s been left in its yard perk up when a stranger walks by.
I mean to say that I’ll see him again sometime, but I don’t, and by the time I gather my thoughts we’ve left him behind and I’m walking with Alice towards her mum’s car, which is parked in the kind of dark, dodgy-looking side street I’m always scared we’ll get stabbed in.
We get into the car without being attacked by an assailant from the shadows and the leather of the passenger seat feels soft and warm. The car rarely ever starts on the first attempt, and isn’t too good going up hills, but the important thing is the stereo is fantastic, even though it’s old. She puts on a tape she made of the M83 album and it’s such perfect, dreamy music for driving late at night. The stars flash past us outside the window and before long we’re in front of my house.
I kiss her cheek and am about to leave but I can see she’s not ready to say goodbye.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,’ she says, looking away.
I think I know what it is.
‘Shh, sweetie,’ I say, ‘it’s late. You can tell me all about it tomorrow. OK?’
You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About Page 1
