Actually, there wasn't any celebration at all: I mentioned it to a number of people who were without exception underwhelmed. Nonplussed. Indifferent.

It mattered to me. I gave a silent prayer of thanks to Hobart for saving me from Sydney and allowing me to create a life and career here. Now, if only I could get my head around the way our beer glasses work - depending on how thirsty I am, I just ask for a handle or a pint, as that almost produces the desired result.

My first job in radio was a 7HT where I wrote ads for clients who just didn't get my (impossibly sophisticated) sense of humor. Chief amongst them was a service station on the eastern shore, keen to promote the virtue of its driveway service and the sale of fresh, frozen chickens. To this day I can't decide if the chickens were fresh, frozen or had been dispatched by hypothermic means - and at what stage of the (no doubt) stellar driveway service did their availability for purchase enter the discourse?

The client did not appreciate the Pythonesque result of my endeavours and I moved to the ABC.

One highlight of my time there was a trip to the Dog House Hotel to see Hey Mook. They were, I was assured, a lot like Radio Birdman and, even though they weren't, handles and pints were consumed and I had a fine old time. They were a mighty live act.

Fifteen years on, and modestly branding themselves as Hobart's favourite band (mind you, I can't think of a challenger for that title), Hey Mook has just released its third album in 18 years of business, Never Gets You Anywhere.

It's great. My favourite track I Signed a Heartbeat reminds me of The Clash (circa London Calling) and all through this fine album I hear shades and nuances of Died Pretty and The Gobetweens, although what I mostly hear is a thoroughly original Tasmanian voice.

Besides, who can ignore a band that opens a song with a line like "You're just a fifty dollar haircut on a five dollar head"?

It turns out the first Hey Mook album Accordian Hufcor Doors was recorded in the house I'm moving into next week. One of the band members, in fact, returned it to domesticity and I'm more than a little honoured to learn I'll be its next custodian.

I'll make Hey Mook's Never Gets You Anywhere the first CD I play there.

timcox66@yahoo.com.au

Article sourced from The Mercury