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The Town Hall Hotel, North Melbourne - 'The Townie'

 

The Town Hall Hotel, North Melbourne

 

Sorry Jonny,

I write better than this, but I got on the piss when I saw your website.

The Townie, what it means to me.

I started going there immediately after my ex-wife walked out.

I went each night to the Townie straight after work, walking from the CBD for a period of 90 days.

20 more than 70 if you like.

It was magically half way home.

It was back at the start of the century

And Jonny was playing live music concert DVDs

I particularly remember the Motley Crue video for some reason

Somehow Vince Neil suits Jonny’s drollness

Like some Viennese Rococo Count

Stumbled forward a couple of hundred years.

The Townie was also the site of my band’s first gig

10 years after I quit music for poetry.

Divorce will do that.

You need to make some %^$in noise.

The Townie took me into rock and punk and post-punk and punk-blues and rock.

The staff were always RocknRoll.

I remember seeing Conway Savage in the back bar

Deliever 2 incredible shows on piano.

Then the Stones came to town

And it seemed possible Keith & Ronnie might walk in.

I think I did something interesting out the back

So maybe they did.

In cognito.

They sought out Joey

For some home delivered truths.

Tess McKenna and I played a spot before the plebiscite

And the pub was an Agora

A lot of things were and have been healed.

Jonny says it best.

Jonny sings it best.

I’ve just been looking at your website.

It kept me company during yet another lockdown.

Johnny dancing to some 60s Oz garage rock.

Whenever I get to be present I lose myself in the spirit, the history, the present, the future of rocknroll.

Young musos, get down there and test out your chops

It’s always a fair crowd.

I’ve had so many great bar chats with faces I’ve never seen before.

It’s a wonderful blur.

Good tucker too.

The best Coopers on Tap, it’s really something

In a bottle no, but tap, MAN!

I tend to eat vego when I’m on the sauce.

Jonny’s presence is magisterially down-to-earth

He makes a night feel like an event.

So many good times.

Friends.

Lovers.

I pray for many more.

Get down there.

Town Hall Hotel.

33 Errol Street, North Melb.

I’ve committed that to memory.

They say it heightens that!

I so won that Mick Jagger karaoke!

What was Patrick Donovan thinking?!

 

http://townhallhotelnorthmelbourne.com.au/index.html


MFM 2021.



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