Attacked by Rundy Bum

The Zoo was always one of my favourite music venues in Brisbane. Intimate without being poky, run-down without being grotty, imbued with a pleasant, laid-back vibe, and being swathed in ancient timbers, capable of fairly decent acoustics too. One of my fave ever gigs there was a Black Keys show with Craigos and Yuri back in 2003 (day Nine of the Twelve Days of Deafness) - for once the King of Seed was cashed up and didn't need us to buy him drinks, the night was long and prosperous and the tunes, given that Thickfreakness was on heavy rotation in the Chateau Dodgy Evo III kitchen, rockin' and well-received. Also saw Even, Dallas Crane and the Hoodoo Gurus (playing as the Persian Rugs) go round on the Zoo stage. Speaking of which, the Zoo Stage used to be the local produce stage at Livid, which along with the place's prodigious gigography goes to show the reputation the place had for unearthing and supporting young local Brisvegan talent over the years - which as a glance at their upcoming attractions page indicates, continues to this day. Although Peter Combe - yes, that Peter Combe, the ABC-for-kids songwriter from the '80s - may not necessarily fit the profile.

The Zoo was and remains a fairly idiosyncratic, even eccentric performance space. The ladies who established the venue shied away from 'testosteronal' acts, never allowed tobacco products to be sold there (even before the advent of smokefree laws) and claimed the place to be haunted by friendly ghosts - presumably not Michael Kasprowicz unless he was more of a regular than his cricketing commitments would have suggested. However the most infamous statute on the Zoo books was that they refused to sell rum. The logic behind this: 'Too much sugar makes some people hyper.' While this is rather cute in an unexpectedly motherly way - one wonders whether they also prohibited the sale of raspberry Vodka Cruisers on the premise that red cordial causes ADD - it is a fairly remarkable position to hold in the state which runs on distilled molasses extract. Particularly as it's possibly the Large Amounts of Alcohol involved which might also contribute some level of causation to the resultant Acting Up and Punching On.

Rum's had a reputation for fuelling stupidity since the days of Caribbean piracy - a marketing Rainbow Connection which has been exploited to this day - and of course the early days of the convict settlement of New South Wales, where the local troopers were paid in currencies including rum, sodomy and/or the lash, with fairly predictable consequences. To be fair Bligh was an insufferable cock and had prior form anyway. However, how much of rum's own prior form feeds into its reputation as fightin' juice is an interesting point. I don't believe this has been investigated scientifically - and I emphasise that last word, as a lot of public health type studies are correlative and speculative (ie just because two things correlate, eg drinking rum and punching on, doesn't mean that rum causes punching on - you could claim just as legitimately that people who like to punch on could be said to prefer rum. Correlation AIN'T causation, no matter what those agenda-pushing arseclowns might like to have you think.)

And if sickly-sweet levels of sugar encourages people to go silly, what of one of the compulsory drink rounds in our last departmental pub crawl (by which I mean that it was definitely NOT an official departmental function, no sirree Bob - it just so happened to involve most of the interesting people from the department) which involved each team needing to knock off a round of Jager bombs. And our helpful drink-buying team member (actually the GF of one of our teamsters) decided to get doubles. That's multiple shots of Jagermeister in a pint of Red Bull. You may as well skol a bottle of sugar syrup and inject raw ethanol into your brain. Even so, even after swilling half a litre of what tasted of liquefied bubble gum extract, I didn't feel particularly like punching anyone - other than maybe the bloke who came up with the challenge in the first place. Though the subsequent round of chasers - the next drink challenge, pints of Guinness (!) - probably slower the metabolism somewhat.

What was my point? Good question. Rum may have a reputation for reasons it doesn't deserve. Then again maybe it does. In any case, my fifteen minutes are up. Good night.

The Doctor is OUT.