John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers.

Saturday 25th October 1986. Do you remember where you were that day? I can tell you where I was. Selina's at the Coogee Bay Hotel. What a night!

I was working for Bandanna and we had gotten a gig that we were all rapt about. Supporting John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers as well as Aussie blues legends, Chain. This was a big gig for us, band and crew alike. John Mayall is such an influential person in the music industry that it was like doing a gig with some sort of minor God.

Continued at Gibbo's War Stories...

The NSW Liberal party is a joke!

Where do I start?
First of all I find out last week that they are standing Nola Fraser as our local candidate then I awake to the news this morning that the alternative Premier of NSW has been taking drinking lessons lessons from Andrew Bartlett. Fuck me dead folks! Do you get Fly Buys for being an idiot these days or something?

We have just withstood 10 years of Bob Carr whose greatest achievement was to make it to retirement before being sacked, and what do we step up to the plate with? Nola bloody Fraser and John "Mail Order Bride" Brogden. In the words of Howard Dean... "Aaaarrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyeeeeooooowwwwaaaarrrgggghhhh"

I was going to ask what John was thinking but obviously he wasn't. Sorry John, but you are going to have to show enough balls to step down now. You have, in one fell swoop, become nothing but a liability. Day after day we see the left side of politics in this country hoping like hell for the Liberals to self destruct. They know that this is their only hope of ever being elected as they are far too hopeless to ever be elected on merit.

Well..you've handed it to them on a plate.

GetOverYourself.Com

Australia's latest political force, GetUp!, has only taken weeks to become a political farce. Liberal party reject John Hewson has reportedly resigned leaving the website as yet another Left Wing spam factory. From todays SMH:

"The group was designed to be a non-partisan political organisation focusing on issues such as industrial relations, media ownership and immigration detention centres. It was set up to appeal to people disaffected with the traditional party system.

But Liberal backbenchers, including the Sydney MP Malcolm Turnbull and the Melbourne MP Andrew Robb, denounced the group and its initial email campaign as little more than spam.

A Victorian MP and member of the parliamentary committee on electoral matters, Tony Smith, labelled it a "scam" that was "an old Labor front dressed up as a genuine movement".

What is it with these idiots and their never ending mission to re-educate the stupid people of Australia to their "approved" version of democracy? I'll give you a tip folks, we already have a democratic process. It's called an election. You lost hahahahaha!

I love the last bit though:
"Dr Hewson's resignation places the organisation in a difficult position.

The search is now on to find someone who is not aligned with either the Labor Party or the Greens to gain wider community appeal."

The key is right there folks. If you are aligned with the Labor Party or The Greens, you do NOT have "wider community appeal".

GetAHaircutAndARealJob.Com, now there's an idea for a political movement.

I've got a new blog

Hi folks, here is a shameless plug for my new blog, Gibbo's War Stories.
It is a collection of the "roadie" stories that first appeared here without any of my political opinions! Plenty of people have asked for more of them & I'll do my best to post regularly.

Check it out & tell all your friends.

Stevie

I was blown away last night to see Stevie Wright on This Is Your Life. During the late Eighties I worked for a while as Stevies live sound engineer, alongside brother of Gibbo on monitors and My Pal Brian(TM) on lights, and I have wonderful memories of some great gigs as well as some downright strange ones.


He was (I think) still on the needle in those days and was very definitley on the turps in a big way and was quite a handful. Even so, he was still very much a household name and drew decent crowds. The band, Hard Road, consisted of Peter Northcote (sax, keys, guitar), Bruno Renzella (guitar), Vic Young (bass) and Paul DeMarco (drums) and one or two others who slip my mind.
They were outstanding in both musical ability and counselling skills. It was a major effort sometimes just to get Stevie onto the stage in a reasonable condition to perform and the guys showed endless patience(usually!).

The guys started picking him up quite early in the day to get him to the gig before he got too blind. They would then keep him occupied and soberish backstage until show time. This worked for a while until the cunning bugger figured that he could just get the crowd to buy his drinks. "Who's gunna buy Stevie a Southern Comfort then?" would be the cry. Half a dozen punters would then head to the bar and buy him drinks. The look on the faces of the band was simply priceless. What can you do to help someone who is determined to trash themselves?

