Good week for getting out and rocking on.

 Friday, May 4,  pan!c returns to the Norwood Hotel (Finn McCools) for a 9 pm till midnight pop attack. Geek pop is the order of the session when pan!c plug in the battery and get hopping...or limping.

Friday May 4 on the watery side of town you can catch the Red Hot Blues Band at the Semaphore Workers Club. Featuring, Nick Kipridis, James Meston, David Blight and Rob Eyers, the Hot Blues Band is so hot that they cook their own burgers on they’s own  heads! Then they add cheese and tomato and a bit of lettuce and then… their own ‘special’ sauce. Which is made by hand, I believe.  Red Hot Blues band starts cooking around 9 pm. The Semaphore Workers Club, on the ‘High’ point of the Esplanade, is the Home Of Roots and Blues Music in South Australia. And beetroot, I nearly forgot the beetroot.

Saturday May 5 and it’s the Lonely Cosmonauts at the Magill Club (Uren St, Magill – behind the Tower Hotel).  8pm lift-off and go here for info:  www.magillclub.com.

Sunday  May 6 and we have The Cats Pyjamas featuring Steve Brown at the Royal Oak Hotel in North Adelaide. Come along straight after church for a 7.15 pm kick off with the best steamy blues and rock on a Sunday evening.

What else…..

Well, on Thursday may 10 the Texettes will be a playing at the Exeter on Rundle, that's what else.

Ad y ou can go here for gigs at the Wheatie. http://wheatsheafhotel.com.au/gigs

Folk Federation:   Guthries, Prospect Town Hall.

 Great Aussie Bush Dance with Inesheer

Friday 4th May 8pm   |   A$10/C$8/M$8   |   (Tickets at the door)
Bushdance combines fun, food, fitness and friends, all in one convenient package. Bring your friends/family and join the dance. All dances are called by experienced dance leaders and beginners are more than welcome!  

Up Close and Acoustic with Aleyce Simmonds and Kristy Cox

Saturday 5th May 8pm  |  A$20/C$18/M$16  |  

This Country/Bluegrass tour of two of Australia's foremost upcoming artists will be one to brag about in the future! Hard work and talents far exceeding their age have paid off with awards a plenty, rave reviews and accolades. And to top it they will be accompanied by a second to none backing band, including Lachie Davidson (of the Davidson Brothers), Anthony Stewart and Josh Verco (Jesse Che Band). 

Looking ahead: 

The Gov: The Blues Caravan featuring:   EUGENE 'HIDEAWAY' BRIDGES (USA) ; RAY BEADLE (AUSTRALIA)  and MATT ANDERSEN (CANADA)

This, the first in The Blues Caravan series ,   will feature three of today’s leading blues players  Eugene 'Hideaway' Bridges (USA), Ray Beadle (Australia) and Matt Andersen (Canada) take to the road next month  as part of  The Blues Caravan.  Created as a channel to introduce new international and domestic Blues artists to the Australian marketplace alongside established names, The Blues Caravan  aims to ensure quality Blues music is regularly delivered to fans. Friday 18th May 2012: The Governor Hindmarsh : Ph: 08 8340 0744 -   1300 GET TIX or www.thegov.com.au

The races.

Races, schmaces. I’ve done the races and I’m not gonna bother with it anymore. Too many complaints.

I had an idea to stage a crocodile race in Darwin. Salties, good long range buggers with a bit of go in ‘em. At the outset it seemed like a good idea and it was a good idea right up until it was over. Then the complaints started to pour in.

Animal welfare hit on me about the racing lure I used to get the salties up to a gallop. I had tied a fat American tourist to a hospital gurney and dragged it along with a winch. The salties went boonta for it. Animal welfare went boonta at me. American tourists are all fat and no fibre, and full of salt and preservatives. Not good for the crocs.

Next it was the jockey’s association  that collared me. “Where are the jockeys?” they asked, after the race. Well, fukked if I know, they were in the enclosure with the crocs after the race…..     

