Author Archives: justin

JUSTIN’S ANNUAL REPORT
INCOME:
Newstart Allowance: $8429
The Bedroom Philosopher: $4009
Centre For Adult Education: $1101
Pinnacle Hospitality Agency: $236
Total: $13775
TAX DEDUCTIBLE STUFF
Centre For Adult Education: $40
The Bedroom Philosopher : $1293 (I even claimed my pyjamas and doona cover this year)
RESULT: Tax debt of $420
Money in wallet: $85
Money in Bank: $150
DEBTS:
Rent $310 a month
Food $70 fortnight.
Pre-paid mobile: $15 a call.
Nan And Pop Records: $500 (the account has been frozen, and turned in a HECS style, ‘you can pay us the rest when you make it big)
Joanna Mullins: $100 (We thought we’d ‘found’ a bag of spare money at the Kitten Club, where I did my comedy show, and subsequently loaded up on cocktails on the final night. Turns out that money was the club’s spare float. 6 months on and I still have to pay off the bar tab.)
Josh Earl: $40. (for belle and Sebastian ticket)
Tammy Nicholson: $60 (for a Supergrass ticket)
Chris Macdonald: $630 (money we lost on the Comedy Festival Show.)
Credit Card: Sitting comfortably on $1505
Interest paid per month: $24
HECS: $12500
Proposed date of first HECS repayment: 13/8/2055
INCOME:
$470 a fortnight. When I work my 2 shifts a week.
INCOME AFTER ATTEMPTING TO PAY EVERYONE BACK AND RENT AND FOOD
-$85
ASSETS:
Kelly the guitar: $1400 (she’s lost $300 from all the times I’ve dropped her this year. But I think the blood stains should add value)
Computer, Pentium 2: $150
Laptop from 1994: $80
CD player: $40
Sony Recording Walkman that sometimes works and always chews tapes: $30
Best of the Wombles record: $15000
Sesame Street Fever record: $280000
Collection of vintage suits and ties: $57900000
Alf doll: $800000000000000
Heart: $0
Brain: $0
Dimples: $0
One contact lens: $110

LIABILITIES:
Single bed sheets on a queen sized mattress
Smokes: Champion Ruby (great name for a child)
Broody people in the front row of my gigs

I had just finished my world record attempt on the civic horse carousel, the humour of which was questioned by ‘elvis’ on the riot-act.com website (are triple j the only people that find justin heazlewood funny…remember, they broke savage garden) I was feeling a little damaged and introverted and wondering why someone with the nerves of a marshmallow soaked in chamomile tea would expose themselves to the scourer-like glare of the Canberra media and public.

I was waiting for my bus, smoking (not trying to sound cool or condone smoking…it hurt my throat, but I was so unsettled I was just sucking the stuff as some kind of cheap medicine) and guzzling pineapple juice (it’s good for your voice) when a kid of about thirteen came up and asked me for money.

Do you have a couple of dollars so I can get a drink? He said. It’s really hot.
HAW! I said in my head, like Alf would have. Remember how Alf used to go HAW!?
Maybe one dollar for the bus, or a dollar fifty for a kidney transplant, but two bucks for a drink? Geez I feel guilty enough buying one for myself. Using my Nan’s practicality, I said
‘No mate, I’m really struggling myself, but do you want some pineapple juice?’
He declined.
HAW! Said the nan in my head…he can’t be that thirsty if he’s turning down an offer of free beverages.
I even went as far as to mumble that I didn’t have any diseases, but who’d trust anyone telling them they don’t have diseases?

After watching me for a while with cat like poise, he asked me why I wasn’t busking. I didn’t really have an answer.
‘You should busk,’ he said.
‘Yeah I should,’ I sighed. Opening one of the latches.
‘You could make some money.’
‘Yeah I could.’ This was the last thing I wanted. I’d just escaped from the scorching scrutiny of a Melbourne cup day publicity stunt, and here I was being challenged on the blue steel chair on platform four.
‘Go on,’ he said. He really wanted me to busk. So I did. I opened the case, and farted around on some chords, until committing to playing Kelly the deli girl. Within seconds a taller youth with a cap and an optimistic air had rocked along and thrown twenty cents in. By the end of the song, he’d thrown in twelve Winnie blue’s, saying he was trying to quit.
At the end of the song, the youth was impressed and the young kid grinned at him.
‘I told him to busk,’ he said proudly.
‘Do you want to be my manager?’ I asked, and gave him a dollar fifty to get a drink.
There are business opportunities everywhere.
If you can get the capital from your confidence.

