You know how when you start to get a bit older and you think you are still pretty cool, but you can’t read the menu any more, or see the controls on the stove or the TV remote? Well if you don’t know, you are younger than me by a bit.

On Sunday night we went to a gig as part of the Adelaide International Guitar Festival. A glorious evening in Elder Park watching the sun go down behind the stage, listening to the birds doing the evening chatter in the big trees by the river, sprawled on our picnic blanket, just hanging out. Anticipation building cause we were gonna see Ed Kuepper finally, after so many close calls.

He was so very rock and roll, dressed in black shirt and pants, his thinning, fading red hair slicked back, making heaps of noise on his guitar. He was getting the most amazing stuff out of that axe, using all sorts of implements as well as his hands to tease new weirdness out of it. It struck a funny chord with me when he took his reading glasses from where they were tucked inside his shirt collar and put them on his face and got up real close to the control dials on the box he was plugged into. He squinted and fiddled the buttons to create some effect. Then he put the glasses gently back into his collar and put the guitar on its stand, the sound still droning on as a result of the dial twiddling, and he took a stick and bashed at the strings as the last wailing strains of the sound effect wafted into the fading red sunset.