Rookie: James Kemp.

James Kemp was born in 1973 in Perth. He’s lived in Germany and England, and his accent betrays the English heritage of his family. ‘I grew up in Norwich, about 200 miles from London,’ he says. From beginnings as a troubled youngster and a self-confessed nerd, James ended up as a writer: he's delivered a self-published novel entitled Naked With Joy.

The novel is set during the Sydney Olympics, providing a cultural context in which the protagonist, Jake, explores his relationship to himself, to others, and to the world around him. The events of the games act as a poignant allegory for the life Jake leads and the changes he makes. As Thorpie powers through the pool, Jake roots a girl with similar gusto, seemingly inspired by the mass sportive epiphany that is the Olympic games. The book is a passionate foray in to the mind of the young male. ‘When I first started writing [this book], I was a seriously angry young man,’ says James, smiling. Any traces of the angry young man he apparently used to be have been erased from James, and the book no doubt acted as an effective catharsis.

James is most impressive in his sharp, focused sketches of Sydney. He chooses his words economically, obviously unafraid to edit down significantly. Early in the book, he offers an evocative view of Sydney in the early morning:

‘There’s something something weird about daybreak in the city. I mean, when you’re really in the city. Stranded in the thick of it, surrounded by those unholy structures of glass, concrete and steel. Harsh, angular shapes at every turn, and immense surfaces of cold, inflexible matter that soar skyward till they disappear. By day these urban spaces are defined by the flows of people, and there’s a reassuring familiarity about them. But pre-dawn, while it’s still dark, everything is other. It is at this time that the corporate lair reveals its true nature.’

Naked With Joy explores sex, clubbing and life as a sometimes-confused twentysomething. Impressively however, James has managed to avoid the pitfalls of inner-city life clichés and the predictable clubbing signifiers. This is a book that DJ Kid Kenobi says is brilliant. Gaining the props of the clubbing community is easier said than done, so Kemp must be doing something right. Kenobi says it all: ‘this is a novel of strong ideas. Never before have I read the music, the issues, the experiences and the general idiosyncrasies of our generation represented with so much clarity and insight.’

(Originally published in The Brag as part of the Rookie column).

Music Interview: This Is Serious Mum (TISM).

Anton S. Trees: How was last night? You have a good night?

Humphrey B. Flaubert: Well I think last night was a night of magic and celebration. I think the audience was perplexed last night. But I think it was a very warm and celebratory evening.

Ron Hitler-Barrassi: It’s always good when there are girls up the front.

AST: Or one girl.

RHB: Well, yes, girl. Using poetic license. It was a good gig because we all got headjobs actually during the gig from each other, on stage. Live: The Canterbury Bulldogs, Germaine Greer, ah every TISM website thing…this is a website thing isn’t it Anton?

AST: Yep.

RHB: Are all the apostrophes going to be in the right place or what?

AST: Nah, I’ll just be writing ‘LOL’ everywhere.

HBF: If you were referring to our body of work and you were saying TISM’s single recurring theme, well that’d be S apostrophe, wouldn’t it?

RHB: Yes, yes.

AST: Did I misplace an apostrophe in my review?

HBF: No idea.

AST: Is that where you’re going?

HBF: No, no.

RHB: We’re saying we know that the web is horrid. Like, there’s the animal sex, and the crap sex. I can put up with that. I just can’t put up with the shoddy apostrophe placement. I think Merlin from Big Brother’s brave protest against the spelling of the definitive article is uh, something we should all hold to the fore very much… What the fuck are we talking about again?

AST: I dunno’, I’m lost.

(Laughter)

RHB: Great article though Anton [the review of the White Albun on FasterLouder.com.au], marvellous. We read it on the plane and it warmed the cockles.

AST: I apologise for being so uh…for lauding you so strongly.

HBF: Yeah, it’s a bit of an unusual phase we’re going through Anton.

AST: Well it seems a lot of critics seem to actually be doing a bit of a reversal and going for the clever ‘I no longer think TISM are shit,’ and going for the ‘I think TISM are good’ thing.

RHB: Well that’s kind of disturbing because what the fuck are we going to whinge about in interviews now? Our whole schtick has been ‘well, we’re shit, and everyone else is shit so why doesn’t anyone say everyone is else is shit?’ …They’ve trumped us…

HBF: I s'pose they’re still not saying everyone else is shit.

