Cosplaying

Tonight was something a little bit different and as they say, variety is the spice of life, tonight certainly held a different flavour. I was scheduled to attend a Dizzy Days concert, held at Bootleggers (the upstairs function type/night club area of Kelly on Kings) a place I hadn’t been to since my university days in Sydney. I have hazy memories of getting shit-faced during a trivia night, but that’s about it. SO in some respects, this venue might have well been a blank slate for me.

The venue is pretty good, although there is not side access to the stage area and as such performers have to go through the crowd to get to and from the stage. This makes it difficult for encores, as demonstrated by Dizzy Days who masterfully played the encore issue off into a seamless experience where it both was and kind of wasn’t an encore.

I had been in two minds going to the concert, for a couple of reasons. One, I am simultaneously lazy and somewhat tired after driving down from Brisbane over the last two days, and having checked into my hotel it would have been both easy and comfortable to just stay in, grab room service and attempt to catch up on some of my work. Two, I had purchased my ticket for Dizzy Days immediately after I got home from seeing them support the Rogue Traders at Kings Beach Tavern last month (you can read my comments about them in my review A Tale of Two Cities). I was only having slight buyers remorse, mainly cause I found out a week ago that Binsad were also playing a gig tonight in Sydney and I was seriously considering going to that instead.

In any event, I decided to man up and leave the comfort of my hotel room and trust that Past Declan (who I usually draw the conclusion is a complete prick in terms of his decision making and his carefree attitude ,read complete apathy, towards consequences that Future Declan has to deal with) actually knew what he was doing and chose to go to the Dizzy Day gig.

Naturally, because I am chronically online and couldn’t even sit through a 15 min taxi ride without scrolling Instagram, I came across a urgent plea from Dizzy Day looking for a person to handle their merch table during the concert. Since I forgot they were a Brisbane band and considering it was 10 mins till doors, I figured they would have already found someone but, just in case, I threw my hat into the ring to assist. It seemed like a good idea at the time and when they immediately accepted, I realised that it would be a great opportunity to see a little of the behind the scenes of a gig. Afterall, I was already on my way and had seen them perform under a month ago, helping them wouldn’t carry any real negatives, plus its good to help people when you have both the time and opportunity with no expectation of anything in return.

As I say when I’m gambling, I’m not superstitious but I am a little stitious, I’m sure there will be an event at some point in the future where I will ask for divine intervention and a miracle, based on the build up of karmatic energies, will manifest itself (not sure if having that as a reason is a form of self serving ideology and will therefore cancel out the positive karma since I was truly being altruistic, does writing that truth make it worse? Anyway, that’s a problem for Future Declan - see Past Declan really is a dick to Future Declan).   

To be absolutely, abundantly clear, Dizzy Days were an absolute joy to work with for an evening, and they immediately offered to pay me for my time and repeated the offer at the end of the night without me asking. They are perhaps four of the nicest ladies working in a chaotic and high stress environment and went out of their way to make sure that I knew what I was doing and had all of the support I could possibly want.

All of this was to say that instead of being a regular concert goer, I got to cosplay as a merchant for the night. I got to handle a table of wares and exchange money for goods (believe me, it was a novel experience since I am usually in the professional services arena where I am supplying brainpower. Having tangible goods to sell was exciting!).

I’ve already bragged to multiple people about my blue collar experience (not to dimmish people who do this all the time, there is undoubtedly a skill to it all and dealing with people is exhausting) and was able to treat the evening as a bit of frivolity and a chance to essentially play pretend a role that I would basically never have the opportunity (or really the desire) to perform either often or at all.

However, whilst I am happy to treat it as a fun, carefree experience, it is easy to forget that for a whole host of people, these events are their main job and career, and there are considerable consequences to things not going right or being performed poorly. I have written before about how fucked the whole live music economy is, and good merch sales can be the difference between making some form of a profit and essentially paying to perform for people.

It was enlightening seeing the way that Dizzy Days approached the event as actual professionals. Gone are the days where artists can just get shit-faced and go up on stage and mumble through a set (definitely not alluding to Jimmy Barnes here, who highly placed sources (who remain anonymous because they are not authorised to comment publicly – see, I can cosplay as an actual journalist as well!!) confirm was recently paid $50,000 to semi perform three songs on Hamilton Island at a well known Insurance Authorised Representatives conference).

The conducting of actual vocal warm ups and stretching so that they can perform a high energy set, whilst mainly drinking water really makes the professionalism of the set up sink in.

At the same time, it is so gratifying seeing a local Australian band really hitting their stride and performing successful sets. Friday night saw Dizzy Days perform a sold out set at Bergy Bandroom in Melbourne (250 pax capacity), with Bootleggers having a similar capacity of around 200-250 people and probably close to that capacity attending. These performances have come off a run of successful supporting acts for the Rogue Traders which has undoubtedly broadened Dizzy Days’ market reach.

It helps that their music is generally upbeat, catchy and extremely easy to dance to, consisting of a mixture of classic disco dance styles and elements of soft rock. The foursome, of Aisling (vocals), Mikaela (drums) with Bridgette and EJ on guitars are complete performers. They easily interact with the crowd, have great chemistry between the members, can write good catchy songs and have that rockstar look. Move over Hugh Jackman, Australia has a new triple threat (because there are four of them does that make them collectively a dodeca-threat? I’m assuming they can act, after all they make dancing and singing look effortless).

I have heard some rumours that Dizzy Days could be performing more shows around Australia over the coming months, possible in more geographically diverse places than just the major cities. As such, if you are browsing through your what’s on for your local pubs, clubs and other live music events and happen to see Dizzy Days coming to a place near you, buy a ticket and go to their show. It is guaranteed to be a fun evening that will get you up and dancing.

In terms of my future as a merchant? By the end of the night I was still very happy with my decision to help out but don’t expect to see me changing careers to become a roadie anytime soon. I think I’ll focus on adding some additional bleach to my laundry to make sure no more blue bleeds through to my very white collars.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/576686_a5f546218d08437ca25dad595b1dc512/720p/mp4/file.mp4