Left New York April 19th arrived Sydney April 21, 2011
I arrived Sydney after an 18 hour flight from New York City. I was nervous about going through customs but it was a breeze and I waltzed right through. As I left the customs area and walked into the arrivals section of the airport I started to look for Simon, the man who would be meeting me, the man who I barely knew what he looked like, in a moment I saw too cool rock n roil looking guys who were holding a large piece of paper, just like the limo drivers do, that said....I Don’t Fit In! Welcome to Australia! I knew this was going to be a great trip! Simon and Glenn, bassist and guitarist from the Australian band Zero’s, (I know and they know, we had a laugh about it) were as happy to see me as I was them. We piled into Simon’s SUV and headed to Dolans Bay, a suburb of Sydney where Simon lived and where I would be staying in his very stylish and beautifully appointed house. I felt fine as I had slept a lot on the plane, and as Simon and Glenn where discussing the planes of the day they said to me, “well we have a rehearsal booked at 11 do you think that would be ok?” I thought to myself, hell by 11 in the evening I should be fine, it was only a bit later on that I realized they had meant in a few short hours! It was pissing down rain as we say and it was grey and cloudy, not at all like what I had seen on the on line weather report in NY, which had said sunny and 70. Who cares I was in Australia that was the main thing and these guys were totally cool! We arrived at Simon’s house and I met his lovely family, his wife the very lovely Elanore and his three lovely kids, Ronan 2, Erin 5 and Callum 9, they apparently are all Beat fans and know most of the songs! They showed me to my room..wow it was like a 5 star hotel...big comfy bed , a walk in closet and my own bathroom! This was most definitely deluxe. I un packed put my clothes away and hopped into the shower. After some good strong coffee and a delicious bacon and egg on a bun we headed out to the rehearsal hall. Top End is a state of the art massive rehearsal complex that is as good as any I have seen, I half expected to run into ACDC as we loaded in to our very deluxe room equipped with A/C and nice size stage and a full on PA system as good or better then most of the clubs we play these days. Boff was there tweaking up his drums and they showed the very nice Fender Strat, creamy white with my gauge of strings already strung on. I had a choice of amps, either a Fender Deluxe or a Vox AC30, I opted for the Fender because that’s the amp I love.
We dove right into it with Don’t Wait Up and for the next 5 hours we tore it apart until we were really rocking! The guys are great, they had done their homework so it was just a matter of tweaking it a bit. I am so lucky, these days I have really been playing with some amazing musicians and this was no exception, they had learned some 30 songs for our upcoming 4 or 5 shows that we would be doing here in Australia. Exhausted but happy we wound up the day and Simon took me home for a nice steak dinner on the barbie and it was off to bed after watching a little rugby...Simon’s team won!
Day 2
Woke up at 2 am and when I looked at the clock I said to myself...damn....I was wide awake and no one would be up for hours! Luckily I have this computer in my room so I could work for an hour and then go back to bed. Got back up at 6:30 am and started checking my emails when Simon’s kids came in to play on my bed, I enjoy being in as family situation and the kids are great. Soon the rest of the family was up and the day started. Today would be the same drill, 5 hour rehearsal over at Top End but first we stopped off at the beach to have “Breaky” at Simon’s favorite breakfast joint on the beach at Cronulla Beach where we met up with Boof our drummer and had a great breaky. Simon’s buddy Chauky stopped by to take some photos while we were working, so we would have some nice photos for the press and future gigs as I would most definitely be coming back! The band is really coming together and I was most definitely putting them through their paces, but they are super guys and more then up to the challenge. It is so much fun playing with talented musicians and it was exciting as we were really getting our sound but at the same time preserving all the things that the songs needed. It was rocking!
Once again I was beat at the end of the day and we went home and I made us a nice big meatloaf which we all devoured and then I went to bed, tired but very happy!