RHB: They’ve trumped us Humphrey… ‘cuz they’re saying everyone else is good, but we’re good as well. It’s something that, as artists, we have to deal with. You know success is like a new team – with new players and everything – and I think you need to be able to play in the finals for a couple of years before you’ve got a shot at the grand final.

HBF: Do you think that maybe that means that people are going to be at a TISM gig in the future sort of after a is song performed as if it was like Ben Harper or the Art Of Fighting or something…they’d all be there going ‘oh!’ They’d all be shaking their heads…

AST: A religious experience?

HBF: Yeah, yeah. Maybe that’s the next sort of rung down that we have to step to.

AST: I think you’d be surprised how many people had an epiphany last night… um…particularly a bunch of bogans behind me who were having a great time humping pretty much anyone…they really enjoyed that. And it’s great that TISM can provide a medium in which bogans can hump other people.

HBF: Low-level sexual harassment has always been high on TISM’s list of ambition, in a live performance context.

RHB: It’s a little bit like a JBT gig, where’s he’s been on for two and a half hours. It must be great if you’re there watching JB and you’re two and a half hours in and then he pulls out some Indian string instrument that was used in Bengal in the 13th Century and he says ‘I’ve just about learned how to D-tune a bouzouki’ and off he goes on a 20-minute bouzouki solo. That must be quite depressing because you’ve still gotta’ go ‘marvellous! Marvellous! What a marvellous multi-instrumentalist drawing on the kaleidoscopic cultures of world music!’

AST: But you guys are sort of shooting yourself in the foot there surely? You’re insulting your man Tokin…I mean he did open up the ’97 tour with Yob played on a sitar… wasn’t it?

RHB: Was it a slide guitar?

AST: Oh, it was a Hawaiian guitar.

HBF: Yes, Hawaiian guitar, yes.

RHB: We plead guilty, Anton.

HBF: Ah yes. We’re certainly dilettantes of the worst kind. We kind of uh, it’s a bit like how Daktari – a television program – tried to approximate the Aboriginal population in a very racist, hegemonic style. That’s our pilfering of world music. We’re not anywhere near as sincere about it as the John Butler Trio. I reckon the guys in the John Butler Trio are really just there to pick up an SBS root. By that I mean…

AST: Indira Naidoo?

HBF: Yes, like an SBS hard-on. So you go along to John Butler and the girls are looking at you there thinking ‘he must be a fairly sensitive kind of guy’ and really all you wanna’ do is jerk off on to their backs.

RHB: Or if you can’t come you just spit on their backs and say ‘that was great.’

AST: I agree absolutely. I’ve seen John Butler and the urge to ejaculate on anyone really, was something that was very difficult to fight back.

I was just reading yesterday Michael Dwyer’s take on you guys, and he said that you had become – or always were – crassly commercial. Do you feel like you’re reaping the rewards of your apparent commercialism?

HBF: (Laughs). Ah, no.

RHB: We have no words to say against Michael, he’s a marvellous journalist. After you Anton, he’s the second most intelligent person to ever interview us. That article was a watershed for us because it was a double page spread in the Age full of fair, laudatory, important [writing]…it had a sense of importance which was completely unusual. We’re used to Pat Donovan’s tossed-off one-liners. Hasn’t Pat had his pants pulled down?! The first thing that happened in this whole process was Pat saying that on first listen our music is just the same-old, stuck-in-a-rut…ooh he’s had his pants pulled down by Michael Dwyer and the rest of them. Because everyone is giving us four and a half stars and we’re now national treasures, Australia’s most interesting artists for the last 20 years and all that palaver. I think Pat should be having a good, hard look.

AST: At least there are journos out there writing the predictable ‘I’ve got TISM worked out’ articles.

HBF: There’s always, of course, Rolling Stone magazine, Anton. And Rolling Stone have the opportunity to have a quick look at the song titles and work us out from that. The grand tradition there.

AST: Yep, yep.

I’ve heard reports that you’re genuinely proud of the latest album Humphrey.

HBF: Genuinely proud…yes, I don’t know about that. I mean I’m certainly always proud of everything we do. It’s sort of like when I’m proud of my poo. I look down on it and think ‘that’s well-formed, that means I’m healthy.’ I’m a bit ashamed of being proud of it.

