The Inside Line

For those who haven’t heard me say it, David Foster Wallace is probably my favourite author ever. News of his suicide late last year left me a bit rattled, and saddened not just to hear what he’d been living through, but also from thinking that there would never be another DFW novel. Testament to his own compassion are the hundreds of memorials and tributes that flowed in the following weeks to McSweeney’s, to which he had been a contributor in the past.

The New Yorker has run a longform article on his life and work, and published an excerpt of his unfinished novel The Pale King, which looks to have been finished by D. T. Max and is said to be ready for release some time next year.

Article

Excerpt

In the meantime, if you haven’t already done it, set aside a whole month and read Infinite Jest.

In other news, you can now follow my inane bullshit on twitter. Follow me!

So, now that the bedbug bites have stopped itching, I can start planning some more shiz.

There are a few confirmed shows, and a few still in the pipeline over the next few months, and I’m starting to get pretty excited. March, in between recording a new EP with a new punk rock band, I’ll be doing a bushfire benefit at The Brisbane Hotel, and supporting Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) with Enola Fall.

April sees me playing support to two of my own heroes: Evan Dando (4th April – tickets here) and Ben Kweller (15th – tickets), both at the Republic Bar in North Hobart, as well as a potential Launceston gig. Something I’m really excited about at the moment is an idea for a sit-down theatre show, featuring a chilled out Lincoln & the Insiders with a string section and maybe a few other guest artists on board. I’m not gonna make any money from it, but fuck it’s gonna be a cool show.

In May, I’m looking at playing Sydney and Canberra shows with friends Jordan Millar & the Question, and maybe a support gig in Hobart with another couple of punk rock heroes.

Look, get excited. This is gonna be a rad year.

Linc

It’s all finished. Nine cities, ten shows (eighteen for me if you count the solo support slots), couple thousand kilometres, one dirty taco and a handful of parasites down, and we’re about to get on a plane to come home.

Last night’s final show at the Public Bar was pretty good. Since most people we invited to the show said something like “where the hell is the public bar?”, we weren’t expecting much, but a few people came through the door. It was also our second show with Geelong kids The Houses, and these guys sounded much better in a decent venue.

For me, it’s on to planning the next run of Insiders shows. At this stage it’s looking like Melbourne and Geelong one weekend, Sydney and Newcastle with Amy Vee and Jordan Millar on another, and a couple of solo Linc shows in Brisbane, somewhere in the vicinity of March/April. Keep and eye on the shows tab on www.linclefevre.com and join the mailing list if you haven’t already, and I’ll let you know.

We’re all dirty and exhausted, so we’re just gonna hang around and wait for the plane to take us home.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

- Linc

Having a three hour drive to get to Melbourne was a blessing after the previous day’s eleven hour marathon drive. The weather once we got there, however, was not. Forty three degrees, I heard someone say. I have honestly never been in that sort of heat ever. It was bullshit (or boowwshit, as the old guys say it, jowls a’danglin’).

We check in at the FLAGSTAFF MOTOR INN, and make our way to Brunswick to the venue. Nice place too. In fact the whole suburb had a nice je ne sais quoi about it. Actually, that’s a bit of a misnomer in translation, since we knew exactly what it was about Brunswick that gave it a certain charm, and that was the total lack of electricity. Literally. The whole suburb’s power grid was out, due to a whole chunk of Melbourne being blacked out from the heat. Shit was melting fuseboxes all over the place. This blackout also extended to the very pub at which we were to play.

But, since this has been a tour of ‘making the most of it’, we were all ready to do an acoustic show in the dark, just for the hell of it, when the power came back on. Not to worry. But, everyone had already decided to stay at home with their working air conditioners by this stage, so we played a quiet little show to a few very supportive fans.

Where were we staying again? Oh yes, the FLAGSTAFF MOTOR INN. Now, this place had a few things: a working air conditioner, a relatively clean bathroom, a TV, and BEDBUGS. I woke up bitten to shit with, like, a dozen of the little fuckers running around under the bedsheet.

You can't see much, but these are a couple of the little scabs.

We cracked the shits with management and demanded a refund (which is proving difficult for the moment), and hotfooted it to another hotel across town.

At this point, I thought we were in the clear, but I thought it would be wise to double check the bags, and sure enough, the bags were crawling with the little fuckers as well, trying to hitchike along with us. Or last full day of tour, and a Saturday in Melbourne no less, and I spent the day with a can of bug spray, a dozen maxi-sized garbage bags, and a roll of electric tape, trying to suffocate the little shiteaters (or bloodsuckers, technically) in the thrity-degree heat.

In the meantime, Hamish has got an ear infection from one of the scummy hotel pools along the way, and asked for directions for a doctor from last night’s infested hotel (THE FLAGSTAFF MOTOR INN, from memory), only to arrive at an accupuncture clinic. Thanks guys. You’ve been great.

