We arrived in Sydney and I went for a run around the opera house and the Domain, the adjoining park. It's hot out, and I paused on my run to have a drink and some oysters with Leigh, Tracy, Paul and George at the opera house café, so it was more of an effort than usual.
In the evening we went to see Rufus' club show at a place called The Basement. He was here in Australia to do a Leonard Cohen tribute and also some dates with his "family", but this was his own show. It was packed. The audience was pretty much 50/50 straight and gay, which sort of surprised me, as Sydney's a pretty gay town and I expected the locals to represent for Rufus. The gay/straight mixture was refreshing — proof that his songs are personal, yet also universal.
Afterwards, Kristin introduced me to the singer (Pelle) from the Hives who was hanging at the bar. They'd played the Big Day Out festival here and he and his girlfriend went on a wine tasting tour along the Margaret River in Western Australia. He was dressed in what looked like a sort of sailor's outfit. I mentioned we'd gone on a hike in New Zealand. I was mildly surprised that someone who appears as a wild young rocker in their videos would choose a wine tasting holiday, but maybe Scandanavians develop sophisticated tastes early. And the wines here are awfully good.
Our shows were at the Enmore, a traditional theater just outside the center of town. The shows went well. A Melbourne band, Architecture In Helsinki, opened. I'd heard their EPs in NY and liked them — so I requested they open the Australian dates. They seemed an eccentric collective, and they were. Clarinet, xylophone, drums, bass, keyboards, sax and trombone, a young woman on tuba... maybe more... I think there were 11 of them. At times they seemed like a school project, often switching instruments and moving from place to place on stage. That might seem a criticism but they had pretty catchy tunes imbedded in all that business.