AST: What poos do you not think have been up to scratch? What poos haven’t been well-formed? I hear you didn’t like Hot Dogma much.

HBF: No, no, I didn’t like Hot Dogma. I wince when I hear it.

AST: I think it’s probably the second best album of all time. But that probably says more about me than it does about the album…

RHB: Well, what do you think is the best album of all time.

AST: (silence)…I think Karma County’s Last Stop Heavenly Heights is the best album of all time.

HBF: Oh well, ok.

AST: Sorry about that guys.

RHB: I might’ve guessed that.

AST: That’s because I’m a sensitive person.

HBF: No, no, that’s fine. Um…yeah…I find lists are always very difficult. I mean, I reckon Barry Crocker’s probably released one of the best albums of all time.

AST: I’ve never listened to Barry Crocker.

HBF: Well, I just sort of picked him out at random really. But I think Hot Dogma, I suppose had a lot of good things going for it. It had a lot of songs on it.

AST: It did have Life Kills at the end.

HBF: Yes, it did have some good lyrics on it. I just hated the quintessentially 80s music on it. I’ve always thought that TISM has always been unfashionably – to our own detriment at times – sort of not sounding like anyone else. And sometimes that sort of sheer dagginess…that album because…

AST: Well it had Leak all over didn’t it?

HBF: Hot Dogma?

AST: Yeah it had a lot of lot of 80s guitar rock. Incredible riffing.

HBF: Well he was a very talented person of course…

AST: And what happened to him?

HBF: Well, he had to go.

RHB: He was making us look bad.

HBF: Yes.

RHB: It’s hard when you talk about albums because it’s something that controls you more than you control it. It’s hard when you’re writing…From the act of writing – and we write a lot – like, we write a lot of songs and then we edit down – I guess in that act of selection, of editing, we have some control. But it does seem that other bands are worried about every knob, and every turn of the knob and every dB and mastering. We don’t sweat on it as much.

AST: So you’re not Craig Nicholls-esque, thinking ‘we have to have 8 more harmonies?’

RHB: No, no, no. We tend to be, for one reason or another – part of it is that we haven’t got time, and part of it is we haven’t got the inclination – we’ve never really mastered – except for possibly Humphrey – we’ve never mastered the whole idea of the studio, and I think that’s a double-edged sword. Like, in some ways you can master the studio to your own detriment. Everything can seem more controlled and everything can seem more processed, which is bad. But there are some artists I think who use the studio as an instrument – Prince I guess. He sonically seems to think a lot. But then he’s gone right up his own arse. It’s a very fine line.

AST: Apparently he has just returned out of his arse with his latest album.

RHB: Yeah apparently.

AST: Of course no one’s actually heard it.

RHB: It’s hard to get that balance right. That’s why I reckon getting that balance right is more a matter of luck. You can over-cement and wreck yourself, you can not care about it in the spirit of ‘who cares?’ I remember when the Clash recorded the double London Calling and they were saying ‘we’re in a shitty studio, and there’s holes in the wall’ and everyone was slagging ‘em off for the album before that – I think it was Give ‘Em Enough Rope – and they couldn’t give a toss if it worked for ‘em. It’s a very hard balance and I think we’ve always fallen on the lack of finesse.

AST: You guys have edited out some songs which I think are some of your best work. Like, perhaps not Eckermann Is Very Silly…

RHB: Not a bad song.

AST: State Schools Are Great Schools…is very good. In Defence Of Poetry is another one I quite like. But maybe these are just me. You guys seem to have a very different opinion of your work than do a lot of your more fanatical fans that you see up the front of every single show that you’ve done for the past five years.

HBF: Anton, I think you’ve certainly hit on a theme there. The guys in TISM – a lot of the guys in TISM – have completely different ideas. And it’s probably a good thing. If you were at a TISM song-writing session, you’d be amazed at how un-smiling and laughing we all are. It’s all like we’re writing some new fucking Dirty Three song.

