Memoir Mondays: Ft. Jack Colwell
Travelling in the Glam Auto Club
Dear Reader,
I am over the moon to present you a very sweet and brilliantly written memoir by my friend, Australian musician Jack Colwell. One of the most productive, resilient, funny, encouraging and kind people I’ve met in the industry and someone I’ve known for well over a decade now.
You can follow him on Twitter, where he regularly cracks me up and brings light to important and tender issues. Check out his music videos on Youtube too.
Big Love,
Holiday Sidewinder
I scroll back over the pictures on my phone. The timestamp reads 2012. Almost crazy to think I was in London, in the UK, after everything that we've just experienced. I hate to be maudlin, but the world just feels so, different, now. There's a guy in a red phone box, smiling and opening the door. Some trips to a taxidermy museum and a scan of a passport photo that's repeated multiple times on the page. I have the same expression in each one, wearing some Tom Ford glasses ala "A Single Man" and holding what looks like a triple strength cappuccino - the happiest of coffees - that kept me alive during the days when money was scarce, and two bananas which could sometimes make up the contents of breakfast, lunch and second dinner.
I'm an Australian doing the Australian tourist trip. The pilgrimage to our northern neighbours. I look wild with excitement in nearly every photo. And also really posed, and young - I keep coming back to how young I look. And how every photo is made for social media and I probably made someone take the shot and quickly hit snap so I could upload on my expensive roaming wifi. I'm sure I paid at least $1000 in data when I got back home. But it doesn't matter because it looks like I'm having a great time. And perhaps I did. I don't remember much, I've never been that into sight seeing, but I do remember getting off the plane and going to the pub and ending up at G.A.Y Heaven on my first night, buying some MDMA off a woman who made me motorboat her breasts as a way to say thankyou. That photo is in the collection and we are hugging and my pupils are huge. I never saw her again.
I go home to my apartment in Shepherds bush, the one I was renting and for some reason I buried the MDMA in the plastic bag outside the front door. At 8am I shovelled the soil with my bare hands out onto the footpath and dropped the plastic bag to the bottom and then, clumsily, shovelled the soil back in and smoothed the top, in (what I thought) was an artful fashion before heading back inside to sweat.
Not to sleep, just sweat.
Sweat for the next 6-8 hours until I crashed.
I can't be sure, but I think It's the next day, and my Aussie friend D is calling. She says to come to Brighton. I'm an unreliable narrator at times, so I can't be clear of the timeline - but we've been friends for years, she's like a sibling to me and she says to come to Brighton so I head to the station and get the underground to the overground and make the journey to the end of the line. D is a great friend and it's important to me I see her - I would travel anywhere for her. Even the end of the world.
The trip is at the peak of my artistic embodiment of my youth. I read Wuthering Heights on the train because it seems "suitable", in an all tan outfit with brown leather shoes. I look like Wes Anderson. I thought I looked cool, but as I write this in my sweatpants I feel maybe I looked stupid, or pretentious. Time has changed. I am no longer young.
I roll into the station and it's like a large aeroplane hanger. In my memory it's bottle green. I want to google to check but I don't want to ruin the illusion, so I stay in the memory of the Bottle Green station at Brighton.
D comes to meet me. She looks fabulous, as always. D was the first person I ever met that put hot rollers in their hair to go to work. She is warm and friendly and maybe I am worried I am sweaty and messy and clumsy but I feel welcome. It has been years since we've seen each other in person. She hugs me and really draws me in. "My baby Jack!" she says.
We head to The Bees Mouth and go down some flights of narrow stairs, past two gay pirates who I think are the bartenders and I think that one of them might have a gold tooth. Again, unreliable narrator. But we sit at the bottom of these steep stairs in the belly of the bar. It's bright red, and for a moment I think that we could be in the stomach of a whale.
