Wagga Wagga, Music, and Me. #3
Here, I will attempt to recall life as a musician in Wagga Wagga during the 1980s. I will be enlisting the help of a few friends, old and new, who shared this fertile and exciting time.
During my hiatus from the club band, I spent quality time with the practice kit and the metronome, studiously working on my tempos. Did I rejoin the club band after honing my time-keeping? To be honest, I don’t remember, although I did play a lot of session gigs with Shep (John Shepherd), Brownie (Peter Brown) and Pat (Geaghan) over the following number of years, from talent quest shows, to backing artists in clubs, to jazz or country dance gigs (more about these later).
The next thing I do remember is being in a band called The Suspects (perfect 80s style name. Sadly, there are no extant photos - what memorabilia Rob Ludwig had went up in a house fire in the mid 80s). Wow! I was now in a ‘real’ rock band! It was 1982/3.
The amazing Samantha Fletcher was on vocals. Sam was unlike anyone else in Wagga at that time. She was odd (in the best way one could be in a town that was, at the time, dominated by blokes that had ‘normal’ jobs and played either rugby league or union, or VFL), confident and outspoken (as a great front person should be), completely individual (in dress, attitude and behaviour) and could deliver the covers de jour with great conviction and aplomb. Among those covers were ‘Boys In Town’ by the Divinyls, ‘Roxanne’, and ‘Message in A Bottle’ by The Police, a rollicking version of Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’, and even some originals including ‘I Wish I Was Miss Wagga’, co-written with Gulia Radatti, sister of bass player Mick Radatti (more on him later).
On one guitar was Rob Ludwig, maybe a year or two older than me, who I remember seeing the previous year at another Battle of the Bands (possibly at Rivcol Union - Riverina College of Advanced Education’s bar. The RCAE later become RMIHE, Riverina Murray Institute of Higher Education, and later still, CSU, Charles Sturt University where I would attend as a student, as well as perform and see countless gigs). I can never forget the first time I saw him: he walked past me after his band’s performance, wearing a Hendrix-style headband, his Gibson Firebird lazily hanging from his shoulders, and his piercing black eyes fixing me for what seemed like ages, making me think “wow, he’s the real deal, very cool”. Now I was in a band with him! He and Sam would share the banter at gigs, with Rob offering the cynical, close-to-the-bone, and invariably funny comments, which would sometimes make us wonder if we would get beaten up as we packed up our gear. A great guitar player, and a cool person to be in a band with.
Now for a slight digression in order to give a little background information for what amounts to a fairly dull anecdote: Wagga has, on one side, the Forest Hill RAAF base, located about 10 kms southeast, and on the other side, about 10 kms southwest, the Kapooka Military base, or Army Recruit Training Centre. Both these institutions served the country’s efforts in WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and continue to be among Australia’s primary producers of military personnel. Indeed, I’m pretty sure my father spent a little time at Kapooka after his time at Puckapunyal during WWII, and I have clear memories of my older brother, Bruce’s passing out parade there during the Vietnam war. Apparently during the 60s and 70s new recruits from these two arms of the military would meet at the bridge on Fitzmaurice Street,in the middle of Wagga city, and beat each other to pulps for some reason.
Back to Rob Ludwig’s potentially dangerous banter (this is the aforementioned anecdote): one Sunday evening, The Suspects were playing at the RAAF base to a group of unimpressed ‘wingnuts’ (the RAAF recruits appellation at the time – for some reason the Kapooka recruits were called ‘chocos’), when Rob, frustrated at the profound indifference heaped upon us, told his ‘new joke’.
“How do you get wingnuts to dance?”
“Dunno, Rob” (that was Sam).
“Throw them out of a plane!”
Some nervous chortling from the band, and a distinct and sudden interest in us from the sauced up new recruits at the back of the room. I remember Rob turning around and looking at me with an expression of ‘there, that stirred things up a bit, now they know we’re here’, mixed with ‘whoops!’
We played on, the RAAF guys eventually decided we were slightly entertaining enough not to beat up, and we got paid. Indeed, in his own words, Rob made a tradition out of smartarse comments to RAAF audiences.
On the other guitar was Steve Littlewood, a signwriter who had his own business with his dad I think, which later became a very successful business I recall. Again he was about one year older than me, and his sister Anne was in my year at high school. Very nice, peaceful, calm atmosphere surrounding both him and Anne, and as both Sam and Rob were apt to become fiery in their passion for what we were doing, Steve’s calmness was a great balance.
On bass was Mick Bromham. Now, where do I start with Mick? He was/still is the person you most want, no, need to have with you in a band. Not only a very fine bass player, with an inherent knowledge of what is appropriate, tasteful and good, but also the best backing vocalist I can think of through all that time playing with the many people I did there. Unassuming, polite, but assertive when he knew he was right about a part, he was not playing for himself, he was playing for the band, for each song. And I know he carried these attributes with him in whatever band or duo he joined, and no doubt still does. His sense of musicianship was inspiring, even if he had no idea about it, and like everyone else (except me), he loved a beer.
