On The Closure Of The Tote

Monday, January 18, 2010

For Bruce ... and Queenie.

The effect of the passing of any person, place or thing always seems to follow the same pattern with me. 

The first few days are all pragmatic pronouncements and stoic resolve. And then, when all the ceremonies are over, the sadness gradually takes hold. It seems, sometimes, as though memory is more powerful and constant than reality. I expect that this is the result of its intangibility and remote, dream-like nature. We tend to subconsciously shape and re-shape it, in order to make sense of what has already clearly passed and is now beyond our control.

Over the years, I’ve managed to train myself to develop very deep and strong attachments to people, but never to places or things. Part of this, I suspect, is some kind of preparation for a career as a musician, or maybe it has come about due to the fact that I have moved several times in my life and each time divested myself of a few more possessions in order to ease the load.

So it was not without some surprise that I found myself suddenly deeply saddened by the recent loss of one of Melbourne’s iconic live music venues, the Tote Hotel in Collingwood.

It’s incredibly easy to mock rock ‘n’ roll because more often than not, it manages to make such a complete mockery of itself. The posturing and the primping! The sometimes faux-arrogance and practised rebellion! Rock ‘n’ roll, as a fashion and a style, has a lot to answer for.

I’ve always considered myself and The Associates to be outsiders, especially to the rock ‘n’ roll scene.

We’re not, strictly speaking, a rock ‘n’ roll band and I am by no means a rock star. Perhaps part of me would once have liked to be such, but the years have shown me, in way or another, that whatever I think I’m built for, is not what I am.

This is actually a source of comfort but it also feeds an underlying feeling of isolation, because there is no scene which we could possibly be a part of. And so it makes it hard to build. But it’s not like we have a choice in the matter. So we push on, vainly attempting to become our own scene.

The Tote was primarily a rock ‘n’ roll venue. That’s the core it was built on and that’s the reputation it carried. Gritty, dirty, lean, smart and completely unapologetic and unashamed, it was a bastion of all that rock ‘n’ roll stood for. And it maintained this stance regardless of the whims of fashion.

But despite that, it was not limited, restrictive or exclusive in any way. Any kind of act who could get themselves together enough to arrange a show was treated with the utmost respect and given all possible support. The Tote, its owner and its employees had soul, they had enormous hearts and an incredible amount of passion for music.

And now, as a result of idiotic, irrational, illogical and above all else, completely insensitive state government policies, it’s gone.

I moved from Sydney to Melbourne five years ago. And being a musician and coming from Sydney, you get used to disappointments. You actually expect them. A life in the music industry, I’d go so far to say, is an extended exercise in consistently warping your heart, mind and soul.

But I never expected this.

One morning, in the midst of the furore over the Tote closure, I woke up and felt dismayed with myself that the Tote was the first thing I thought about and Haiti was the second.

But what needs to be understood is that places like the Tote are not just dirty pubs with stained stages. They are places where people go to discuss matters, work things out and indulge in the glory of music which takes them away from every horrible, soul destroying, mind numbing personal, local and world event, and allows them to escape and find some kind of temporary refuge in light and amplification.

This kind of bureaucratic destruction of history and culture is a disgrace and it’s sad and it’s an affront to our cultural and artistic lives. Not just as a city, but as a nation. Because small things are often reflective of big things and a mindset such as that which closed the Tote, if pursued to its logical conclusion, will drive all difference and creativity and ingenuity out of this country and into the wilderness of the wider world.

I know it’s just a pub and not a particularly pretty one at that. And it was primarily a rock ‘n’ roll beast which, as I said earlier, is one of the most easy beasts to poke fun at. But it was also a historical building. And like any great historical building, it holds more than faded memories inside. It was an institution that had soul, character,  warmth, charm and a bright and pure belief in the importance of artistic endeavour.

And although I continue to train myself to not get weakly attached to places,  and although I believe that some good will eventually come out of all of this, and while I keep telling myself that it’s just another non-descript pub with a stage, I still can’t help but feel incredibly sad that it’s gone.

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The below is a photograph taken after one of our shows. It features our bass player's young son, Barnaby, happily sitting at the bar of the "high risk" Tote.