Click here to go to main site.

LogoMH

MataHistory

I came into the picture at about the Mk2 period with Ronnie and Clive in the band. I remember the first time I saw them, it was a 'Battle of the Bands' thing, and their big song for it was "Locomotive Breath by 'Jethro Tull'. They really nailed it and came second, beaten by 'Bogislave', I think? I thought 'they was robbed'. I was sharing a flat with Bruce "Nugget" Gates and he knew the band so we hung out with them, and my friendship with them grew from there.

As with most roadies it started with helping the guy's to pack up their gear, then getting to the gigs before they started, to help set up the gear, until they trusted me enough to play with the PA. The first PA was rather primitive but after a while a replacement was purchased. Made by Brian Rippo of Audico, it was a 100 watts amp, two column's of four speakers and a couple of Altec Lancing horns. These were later augmented with four monster bass bins and a couple of even bigger horns plus another 300 watt amp, destined for "Armageddon" before we 'stole' it. Click on the link below for a more detailed story on the PA by Mr Stanes himself. Go to Jim's breakdown of the sound system.

Transport was always the problem, everyone carried their own gear in their cars with Jim transporting the pa in his Valiant station wagon which we called 'The Big Six'. I still have fond memories of our trips up to the Salamander Bay Hotel every Sunday, where we had a residency of sorts, but more about that later OK, I'm getting ahead of myself here. My flat in Glebe Road Adamstown became the semi-official meeting point for the band, and some weird and wonderful people came through my front door.
Nugget was heavily involved with 2NX, so it wasn't unusual to get home from a gig at 2 am to find DJ's and their floozies crashed out on the lounge room floor. Of course this did reap benefits when the single was released later on.
Onya Webbie, onya Gracie.
With publicity from the Battle of the Bands we started to get more gigs, places like The Town Hall, The Bel-Air Hotel, Tyrelle Hall at the top of town, the Mawson Hotel, and heaps of high school shows

And that's the way it continued for the next year, gradually picking up gigs from different places and all the gear still being carted about by cars and "The Big Six". Jim was doing most of the PR work, with Nugget keeping the name alive in his circles and coming up with some hairbrained publicity schemes. Then we got a Sunday residency at The Salamander Bay Hote and we got to meet "Sally" Ridgeway and his brothers and sisters. From the first time they saw us they more or less adopted us and became our unofficial bodyguards. I can vividly remember a gig at Maitland Town Hall when the only thing between us and a thumping from the local 'gang' was the Ridgeway family. Happily for us the locals weren't to keen to take them on, and peace prevailed. Thanks for that Sally you saved our arses. Needless to say we never played Maitland again. Mata Hari gigs were pretty peaceful on the whole, the only other real confrontation I can remember was at theSwansea Pub, when some drunken arsehole took offense to Jims lyrics to the song "Gloria", by 'Them'. Jim had his own lyrics about getting Gloria up to his bedroom, this guy's wife was called Gloria, and he wanted to thump the whole band starting with Jim. It didn't happen, his mates saw the stupidity of it all and dragged him away kicking and screaming. The next time we played there he came up and apologised for being an arsehole.

But I digress.........., back to the Salamander. It took about a month for word of mouth to spread and the crowds built steadily till we were packing the place out. Inside you could cram about 80 people but the surrounding beer garden could take about 150, so Scotty ( the publican ), was laughing all the way to the brewery.
We used it as a testing ground for new and way out material, stuff like 'Billy the Mountain', by 'Frank Zappa', 'Chunder in the Old Pacific Sea', by 'Smacka Fitzgibbon',and some solo stuff from a mate of our's, Russell McDougall.
Thing's were so cramped that I had to set up the pa amp / mixer next to 'The Shaft' behind the drums. This was also the time I started setting up a microphone for myself, to fill out the backing vocals a bit, and bounce stage talk between Jim and myself. I think it blew the crowds out a bit when they realised that the 'roady' was allowed to participate in the music. The only one who had a shot at me was 'Crabs', and that was for the falsetto in "Ohio", to which I said something like "up yours Crabs yer mother wears army boots", and kept right on doing it. The good times we had at the 'Salamander' will always remain with me and are a big part of the Mata Hari legend, the old saying "you had to be there" rings true here, some things I can't remember, others I can't forget, and still more I can't tell you about for fear of prosecution.

