Saturday Night Special

PL dives deep after seeing his favourite band at his favourite venue

Sacred Cowboys’ Garry Gray easing into his work.

READER DISCRETION ADVISORY: This is all Et Al and no cricket. It may also be deeply nostalgic and obviously indulgent. Apologies, Pete.

(I’ve got a yarn on spin bowling I should file later today.)

The past is another city. A Black City, as the Sacred Cowboys sing and sang once again, 40 years on from that place to this, from then to now.

The past came to town and plonked itself on the couch over the weekend. The brooding band that was the centre of our small circle’s late-night lives in the sleepless early 80s, what was left of them, came up from the highway from Melbourne on Saturday night. An old car with American fins, cylinders to spare, panels and parts replaced, but hood ornament and spirit intact.

Bass players, Andrew and Nick, are no longer with us, like drummers Johnny, Stephan and Paul. Many have passed through as the band shifted shapes. Too many perished in sniper alley.

But Garry Gray and Mark Ferrie, two of the originals, the singer and the bass player, legends of the Melbourne scene, have hung in and recruited muscle to fill out and replace those the stage lights could no longer find. And, now they were finally visiting me in Sydney, at my local, no less, the Marrickville Bowlo where you can find me some 6 pms quietly doing a NY Times puzzle. Slippers and a schooner. Shadows long in the setting sun. Gone by 8 pm.

I hadn’t seen the Cowboys since the 1980s. I’ve been up here in Sydney since the 1990s. And now they were on their way, ghosts of the past come to stir strange memories on a small inner suburban strage that’s no stranger to grizzly old rock bands of the past. Almost every weekend you can find a group of men and women, refugees from outfits past, advanced in age, but well-grooved in their task, playing because, well, that’s what they did and do.

Saturday, I sat restlessly on the couch at home, watching the footy, unsure of how to fill in time ahead of a gig that starts at 10.15 pm. These days our bands start early and often have us back at home by this time out of sympathy for the passing of time and the absence of speed.

I make a piece of toast and a cup of tea at 9 pm, saving myself for a few beers at the gig, and then jump on a Lime bike for the quick trip to the Bowlo, revived by the fresh air. I know, I know. Who needs amphetamines when you’ve got toast, tea and an e-bike?

I’m bracing for disappointment, but just a bit excited. There are a couple of tracks from the new album, In the Manifesto, on Spotify (I finally got a vinyl copy at the show), and they’ve still got that thing. Still got Garry’s dramatic noir. The Psychedelic Shooter mines the same threat of songs from 40 years before with all its unclipped safety clips, manifestos, culture and killing.

You found a hill to die on … you’re in the manifesto

The support band is still playing when I get there. There’s a roiling violin and a staggering rhythm, grey sheets of guitar, and a wailing singer channelling Lydia Lunch. They’re the third support at the Tiger Room, Richmond, 1983, stuck in aspic and somehow here. “We’re from Melbourne,” says the singer. “No kidding,” Mickey says. “You don’t say.”