The first gig I ever did was to a modest but receptive audience of three, in 1987. It was a place called the spare bedroom and Nan, Pop and Mum came all the way up the hall to see me. Being a child genius rockstar, before strumming a note, I asked the audience to stand with their backs to me. It sounds like one of those stories that gets passed around and snowballed into an urban myth, but believe it or not, it’s true, and possibly even more pretentious than Tool refusing to do an encore.

Okay, I was a bit shy.

The last gig I did was at the Cat and Fiddle pub in Balmain a couple of weeks ago. I was supporting a funk covers band, and without a degree in crowd dynamics, one could safely assume that most of the chirpy punters weren’t there to see me. Twenty seconds into the opening song, an acoustic version of Rockafella Skank, I knew things were bad. My attention grabbing song wasn’t grabbing. I was straining to hear myself over the chatter.

Of the fifty, only one guy was looking my way, and he needed to go to the loo. Inattentive audiences were nothing new, but this was a revelation. It was the noisiest apathy I’d ever heard. By the third song, my carefully crafted song words could have been the ingredients to tropical muesli. My engaging and original chord structures could be the hold muzak for Centrelink’s phone-line. I could go topless and knock over the microphone stand and no one would bat a brain-cell. I know the last part because I tried it. The microphone bit was accidental, but it didn’t matter anyway. I stopped the song, picked it up, and kept on playing, unable to compete with a plate of wedges and the story about Ann-Marie’s new car.

‘It’s a despicable industry.’

These words were said by Fred Smith to me last year in a pub, after I stammered out that I wanted to focus on my music and try and make a career out of it. He said them and took a sip of his whiskey. I sort of laughed, not sure how to react. Fred is a respected Canberra folk singer who gets compared to Billy Bragg and writes intense, intelligent emotional stuff with a sense of humour. He said you better get a mailing list son, you better get a real good one, and be prepared to play in front of very small audiences.

‘It’s a boutique industry.’ I said.

He liked that.

‘Yeah, boutique.’

I chose 2003 as the year to focus on my music, and make the transition from hobby to career. I’m careering alright. And in my mind I’m wearing the same tshirt everyday with Fred’s comment written on it. I look down every so often and think, ‘mmm….yes’

When I think of a despicable industry, I think of weedly high school kids out in the cold wobble boarding pizza specials to afternoon traffic. I think ‘poor buggers, getting paid eight bucks an hour no doubt, lagooned on a traffic island, like a pathetic Rolf Harris tribute, you must feel invisible.

Well folks, swap the wobble-board for a guitar, pizza prices for lyrics and you’ve got an original solo musician, doing pretty much the same thing but for less pay, and in most cases less impact.

‘$6 pizza, fuck I could go one right now.’

‘A waffly ballad about self doubt? Fuck, what time’s the DJ?’

I started writing waffly ballads in 1996. I’d record them sitting on the toilet (lid down) with my little walkman microphone blu takked to the indoor clothesline. (this is how Radiohead record, apparently) I’d give the cassette a title, and do the album artwork with textas and pencils. For my first album, I sampled the clapping and cheering from Nirvana’s unplugged, and, activating a separate stereo with my toe, played it in the background at the end of  my songs, sometimes with an obligatory “thank you.”

In 1998 I started writing songs that I’d let people hear, performing them at college music concerts, and impromptu gigs in the cafeteria. At the height of schoolyard fame, I staged my own lunch time benefit concert to raise money towards the $300 damage bill for the hall of my unsupervised 18th birthday party. My friends passed a hat around, and I raised $80.

I met Adam Forbes and Matt Kelly at uni in 1999 and we formed Urban Turban. Our first ever gig was at 9 o’clock in the morning, the day after Stomp, a massive all night dance party. In scorching Canberra sun a sleep depraved group of ravers threw paper at us and made requests for the theme from love boat and some song called ‘Joe’ that we’d never heard of.

Our next gig was at Gender Bender, a night where guys and girls get drunk and wear each other’s clothes. (sometimes in that order)  The theme was ‘the future’ and being earnest and naive we took this very seriously and wrote three overly clever songs about the future.

“…astroboy was set in 1995, I’ve never been to mars and cars don’t fly…”.

After a few seconds we realised that the aforementioned set of acoustic wittisisms, was, at best, ill advised. With bourbon fueled part time transvestites howling like buffoons, I couldn’t hear my guitar, Adam couldn’t hear his vocals, and Matt was battling with a girl trying to see up his dress with a plastic pitchfork.

