Zartes

Continuing, and largely transplanted, on from here: http://www.transstellar.llamaslap.com/tsc-033.php

I went to Melbourne, and met up with my dear friends Kai and Sunshine, at the State Library. We checked out an exhibition of historically significant books from their collection, including a first edition copy of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Very groovy.

before you continue, be warned, I rant. At length.

I then went to a music gig at the Palais Theatre, in St. Kilda, the country's largest theatre. The building is beautiful, a magnificent work of architecture. It has held witness to great performances, including the Rolling Stones, and a few others that are equally great, but I can't actually remember at the time I write this (1:52am).

Which makes the United Artists... whateverthehellitwas... such a egregious stain on the Palais' bright record. To start with, the announcer was a pretentious, arrogant twit. He claimed that the evening would be a great one in artistic history. That we would all be glad because we could say "I was there".

Well, I was there

And I really wish I hadn't been.

The best performance I saw involved a duo, a guitarist, who was quite good, and a saxophonist, who's "improvisation" sounded like an animal that had been lethally injured, and was waiting to be put out of its misery. The guitarist should go far. The further away from the sax player, the better.

The very worst, however, was some idiotic little oik, who seemed to think that the best way to show everybody the creative beauty of his inner self was to bombard them with white noise so loud it forced every member of the audience who wasn't tone-deaf (appearently there was five us. Not really a suprise, after seeing what the rest had applauded) out into the foyer, and some of the more sensitive ones out of the building. I'm also reasonably sure that the unholy noise damaged the house speakers, as every performance after that had a certain roughness to the sound. Although that might just have been the crap, for want of a better term, musicians.

That would seem to indicate that I hung around after Mr. Wanky White Noise had done his bit for industrial deafness. Well, idiot that I am, I did, on the offchance that things would improve.

They didn't. I finally decided to quit when I realized I was staring at a man attempting to pluck guitar strings with a small lump of wood, with all the fervor and coordination of a lobotomized zombie. While making dying animal noises.

There was a momentary high spot to my afternoon, when I realized that the man I had just walked past on the street was stage and screen actor Garry McDonald. I was tempted to go say hello, and that I loved his work, but that seemed overly fanboy-ish, and would probably be annoying, so I just kept walking.

I then had to wait half an hour for the bus that was running instead of the regular trams. This was particularly annoying, as the bus pulled away just as I got to the tram stop. When I finally did get on the bus, it rapidly filled up with people going home after a hot day on the beach. There are times I'm really, really glad I have almost no sense of smell.

However, through all these trials and tribulations, I got home, and I got the comic up for you people, you wonderful readers out there.

I truely, honestly hope none of you ever have to experience experimental "music". Good luck, and good night.