Posted April 9, 2014   Posted by Adam in Uncategorized

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Posted April 9, 2014   Posted by Adam in Uncategorized

I left Taksim Meydanı after the fireworks. Thousands of people were milling around, singing, shouting, enjoying the feeling of being at the centre of everything. If you turned on a television now, it would show this place and its churning, writhing party.

My friends were going on to a bar but Not With My Sister was due to play at 2am. We were booked with three other bands for the Flatline New Year’s Eve Party. Flatline was Istanbul’s capital of grunge: on the bill tonight were Lemmings, Cockroach, Not With My Sister and Indians. We were a sort of collective of bands, all interconnected, sharing musicians and ready to stand in for each other in cases of illness or missing bass player.

I pushed through to the edge of the crowd and headed down towards İnönü Stadium where I might get a taxi. I saw people I knew. Their plans all seemed to involve being at Flatline at some time of the evening. It took time to navigate the sociable crush. I would probably be late but it had never mattered before. I found a taxi at the bottom of the hill and we nosed into the hooting but, for once, happy gridlock.

After twenty minutes, we hadn’t moved so I paid off the driver and walked into Ortaköy. It was unusually mild for New Year and the crowd outside Flatline was smoking, drinking and making itself heard, something that couldn’t be done inside.

Not With My Sister’s first gig was in 1994, at a small bar in Ortaköy. This was Abstrakt, newly opened and fitted out with a décor of serrated, arc-welded slab steel. My natural habitat. I wasn’t really prepared. I knew the songs and had all the vocal tricks down well. It was a few months since I had performed and Ortaköy was a new and cutting-edge entity for me. Still. I was fronting what I was certain would be a force in the music scene and the fretted decoration was eminently climbable.

We crashed into the first song. The sound was a bit off so I covered with more screaming than usual. That went down well. By the time our sound guy had the levels right, people were coming in off the trendy craft-market area to find out what the noise was. I had an audience. My Turkish was awful so I didn’t have much between-song patter to hold the audience while my bandmates did the endless tuning and effects adjusting that they said was necessary.

So I started climbing and singing. Thank the lord for cordless microphones. After a few seconds, I was on top of a saw-bladed booth partition staring down at some startled couples and howling ‘New York, New York’ at them. That seemed to go down well. Everything went down well. If I partitioned my sense of reality off and just did what my mischievous little inner child suggested, I could get away with anything.

This set the tone for my performance for the next decade.

Ortaköy itself was heaving. There were no enforceable licensing regulations on New Year’s Eve. The traffic was less good-natured here, with most people trying to get home after their family gatherings. Children were sleeping in cars and the periods of immobility were so long that drivers were dozing off too. Occasionally there would be a fresh burst of hooting as a car moved a length forward. The horns would wake the rest of the drivers up and the whole Tetris grid would adjust again.

I shoved through the people into Flatline. The temperature and humidity rose sharply as I moved inside. So did the volume. It took me a while to get used to the noise and darkness. I began to recognise people and sounds. The band was Lemmings. They were supposed to finish at midnight. It was after two. I passed by the bar and got a drink. There was an air of anarchy that I wasn’t used to in Flatline. It felt as if something was going to happen. I wandered up to the stage and joined a clump of musicians. They told me that there had been some kind of electrical problem. Lemmings had started late and they were likely to be playing for another hour.

The place was jammed. There was a regular sound of glasses breaking and being trodden into the floor. I wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t that kind of place. Still, it was New Year’s Eve. Lemmings were doing nicely and there was another and on before us. Some of us went out for some food. The narrow alleys of Ortaköy were packed with people eating and drinking and talking. We found a dürüm place, got our food and went down to the water to relax. Other band members were there. Bottles of Scotch circulated. I had some, then went back onto beer.