With an equal balance of comedy and serious material, Urban Turban gigs were becoming increasingly bi polar for performers and audience. The dramatic juxtaposition was amplifying the instant gratitude of  humour, and the funeral-like pause that suffixed serious songs. Here is a quote from an Urban Turban interview that appeared in the student magazine I was writing for at the time. (yes, Adam and I actually sat around a tape recorder asking each other questions)

“serious stuff means more to me, but a crowd reacts better to the comedy. You notice that a crowd will perk up and tune into a funny song, mainly because it’s instantly accessible, you can understand the words, it’s funny, people love to laugh, whereas I think it’s just naturally harder for someone to get into a serious song. because the words are more poetic.”

In early 2000 The Harmonica Lewinski’s were born. We needed two bands. One for funny stuff and one for serious. In 2000 the campus band competition provided the perfect trial for the experiment, when we entered both acts. Comedy was the winner, with the Harmonica’s advancing into the ACT finals. One judge wrote: ‘guitars were sometimes out of time, but couldn’t tell if this was on purpose as some sort of musical protest.’

“The Harmonica  Lewinski’s then ran though a satire-laden set. Theirs was a bit like red faces without the gong but they get points for their rendition of denis leary’s ‘i’m an asshole’ (read: I’m an aussie.)”

Paul Berwick, BMA 152, march 9 2002

Somehow amidst the nervous breakdowns of uni deadlines, we recorded two CD’s for both bands and gigged infrequently. By late 2001 Matt Kelly had moved on, and Urban Turban was abandoned. It was decided that the funny stuff was more fun for the audience, and therefore more fun for the band. But underneath the beanies and the bedlam, were a pair of laconic wobble boarding clowns, forced to accept that even though they’d written the soundtrack to Jeff Buckley and Augie March’s lovechild, punters wanted parodies and farty noises.

The Harmonica Lewinski’s, (the band everyone had heard of but no one had seen), played their last gig in June 2002. Here is the review that appeared in Canberra streetpress, BMA:

“What began as a notion at UC in 1999 quickly led to their misunderstood musings cutting a swathe through university revues and campus band competitions, before ending on this night at their beloved local. Complimentary tissues were distributed for the final appearance of a duo who at very worst, provided much needed comic relief to a scene that can at times take itself far too seriously. Despite talk of ‘reunion tours’ the finality of the moment was palpable and it took a rousing rendition of and response to their crowd favourite ‘aussie’ to melt the ice.”

Daniel Craddock, BMA 158, June 1 2002

Never live with friends who are band mates. Adam and I parted company after an argument about ironing curtain linings, and didn’t talk to each other for three months. Our last communication was a package he sent containing three of my cassettes he’d found, and a 12 word message on a deposit slip.

After going solo I was picked up by Triple J’s Morning Show, writing one comedy song per week for six months. In September 2002 I opened for Unearthed in Canberra. 1300 people were there at 6pm for the free all ages show. After half an hour Robbie Buck had to drag me from the stage.

For my first gig after moving to Sydney, I totally mixed up my serious and funny songs. At one point I attempted to take the audience from Falling Awake, a song about depression, to Disco Chicken, a song about a disco chicken.  Afterwards I asked a couple if it worked. The girl said I had pulled it off by taking the audience with me, while my friend Catherine said  ‘yeah…nah…i reckon …’  The guy who booked me said the highs and lows worked and he wanted me to play every week.

Yay!

Hang on.

The Cat and Fiddle works like this: There’s a cover charge and you’re encouraged to provide your own audience. The first $100 goes to the sound guy, and the remainder is split up between the bands. Thing is, I don’t know anyone.and despite having national radio exposure, no one comes, so I can’t provide an audience. And neither could anyone else on the Monday night St Patrick’s day that I found myself wobble boarding to the other bands. We were asked to pay the sound guy out of our own pockets.

I had to ask the band who had traveled from Adelaide to spot me my share, before walking to the bus stop in light rain.

A quote I once heard on Parkinson about the entertainment industry:

‘Don’t do it if you really really really really want to do it.

Do it if you have to do it.’

And I just can’t turn my back on an audience.

The ACTION bus driver is being extra cheerful, and I can tell he’s from the old school, (if there is an old school of bus drivers, or even an underground urban scene) he has clearly not read sections 3.1.1 through to 3.1.9 of the ACTION guide to being a better bus driver.

“It is not your responsibility to engage with the customer in any way. Techniques such as smiling and especially conversing, are now seen as being out dated and only act to take up more time for you and the customer and ultimately endanger the promptness of your service.”