RHB: I think, Humphrey, we made the mistake, when we first…what was that album before DeRigeur Mortis? Wanker.com – before Machiavelli. I reckon we chickened out. We wrote quite a lot of songs that we liked. The reactions we got was that they were good songs but they weren’t TISM songs. I reckon we went a bit low-brow with the couple of albums made before [The White Albun]. We went against our instincts and went ‘alright then, we need to slag off Fred Durst.’ You could tell that it sounded like TISM were trying too hard to sound like TISM. It was like we were a TISM covers band.

AST: It’s a very different album.

RHB: Yeah. This one’s there’s been a bit more of a let-up on that. We’ve let through to the public this stuff that we’ve always been writing, but out of the spirit of ‘we couldn’t give a toss.’ And I think that has worked for us. And I think there was a lack of backbone caused by success. I don’t think we’re on our Pat Malone here at all. But it seems that with us, success makes us too self-conscious of that…for all our anarchy and our rock ‘n’ roll / break the rules, I reckon we paid too much attention to the rules once those rules started working for us.

AST: That goes to show that even if you guys sometimes seem to exist in a critical vacuum, you are...

RHB: It wasn’t a reaction to critical success – we’ve never had that much and we don’t care about that too much. It was more success-success.

AST: Like people genuinely liking you?

RHB: Yeah! Two songs on the Triple J Hottest 100, the gold record, the ARIA and all that shit. For all our slagging that off – and intellectually we definitely slag that off, it’s all codswallop – on some basic gut level it took us two albums to get over it. By trying to put it in the background, that’s still a reaction to it. And I think that hampered the work on those two albums. And I think with this album we’re out of the shadow of that, and we’re back to genuinely not giving a toss. And I think we’ve learned something from that process of…look, we’ve come to the realisation that nothing’s gonna’ get much better or worse from where we’re at. That second-guessing the audience is gone.

HBF: Somebody said to me that this album reminds them off the second disc on wanker.com. And it is in a way. That’s the sort of song [on Att: Shock] that we like to write. Not in isolation. We write the other ones as well. But we write the whole lot, and this time I suppose we… a song like Car Battery is a bit like You Gotta’ Love That in that it doesn’t quite fit the normal persona of a TISM song. And this time we put it out.

AST: I think that’s when you guys are at your best. When you get in there and regardless of what the critics want to believe, you are actually saying something. You actually are reflecting on society and all that kind of…

RHB: It also shows, I think, that kind of process of how - as artists in TISM - the critical approach to us seems like they’re completely talking about another band. I think there’s been a legitimate criticism of TISM’s last two albums in the reasons I just elucidated; it’s too self-conscious, it’s a little bit safe. It’s not quite…

Instead there’s just been the normal effort of ‘they’re jokey, they’re whacky, whacko, one-dimensional whackos from TISM.’ And you think…that’s never convinced me. If that convinced me, I wouldn’t be in the band. If I thought it was a jokey, whacko band I’d get the fuck out of it.

So you have what’s really going on and the things you’re exploring and learning and meeting people over 20 years and then you have… it’s like this child idiot’s version of an adult’s growth. The voice of the media is hugely loud and idiot savant. It’s like someone from Rain Man shouting in your ear. They might get a little bit right, but the overall impact of what they say is so foreign to what it’s really like [to be in TISM]: turning up, masks off, calling each other by our real names, after our real jobs, at eight o’clock in a stinking, freezing room and asking ‘who’s got an idea?’ That’s when you think ‘I wish the fucking critics were here then.’ They’re talking about the witty, cynical TISM and the marketing ploys TISM and the TISM that’s all self-conscious about the industry and the whacko TISM. You see what we’re really like! It’s seven blokes in a room who are tired, have real lives, and real jobs and no ideas, ‘so let’s get a beer, boys.’

HBF: I think also, we are actually…we’ve always had a very high self-criticism bar. And it’s only recently we’ve actually realised we can lower the bar and allow more things to be released to the public without feeling afraid that we were going up our own arses. When we started, we were intensely afraid of going up our own arses. I think probably we rejected things on that basis. We’re actually able now to actually relax and go ‘Car Battery may be a little bit romantic and esoteric but it’s still not the utter wank that we are opposed to.’ It’s actually okay…some people might not like that song, but I reckon there’s something…

