Vin Maskell
The Continental, Prahran, July 1996
I kissed my six year old daughter goodnight. I kissed my four year old son goodnight. I kissed my wife goodbye. “Home by midnight,” I said, and then drove over Westgate Bridge, across town and into narrow groovy Greville Street.
I did this five Tuesday nights in a row. My treat for the demands of being a home-dad. Rob Snarski of The Blackeyed Susans was doing five nights at The Continental, one of the best venues in Melbourne back then. Good sound, good sightlines, terrific bands. And audiences who were usually there for the music.
For five Tuesday nights I got to hear the great smooth Snarski voice as he sung Sheets of Rain and Dirty Water and This One Eats Souls, as he sung By Your Hand and I Need You and End of the Line, as he sung Glory Glory and American Sailors/Too Hot To Move, Too Hot To Think.
Snarski might have also sung Dylan’s I Threw It All Away, Elvis’ If I Can Dream, and Springsteen’s State Trooper.
I was there for all of those songs, there at a table near the stage with my all-night lemon squash. But mostly my weekly pilgrimage was for Ocean of You, a deep, dark tense song written by David McComb.
Sunlight is a rumour/That is lost in the stars/You can’t see the bottom/But you know it’s not far/This theory of love was never proven true/I’m out of my depth/In an ocean of you
I was there with plenty of other mid-week pilgrims, happy to be sitting on my own. And I was there for my sister Louise, who was overseas at the time. A dedicated, devoted, loyal, long-standing, passionate fan of The Blackeyed Susans, she would have been thinking of the Continental and the Snarski gigs while she was on the other side of the world.
Courtesy