It goes on: “If you do feel an overwhelming desire to engage with the customer, you can do this by simply looking in their direction, (but never directly at them) and perhaps smirking slightly beneath your sunglasses. It is best to avoid a fully-fledged smile, however, or the customer may see this as an invitation to talk. If a customer asks you an open question such as ‘how are you today?’ simply answer them in a curt manner. Here are some suggestions: ‘Yeah.’ Good.’ Alright.’ Or sometimes even a small grunt will suffice.’

I am secretly blessing the man with shaved, balding hair and a wily grin.
‘How are you today mate?’ he asks with the gusto of a hundred Tiggers.
The way he frames the question makes me wonder whether he already knows me. Have I ever served him at the Canberra Labor Club?
‘I’m good mate.’ I say.
‘Anything exciting happening?’
He’s thrown me off guard. What a good question to ask. He’s been sitting in his den all day driving around the public servant pinball circuit, and now he wants to hear something exciting damnit.
‘I’m going home’ I say. How terribly disappointing.
‘What are you going to do when you get home?’ he probes. This is great, I am suddenly a contestant on his game show.
‘I’m having the day off.’

Later, in Belconnen, an Asian girl is telling her friend how to make sure you get off at the next stop.
‘Or you just take your shoe off and throw it at me’ says Larry (he needs a name)

Then, another Asian girl gets on the bus. In any standard reality, she would bypass the driver, sit down, and we would all erase it from our memories. But not today.
‘Where are you from? said loudly.
‘Malaysia,’ said quietly.
‘Yeah, do you reckon if I came over to Malaysia with you, you could show me around?’
‘Okay.’

And she sits down, and I still haven’t forgotten it, because Larry spun gold out of the stale air of that warm Sunday morning in July.

If there’s a bus in heaven I hope Larry’s driving it.

Hello Christmas ghost!
Hello
How’s things.
Christmassy.
No doubt.
Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?
Okay. How much.
Three for a dollar.
I only want two.
You can’t buy two.
Why not?
Look, the prize is really good, just buy three you tight arse.
Fair enough, whatever.
Have you got anything smaller?
No.
Shit man do you really expect me to cash in a hundred dollar note?
Why don’t you have more change?
Well I’m planning on going to the bank to get some a bit later, but I made a special effort to come over to you first because I understand how busy you are.

Okay?
Yes okay.
Don’t worry about the money, just take two tickets, geez.
What is it anyway?
What?
The prize?
It’s a years supply of pavlova eggs.
What’s that?
It’s like a little plastic egg shape and it has all the ingredients in it to make a pavlova. They’re really good. Really handy.
But I hardly make pavlova.
That’s okay.
How many is a years supply of pavlova?
Well, how much pavlova do you eat each year?
I don’t know. How the hell would I keep track of that?
Once a month?
I don’t know. No.
Once every six months?
Um, probably more like once a year, if that.
Then you’ll only get one egg a year.
One pavlova egg. That’s my prize?
Yes.
Go away.
Fine. Good luck with Christmas, you haunty prizz.
What did you just call me?
A jaunty whiz.
Damn right.

The beginning of 1999 was a smash and grab affair. On Valentine’s Day I left Tasmania to study at the University of Canberra. Eight days before I left I met a girl called Jacci at a party. Sometime after dawn we kissed. It was three days after I had unofficially broken up with my girlfriend of six months, Jade. Jacci was the same starsign as me, Gemini. We were born a year and one week apart. She barracked for the same football team as me, Carlton. She had the same colour eyes as me, bluish, and the same coloured hair, dyed blonde with dark brown roots. And her stepfather was my music teacher. On top of all this she had the same initials as me. JMH. Jaclyn Maree Holness. Justin Marcus Heazlewood. We sat on the front step and smoked her rollies under the moon, reminiscing about year twelve, impersonating ‘shazza’ and ‘simmo’ the bogans, and losing the plot with laughter.

What’s in a name? Jade had the same initials as me. JEH. But with Jacci I had hit three cherries on the same reel. JMH. I was a believer in signs and this was as intense as Mother Mary winking from the bottom of my teacup.

My name was Justin. But you never called me that. The only people allowed to call me Justin were Mum, Nan and Pop. Anyone else using the word obviously didn’t know me or the rules. This person would be ‘reprogrammed,’ or face immediate prosecution from the Nickname Police – my friends. If you were my friend then you used my nickname and only my nickname to address me. If you were to hear my real name then you would act surprised, as if you had forgotten that I had a real name. The only time it would be permissible to use my real name would be for the purposes of ironic humour, or to gain my attention. In any case, these devices had to be used sparingly. The Nickname Police were vigilant. They enforced the laws that stated:

1.1.1        Persons with a nickname shall be addressed by that nickname at all times.

1.1.2        Persons with a nickname shall address themselves by that nickname at all times.

If either of these laws was broken then it was the role of the Nickname Police to make sure the persons involved were brought to justice.