Day 3
Up at 2 am again, I hope this is not my habit for the whole visit! Checked my emails and forced myself back to sleep. At 11 am we were back in the studio as usual. Today we just wailed through the set, no stopping, the boys had done a great job and we were ready! Chaulkie came by and we did another photo session, got some good pics I think. Later on Simon and I took a swim and then I went to Glenn’s house for a steak barbie...mmmm...delicious. Glenn’s 3 kids, Zac, XX & Kane treated us all to an accappella version of Working Too Hard which just blew me away, we videoed it so I will be posting it shortly! Glenn showed me a really cool song he had been working on and we finished it off. We are planning to record a single to commemorate my visit to Australia. After dinner I was knackered so Boof took me back to Simon’s and I was sound asleep in minutes.
Day 4
Slept right through the night...oh what a relief it is! Saw my first xxx a beautiful and colourful native parrot, flitting around the bushes in front of Simon’s house. Today we are just going to chill out and take it easy. The weather is perfect, not too hot with a cool breeze. Hung around the house all day, at about 3 the boys came over and we did a last minute tune up out on the patio with the practice amps, worked up a couple of new tunes as we are planning to cut a single next week. Later on we had a nice lamb dinner with Simon’s in laws and it was off to bed...
Day 5
Today is the big day! We will do our first show tonight in Sydney at The Sandringham Hotel. We had a good sound check, and then it was showtime! Carrie Phyllis and The Downtown 3 put on a good opening set, downstairs my good buddy Paul from Motto was playing, we had done some shows in Italy together, then The Zeros put on a ripping show. The joint was really filling up and I was out front selling merch like crazy! Our first set rocked, the band has taken shape in just 3 short rehearsals, really amazing! Richard Lane from The Stems joins us onstage to play harp on Do You Wanna Love Me? And he also sings with us on Walking Out On Love at the end of the set. It’s a full house and the fans are going nuts as they sing a long to their favorite songs both new and old. We invite girls to join us on stage for Look But Don’t Touch in what has now become tradition. The whole stage filled up with girls shaking their booty’s, we all enjoyed that tremendously! It was a great first show in Australia! After a few beers we headed back to The Shire and bed.
Day 6
Up the in the morning and off to school? No the airport and a flight to Melbourne for 2 shows, The Tote and an intimate show at Pure Pop Record store, 50 people for a semi acoustic set including a question and answer session. Once again Richard Lane joins us for more high jinx, the more I get to know this guy the more I like him, and he is a wonderful musician and an all around great guy! The Tote is a real rock n roll club and you know it form the minute you walk in the door, actually from outside where they have all the letters pasted up on the walls from when they tried to close the club down. Tonight we play with Little Murders, and established band from Melbourne with quite a good following and an up and coming band called The Barrows. Our hotel is in the Yarra district which is cool and trendy but the Hotel is a rambling old joint that a miner used to own, our room is straight out of Goldie Locks and the 3 bears! I take one of the top bunks and Brian takes the other, leaving Glenn and Simon on the bottom, Adam, Simon’s brother on the floor and Richard on the sofa in the hall! After a delicious Thai meal that took forever to get to the table we headed back to the club. The joint was packed and you could tell that Melbourne was much more of a real rock n roll town. We hit the stage and rocked the house down. The crowd was even more enthusiastic then it had been in Sydney, and we got to Look But Don’t Touch the stage exploded in chicks moving and a grooving…we were in hog heaven! Well we had one more and then we had one more and then it was time to stumble on home to our bunk beds! We made it alright but in the middle of the night our dear Glenn jumped out of bed screaming that he had been stabbed…we all woke up in start to hear say again as he stood in the doorway, “I have been stabbed but I am not bleeding!” Brother Brian quipped, “Ah you are alright then…back to bed with ya!” And so it was….
