It's 2010 and I still can't believe how many people I talk to who have never heard of The Mac, let alone set foot in it.

Located at the back of Central Station and with upstairs accommodation, you get a few country bumpkins setting foot inside Sydney's home of funk - which is exactly what this is. Free funk and blues/roots music, most nights of the week barring the anti-social ones. In a country where it seems there's more and more cover charges for worse and worse cover bands (oh they played Mr Jones and Two Princes - what a surprise) - The Mac is a haven for original music from talented musicians. Some of my favourite acts like Ray Mann, The Bakery and Extended Family are usually playing here, and the only cover band I can stomach Johnny G & The E Types which plays Stax era Booker T covers with such gusto that Otis Redding would sit in if he was in town. And that's the other secret, thanks to some well connected bookers, The Mac often offers free secret shows from visiting internationals, like Jon Cleary or one of Harry Connick Jr's horn players.

The newly renovated and opened venue upstairs, The Raval probably deserves it's own entry - but it's such a secret, great spot I'm afraid to talk about it too much for fear more people will discover it. It's like the parlour room of an old rich French uncle from the 19th century - all antique couches, chandeliers and stained glass. This is the kind of venue The Basement wishes it was - all class. It's such a good venue you don't care who's playing - you just want to take interstate guests their to drink absinthe and impress them and pretend it's your own private club. Make any excuse to go check it out.

Oh and if you need another excuse to visit - they brew their own beer!

Okay, so Spectrum is nothing special. The sound is crappy, the conditions often cramped and the beer range average.

But when it opened however (was it 2003 or 2004?), it was nothing short of revelatory. The term "indie club" have never really been heard before in Sydney, and punters were confused. "A club? That plays nothing but indie? Surely they must have a few nights a week of hard house? Hmphwhwt!" people would remark.

It really helped kick-start an era in Sydney. And god bless it, it hasn't changed since.

Since the closing of The Hopetoun Hotel it's also pretty much the default small venue for up-and-coming and unknown interstate bands.

The reason I'm picking it however, is it's reliability. There's pretty much nowhere else to go out on a Friday or a Saturday night for a cheap, late night dance with a decent crowd (i.e. not all rich 18 year olds). And the music policy, while at times erratic, usually centres on lots of cheeky old retro, and you can usually be guaranteed at least one Bowie song. I DJ'd here once and basically just played The Rushmore soundtrack - and the crowd lapped it up.

Viva le Spectrum!

I recently got back from 15 months away, and one of the signs that the Sydney music scene had actually improved, despite the closure of several iconic venues, was the emergence of the Melbourne-esque, obscure small bar phenomenon: with venues like the unsignposted Chingalings, and the subject of this entry: Good God Small Club (sub-heading: late night danceteria).

Located in the heart of the Spanish quarter, some genius had the idea of taking the backroom of the La Campagna salsa dance hall and turning it into a very small club. And in a city fascinated with mega-pubs like Ivy and super-clubs like Home, it was a refreshing change. Not nearly as refreshing as its music policy, which focused on bringing in some of Sydney's better music nerd promoters for nights focusing on progressive niche genres like dubstep, Baltimore Miami whateveryoucallit (Wamp Wamp), 1940's-1960's lo-fi obsure-ana (Jingle Jangle). As well as regular club nights, it also welcomed small-sized hype bands doing somewhat secret shows (Hawnay Troof, Spank Rock). Adding to the mystique, the entrance was literally behind another dance floor - you'd have to walk past salsa-ing middle aged women to get to it. The size of the club was also one perfect little room, with a tropicana decorated DJ booth and a good range of not-too pricey beers.

I was hoping to hold my next Twist And Shout 60's Dance Party there. I emailed them last week hoping and never heard back. Now I know why.

Throw Shapes is reporting that GoodGod has mysteriously closed and the guys who run it have had no explanation and are being denied access to their space. This isn't the first time an indie dance venue has been suddenly closed in the Spanish Quarter - anyone remember when The Spanish Club got shut down from having music when someone realised they didn't actually have an entertainment license? Perhaps this is the same deal, and maybe La Campagna just happens to be a Spanish restaurant with a dance floor.

Whatever the story is behind GoodGod's sudden closure (and whether or not it's permanent - hopefully not), it makes Sydney look like a backwards nanny state - if the movement is away from DIY venues trying new things and towards superclubs that force you to give your biometrics.

To put in perspective how backwards Sydney's licensing laws are, read this article from the Toronto Star - a great city where they have no problem with restaurants having dancefloors and DJs, just as long as the venues serve enough food for a light snack and stop serving booze at 2am.

Who knows when GoodGod will be back - but hopefully this isn't the end of the small club phenomenon in the harbour city.

After the closing of the Hopetoun and countless other venues, yet another Sydney music institution is under threat from gentrification and developers: the Abercrombie Hotel.