Poor old Stevie didn't have much of a voice left by this stage and it became increasingly difficult to get his voice to sit in the mix at a decent level. Brother of Gibbo had the worst of it as he looked after on-stage sound which was...loud! One night Stevie was having particular trouble hearing himself in the monitors so he decided he would kick them off the front of the stage, as you do. Classic rock 'n roll tantrum! Anyway, being the professional he is, brother of Gibbo wanders out from side stage nonchalantly and puts the speakers back on stage. Well, Stevie manages to kick them off again at which point brother of Gibbo decides to unplug them & remove them. Picture the scene... Band wailing, punters dancing, singer fuming and brother of Gibbo standing at the front of the stage giving Stevie a right bollocking. Common sense eventually prevailed and the rest of the show went well. During the packup I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of the band members had brother of Gibbo bailed up side stage and seemed to be giving him a gobfull. Thinking there could be ill feeling about the incident, I wandered a bit closer just in case and managed to hear words to the effect of: "Why didn't you hit the bastard? I that had been my gear he kicked, I'd have floored him!" Brother of Gibbo explained that it wouldn't look good on his resume that he had knocked out Stevie Wright.

One day I'll tell you about the Stevie gig where I had to leave the mixing desk to punch on with some of the crowd! I've still got the scar where my tooth went through my mouth just below my bottom lip. I'll bet the other prick's still pissing blood though!

Thanks for the fun times and classic memories Stevie. Stay straight. I hope you find the peace you are looking for.

Gibbos new toys.

Gibbo shouted himself a new kit a couple of weeks ago and I've finally got around to taking a few pics.


I was in good old Sydney Town a few weeks back and, as you do, I popped in to Billy Hydes. As soon as I layed eyes on it, it was sold! It was exactly what I had been after and the colour(Ruby Fade) blew me away. I whacked a deposit on it and organised to come back on the weekend to pick it up.
Saturday morning rolls around and there is much excitement. Gibbo Jnr has even gotten out of bed early to throw his L plates on the car. He's driving on his first trip to the big smoke. After an uneventful trip in we decided to do a quick lap around Hydes to see if we could fluke a parking spot out the front. We were greeted with the site of a mob of folks standing on the corner outside the shop, which was closed! We parked around the corner and walked back to find out that there has been a fire in the building overnight and the shop was shut. Ahhhhhhhhh!
"Which kit was yours? We suffered no fire damage but a lot of kits got wet" says the guy.
"The Ruby Fade 6 piece Pearl."
"Cool. Your kits not wet. We can pass it out the window."
"Hang on," I says "I was going to pay with EFTPOS"
"Sorry mate, no power"
This is when I realised that you can only get $1000 a day out of an ATM. Damn, today aint goin' good!

Anyways, between myself, the ATM & Mrs Gibbo we scraped up most of it and the very generous, folks at Hydes let us pay the difference with a cheque.

Yeehah!!!



I have to say a very special thanks to Fab and his guys at Billy Hydes. They had many more important things to worry about that morning but they went out of their way to help me out. Well done guys. Top service!

Gotta love a fishing story.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately folks. I've been as busy as a one armed wallpaper hanger.

Here is a nice little story from my buddy Sticko for your enjoyment.


This one's about the kinda fishing trip we have ALL experienced at some time or other...

IT was to be the kind of fishing trip you hear the old salts bragging about when they turn to reminiscing.

We were looking forward to perfect weather, convivial company and plenty of bigg'uns in the cooler when we got back ... proof of our prowess in that age-old battle of man against the best nature has to offer (ie man's own innate stupidity).

We got off to a crook start. On Thursday night we gathered at Gibbo's to plan the grand weekend.

Apart from your correspondent, there was Gibbo, Killer, Whoppa, Chook and Howie, all old school buddies, apart from Howie, a gently-spoken physicist who immigrated from Romania 12 years ago.

Howie was decidedly nervous about the whole concept - firstly because we had decided to be "spontaneous''. You know, not plan ahead too much.

He had vivid memories of our past disasters, especially that camping trip to Oberon and the Jenolan Caves when he wandered off in search of bush orchids and a feral pig trapped him up a tree for four freezing hours.

The only thing which eventually discouraged the cranky sow was that it began to snow.

The other thing worrying Howie was that his ample Aussie wife Janine had reminded him several times that they had long ago locked in a promise to have dinner with her elderly widowed father on Monday of the Australia Day long weekend. More specifically,

what had really put the wind up him was that Janine had bought a new wooden rolling pin, just in case he somehow overlooked the appointment.

Anyway, Thursday's plan was flawless, except that nobody woke up at the appointed time of 4am on Saturday morning and we didn't actually get on the road until 9-ish. Just past Waterfall, Gibbo twigged that the fishing gear so carefully inspected and spiffed up on Friday night ready for battle was still neatly stacked in his suburban laundry.

