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34 G e r r y ’ s J a z z At fourteen you crawl through a hole in the wall where they slip sly grog into Ollie Ward’s Maxine Cabaret, & listen to a band play for gangsters. You’re on your way to Tom Ugly’s & El Rocco, & the guns on tables can’t stop you. Something takes back part of childhood pain, riding out long hours behind the trap as the sonorous high hat clicks a fraction between the cracks, & then you’re off on a trip: Gene Krupa’s “Wire Brush Stomp” rains over the kit & sizzles like a tin roof after you hired a blacksmith to hammer a cymbal into shape. You rap sticks against it & sound travels through everyone like rings of water. Cocky & skillful, you go into a groove & dance the true pivot, playing for jitterbug contests at Katoomba & the Trocadero. Going deeper into each song, you rattle keys like Houdini locked in a trunk, 35 bending within a black echo. The difference between the difference is the difference, you holler to a full moon hanging over the steel mills of Wollongong. Like an unknown voice rising out of flesh, each secret is buried beneath the skin, & you feel they try to pick your brain for them, to find the rhythm of your heart, as you swear the beat is stolen from the sea. With empty flagons beside you at Fisherman’s Bay, you pat Out of the Afternoon upon your leg, knowing you’ll ride hope ’til it’s nothing but a shiny bone under heavy light. ...

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