‘Do you know why I’m lucky, Dad?’
Jack’s in his position in the middle of our disability adapted green VW Multivan, the one he calls ‘The Green Machine’. He has cortical vision impairment, some sensory processing issues, and spasticity in all four limbs. I’m used to him saying sentences like this and know that he means it — that he thinks he’s lucky. One thing Jack does better than me, better than most people, is positive outlook.
‘Tell me, Jack, why are you lucky?’
‘Because I love bogan funk, and I found the best bogan funk band.’
It isn’t what I was expecting, but it’s spot on. Jack does love bogan funk, he’s listened to little else in these first months of 2026. I’d even say that he likes bogan funk more than any other fourteen year old on the planet, which is a credit to the genre of bogan funk, and the band that boldly claims to be its archtiect — Playlunch1.
You might have heard at least one Playlunch song, even if you don’t know all seven members of the band by name, as our family does, by sheer weight of Jack-instigated conversation. If I say the word ‘Keith’ to you, it’s possible you think of Keith Urban, but it’s also possible you now think of Barry Hall, and pumped up biceps, and jutting fingers and shouted obscenities and a suburban parable that’s as timeless as a freakishly discovered parking spot that on weekdays is a loading zone.
You might think of this ‘Keith’.
Keith is a ripper song, written by Playlunch frontman Liam Bell. It received a shortlisting for Best Song at the ARIAs and in the listener voted Hottest 100 on Triple J, came in 5th. It tells the story … well Bell’s lyrics set it out absolutely perfectly:
There’s a man at the Malvern TAB
Bald head, tatted up, ‘bout six foot three
He was our neighbour when we lived on Hotham Street
And though we never got his name, we called him ‘Keith’Keith had a white Volkswagen Amarok that he parked out front his house
With a steel two-wheeler trailer that he liked to tow around
One day a mate was coming round and parked out on the street
And little did we know we had just started World War Three
Little did we know we had just started World War ThreeThe bloke was seething
He was enraged
Knocked on our door
Like a dog in a cage
We opened up
His face was red
Took off his speedies and he saidDon’t fuck with my trailer cunt
Don’t park in my spot
It’s the second time this week
And I’m about to lose the plot
I phoned up the council
And the bloke said it was mine
Move your shitheap of a car
To the other fucking sideKeith!
Verse three ends with a visit from ‘A Current Affair’s’ Tracy Grimshaw who is ready to crucify Keith for his antisocial behaviour, except Keith isn’t listening to her doorstop questions, because —guess where the crew have parked?
As good as ‘Keith’ is, it wasn’t Jack’s portal to Playlunch. That came via the equally catchy, ‘No Hat, No Play’, which was the lead single on the band’s post-lockdown debut, Who’s Ready for a Good Time, which found it’s way onto my ‘TW Recent’ Spotify playlist2 thanks to friend and new music compadre, Rob Wallace, who actually lent me shorts for a Dermott Brereton dress up outfit last year, and sends me new music recommendations every few months.
Jack was immediately drawn to ‘No Hat, No Play’, as was I, because it’s an undeniable banger:
Now where’s the speaker at?
Al Green, Le Freak, stay Chic, Take That!
We′re running a muck until the muck runs back
The party’s gone? Well I got the track
2007, Kevin Rudd is the name
We’re playing handball outside ′til the police camWould you drink it if it spilled on the floor? (Yes sir!)
Would you drink it out the kitchen drawer? (Yes sir yes!)
Would you sip it up, spit it out and come back for more, more, more?Passion pop ′til the party stop
No hat, no play
We only drop when the bottle shop close
Out back of your share house
We love that the song mentions Chic. As Bell puts it in one ABC interview, ‘We’re a bunch of dudes who really wanna sound like Earth, Wind and Fire, but grew up playing Cold Chisel in pubs.’3
Before Jack discovered bogan funk, he discovered funk, and we spent the last half of 2025 listening to Earth, Wind and Fire, early Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Prince, Cory Wong, Funkadelic and endless, endless Nile Rodgers. He listens to funk music several hours per day, and one challenge we have is finding new artists for him. Every night he asks us to go into a live music app called nugs and ‘find a funky artist like Nile Rodgers’. He doesn’t have the hand coordination or the eyesight to search himself, and voice recognition software doesn’t get us far enough. Once we discover an artist, Jack wants to hear a live show, and it always has to be a ‘full show’, not just one song from the show. He then doesn’t listen to the full show, because he wants us to find him another full show by a different artist for him to not listen to. ‘Stop collecting, Jack!’ is one of the regular complaints I fling in his direction, which is maybe a little unfair on a music-obsessed kid who can’t see-to-read or control his own device.