We were in the middle of some grunge song when I noticed a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye. The bar was packed. It was raining outside and people were crowded in. It had been raining for over a week. People were sick of it and were no longer content to stay inside. So here they were. Flatline looked somehow simultaneously cool and friendly when you looked inside from the street. It had good music (us) and it had a comfortable but punk-jagged décor that people liked. It was still early, about 11 and we had begun our first set with the sort of energy that we needed to show people that it was going to be worth staying until 2 or 3.

I felt nicely at home. The mix sounded good and there was no trace of the sore throat I had struggled with for the past few weeks. The crowd was still building. People sitting at the bar were enveloped by the standing throng. People were starting to dance. I kept a proprietorial eye on proceedings as we built the atmosphere. Then I saw that flash from above the bar. I kept singing but looked more closely. It came and went, an electrical discharge that shouldn’t have been there.

Everything went on as normal. Kerem, the bar manager was in his usual position in a corner of the room. I caught his eye and pointed to the sizzling blue. He smiled and went back to his conversation. Maybe he knew about it. We finished the song. I asked the bass player whether he had seen it. “Come on,” he said. People were waiting. We crunched into a Rage Against the Machine cover. The atmosphere cranked up a notch. There was a mosh pit now. The stage diving started.

I looked at the place where the blue had been. Nothing. Then it started. A flicker of electric blue, then it spread in a line along the ceiling above the bar. A chunk of plaster detached and fell. People stopped and looked up. Sparks flashed along from one side of the bar to the other. In slow motion, a section of ceiling unpeeled itself and plummeted onto the crowd by the bar. There was dust everywhere. That sapphire will-o-the-wisp sputtered away above the mass of people writhing on the floor.

I looked across at Kerem again. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. We kept playing. Our power was still on. The roiling maelstrom in front of the stage hadn’t noticed anything. I finished a chorus, jumped onto the moshers and made my way to Kerem “Should we stop?” He pointed at the rescue effort that was under way. Someone had turned off the power to the lights above the bar. The dust was settling. The injured were outside. The biggest slabs of plaster had been dragged onto the pavement. “Keep playing.”

I muscled my way back to the stage just in time for another burst of revolutionary poetry. The song finished. People were starting to come back in. They were given drinks. Nobody was badly hurt. A couple of people were bleeding a bit from cuts to the head. They were seated at bar stools and allowed to recuperate with medicinal alcohol.

The incident was never mentioned again. It wasn’t that anyone was trying to hush it up; nobody seemed to think that it was worth talking about.

When we got back, Lemmings had finished and Cockroach were setting up. It was quieter without the bands but still loud. The air was almost opaque with cigarette smoke and the humidity was at sweaty sauna levels. Cockroach started their first song. Deniz, the singer, went for an introspective, moody delivery that matched the thick air. I went into the back room. Eddie the cat was asleep on the main power amp. I lay down on the cushions at the side and imitated him.

“Come on.” It was Seha, our bass player. “Time to play.”

“OK.” I opened my eyes. The back room was full of smoking people. Some of them were arranged in interlocking couples. In one corner, someone was having their ears pierced with a lighter and a needle. I got up and took my gear to the stage. Cockroach were looking happy. The bar wasn’t quite so crowded now. Most people were having a breathing break outside before resuming their mission of seeing the New Year in with the maximum of ear and lung damage. I set up my receiver and plugged in. A quick sound check and we were ready.

Deniz slung an arm around my neck and said, “Look out for the glass.” I had a habit of launching myself off the stage onto whatever was there. Deniz pointed at the bit of clear floor in front of the stage. It was ankle deep in glass. I went to the bar for a coke. There was nobody there. I ducked under the hatch and got a can from the fridge. Someone asked for a couple of Efes. I didn’t know how much they cost. It didn’t matter. They gave me some money and I put it into the unlocked cash register. I served drinks for a while. I wondered where the bar staff had gone.

Being a regular on the Istanbul rock circuit meant guesting with other bands. If a musician was recognised by the performers on a given night, it was considered polite to invite him or her onto the stage for a song or two. I embraced this practice wholeheartedly when we were playing because it would give me a rest and time for a relaxed drink.

