The Adelaide scene: to many of you it may be little more than a touring speed bump between Melbourne and Perth but to us it's a way of life. Feast within, on all its dysfunctional splendour, as we bring you the highly satirical, laughingly fictional and intellectually imbecile tales from our rock & roll wasteland...
BOOSTER + DEAD POPES OF THE VATICAN LIVE @ JIVE / Friday September 21st 2007
Welcome to Jive: home to Adelaide's friendliest barstaff and the almightly Jager machine of doom! Home to the free foosball, the finest art resplendant under impossibly dim lights, all the wondrous balcony seating, lush velvet stage curtains, spastic kindergarten carnival decor and the glorious purple fur facade of a thousand slain muppets! Jive, home of the brave, the drunk, the loud and the golden pee that flows so free.. ooooooh saaaay caaaan't you seeeeeee how blind drunk this place makes me want to beeeee!! (hyperbole? HA! what hyperbole?) *cough* and as for why I'm here on a god forsaken night like this: lawn bowls? croquet? table tennis? quilt making? the first annual international tournament of tiddly-winks? do I need to spell it out in letters large enough to blot out the sun? oooooh fuck no, you know the score!
THE WARSAW FLOWERS
aand so here we are with the first band (victim) of the night by the name of The Warsaw Flowers. Besides potentially namesaking a dubious penchant for popping cherries in the Polish capital, this band very much reminds me of the doom and gloom 80's sound of The Smiths; or better yet a freaky alternative reality of The Smiths as fronted by an Ian Curtis from Joy Division, who after discovering after numerous failed attempts with a belt buckle and a ceiling fan that he's cursed with an inescapable immortality, resigns to the fate of his perpetual misery by inflicting upon everyone ELSE the ultimate party time soundtrack to murder suicide your whole family to. Yup, to put it mildly The Warsaw Flowers write music so freakingly maudline they make Nick Cave's classic ode to woe "Shiver" sound like the giddy handclap spastic attack of Patience Hodgson; they're that near brilliant and damn near fatal to experience! They should come with a warning label, a 24 hour hotline and a team of paramedics! They are hands down (and slashing wrists) the most awesome choice of opening act EVER.. WEEEEEEEEE! :)
KASAVETT
With the Warsaw Flowers absolutely flooring the crowds from aisle to aisle it's no small wonder there's anyone still left alive to enjoy the 2nd act of the night, Kasavett: the loutish brit-pop punk blast we were begging for, quite like Uma Therman getting skewered in the chest with a shot of adrenaline by John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. They're Blur's self titled album, Ash's "Nu-Clear Sounds", The Rakes and Greenday back in the 90's (ie: back when they didn't suck hairy testicles) punching holes in the walls and raining down plaster from above. They're everything you love about ferrets, weasels, minks, stoats, polecats and other eye gouging members of the Mustelidae family. They're Humphrey B Bear playing the drums. They're lead singer Dan looking altogether too much like Paul MacCartney in a pair of reading glasses. They're the amazingly unkillable Phil on bass (believe me WE TRIED!). They are all things to all people and better yet they really remarkably don't suck as a live band in the slightest.. YEEAAS!!
Such is the giddy hysteria (and out've control alcoholism) that this band inspires, that members of the crowd are soon seen swarming the stage, hooting and flailing about exciteably like the closing minute of the Muppet Show. Any minute now Kermit is gonna come flying through those red velvet curtains flapping his tiny arms in the air and it'll all be over.. woooooooo!
DEAD POPES OF THE VATICAN
So in effort to sedate the crowds we're next treated to the soothing sounds of The Dead Popes Of The Vatican. They're everyone's favourite Sunday recovery band. They're snarling, vinegar pissing, fist fucking aggression, buzzing with catchy chainsaw riffs and endless scream-along lyrics. They're everything you love about AC/DC, Shihad, The Ramones and the Sex Pistols being beaten to death in the Jive parking lot. They're Lynda (formerly of Blow Up Betty), Nick Hadley (formerly of Angelik), Captain Caveman (formerly of the Pleistocene) and what appears to be Elvis Presley squinting out a pineapple the size of the moon. Tonight they're nothing short of on fire, screaming and hurtling towards you with arms outstretched. If there's only one band you'd rather see before you die, then let it be THIS one that puts you there. This is Dead Popes Of The Vatican, bring a shovel and they'll take care of the rest.. OOOOH FUCK YEAAH! :)
BOOSTER
Normally this would be more than enough to satisfy any bloodthirsty mob on a Friday night, but like all good horror movies it pays to have one more kill shot up your sleeve lest the multitudes rise again; and so it is that we're treated to the final solution: the horror, the white knuckled terror, the rockpig manifestation they call Booster. Seriously I don't know how the hell I got out've here alive: so few words can encompass the apocalypse wraught, so few witnesses can form the words, so few braincells and so much alcohol at this late an hour can hope to recollect. Was it a tornado engulfing Josh Homme, Jesse "The Devil" Hughes, Justin Hawkins and spitting out nothing but toothpicks? Was it Jack Black from Tenacious D being repetively punched in the balls by Mohammed Ali? Was it a screaming toddler the size of a bus beating a path of destruction through Tokyo's central business district? Who really can say for sure?
Suffice to say (as is often the case when the Booster circus rolls into town) everything goes just a little bit pear shaped at the end. One moment I'm taking photos in a bleary alcoholic haze, next minute I'm on stage with Dan from Kasavett singing backup to "She's a Live One" (weird how I always seem to find myself in these situations) and then THIS shit happens..
as much as I would like to elaborate upon any of these following frames, attempting to explain ANYTHING that lead singer / drummer Sean Kemp cooks up will leave you with nothing but a sore head, a puddle of drool and no recollection over how you ended up there in the first place..
of course no humans were dismembered, disembodied or otherwise disemboweled in the making of tonight's live gig. Sure, we sacrificed a few chickens and quite possible a few million braincells in the process but hey what else is new in one of my Friday night out on the piss?
and as always, under no circumstances should you EVER try this shit at home! Why would you when you could come out to a live venue and join us instead!? we're trained professionals! :)
