What happened to honourable, gimlet-eyed hot dog vendors? DAVE GRANEY laments the rise of the gastro pub.

Maybe it’s the way everybody kept going on about Masterchef, but even though I never watched it I started to see things through a funny kind of prism. Colander. I was Mastercheffing shit like I knew what it was. Grabbing handfuls.

People who run clubs used to be rootless and toothless types. Fronts for gangster money etc. It was exciting. Those lavender-haired old smoothies who used to loll about upstairs at the Prince of Wales. They were hangin’ out for some flesh and some juice. They didn’t drink ponies or anything regular oldie like that. Top-shelf spirits - but they coasted on a few drinks over a long period. One looked like Dr Smith from Lost in Space and another looked like the fat guy who slept with Cookie on A Country Practice. Or maybe the fat guy who slept with Gilligan on that island of castaways. They were cool types anyway. They never bothered the musicians. Only once. We did a gig on the anniversary of the Battle of Little Big Horn. Just to be annoying. I was playing “rodeo suite” by Aaron Copeland to set a classy Western ambience and one of those cats lifted an eyelid and nodded in my direction. Like a leathery old lizard on a rock. Cock.

Graham Richmond used to run The Seaview Ballroom and also the Richmond football club. He liked a bit of a scrap to wind down at the end of a night. There was always more than a possibility of that happening. “Whadda ya reckon of these Dead Kennedys boys?” he’d ask, rolling up the sleeves of his tux as he picked up and cleaned some glasses. He had two loyal offsiders, Toddie and Laurie, who worked there and followed him about. They both could’ve been bell ringers at Notre Dame cathedral. The joint was their kingdom. People lived upstairs, including them, probably. A little community. One of us used to have to get the keys to rehearse downstairs. Our bass player Chris Walsh got it one day. He had to walk respectfully and very quietly but quickly past the Maoris gathered around the corpse lying stretched out on the bar.

Anyway, Masterchef. I have been wondering about the types who run these boutique type pubs and why they are so uptight and stand-offish. Yet they still want to give it off like they’re hip to the streets. Dude. They are giving me the Masterchefs. Whim Whams. They don’t like musicians much. They kind of think they're the main act. Mastercheffing it you see. They’re all in on the act. The next rock‘n’roll is hospitality. Christ, what happened to honourable, gimlet-eyed hot dog vendors?

“The musicians are last in line. Can’t upset the diners and have to be swept out of the joint so the bar staff can, you know, get to a rock club like Cherry or something.”

The musicians are last in line. Can’t upset the diners and have to be swept out of the joint so the bar staff can, you know, get to a rock club like Cherry or something. That’s where you can hear some AC/DC or even The Stones. Shit.

I kept noticing these grim Michelin-starry types along the way. Then I ended up playing with a friend at a little pub which is right in a very smack-bang intersection of two well-travelled main streets. I’d walked past it many times. My friend was taking us to places I’d never thought to go. We walked into the gig which was on a street of gigs.

This place seemed to keep leading you further in where there were more and more rooms. The bandroom was empty, people were lounging about elsewhere. Then when the music kicked in, the room was full. The place just worked. Horribly loud. My ears were tortured. Felt kind of neo dead. Nice. Sat around after the show. Our friend who had left us there had ran way to his cave quick smart. We had a long drive and had already been to a party so we felt like kicking on. The people who ran the place were young enough to have just been born when we first walked into these kinds of rooms. They sat down on the carpeted floor and rolled some cigarettes and pulled out a few six packs of beer. They talked about gigs across town and over the other side of the river. They hated that part of town. They were full of sophisticated, nuanced views and attitudes to the world. One side of the street was one suburb, one was another. This character enjoyed pointing to that distant corner through the window and professing how much he hated it. And NEVER went there.

He told me it was great to have more gigs around. (He was in his 20s.) “Its like a florist district in a big city,” he said. “You go there if you want flowers. If you want music, you come here.” Most of them lived upstairs.

They then started to talk of taking some acid. How much did each want? A half trip? A whole one? What did they have to do tomorrow? I was so impressed. We were so far away from Masterchef. Actually, we were so far away from all those pesky social networks and the internets and these young people were sitting cross legged on the floor, drinking, laughing and talking softly rather like people do on the dry riverbed outside Alice Springs, or any large inland country town. It was a great place to be and I was grateful they let us in and stay so late in their world.