Arguably the smelliest dance floor in the state, the Abercrombie was nothing but an ugly, under-utilised "old mans drinking" facility of the six o'clock swill age, attached to the site of a former inner city brewery and on a very busy street corner - Abercrombie and Broadway.

It was however in a great location for students, literally just across the street from the University of Technology and down the road from the Uni of Sydney. Being on a main intersection also meant it could trade late into the night. It wasn't long until promoters discovered this smelly, nostalgic dive bar and turned into a hipster dance hangout - and it started with niche electronic music parties.

The Foreign Dub DNBBQ crew were the first guys to seize this grungey smelly den for one of their all-day, all-night jungle-music-and-cooked-meat-athons (sometime around 2001 I'm guessing), bringing in crowds to dance the night away in the carpeted bar and the outside beer garden (and of course to try and navigate between the two via the incredible small single staircase). Uber Lingua's world music fiestas soon followed, as did the anti-establishment performance night Creative Dissent.

But the Abercrombie remains synonymous with one night: Purple Sneakers. Named after a You Am I song and with a lineup generally stretching around the block, the sneakers became Sydney's see-and-be-seen Friday night for the Strokes/Franz indie uni student generation, getting to the point where wanker celebrities like Andrew Stockdale from Wolfmother were turning up to hang out, non-professional DJs like Chris Taylor from The Chaser came to spin tunes, local bands did DJ sets, record companies launched albums and many, many drunken pick ups took place. It's not much of a stretch to say that for indie kids, there really is nowhere else to go out late on a Friday night in Sin City.

Being down the street from my work means I've hung out at The Abercrombie far more than I should have for someone with a full time job, and looking back it was more than a venue, but rather a microcosm of my whole sordid twenties. At the Abercrombie I've kissed girls, reunited with old friends, cried my heart out, performed slam poetry, thrown up in the bathroom, danced like a crazy man to The Who at dawn, been ushered into a VIP room during a police shut down and been called a "good lookin' man" at the bar by Aussie rock legend Tim Rogers. We even had a work Christmas party there once, complete with professional decorations (but still the same godawful stench mix of sweat, beer, piss and puke).

Hopefully the Abercrombie will be back - with a new, less smelly carpet. Until then, Sydney seems to have run out of dodgy old man pubs for hipsters to reclaim for dance parties. What are we to do?

In what could actually be the straw that broke the camel's back of me deciding to move to Melbourne, The Hopetoun Hotel has closed suddenly and appears to be on the market, with the likelihood of it re-opening as an intimate music venue looking pretty damn unlikely.

Current uni-aged indie hipsters might have trouble believing me, but around the turn of the millennium, when both DJ culture and pokies were at their peak, i distinctly remember there were only two or three decent music venues left in Sydney where you could go see local independent bands seven nights a week - the Basement, the Annandale and The Hoey. Having survived that onslaught, it makes the sudden closing this week all the more unbelievable.

All throughout my twenties, the Hoey was always worth going to no matter what band was playing - as it always guaranteed a decent vibe, a laid back local crowd, intelligent music, cheap entry and a decent range of beers (including three Coopers on tap). On a quiet night you could sit on the floor with a drink in your hand - on a busy night you could never get to the bar and the dance floor was packed and sweaty. For years it was home to the Sunday electronica night Frigid, itself also a Sydney institution.

My favourite memories of the Hoey (in no particular order)

• The Hive (aka Baggsmen) + Pivot, winter 2001. Also, the Baggsmen's cinema shows playing along improvised music to movie scenes from Peter Seller's The Party and Indiana Jones.
• Also in 2001, rocking up randomly to see some up and coming band called Faker, which my friend Chris just happened to be in at the time.
• Jason Molina solo - frustratedly couldn't get his guitar to work for like 10 minutes, but managed to win over the crowd anyway
• Spod + Bluejuice on Christmas Eve, 2004, which also featured some birthday cake-wielding gatecrashers.
• The fact it welcomed great Melbourne bands that probably couldn't get a gig anywhere else in Sydney, like post-rockers International Karate and Laura, etc
• Sarah Blasko covering Kermit the Frog's The Rainbow Connection at a friend's private 30th.
• Rocket Science, September 2008 - last gig I saw before I left Sydney was at the Hoey, and it rocked out.
• seeing Thirsty Merc back when they were simply called "thirsty".
• Waiting For Guinness' annual anti-Homebake night crunk-jazz fests
• The Hauntingly Beautiful Mousemoon passing out improvised scrap metal percussive instruments to the crowd while also cooking pikelets onstage.

R.I.P. The Hoey.



Above: Betchadupa featuring a very young Liam Finn - onstage at the Hoey - Feb 5th 2003.





Above: A very early incarnation of the international prog-tronic exports Pivot onstage at the Hoey - winter 2001?

Sorry so many of these things are in the inner-west, but hey, it is the COOLEST part of Sydney.

