Damien
Lovelock (spoken word) Damien Lovelock may be the lead singer of the Celibate Rifles, but a Damien Lovelock spoken word performance doesn't have any direct connection to the Celibate Rifles, save that the same intelligent, incisive wit behind the lyrics of the band's songs is also clearly evident in the band's absence.
Of course being the lead singer of the Rifles does mean that he tends to attract more of a rock'n'roll crowd than most other artists at the Sydney Festival. It also means that he probably draws a larger percentage of curious and casual passersby. Certainly some of the people standing around waiting for the doors to the show to open had little knowledge of who he was, beyond the fact that he was in "a band" that was "sort of famous" ("that band, they're sort of like... legends aren't they?", I heard the girl in front of me ask her boyfriend as we went in).
Me, I knew very well who he was and had made a particular effort to get there early, since it wasn't going to be reserved seating. Needless to say, there wasn't a car parking spot to be had anywhere close, except for the almost empty parking area right next to the venue. Unfortunately that area also sported a sign stating that the gates are locked promptly at 10:00pm every night and it was obvious that the performance would go well past that hour. Bummer. After several more minutes of driving around and around in ever increasing circles, the fuel warning light came on. Double bummer.
Since I wasn't sure where the nearest petrol station was and show time was approaching rapidly, I opted to abandon ship in the underground car park of the big hotel opposite the venue and deal with the petrol situation after the show. The fee for using the car park immediately doubled the entire cost of my evening out. Triple bummer.
Fronting the box office to collect my ticket, I was told that the start of the show had been put back half an hour because he was running late. I asked if this was cause for concern, but she replied with complete sincerity, "Oh no, in fact it works out very well for us. We've sold more tickets than we've got seats, so it gives us a chance to drag some extra chairs out of the other theatre when the play has its intermission". Sure enough, not too long afterwards the audience did spill out of the other theatre and while they were jamming the bar an employee could be observed dragging a dozen or so chairs through the common bar area from that theatre to the other.
Meanwhile, I got to "enjoy" the techno music being played by the resident DJ and partake of the Bondi Pavilion's surprisingly limited choice of beers (three). A lot of the people hanging around out on the balcony were drinking margaritas and appeared to be there solely to enjoy the late sunset (thanks to f#$%in' daylight saving, but don't get me started on that topic) rather than to attend any specific festival event (and this despite the fact that the balcony doesn't even face the right way for sunset), so maybe beer isn't particularly big in this part of Bondi.
After what seemed like a lifetime, thanks in no small part to the techo, 9:30 finally rolled around and following some good natured jostling for position at door I grabbed a seat right up at front. First up was a short solo set from keyboard player Tony Slavick (spellink?). A little free jazz, a little Thelonius Monk; very pleasant, all in all. The advertising had mentioned "guests and surprises"; Damo assured us (a trifle ominously) that Tony was the guest and that the surprise would come later...
Damo was dressed simply in sandals, shirt and shorts (well, cutoff jeans). After helping move the electric piano out of the way, he looked around, lit up a cigarette, took a sip out of his can of coke, looked around again, muttered "yeah... right..." under his breath, grabbed the microphone from its stand and announced that he was about to start teaching a yoga class soon and that he hoped that no one from that class was in the audience tonight. Then he was off and running...
I remember once seeing a comedian start off his act with: "If you laugh, I'm a comedian; if you don't, then I'm a spoken word performance artist". However there's more to a Damien Lovelock spoken word performance than just a monologue that isn't funny. To start with, often what he says is funny - not bust-a-gut, surprise punch line funny; but funny in the "can you believe it - is that really fucked or what?" sense. Some of the things he touches on may be inherently humorous, but many others are only funny once he's helped you to see them the way he sees them. In particular, it seems that the life of a catholic schoolboy is one of an ongoing theatre of the absurd.
From growing up as the only child in a single parent family and being packed off to boarding school by other relatives when his mother developed leukemia, to adulthood as a single parent often on the dole and scrambling to make ends meet, his life has been about as far removed from the standard suburban experience as you can get, at least without being incarcerated in a refugee detention centre - and that's without even touching on the over 20 years spent fronting one of Australia's longest lived and most aggressive rock'n'roll bands. I guess it helps if you are observant and articulate, but when you find yourself on national radio being expected to provide a thoughtful and perceptive summary of the day's main soccer match in order to pay the rent - when not only didn't you see any of the game, you don't even know the final result! - then the candle of creativity can be induced to burn very brightly indeed.
