Episode 304 - USS Somers in Hobart
I wanted to explore the concept of jamming as it relates to music. It’s really just musician speak for brain storming and it reminds me of one particularly magical afternoon in my recording studio, which is now my YouTube studio.
Matthew Piscioneri and a bunch of friends formed a band (later called "O Serpent") at my studio. One Sunday they were jamming, goofing around mostly and the keyboard player was looking for a sound (as keyboard players spend all their time doing) and the guitarist was practicing his solo (as guitarists tend to do) and the drummer was just hitting things and the bass player joined in and suddenly out of nowhere they were playing a song. Nothing they had rehearsed or even written really, it just came out of the air. And I had the tape running and that song became Adventure. The re-recorded studio version, all multi-tracked and arranged and written down was never the same. That live version was pretty good. And that was my first experience of the power of jamming.
Around 1987 (I think) a bunch of us got together at 246 Bathurst Street and formed a company. That was Up and Running Promotions. There was Matthew Piscioneri, S Kenneth Stoke ("Glass Onion Productions"), Michael Vuister, Brian Dimmick, Robyn Warner, Annabelle (I’m sorry I don’t remember her last name), John Stephenson and I think that was it. We were initially called “The young independents and S” but later chose “Up and Running Promotions” as our business name. There are cassette recordings of these meetings in the stuff I donated to The Archives. We decided we wanted to be like Charles Touber, a music promoter, film producer. Probably more like Apple Corps. But we had no money. Our one and only project was Metal Mania - a heavy metal concert at the City Hall featuring skateboarding. We each took a piece of the work and did our best. The TV commercial Brian made won an award. It nearly missed out as the judges didn’t believe the low budget. The Radio ads caused a stir and I’m sure every parent was totally convinced that their little Johnny was NOT to go to such a thing. The music and stage show was amazing. The skate boarders were a little lame but we had no ramps or anything, just a flat surface. The kids that came enjoyed it. But the total audience was maybe 100 and we needed 1000 to make money. Sadly it was the last joint venture with all of those people. They graciously let me keep the “Up and Running” name. My studio was called “The Ultimate” before that. My computer business later on became “Up and Running Computers”.
But what’s all this got to do with a US warship? Well, I was jamming in the studio, just pulling out negatives at random, digitising them and then seeing what Wikipedia could tell me about them. I pulled this one and I couldn’t even tell if the ship was Australian, British or what. The flag at the front was probably connected to the ship on the other side of the wharf, but the US flag on the back and the number on the side came up as USS Somers. Other photos of Somers online confirmed this was that ship. And then I found a blog of some sailors on the Somers and they mentioned that Somers came to Hobart as part of something called the Westpac Cruise of 1961. No wonder I hadn’t ever heard of it, I wasn’t born then.
There’s a strange thing that happens, when a large population of sailors come to Hobart, we show them a good time. Sometimes too much of a good time and 9 months after the visit, there’s another new person in the world. So it’s just occurred to me, that not only could there be descendants (of sailors on this cruise) but they would be slightly older than I am now. If this is you, please reach out, I’d love to hear your story.
War ship 947 USS Somers, during the Westpac Cruise of 1961. The Somers visited Hobart, Tasmania and the Australian ports of Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane. This would have been the tail end of my grand father’s career as a photographer. Arch passed in ’68, but he loved ships and got on well with “yanks” as he termed our American cousins.