Lately, Tam and I have been reduced to searching music apps for songs with ‘funk’ in the title, and googling ‘bands like Chic’. It’s quite intense work. Jack is a demanding overseer. I often focus on the good parts of disability parenting. Fuck me. It’s good that he likes music.
It’s absolutely outstanding that he likes Playlunch, because it’s meant that I’ve got to like Playlunch too. More than that, I love Playlunch, and am completely convinced they’re going to conquer the world. Jack and I were both keen to see them live but were stymied because (perhaps unsurprisingly for a band that wrote a cunnilingus themed song called Le Snak) they do a lot of over 18 shows.
Oooh baby, biscuits and cheese
You're a Le Snak and I want to eat you, please
Peel back the cover, I could be your lover tonight
We were struggling, but towards the end of January, Jack’s physio assistant Meg Kossatz spotted an all-ages opportunity that wasn’t obvious on the band’s website —Playlunch was playing the St Kilda Festival, Espy stage, 6.50pm, free entry!
‘Will they be loud,’ Jack asks, which is what he always asks when he knows he’s going to a show.
‘Don’t worry about how loud they’ll be,’ I reply. ‘Worry about getting a park in St Kilda’
‘Don’t fuck with my trailer —’ Jack says, leaving off the last word.
I laugh, and Jack enjoys that he’s made me laugh. ‘Was that funny?’ he asks. ‘Is it bad that I swore?’
I tell him that it isn’t bad, because he was making a clever reference. With our kids, we’ve made the decision not to worry too much about about swearing in songs or TV, because they’ve mostly been able to work out when swearing is appropriate (rock star stage banter, dad injuring himself at home) and when it’s not (maths class, supermarket checkout). In Jack’s case, he’s VERY reluctant to swear, and on a recent occasion when he accidentally said ‘fuck’ when he meant to say ‘funk’, his older sister seized on his mistake and asked him over and over why he was swearing and that she’d like him to stop, ‘I’m offended Jack!’, which left Jack shrieking ‘I didn’t, I didn’t!’ in indignant panic.
I like it when they treat him like a true sibling (ie awfully).
We leave in good time, anticipating Punt Road to be doing its weekend Punt Road thing, which of course it is. The Green Machine car stereo lives permanently near full volume, the kids demand it, but right now it’s me pushing the dial to the right for my favourite Playlunch track — ‘Boys’.
We came to party with the
We wanna party with the
*MOTHER FUCKING BOYS*Me and the boys are going out
We’re heading out to the club
Dressed in YD and we’re looking to party
Me and the boys are going outWe’re just a big pack of blokes
and we’re out on the town
Ordering Jack & Cokes
Cos we’re heading to Crown
Whether we’re out for a bucks
Or we’re just out for the weekend
We came to party with the boys, boys, boys …We’re just a big pack of blokes
We’ve got nothing to lose
Dressed in a smart casual fit
Wearing our going out shoes
Strutting along Chapel Street
Like we’re a big bunch of legends
Saturday night is for the boys, boys, boys
We park 1.4 kilometres from the Espy, and begin our walk down a closed-to-vehicles Beaconsfield Parade. A few years ago, Jack would have been shrieking at this point of the buildup (see a piece I wrote about the Rockwiz Good Friday show) but now he just nervously stims with fingers drumming palms and asks that we keep moving until the gig starts.
‘I want to see the festival’ he lies.
He doesn’t want to see the festival. He just can’t stand being motionless when he’s tense.
‘We should get there early so we can get near the front,’ I suggest.
‘No, not the front! And not early!’
‘But you won’t be able to see! You’ll be looking into people’s backs’
‘Not the front!’ Jack says. ‘And only in time for Playlunch.’
We meet Francis Leach at the security point outside the Espy, and the stage is set up in the laneway beside the pub, next to the ‘FROM ST KILDA … ‘ Paul Kelly mural.
The sun is beating down, the skies spotlessly blue. It all feels quite iconic. There are palm trees and the air smells salty, and the people don’t seem the same as Melbourne’s northern suburbs people — they’re tanned and youthful and look like they’re having fun. For the millionth time visiting St Kilda, I wonder whey I’ve only visited a dozen times since 2010. We choose a spot in the middle of the crowd, where Jack is going to stare into people’s backs.
‘Would he like to go to the front?’ a broad shouldered South African offers. ‘I can plough a path for him’.
