Went over to the tombola tonight. Hey, we won two trays of meat (about $40 worth of steak and sausage) from a $5 raffle ticket. Coulda' been worse. Amanda was busy catching up on and spreading gossip. That's the favorite past-time in a small town.

Over on the far corner of the room were a few twenty-somethings. Completely out of place in the bowling club, though we get 'em in here now and again. The drinks are cheaper than the pub around the corner. I'd go to the pub myself - it's closer; except that they only serve Toohey's and Victoria - the local equivalent of Schlitz and Coors. There are only two Aussie beers that I can tolerate ("Pigs Fly" and James Squire "Amber Ale"), and I go where ever they've got at least one of 'em. 

My eyes were glued to the monitor above the jukebox. Oh yeah, vintage AC-DC. "You shook me all night long" - the concert footage. I remember it well. I was at the Back in Black concert in Denver way back when.

In the late seventies and early 80's, the U.S. rock music scene was exporting Van Halen.  Pyrotechnic guitar. Let's ignore Bruce Springsteen. England was still trying to show us up with Jimmy Page and David Bowie.  Germany chimed in with Michael Schenker and Scorpion. These were really out of place in the U.S. as we had no need for esoteric and intellectual rock-n-roll. What's the point?

But everybody had a place for Angus and Malcolm and their bare bones, no-frills 3 chord rock and roll from down under.  There were no airs about it, no 'fastest guitar on earth' to challenge. No intellectualism. Just rock-n-roll, cut to its basics. Simple, loud, driving. Ya' have to respect that. Especially when you add such eternal lyrics as "Too many women, and too many pills". 

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On a related subject, as I listen to Aussie radio, there's a notable lack of rap music. That's understandable, there's no ghetto culture here. The dark skinned folks are usually aboriginal, and there is a lot of racial angst towards them - about which I'll write another time. What I would think of as 'Africans' are usually exchange students from England, and they're usually well respected here as part of the intellectual class.  They generally talk in thick British accents, which makes whatever they currently call 'street talk' in the states a foreign tongue completely. Nobody here can understand it.  The Prince of Bel Air and the Romeo Show might as well have been from Mars.

What I do notice about Aussie music is that there is an emphasis on trance and techno for the last fifteen years or so.  Obviously ecstasy and rave dancing were very big problems here at one point in time (at least in Sydney, I don't know how much the rave culture spread to the suburbs, as it is historically an urban phenomenon).  It's interesting what you can find out about a culture by knowing what they request on the radio.