RHB: There is something about the way we write and what we put out, Humphrey, that it still is a TISM song. A TISM song’s a TISM song and there’s not many songs like it. There’s just something built in to the seven guys we are…I think part of it is because there’s a lot of talking put in the middle of it, that really makes it TISM. And of course the lyrics are like nothing else. We’ve never tried to copy anyone. But if you want a normal band with normal inspiration and normal rock ‘n’ roll, there’s always going to be a better band than us. The only thing you get from us that you don’t get from anyone else is TISM. And TISM’s always been at our best a mixture – it could be that one song is a hard rock song and the next song’s this weird thing and the next things this sort of fey – like 40 Years – this weirdly poetic sort of thing. And we’ve allowed ourselves on this album to do more of that. And we didn’t allow ourselves enough of that on the last two albums.

HBF: I also think in a musical sense, there is a TISM identity and I reckon it’s certainly worked against us with some of your more glossy mag critics. We always insist on our songs being immediately simple and accessible. Even if it’s a slow song or whatever, [even] if it’s a little bit sort of –

RHB: educated –

HBF: Yeah, or confronting and murky or whatever, there’s an internal police force in TISM which knocks it on the head. And I reckon that some people think that it equates somehow with a lack of song-writing craft or a lack of musical prowess. That’s actually not because we can’t play Kid A, it’s because we choose to play music like that. We would’ve lasted a year and a half if our music sounded like…

AST: ‘Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon?’

HBF: Yeah, or if it was Slipknot. If it was as confronting musically as the lyrics and the images are confronting, you know, it wouldn’t have lasted six…there’s that whole other element where you look up at the crowd, past the people who, okay, we connect with those people at the front there –

AST: - On a very visceral level.

HBF: Yes, but you look up at the back as well and there are the bank teller types and their girlfriends who are singing ‘I’m fucked in the head’ but in a way that’s not how Fred Durst might sing ‘I’m fucked in the head.’ The way that Barry Crocker might sing ‘I’m fucked in the head.’

RHB: Exactly.

AST: I think that that’s one of the things that’s awesome …I was yelling out ‘I’m fucked in the head’ last night up the front. And you can take it on a completely simplistic level of, yes, I am genuinely fucked in the head. And you can enjoy saying the word fuck. Everyone around me obviously enjoyed swearing. But a lot of people do take something away from that that’s a little bit deeper.

HBF: Oh, yeah.

RHB: You’re right Humphrey…it’s a legitimate – no critic has ever said it because it’d be too thoughtful – but there’s a legitimate argument against TISM’s music in that it’s not crafted. There is a sense of rough hued-ness about it. And yet, that’s not just because we just let it happen. There is also a self-conscious lack of finesse. Like, we like a lack of finesse. Especially on this album, there was a lovely spirit of ‘who gives a fuck?’ That microphone’s popping! Who gives a fuck? That organ isn’t recording properly! Who gives a fuck?

AST: It’s got a very bedroom tapes feel.

RHB: Yeah, and that’s exactly where TISM started. So for good or for ill, it started in the bedroom and probably the best things are still done in the bedroom. And other artists don’t want to work like that and they’re fantastic, of course they don’t. But there’s a lack of finesse and an immediacy and a simplicity about not just the meaning of it but the form of it. We don’t resolve from that. We think that’s good. Jesus, once you get over three minutes thirty I reckon you’re very much in danger of going straight up the shit chute. There’s not too many artists that go over three minutes thirty and you don’t think ‘well if you cut that back to three minutes thirty it’d probably be better.’

(Originally published at FasterLouder.com.au).

Pubs & Bars: Marlborough Hotel (145 King St. Newtown)

The Marlborough Hotel is like capsicum. By itself, capsicum is sort of icky and gross and far too capsicum-y. But if you put it on a pizza or in an omelette or something, it suddenly becomes awesome. Similarly, spending an entire night at the Marlborough is uninspiring and sort of boring, but as a stop-off point, it’s great.

The ‘back bit’ of the Marly is awesome. (Technically the ‘back bit’ is called Bar Prego, but my Italian accent is predictably terrible so I refuse to call it that). It’s filled with very comfy grey couches and some conventional seating for those who enjoy eating instead of drinking. There’s pool tables and nice sombre lighting. But best of all, the outside courtyard is totally nice and relaxing.