Holiday is here, sitting on the edge of a leather chaise. Her hair is blonde and in an updo. Or maybe it's a bob. I haven't seen Holly in years, and to be honest, I didn't know Holly to well at this point in time - but I knew a lot about her. I had been a Bridezilla fan and we had run in some similar circles in Sydney. A friend of mine who went to her high school in the inner west said Holiday had once helped him write some assignments for his HSC because his penmanship was so bad no one could read it, and told me that Holly wanted to go to the UN but she became a rockstar instead. It was the same friend who took me to see Bridezilla first at the mandarin club when I was underage. I had an ID of a guy called Sam Heffernan who had broken my heart. In return, he gave me full freedom before the legal age of 18 by handing over all his drivers licenses and bank cards. Anyway, I'd never asked if it was true - the story about the handwriting, but it sounded good. I'd also seen Holly perform at Cockatoo Island supporting Nick Cave, and when ATP moved to NYC I saw her support Nick Cave again but this time in a ballroom in a country club where I'm pretty sure Animal Collective played too. Only I saw that on myspace, not in person, I hadn't travelled to NYC, yet.
Holly is talking to N, her godfather about his time filming back in Australia. He had just returned from making Red Dog, a film that also starred Holly's mum, Loene Carmen, where N and Lo were paired together on the silver screen. If you're an Australian film buff you'll know this wasn't the first time - the first time was the year my voice broke, not the actual year, that's the title of the film, it's an Australian classic, and N and L are literal children in the film, coming of age, in all it's messy glory. That's how they met, so many years ago, and Holly is here in Brighton because N lives here, her godfather, and my friend D married N, which is how come I am here, and I know that Nick Cave lives here too so I look around the belly of the whale quickly to see if he's inside at the Bees mouth too, but he isn't. I don't know where he is. I never meet him.
We drink, and we drink wihle N talks about Red Dog. He tells us that most of the extras on set, deep in the red desert of rural Australia worked at an abattoir nearby to the filming location. I think the pints we drank started to kick in, or maybe it's my come down from the night before because I just smile and laugh and we eventually head back to the basement flat, the one they used to live in that has the slippery stairs. I slip on the way down so I'm put to bed early in a children's room that's not currently being used, and fall asleep cuddling a miffy doll.
The next morning my hangover is worse. doubled down - I'll stop drinking years later, but not yet. But I'm up super early. Always awake at 5. Still Jet Lagged and my phone has died overnight, I don't know what time it is and I can't find an international adapter to check. I head out to the maze of the basement flat. Paintings on the wall, a dark and dimly lit corridor, a kangaroo skin and other Australian paraphernalia line the walls - an oil painting of seared flesh next to orchids. A call to home. But out the back on a salmon coloured couch is Holly, with her updo still sort of intact, or maybe it's the bob and these long naked legs playing acoustic guitar. Gay men can tell when a woman has great legs, it's just exciting in a different way. She looks like Bridgitte Bardot and is tinkering away at something with a soft lullaby in her voice. In my memory she is naked with the guitar astride her body, but she could've had pyjamas on, or just a bra. The song? It's Elvis. Holly lets the words fall out of her mouth and almost like I've caught her by surprise she flicks her eyes towards me and then abruptly stops. I've disturbed the moment, It's beautiful, and I don't want it to end so I sit in silence and slowly she resumes - I let her finish crooning. She can tell I'm dusty, so she makes me tea. More energetic than I. At least today, And then over camomile she tells me about Berlin and how she dominated a stranger at the Kitty Kat Club. This could be like my friends story about helping him write his HSC papers, it's not quite clear - but I believe it. Or perhaps I just made it up. She finishes the story and we talk about Sydney, and work, and how she's selling expensive French lingerie at FiFi while going to the recording studio in the evening, sleeping on couches. singing in London's oldest jazz club. A man in America has just bought her a Wurlitzer organ and sent it as a gift - his undying love and affection. I don't think I have much to say as no one has bought me a Wurlitzer, and I haven't sung in London's oldest jazz club but I agree it sounds pretty serious, and cool.
I think to myself, here I am with Sydney's It girl, a Holly Golightly, an Edie Sedgewick of the world and I don't have that much to say - but we talk about music and I can feel myself slowly relaxing. I'm regretting the MDMA and the Beer - always makes me bloat.
Chips on the beach, a stroll to the pier and then night-time rolls around, clockwork, and the Aussie travellers are at it again. The champagne is out and talk of "Neighbours" is in the air. Colourful laughter fills the back room and somewhere between my second and fourth glass a violin is brought out along with various glittery costumes that N has worn in films. We try to improvise something, me on guitar and N on violin. I think it sounds like the Dirty Three, and maybe it does, but we never captured it so our song just rolls on into the night, across the Brighton sea. At some point we face swap our faces onto a picture of Barbie driving a car. We call ourselves the "Glam Auto Club" and although we look totally stupid, we think it's pretty funny. D and N seem so happy to have their "younger" guests, (as they keep referring to us) and for a moment in time, it's like Stanley St is at the tip of the world in the Northern Hemisphere. We all sing together.
