The Ragged End Of Nowhere: Last Days In Oz

Ween's tour of Australia ended with 2 shows in Melbourne at the Forum and a slot at the Golden Plains festival in Meredith, which is a couple hours outside of Melbourne. The Forum is an old elaborate theater that's actually been split into 2 venues. We played the main room with all sorts of statues and whatnot looking all grandiose and yet rundown and haggard. The balcony is walled off into it's own all-seated theater which seemed to be used as a movie theater. There's all kinds of passageways and dark, closed off places, giving the place better than average character. Both shows here were top-notch and well-received. The last night ended with the whole band playing Claude's drum kit.

The Forum, pre crowd...

Mickey, pre-show...

The backstage at the Forum hasn't been so much as painted since it opened. There were all kinds of cool, old signs painted in the dank basement halls & stairwells. I like that kind of shit so I took some pictures...

A more typical vantage point for my world than Perth...

Chip works the smoke...

Johnny On the Spot...

Debating the encore...

The drum jam...

The day of the 2nd show I walked around Melbourne a bit and checked out the Nick Cave exhibit. Mickey couldn't get his head around the idea of an exhibit for a guy that's still alive and making records, but I think this made it more interesting as Cave was involved with choosing what went in and wrote and recorded stories about various items. It was a lot of photos and typical memorabilia type stuff but there was a bunch of really cool stuff that belongs to him that gave a different sort of insight into the man's creative process than a normal museum exhibit would. Pictures were tough to get but I got a couple.

A couple random Melbourne shots...

The Nick Cave Exhibit...

The last day we made the hour & a half drive out into nothingness for the festival. It was one of the most remote festivals I've done and one of the smaller ones too. It was a bit lacking in amenities but they made up for it with good vibes and an accommodating attitude. Saw Iron & Wine play which was good but I prefer the solo acoustic setup to the full band. The gig itself went well once it got going but the 30mins before were a nightmare getting ready. Typical festival. On the ride back into Melbourne you could see more stars than I've seen in years. No ozone to get in the way I guess. After one last night in a "serviced apartment", it was back to the airport and off to Hawaii.

The road to Golden Plains...