Mourners Recollections – by Ben Vernon
I am indeed a stranger in a strange land. It’s 1986 and my shoes are stuck to what must have been carpet when they built this bizarre suburban “tavern” in Belconnen, one of Canberra’s northern suburbs. The patrons of this place are an eclectic group – giant menacing bikies break character to warmly hug some hot young office worker girls, wild dreadlocked stoners laugh uproariously with a bunch of skinhead-looking guys and despite the incredible breadth and range of this generous demographic, I am definitely “one of these things that’s not like the others” as they say on Sesame Street. And that’s a good example right there, no one else in this place would get that reference, but Big Bird, Elmo and Ernie and Bert are still pretty fresh in my memory. But all that is about to become completely irrelevant, because I am about to hear the greatest live band I’ve ever heard (still true today, three decades later) and have the kind of face-melting transformative musical awakening you remember for the rest of your life. [Read more…] about Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be…