StopPress 175

S P E C
T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M

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1) The Madders
set-up at their alleged sound check at the Sooki Lounge in Belgrave.
I always liked the room when it was called Ruby’s and nothing’s changed
so I still do

2) Glyn Mason joins Spectrum plus bro’ Brenden Mason for a rousing
chorus of Rock Critic 3) Maria recorded Spectrum playing Red Hot Momma.
Click on pic to watch..
The first
in a series of gigs with Madder Lake goes pretty well..
22.7.18 – Logistically speaking a good start
to Spectrum’s series of double bill gigs with Madder Lake as the Sooki
Lounge is about as close as it could be to my home in Mt Evelyn. I
like the Sooki (formerly Ruby’s) ambience too so I was looking forward
to it, although the stage is only just adequate for one band, let
alone two dinosaur ’70s’ bands.
I arrived at the Sooki Lounge on a crisp hills’ Sunday evening to
find the scene pretty much as you see it in the pic 1, with
the Madders doing a lazy piece-by-piece sound check. Bren reminded
me of the secret entrance to the ‘green’ room down the steeply-raked
stairs near the men’s toilets – possibly a relic of the prohibition
era, except Australia didn’t have one. I took a couple of my stage
bags down there, which I was to regret doing later on.
After the Madders had finished tootling around it was Spectrum’s turn
to set up. In fact, it was just me and Daz adding our gear to the
stage – Spectrum’s sharing the Madder’s guitarist Brenden Mason, Broc
was sharing his bass amp with Kerry and Robbo was sharing Luke’s kit.
Still, despite all the sharing it was mighty crowded up there, as
you can see from pic 2 when the other Mason, Ariel’s
Glyn Mason, added his mighty tonsils to Rock Critic, a song
he performed with us last year in a cluster of Spectrum to Ariel gigs.
It all sounds slightly incestuous, but I think the concept of having
the two bands on the same bill not only sounds good but actually works
in practice. Spectrum never played on the same bill with Madder Lake
in the good ol’ days of course, but we were both playing in the same
era and we were both trying something a little different, something
you could objectively identify as part of an Australian ouevre.