There is this girl i know by the name of Steph Runge. Steph is a
bit weird and eccentric, i suspect by nature she is actually a very
sensible person but chances are that her parents and peers were
musical roadies in her impressionable years and to this day now
she has an undying infatuation with the cult music of yesteryear
which mustered a very loyal following in the urban sub-culture
of australia during the 80`s and 90`s. Steph is actually a talent-
ed musician, as far as i know she is a wonderful reeds players &
isn`t too bad on a viola either, she has backed a couple of under-
ground bands in Australia involving Tom Waits affectiono Peter
Green (not to be confused with the namesake English blues king
and co-founder of Fleetwood Mac). We are no longer on speaking
terms, which is a shame, because Steph was supposed to get back
to me about meeting up on the odd occasion to talk about musical
things and what good obscure music i could use as material on this
blog. I cannot say where i met Steph, it wouldn`t be appropriate,
but what i can say is that we did `hit if off` and possibly we may
have had `chemistry`, and i think our off the wall friendship that
started in a dental clinic should have been able to survive a bit of
my satirical horseplay in the form of a few pisstakey emails that
might have mentioned some adult orientated themes. She is ac-
tually engaged to somebody, and at no time did i ever have any
inclination to try and split her and her partner up, but given my
natural attraction to Steph, i would have happily cleaned up the
crumbs so to speak and gone out with her if for whatever reason
she didn`t marry her longtime BF. I dealt with that in my mind
and i truly only wanted to be her plutonic friend without any ex-
tras, but being a girl she made too many assumptions obviously
and now i am in the doghouse for life with her, i wouldn`t even
be game to go back to the dentist where she works because i`d
be scared she would attack me with a toothbrush. Anyway, mu-
sically as i said Steph and i communicated long enough by email
for me to realise that she isn`t your typical 30 year old by a long
shot, most musicians as they get older might hold on to some ve-
ry hardcore fundamentalist influences which fall outside what is
considered to be mainstream but normally they (and especially
girl musos) will adhere to some level of acknowledging the influ-
nce of mainstream music even if only in a social setting to allow
them to mingle in with the crowd so they dont marginalise them-
selves in their everyday existance. Steph by that measure is ve-
ry hardcore indeed, in fact i have never met a girl of her age who
is so deeply touched by what i regard as some of the most dark &
depressing underground rock music ever recorded, namely Nick
Cave and The Bad Seeds and Rowland Howard, who both were
members of seminal alternative rock band The Birthday Party.
I wouldn`t say that Nick Cave and Rowland Howard were not
gifted in their own unique way from an elemental musical per-
spective, and because Steph is a musician i can understand to
some extent why she would regard them as an influence from
a totally musical point of view. But to me, i just cannot under-
stand why a 30 year old or thereabouts girl wouldn`t know
to draw a line between the musical and the cultural before
she allowed herself to treat her muscial idols with as much
reverence as what the Tibetan monks show to Buddha. It
is a bit of an unhealthy infatuation to say the least, i really
was looking forward to meeting Steph to discuss music &
swap ideas about out favourite music, naturally for it to
work Steph would have had to been open minded to lis-
tening to `normal` hard rock like say Van Halen or per-
haps a bit of Whitesnake, not talking about mine by the
way, and in return i would have had to been prepared to
listen to her favourite music and admit if i liked some of
it. I get the feeling it wasn`t just my naughty email last
night which ended the party between me and Steph, all
i can say is that i believe i actually met my dream wom-
an and she turned out to be my ultimate polar opposite.
Up until last night i thought opposites really did attract.
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