When in Melbourne I embarked on some research regarding gigs in the city via a conversation with a friendly local record shop owner near our digs in St Kilda. He referenced the Corner Hotel as a potential venue, and this was a location that Mogwai had played twelve months earlier, oh to have undertaken the trip a year hence! There was a band playing that Friday, so plans were summarily hatched for us to make an appearance.
However, those plans were scuppered for a very good reason. The England cricket team had been battered in the Ashes but had woken up from their slumber in the subsequent one-day triangular series resulting in playing the home nation at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in a day/night match that Friday. We managed to purloin some tickets and were blessed with excellent weather and good seats protected us in the main from the sunshine. The ground got busier post-work resulting in approximately 50k in the ground by the end of the game.
There was a highly humorous advert showing on the screen displaying the disparity between a Pommy backyard (dark, monsoon conditions, 1930’s slum) and Brett Lee’s backyard (beautiful huge expanse of sun kissed Wimbledon quality grass) – they are such wags!
However, we had the last laugh as we won a very tense close match in the last over, though probably the overriding highlight was Glenn McGrath in his last ever Melbourne appearance dropping an absolute dolly of a catch right in front of me. I very nearly spilt my ice cold Tooheys Extra Dry in celebration! In the interval between innings there was a short set from local grunge legends Something About Kate.
Much to my chagrin, there was a music festival scheduled in St Kilda on the day we left, however Melbourne is a city of four seasons and the event was marred by extremely strong winds and ended up being abandoned early. As we had rescheduled the Corner venture, I obviously had to identify an alternate gig outing and lined up a local gig on Thursday 08/02/07.
Prior to the gig, we went on a random excursion of penguin viewing which was arguably a bit of a sham and was bloody freezing on the boat, resulting in Gill contracted a mean head cold as a result. We christened the wide boy skipper as ‘Captain Shane’ due to his likeness to the recently departed Shane Warne and his propensity to say ‘No Worries’ at regular intervals.
We wandered past the picturesque historic Palais Theatre located right on the sea front, which with a capacity of nearly 3000 is the largest seated theatre in Australia. There was a huge younger crowd queuing up for a band playing that night.
Our destination, just across the way was the Esplanade Hotel, known locally as ‘The Espy’. Built way back in 1878, it sits proudly on the Upper Esplanade overlooking Port Philip and has a commendable musical heritage. Beyond the live gigs it was also apparently the filming location of a live music trivia program Rockwiz.
It is a four-storey building with many of the rooms being used for different purposes over the years and the future of the hotel was in doubt a couple of times in the 21st century prior to an extensive refurbishment. It subsequently reopened in November 2018 with three live music rooms and bar and restaurant areas contained within the hotel.
On our visit we were housed in the large front bar called the Nimrod Room. There was a stage in the right-hand corner of the room, behind which was a decent sized pool room where I was amused to witness our very own Captain Shane persevering with his patter and endeavouring to chat up the local St Kilda ladies.
The support band was a decent local act called Jim’s Eyes who said towards their end of their set they were selling merchandise. However, I was therefore somewhat perplexed when I approached them immediately afterwards to be informed, they had sold all their tapes! The support outshone the main band who were a combo called Outrage. I thought it was a terrifically atmospheric venue and I glad that 15 years on it still appears to be thriving!
By completing this very article, I have traversed past 80k words in total, which is the word limit for a PHD. Thus, an open question from me is by passing this landmark can I now validly rechristen myself as ‘Doctor Jimmy’?
