Almanac Music: The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart – Tops Off!

 

The music’s been a blast. Gotten me through an off season, without resorting to more footy. The insane levels of jealousy I feel around those playing it defies measure. The way they make a room sweat, people feel, fall in love, burn with anger. How they spellbind.

  

Musicians. Centuries older than writers. Immediate, physical. These things echo back to the forming of the world.

  

But it’s almost time to kick back to footy…

 

 

The Brisbane Hotel

 

The Brisbane Hotel in Hobart is music. A nondescript 50s brick building down a nondescript side street, its sticky carpet and dark, grungy lighting, feed the bunker of a band room, where we celebrate life by going to war with sound. Where bodies heave and clash and spend themselves.

 

That black-walled brick of a room has housed some of the greats shows I’ve ever seen. Eddy Current Suppression Ring in their prime, loose a free. The Bennies lead singer being crowd surfed to the bar and back for a beer. The pure soul of Dan Sultan. UV Race, infecting a city with their weird.

 

The Brissy is the go to for every other band, every freak and gloriously quirky when their shows or nights are over. One night, about 2am, three body builders somehow found their way in there. Tall, bubble-muscled, wearing teenaged girl tank tops, they loomed over an almost empty dance floor, dj playing no-name songs through his thrown together kit on top of two milk creates.

 

Two floppy, pasty young dudes through the muscle boys were hilarious. Flinging their tops off, they danced beside them, flexing white, saggy pecs, grinning, having a ball. Before the body builders could react, everybody in the room was on the dance floor, topless. With more coming, from the band room, the green room, the courtyard. I had no idea the place housed so many, yet there we all were, every single soul, skinny, fat, woman, man, topless, laughing, dancing approaching 3, having a ball.

 

The muscle boys a good head taller than anyone, huddled, looking baffled, kind of happy, intimidated, confused.

 

A beautiful woman danced with me, with long, curly, red-black hair, and mighty, lazy smile. She kept turning, rolling her head as she went, so that glorious hair drifted back, then fell, lazily forward.

 

I’ll never forget her.

 

It as a real win, all of it, though over what still has me baffled.

 

 

 

 

More from Matt Zurbo Here.

 

 

Read more stories from Almanac Music  HERE

 

If you would like to receive the Almanac Music and Poetry newsletter we will add you to the list. Please email us: [email protected]

 

To return to the www.footyalmanac.com.au  home page click HERE

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?
And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help keep things ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

 

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE
One-off financial contribution – CLICK HERE
Regular financial contribution (monthly EFT) – CLICK HERE