I remember a gig down at Terrigal or Wyong where we had to hire a truck with a canvas cover to transport the gear, on the way back from this gig I nearly killed half the band, who were traveling in the back breathing exhaust fumes. You can see the funny side of it now, but there were some pretty pissed off 'Mataharians' by the time we got back to Newcastle.
Things continued on with every one transporting their own gear for about another six months, but we all realised we needed to get a real truck

Something had to be done, so Jim and I drove to Sydney and cruised Parramatta Road in search of the right truck. Just when we were about to give up and call it a day we found it,
I threw down a holding deposit, and we headed home. Next day I organised a loan and the day after Jim and I hopped a train back to Sydney. And the legend of "Egor the truck had begun. That's Egor with a capital 'E'.

Where before, Jim had done all the driving and I was the co-pilot, the roles were now reversed, it also meant that Jims wife at the time, Peggy, had to find her own way to the gigs, which probably pleased Jim, 'though he never said as much. The whole shooting match was starting to get more professional, now that 'Egor' had arrived, and it was decided we needed a light show, to help fill up all that empty space in the truck.

Now you have to remember we were living in pretty primitive times back then, you couldn't just go out and buy lights and stands and light boxes and light mixers, you had to build it all yourself. I'll give you one guess who got the job of building it.
Hands up all those who said 'The Road'.

Light boxes and stands were no problem, but the light mixer was a real pain in the arse. I built it all in the flat and finished about 1.00 am one morning , plugged it all in, and started flashing lights in five different colours out the windows and doors. I wonder how many people driving by wondered what the fuck was going on ?????
So now I was setting up the gear, mixing the sound with one hand, flicking on and off lights to the beat with the other, and doing backing vocals. Things were getting hectic, luckily Jim was after extra cash, so he took on the job as assistant roady, he'd claimed the co-pilot's seat in 'Egor' so he was well placed for the job. I must mention that we did have another assistant roady, Paul "The Man" Jenson a work mate of mine at BHP, he had this saying when things started to get out of control, "settle down fella's settle down".

Now we had 'Egor' the gig's were starting to come from farther afield, places like the Manly Vale Hotel in Sydney. We'd done Chequers with private transport and that had been a real pain in the arse. Funnily enough we never did Chequers after 'Egor arrived. Also a lot of gigs up at Taree, Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour. Somewhere in here the band recorded it's one and only 45 "Gypsy / Easy". It was done down in Sydney for Polydor, produced by Peter Dawkins and withRene Gyer as one of the back up singers. Gypsy was a Van Morrison song chosen by the record company and foolishly ( in my humble opinion ) agreed to by the band.
Let me make it quite clear here, I hated the song right from the start.
The only thing that was good about it was 'Appy's' bass playing. The rest of the song just droned on and on and on.........
I got extreemly drunk and stoned the night it was dropped from the set list.

We were now being 'run' by a booking agency, along with every other band in town, and they were putting pressure on us to give up some of our Sunday afternoon Salamander Bay Hotel gig's to the other bands in the agency. We held out for a while, but finally had to relent and do it once a month, instead of every Sunday. At least we didn't have the usual Sunday rush to get back to Charlestown Community Hall when we had a Sunday night gig there anymore.

About this time Peter Harrison left the band, I think the line was "it's her or the band", or something like that. He moved on to Gold Caddilac, and took his red headed lady with him.

Enter 'Mango' Mark Turnbull, also known around the traps as 'Cisco', who fitted in nicely with our 'out there' sense of humour. He brought a fresh approach to some of the songs that were getting a bit jaded.

Not long after 'The Shaft' left, Mark 'Happy Appy' Apthorpe decided he wanted a bit of a seachange and called it quits. After a bit of a break from the band scene he joined Salt Lake City for a while before taking a position with Brambles in Woolongong. This left no time for bands so he only jams with his kids now.

Enter Lee Brossmann. Lee was a totally different style of bass player to Appy, where Appy played predominently with a plectrum, Le was a finger player. This once again changed the sound of the songs and lifted the feel of the whole band.
This was the final line up of the band and some people have said the tightest.

When the band finally called it quits, Jim, Lee and myself moved on to Highway with Neale Johns, Dave Hinds and John 'funky' Halls.
Crabs, Dave and Mango recruited Graham Griffith on bass and formed Calypso.
Neither band lasted that long, but thats a whole 'nuther story.