Doug and I are holed up trying to unpack ready for our grand Driveway Sale, but we meant to go out and Do Things this weekend. Illness prevented most of it (sorry especially to Stu who was DJing at Carnivore with Michaela VJing; we really wanted to catch that).
Anyway, we dragged ourselves out on Sunday regardless of low-grade fever because we had tickets to Ash Grunwald/The Beautiful Girls/Blue King Brown/Cat Empire at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. There was an enormous queue to start with, so we went down and looked at the tail end of the art market under the Flinders St Bridge, had drinks on the balcony at Blue Train overlooking the river, passionfruit and grapefruit gelato as we walked back to the gardens and randomly ran into Sylph and Kia who we met last week at Rainbow Serpent (wonderful people; Doug has an awesome portrait shot he took of Sylph), then rocked out to Blue King Brown. They were awesome as usual but the real stars were Cat Empire.
They’ve got their mojo back and it’s trebled. Harry seems to have gone and had singing lessons and now has some numbers where he sounds like the woman from Juno Reactor. The song they played first for the encore was tribal and unearthly, with deep Juno Reactor “Song for Ancestors” feel to it, a serious shift from the Dean Martin meets klezmer of another new-ish track. Old classics like “The Wine Song” never fail to amuse and they ended on a brilliant anthemic rendition of “The Chariot”. The highlight, though, has to be “Two Shoes” with guest flamenco by Richard and Johnny Tedesco from Arte Kanela. Oh. My. God. Richard Tedesco is HOT. Also the woman he danced with. There was another great guest dance troupe doing a black tie comedy dance routine and as usual, Cat Empire keyboardist extraordinaire, Oliver McGill, did absolutely insanely incredible things with that keyboard, from wild circus music to seventies funk to lounge and back again.
As the sun set and I danced with my honey and we chatted to the random guys we’d just met from Warrnambool, I just felt transported and safe. Then Doug’s fever kicked in again and my hips started to remind me about the aching thing and reality set in again. But just for a moment there, it was perfect.