Here’s what I learned on the weekend: It’s very hard to stalk someone if you don’t know what they look like.
On Australia Day last month, I did what I always do on Australia Day: I listened to Triple J’s Hottest 100. Of course, streaming over the web while working is much less fun than on the radio while drinking, barbequing and enjoying summer, but the music was still cool.
As they always do, the Jay announcers asked each of the callers-in who they thought would get the top song, and everyone kept mentioning this band that I’d never heard of: Wolfmother. Well, Wolfmother didn’t get the top song, but they set a new Hottest 100 record by having six songs show up in the hundred, and they got two in the top ten.
Suitably curious, I asked Alex to get hold of their album. I got home and he had it; his summary: "These boys rock".
Two weeks later, while we’re still raving to our friends, out of the blue I get a mail mentioning a little Australian band who are playing at Chop Suey on the weekend. As weird as when I saw Powderfinger at the Showbox and it was half empty, they’re on a bill with a couple of other bands…and it’s free.
We arrive at the gig a bit early, and wander around the corner to the Elysian for food and booze. We’re working our way down the cocktail menu when we notice that the large group at the table next to us has a bunch of Wolfmother posters. We eventually get around to the hypothesis that they might actually be Wolfmother.
It turns out that listening rather obsessively to a CD for a fortnight straight and casually visiting a MySpace page ’cause you want to put a link in a mail doesn’t exactly equip you for making a great identification.
Grampy looks them up on his Smartphone but it doesn’t help. We chicken out of the direct approach. So we surreptiously spy on them and mutter to each other until they leave. And then we ask the waitress. It was them.
So then we went to see the Wolfmother concert. And those boys rocked.
ToDo: Invent Brilliant Title 
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