Every Thursday for as long as I can remember, omnipod piano maestro and Sydney identity Chuck Yates has held court at the unpretentious local the Bald Faced Stag, playing three sets of impro-heavy trad jazz, with a rotating array of horn players, including on at least one occasion - no less than three trombonists. For free. Til very late. Usually with a free supper at midnight. Needless to say, Sydney's starving students and jazz-starved music fans ate it up - literally. One of the best free nights out Sydney had on offer, last thursday was supposedly the last of Yates' nights at the Stag. But i get the feeling he'll back.

Rumour has it one Thursday after playing a set of their pop-heavy hits at the Annandale, the multi-talented Thirsty Merc then wondered up the road to the Stag and played a jazz set, which I reckon probably would have been more enjoyable than hearing them play Thirsty Merc songs.

The Bald Faced Stag is at 345 Paramatta Road, Leichhardt.

NOTE: I leave Sydney in a week to go live in Canada for a year, so don't expect any new entries for a while. I started this blog as a piss-takey way of remembering the things i love about Sydney, and hopefully despite increasing commercialisation and over-crowding, most of these things will stay so i have something to look forward to coming back to. Rock over Sydney!

Okay, so I'm biased. I've done some volunteer video editing on the Underbely festival the past two years and i'm a huge fan. Melbourne has long been considered Australia's home to the arts and creative expression, but the Underbelly Festival (held annually at Carriageworks) certainly gives Melbourne a run for its money in terms of creativity on offer and coldness of temperature inside the venue.

It works like this: 40+ collectives comprising of 250+ artists work for 2 weeks on various new collaboations that premier during the 2 day festival. The festival is a visual and aural orgy, and in typical Sydney fashion - there's way too much to do, too many places to be and not enough time. For those cash-obsessed Sydneysiders who devalue both art and artists, i dare you to come down and not be blown away and/or inspired by the sheer amount of hard work, unique collaborative process and sheer creative thinking that goes into the dozens of various, indescribable art projects crammed into two weeks work. Oh and there's beer and most of Newtown there too.

Underbelly is on this weekend, July 12-13 at Carriageworks. Tickets thru ticketbastard or on the door.
for more info: underbelly.com.au.

The only pub that has more propagandist billboards attached to it than downtown Baghdad during the Saddam Hussein regime (somehow branded by Coopers, Jagermeister and Cog!?!?), the Annandale was one of only about three music venues in Sydney to survive the pokies/DJ explosion of the late 90s. Just.

Since getting music back in 2000, it's slowly become Inner-Western Sydney's busiest music venue. Located just down the Great Western Highway, and right near Stanmore McDonalds and with plenty of street parking, it's hardly an inner city den of bohemia or progressive electronica.

But it does have live music most nights of the week, and as the profanity-labelled t-shirts remind us, it is a Sydney institution. Most Sydney gig-sluts will happily lie about the night they saw Elliott Smith, Jet or The Dandy Warhols here.

It's loud rock (and the odd hip-hop gig), and in a sign that it's both pure Sydney and pure angry, the beer is served in schmiddies made of plastic.

The sound might be average, it might be in the middle of a cultural desert and the crowd might vary from boring to mediocre, but we've all had a great night out at the Annandale at somepoint in our life.

The Excelsior in Glebe was home to some of the happiest memories of my early 20s. As an underemployed TAFE student at the time, this was the place a poor person could rock up and get a great nights entertainment. Their regular rotation of free bands included many future stars and under-rated talents, including Peregrine (who had like a 3 year residency from memory), Melanie Horsnell (before she did TV ads), Andy Clockwise (before he was cunt), Bertie Blackman (back when she was still a folk singer), Panda before they became Extended Family and starting selling out the Basement, Paul Greene, Tim Ireland and The Hands. Wednesday (and then Thursday) nights were programmed by Brett, the lead singer of Peregrine, and such was his friendly demeanour, he could convince anyone who popped in to jump on stage and join in on a song. Rai from Thirsty Merc would sing a future hit on a solo acoustic, Peta Morris would re-imagine her Paul Mac with Wesley Carr, Panda would lay down a 20 minute version of Rollercoaster that would blast into outerspace, ditto Peregrine with a drunken train-wreck of the Dave Matthews jammer Jimi Thing. Bertie had Andy Clockwise on drums, and has never sounded better or stronger. And it was always free and welcoming, and the music was generally always amazing. Nights ended either at some stranger's house party or the Different Drummer.

To be a teenager in Sydney in the 1990s was to be a fan of You Am I. To not be, was heresy and inexcusable.

You Am I is Sydney.

They sing songs about the Town Hall Steps, drinking beer, taking girls home and the Glebe Island Bridge. Without them, Sydney club night institution Purple Sneakers would be nameless, as would new band Dead Letter Chorus. To see them on a good night is to be reminded why Rock and Roll will never die. They tried to break in America and failed, but inspired fly by night bands like The Vines and Jet who did it for them. They opened for Nirvana!!

They mix punk, grunge and country into a timeless mix, as old school as Sydney's old sandstone buildings.