Well, I can see that was a mistake…now. But to be fair, no one seemed to miss the yapping little leprechauns , not even their missus’. I spoke to one of the widows:  “Well,” she drawled…” I don’t think I’ll miss him. He was like a little wind up toy ‘cause he was such a wee thing; so was his thing, really, it was.  You know it was such a tiny thing you wouldn’t know it were in you if he weren’t digging his heels in yer thigh. An’ maybe I can eat me own diet pills, now.”

Then there was the rich bastards whingeing. Whenever they wound down the windows of their air-conditioned Range Rovers to take a gander at the race their field glasses fogged up.

“Can’t you do something about the humidity?” they demanded. “And if you’re going to do this annually you should consider moving Darwin nearer to Melbourne, somewhere handy. Down the Mornington Peninsula would be fine; we have property there!”

And that’s only the complaints I can remember. For goodness sakes, it was a crocodile race in a mangrove swamp; what were they expecting?

I’ll tell you what they weren’t expecting. I got so fed up with the lot of them that I unhooked the gate on the crocodile pen and let the mean and ugly fukkers out into the members' area – in with their own kind.   I didn’t see much of what happened because I was three furlongs ahead of the action but I could hear the screaming as far south as Humpty Doo.

Don’t we all love the return of the cold, wet miserable weather? Of course we don’t. It’s cold, wet and miserable. And if your home heating bills are going to cripple you, why not take yourself out and enjoy the heating supplied at some of the venues listed below.

Tonight, Thursday April 26, warm up at the  Gilbert Street Hotel with a bowl of zingy Buffalo wings and the hot sounds of Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers. Early start, 7 pm, good food, good beer, good music and good gracious.

Friday April 27 and the volcanic sounds of Double Wammy will erupt from the stage of the Semaphore Workers Club, Semaphore.  Double Wammy rarely gets out of the cage these days so make sure you get along to the Semaphore Workers Club – the Home of Roots Music in South Australia – for a 9 pm rev up.

Saturday April 28 sees the steamy, sensuous groove of the Steve Brown Band at the Soul Box in the West End. Don’t know anything about the place…? Neither do I but I hope to see you there for a 9 pm start and we can discover the Soul Box’s nooks and crannies together.  NO… I did not say ‘Crooks and Grannies’. ‘Nooks and Crannies’. I was being coyly suggestive.

Sunday and someone new in town. New… but a little bit old, too. Lachlan Doley will be pushing his new album in your face at the Grace Emily Hotel. Formerly of The Hands, now just a ‘hand’, I guess, Lachlan -  former keyboard player of the mighty and afore-mentioned Double Wammy - and his band will be burning the oxygen at around 9.30. Support (Airbenders) will crank up at 8.30.

Gigs at the Wheatie:  http://wheatsheafhotel.com.au/gigs

The Gov:  Friday, 27 April ROOTS NIGHT 2  Featuring: Bill Chambers, Snooks La Vie & The Reprise and Carla Lippis & The Martial Hearts.From the success of first ROOTS NIGHT early this year, heres ROOTS 2 with another great line up for a night of roots music extravaganza - DONT MISS OUT!!!!!

Folk Federation:  Guthries, 126 Prospect Rd, Prospect,  Saturday April 28 @ 8pm - Unsung Heroes of Australian History. So many people have quietly made their mark and helped to form this fortunate nation. Moira Tyers, Bruce Watson, Neil Robertson and Wendy Ealey invite you to meet some of them. See: http://www.folkfederation.com

The Whitmore: Friday 27 the Bluescasters.

 AFRICAN  SOUL  PRESENTS AFROTREAT AT MONARTO ZOO 4-6 of May

Join Bortier Okoe and special guest dancer ‘’Lucky Lartey’’ from Ghana.

A TOTALLY WILD WEEKEND OF AFRICAN CULTURE -WARM UP FOR THE TELEMA TOUR TO AFRICA SEPTEMBER 14  - OCTOBER 13 2012

For more info about the Telema Tour to Ghana please visit www.telematour.blogspot.com

Sherluck Fukken Holmes and the mystery of the disappearing ringpiece

Doctor Watson sat fretfully in the drawing room of upstairs 221b baker street, his Lay-z-boy tilted not far off the vertical to prevent spillage of his whisky sour down his immaculately bloodstained shirt front.

