Strange Perspectives Volume 1 - The Memoirs of Mike Najarian (From the Band State Radio)

Australia: Take 1

It’s pretty bad when your testicle shows up on the internet from when you were in Australia. It’s even worse when you find out your testicle is on the internet from your Mother. It’s even worse than that when she calls you into the computer room out of nowhere and says, “Hey Michael, look at this,” in a nice, calm voice, and when you look at the computer screen there is a picture of you wearing pink ‘The Beautiful Girls’ panties, a ‘Cape Cod: Like No Place on Earth’ green mesh cut off shirt, eye black under your eyes, and have one testicle hanging out. “Well, that’s me singing in Australia Mom,” I said back to her just as calmly. “No, what’s that?” she said and pointed to the general area of my testicle. “Well, that’s my testicle Mom”. “And what’s it doing on the internet?”. “I don’t know, I didn’t put it there…”. “What are your kids going to think when they see this picture of you? It’s not cool to have this stuff floating around on the internet!”. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until I have kids and hope they don’t see it”. Laughter ensues from my end. “It’s not funny Michael! I’m serious. This isn’t cool!”. More laughter from my end. “There’s nothing we can do about it now Mom”. And then I left the room. Surprisingly, I wasn’t embarrassed, even in front of my Mother. In my mind, at that moment, the experience was worth it, and if the picture was seen by my kids, then so be it. And even now as I am writing this, I am still chuckling about that night. It brings a smile to my face every time I think about it. Oh, fond memories of exposing myself in Australia. Before you think I am this weird sex offender-esque freaky deeky dude, please give me a chance to explain myself. I’m sure you will come to the same conclusion as me. And for the record, I had no intention to expose myself, I promise.

I’m going to guess it was in the late Fall, early Winter in 2007 when we went to Australia for the first time. We had played with a band called The Beautiful Girls in the U.S. and then they invited us to play over in Australia to return the favor. This was an amazing tour. We got to take a two and a half week break from the harsh New England weather and enjoy the Australian easy living Summer for a bit. At this point we had become great friends with the guys in The Beautiful Girls (there are actually no girls in the band) and we had a great camaraderie going on for this entire tour. There were so many cool things that happened on this tour that I couldn’t even fit all of them in a single memoir. On top of that, some of my experiences have been sworn to secrecy. I will briefly touch on a few of my experiences that tour though just to build up to my infamous testicle showing.

First off, on a work related note, I learned so much from my still good friend and The Beautiful Girls drummer Bruce Braybrooke. He taught me so much about professional drumming by the way he approached the art. When The Beautiful Girls came and played in the U.S., Brucie used my drum kit. When I told him he could move around my set up he replied, “Naw, I’ll just keep it as is, that looks great”. At first I was confused, no drummer had ever said this to me before. Most drummers are pretty anal about the way they set up their kit, and the angles at which they put their drums and cymbals. I told Brucie about my confusion and he said to me, “You are a professional, I am a professional. Professionals should be able to roll with the punches and be able to play any set up. That’s part of the fun of it anyway. Everyone needs change or things get boring. Also, the more set ups you try, the more you see why people set up their drums a certain way, and it will make your personal set up better and more researched in the long run”. I had never even heard this philosophy before. Like I said, most drummers are quite anal about their drums. I was actually a very lax drummer, I always offered up my drum kit to whoever wanted to use it. I thought about what Brucie said and I replied, “Well, it looks like I will have to use your set up exactly how it is if we ever come to Australia! That’s only fair”. Brucie liked this response, I could tell by the look on his face. And just like that my philosophy on drumming was forever changed and I had gained a life-long friend. Weird how life works sometimes.

Brucie also taught me a lot about how to take care of your musician friends. He was so welcoming and went way out of his way for us when we went to Australia. This also changed my philosophy on how you should treat a guest. Brucie went way out of his way to help me have one of the best experiences of my life. Giving is better than receiving to some I guess. Definitely is for Bruce.

