Hard Currencies and a Distinct Lack of Picnics

This episode of Top Paddock features another of the stories sent in a couple of months back when I called for tales of travelling folly. It’s by long time photographic contributor and sometime travelling companion Mark Hopper - and it’s a beauty. Reading it got me thinking back to the big trip I did to Europe in 1998 with Mark McCartney. It’s because of that I have gone with solo versions of the songs Hard Currency and No Picnic.

That six month long journey took place right at the end of the Weddings, Parties era - just before the farewell tour. I had been dissatisfied with what I saw as the increasingly limited touring path the Weddings seemed to be refining. Canada felt like a different version of Australia - the same tours, playing the same venues in the same towns and the fact was, we hadn’t been there in ages anyway. America had been promising initially but as the major labels we were tethered to, all seemed to reneg on showing any significant support, so too did the prospect of us going there in any meaningful way. England and Northern Europe had looked as if they might be something in the mid 1990s but this too had fallen flat.

I really felt the need to get out there and play some different places and I think it was simply that the Weddings had become an unwieldy vehicle in terms of production, promotion and management. All through the rise of the Weddings in Australia I had remained friends with the Wild Pumpkins at Midnight who had chosen a vastly different career path relocating to regional Holland and working their subsequent tours and releases from there. But it was fifteen years down the track and I wanted what they were having.

I have a strong memory of a person we were staying with in Amsterdam when we first got off the plane - someone who had seen me playing in Australia only a year or two previous - saying, ‘what in the hell are you even doing here?’ He was referring to the fact that back in Australia the Weddings were a band with a decent record deal playing decent sized venues to an enthusiastic and occasionally large fan base. And here I was sleeping on someone’s floor learning a bunch of acoustic covers to play in Eastern European coffee shops and Viennese dive bars. I couldn’t have been happier. At first.

Looking at the list of shows featured in the front pic from this edition of the Top Paddock I don’t think the Weddings would have been able to fit on most of those stages.

The photo is actually taken from a t-shirt that we ended up selling on that trip. I can’t remember what the quantity printed would have been. I’m thinking 50 - maybe 80 at best. I don’t think we printed the shirts until we got to London after the rigours of the Northern European were largely behind us. While there are a lot of shows on there it is pretty easy to see the spacing of the dates is irregular with large gaps where we watched any financial buffer we might have created dissolve in a haze of rough accomodation and relentless boozing. Inept attempts at busking did little to assuage the situation.

This is a gig poster they made for us in the Czech town of Most. (Just head north west from Ceske Budejovice and take a right at Karlovy Vary).

But hey - we were in the Czech/Slovak republics! We were catching trains across Austria and Germany and Holland and we always seemed to be able to retreat to Amsterdam where we had some wonderful supportive friends who could see what were doing was somehow a valiant attempt to make sense of a fragmented career without the support of the major labels and the commercial industry that had ruled my life for the ten years previous.

The two songs here directly relevant to that trip are both from the Dust On My Shoes album. Hard Currency was written reasonably early in the trip and I actually remember performing it as we travelled. I am pretty sure No Picnic came after I arrived back in Melbourne, a little battle weary but still glad for the experience. I’m pretty sure it was written on the instrument I have played on this recording: it’s called an octave mandolin to be precise, even though if you string/tune it differently it can legitimately be referred to as a bazouki or even a cittern. It was made in 1984 for D’oole Luthiers in Geelong by Pat Evans who many Melbourne musicians will know as one of the really helpful head honchos at the Maton Guitar Factory. It’s sure got its own sound.

And so for the paid subscribers - here’s a fine story by Mark Hopper (with an audio monologue version read by yours truly) and an acoustic reading of the songs Hard Currency and No Picnic. Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten around to a paid subscription yet? Hmmm? You know you’re missing out big time!

by Mark Hopper (monologue & text).