High School

Yes yes, JD's new school is a beauty! Bought back many memories of my old High School, Balgowlah Boys High School on the lower Northern Beaches of Sydney. Our playground was a concrete slab between two large square brick bunkers!

Yes yes... because we were located close to the beach and Sydney Harbour, we had a diverse range of sporting activities as well... including surfing (no, really!), skateboarding, sailing and rowing (which I was majorly involved in... that's for another post tho...)

A few years before I started there (1977-1982), it used to be known as "Shack Town", as it consisted of a whole lot of wooden little sheds substituting as classrooms! One of the final year groups, who knew that one whole section was to be demolished pending reconstruction of a new gym/library complex, decided to - burn it down! How's that for a muck-up-day prank?! "Let's burn the school down!" And they did too! heh heh

My old school had pretty good facilities for its day, but nothing compared to now. I played my very first live public performance in a band (on bass, strangely enough - I hadn't even picked up a bass before then!) in the school hall. A couple of the musos got together and arranged a free concert one lunchtime, for all the aspiring school rock sta... I mean, musicians! lol. Oh god, I'd totally forgotten! I also sang as the front man as well, after my bass duties were over! Oh god, how embarrassing! Talk about trial-by-fire in front of an audience, the whole bloody school! Like I said, I'd never performed or sang in front of people before, so I really had no idea how to 'perform'... my only point-of-reference was watching old videos of Mick Jagger! Oh my god... I'm turning red at just the thought!

[coughs] I was told by my peers at the time that it wasn't too bad, actually. Whew!

Aahhh well... the things we do when given the chance as a 16-yo, huh? heh heh

Crikies! How things have changed! We never had any of this music stuff when I was going there, dagnammit! A punk band? A recording studio? Geebus, do I feel cheated!

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Downtown yesterday, I spied a DVD-collection of the only remaining Tony Hancock TV shows. Twas $100 ($92.80 US / £46.00 / 60.50 Euro), but I've spent too much on 'retail therapy' lately. Ooh, I love Tony Hancock. Always have ever since I was a little tackker, when I managed to 'inherit' [cough] a vinyl LP of a few of his radio shows. Over the years I've managed to record most of his radio shows off the ABC radio, and I've got a few of his TV episodes on DVD here and there. It's really sad... in the late 50's, this guy (and his enormously-talented writers Galton and Simpson) were totally huge. Unfortunately, the BBC didn't always archive a lot of his radio and TV shows... one whole series of the TV shows no longer exists! That's almost a crime!

Tony always makes me laugh. His was such a sad ending as well...

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Box of Sox rehearsal tomorrow... everyone's keen and available. We're gonna work-down at least eight songs plus a few more. that'll be our focus - finalizing arrangements of about a dozen songs, as in how to start, who does what-where, and ending! get those harmonies happening too. It'll be a blast.

Makes me laugh... it's a well-known rock'n'roll myth that the drummer ends up doing a lot of the administrative organization in any band. well - it's true! Julian is really good at organizing people, and we compliment each others' styles... I'm good doing all the boring paperwork stuff!

I finally remembered to edit and upload a few photos of when "The Thing" arrived a few weeks ago. All the way directly from Japan, actually. Here they are... this one and the next five pics after this one.

Thanks once again to Jac for her outrageously-gracious gift of a one-year Flickr account!!!

Oh, and here's a pic of my new laptop, that I bought back in early December '07.

Still working like an absolute dream. Using this in conjunction with my old Optima desktop, and an extrenal Hard Drive, it's all good!

Yes yes, I'm a dorkalope!

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Oh, I just stumbled across this, on Bellis' Blog... "Blogging Without Obligation". As I've been saying to people for the past 3 1/2 years I've been doing this whole blogging-thing on-and-off, "Don't become a slave to your blog"!

Peas be with ewe

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