Do Re Mi so far...

Do Re Mi, Dog Trumpet
Marrickville Bowling Club
1/3/19

Any much-loved band’s reunion gig/tour after ten, twenty – godsake, it can’t really be thirty years could it? – is often a fraught thing. Music can date, passion or talent may dim, the personalities involved may no longer gel for any number of personal or professional reasons.

This enthusiastically accepted Do Re Mi go-round has got around a number of those conditions in various ways. Thing is, the original lineup was a such a mix of individual players: the clattering drums of Dorland Bray, Stephen Philip’s often jagged guitar chop, Helen Carter’s fluid bass, and of course bitch goddess Deborah Conway – the presence, the attitude, the voice. As much as there was occasional chart success almost in spite of themselves, and they could fill the classic ‘80s beer barns – and I still can’t quite recall if the last time I saw them was at the Sydney Cove Tavern or the gloriously named Pickled Parrot – they were never quite wholly ’Strayan in music or manner. Always a bit more Gang Of Four than slab of VB.

Fast forward to this century, and Bray’s settled in New Zealand, but more importantly he and Conway have apparently had the classic full-tilt, friendship-ending, falling-out – so he’s a non-starter. And Philip steps away to make what seems an absolutely natural 21^st century move: Do Re Mi 2019 is all-female band. Of course it is. Bridie O’Brien is a solo artist in her own right, and adds some blues in the guitar noise to the staccato. Julia Day finds her way around those Rototom drums that still seem most surreally futuristic, and yet so oddly old-fashioned now.  Add sometime RocKwiz Orchestra keyboardist, the luminous Clio Renner – with her modern technology adding depth and those little flourishes like Parsons' brass being so “…pealing, appealing…”, as the song would have it. Carter’s bass retains its confident strut. And Conway? She just is. Her creative life hasn’t stopped, through that delightfully perverse solo career to the rich storytelling she now does with life and music partner Willy Zygier. And there remains so very few who can shift gears so seamlessly from seductive to “Oh look, could you just fuck off…” like she can.

And so, the faithful gather – and not entirely the correctly inner-west hiply chic Boomers and Gen-X’ers some might have expected. Yes, you – young fellow with the asymmetric haircut! Are you some musician’s offspring, or an adolescent out of his time? And get off the damn lawn.

And if you want to talk timeless - yet utterly identifiable – noises, even if you never heard of Dog Trumpet that idiosyncratic part-Hawaiian, part-psychedelic, part-high plains twang could only be Reg Mombassa’s guitar. Then there’s songs that could just about soundtrack the sometimes askance visuals of his or bandmate and brother Peter O’Doherty’s paintings. Throw in Marrickville local national treasure Bernie Hayes’ rich bass playing and third part of the harmony and it’s a sometimes deceptively alluring tuneful racket. Slipping in a final Beserk Warriors from ye olde Mental As Anything canon and everyone’s most comfortable beneath the perfectly ’70s-era copper-roof.

And on to more of everything old is new again. On what’s planned to be the last performance of this resurrection, Do Re Mi settle into their work. Maybe even a little smoother and assured than remembered. But then, just to throw most of us off-balance, the words of ‘pubic hair’ and ‘anal humour’ are recognisable - but that’s not quite the song we know. The real trainspotters identify it as the early original punk-rather-than-funk take of Man Overboard - Conway delivering it with suitable mischief. Surely they're not going to be as deliberately perverse and iconoclastic to not do their most eternal song as the crowd wants it? Puzzlement ensues. For a while.

But other things come as advertised on the tin. Politics, personal and international: Theme From Jungle Jim, King Of Moomba, Idiot Grin. Muscular and wiry. Between songs, Conway is typically imperious and nervously garrulous. Subjects covered including being the sound but not the vision of ‘80s youf TV gem Sweet & Sour, her own dancing ability or lack thereof, pashing Mike Willesee (yes, really…), pushing the merchandise sales of tour souvenir t-shirts and tea towels, pondering a crowd-funding campaign to get the original band’s lost third album released (Yes please!), and a sincere delight as the crowd knew where to sing along with Warnings Moving Clockwise.

So, by about three-quarters of the way through we would left satisfied, if not thrilled, with the nostalgia. But then it all kicks up. Man Overboard comes in its more familiar guise, and the voices raised at the title refrain comes with a thousand years of gender roles pushing it. And bugger me, that is still a helluva bassline.
So to the towering, rich longing of Adultery. Beside that fact it invariably puts something in my eye, this really should have been the song that made them. It’s a glory. Smart and thoughtful and provocative all at once. And still stands up better than something dating from 1987 has any right to.

And it could only finish with the even more plaintive memories of romance that is The Happiest Place In Town. Other eyes nearby get something in them, as above. There’s clapping, cheering, bows are taken, hugs are exchanged, and post-mortems of music, relationships, and other bands you loved then and now start at the bar almost immediately thereafter.