Below is a great bit of reporting from the front line by veteran war correspondent David Nicholls. He gets up close to the action and even implicates himself in the ongoing corrupt proceedings.

A night out in young Melbourne town...

The Sailors, Rob Roy 10 May
One of the strange, strange things about the very strange Sailors is that they’re actually a really good band. They’re tight, their songs are full of
hooks, and they’re versatile musicians (that anyone can get those variety of sounds, and so much impact, out of such a silly-looking little silver
drumkit is continually astonishing). And yet their songs are all bizarre jokes about violent male homosexuality, with a tuppence ha’penny (or perhaps
that’s a little dubloon?) of misogyny thrown in.
My prescription for the Sailors is that for maximum shock value they use their talents to write, record and promote a super-slick, treacly Farnhamy
ballad along the lines of Angry Anderson’s ‘Suddenly’ and suck the average middle-aged mums ‘n’ dads in to their shows. Average middle-aged
mums and dads are, after all the last sector of the population who (a) can potentially be suckered in by pop ballads and (b) can potentially be
scared and upset by songs about some guy sucking some other guy off in a bar.
Then again, maybe the Sailors just want to entertain their people. And this is quite within their capability. And they’re so tight (wow, they’d make a
meal out of that description in their onstage banter) that their audience even loves the little cabaret touches e.g. the ‘Hector the homosexual
dancing monkey’ segment (‘he’s going to mime fellatio for you tonight!’).
Tonight was not just a Sailors show, though their particular talents were showcased throughout. It was also a chance to catch the inventive
interpretative styles of dance duo the Town Bikes, easily the best dancing I have ever seen in the Rob Roy and for that matter anywhere for years
and with the good taste to take on a rather remarkable Serge Gainsbourg number with their only gimmick some specially designed electric breasts.
It was also also an event called Slide Mania, during which 12 members of the guitar playing community got to jam onstage with the band in pursuit
of slide guitar nirvana. The band would play a 12-bar – they were pretty inventive with it – and luminaries including the excellent Kat Spazzy,
Andrew McCubbin, Chris Smith, Julian Teakle, Gareth Drones and Dan Luscombe all got up to play in various states of confusion. Judges were the
stand-in Governor General, Sir David Graney and Luke who used to book The Tote. General confusion reigned during the contest itself, but Sir
David as usual acting with the dignity of the occasion and his office brought a sense of order to the proceedings, giving almost everybody low
scores for a variety of very good reasons, the best of which was for one offender who played a fake penis (eg his guitar) with a fake penis (a dildo).
Top marks should have gone to Chris Smith for playing his guitar with a ladder, but somehow those marks didn’t come. Top marks should also have gone to Julian Teakle for his resemblance to Steve Harley and/or someone out of Sad Café. But that didn’t happen either. As it was, top marks deservedly went to my wife Mia Schoen, which is awfully embarrassing for me as an impartial reporter, but there you go. The Slide Mania trophy – a
delicately spray-painted toilet roll – decorates our mantelpiece forever.
Go forth, Sailors, and be fruitful.
David NIchols

Graney, ooh