There's a music manager's forum tonight at The Troubadour in Brisbane's low-rent music-hub of Fortitude Valley. It's run by the national MMF, with help from the Australia Council, and aims to give people like me (the accidental band-manager) some skills at booking, running and protecting our bands against the predations of slimy club owners and industry sharks of every kind.

I should be there - but I'm not. Its raining, its dark, and I'm still a little dispirited after last Sunday. And Fortitude Valley is about as safe as a snake pit with the lights out. There's a lot - a W H O L E lot I'll do, volunteer for, put myself out for, and generally make sacrifices over for the sake of Lee and the crew but tonight is just a nightclub too far.

Anyway, tomorrow is a singer's rehearsal with just acoustic guitars and the still-too-long setlist and I'm hoping to be able to crank up some positives by then. It's just a couple of days before Easter, there's no gigs set and I get the feeling everyone just wants to bugger off for the long weekend and rethink afterwards.

There's a couple of prospects on the guitarist front, including (no, I'm not kidding) some guy from South America named Nuno' who is moving over here to live on the Gold Coast in April. He thought he'd troll the local musician's webboards and found us...so, what the hey, we'll audition him. THe other current contender says he's been playing guitar for 10 years, but is only 17 years old...which suggests that he's either a child prodigy or just your typical teen guitarist looking for his first break. Again, what the heck?

This weekend marks the beginning of the Australian AFL (Australian Football League) season so if there's nothing else doing I plan to watch four straight days of gladiator-football and pretend there's no such thing as a band to manage.

Check ya later.