28 Feb 2008, Posted by Cat in News, No Comments. Tagged music, old friends, writing

reconnections

Since the advent of Facebook, Myspace & Blogs, etc, its pretty much impossible to remain ‘lost’ from all those old friends you’ve lost touch with over the years. Several folks I used to hang out with have tracked me down via Facebook, Google or my website. So far no one I don’t actually like has done this but it’s got to be only a matter of time… I’ve Googled a couple of old friends MIA too. A few months back I used Myspace  to track down a guy who I’d been good friends with a whole other lifetime ago. We’d both been part of a social group centered around a high school band on Sydney’s lower north shore. I started going out with the drummer when I was fifteen. The guy I tracked down was the lead guitarist, two years older than me as were all the boys in the band. We, and others, hung out together until my early 20s. The particulars of how we all went separate ways escape me now, but the group eventually fractured and the bass player was the only one of them I kept in any sort of regular contact with.

I recall a reunion in Sydney’s Century Hotel sometime in the mid ’90s.  All I remember clearly about the night was that my drummer ex had long curly hair & the lead guitarist’s band, Cactus Child, was starting to take off. One of the other guys in the original band had become my ex by that point too, but we all got on OK that night. I saw both exes, the bass player and other folks from that period a few times again after that night, but I don’t think I saw the lead guitarist again for over twelve years. No, that’s not entirely true. I saw his band play live a couple of times, but for whatever reason I didn’t go up and say hello. Why not, you may ask. I can’t remember. What sort of things was I doing in my life at that time? I can’t remember — a bit of archaeological photography I think. I’d have to consult my trusty photo albums, but whatever it was, I was right into it & distracted enough to let all these people vanish into their own timestreams without really noticing they were gone.

Anyway, as time passed I did now and then wonder what the lead guitarist might be doing with himself. He’d been the utter locus of that original group of friends. Very smart, very talented. I’d seen his band on TV a couple of times & in music magazines, but I lost touch with western pop music as my interest in Middle Eastern & Latino dance and groves broadened. Google didn’t produce much intel, but just before Xmas last year I realised Myspace might be the go, being that musicians tend to promote themselves there. So I signed up to Myspace and tracked him down. We caught up for dinner before Xmas along with the bass player and one of the exes. The lead guitarist and I have been emailing regularly ever since, filling in the missing years by swapping links to our art more than with actual anecdotes. Which brings me to the point of this post:

After Cactus Child split up, the lead guitarist formed a duo with another guy. Called Chakradiva, they supported Kylie Minogue on her 2001 tour. I knew absolutely nothing about this band, and the lead guitarist seems reluctant to talk about it much. Once again, Googling produced very little, but I found a promo copy of their CD, ‘The New Economy’, at Red Eye online music store. And, do you know, it’s fucking AWESOME. I’m not even sure how to describe it properly — some sort of world music/dance fusion, which is pretty much how I’d describe the bulk of my often played CD collection. Seriously, its like someone reached inside my head, pulled out all my favourite grooves and burnt them to CD. “Tell me you had a good reason for chucking this in,” I said. “I didn’t chuck it in, I just stopped doing it,” was his reply.

So there you have it: awesome music lost in the sand of time. There’s a videoclip of one of their songs on Youtube:

And a couple of Cactus Child clips are up there too: here and here.
(he’s the tall dude playing the guitar)

But Chakradiva are gone. And I completely missed out on all of it. What was I doing around 2000-2001? Well, that was around about the time I decided to take my own writing seriously. I moved out of Sydney & down the south coast to live with Rob, abandoning the distractions of the inner city shared house lifestyle forever.

My earlier short stories aren’t very good, but a few years ago some of them started to make the grade to the point of me being quite proud of my achievements. But what happens to even the best of them, posterity-wise? Published in small press anthologies & magazines, they too will be lost forever. And what of other worthy forms of art, such as dance performances and plays? Excellent work that is, nonetheless, classified as semi-pro or below and therefore never professionally recorded? Memories and dust, all of it. I guess with a CD or anthology you at least end up with physical evidence of the thing.

Here’s the punchline (cos you knew there was going to be one, didn’t you?) Dinner with the guys before Xmas revealed that the lead guitarist has written a fantasy novel! Which I would have thought was about as likely as me touring with Kylie Minogue. I’ve read the first 36,000 words of it. It’s good stuff. Raw, but good.

Seems like one half of my life has finally caught up with the other…