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Well whilst you lot are lolling around watching the cricket we're..

Probably doing the same.

Except for the fact that we're back in the Studio tomorrow to record 'Sweet Mama told me'

We're getting this one ready for release on our mate Cesar's radio show, his 500th.

This ought to be fun.

People got laid as a result of our show last night.

Yep, no doubt about it.

In 9 months I expect to see a crop of progeny named 'Storm' or "Swamp monster' or whatever song of ours they were listening to just before they were doing the nasty.

Ok, so how can we make such claims, I hear you ask. Well I don't but I am imagining your mock horror as you read my intentionally salacious headline

Right. So here's the thing.

Quite often at our shows we will see a Mated Pair. She wants to dance, he's an Aussie Bloke.

About the only Aussie Bloke who seems to come naturally to dancing is Hugh Jackman or those guys from Tap Dogs.

I have commented about Aussie Bloke Dancing in a number of my posts (tl;dr they gotta feel free before they'll risk it in public.)

Anyway, so there's this girl. Front row. On Facebook on her phone. music starts.

Slowly her feet start to tap. Mid way through the set she starts to rise.

Boyfriend is still sitting down.

2nd set she's swaying. Boyfriend still sitting down. People are dancing. 

Boyfriend still sitting down

STORMCELLAR TO THE RESCUE!

At the critical moment where he's not quite sure what to do I look at him, for I have seen him and his ilk before.

Yes Brother, I now offer a Man Solidarity Moment. You will thank me later.

As the crowd is dancing, Rosie is wailing away on guitar, I look at that man. I say to him 'Get up and dance with her mate, you know she wants to' 

And he is a wise man. A Mannish man. A Stormcellar Feller.

He knows she doesn't care how he dances, she just wants to move.

He hears the wisdom of St George Thoroughgood to 'treat her right' and by the end of the evening's dancing they are canoodling in ways that hey dude I can see what you're doing from here man keep it PG13, this is a family show. Heh. I just realised the pun.

So yeah. We encourage the guy to dance with his girl, they make kissy face and THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS SAVED.

We're like Barry White for Aussies.

Big night last night.

Big night.

Happy 2015.

Love you all.

Sitting in the aft cabin aboard the good ship Stormcellar as she swayed gently in Canada Bay, the Captain peered over the rim of his bi-focals, his eyes travelling across three open maps, between compass points only he could see.

He sighed as he leaned back, taking his glasses off to rub his eyes, letting them water and re adjusting the frame so he could return to the map once more and seek the  Undrawn line.

 ‘The chart is not the voyage’, the Captain muttered - the first in his alternate universe to realize the concept.

Was it only 3 months ago they made port in Sydney, after a journey near all the way to Boston?

 It seemed so long ago; the travails of the journey subsumed into the mundane of careening the vessel and scraping barnacles off the Roadie.

Yes, safe harbour in the convict city where a sailors life ashore was filled with Chinese Delicacies, Moderately Priced Art Exhibitions & Paying The Rent.

What do Vikings do when they’re home?

When do Pirates consider shopping at the local green grocer or that new all-in-one  place with easy parking?

Do wanderers along forbidden highways use mail forwarding?

Such questions vex the home bound adventurer.

Outside the cabin in the rigging, the guitarists cried out their night song ‘Tuuuuuuu-ning….Tuuuuuu-ning…’ and the deck thrummed with the omnipresent finger doodling of the cargo of Drummers. No matter where you stowed them, they’d find a place to start tapping, tapping; always the tapping.

As evening’s early blush graced the foreshores, the nocturnal Bassist revealed themselves, sporting about the prow of the ship at anchor, bobbing for fish. They grasped their catch between powerful fingers and devoured each one with a Schlorping sound. Schlorp.

On the poopdeck, a lonely Harmonica began a mournful wail, until as a one, the crew told him to STFU and threw sea biscuits at him.

Momentarily, the stillness was broken as from within the cabin came the sound of the Captain exclaiming ‘Aha!’.