It’s just about time to head to the Public Bar in North Melbourne to play our very last show of tour. Still pissed I couldn’t go and see Ryan Adams last night or tonight. Naw well. Laters.

Did I tell you someone got shot outside our hotel? Surfers Paradise – what a place. Road rage, they say. Unleashed a hail of gunfire, they say too. What a place.

Thanks a billion to Jordan Millar and the Question for playing with us at the Hopetoun in Sydney on Wednesday night. What a great bunch of guys. Top work from Mikey from the Question especially, having played three shows straight, and then had to get on a plane at eight the next morning to go to LA to play some more.

In a rare rock and roll moment, there was even an after party for the show, thanks to a gracious host. However, by the time we drove the van back to the hotel and walked back to the party, it essentially involved two guys sitting in their loungeroom pulling cones and the rest of us sitting out in the backyard talking about how the other two were just pulling cones. Good times.

There are currently five of us sitting in a hotel room in Sale, too hot to wear shirts, trying to get drunk on whatever we’ve got left, after having spent eleven hours in the tour bus to get here from Sydney only to find that the gig here had been cancelled. Still, in this heatwave, we’re quite happy to have a night off.

Brunswick hotel tomorrow, in the forty degree heat. Watch me melt.

Now don’t get me wrong, and don’t get all RSL on me, but there’s just something that makes me connect any overt display of the Australian flag with a vaguely racist sense of nationalism. First thing I notice about Surfers Paradise, is that every second car has one or two Australian flags flying from the car roof, and an equivalent number of a variety of sizes of flags gracing most houses up and down the Pacific Highway.

We played a show in a suburb called Miami, and played essentially to the other bands, and a few people we knew from Hobart. The rest of the people milling about the place seemed to be some kind of blond, tattooed, tanned bogan. Dumb and territorial. Still, our hotel had a pool and we kicked it around there for a few hours. Suffice to say the rest of the band have had to endure the smell of my post-swim dreadlocks, which, especially in this humidity, something akin to a dirty bath towel that’s been on the bathroom floor for a few days.

We’ve just got home from a show in Brisbane, which happened to be right next door to the Here and Now Festival (which we can only guess has popped up in response to the Future Festival), at which Regurgitator played a no doubt amazing show to a home crowd. Hamish wandered off at one stage during the night to run into what at first appeared to be a really drunk guy who had stumbled out of the festival all covered in mud, but it turned out had actually had the shit beaten out of him and was pretty concussed, so Hamish had to find his friends to come help him. Hamish wins at samaratan.

Hamish also wins at getting massages from weird name dropping chicks. You know the type, that after having ‘worked in the industry’ for seventeen years is perfectly poised to offer all the respected words of wisdom they think they can muster. What’s that? You gave Chris Cornell the same massage? Who gives a fuck? Why don’t you tell us some more about all the famous people you know in a pathetic attempt to get some respect from some young impressionable musos because NOBODY ELSE LIKES YOU. Fuck.

Okay, I’m out. Next gig: The Hopetoun with Jordan Millar on the 28th of Jan. Should be a kicker.

From now on, whenever someone says “have we got everything” and I say “yeah, I did the double check,” don’t for the love of god believe a word I say. Some guy from one of the other bands comes running out to the van just as I was driving off and asks if anyone has left a a Maton acoustic behind. Clearly it’s not mine, since I don’t own a Maton. I do, however, own a different guitar in a Maton case.

Shit. I was just that close to leaving my guitar at a pub. What a dickhead.

Good news is that Joe is feeling a little better after the whole dirty taco fiasco, and we’re all set for a couple days in a row of shows, continuing with tomorrow night’s show in Newcastle.

Tonight’s gig at The Lansdowne in Sydney was as hot as the devil’s underpants, but we played a couple of good shows, and thanks to all those who made it along. The Lazy Flies are a great bunch of guys, and they played a great set of sitting-back rock and roll. Great tunes.

Later mofos.

As it is, I’m sitting in the tour van, we’re driving away from Canberra and we’re listening to Love of Diagrams on the stereo. Behind me lies Joe, in an awful state, having last night taken my advice and eaten at a dirty Mexican takeaway (not in any way saying that Mexicans are dirty, but the burritos sure were). Having spent the night working on some wicked spew noises, he’s a bit worse for wear.

Joe and the offending article, pre-regurgitation, obviously.

Stan, it must be pointed out, suffered from no side effects from a similar degestation.

Stan and the taco

We had a couple days off to hang around Melbourne, and Elliot and I took the chance to go and see our friends The Great Apes play at the Summer Noise Festival. In doing so, we managed to chance upon a secret gig by our friends The Vasco Era (Elliot got asked up on stage to play drums with them), and ran into the lovely Charlie from Dash & Will, and generally got drunk and ran around. I just can’t stress enough how great Ted, Michael and Sid are; out of all the bands I’ve worked with over the past ten years, these are just the best guys to have met. Apparently a couple of them are starting their teaching degrees this year, too. Awesome, right there.

