While I was thinking about the next batch of tunes to write and record, I joined another cover band. It was with this band that I had my first paying gig.
This band was a four piece including a girl keyboard player and two bothers, one on drums and one on bass. The two guys were gung-ho on doing a three month stint on Dunk Island. There was some fantasy about chasing women by day and doing gigs and chasing women by night.
So to that end we got a few songs up and we asked Terry Blamey from PACE Entertainment (one of the leading booking agents of the day) to come and listen to a rehearsal.
Funny, you’d never get a booking agent to come to someones house to see a rehearsal these days buy anyway…
He listened to one songs and said “Right, you’ve got Dunk Island”. The boys were over the moon.
In the meantime, he started to book us into local gigs, the first being the DAVA hotel in Mt Martha. I have vivid memories of being stuck right next to the biane-maree, singing away with people walking past me with trays full of empty crockery to get their food. In fact, I was literally singing right next to the roast beef.
Needless to say, this didn’t measure up, even to the ‘singing in front of the mirror with a hairbrush’ experience, so it was not long after that I left this band. My heart was never really into doing Top 40 Covers, I just wanted experience.
Terry Blamey went on to manage Kylie Minogue. Maybe he got to Dunk Island?