By the middle of 1999, I was a permanent resident of the ACT and a wanted criminal back in Tasmania. I faced charges for repeated offences. These included:

• Intentional misuse of a Christian name.

‘G’day, I’m Justin. How’s it going?’

• Providing false or misleading information to a member of the NP.

‘Do they call you Phonze over there?’

‘Sort of.’

‘What do you mean? Do you introduce yourself as Phonze?’

‘Um. Sometimes. Once. How’s the weather been?’

The NP wore black and white glasses. They could not compute the uncertainty in my voice. I contained a foreign and deconstructive weakness.

But they were not here. They were at home sipping coffees in front of familiar televisions murmuring safe news about quiet local towns. They rested their feet on sagging armchairs and picked fluff off fresh socks with wrinkly bath hands. They scratched their cheeks and delighted in the hypothetical.

‘You should say your name is Phonze.’

Canberra was their hypothetical world. I was an ideal. A comic book character. Able to swing into conversations like Tarzan, peel off my name with a grin, and exit with a Danny Duko strut. I was an expectation. A sultry caricature in the Planet Hollywood of their memories. Forever blowing smoke next to Richie Cunningham in a cheesy ‘legends’ painting. I was an enigma. A culmination of all the classic scenes. Memories of me ran like a showreel. A highlights package. A seamless collection of timeless one liners, finger snapping entrances and burning rubber exits.

I was: The Phonze

Here, I was tripping up stairs. I was a sidekick. Comic relief. Phonze seemed a clumsy title, not a cool one. I felt like one of the muppets. And worst of all, every single person would now want to ask ‘the question.’ Back home ‘the question’ was to be avoided at all costs. Asking it was as bad as calling me Justin, and indicated a clear naivety to our social codes.

‘So why are you called Phonze?’

‘Aaah…’

I begin with a raw stream of unprocessed disappointment. ‘The question’ which I have been asked many times before has once again reminded me of how disappointing the answer is.

‘Okay…’

This is used to buy myself some time while I consider whether or not to make up a more exciting story. I never do.

‘Well I was on the school bus in grade eight. And I was sitting next to a kid called Elvis.’

Surprise. Mirth. Elvis?

‘And then this other kid, for no apparent reason, goes ‘hey look, there’s Elvis and Phonze.’

Confusion. Bemusement. Is that it?

I pause for a moment to see if the other person appears satisfied by the story. They never do.

‘I think it was something to do with how I had my hair that day. It was all slicked back.’

Oh. Of course. Now I get it.

‘And it just stuck.’

Sometimes I add a twist.

‘Only I spell it P-H-O-N-Z-E. I’m disassociating myself from the traditional Fonz character.’

Oh that’s cute.

I now mumble something about wishing I had a better story.

Once, and only once, I found the courage to make up a story. I said I was on a school trip to Movie World and I was watching a ‘happy days’ stunt show. Henry Winkler, who was playing the Fonz had to jump over a house on a stunt bike. While he was doing the jump his hat blew off and landed right next to me. I picked up the hat and put it on. After the jump Henry rode up to me and said I could keep it. I was in a wheelchair at the time. So naturally, Phonze stuck.

They believed every word of it.

In Tasmania I got away with my nickname. The NP knew that deep down I loved it and were happy to keep fuelling the fire. To anyone new I acted nonchalant, as if Phonze was something I ‘tolerated.’ There’s an Australian modesty that requires you to at least pretend you hate your nickname a little bit. It was my understanding that the negative energy directed towards one’s own nickname was the fuel for its survival. This is where I believe Phonze transcended culture. This was more than a nickname. On that day in grade eight I had been baptised all over again, with a christian name chosen by the people for the people.

Now it was over. Canberra had not heard of Phonze. There were no NP assigned to this region. I was alone to fend for myself. I had always had someone around to speak for me. Now I was my own ambassador. This was my undiscovered country.

One day in the bar I told Toby, the President of the theatre society about the Phonze institution. He grew quiet. He was searching for the right words. The polite way to say:

‘No, I wouldn’t call yourself that.’

Jacci too, knew nothing of Phonze. She had encountered the NP but had grown defiant. She didn’t like Phonze. Did I mind if she called me Justin? No I didn’t. Canberra would not accept Phonze and neither would my girlfriend, who was now my central link with home.

It was official. Phonze was dead. The NP had lost their man.

A month later Toby started calling me ‘Spankees.’

Don’t ask.