merch bitch blog (deceased)

o-ils

Nearly 20 years ago, 500 people were 'secretly' transported to Sydney's Goat Island for a triple j tenth anniversary live 'thank you' performance from Midnight Oil. The concert was recorded by ABC Radio and TV and simulcast nationally a week later for the birthday, and once again in the following year. But since then, the recordings have gathered dust, save for a cheeky airing in the small hours on Rage a couple of years ago.

In late 1982, just over two years prior to the Goat Island performance, the Oils played Sydney's Capitol Theatre for triple j. On that occasion the band asked documentary maker David Bradbury to capture as much of the show as possible on film. The tapes of that show also languished in the archives, waiting for the right moment to emerge.

Then late in 2002, the ABC was approached about the possibility of restoring the Goat Island tapes for DVD release, and including the Capitol Theatre show as a 'bonus'. So after a year of hard work, we're finally there. Thanks to the passion and dedication of many people in the ABC, in the band, at Digital Pictures and Studio 301, all the video, film and audio multitracks have been carefully restored, regraded, remastered and remixed.

The restored Goat Island performance was broadcast in 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound on the ABC's digital TV service on 9 March this year. Both concerts will be released locally on DVD (including a bonus CD of Goat Island) on the ABC's own label on 5 April, launching the Live at the Wireless archive series. The 'Best of Both Worlds' pack will be released internationally later in the year (again via the ABC) and is available online complete with a region 0 DVD.

Triple j's Richard Kingsmill is paying tribute to the Oils this Saturday 3 April on the j Files.

Check out some of the stills and clips from the concerts and the background to the project at http://abc.net.au/oils. And do visit the guest book for some excellent stories about people's experiences of the band in concert.

radness

...!!!

This is a photo of Billy Boyd and Buckethead in the studio while working on Viggo Mortenson's fifth album.

read yesterday

Bought from a remainder store (quite possibly still before it’s even been published in most of the world) just to read the new Neil Gaiman story. Titled Monarch Of The Glen and featuring Shadow, the plank-like protagonist of American Gods, it comes off closer to Whiskey Galore than the titular literary antecedent*. Wacky Highlands characters go about their comical business, mistrusting the soft Southern scum who take a cheap holiday in someone else’s misery. Meanwhile, Shadow lumbers around through it all, doing not much of anything until called upon to thump a mythical creature. So no change there.

Well-written, of course, but basically (and thematically) a holding pattern for the next full novel about him, which might be written by the end of the decade. Unless you’re mad keen on the work of some of the fantasy dinosaurs also filling up the volume, not worth the $30+ it costs in actual book shops.

*though it's actually named after the painting, apparently

read yesterday

The only other novel I’ve read by the former Farm manager was his rock-themed Powder, which performed the remarkable feat of not being a total roman a clef. While obviously drawn from his experience, the characters, settings and events weren’t analogues of the briefly talented scousers (though he couldn’t stop Pete Wylie from turning up at a lig and enthusing about the boys’ prospects. Obvs.). So too here, where the music used to define the tastes of a bunch of first-year uni students is all Autechre and Lemon Jelly and Cocteau Twins, rather than Echo & The Bunnymen, Smiths and, well, Cocteau Twins. The book’s a lot slimmer than Powder, and slighter as well, but the story of a group of kids* trying to define themselves as on-the-cusp-of-adults barrels along heartily, and you should be drawn to the end at least to find out if the main character gets over his fear of sex and gets off with at least one of the hot girls pursuing him throughout.

*Plus a fat American nutbar-feminist mature age student. Bovs.

true story

"For this reason, it is entirely possible that the constable who clocked me back in 1974 was holding his laser equipment upside down and instead of doing 116km/h as per the infringement notice, it is more likely that I was doing 911 km/h."

dee jay slash

Some time after spoofing his daks over Gold Teeth Thief, Seattle muso-crit Michaelangelo Matos got to do an Invisible Jukebox-stylee interview with /rupture. And even more time after that, he's posted it to his blog for the world to enjoy!

goodnight jim bob

'Goodnight Jim Bob - On The Road With Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine'
Jim Bob's Carter On The Road autobiography is published by CHERRY RED BOOKS on May 10

Pre-order your signed copy from from MAY 1st at Shopper's Paradise

Read a sample chapter here.

One of the following does not feature in JIM BOB's autobiography of his ten years of touring with the greatest agit-disco-punk-pop-rock-guitar-synth-and-drum-machine-band the world has ever known:

1. Fruitbat rugby-tackling a childrens' TV presenter live on telly.
2. Jim Bob being accused of murder by the police at JFK Airport.
3. A Czechoslovakian fairy tale about a pair of magic underpants.
4. Stealing Swiss chocolate bars from Pavarotti's mini bar.
5. A brief and accurate history of The Corby Trouser Press.
6. Jim Bob's night of dirty love with footballer David Beckham.
"Jim captures the very essence of life on and off the road for the 90s' least likely pop stars. Like you, I was there and this book takes me right back. A good dash of Hammer Of The Gods, a healthy glug of Ian Hunter's Diary Of A Rock'n'Roll Star and absolutely no trace of Sting's Broken Music, this book will mean a lot to anyone who fought the indie rock wars." - Andrew Collins

Jim Bob Book Reading And Song Singing Tour Dates May 2004
8 Berlin Magnet . 12 Bristol The Prom . 13 Cambridge Man On The Moon . 14 Southampton Joiners Arms . 15 Reading 21 South Street . 16 Hastings The Brass Monkey . 19 Exeter Cavern . 20 Leeds Joseph's Well . 21 Glasgow 13th Note Café . 22 Aberdeen Dr Drakes . 25 Liverpool Carling Academy . 26 Birmingham Bar Academy . 27 London Islington Academy

www.jim-bob.co.uk

The Dirt, of course

Neil Strauss, author of the best debauched rock bio ever, interviews Courtney Love for Rolling Stone. Given an hour in a record company office, he ends up spending three days in her apartment, watching Boogie Nights on DVD and receiving acupuncture from The Adolescent.

She slips into a black-and-white baby-doll dress, very reminiscent of the style she helped pioneer in the early Nineties. "It's old-school," she says of the look. As she waits in her loft for the elevator, she turns and adds, "I still don't have that picture."

"What picture?"

"You know, the one they're going to use of me when I die. With Kurt, they always use that eyeliner picture. He'd hate that one."

chow-DAH

Richard Alvarez gives the new Sneeze album, Just The Blues Sped Up, a three-star review for Time Off in Brisbane:

Kicking off with some kind of six-minute-plus Hendrix-styled wah-jam, Sneeze have amassed no less than 20 pop-rock exploratory gems, laid down over the past five years.

This time around the on again/off again Sneeze expand the core of Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan (often seen playing and fighting with Evan Dando) to include a multitude of musicians. Their songs vary from the Gram Parsons-styled Headache Over Heartache through to the John Barry-inspired That Man's My Weakness and the mod Svÿchers Du.

Every song in its individual way is a wonderful slice of rock hook and melody, unless it's the mini-rock opera in tracks 12 through to 19. Totally infectious and, as usual, out of step with the rest of the world.

Nic Dalton ruminates in response, "[n]ot sure what the Time Off review means by 'having fights with Evan' as the only time I have had a fight with Evan was over the last clam chowder at Henry's Diner, NH in 1993."

Album launch on Friday night at the Hoey!