I go to sleep in the single kids bed again, clutching the Miffy and garble some good nights, and goodbyes. Holly has to leave early in the morning for work. I feel welcome, and like I've made a new friend. A home away from home, with Holly, D and N, of the Glam Auto Club.
Late-Noughties Nightclubs, Health Goth and Kate Bush
by Holiday Sidewinder
I’m a teenager standing in a queue to get into a nightclub (that somehow I’m allowed into by the owner because I’m in a local band). There’s a very excited gothic looking boy fangirling to me over my music to me (which totally takes me aback), the yellow black flickering light of the “lick-her store” out of focus behind his beaming face (his name is Jack, and he’ll keep popping up). We’re on Oxford St, the gay capital of Australia, and my stomping ground. I’m frighteningly self-conscious about people having an idea of who I am and what I do and deeply uncomfortable. Everything in my life is a blur and all I think about is music and the serious and important work I’m going to contribute to cultural history. This is all I focus on.
“I don’t remember names, but I remember faces” Jodie Foster in Bugsy Malone
I’m from “the scene” but not of it, so to speak. Everyone knows me, and I know mostly everyone, but only by face and rarely in any kind of intimate or meaningful way. I go to high school during the day, write songs in the music rooms during lunch-times, dream of the shows I’ll put on while I’m bumping along on the bus ride home, go to rehearsals, dream some more in my room while listening to records, and go to gigs several nights a week. I’m fully involved in every show I watch, arms crossed, hip cocked to the wall. Highly discerning and judgmental, picking apart every element of a performance or a song (in my mind), conjuring ideas on how I can improve or be better or different.
The clubs we play are rotating, the scene is mostly 5-6 years older than me and everyone is ridiculously hot and ‘edgy’ (full dressed up in glam punk, 80s jackets, American Apparel, synth collections, long hair, tight skinny black jeans and winkle pickers on all the boys. Glowing skin). They’re all fucking each other, gossip scurrying through every conversation, flash photos by socially awkward social photographers that end up in beige and black print in the local street press, proudly cut out and stuck on the fridge. Club 77, World Bar, Candy’s Apartment, Gaelic Club, Oxford Art Factory, Brighton Up Bar, Vegas… post punk, electro punk, new romantics, psych rock, art rock, indie rock pop. Rich kids with expensive gear, down from the northern beaches. Everyone works at call centres. Jager bombs are popular. It’s electric. There’s always a Gary Numan song, followed by a Kate Bush song playing at the club at the end of the night.
After doing it all, getting caught up with a punk band and a bad romance with a drummer, I’m dead keen for a fresh start in London. That road leads me places I never imagined. I remember arriving in the big city with the big white statuesque buildings, larger than life, powerful and grand, top deck of the double decker, eye up and out. Haggerston, Dalston, same scene, different city. Waitressing, lingerie fitting, jazz, bakeries, 24hr restaurants, Berlin, Paris, East, South, North. A fitness studio in a railway arch. A Vietnamese restaurant where I’m wearing black adidas and haven’t played a show in years, with the once-gothic kid who once looked up to me, and he’s holding a ticket to the first Kate Bush show in 35 years. He’s made a pilgrimage. I’m dead jealous.
We’re huddled in my godfathers basement flat and finally I get nurture some meaning into a relationship with a face from a scene that was always a blur to me, while I was awash in my own emotions and dreams. What a precious creature I find. A little brother. A treasure. Tender. Laughter rings out throughout the night and this kid who is now a beautiful man holds a little lock in the collection of treasured souls I carry in my heart. The scene has survived successes, failures, global diaspora, fashion seasons and personal dramas. As the time passes we all reflect a little more gratefully on the wider family of weirdos and creatives that all made that time to create a world for ourselves that was exciting and nourishing. It becomes clearer that it wasn’t just a generational turnover, but a moment in time where we were blessed to be in the right place with the right people, exploding with ideas and inspiration, at the dawn of the technological Tsunami, when people had to meet in person and Myspace didn’t cut the mustard. I don’t remember their names, but I remember all of their faces, haircuts, outfits and smiles as we stumbled our way through wondering what it was all about.
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