Day 7
Apparently there where a few complaints at the office in the morning but nothing was pinned on us. We had a nice coffee and cabbed it over to the PBS Radio station to tape a set for a live broadcast. The band was ripping as we slammed through about 6 songs. We opened with Ribbon of Gold, which we had never played before as a band and it was amazing! Glenn, Brian & Simon are fabulous musicians and I am having such a great time working with them…music really is such a great gift and lately it has been giving me such wonderful times I have to pinch myself to see if it is really true! If you go here you can listen to the broadcast http://www.pbsfm.org.au/node/6572 After that we had some breaky and headed over to Pure Pop Records for our show. Pure Pop is a very cool record store that apparently is the only record store in Australia that is licensed to sell beer! I had never done a show quite like this where the audience would be asking questions during the set so I was excited to do it…never too old to try something new. We got to Pure Pop and started to guzzle down some ice cold beer. The store is really cool with a covered garden in the back where we would be performing, today was all about being stripped down, Brian would be playing drums on a chair, something I am a big fan of, love the sound of sticks on leather. We had an MC for the Leaping Larry who was a local luminary and DJ on the Triple R Radio station. Are good buddies The Wellingtons had already done their set, which we unfortunately missed. The Wellingtons are a great band from Melbourne who I had played with at a small club in New York some time ago. http://www.myspace.com/thewellingtonsmusic
For a good look at what happened check out Carbie Warbie’s footage http://vimeo.com/channels/carbiepaulcollins
The show was fun and there were some good photographers there, after wards we hung out and drank beer and had some pizza….that pretty much wrapped up the day until we headed back to The Yarra and our cozy little room with 2 bunk beds and a couch in the hall.
Day 8
Free day in Melbourne, so we hung around downtown, took a ferry ride which turned into one of the most expensive naps we ever had, grabbed some pub food and went to the airport and headed back to Sydney.
Day 9
Another free day, hung out in downtown Sydney, took a ferry ride, this time I didn’t fall asleep. Took the monorail through town and then headed back to The Shire for a swim at Cronulla one of Australia’s famous surfing beaches which was just minutes from where I was staying in The Shire.
Day 10
Went to record a single, Paul Collins and The Zeros (AU) Don’t Know How to Treat A Lady b/w Half To Blame at Michael Carpenters studio in Sydney. We banged it out in 7 hours flat and had a ball doing it, Michael is a talented guy and he knows how to run his studio. Later that night Michael emailed us the mix’s and they where fantastic! Every night while I was in Sydney staying with Simon and his wife Eleanor and their 3 lovely kids, Callum, Erin and Ronan I would drift off to sleep a big soft bed in my own room with a private bath, deluxe accommodations for the King of Power Pop!
Day 11
I decided to take matters into my own hands and I booked a day tour into the Blue Mountains, it was spectacular even though it was cloudy and gray. First we went to a wild life preserve where I saw my first Kangaroo and my first Kuala bear. Then we threw some boomerangs and then we went to some lookouts high in the mountains. At the town of Katoomba we descended into the rain forest which was nothing short of spectacular and wound up being the highlight of the whole tour. After a lovely ferry ride from the Olympic Village winding through the harbor back into Sydney I met up with Matt and Johnny, Simon’s good mates and we went for some beers in the historic district. After a quite a few pints and nice big Angus steak we went to the top of the Shangrila 5 Star Hotel and had drinks overlooking all of Sydney Harbor glittering in the evening lights!
Day 12
Today would be our last show…my trip was coming to an end! We had breaky in Cronulla, took a swim and then headed home for a nice nap. At about 8pm I headed over to the Woolooware Golf Club where we would play our last set. Tonight The Zeros would open and close the show as this was there stomping ground and the crowd of some 600 people knew them all by name. It was a great night and we all had a blast and got really drunk and then went toddle off to the house which was minutes away. Here is Simon’s wife Eleanor, who used to be the lead singer of The Barbarellas singing Don’t Wait Up with us.
Day 13
This is my last day, I take my last swim at Cronulla, have breaky and head out to the airport for my 19 plus hour flight back to New York City. This month I have taken The Army Beat over some 30 to 40,000 miles between Japan and Australia, not bad for a kid from Long Island who just wanted to play rock n roll music!
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