This also meant that if a singer from another band was out of action for any reason, I would get drafted in to replace them for a while. I fronted a band called Lemmings for a while when their singer was studying elsewhere. I liked them and I was familiar with their repertoire so this was quite a pleasant change.

One Saturday, we had done a good night in Flatline in Ortaköy and were about to pack up. A large American approached the stage and began shouting. It took a while to realise that he was being tremendously complimentary. “You’re a great band,” he said. “I’d have to pay hundreds of dollars to hear a band like you in the States. So here’s hundreds of dollars.” He then proceeded to give us a handful of hundred dollar notes. He then bought us a round of drinks and left.

After a while I wandered back to the stage. All the guys from Indians, the last band on the bill were there. They were supposed to play at 4. It was now after 5. People were starting to come back in from outside. I saw Kerem, the bar manager. He was arguing with the owner, an older man who I hardly ever saw. Apparently, it had been so rough during the last set that the bar staff had gone home. The owner said, “You’re the manager. You deal with it.” Kerem said, “This is how I’m dealing with it,” and left. The owner looked at me, shrugged and disappeared as well.

I responded in a practical manner, filling pint mugs with beer for all of my band mates. I shut the cash register and placed the feeble barrier of the hatch down. Back to the stage. Indians were looking doubtful. They had played somewhere else before coming here. Their equipment was in a car double-parked outside. This was not a particular problem as the traffic had subsided. Still, they were tired. They stood around morosely in a sea of glass, watching the punters come back in.

We got on stage and plugged in. Within the first few bars of the first song, the mosh pit was a seething mass of projectile people. It got safer as more joined them. Now there were too many people for them to build up dangerous momentum. It was harder to fall onto the broken glass. Physics to the rescue. They were also more tired than they had been. They took the absence of bar staff in their stride. Most of them didn’t drink any more. Sometimes there were people behind the bar. There was nothing I could do about it. It would have taken quarter of an hour to get across the floor to the bar.

After one performance at Flatline, a girl wanted to talk to me. This was normal. If I sang lyrics about disorientation and alienation, I must be able to help people who felt these things. This girl approached me as I was packing up. She sat me down on the front of the stage, faced me and took a breath.

She pointed at the T-shirt I was wearing. It said Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian. I had bought it from a stall in Camden and worn it as a bit of a joke. It wasn’t a joke to her. “Can I have your T-shirt?” she said.

“Why?” People didn’t usually ask for my clothes. She must have a good reason.

“I’m a lesbian,” she said.

“I see.”

“I’ve never told anyone.” She looked at me earnestly. “This is it. I’m coming out.” She gave me a shivery little smile. “I knew you’d understand.”

I took my T-shirt off. I got hers in return, a nice Phantom one but about seven sizes too small.

I saw the girl in the Lesbian T-shirt quite a lot after that. She introduced me to her girlfriends and treated me like a favourite uncle.

Not With My Sister, 1994

It was a great gig. Any inhibitions had been lost hours ago and anyone who was left was there because they were having a good time. Someone touched my arm. It was the singer of Indians. They were leaving. I waved and watched them plough through the densely packed humanity. It was an odd situation. More like a private party than a job – just us and the crowd. We launched into one of our standards – an upbeat song about suicide. I finished the second chorus, raised my arms and screamed. I felt pressure under my arms. The crowd knew the song as well as I did. I relaxed and felt myself rise into the air. A bed of hands passed me back through the club. They stopped. I was at the other side. I stepped down on to the bar and sang another verse/chorus. Then I ducked behind the bar and got myself a drink. The passage back to the stage was so smooth that I didn’t spill a drop.

The atmosphere didn’t flag. I didn’t know what the time was but we had played over thirty songs. I still had a voice. People were still moving and shouting. All of us still had adrenaline. We were well into our stock of old cover versions by now. It didn’t matter. The crowd was so full of alcohol and whatever that they would enjoy everything. I was glad I had that sleep in the middle of the night.