One of the coolest things Brucie did was take us up to his friends’ “treehouse” up in the rainforest, a few hours from Byron Bay. This place was quite amazing. It was this mansion on a mountain in the Australian rainforest. Score! What a sick place this was. And the people who lived there were these amazing free spirited people who had a great outlook on life, and really made it an awesome experience for us all. As legend has it, the girl who scoped it out, and facilitated renting out the house (her name was Polly), said as she was driving up the driveway for the first time there were two snakes in the middle of the driveway making love. When she saw this she thought, “Yup, this is the place!”. Now, if that was me I would think, “Hell No! Deadly snakes in my driveway!”. I mean, these aren’t just little New England gardener snakes we are talking about here. These are Australian Rainforest death machines. And if you can imagine, for all the snakes around, there was just as many deadly spiders. In fact, there was a deadly spider that was on the porch of the house right outside the master bedroom. Polly lived in the master bedroom with her boyfriend Jamie and was totally cool with having the spider live there. Further, she actually preferred it living there.

The spider was this baseball sized creature that I think was maybe an Araneus Pallidus, or a black widow. It was the kind of spider that eats the male spiders that try to mate with it. Jamie and Polly described to me that they had personally seen 3 different males court it. Then one day they would see the male wasn’t there anymore, and the female kept getting bigger and bigger. They said the newer males were much smaller than this female because she kept eating the males. I’m not sure how accurate this was but I am a male and I stayed the hell away from that porch. Apparently, one bite from this thing and you were a goner. To make matters worse, Polly said she woke up to the feeling of the spider crawling on her leg one night. She said she just jumped out of bed and the spider ran away and ended up back in her web the next morning on the porch. Now, I am squirming uncomfortably even thinking about this happening, never mind actually having it happen. On top of that, I can’t imagine sleeping in that same bed with the same spider still on the porch! Crazy Australians.

But Polly was truly an amazing character and had been through way more than that in her lifetime. When she was 20 years old she went over to Somalia to film the outdated and barbaric practice of female genital mutilation that was still practiced there. To put this in perspective she is only 31, so this was only 11 years ago. She had to be accompanied by armed guards all day and she was shot at more than once. She said she barely made it on a plane to exit the country alive. She believes she is truly lucky to be alive and lives every day to the fullest. She definitely is not afraid of the spider on her porch. But, damn it, I was. I am just a Massachusetts boy where the winter kills most of our spiders that would be deadly. So, excuse me but I was afraid.

Beyond the deadly wildlife, the Rainforest was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. The vegetation was amazing, and being on top of the mountain gave us a sick panoramic of the area. It was very similar to the way Hawaii is, but a tiny bit nicer in my opinion. In addition, the area was filled with magic mushrooms. “Mushies” is what they called them. When we got to the house there was a bunch of mushies that were just chilling in a jar with honey. Now I’m not one to frequent psychedelic drugs, but when you are in the Australian Rainforest… well, you make exceptions. So yeah, we had a few nights off that we went to the Treehouse and decided to partake in the magic mushrooms with everyone there. There were a few notable experiences that resulted from this scene of scenes.

First, on one particular night, while I was indulging in the magic fungus of the land, I noticed there was this little house up the mountain a little bit. When I inquired about it I found out that one of the girls lived there and was just about to leave to go up there to bed. I actually saw that she had put a State Radio flag up on top of a lamp in her “chalet” (that’s what she called the cabin) and I took that as a sign that I should go check it out. She was like “oh yeah, I forgot about that flag”, which made me feel awesome. Either way, I was curious as to the scene up there, and because I was indulging in the fungus I found it most interesting walking through the woods to get there. Anyway, I got up there and looked around for a bit and then was like, “alright I’m heading back down”. To put this in perspective, there was a path that led up to the chalet but it was a much longer walk. It was much quicker to walk through the woods for about 50 yards down to the main house. Either way, the path was surrounded by the dense rainforest woods. And as I had said before, there were...