At the beginning of each half of the performance, the audience was given a choice of theme/topic, but only the title/summary phrase, and then invited to vote. Of course no one really had much of an idea what they were voting for (or maybe that was the idea of doing it that way) and both choices tonight ended up being about sport.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was learning what a jock Damien Lovelock was in his youth. Certainly he still looks pretty fit these days (in fact spectacularly fit for someone who admits to having been twenty in 1974), but given the customary punks versus jocks dichotomy it was a revelation to find out that he was a star of the school and local district rugby teams, as well as a keen soccer player until forced permanently onto the sidelines by injury in his early 20s.
"The Great Leap Forward" was about soccer and drugs (and not the performance enhancing kind either). This was the account of his involvement in an amateur Sunday afternoon soccer competition, where he found himself playing in a team whose collective idea of a "warm up" was to share a couple of joints before the match, while some of the players would have to disappear into the dunny at half time to "fix themselves up" with something a little stronger and how even such a nihilistic environment could still give rise to the traditional competitive urge.
"The Best Day Of My Life" was about playing junior district rugby while still a schoolboy and how an inappropriate and over enthusiastic application of some suntan lotion cast a shadow over what should have been a triumphant day in any young sportsman's life. Of course, that was just the basic framework around which Damo then wove the much broader narrative of his school years in an exposition infused with perceptive commentary and some fascinating autobiographical glimpses. But I'm getting ahead of myself, since that was not until the second part of the show.
Although we'd been allowed to take our drinks into the theatre, there was no ducking out for replenishments once the session started, so we were all pretty dry by the time the "The Great Leap Forward" concluded and there was a widespread rush for the bar. When the audience was settled back down again for the second half, Damo astounded us all by stepping out onto the stage dressed in what turned out to be a $1500 dollar Italian jacket, Ralph Lauren trousers, designer shirt and imported brogues. He said that these clothes had all been presents (Christmas/birthdays) from relatives who just couldn't grasp that he would never wear them (they all still had the store tags and designer labels attached), because unlike his relatives he simply never goes anywhere that such clothing would be worn.
Personally that would piss me off no end (just like the shaving cream, razors and aftershave lotion I got for birthdays and Christmases for about five years after I first grew a beard), because I would take such a gifts as a rebuke, or at least evidence of an obdurate refusal to acknowledge/accept the legitimacy of a life lived differently. He on the other hand calmly accepts such gifts as simple signs of affection, well intentioned no matter how misguided. Having made his point, he took off the jacket and shirt, to at least one call of "get it all off" from the audience in a female voice, followed by several clearly audible sounds of disappointment when he turned out to be wearing his cutoff jeans under the trousers.
However he did get naked in another way. Before moving on to the second monologue of the evening, he announced that his girlfriend had recently moved out and that he'd been devastated. In an attempt to cope with the break up of that relationship he'd been making notes of his feelings at moments "when I had a clear thought" (which he gave us to understand had not been all that often just recently). Since these observations had a kind of accidental or inherent poetry to them, he was going to read out these glimpses into his torment exactly as they had been written down, with no attempt to organise them or impose a structure. He then proceeded to do so and while they certainly affected most of the audience strongly, from down at the front it was clear that they were having at least as strong an effect on him, if not more so.
Of course you can't get a largish group of people together in a room, with easy access to alcohol, without at least one person making a dick of themselves and tonight was no exception. Some clown who clearly didn't have a clue decided that this spoken word event must be similar to comedy night at his local RSL and that heckling was not only allowed but even encouraged. Not only was he wrong on both counts, but he couldn't have picked a worse moment at which to demonstrate the apparently limitless breadth of his stupidity, although being threatened with a punching bought some silence almost instantly, soon followed by the sounds of his noisy but voluntary exit. I guess we were all lucky that he didn't decide to stick around and start calling out for "Back In The Red" or something similar, which would really have derailed the show - either through his interjections or the resulting outbreak of violence from the rest of the audience. This was the only blemish on what was otherwise a perfect evening of entertainment and enlightenment.
I wish I could offer a few quick zingers to illustrate the show better, but
it's not the sort of performance where you come away with gags and punch lines.
However, here are a couple of interesting facts that I did pick up along the
way:
- His first spoken word gig was supporting Jello Biafra;
- If you don't want to work for the likes of Rupert Murdoch, then maybe journalism isn't for you, since your alternative choices are pretty limited and the Watchtower doesn't pay that well;
- Being good at sport at school, as in life, buys you the freedom to depart from the norm in other ways though not, as it turns out, to be so different as to refuse to join the school's "volunteer" cadet corps.
Oh, there was one other blemish on the evening: the show ended just short of midnight and the entrance to the hotel car park was already locked by the time I got there. I raced around to the vehicle exit and fortunately the attendant was still in the process of closing up, so I was able to get my car out, but only just. To add insult to injury, there was no sign of a lock on the gates to that free car park which was supposed to have been locked at 10pm. - John McPharlin
