Power Supply duo cousins Pete and Paulo take their brand of space rock to a beachside cliff location.  For years the duo had spent many an evening with a telescope mounted from Pete's Mt Eliza gallery, star gazing and watching astronomy documentaries.  On a clear night neighboring planets could be located and observed with the help of assistance from the local observatory.

 

Dante: So I hear that 'Star Seekers' is now a local club.  What are they and how did the club come about?

Pete: On hot summers nights, when our house bricks made staying indoors uncomfortable, we would go up to the peak of Arthur's seat where the sea breeze offered some relief if there was an easterly draft coming up from the ocean.  It was a place of some local legend regards the winding down of the chairlifts.  But even without chairlifts the views were spectacular.  So myself, Paulo and our wives would take up some beers, guitars and our Celestron Powerseeker telescope up to the top of the mountain.  We'd drink, jam and check out any interesting objects in the sky or bay.

Dante: So the club is just you four guys?

Pete:  It started that way but when a couple of locals checked out the views in our telescope, they twigged to the idea and started doing the same.  This was back in January and we anticipate the same in 2011.  You get the double advantage of clear dark sky in the east for star seeking, or a city light view to the west.  Word spread, and now it's a party for a few weeks during the summer months.  The locals love it.

View from Arthur's Seat inspired the Star Seeker club.

Dante: So how big is the Star Seeker club now?

Pete: I think the best night we've had is about twenty-four, with six telescopes and four or five musicians.  It's very informal, no official committees or agendas or anything.  A few of the members have discussed that, and say they have been bringing their 'scopes up here for years, but me & Paulo had never seen them before and are just in it for the casual jam and night out.

Dante: Ok, so how did the song 'Star Seeker' come about?

Pete: We'd been in the habit of improvising funny lyrics sending up the people we knew (especially authority figures like bosses or politicians) or just describing what we were doing at the time, so it started of as a song about escaping our hot-houses and reaching for the stars, which were even hotter but we could withstand that with a cold beer and a sea breeze.  Passer by's would give us strange looks and one couple even threatened to call the park ranger.  Unbeknown to them was the fact that the park ranger was actually one of us, playing bongos and drinking Southern Comfort premix!  We were just acoustic, no amps, so we just laughed and ignored them and some nights we'd have a bit of an audience and invite people to look through the 'scopes.  There were some good nights till about 2AM and then the designated drivers drove us all home.  By that time we were getting a bit noisy for the possums.

Dante: And then you adopted an electric version for the studio and video?

Pete: Yeah, I recruited our other cousin Wazza, who has a masters degree in multimedia to take some footage during daylight and other locations close by and put together a short amateur video with a Sony handycam, Movie Edit Pro and my Scope system.  My studio is in a domestic situation, so I generally don't use my amp loud enough for distortion indoors.  But with Scope that's no problem.  Just plug in an go with Cubase and the Dynatube Jim Marshall plug-in.  One of the guys was a Mac/Logic freak, so we had a bit of rivalry going there

 

Dante and Pete November 2010

 
  'Star Seeker' by Power Supply (AKA The Alchemists)