How to boost the gig count? See 9 bands in a 30 hour period.
Friday night at Spectrum it was Bam Bam, Dead Frenchmen, Damn Arms and Riff Random; the first two of whom are the epitome of ceilinggazers and the last of whom appears to have taken a lovely detour in sound.
Saturday night the Gaelic Club rolled on Jack Ladder, Starky (only two old songs.. aww.. but you’re lush anyway), and Dappled Cities Fly. A Nathan Hudson (Faker) lookalike/dancealike in the crowd was a funny site to see. Then the Mandarin Club treated us to the tail end of Mercy Arms and a bizarre set by a band whose name I don’t know but every single song lasted less than 45 seconds. Genius. Boy the Mandarin Club is an odd little trashy venue.
A brilliant weekend and after watching bits of the Aria’s on tv tonight I feel like I have to provide a speech so I would like to thank all those whom entertained me this weekend. Those who kept me up til the wee hours and played my guitars. I’d like to thank my itunes for providing me with inspiration and the bands I saw for inducing a smile and providing guitar lessons. Thank you, and good night.
Blurt time..
The office has moved in to the schmitty with no method to get there on an i-don’t-feel-like-walking morning apart from ignoring my thoughts and putting one foot ahead of the other, repeat ad nauseum. When the rain’s falling and I have to duck through umbrella wielding suits it’s not much fun (I hate crowds). When the mornings warm up it’ll be less fun. Hunting a healthy and pocket-friendly lunch in the city has yet to be mastered. Finding a space to sit and contemplate nothing in particular is probably aiming too high (and the weather’s been too soggy to try yet). Ah well, atleast the new office is nice. And there’s my favourite bookshops a few minutes walk away. And the music shops. And the camera stores. And all sorts of other things to try and pry my hard earned cash from me. Hmm.
The gig count has been down but Faker put on a wonderful show on Saturday night at the Gaelic Club, handing out flowers (mine’s still clutching on to dear life), jumping about and playing their very fine tunes. The crowd was big, too big (have I mentioned I hate crowds?), and somewhat idiotic in their moshing attempts but I had a saviour whom I’m very thankful to. I felt some glee at the thought that a Sydney band of their style can draw such a mass and have them singing along to most of the tunes. Since the first time I saw Faker at Spectrum early in the year they’ve hit a chord and the Faker future is bright and sunny.
London bods – catch them in November please.
I bought my big day out ticket. Woo. My first bdo. Always meant to go, never quite made it. I still remember the colourful posters plastered around Chatswood back in 93 and friends raving about it after the fact. It’s going to be big and scary and.. crowded (yeah, I hate crowds). But I’m going to ignore all that, pretend we’re the only ones there, and have a ball.
Where have all the good bands gone? The gig listings are empty of all the faves. Has everyone ducked out for a pre-summer body-cleansing experience?
Melbourne will be treating me for 6 days in November thanks to VirginBlue’s happy hour sale. Who, what, how and all that is yet to be decided but I’ll put my money on: gigs, cafes, bookshops, meandering and a bit more gigging. 6 years between visits is too long for such a lovely town.
Christmas is planned for sheep chasing in the country side (I have no problems with a crowd of sheep).
And a final thought – those playstation portable device things are way too futuristic. If it’s not a desktop computer then I’m a technophobe (who got my first lesson in how to use a TV with Foxtel Digital today at work.. daunting!). A little screen that shows movies, and crystal clear photos and plays your music and makes you coffee is just a bit too stunning to believe. I looked at one the other week and couldn’t understand that it was real. And I’d use the excuse that I’m getting old but the person who owned it is around twice my age! Hmm again.
Keep on strumming.
Another Coles story…
Walking into the local supermarket tonight I noticed a new sign advertising those green “enviro-friendly” bags.. it said:
don’t forget where they are..
keep them in your car
Well.. I found it funny.
Dear Coles Supermarket,
I’d like to draw your attention to a case of absent mindedness (for surely that’s all it could be) that has occurred in your World Square store. It appears that someone, while eagerly flipping the calendar before the month is over, has skipped a few pages and thought it was later in the year than it actually is. This conclusion came to me tonight as I stood in the 12-items-or-less express lane surrounded by two large shelves full of Christmas crackers and baubles.
May I recommend you return all the Christmas goods to the back of your warehouse and forget about them until a more suitable time. Please allow Spring to settle in, let people enjoy warm afternoon barbeques and the purchase of a new swimsuit/sunglasses/tshirt. We’d like to spend a little time wiggling our toes in the sunshine and not worrying about how much tinsel is needed to satisfactorily wrap a tree.
I hope you right this wrong soon because, quite frankly, there’s a quarter of a year until Christmas time and no store could be so money-grubbing. It must have been a mistake.
In effort of making things right,
Niina
PS. Your mushrooms are still over-priced.
The sun came up, another day began, so I tottered off to a music shop and bought a couple of packets of guitar strings determined to give the re-stringing another go. Patience, a coffee break after the first three strings had been replaced to calm my nerves (coffee? calming? hm), and finally success – a re-strung, re-tuned elcheapo guitar is now happily having its strings worn in.