The captain emerged triumphantly from the stateroom, his swinging cutlass knocking over another cutlass that was carelessly stored against the door.

‘Aha!’ he repeated, picking up the cutlass and putting it back where he should have put it originally.

‘Have ye a plan Cap’n’ said the first mate, a salty sea dog and old china hand.

‘Yes!’ Cried the Captain, jubilantly, planting his foot on a cabin boy.

‘Huzzah!’ cried the mottled and grizzled, tattooed and hairless, pierced and gold-earring-not-wearing-actually-pretty-ordinary-looking crew – a  more curious group ne’er assembled.

Lofting the charts on high, the Cap’n shook them within his clenched eagle-clawed grasp.

‘Men’ he said. ‘Bold men.’

‘And women too’ he added after some grumbling near the mizzen mast.

‘all right, all right, ‘humans of non specified gender’  the Captain said, amending his commentary with a wary eye cast o’er the Protocol Troll.

‘Where was I?’

‘Humans!’ said the Mate

‘Hu-womans’ said the Troll.

‘Shipmates’ said the Captain, exhaustedly. ‘may I?’

The assemblage nodded.

‘Shipmates, you have sailed the perilous seas, braved the tempests of our odyssey with pluck and courage notable amongst braver species, yea even as Otters.’

A collective approval of the metaphor was heard.

‘Have ye mapped a course through uncertain oceans of the Modern Music Business, Cap’n?’ came the cry,

 ‘Have ye charted a course to the mythical El Radiado?’ they implored.

 ‘Did you remember the cheese whizz?’ they intoned.

 The Captain, with a fiery gleam in his eye and a great curling of his curly-and-socially-contextuously-appropriate-facial-hair, cast the charts to the wind.

 How they danced, high, higher, passing over the bay to land with unexpected consequence on the face of a guy walking his dog who got quite a fright and stumbled a bit.

‘But captin!’ cried a crew mate. ‘What became of the chart of common sense’

‘Ha!’ snorted the Captain. ‘A myth!’

‘But captain!’ clamored another ‘what about the lists of unspoken and unwritten rules and expectations that go into making up current conscious thought about the music industry and its relevance to society in a time of remarkable technical and commercial change?’

The ship grew silent.

From the shore a dog walker called out faintly ‘I have them over here, some of them are contradictory’

‘Aha!’ roared the Captain, ‘Pointless misconceptions! No me hearties, I have long and hard cast my eye o’er the charts, the lists, the forms, the gossip, the buzz, the happening, the hi, the scuttlebutt, the

‘we get it, please move along’ yelled the crew

‘right’ sayeth the Captain. ‘ I forgot how switched on you lot were. ‘

‘As I was saying, after reviewing the great mass of angry data, I have, by the use of my quadrupinary lobal modality,  come to the answer, the correct course’

The crew fell silent. Now would their course be revealed? Their next voyage? Their next paycheck?

They  leaned in eagerly, straining to hear the captains words.

In the hush across the bay as even the drummer silenced, the Captain looked at each ship mate, smiled and said ‘the secret is

Howdy Folks.

I know that you will want to spend NYE with friends, family, loved ones and if you're a Sydney sider, probably Fireworks.

We normally do the same. It's rare for us to do a NYE gig but Lazybones asked us and we love Lazybones so we said yes.

That means we'll be doing what we love on NYE. Yay for us.

Lazybones is a very vibey venue and if you want to avoid Crowds, Inebriated Fellow SydneySiders, Inebriated Backpackers crowding the foreshores or just want to do something different, come join us.

There's nibblies, a DJ, us, lights and flashy things and it's in Marrickville, avoiding all the congested highway bits.

Get your tix at www.lazyboneslounge.com.au

As we complete our circuit around the sun for another year, like human societies throughout the ages, we celebrate those seasonal markers by a variety of names.

Once again it shows there is more between us that is the same than different.

We wish you, Dear Reader, wherever you may be, a moment of peace.

and when you're cool, calm, collected and feeling the edge of gratitude for still being here to marvel at it all, come hang out with us and we'll get loud and celebrate the other way :-)