He absolutely could, too. He’s enormous.
‘It might be good, Jack?’
‘No!’ he says, with a quaver of panic, and it’s too difficult to explain to the South African why he’s so nervous. I think it has something to do with the band seeing him, or even worse, giving him a shout out. I’ve tried to tell Jack that he’s just a face in the crowd, that Liam Bell has a lot on his plate, and shout outs are down the bottom of that list, especially for people he’s never met.4
Francis has walked across from Carlisle Street. He’s attending because he couldn’t get Jack into the over-18 Church gig at The Forum the previous week, and they have a real musical connection. It was Francis who introduced Jack to the The Kinks and RL Burnside during a vinyl playing session just after lockdown. He’s an ex Triple J presenter, a fanatical music lover, but he doesn’t know Playlunch well. Only that you don’t fuck with Keith’s trailer, and that it was right up there in the Hottest 100.
‘It’ll be fun’ Jack promises, possibly just hoping to convince himself.
“It will!’ says Francis. ‘I can’t wait.’
Playlunch are whooped onto stage and open with Station Rat, which is Jack’s current favourite. It’s about a 12 year old kid who kicks around train stations, vaping, and skating, and raising hell. The Bon Scott line is truly superb:
Don’t you know? Can’t you tell?
I own this whole line and I’m only 12
I’m the one that put the kush in your board, Schapelle
The altar boy that made a bitch out of Cardinal Pell (c’mon)The coppers set the warrant, come arrest me
Like Chopper mate, I’ll drop ya if you test me
Bon Scott had sex with Nan back in the 70s
And I’m the heir to the throne, I’m fucking TNTStation Rat
Nothing wrong with that (there’s nothing wrong with that)
I’m a Station Rat
Nothing wrong with that …
I got a vape in my pocket and I’m rocking the shades
Gatorade, bottle bong, chuffing up every day
Come along, Diddy Kong, and I will show you the way
We’re dropping out at year ten and going into the trade
Selling pingers on the side, twenty dollars a piece
I’m saving up for a ride so I can bump off the keys
The finest shit in the land, admired by Gary V
So grindset, don’t forget, I’m Walter White of the East
The show is incredible. Playlunch has been touring Australia consistently for three years, and the set is perfectly grooved. ‘How good is BRASS!’ Francis yells during a song called Soupe Opera that’s a tribute to staying home sick from primary school in the early 2000s, and watching ABC:
Ah, it's 10am on my Aus TV
I don't want that channel 3
I need that ABC
Mum's coming home at 5
I lied to try and find respite
And lighten the load of that primary school day grind
The kind of boredom you know
'Tween daytime TV shows
Ain't airing Dragon Ball
Ain't airing Pokémon, Yugioh
I need a thriller, a killer,
Something to fill the time between the news and Bob the Builder
There’s also Foxtel Girl about going out with somebody richer than you are, Get Around it. a power ballad Boyfriend, and the Kath & Kim inspired ‘Hornbag’, that’s great on the album but even better live, as Bell introduces his bandmates as Hairy Maclary characters and cues their solos.
There’s so much pure musicianship. The majority of the seven twenty-somethings met studying VCA Music, and you can imagine parents and lecturers and mentors and music teachers embracing the curiosity that their young prodigies are hitting the big time with ‘don’t fuck with my trailer cunt’. But they have, and if the highlight of the show isn’t a cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’ (the four bar trumpet break after ‘rip off the roof and stay in bed!’ puts a rocket launcher under the audience) it has to be when they all stripped down to their worker singlets, and Keithed.
After 70 minutes, it’s over.
‘Woohooooo!’
‘Enjoy recess!’ Jack screams. ‘Enjoy recess!’ The primary school themes are sitting well with him.
‘That’s maybe the most fun I’ve had this year,’ Francis says as Bell signs off. ‘Mind you, it hasn’t been that fun a year.’ Francis is working in federal politics. He hadn’t known it, but he needed some bogan funk. It’s possible we all do.
We farewell Francis outside the Espy, and then Jack asks if we can go back in, ‘in case Playlunch are there and I can meet them.’ I tell Jack categorically that he can’t meet the band, because the next act will be on shortly, so they won’t be hanging around. As it happens, Playlunch are the last act, and all seven bandmembers are front of stage selling Keith T shirts and No Hat No Play hats. Well played Jack.
We buy two shirts and a hat.5
‘Will you be playing stadiums soon?’ Jack asks Jerry Li, the band’s trumpet player.