As if I’d ever give up on something!
A word of warning to anyone newly learning to play guitar – even if you’re getting to grips with barre chords, please don’t attempt to re-string your prize possession unless you seriously know what you’re doing and have a couple of packets of strings for back-up. I wish I’d have known that this afternoon. Two broken strings, a bruised ego, and now I’m guitarless until I can persuade one of my guitar-genius friends to come over and sort the mess out for me. So now I’ll have to stick to the acoustic and hand-me-down.. it’s only been a few hours and I’m having withdrawals from my little el-cheapo electric already!
No music posts for a bit so a quick recap of those where the camera didn’t make it out of the bag, and one where it did. I went to the Transit Lounge at the Metro the other week, my first time in that part of the venue and except while watching the sweet-voiced Tess McGowan I found myself lost staring up at the nice lighting rig or trying to remember how the place was laid out back when it was a Dendy cinema.
Last Saturday at the Annandale I saw bits of the Damn Arms, My Disco and the Bird Blobs but none of them were to my ears at all. The Drones on the other hand were quite spectacular to watch and listen to but I think some of it went over my head.
Thursday I caught most of the Saturns set at the dodge-central Excelsior. The bass player bantered amazingly kindly with a drunkard celebrating his birthday who was keen to dance and hold a microphone stand. They rocked on despite the local distraction, the lead singer seeped stage-cool, and their tunes are digging their way in to me. A cover from the Easybeats and a joyous Who’s “Substitute” capped off a great set. They’ve got an EP coming out soon that I’ll definitely be hunting down.
The birthday boy’s attempts to roadie for Phonograph saw him escorted from the venue before they went on. The crowd had massed up and was listening intently but several times the band melded one song in to the next not bothering to wait for applause. Overall they sounded great… but there was a niggling knowledge that they can do so much better. A report from a friend at today’s Come Together festival, where Phonograph were on at some ridiculously early hour, says they “were amazing”.
On to recorded music.. the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club‘s new album “Howl” has been on rotation and this girl is amazed by the affect it’s having on me. I’ve been spinning it around and around in its entirety utterly enthralled. It’s genius in all it’s acoustic guitars, harmonicas and hammond organs. “Complicated Situation”, “Devil’s Waiting”, “Restless Sinner” and the hidden last track are keeping me good company. It’s a bit of a sidestep from where they’ve been before, but similar to other artists I’ve been listening to recently.
Last weekend I was lent the Brian Jonestown Massacre‘s “Tepid Peppermint Wonderland..” and told to educate myself. I’m learning.
Upcoming gigs – By the Sea and the poetic Modern Giant at Spectrum tomorrow night; Tuesday the Mercy Arms are at the Transit Lounge; and Friday it’s to the Annandale for Tambalane and British India.
The current #1-4 of gig venue peeves would be:
#1 – using only red lighting on the stage
#2 – over selling little venues
#3 – drink prices (alcoholic and non)
#4 – mis-matched lineups
but #5 hit me this morning in the shower as I scrub-a-dub-dubbed at the 7x3cm “Wrangler” (a la jeans) stained on my forearm. When did we consent to being used for advertising space? Recent months I’ve been stamped at venues with all sorts including various URLs, “the Edukators” promoting the movie of that name, and the Youth Group (however that’s forgiven because I was told the band members were doing the door that night so fair play for subtle band self promotion).
If you want me to be a walking billboard then I’ll happily do it if the advertising budget extends beyond the cost of creating a stamp and pays for me to see the band. Go on, line up my favourite bands, allow everyone in for free but keep the numbers to a breathable capacity, hook up a nice lighting rig, provide free drinks and I’ll happily let you cover both my forearms with as many stamps as you can muster.
In 1995 I was taken to a film called the Doom Generation, at the good old Verona on Oxford Street, because my favourite band was on the soundtrack. I remember being struck by the madness, the colours, these kids moving about in a reckless way to the coolest tunes. It’s not a nice film, the violence creeps up from schlock to reality, and the hip-cool-kid talk would get most people to walk away before the plot actually started. But I liked it.
Confused but thrilled I did a little reading up on the writer/director/producer/etc Gregg Araki and got myself copies of the Living End and Totally F***ed Up – both films centered on gay relationships, bored teenagers, life and death, and general wastefulness. In those films I found more Jesus and Mary Chain references amongst other good music, I picked up a book with the scripts to these earlier films, and marvelled at the oddness.
I missed his next few films for being in the wrong places at the right times and haven’t managed to track them down yet and I assume they’re in a similar vein.. but recently I heard about Mysterious Skin – his first adaptation of a novel instead of his own script – so I went to see it on Friday.
On a side note the ticket seller at the Dendy looked at me a little puzzled and said “You’re over 18 aren’t you?”. Err…. Anyway, slight spoiler coming up so if you have some intention of seeing the film it might be best to stop reading.
