merch bitch blog (deceased)

Art to D&Q: Hel-looo!

punisher

or From the Complete Lack Of Self-Awareness Dept:

oh, gold. Frenzal Rhomb were playing a festival in the NT on the weekend. Already having their time cut down by over-playing bands, they were then delayed further by a speech from the Chief Minister of the territory, and then the nine-hour-late arrival of MC for the day, Popstars judge and Top 30 radio chart presenter Jackie "er, no, not that one" O.

Evincing an understandable attitude of "ah, fuck this," guitarist Lindsay began playing Thunderstruck over the top of her speech, and the band launched into their delayed and truncated set, throwing out sideswipes at BMG and the way Australian bands are being axed from their labels to free up marketing budgets for singles by the losers of reality TV game shows.

Cue Austereo management phoning Shock, threatening to "bury" and "destroy" the band, and insisting that they phone in for an apology. Always with an eye for a platform, singer Jay Whalley calls in - they pre-record, bleep, and put to air the result (posturing on air that they've forced him to call live) - all without noticing that he remains on-message and polite throughout, while all they've managed to do is insult him, admit to threatening to destroy his career, and openly endorsing violence against the members of the band.

So best. Check out the an mp3 of the radio broadcast, or read Craiggles New's transcript of the band's own tape, and see Lindsay's account of the events here.

Modern Giant, Hopetoun Hotel, 14/7/2004

With the rainy weekend, I'd only just managed, by hanging it in the bathroom, to air Friday night's Hoey smoke out of my green suit by this morning. No plans to wear it to the Ween tribute next week, though.

Tom Morgan put in a gem of a solo set, mixing up a gumbo of Smudge, Givegoods, Sneeze, Lemonheads, covers and newbies - one already circulating in the new Givegoods demos, and one completely fresh. He was in great voice (and using a new acoustic of the about-to-leave-the-country wife's), and not being able to cede centre stage to an Andy or Nic inspired him to be somewhat animated and actually both look and smile at the audience.

From what Simon Holmes has told me about Her Name In Lights (or people's reactions to their newly-finished recordings), I was expecting something a lot more arty-ambient along the lines of Al Galloway's last band Seventeen. But live, at least, they drew a more direct line from the players' best known work (ie Hummingbirds/Smudge/Even As We Speak), being fairly straight-up jangle-pop. A few songs did strip it back, leaving only minimal instrumentation behind Mary Wyer's voice - it'll be interesting to see what style prevails on their record when it eventually gets released. Or in the next few days, if you're getting an advance while they shop it around

And the Giant put on their usual multimedia mini-stravanganza, with 8mm films running behind the band, old portable TVs shining the band's name and slides being projected onto sheet-covered amps. It's a great budget aesthetic, and one that does a lot to complement their similarly collaged style, with Adam Gibson's poetry past bolted into a pop-music framework. For mine, the mix of melodic pop with snappy rock and Adam's interludes makes for a more accessible band than either of Gibbo and Gynia's last two collaborations, and it's great to see so many people getting into them. That was a hell of a turn-out for a schoolnight! And an oddly high proportion of good-looking girls with long hair, who - even more oddly - weren't *all* being attended to by Gibson Minor.

Extra special big-ups to the middle-aged drunk bloke who, after enthusiastically catching up with all and sundry, rambled extensively to me about how the band's no good, he's played in different bands with them for years, he never thought any of their old bands were any good, he listened to the EP last night but there's no talent there, and he'll probably only stay for two songs at the most, all the while spitting in my eye and mouth. Nobody have sex with me this weekend unless you're immune to hepatitis.

sing along

Marcello Carlin wrote in his diary on Sunday 18 December 1994:

Made a point of playing some of their '80s stuff, JC pointedly informing us that "this song was written in 1985" etc. (L: "that's telling the kids!"). They also premiered some new songs. The two which stood out were "Common People," an immediately catchy song which seemed to be about posh art students pretending to be poor. It was like Eno's Roxy playing "Rat Trap." L & I exchanged glances. "Number one?" "Yep."

band in a bubble

Makes sense. Now that they have a stable line-up, are all living in the same city, and are touring like a real band again, Regurgitator have decided to throw that in the air and write & record their new album by setting up living and recording quarters in a compact plastic bubble in the middle of Melbourne's CBD.