With an amusingly small water feature and metal seats, the courtyard in ‘the back bit’ should really be an abhorrent testimonial to the great outdoors gone bad. And yet, when I’m sporting a jacket, there’s nothing better than downing schooies in the cool Winter air of Newtown. The water feature is cute in its retardedness, and the metal seats can easily be bypassed for wooden bench seating.

The Marly is at the top of its game as a kick-off point. Newtown, for all its scungy bogans and spastic hipsters, is totally full of quite fun bars, and the Marly works brilliantly as a way to ease yourself in to the divine sweetness of a big night out. Here’s a night I planned earlier: relax in the Marly courtyard for a few hours (drink a lot), move on to the dubious pseudo-Irishness of Kelly’s (drink a lot), bat on to the Townie so some insane fucker can tell you about his bizarre theories (drink a lot) and finally end up at Zanzibar and throw up all over it if you possibly can. Enjoy my metaphorical drinking pizza!

(Originally not published in The Brag because the Under The Bar column ceased existing).

Pubs & Bars: Middle Bar (383 Bourke St. Darlinghurst).

You know those 'whacky' guys who have gross tans and expensive haircuts and white teeth and won't wear anything unless it's bought at General Pants Co.? You know how pretty much everything they say seems to be an unecessary reaffirmation of their own supposed aesthetic or monetary brilliance? They know they're reasonably attractive in a generic way, and they want everyone else to know about it. Middle Bar is the bar version of one of those guys.

Middle Bar is the guy who walks into the party decked the fuck out in everything totally du jour, loudly declaring himself the coolest fucker in the place. And while it's hard to argue with the fact that his threads are pretty sweet, it shits you that he's trying so hard. Yep, Middle Bar is that guy. Sure, it's got the admittedly very cool balcony overlooking Taylor Square, and the aesthetic of the place isn't bad. But it also sports one of the worst door policies in the history of the universe - a door policy based on ludicrously abitrary decisions made by doormen who obviously think their role in society is intensely important.

Like the aforementioned fuckhead wearing an Industrie catalogue, Middle Bar's door policy continually tries to reaffirm a feeling of coolness/exclusivity in a place that would be so much better if everyone would just sit back and chill the fuck out.

Middle Bar openly denies its members entry, and yet they let in crazy women who rim random people's ears while purporting to be Chopper Reed and claiming to live 'over the moon.' Middle Bar is a mad house: shot glasses thrown around, patterns mismatched, people vying desperately for seats on the balcony. The sort-of-occasionally-cool clientele varies, from gay cabaret dancers to recently divorced mums to horny hipsters. Like, the place isn't bad - even if it is a little schizophrenic - the real issue lies with the terrible doormen. Once they lose the ‘tude, this place could be the Hot Joint it obviously thinks it is. As it is now? Fuck off.

(Written with Alex Vitlin & James McKenzie. Originally published in The Brag as part of the Hot Joints column).

Pubs & Bars: The Paddington Inn (338 Oxford St. Paddington).

I love private rooms. I absolutely adore being even slightly secluded. If my lack of melanin or indeed talent didn’t preclude me from being a Diddy-esque rap mogul, I’d say chillin’ in private rooms would be the aspect of my hip-hop superstardom I'd enjoy the most. Yes, even more than snorting blow off the arses of strippers in high-budget clips. Even more than that.

When that retarded but well-muscled 50 Cent guy says you can find him in the club with a bottle full of bub, you can be sure that he’ll be knocking back that champers in some sort of awesome secret VIP area. Then he’ll probably get shot or some shit, because I hear he loves bullets entering his face like most people love candy (which is quite a bit). Yes, private rooms are so hot right now.

This love of private rooms is the predominant reason I love the Paddo Inn. It’s a lovely pub with awesome lighting and retardedly comfortable seating, but it’s the two little rooms that are found in the back of the bar that really do it for me. Each room has sweetarse tables and couches. Both have a theme too apparently – one is a ‘gentlemen’s den’ and the other is a ‘bordello red cushion room.’ If the website hadn’t told me of these themes I never would have noticed them, but that’s because I’m usually having too good a time in them to pay attention to anything. When I’m in one, lounging with mates, I get the feeling that our conversation is somehow better because we’re in a private room – like we’re somehow having a better time than the hoi polloi. Of course, this is all bullshit because usually we’re talking about ponies or modern art or Peter fucking Garrett, but at least the feeling is there, right?