Most of our gigs were at the famous The Bootleg where local knuckleheads, mixing with the emerging art students from college, meant that anything could happen and generally did. More about the Bootleg in another post, but suffice to say it was as close as the Star Wars cantina as Wagga ever got, and it even got into the Guinness Book of Records!
Also performing in and around Wagga in the beginning of the 1980s was a band called Low Profile who, in 1981, were the house band for the Riverina Trucking Company’s second production of The Rocky Horror Show (the RTC’s first go at this was in 1978, and I remember going in costume with friends to this show). In this production, the aforementioned Wayne Pygram was cast as Rocky Horror.
In 1982, Low Profile (Don Hillam, vocals; Brett Allison, bass; Dale Allison, guitar; Bill Ferguson, keyboards; Jim Leischke, drums) was performing almost exclusively at the Australian Rules Club, a larger venue that us in The Bootleg could only dream of playing in. The following year, Jim was replaced by Roger Ansell on drums. Roger’s father John, was a local jazz legend, and Roger was another of the drummers above me that I would watch with awe and envy. That same year, Low Profile became the house band for another RTC production, the Australian show, Starbuck. John Rosengren was musical director for this, and all other productions at this time. The leads in this show were Rob Wilson (a talented singer-songwriter who was a year above me at Kooringal High School), Hugh Crawford (a local businessman and singer of another band, Red Handed), and Don Hillam of Low Profile.
After shows, the band and lead singers, augmented by Al Matthews on bass, John Ansell (Roger’s father) on brass, Jacinta Tooze and Tracie Luhrs on backing vocals, and Peter Weston would venture to the ‘lower’ end of town (literally, as The Bootleg was down a small alley, almost underground, off Fitzmaurice Street) and play an entire set of Blues Brothers covers, in costume as the Blues Brothers. I was there at least once to witness these next level local musicians at what seemed like their peak, fresh from playing a strictly charted show, now warmed up and exploding with limitless energy and fire. For me, it was envy mixed with inspiration, and I watched very carefully Roger Ansell’s precise drumming, hoping to be able to soak up some of his musicianship. Every show they did as the Blues Brothers cover band was sold out, packed out, with people waiting outside venues trying to get in. Indeed, it took on a life of its own, touring nationally, now with Mick King on guitar (Dale’s first daughter was on the way). This eventually morphed into The Danglin’ Brothers.
Also at this time, the go-to sound engineer for the larger venues was Wayne Sims (Simsy), and he is still to this day the sound engineer with the fullest diary. I first met Wayne in the mid 1970s when I was awkwardly shuffling at my 6th grade end-of-primary school dance. His sister, Michelle, was in my class, and it was through her that Wayne’s band was playing at our dance. I have very clear memories of trying to dance red-faced, someone (I think it was Phil Mann) yelling “Ian plays the drums!”, finding myself sitting red-faced behind what seemed like a huge and unfamiliar drumkit, with the bass player saying something in my ear, and me red-faced, not hearing and just saying “yeah”, and then we were playing ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’.
A quick Wayne Sims anecdote not really related to 1982: In the mid ‘80s, I was warming the drum throne for Red Handed, and knockout, tight little band (more on them later) with Wayne Sims on guitar. We used to rehearse several kilometres out of town on the eastern side of Wagga, past the RAAF base. One night, returning from a practice with Wayne in his restored Holden EH sedan (this classic car was in showroom condition, after he and his father found it as a rusted heap and brought it back to life. A three-speed manual column shift, with a 179 motor that was seriously tweaked). Coming up behind a slower car, probably doing the 60 km/h speed limit, he looked at me sideways, mumbled something like “Wanna see what she can do?”, and then with all the confidence of a touring car race driver, flicked the column shift from 3rd back to 2nd - while we already doing around 50 miles an hour according to the old speedo! I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes, but everything did blur. That ‘old’ car snaked around the other car, while seemingly hunched over and gripping the road like a gecko on a window. It was all over in a few seconds, and the engine sounded like it had made a slight effort. Simsy and his dad were magicians.
Time to sign off now, mainly because I can’t remember anything else about 1982. I will return with Chapter 4 anon.
Thank you to Rob Ludwig and Dale Allison for providing information and a much better memory than mine. Your contributions are invaluable in making this memoir as complete as possible.
I was in Starbuck alongside Tim Pledger. We played the sidekicks to the evil leader (Hugh) Gorgon and Zola (I was Zola). I remember getting a tri-fin Mohawk dyed black for the role. So many local musos were in that production. Good memories.