Mike Noga: A quiet Saturday night in a quiet bar in Darlinghurst.

Mike Noga

Golden Age Bar

With a couple of exceptions, Sydney is still working out the ‘small bar’ thing. That’s partly due to the ongoing cage match between a council trying to keep some culture in the inner-city and a state government intent on selling off not only any building with human activity, but the park opposite as well, and even the bus that got you there.

And some blame could be sheeted to the bars themselves, where the musical entertainment provided is often just to be background music to deciding which single-origin spiced pilsener you want with your artisan cheese platter. But sometimes you want more than old mate yowling Dylan covers, or noodling like George Benson. Someone to entertain and engage. Someone like Mike Noga.

The random nature of a Saturday night means there’s a crowd where some know all the words from his genuinely terrific solo work, a proportion having to be told he used to be the drummer in The Drones, and a few who might need explaining that “See, there’s a band called The Drones…”. But armed with only the guitar his dad bought him, a $5 harmonica (“Yeah, really should have got the $30 one…”), and a tambo on the floor to add occasional percussion, Noga is chatty from the little mirrored box with a mirror ball that is The Golden Age stage. He offers samples of his often downbeat muse: the mortal regret of I Will Have Nothing silences the chatterers, chunks from his churning latest album King like the sadly jaunty All My Friends Are Alcoholics – always striking as an interesting choice to play in licensed premises – and “Irish murder ballad by a guy from Tasmania…”, Eileen.

There’s also the danger and delight of such intimate venues: the punter at one of those almost-on-the-stage tables having the hiccup attack right in the quiet bit of M’Belle. Noga stops, laughs with her, soldiers on. Or the lady further back who asked for something a bit more upbeat, and is rewarded with the swing of Down Like JFK as the 35^th president considers taking the convertible may not have been the best of ideas.

He finishes with King’s closer, the human need and longing of This Is For You, and most everybody – even those likely who had no idea of who or what was on offer – probably considered this a good way to spend a Saturday night.