Capricciosa funk

A flat night for most at rehearsal last night was attributed by some to the foolhardy decision to let Dan purchase dinner and by his unerring choice of Melbourne's and possibly the world's worst capricciosa. Preliminary googling shows stiff competition for world's worst status (also see left). If only we'd taken samples for testing back at the lab, the title could be ours.

The pizza was limp, lacking crispness and flavour — some might say emblematic of a session in which the squids never got out of the shallows. Crafty forgot the intro to his signature piece, Silky-D struggled with either a flu or pre-nuptial jitters, Modern Doug pronounced several calls of N.F.G.E and even Paddy struggled to remember the words of the band's hits-in-waiting.

Later, as I drove him home he took issue with my Ipod, which appeared to be selecting from a secret list of his most hated songs in the universe (The Motels, Van Morrison, The Byrds and Sandpit). The bass-man was in a funk all right.

But after dropping him off, the pod coughed up Going Nowhere, the 1974 Neil Sedaka classic, which miraculously turned the night around for the better. If I ever find myself on Australian Idol, I'll be singing this. Only my inability to find a live stream on the net prevents me sharing it with you.

You can keep your Dylan, your Dead, your Joplin and your Buffalo bloody Springfield, Neil Sedaka sums up the bittersweet realities of the counterculture here in a way nobody has surpassed.