So after a fucking long drive, we get to Canberra and check into our hotel. I’m not entirely sure why we had booked a Formule One hotel, but these things are fucking hilarious. The rooms aren’t quite as small as boat cabins, and almost as bare, and I can only imagine that the room cleaning process is something futuristic involving motors that turn the beds over and a computerised sprinkler that hoses the room clean. Still, a clean bed is a clean bed, and there was enough room to get some very rock and roll games of Euchre going.

The Canberra gig, at The Phoenix Bar, was the best show of the tour so far. There were plenty of people packed into a small venue for a Monday night, and they were a great crowd. After the small crowds of Northcote and Geelong we needed a gig like that to get our spirits back up, and it worked a treat. We sold a few records and made some cash, and Joe’s guts had the decency to hold out til after the gig had finished before they began to expel themselves of the Taco disaster that had been brewing inside.

Sydney lies ahead. Next show is Thursday night at the Lansdowne Hotel near the city centre. Tell your friends.

I was pretty bummed that the one thing i left in Hobart was my pair of cheap sunglasses. Since I’ve been doing most of the driving so far, I’ve had to borrow everyone elses sunnies so as to avoid being blinded and driving up the arse end of some Eurotrash sportscar, of which there seem to be plenty.

So my mission for the day was to buy a new pair of aviators. Ray Bans for $240? Nieehew I don’t think that will be neccesary sirs, given the five dollar peices of crap I found at some shitty souvenir shop in the city. MIssion accomplished, leaving me to spend the rest of the morning drinking coffee on Brunswick Street, before meeting the rest of the band and driving to Geelong.

Now, I thought there was some kind of law about having to be a certain age in order to work at a bar. Maybe things are different in Geelong, but we ate dinner at some pub in the city, and I was greeted at the bar by a kid, who was no word of a lie about thirteen years old. This little squeaky-voiced blond kid with a buzzcut and a purple t-shirt someone had given him for christmas asked me if i preferred my bourbon in a short glass or tall. The little fucker couldn’t even reach across the bar to hand it to me.

There’s this bar called The National (or The Nash) as the locals cleverly refer to it. Cool enough place, which reminded me a bit of The Tote in Melbourne, but the clientele had just finished high school, and were very concerned about looking different to the slappers at the cover band pub down the road. It was essentially as you would expect if you were drinking at a bar somewhere in MySpace.

Good things about Geelong: The Houses (a cool young band that we’re playing with again in a few weeks), Steve from Spinning Half studio, and a couple of cool venues.

Uncool things about Geelong: as far as I can tell, most other things.

Travel Hobart to Melbourne – Bar 303, Northcote.

The trip to Melbourne isn’t worth blogging about, save for the fact that it was only Hamish’s second ever plane trip. Also not worth telling is the story of picking up the tour van and collecting the gear from the freight company, although I did manage to stab myself in the finger with a pocket knife while unpeeling the seven layers of bubble wrap that sheathed every piece of fucking gear we had, which, as it turns out, is not quite enough bubble wrap to stop a keyboard in a case getting broken. We now have an electric piano which is missing a few black keys in the upper octaves, but who the shit plays that high anyway.

Setting up at Bar 303 in Northcote, and the bar manager didn’t seem to give a shit about much. Not necessarily in a bad way, but he certainly wasn’t the most helpful dude in the world. I pointed out that his gig chalkboard had Dom Cooley advertised as ‘Dom Dooley’ and he just kind of grunted at me.

It was about this time that Stan realised that he didn’t have a hi-hat clutch. A small but essential piece of kit that we’d left at the caravan park (that’s right, we’re staying at a fucking caravan park). Once we’d driven halfway back, realised that we’d forgotten the keys to the cabin, driven back to the venue, and hit the road again, I thought I’d try my luck.

The Great Apes (soon to change their names) live not too far from the venue, so I thought I’d have a crack at dropping in to see if Emily or Will were at home. The door opens, and flatmate Callan is standing there looking at me, thinking I know this guy. Who the fuck is this guy, and I just kind of blurt out ‘Don’t have a hi-hat clutch, do you?’ So he disappears into his room, and comes out holding a shiny silver clutch in his hands. We have some awkward conversation where I try to get out exactly how excellent this guy is, but I end up acting like an ungrateful dick, and get back in the van.

So we got our shit sorted, and played a show to around ten people. After selling some discs and taking the fuck all we made on the door, we paid our soundguy and came away with the less than impressive total of seven dollars.

We ate dirty, dirty kebabs from some shifty guy who kept looking at me like he had just wiped the lamb under his stinking armpits, and who insisted on playing some shithouse Euro-doof at a hundred ducking decibels in the shop, and went home. To the caravan.

And what a dirty kebab it was too. Fucker.