"Bored, overpaid, getting old, fat, tired of the same dull routine, everyday life sucking the inspiration to live out of you? Yes, I thought so," said singer Quan Yeomans. "Unparalleled artistic accountability wrapped up in a landmark meta-cultural experiment or a weeping pustule of cutting edge, quasi-real situation marketing-anti-marketing fodder covering up poorly crafted music? Quite possibly. I have no idea. That's why we have to do it."

Of course, the whole thing is going to filmed for Big Brother-style highlights screening on a cable music station, plus every-band-and-their-mum style webcasting. But let's not be cynical about it - this is going to get them more publicity than the last three albums on Warners (okay, to be cynical again: the stunt itself is more worthy of publicity than the two non-compilation albums in that tally. But then, they were cynically trying to get dropped, so it's all one big cynical circle).

gigs last night

Straight after work, on the bus to Fiery Furnaces instore at Red Eye. The sound was troublesome - they had to switch from girl acoustic/boy electric to just boy acoustic (and Eleanor on leg drumming), and only played for fifteen minutes. But they handled it okay, broke out the singles, did a medley, let Matt sing a bit. Was fun. Look for the MP3 to appear on Fluxblog by the time you've made a cup of tea.

Then a couple of hours record shopping back down the city to fill in until the Ween tribute night at the Hoey. Organised accidentally after Andy Depressant posted a hoax thread about a tour on Mono.net, the night saw him playing in half the bands, and only one group not made up of at least 50% internerds.

Captain LeSnak & the Chats opened proceedings with classic show-closer Buenas Tardes Amigos - this was a thrown-together-for-the-night band comprising young Levins on vocals and trucker hat, Danny Yau on rhythm guitar and, on a few hours notice and his personal request, Andy playing the solo. Russian Brides followed almost immediately, with Yau staying as guest guitarist and Andy switching to guest drums. Freedom of '76 sticks out in the memory, with the flat-capped bloke singer turning out a lovely falsetto. Dos Dedos, one guesses usually a normal four-piece rock band (though if the name implies PWEI influence hmmm), were operating as two men a guitar and a laptop tonight, and even the guitar was ditched for the second of their two songs, a pretty brilliant hip-hop versh of The Blarney Stone.

Whopping Big Naughty, the only band of the whole night operating with their regular line-up, the only band to historically slip Ween covers into their set, and the aforementioned only non-mono band, belted out a tight bouncy batch of songs, but the peak was the opener. Justin Credible's typical drawled or slurred-shouting vocals put aside for casually-murmured "AIDS" and "HIV", hilarious in their very deadpan-ness. theHEAD, tonight operating merely as Skot plus ring-in were delayed in going on when said ring-in's keyboard failed to start up. So he merely switched to drums for the whole set - improvisation in action! A modulator, or possibly just a silly voice, could have enhanced Mutilated Lips, but great apart from that.

Standout of the night was The Brown Sound, a supergroup formed expressly for the purpose of embodying brownness. Andy back on drums, Billy Gibson on bass and vocals and John E on guitar and vocals played the most straightforward set of the show, but sometimes just being good can be impressive. Especially when you salvage the only White Pepper song of the night (Even If You Don't) and also have a go at Baby Bitch, here crooned by Bill as more of a lullaby than the upfront edge of bitterness in Gener's vocal. Spod was up last, with Skot on improvised keys and a late-arriving Andy Clockwise on freestyle guitar, all over pre-built backing tracks. The un(der?)rehearsed nature of this could still have held together, if Spod hadn't forgotten most of the lyrics to Fluffy and Birthday Boy AND Push The Little Daisies, letting the set generally fall into genial sloppiness.

