I head into Fortitude Valley around 7:15pm with a friend for an enjoyable night out. We do the cliche thing and head to Maccas in McWhirters and order the sloppiest Quarter Pounder meal I’ve even had. It’s that sloppy, I get 3/4 of the way through it before I throw it away.
Feeling slightly queasy, the only thing I could think of to rid of the taste was to down a schooner of beer. So we hightail our arses to see The Paper Scissors perform at The Clubhouse, inside The Empire Hotel.
We walk in and it’s quiet. Not audio quiet, but people quiet. The bar is dimly lit, and on the other side it’s dark with a glowing blue tinge coming from the next room. I order myself and my mate the beers and received friendly customer service with a smile and a nod. We clink our glasses together and head over to the Clubhouse Room.
There are comfy lounges aligned with the walls, with band posters covering the glass windows. You can’t see in or out of the room. The foundations of the Empire Hotel are shaking from the heavy bass coming from Cloudland next door. Doof Doof Doof…. the burger taste is still lingering so I swig my beer to keep it down. Then a dull headache begins to develop.
It’s around 8pm and 4 guys on stage are doing a sound check. It turns out later it’s Dan Parsons and his band. There’s terrible high pitched feedback and the sound guy is doing his best to remove it. I hear a couple of groans in the room and discover more people have entered. We must’ve come in early.
More beer flows, the headache continues to grow, and more people pour in as Dan Parsons and Co. begin to jam. The crowd begins to fill out, and after about 5 songs, they’re off the stage. I start to slightly doze off as I forgot I only had 4 hours sleep the night before and my 2nd wind hasn’t come through yet.
I start sinking into the comfortable lounge, chatting to my mate about my developing headache and stomach rumbling, when an attractive blonde and her partner sit down on the end of the lounge. Two of their friends join them. The doof doof music gets louder and the building feels like it is one gigantic vibrator that would send a porn star red faced.
The night rolls on, The Boat People hop on stage. The crowd becomes more livelier, while the blonde woman keeps looking in my direction. She inches a little closer, until I realise her and her partner are trying to push me off the lounge. Bugger it – I’m sitting put. I don’t care how hot you are.
The Boat People start rocking out, with the crowd getting more excited – absorbing the sounds blasting through the speaker system. More feedback comes through the microphones until the song stops, the microphone is fixed. No more feedback.
My beer has run dry, struggling to keep awake, and my stomach is growling at me. The band finishes playing, loud applause, and I head to the bar to stop the food pains and the headache. My mate is squirming, trying not to lose our seat on the lounge.
I come back just in time as The Paper Scissors hop on stage – ready to show the fully developed hotel crowd what they have got in store.
A strum of the guitar – the stage is alight. The floor is theirs.
Their musical tunes distract me from being grumpy. My foot is tapping away to T-T-Time, which is damn catchy. The whole performance is based on the single release of the song. It’s fantastic. The Paper Scissors are drowning out the bass from next door. I’m sure that Cloudland’s owner was banging on the walls, yelling to keep it down.
These guys know what they’re doing.
My mate is enjoying the show so much, he makes me sit still and orders another 2 beers each. He’s really getting into it, and so is the crowd. They’ve made my beer taste sweeter, as well as finding my second wind. The headache is now been ignored. It only comes back when the show finishes and I leave for the night.
They didn’t cure my stomach pain though. Noone could – other than myself. I threw it up when I got home.
The Paper Scissors are still doing the rounds, so check them out where possible, below:
