Maybe you’ve never put any thought into how PROM might end. Maybe you don’t get sucked into the various bullshit narratives around the breakup of bands. But I dare say if you thought about it it would occur to you that a band as snottily meta and story-world-y as PROM would probably rent a theatre and present their last gig as the culmination of a seven-year-long live indie-pop genre show.

If cooler heads (read: Julia) hadn’t prevailed I would have tried to smoosh everything the band was into one show- the initial apocalyptic-horror stuff, the half-assed deconstruction of the nature of pub gigs, the audience choreography. For Jules the simple heart of the band, the main thing all along, was that we are Playing Our Own High School Prom. Every gig we’ve ever done has been about refusing to graduate, whether by choosing oblivion instead or just wallowing in a loop of pop-music arrested development.  Anyone who isn’t an idiot like me would have known that we were heading for a Final Actual Graduation all along.

In a way it was still a Greatest Hits show. Joel Barcham MC’d in his SOCE Teacher persona one last time (he finally got a name- Mr Harold), augmented and elevated by Claire Granata as the authoritarian principal Ms Bizcut. Julia basically created a complete theatrical set from $80 of materials, just like always. Chris broke a guitar string two songs in and still played spectacularly, as if to prove that he is utterly irreplaceable (yes he’s moving to Scotland that’s what’s actually happening here). We picked a couple from the crowd and crowned them PROM King and Queen and made them slow-dance awkwardly, casting a comical frame over the what is actually one of my most earnestly-written songs (Run To The Love). Dead DJ Joke played a set either side and is the best DJ in the world of course. We did all the most PROM things.

I couldn’t even to begin to wrap my head around the fact that this was the last time I’d be doing these songs with these people, with Matt, Sam, Julia and Chris. Or the fact that Mel, my dear dear friend who the whole band began with wasn’t there (I mean she was in Brisbane where she lives now so odds are she was having a good time that night regardless, Brisbane is very good).  The crowd came in force and in costume but with the various jokes flying around the stage and the detention essays Ms Bizcut was forcing them to write it’s likely they didn’t spot just how nakedly emotional I was at my inability to square exactly how to most correctly think or feel. Which reminded me more if my actual high school graduation than anything else possibly could.

We played Cost In Lives last and the chorus high note that has been the bane of my existence for seven years came out as easy as sighing. Thank you to all of you who made this band what it’s been to me.

Photos by Adam Thomas