Which appropriately enough set the stage for the grand finale, everyone who'd played all night uniting on stage for one glorious, and authentically drunken, bash through The Blarney Stone. You can already see video of it here, but unfortunately the camera missed Justy doing the final verse with two mics jammed in his mouth and no memory of the lyrics in his head. Listen in though, he manages to freestyle a completely convincing facsimile!

Electric Six, Gaelic Club, 22/7/04

Hooray for a crowd drawn by previous-year's airplay of a couple of novelty singles - last night was the first time I've been punched in the head at a gig in seven and a half years.

Of course it's not the exposure to the band that maketh the dickhead: myself, I'd loved Danger! and bought that & Gay Bar, but had no compulsion to actually pick up the album. A few days before the gig, I just decided "Spod AND Peabody AND Electric Six? There's no way that can't be fun, you know?" and bought tix. And apart from a ludicrous proportion of agro dickheads in the crowd (the guy who smacked me was about 7' tall, 4' wide and was wearing an American sporting shirt [gridiron or basketball or something, I can't tell] and backwards baseball cap), it really was.

First time I've seen Spod this year without the full band (Andy played some guitar, but the rest was on spodPod), and was reminded of how well he can win over an unfamiliar audience as a support act. Peabody almost made up for their Ween-piking with a fast and sweaty set, that included Bruno pulling a thrown g-string on over his jeans and wearing it for the rest of the set. And as Electric Six's raison d'etre is to perform straight-faced comedy lyrics over disco music, they would have been completely fantastic if the crush had abated and allowed room for arms and legs to dance, and lungs to laugh.

All the replacement blokes from the sacked E6 seem to have been picked for being, in order, a) skinny, b) good-looking and c) competent on their instruments (and the less hot ones are required to wear mirror shades), but the music's simple enough that this works fine, and gives them plenty of room to pose out entertainingly. My first thought on seeing the singer was "smallest Dick I've ever seen onstage", and was almost as soon taken aback by his abandoning the Morris-as-Paxman slicked intensity of the video clips for fluffy curls bouncing around his ears. But this just made his stage moves endearing - how can you not be won over by a frontman who stands still and waves enthusiastically to the sides of the crowd while wearing a goofy grin?

insert mid-90s catchphrase here

Charlie Higson reviews McSweeney's #13 for the Guardian. Having been on the First Book Award panel that awarded Jimmy Corrigan, he recalls

Late Review gave it a little jokey dismissal and Tom Paulin said something witless along the lines of it wasn't as colourful or as funny as the Beano - which is a little like saying that Paulin's poems don't rhyme as nicely as Pam Ayres's. Why does the novel maintain its exalted status as the pinacle of human achievement? Any idiot can write one: you just need patience and a massive ego. It seems extraordinary, when we are surrounded by so much visual information, when we rely on the visual to tell us so much, and the lines between comics, films, advertising, TV and computers are becoming so blurred, that comics should still be considered trivial in some quarters.

toxic hymns of hate

"Doesn't this album prove that the Left today is festering in flesh-melting, reason-rotting hate? Isn't it a warning that if Howard is defeated, "artists" such as these will feel even freer to spread their culture of violence, nihilism and toxic anti-American bile?"

Andrew Bolt has a rabid and fact-confused, but highly entertaining, go at the Rock Against Howard compilation CD in yesterday's Herald-Sun.

Architecture In Helsinki, Manning Bar, 28/7/04

Manning need to get a website actually listing what gigs they have on week to week - it's so easy to get down on the bus at lunch and catch a free show, I'd go all the time if I knew what was on. Beer and food bought without a union member discount, people!

I only had a vague idea of what AIH sounded like before finding out about the free gig (tinkly? sparse?), enough to idly assume they were probably a trio. Ha ha, ass out of you, ass out of me: there's eight people on stage. How can they possibly co-ordinate touring around that many day jobs? Not to mention break even on travel and accomodation: no one living room floor can accomodate so many people. Even less their gear - among those eight people, there's two guitars, a drumkit, a bass, two keyboards, a xylophone, a trumpet, a clarinet, TWO trombones, a TUBA, a melodica and more hand-held percussion than you can shake a shaker at. Most of the fuckers sing, too.

