Come back, jukebox crowd, Hal's parties need you

I thought I would take a light-hearted look at events of the past few weeks by removing some of the rhetoric and approaching it from a slightly different perspective. I’ll also leave it with a personal plea.

G’day,

My name is Phil. I live in this huge suburb called Oz. It’s a place with wide open spaces and dense areas too. There are loads of immigrants, new and old. And even the locals were immigrants once, although they seem to forget that.

There are plenty of stories to tell about Oz but I wanted to share this one with you. First of all, I’d better fill you in on some of the main characters in my neighbourhood.

There are three big wigs, Alf, Hal, and Ru, who all love to hold parties. Hal’s parties are run by the head of the family, Dave and his sidekick Damon. Dave used to manage the parties at Ru’s place.

There is this grumpy woman, Bec, who lives somewhere about. She doesn’t like Hal and his parties, and she writes for a local rag. And there’s a real grumpy old bloke down the road, AJ. He thinks he’s important because he’s got a war medal or something and he’s got a megaphone.

Ru’s pretty new to our area and no one pays as much attention to his parties, but some are pretty big if the guys from across town come over.

Alf has the biggest parties by far in terms of numbers and he’s been around a long time. Despite the big numbers, people tend to arrive on their own and don’t make a big scene. They’ve got a jukebox down one end and some kids hang around, but they don’t sing much or make too much noise.

Alf is always inviting old crooners to his big parties to sing along. It’s pretty funny because everybody who goes complains about them.

Hal’s been around just as long as Alf but he’s only recently changed his name and started inviting more of the neighbours. Hal’s parties are not quite so big as Alf’s but they do tend to be noisy. There’s a bunch of guys who hang around the jukebox and they love belting out Jimmy Barnes hits at the top of their voices. They also love to arrive at the same time and march down the street to announce their attendance.

Occasionally one or two get out of hand, but that’s the nature of people in groups or those thumbing their noses at authority. In reality, they add great colour and real vibrancy to Hal’s parties.

Well, just the other week something got up Bec’s nose big time and she ran a front page spread, and more, in the local rag about some of Hal’s crowd throwing up all over the place. She spoke in great detail about the vomit, even describing the contents. And she even went back 10 years to when Hal’s parties began.

AJ got right on board and some other locals joined in too. These people are murderers, she said, and everyone who goes to Hal’s parties are like violent criminals, and they are all foreign and just want to trample Mrs Smith’s roses.

It was nonsense of course. Over the years Alf’s parties have been responsible for plenty of vomit too. Even this week one of Alf’s vomiters was sent to jail for a really awful vomit. And some of Alf’s direct family have been in strife recently for association with some really big vomits that have made world attention. But, quite rightly, not all of Alf’s guests are tarnished with the same brush.

Hal’s jukebox crowd expected a strong response from Dave and Damon. As did some of the families who attend Hal’s parties. Damon and Dave both put their foot in it, though.

Instead of saying “our parties are great”, they said, “Yes, we agree, the vomit is awful. Disgusting. And we told the vomiters not to come back. And these vomiters can’t even appeal because our anti-vomit security team never, ever, make a mistake and are more infallible than the pope or the police, so we don’t even need a judicial system! So there!”

It was hardly the right thing to say. The crowd that hangs around the jukebox was pretty annoyed. Not so much about the vomiters being banned, in the main they were fine with that.

They were annoyed that some of their mates hadn’t thrown up anywhere but they got banned too and couldn’t appeal. They were mostly annoyed because Damon and Dave said nothing about the rest of them and the rest of the Hal party people. They couldn’t all be murderers and violent criminals – after all Dave had used their pictures for 10 years to promote Hal’s parties.

Damon and Dave should have said: “At best, Bec is an out of touch, grump, who adds nothing to the conversation and has momentarily abandoned all reasonable moral decency. At worst, she and AJ have a political agenda to push.

“On the other hand Hal’s parties are a celebration of young and old, culturally diverse, and more specifically the jukebox crowd are fantastic and so are all the families at Hal’s party as they sing and dance and cheer.”

A comment like that would have reflected true leadership and kept a lid on other simmering problems faced by the jukebox crowd.

Bec and AJ both got whacked by other people with megaphones and rags to write in, but it was scant compensation for the jukebox crowd who expected more from Damon and Dave.

The following weekend the jukebox crowd said they were going home early, and they did just that. The party wasn’t quite the same but most of the families understood their attitude and were also annoyed with Damon and Dave.

There were one or two families that didn’t care much and said the jukebox crowd didn’t really matter. I reckon they were wrong. I love listening to the jukebox crowd belt out Jimmy Barnes songs, even if a few occasionally use the cover of the crowd to misbehave. I’ve even joined the crowd a few times to belt out a tune from the periphery.

They’re not ratbags. They are mostly teenagers and young adults. Some are at school, some at uni. Some may even be ‘A’ students. Some are jobless, some are well-paid. Of course, some occasionally vomit but that doesn’t mean everyone at Hal’s parties are criminals.

Dave came out and apologised to the crowd midweek. Damon was nowhere to be seen. Dave said he’d learnt a lesson or two and he’d do better and start talking to the jukebox crowd and fix some of the issues. Unfortunately, the jukebox crowd weren’t pacified and this weekend they boycotted the party entirely.

They were definitely missed. At Hal’s red and black party last night the families in attendance made it quite clear that they supported and missed the jukebox crowd. Even as I write this I’m watching a Hal party in red and some supporting the jukebox crowd are holding up a big black banner saying “Dave: can you hear us now?”. And there’s noisy support from the rest of the families.

I have supported the jukebox crowd wholeheartedly on this issue and have written quite a lot about it. But my message to them now is that you’ve made your point. The bulk of Hal’s party people agree with you. Dave has said he will do better but he’ll need a few weeks or months to prove himself.

In the short term Hal’s parties will go on without you, for better or for worse, so don’t stay away from the party too long and hurt us all and hurt Hal. In fact, there would be nothing better than for you to come back next weekend and make a noise and belt out a Jimmy Barnes song or three.

While the news is fresh and the hurt feelings are real all around, it will put in a real exclamation point on why Hal’s parties need you and how you make Hal’s parties better than Alf’s or Ru’s.

If Dave doesn’t deliver in two months’ time then you have a valid reason to stay away again and I’m sure you will only garner more support from the families.

I love my little suburb called Oz. There is so much to see and do that you occasionally forget to lift your head up and look outside. But when you do you often see real strife elsewhere. The other suburbs around the globe have so many problems to deal with that they would hardly even notice a vomit or two.

We are blessed and at the end of the day, Alf, Ru and Hal are just holding a party and giving us a place to celebrate and we should all be thankful for that, including the likes of Bec and AJ.

Come back, jukebox crowd. We’ll all be better for it.