Another of my true life stories. My band No Comment was booked to play at the Playpen night club in Cairns for 6 weeks. The Playpen was recently opened converted from a ware house into a night club. The Cairns crowd flocked to the Playpen taking the crowds away from other night clubs including the former largest one in Cairns. We set up our large PA and band gear the night before our first gig at the Playpen and went home. We woke the next morning to the news that the Playpen had been firebombed. We went down there and all our gear was pretty much trashed/melted. We thought that was it for No Comment. We were broke muso's. Our Bass players father was a multi millionaire. The Bass player had grown up in Alice Springs with Ian Moss the guitarist from Cold Chisel. When Ian Moss left Alice Springs to go to Adelaide before hooking up and forming Cold Chisel he said to our bass player he should go with him. Our bass player asked his Dad for all the money he had earned working for his father that his father had banked. His Dad said no, There's no future in a band. Of course Cold Chisel went on to make a lot of money. For that reason his Dad flew to Cairns and replaced all our gear and more. Got us a good band truck, big light show and an even bigger PA than we had before. The Playpen was repaired very fast and we got to work there for 3 months before going on tour all along the Queensland Coast to Surfers Paradise on the band circuit. The first night after the fire we got a crowd of 2,500 people which set a house record that stood for the life of the night club. Even against names like The Little River Band, Cold Chisel, Men At Work, and other big names. That was largely because authorities changed the capacity numbers because of the fire but not until we had finished our 3 months there (we were extended for another 6 weeks). If they had not have done that we would not have held that record but hey......we liked to brag about it.