Most impressive is that, with so many players and such an option of instrumentation (almost all of them multi-task from song to song, and one keyboard was kaput), most of them are playing notes in between each other, rather than creating some wall of sound. The songs themselves could be unbearably twee if played straight, but the arrangements are so elaborate yet individually minimal - but still carrying strong melodies- that I'm too busy being impressed to stop and pay attention.

Two schooners down and back to work.

KSK/Teenager/Wolfmother/DFA, Hopetoun, 28/7/2004

I'd barely heard of the international headliners before this gig was advertised, but wanted to check out all three of the supports. Commitment to local scene rated at: [bzz clunk...] HARDCORE

Kiosk are a delight just because they make you think "if I'd formed a band with two 18-year-old girls when I was fifteen, I could have sounded just this good!" They all switch instruments, though they can barely play any of them - all three are competent enough on drums, if you accept that sloppy (an unweighted adjective) playing is part of the aesthetic. And they seem to have an approach of "I've got half an idea for a song!" "Great, let's play it!" "There, now it's written!" Of course they're no good, but they sure are fun.

Steve Sourcremo and I were at Pnau's first ever gig, at which Mako and Heidi P's enthusiasm, as MCs, for the live nature of the performance was possibly misinformed. Similarly, the debut performance of Nick's new band Teenager featured a backing band of models, hired to make the film of the performance look that much more appealing to the record companies to whom it was going to be shopped. By this third gig, he'd actually recruited musicians to play the songs, so we were keen to check him out in a legitimate performance. The fact that he's approaching it as a "rock band project" is apparent, having to refer to an exercise book for the lyrics, and wanting to be up the front and emoting, without having learnt how to project a performance in that mode. It'll be interesting to see if it goes anywhere. Even if it does, to see whether the band keep gigging, getting accustomed to playing together, opening up to collaboration and letting the songs grow into themselves from the promising but stifled forms they're in tonight... or whether the marketing notion works, the rock-band-as-style-concept gets signed and Nick swans off to New York with his publishing advance and starts alienating the musicians he works with again. I hope there's at least some element of the former - I'd like to see a more confident version of tonight's music at a show in the future - but either way, it'll be entertaining to follow.

A couple of months ago, Hel-M asked if I'd heard of this new band a friend of hers was in, called Wolfmother. All she knew was there was hype swelling, Pav was sniffing around, and their website design had more style than information. Within a couple of weeks, the hype wave crashed and churned in towards the shore, ebbing after a month or so and leaving breathless word-of-mouth all over the shore, and the band signed to Modular. The first whisperings of backlash have even begun. But finally ("finally") seeing them play, I understand both sides of the opinion divide. Basically, this band have sliced Sabbath and Zeppelin exactly down the middle, and stuck two of the halves together. Sludgy, repetitive riffs, but played nimbly. A voice almost as limited as Ozzy's, but using an excited yelp like Percy's. Occasionally there'd be a flourish or embellishment, a bass line played on organ, and I'd think "ooh, bit of Floyd? maybe Doors?", and then realise John Paul Jones could have done that and settle back to admire. This is ALL THEY DO: Sabbath + Zeppelin. However, and here's where the buzz comes in: they are very good at it. Whether it can translate to CD and an international audience that isn't watching them in a small room, I'm doubtful about. But by crikey it's worth catching a show now in case you miss yr chance to see them without a thousand bogans jostling beer into your sneakers.

In the extended gap following, When Will They Shoot? by Ice Cube is played over the PA. First time that's happened in seven and a half years too! Eventually, bumping out and a spartan bumping in are achieved: Death From Above are from Canada, have a bloke who drums and another bloke who plays either bass or keyboard. They rock very hard, in a kind of non-electronic Suicide kind of way. But the wait's been too long, we're kind of bored, Steve wants to get home and I'm getting a lift. We slip out halfway through the set - good luck, Death From Above The Equator!