I've had a busy few weeks since I got back from the trip. Last weekend I went down to Ararat with Mark and the guys, and played at a fundraising event at the town hall there:

It was a good night, there were lots of people there and they raised over $30,000 for various charities.

Unfortunately the news wasn't so good for my van. It overheated, and the next day we couldn't drive it more than about 5 minutes before it overheated again (even after filling up the radiator). It's still in Ararat, and now I'm looking for a (cheap) new (used) car.

On Sunday night I went to see Stevie Wonder at the tennis centre. It was a great concert. The guy is nearly 60, but he is in a league of his own - he knows how to funk. I have uploaded a few short clips to youtube: 1 2 3.

Friday night I went to see Blue King Brown at the Palace (formerly the Metro). These guys have a cool blues/funk/reggae/roots sound which is very easy to get into. I had seen them live a few years ago at the Chill Island festival, and was looking forward to seeing them again. Unfortunately they were really let down by some very poor sound techs. Basically everything was twice as loud as it should have been, and you could barely hear the music over the distortion and feedback. Half the time the backing singers were drowning out the lead, there were high-pitched squeals coming from the keyboards, the bass was so loud and muddy you couldn't work out what he was doing. I won't be going back there in a hurry.