“I need to get back to my patients – I cannot leave that hysterectomy on the table much longer but I am worried about Holmes,” mused Watson out loud. “I haven’t heard from him for three days now.   Ah… I hear footprints on the stairs; that must be him now.”

“The door was flung open. Holmes sauntered in, flinging his magnifying glass on the horns of a stuffed rhino head on the wall, and shook out a pocketful of fingerprints into the ashtray.

“Sorry for my unexplained absence, Watson. I have been on a secret mission for our Prime Minister, Jooliya. The arsehole has been missing.”

“The PM has no sphincter?”

“Of course she has a poop-hole, Watson, it’s in the middle of that huge thing she calls a buttocks; no, I mean the annoying little arsehole, Tony Abbottom; he has been missing from the newspapers for some time. What is so mysterious about it is that he is usually as loud and gibberish as a carpet warehouse salesman and he is a capital boot-sinker into those who are struggling.  And here we have, our glorious PM struggling to keep her snoot out of the shit and where is the little ringpiece?  He has been too quiet and missed some easy kicks, Watson.  It was a mystery, but I have solved it. I will tell you the tale in allegory…”

“I am sorry Holmes, I know a little Latin but I was looking out the window during the Allegory lesson.”

“Watson! Listen!  To realise what happened you need to see this newspaper …” at this Holmes flung a copy of the national rag at Watson’s head;  “…you need to see this newspaper as a pair of trousers…”

“But, Holmes…. Isn’t a newspaper something to read in the dunny?”

“Watson… it’s a simile, a metaphor.  Please assume that a newspaper is like a pair of trousers. Now… as we all know, our newspapers are controlled and run by Victorians…”

“Penguins?”

“Watson, your naivety never ceases to amuse me.”

“Oh, What Ho, thank you, my good fellow…”

“That, my dear Watson, was a condescending metaphor that meant you are a fukwit. Let me elucidate: some of them may indeed come from the precious colonial state but, by saying ‘Victorians’  I mean the press and media are owned and managed by people who are appalled at the status of the working classes who are relegated to minimum wage age for life, or longer!”

“As I am Holmes…”

“Exactly, Watson. They want to restore the status quo by making the working classes slaves for life with no pay, and no access to public medical, education or housing perks. In this they are at one with Tony Abbottom who is their poster child and Great White Hope for a totalitarian future but, in order to achieve their ends they must not show their hand too soon. Abbottom has all the charm of a cancer cell and the wit of a speed bump.  He can frighten a Gorgon and his utterings are on a par with Caligula, so… the newspapers, as prudent ‘trousers’, have been pulled up to conceal the stupid little arsehole at a time when he is twisting himself out of shape to issue more putrid,  mouth-frothing vitriol. That is what I have discovered.

“I say… and is Jooliya now safe from this?”

“No one is safe, Watson. Even the Victorians don’t recognise a Pandora’s Box when they’re sitting on it. Julia is having a trying time, Watson. And….in dire need of support and comfort, my good fellow.”

“But Holmes, what can you do?”

“Me? Watson, I can do nothing; I am allergic to women. But maybe you can, with your understanding of the feminine component of the populace and its unique physiognomy. You know, of course, that she is stepping out with a hairdresser?”

“Yes, But…”

“And that means, Watson, she is no doubt on a vegan diet and has probably never had her 500 kilometre service!”

“Holmes, are you suggesting that…."

“Yes, Watson! Get yourself in there and give her what she’s been needing since she bought her first box of Tampax.  And you can rest assured that it will be like the dark side of the moon.”

“Er… do you mean big, black and full of craters, Holmes?”

“It will undoubtedly be something like that but I meant that no one has ever been there before. Do you get me Watson? You will be the first to give the woman what she needs to raise her spirits.”

“I say, Holmes.  What Ho! and all that….”

“Yes, Watson. Go now! Be the first to give Jooliya the beef she needs to face the trials before her;  apply First Aid to the First Lady, Watson. Give it to her, My Good Fellow, big and large. I will await your return."

Ten minutes later, Watson kicked open the door and flung his hat on the stuffed elephant head.

“I was too late, Holmes.  She’s already fukked.”