Mysterious Skin unsettled me – brilliantly shot, acted, and portrayed but dark and too true to the harm that children and people can be subjected to. The story begins with two kids from Kansas, little league playing innocent cutesy things. Brian recounts in his teenagehood that he believes he was abducted by aliens at the age of 8 while Neil looks back at time spent with his baseball coach and the abuse that was done to him. These instances shape their characters, Brian is a reclusive alien-fixated teen while Neil starts to turn tricks favouring older men and living on the edge.
The film turns your stomach with the brutality that’s suffered by these two kids (that’s right, Brian wasn’t abducted) but it’s not all doom and gloom, there’s a side of true friendship as well as motherly (but unfortunately ignorant) love. It’s a story of facing and remembering the truth, not the “truth” you’ve made yourself believe. You fall back to the reality that some kids get scarred and carry these memories of abuse within them that most people couldn’t imagine or fathom. Brian lashes out at his long absent father for failing to see what he actually went through, Neil seems willing to put his life on the line presumably for thinking that nothing worse could happen to him. It’s so easy to get hurt, but so hard to heal.
As wrong as it sounds to say it, the film is stunning.
Time for a music catch up..
The other week I caught the end of Wallspace at Spectrum and they’re still not doing anything for me. The reason for being there though was to catch Phonograph again. The crowd was big for a Thursday night mid-bill band and although they had everyone’s attention the set seemed particularly long, throwing three new slower songs in a row lost a few people, and overall they didn’t quite spark as much as they can. I skipped out on the headliners to get an early night.
Last week I found myself having a magical experience at the Excelsior in Surry Hills, so much so I’m going to struggle to explain it. I’ve been wanting to check out Darren Percival for a year or so since I read about a CD of his and saw that he was singing around town but usually in venues I don’t particularly want to go to on my own. The other night, the venue being close to home, I decided to go along to see Darren Percival’s Voiceterous – a solo performance, no instruments, just three microphones and a little machine in to which he was storing live loops, playing them back, singing over them and harmonising with himself. Watching this little genius show had me awestruck. His voice, despite being troubled by the lurgy going around, managed to be as strong and stunning as I remember [insert long story about being stunned by him on a few occasions circa ’89 or ’90 due to being in the same class as his kid brother]. The venue itself was decked out with tables and chairs for a change and from the onset Darren got people singing along with a song I can only assume called “We live on an island”. He beeped and honked in to his microphones and looped the sounds for the chorus of a song about traffic jams – when you shut your eyes you’d be forgiven for thinking you really were sitting in a car trying to get up William Street at rush hour. He joked around, encouraged the crowd to sing, and made this girl smile with little tears in my eyes for the beauty of it.
Saturday night I went to @newtown for an fbi fundraiser. Walrus kicked off the night as a three piece in white shirts and black ties, at times sounding Hives-esque, generally sounding ok. Lyceum were a bit different to the other time I saw them (I thought they had atleast another member) and they didn’t really grab me. I didn’t catch much of the The Model School so it’s hard to say much about them this time. And last up was Phonograph (anyone get the feeling I see this band a bit too often??)… the set started a little casually but soon they had a few people dancing who turned in to even more people and with some encouragement from the band those people went and grabbed others on to the floor. The set picked up pace and the new songs seemed sped up so they came across better this time. Their stage presence, considering the large space they had to move in, was fantastic and they definitely need to get themselves on some more big stages. It was impressive to see a previously seated and tired looking crowd get up and enjoy the songs but that’s the power of Phonograph – their tunes make you want to get up and let go.
I finished up with Jasper Fforde‘s the Big Over Easy and there’s that little sadness realising it could be a year to wait til the next of his chuckle. But the mystery of how Humpty Dumpty died is solved – I didn’t see that coming. Well done yet again Mr Fforde.
Kicking myself for not buying Neate’s City of Tiny Lights on my lunchbreak, I went over to his site and found a little blog about his diary from age 10. I dug out my own diary from the same age: a pastel green affair with a lock that my Aunt had sent me for Christmas at age 8 but only contains a few drawings of aliens and rockets up until age 10. I’ve read through the 4 months it contains and found I was an angsty, dull but hopelessly in love little girl (trying to avoid drawing parallels to my current self…). There’s this bizarre re-occurrence of writing things like:
(28.10.1989) I went into my room at 11.45pm and I kept reading till about 1.04am.
(3.11.1989) Narrelle came at 9.28am and we watched the Meaning of Life. Narrelle left at 1.12pm. Jani got home at about 4.30.
(18.11.1989) At about 3.00pm mum told me I had to walk to Amy’s party. Left at 3.45. Got there at 3.55 so I waited a couple of minutes outside.
(19.12.1989) Tony phoned at about 1.25 and asked if I could go swimming with Alan tomorrow but I said I had to go shopping (which is true).
(22.12.1989) Dad got home at 3.45 and at 4.00 we went shopping.
I was utterly obssessed with time! I remember the two watches I had around then. A black one – no numbers, just two hands with a little moon and star on the ends – that bugged me because it didn’t have a second hand. The other, this one still numberless but it did have a second hand, was a little pink-faced watch whose strap disintegrated from too much swimming. I think I’ve still got it boxed up somewhere with a makeshift strap in place when the replacement fell apart in New Guinea. I must have had my nose glued to those watches every time anything happened. Kids are weird.