Eventually, a few people started to go. There came a time that seemed like the right one to stop. We announced the last song. People were ready. We finished. People slapped us on the back, invited us to parties, then went home. As the population density decreased, I could see that some of the punters had bleeding legs. When the floor cleared, we could see that there was jagged glass up to mid-calf.

We packed up and gathered at the entrance. It was light outside. The street was a deserted New Year’s Day grey. We wondered what to do. None of us had a key to the club. Normally, Kerem would be there to do what had to be done. I checked the cash register, fully expecting it to have been looted. It was overflowing with notes. There was a pool of money on the floor in front of it. We paid ourselves from the register, shut the outside door and went home.

We played at Flatline again on the following Friday. Everyone was there: Kerem, the owner and the usual bar staff. Whatever had happened on New Year’s Eve was forgotten.

More Not With My Sister stories here and here.

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Posted April 9, 2014   Posted by Adam in Uncategorized

Not a bad mid-life crisis. A little early. I was 29.

I was teaching in a school in Kangaroo Island, South Australia, when the guitarist of a band I had once been in called me and said, ‘What do you think of moving to Sydney and playing bass and singing in a new band?’ I went to see my Headmaster who laughed and said, ‘As if.’ So I went.

Some of our guitars

We lived in a townhouse that we couldn’t afford in the beautiful suburb of Manly. We had a surf beach 50m in one direction and a harbour beach 50m in the other direction, where I attempted to windsurf . The house was full of musical instruments and our neighbours suffered.

I busked in Manly and on Circular Quay for a while, then found jobs in a pizza shop and a gym. The band never got off the ground but I found another band fairly quickly.

Just up the road was North Head, a surprisingly pristine wilderness area with cliffs and echidnas and Eastern Water Dragons. I did a bit of rock-climbing there…

…and the drummer took this picture of me leaping from a fence over Sydney harbour.

Flying over Sydney

No Photoshop back then.

After a short time, I was as busy with three jobs (pizza, gym and band) as I had been as a teacher, so I got another teaching job, made a bit of money and went to Turkey.

The Philharmonic Oysters

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Posted April 6, 2014   Posted by Adam in Uncategorized

In the late 1970s, I was seventeen and short of money. My mate had a brother who lived in Swan Hill, in the riverland district of Victoria. He suggested that we try making some money picking fruit for the summer. We lived in a caravan and got up early enough to start work at sunrise. I remember packing the trailer on Christmas morning and driving past the farmer’s house bellowing out ‘Silent Night’ at 5am. It was kind of nice being the local colour. People passing by would stop their cars and take photos of we charming rustic locals.

One morning, the cocky arrived early to give us our jobs. He turned to me and said, “Adam, you take Ann and Jean out to the plum orchard. You can drive a tractor, can’t you?”

“No.” I didn’t even have a car licence then.

“OK.” He led me over to the tractor. It was a little grey Ferguson from the early 1950s. “Here’s the clutch. This is the left wheel brake. This is the right one.” He jumped into his ute and disappeared.

Ann and Jean got up onto the trailer and looked distrustfully at me. I got the tractor moving and onto the road. We arrived in the orchard without mishap. We started picking. It was a lovely peaceful morning, sunny and full of birdsong. The sprinklers were chuffing away at the other side of the orchard, keeping the air cool and dust-free. Soon it was time to reposition the tractor. For this, I needed to turn sharply to get into the next row. To my surprise, the wheel brakes worked perfectly. We pivoted on the left wheel and turned cleanly into the row. I was so surprised that it had worked that I left the brake on and cannoned into a plum tree. I picked up the fallen plums, hid the ruined branches and kept picking.

Towards lunch time, we were making good progress. I moved the tractor up to where the sprinklers had been working in the morning and hopped down. I sank up to the calves in mud. The irrigation ditches were overflowing. Oh dear. Ann and Jean would not like this. I decided to move the tractor back to dry ground. I started it up, ground it into gear and went nowhere. The poor old Ferguson didn’t have enough power to spin its wheels. It just grumbled and sank.

