Sue O’Brien
The Candy Tavern, Brunswick, late 1980s
It was around 1987 and the band was called Double Fantasy, which curiously had three members – Irene and Susie and long-suffering keyboard player, Scotty.
Double Fantasy did gigs at least two nights a week back then and one of the highlights was a Friday night residency at The Candy Tavern in Brunswick. The interior décor of the pub was predominantly pink with garish nylon carpet. The bar and dance-floor were lavishly trimmed with reflective chrome requiring constant polishing and generating a fair amount of static electricity.
At a typical gig vocalists Irene and Susie would be decked out in full-on 1980s garb – stilettos, multiple shoulder pads and enormous hairpieces. Their keyboard player, Scotty, would calmly put up with the girls’ antics, including taking twenty minutes to finish a song as they held the audience captive with their humour.