Christmas

4 day weekend! I've slowly gotten my Christmas cheer and the year, in retrospect, has flown by. Contrary to the last, the work group decided to get into the Xmas decorations around the office, which included cutting out dozens of colour photocopied lollipops, to stringing lollies together to create an alternative to tinsel hanging from the roof. It also required me to create some gingerbread biscuits to which I got the response that I'd make a great wife one day. They turned out to be edible which was all that I was aiming for -including the Michael Jackson circa 1980's one- top right of the tray. I started thinking about decorating, but gave up when I saw the time and didn't have any ready-made icing. They seem to pale to some of the offerings I've seen lately here.

Fortunately we beat the other efforts at different sites and won a $300 prize which will go towards the multiple fires that are likely to be generated from the massive amounts of ornaments hung near white hot lights on the ceiling.

Friday night concluded the final gig this year to make a paltry 8 -when in comparison to some of the readers of this blog. The night began with drinks at the Imperial where, after just one the little man in my head who prevents inner thoughts from becoming audible, took a break. Needless to say it made the evening more enjoyable from then on. We headed off to The Spanish Club to see Even, supported by Bob Evans, Mike Noga & The Gentlemen of Fortune, with a special guest DJ and MC'd by Brian Nankervis. We passed on the first support act and half of Bob Evans in favour of a few more drinks at the front bar which was pretty packed.

It's the first time I've been to The Spanish Club and it's an impressive venue, from an entrance you'd likely see in a European castle, to the classy design and Persian rugs inside. (Lucky rugs never seem to be sold at full price according to all those crazy warehouse ads -minimum of 250% off!- is that possible?)

It was to some surprise that the guest DJ was none other than Tim Rogers from You Am I. With Brian Nankervis as MC, it felt like an episode of RickWiz and there was a mini quiz inbetween sets, thankfully somewhat easier. Rightfully, a punter was correctly denied a prize for identifying a Nikki Webster song with about 5 sample seconds.

I won't say too much on the main set by Even mainly because I hadn't heard them prior to the night so I can't identify any of their songs. Needless to say they didn't leave anything on stage and all songs played sounded impressive but what did standout were some of the awesome guitar openings. I'll have to check out some of their albums now...

While we knew it was likely that Tim Rogers would take to the stage and pump out a song or two, the 2nd encore/finale was a fantastic way to finish off the year. Davey Lane from You Am I jumped up from the crowd, there was a huddle for a couple of minutes and the 5 on stage blasted out Jumping' Jack Flash by the Stones. It trumped any expectations and we left with the venue ringing ears and happy faces. Cheers for organising it Jimbo. A great end to the year for music...

Merry Christmas to anyone reading this. It's 1.35am and Santa still hasn't visited. I even made biscuits...