We finally got the show on the road after lunch. Dusk was hovering on the horizon by the time we reached Kiama and every motel was booked solid. (We hadn't brought any blankets with us. That wouldn't have been spontaneous, would it?)

Every van and mucked-out stable in Berry, Nowra, Sussex Inlet and Bendalong was chockers as well. We kept driving south.

By the time we found a pub with six vacant beds, it was almost 10pm and all the jokes and camaraderie had withered with the increasing likeliehood of half a dozen slumbering old fools crammed uncomfortably into a Commodore sedan, just centimetres away from three kilograms of defrosting prawns and mullet gut.

After a hearty country breakfast the next day, we continued south to a picturesque spot just out of Batemans Bay. It was paradise. Crystal clear aquamarine and turquoise shallows, with dark basalt headlands spiking out into the sea on both sides of the inlet.

Whoppa pulled in a whopper - a 40cm spotted cod with gigantic mouth on 'im - before Gibbo and I each hauled in pan-sized bream and Killer came good with a decent leatherjacket. Chook was still empty-handed but full of confidence at this expectant stage of proceedings.

Howie was so excited that his thick accent made him nearly impossible to understand. He wasn't much at fishing, but he offered to help by carrying our catch (the first of many many more, we figured) to the safety and coolness of a rockpool, well clear of the surge and suck of the ocean waves.

"Hey mets,'' he called out to us, with the dumbest grin you ever saw. "Look thees bee-oo-ti-fel fish.''

Howie was squeezing a blue-ringed octopus in his powerful Baltic fist. The staff at Milton Hospital were fantastic ... professional, sympathetic and kind.

Janine wasn't quite so understanding.

Whats the go Blogger?

Whats the go with all the whitespace at the top of my blog?

Sorry folks. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

How long before this gets pulled?

Stand proud citizens of Australia. Bob & Kezza thank you for your opinion and choose to ignore it. That is all!

Those fascist greens are at it again

In the tradition of great left wing fascists, the mighty greens are trying the old poll stacking routine again. Not content with just having biased polls such as "The Federal Budget is appalling because..." and "Our PM is a lying rodent because...", we now get the situation where they are banning dissenting voters outright!
Check this out.

Figures!

Dubbo

We spent last weekend in the beautiful city of Dubbo for the Under 15 & 16 Country Rugby League Championships. The drive up was a real eye-opener. Man it's dry out there! At least it was until we arrived. We had only got as far as Lithgow before the rain started and it stayed with us all the way to Dubbo. Top stuff!! Mrs Gibbo & I were a bit concerned that we were going to spend the weekend huddled, shivering, under an umbrella. We needn't have worried though as the facilities at the ground were first class. They had a covered grandstand that would be the envy of many City fields.

The Group 6 U16's campaign started very well on the Saturday, winning the first game.

The Group 6 Under 16 team after their win on Saturday. This was Gibbo Jnr's first ever game in the rain!

Sunday didn't quite go so well with the boys being solidly outplayed by Group11 who went on to win the comp. Just an hour after the first game, tired and injured, they backed up for another game and were unfortunately beaten again. Oh well!
The boys played quite well all weekend and showed great spirit to keep trying until the full time whistle.

A special mention must go out to the coach Bob and his intrepid staff of trainers/managers/sports med people. These guys give a huge amount of time and effort in organising a competition like this. Thanks guys.

Another special mention must go to the parents of the lads who have also given much time and effort getting the boys to training etc. We spent a couple of VERY social evenings in Dubbo RSL Club with some of the other parents who proved to be great company.


Three of the four Camden players who represented Group 6. Gibbo Jnr, Alex and Tom. (Karl missing.)

Thanks lads for a great weekend. Better luck next year.

And now.... back to club footy!

You can't polish a turd, right?

We've all heard that old saying about not being able to polish turds, right? Well...apparently you can. The problem is that all you end up with is a shiny turd.

This thought occured to me originally during Mark Lathams reign as leader of the useless whinging bastards opposition. It all came flooding back last night as I watched poor old Kim Beazley struggling hard on the 7:30 Report. You know you are going bad as an ALP leader if even Red Kerry thinks you are shit. It was like watching someone stab themselves to death. The poor bastard's has got nothing! Sad really.

I recently read Kerry O'Keeffe's book "According to Skull" which contained an interesting insight into the man. At the end of his career one of his team mates jokingly said that Kerry had done well to play for Australia because he really only a State class player. Kerry was miffed for a minute then realised the guy was probably right. He had done very well to reach those heights when he probably didn't have the level of talent necessary. It takes a big person to honestly admit their limits.