‘I don’t know about that,’ he says. ‘We’re mainly playing pubs and clubs. And festivals.’
‘Will you stop playing pubs so that everybody can go?’ Jack asks.
I explain that we have four tickets to their Barwon Heads Hotel show on 14th March, but Jack might not be admitted because he’s under eighteen.
‘Oh that’s rough,’ Jerry says.
We meet them all. Michael d’Emilio on keys. Guitarist Tom Kindermann. Bassist Dylan Knur (who wears a Stakhat on stage). Saxopbonist Andre Lew, and big haired, perennially smiling Austin Richardson on drums.
And Liam Bell, of course, Jack’s latest music hero. The mustachioed singer songwriter leans over a metal stage barrier to return Jack’s offer of a hug.
‘Bon Scott had sex with Nan back in the 70s’, Jack says, and Bell is momentarily thrown before realising his own lyric is being randomly quoted at him by a fourteen year old in a wheelchair.
‘That’s my favourite line in that song!’ Bell says. recovering.
‘It’s my dad’s favourite line too!’
It is. I’ve been writing for thirty years, and I don’t think I’ve done characterisation better in ten words than ‘Bon Scott had sex with Nan back in the 70s’.
The band sign our t-shirts. we shake hands one last time, and Jack asks Liam if he could put more full shows on YouTube.
‘Maybe,’ Liam says, not quite following. ‘Thanks for coming to St Kilda, Jack! I think it was one of our best ever shows!’
The sun slides below the treeline. It’s creeping up on 9pm. We wander past a bistro guitarist playing John Denver, which doesn’t seem very St Kilda, but the palm trees are now black silhouettes against an early night sky and there is orange and blue and purple in its midst, remnants of a sunset missed while Jack met his heroes.
‘Dad, I think this is the best day of my life,’ Jack says. ‘Can I ring Mum and tell her I met the band?’
‘You can.’
‘Can I ring grandpa too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Harry and Polly?’
‘Yes, you can ring anyone.’
I roll him into the car, and crawl on hands and knees to fasten the chair. I’m sore after the walk, after hours on arthritic knees and ankles.
‘Was it the best day of your life too, Dad?’
I’m pulling belts and tightening straps. Why can’t everyone just keep them at the correct length. ‘What?’
‘Was it?’
I’m finally able to get the belts fastened. Still on my knees, I give him a hug from behind and he grabs my arms. My cheek is pressed against the headrest of his wheelchair. Jack hasn’t stopped buzzing since we left the Espy. ‘I think it might be the best gig you’ve seen, Dad? Is it?’
‘It was incredible, Jack. Definitely one of the best gigs I’ve been to. I’m so lucky you discovered them.’
I am lucky, too, and on many fronts. Lucky to see a great band. Lucky to live in a beautiful city. Lucky to go to gigs with my teenage music enthusiast, my life enthusiast, my Jack, who can lift me up on the tough days, and never stops seeing the light.
If you like Good onene, Wilson, please send on to a friend, or press the ❤.
Have your kids introduced you to a great band? Let me know in the comments.
Do you have a special needs kid with a music obsession? Again, love to hear about it.
Playlunch are generous about their influences, citing Silk Sonic, Vulfpeck, Earth Wind and Fire, and The Chats. It’s hard not to think of TISM when you see them in full swing, and also Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine. TISM were more anarchic, Playlunch have a funkier brass section. ‘Playlunch are the Australiana-themed band bringing Bogan Funk to the big stage’, ABC, 21/7/25
TW Recent. Controversially, anything post 2010 qualfiies. All my playlists start TW, which means Polly prefaces them as ‘Trigger Warning’. Dad, are you playing Trigger Warning 2000s?
Unfortunately, Jack does seem to get a lot of shout outs, which counteracts my argument
One thing I’ve learned here on Substack is that if you like a band, BUY THE MERCH! Brian Merchant’s article ‘How to Quit Spotify’ is excellent, as are several by Gabbie for New Bands for Old Heads) Spotify pays approx US$0.0029 per play, which means a thousand plays earns US$2.90. Since coming 5th in the Triple J Hottest 100, Keith has skipped to three million plays, so I’m guessing Playlunch have earned around US$9000 from Spotify streaming for that song, that they can presumably split seven ways, after paying management. So we need to buy the digital downloads, and buy the merch! I’m pleased Playlunch are now selling out almost every show. I hope they’re making some cash. As a side note, the streaming servie Qobus pays 3-4 times as much to artists as Spotify (0.013 per stream) and many report smooth changeovers.