My advice? Come down to the quite awesome Paddo Inn this weekend. Sojourn to a mini room and go nuts relaxation-style. Even if the rooms are taken, the Paddo will still serve you very well. Guaranteed.

(Originally published in The Brag as part of the Under The Bar column).

Pubs & Bars: Flinders Bar (62 Flinders St. Darlinghurst).

I love it when things are restored. Like, how cool is it when someone fixes up a sweetarse car from the 50s and it becomes totally sweetarse once again? Or someone repairs a watch from the early 1900s? Or the dead are brought back in the form of killer but totally awesome zombies? I love that shit.

In keeping with my love of restoration, I love Flinders Bar. It used to be old and retarded, and now it’s new and awesome. Such a change is the result of a good few months of solid renovation, and it really has worked wonders. The Flinders of now is full of deep purples and awesome wallpaper and comfy lounges. There’s even a nice restaurant upstairs.

Where once it was - apparently - a haven for sleaze, Flinders is now a much-needed haven from the hustle and bustle of Oxford St. It’s a two-minute walk from the oft-debauched strip, and yet it seems like a world away. It’s totally devoid of the drunken fucktards that populate other Darlinghurst venues, and the bar staff are totally friendly, which is a nice change from the tip-hungry bastards behind the bars of other joints.

Basically, checkin’ out the Flinders is totally necessary – it’s new and pretty! Darlinghurst finally has an appropriate venue to chill back in. (Flinders isn’t all about the chilling though – there are DJs getting things a little rowdy on Friday and Saturday nights). I’d be surprised if I go a week without rocking this place. Of course, there are a few downsides to Flinders… actually fuck, no, there aren’t actually. The place is just deadset fuckin’ cool. This place is part of the new breed of bars – places that are into comfort and chillin’ and an awesome lack of pretentious dickheads. Gotta’ love that.

(Originally published in The Brag as part of the Under The Bar column).

Rookie: Paul Davies.

Paul Davies is a Sydney-based artist and COFA graduate working in a number of mediums: painting, photography and sculpture. His most recent work has been of the brush-and-paint variety, and he creates beautiful examples of form and meaning reaching communion.

His latest works explore, among other ideas, the relationship between the part and the whole; the television and the pixel; the painting and the paint; the image and the meaning. It’s a somewhat post-structuralist view, but Davies avoids the clichés of post-whatever art by deliberately avoiding being too obtuse or didactic. His work doesn’t get caught up in stupidly esoteric text or unnecessary enigma as a lot of artists do. You won’t see any words like ‘Pain!’ emblazoned across his pieces. Instead, his works present a number of messages and let you decide what they mean to you. He has a fantastic gift for walking the fine lines – his work doesn’t dictate, but it still has a lot to say.

The latest exhibition of his work at the Twostep Gallery in Newtown is an exploration of the living room (and how we interact with that space) and television (and how we interact with that medium). He has stencilled the walls of Twostep (an old terrace house with a fireplace) to create an exhibition space akin a lounge room. Davies sees a link between television and paintings. ‘TV is a transient thing,’ he says, ‘you pick and choose what you want to watch.’ In the same way, his art allows freedom for the viewer – it forces no ideology but provides the opportunity to explore many.

There is a sense of impermanence to Davies’ work – just as we see in television – which sees pieces with similar colours or images or textures working with each other to present a non-linear artistic narrative. His work uses iconographic images of the past with the aesthetic of the current artistic zeitgeist - bold colours and big contrasts. Expect to see Japanese women or a 50s housewife or a stencil from the early 1900s.

Most impressively, Davies’ work operates beautifully even if the viewer doesn’t want to explore the messages. That is, his pieces are incredible works on a purely aesthetic level. His grasp of painterly techniques is exceptional – his use of colour is especially impressive, with bold pinks and reds teamed with muted blues. He constructs paintings as if they are the part of a whole – this is where the impermanence of his work comes from. It seems as if his paintings could be 10 centimetres or 10 metres and they’d still work.

And, just quietly, he's one of my favourite artists.

(Originally published in The Brag as part of the Rookie column).

(Photo: A Davies piece, my lounge room, yesterday).