This was the problem with Crean, then Latham, and now Beazley. They have(had) risen to a position which was well and truly above their skill level and it eventually showed through.

Polished turd is still turd.

Self explanatory really

Cashing In

Hi folks, I'm back. Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I've been doing evil capitalist shit that has been quite time consuming. Anyways..................

I really haven't got much to say about the whole Corby thing that hasn't been already said. Frankly, I don't know if she's guilty or not...but, neither does any of the loudmouths who have been treating the Indonesians with downright disdain because, surprise surprise, they choose to do things a bit different over there. Gee, I thought that it was their choice to have a shit system of justice or not. Oh well!

What really shits me is the bastards trying to cash in on the whole affair, from various bloggers to the main stream media(yes channel 9, I'm looking at you). The worst of the lot though is the lawnmower company that My Pal Brian(TM) told me about. They are now selling the Schapelle model lawnmower. Apparently it can hold up to 4 kilos of grass and comes with a 20 year guarantee!

In fact, My Pal Brian(TM) went past Schapelle's work place the other day.
There was a sign on the door saying "Back In 20"

Bulldog Bob Brown

So this is what he did before politics.

I went to a funeral yesterday.

The first funeral I ever went to was for a guy I went to school with. It was 1978, the year after we left school. I was down the back yard with a bike frame tied to the swings, spray painting it from a can. My Mum burst out the back door in tears. “Randall’s been killed” was about all she could get out. I was numb and to be honest, I didn’t really know how to react. He was only 17 years old and his life was over. Man, 17 years old, that’s just getting started. He was out driving on his brand new P plates when they ran out of petrol. While walking to get fuel he was run over and killed by an idiot who was running from the cops.

His life was taken away through no fault of his own by a man with a Tic-Tac sized cock who tried to make up for his lack of penis by hooning around the streets in a hot car pretending to be Peter Brock.

I remember going to the funeral with a couple of mates. None of us had dealt with this before. It really cut me up to see his Mum and Dad trying to be brave. This is just a parent’s worst nightmare. Having to bury one of your kids.

The one I went to yesterday was the same. A young man, just 25 years old, with the whole world at his feet. It was probably the saddest funeral I’ve been to and I’ve been to a few. It was sadder than burying my Dad. As young as Dad was, at least Dad got a decent turn. This one had the same feeling as the first one. It is just horrible to watch a Mum and Dad bury their child.

The respect this young man and his family have in their community was shown by the absolutely enormous crowd that turned up. Half the crowd had to stand outside. Speaker after speaker talked of this lads’ genuine love of life, friends, music, sport and his studies. This kid packed more into his short time here than most people do in 60 years. It was a moving experience. Sad because of a life cut short and joyous because of a life spent well.

They told of a boy who was passionate about sport and music, both as a participant and a spectator. They told of a boy who went from being an average student to doing a double degree in Law and Commerce. All the while keeping up his relationships with his friends and his passion for sport and music. They told of a boy who had a genuine passion for life. They told of a boy smart enough to pay his board in alcohol so he could get frequent flyer points on it!

His life was taken away through no fault of his own by a man with a Tic-Tac sized cock who tried to make up for his lack of penis by hooning around the streets in a hot car pretending to be Peter Brock.

Rest in peace Tim.

I don’t ever want to go to one of those again.

Nashional Yoonion of Shtoodents

Check this out.



The whole thing contains only three lines of text. In those three lines are:

• Two spelling mistakes. "loose" instead of lose and "downloadble" instead of downloadable
• A redundant capital letter in "Services"
• The link isn't working.

You don't need a long neck to be a goose!

Maybe a better use of ones' time might be studying instead of politics or basket weaving?

I can't wait for July.

Rams by a thousand.

Camden Rams 16a's had a brilliant start to the season beating Mt Anan convincingly on Saturday.

It started out as the Gibbo Jnr show as he scored 3 tries in the first 15 minutes and another one in the second half. At one stage he had more steps that the Opera House.

The game was really won on the back of a brutal and enthusiastic display by our whole forward pack. Their defense was great and they were spirited in attack, even managing some great offloads. This is a great lesson to my mighty Eels. When the forwards go forward... well you know the rest.

Well done to the whole team. It looks like a great year ahead.

Go Parra!

Finally we remembered how to tackle.
Finally we remembered how to run.
Finally we remembered how to pass the ball.

And guess what? We won!

One in a row! we are on a roll.