JUMP by BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. Story by Louise Maskell

Union Hotel, Brunswick. September 2024.

Footy is not a big thing in my life. Not really. But when the team from your hometown is in the preliminary final you do take an interest.

That’s why I picked a barstool with a perfect view of the stage and a view of the TV screen off to my right.

Had I ever done such a thing before? I don’t know.

Was it sheer coincidence that the one person in the room I invited to share my table was … from the same hometown?

The first band were doing their first ever gig. But all three were very experienced musicians and two of them were people I had known for years.

I had noticed the slim baseball-hatted figure in the bar, when he was looking for somewhere to prop with his glass of wine and packet of crisps.

Turns out, like me, he was trying to find that sweet spot where you could see both the TV and the band. I had that sweet spot.

When he moved away from the TV and closer to the stage, but right behind me and in front of the main door, I swept up my discarded cardigan and offered him my spare seat: “Do you want a seat? My friend’s not coming any more,” I gestured towards my phone.

My new acquaintance said: “I’m only staying for the first set.”

So we listened to The Upshots do their first gig. And chatted between songs.

We talked bands and venues. The Go-Betweens, The Triffids.

The Blackeyed Susans.

The Continental.

The Lyrebird Lounge.

“Which is your favourite Blackeyed Susans period?”

I ponder this very tough question and eventually answer: “All Souls Alive.”

We talk Bruce. I even show him one of my Stereo Stories about Springsteen. Not all of them. I don’t want him to think I have a one-track musical obsession.

He tells a wonderful  story about having splurged on general admission tickets for one of Springsteen’s AAMI Park shows … but  having to leave after an hour into the three and a half hour show because he had a gig across town in Coburg. As in, he walked in, up on stage and began playing guitar.

We soon learned that we came from the same city.

Grew up there.

Went to school there.

We compare addresses. The addresses of the houses we lived in a long time ago. For me, it was 1983, the last time I lived in Minerva Road. For Pete, it was at least 20 years ago, 2002.

That was when he whipped out his phone and zeroed in on the street. Malvern Grove.

“Is that the one on the angle, that intersects Minerva Road?”

“Yes”

“Where there’s a milkbar on the corner?”

“Yes, but it’s been an interior design shop for the last few decades.”

“Where were you?”

“Minerva Road. 165, to be exact.”

I try to remember the name of the street that I could see from my rooftop attic window.

“Starts with a C?”

Calder St. But we have to look at the map again to realise it was Sydenham Avenue that I could see from that tiny window. The one I sometimes climbed out of. On to the roof. For a bird’s eyeview of my suburb. His suburb.

In a bar 70-odd kilometres from Newtown, two sad-sack sometime footy fans but always music fans discover they grew up less than a kilometre apart.

But there’s a bigger gap than that to negotiate.

We chat on and on. He stays for the second set. And The Upshots pack up.

One of the musicians from the second band arrives and we exchange warm hugs. I introduce my new friend.

Finally he says he better go home, he hasn’t eaten, and he’s had a few wines.

I don’t argue. I stay for the second band.

And that gap?

The distance from my house to his?

No. Something much harder to bridge than the gap from Brunswick to Balaclava.

Nineteen  years.

 

 

Stereo Story #808

Footnote: Cats lost, Lions won. The rest is history.