Eventually I decided that I would have to go for help. The farmer didn’t say anything. He just told picked up a couple of lengths of solid chain and told me to hop up on the Ford tractor. He then drove to the plum orchard. Ann and Jean had filled the boxes and had nothing to do. There is nothing a fruit cocky hates to see as much as pickers standing idle. He hitched up the Ford to the bogged Ferguson with a chain and began to pull. There was a snap and the Ford lurched backwards. The chain had broken.

The next chain managed the job. Before the farmer drove away, he said, “Don’t drive in the irrigated bit.”

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Posted April 6, 2014   Posted by Adam in Uncategorized

My girlfriend was having a year in Rio de Janeiro as an exchange student. I decided to visit her. One of the first things we did was go to Ipanema. We were lying on the beach, engrossed in each other when I saw something move in my peripheral vision. My girlfriend’s bag was steadily moving away. I yelled and a kid released his grip and ran away.

I thought nothing more about I until he came back with a bunch of his friends. They stood a safe distance away, laughing in a good-natured fashion. We smiled at them and waited for them to get tired of us and go away. They didn’t. They started throwing stuff. Just screwed up pieces of paper. Then tin cans. Suddenly it seemed a bit threatening. What had just seemed like a few amusing kids was now a gang of predatory teenagers.

We decided to take the hint and go. We aimed situation-defusing smiles at the boys and left the area. They followed us. I stopped. They stopped and backed off a bit. They closed in when we started moving again. When I looked back, they were closer. They were throwing anything they could find at us. There was a lot of litter on the beach. One of them was armed with a bent bicycle pump. Not a very threatening item normally but it looked sinister in this context. I could see another filling a Coke can with sand. We accelerated.

I turned to look again. I saw the lad with the can launch it. It flew in an arc and hit my girlfriend in the middle of the back. I saw her back arch and she cried out. That was enough. I yelled and wheeled back. The teenagers scattered. I had my eye on the can-thrower. He was laughing. I caught him within a few steps and kicked his feet out from under him. He sneered up at me. I had punched him in the head before I realised it. As my fist landed, I saw that he had lowered his head so I was hitting that thickest part at the front of the skull. The part a striker uses to head a ball.

The lad dissolved from murderous hoodlum to sobbing youth. He lay on the sand wailing and blubbering. Maybe I could have handled this better. I looked back to my girlfriend. She was standing where I had left her, looking vulnerable. I ran back to her and we got out of there.

It was only later in a café that I realised that my hand was hurting. I looked at it. It was an odd shape. The knuckle between the metacarpal and the first phalange of my index finger seemed to be thickened. It was domed like an elephant’s head. And it hurt quite a lot.

Over the next few days, the hand swelled and took on a shiny, pink appearance. I ignored it. In this whole year, I had only one week with my girlfriend. I wasn’t going to interrupt a short, wonderful time in such a fabulous city for something unimportant that happened on the first day.

When I got back to Istanbul, it began to look serious. The swelling went down, revealing that something was broken. Apparently, I had a boxer fracture. I had broken the metacarpal and the front part had ridden up over the rest of the hand, causing that elephant head appearance. I went to a doctor. He tried to wrestle the bone parts back into place. Not onl did this hurt a lot but it didn’t work because the parts of bone had begun to fuse into their new positions.

The hospital specified in my health insurance had a world-class hand team. I hadn’t known that there were such things as hand teams. They seemed delighted to be doing my hand. They did a lovely job that involved inserting rods into the bones. I could show people one of the rods moving in and out of my hand as I clenched my fist. The doctors in the hand team were less delighted when I came back a couple of weeks later, having been bitten on the hand by a dog in Fethiye at the Hippy Festival. Infection set in and made their excellent reconstruction work look a little shoddy.

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