By PHIL JARRATT
IF the performance photo with this column looks a little blurry, you should have been around 25 years ago, when these guys first started rocking Noosa! Everything was blurry!
Along with the great Barry Charles, Doc Span and Ross Williams were the live soundtrack of Noosa in the early ’90s, fun-loving dudes who could light up a room with their infectious brand of Chicago blues and down and dirty rock and roll. They brought the house down when they played at my 40th birthday party at Palmers (now Berardo’s) a year or two back. Or perhaps it was 1991. I can’t remember. I have a disease called CRAFT.
Then when we started a magazine called Noosa Tatler (soon changed to Noosa Blue when the cease and desist letter came) we had a party to launch every issue and Doc and Ross usually played for our pie-eyed advertisers. Eumundi Lager used to take the back page ad and pay us in beer. Ah, those were the days.
So it was old home week when Doc and Ross rocked Cafe Le Monde last Sunday afternoon, and there were a lot of familiar old party pigs in the audience loving it. Even Sean the Prestidigitator made an appearance, minus the tux.
Of course neither Doc nor Ross has been idle these many years, playing together and separately at gigs and blues fests all over the country, including last year’s Noosa Jazz Festival, as well as producing a prodigious output of recordings. And when not playing, Ross teaches jazz guitar at the Queensland Conservatorium.
When I first met them, Doc and Ross had just started playing together, following Doc’s arrival in Australia after many years of eventful travel. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, like Frank Sinatra, Doc got his musical start playing the accordion in his grandmother’s saloon. In the ’60s he made Chicago his home and learned the harmonica at blues clubs like the Checkerboard Lounge and Ma Bea’s on the west side, while working as a paramedic at the notorious Cook County Jail. After a stint in the US Navy, he formed his own band, Two Fisted Blues, and made Santa Fe (New Mexico) his base for touring the Rockies to Alaska, playing hundreds of gigs at Rocky Mountain ski resorts.
While they have each followed different musical paths, the sheer enjoyment these two great bluesmen take in playing together would be worth the admission ticket alone, if they charged admission at Cafe Le Monde, which they don’t. If you’ve been washing your hair for the last 25 years and have failed to catch up with Doc and Ross, do yourselves a favour (as old mate Molly is wont to say) and catch their next Sunday sesh at Le Monde, coming up 1 March.
China goes surf crazy
The name might not mean much to you, but in Hainan Island, China, Tie Zhuang is a household name, being the Chinese national longboard champion. I’ve been in contact with TZ (as he’s known) over the past few weeks, and he emailed excitedly this week to tell me he’d been granted a visa to represent his country at the Cricks Noosa Festival of Surfing. We’re excited too, because although the Taiwanese have become regulars in Noosa, this is our first representative of the People’s Republic.
China is a young surfing nation but it has gained a lot of favourable publicity in recent years with international pro tour events being held there. Australia’s Harley Ingleby just picked up his second world longboard title there late last year, and is looking forward to renewing competition with TZ.
Meanwhile, in last week’s Samsung Galaxy Hainan Pro on the women’s world qualifying tour, a 12-year-old cutie named Keying Dong became the first Chinese surfer to enter a QS event. Dong was one of the event wildcards and was unfortunately eliminated in her first heat … but with this style, she’ll be back.
