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...
THE DAIRY BROTHERS + THE GELS + DOUBLE HANDED LIVE @ PRODUCERS + JADE MONKEY / Saturday November 24th 2007
I dunno about you, but I'm finding myself waking up in the weirdest places of late. Waking up in hell. Waking up in small boxes. Waking up in a maze full of rats and I'm the cheese. Waking up mid-sentence. Waking up lost for words. Wake up mid-sprint as I hit this wall. Am I dead? Am I buried alive? Or am I waking up to my neck in sand squinting and perpetually sleep deprived? Stuffed into the back of buses. Stuffed into the front of taxis. Eyes open to long stretches of road with the lights coming at me. Flick that switch off and on, find myself between a rock and a hard place confused with this gun in my hand. Laugh as consciousness hits me in waves and drags me out to sea. It all looks the same but I swear the furniture's rearranged. Where am I? Who am I? Who the fuck ARE all these people!? No time to think, one blink and I could end up just about anywhere. Here at the end of Grenfell St, brain dead with a mile long stare..
This is Producers, also known as Electric Light, also formerly known as The Exchange and then formerly known as Producers. Rumours abound that every few years (likely for tax reasons) this hotspot implodes from our dimension like the closing scenes of Poltergeist before being spat back in ever more confusing and bewildering forms. How else could we explain this all pervading murk, these blood splattering walls, those resplendant fur rugs, sofas and lounges crafted from indistinguishable species, their low slung ceiling lights that droop like tentacles..
What work of otherworldly creatures is this? demons of the under-earth? hobgoblins? gremlins? orcs? dark elves? smurfs? warlocks? vampires? Uh oh! that bartender's discovered me, she's giving me that evil eye! What foul concoction is she sipping through that straw? is it rasberry and vodka? is it blood? it's blood isn't it! we've all been brought here as sacrifices before the great Bezoar haven't we!? HA!! I SEE THROUGH YOUR LIES NOW, YOU FREAKING HARPY!! HAVE AT THEE AND TASTE MY STEEL.. WAAAUUUUGGHH!!!!
*cough* whoaa shit damn do I need me a solid night's sleep, I just woke up to find myself licking those walls again. Do I detect the distinct flavour of silver nitrate and cat pee? oh so tangy! :)
DEXTER JONES And now in effort to disturb my constantly interrupted slumber further, we have the first act for the night, Dexter Jones: a band that appears to be nothing more than a fanatical front for the People's Revolutionary Army for Handlebar Moustaches. Granted, these are politically charged times and I'm aware that we're kicking into the last leg of "Movember" here, but that shit the guitarist is sprouting is beginning to verge on a beast that could scale the Empire State building and swat fighter jets out've the sky. Still, as glaringly distractive as that and it's many squinting mariachi expressions may be; hack and slash through that forest and you might just find a band worth seeing. Dexter Jones: they're the sing-along-with-beers-in-the-air pub rock act you'd expect to see packing out a country piss hole to the ceiling on a Wednesday night, they're the stadium rock cheese of Jet and Oasis and the slurring swagger of You Am I minus all the rich dickheads, the chair smashing brawls and the brain damaging cocaine and they're about as infectious and near deadly as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.. aaah, what's not to love?
Still, in such apocalyptic surrounds, with all these infectious grooves and me without my shotgun, this shit could get messy. Their zombie cheer squad is building up thick in numbers around me. I can see them clawing for the stage. I can see them thirsting for brains. How they haven't detected mine yet is anyone's guess *cough* and so, seeing my ONE brief opportunity to escape this untimely demise, I flee to the one pub in town that the undead can never reach me: this hallowed ground, this fairy lit sanctuary, this temple of the Jade Monkey..
and as luck and near retarding coincidence would have it, what do we have, but yet another live band (sheeiiit, how does THAT happen in a website as wildly unpredictable as this? :) )
DOUBLE HANDED This ever insidious viral marketing campaign with guitars otherwise known as Double Handed (now with loony street teams.. weeee!) is short one member tonight: Shaun their lead singer who's since buggered off to the Middle East in search of an alternative source of hommous. In his lankyarse stead tonight the rest of the band present a predominantly instrumental shred that sounds rather like Incubus mixed with A Perfect Circle as performed by 1000's of dog fighting guitars dancing on the head of a pin, whilst sporadically accompanied by Jessie (the Kid) Porter on guitar: channeling his very best impersonation of Maynard James Keenan on cough syrup and former Black Doves member Kate Jay: pulling all manner of amusing lemon faces whilst she strangles a cat. Don't get me wrong though, it's truly awe inspiring stuff and provided just the cheesy call-to-arms film score I needed whilst I gathered my stash of demon slaying weaponry (as provided by Zach the psychic bartender) to fight my way back to Producers..
But alas, it's all too late! Upon my hasty return to the Producers, it appears the zombies have already taken to the stage and devoured everyone else in their path.. THE GELS Such is the hulking menace that is The Gels. They're the one punk band that eats all other bands for breakfast: The Ramones, Radio Birdman, AC/DC, Iggy & The Stooges and The Muppet Show and then spends the next 45 minutes passing them through their lower intestinal tract like an over sized pineapple. How else do we explain the veritable rainbow in eye bulging stares as presented by lead singer "Marty Gel"? or the contorted squinting and uncomfortable squatting of bass player "Ben (The Refrigerator) Gel"? or how starved those other two stick insects: "Claye Gel" on guitar and "Mark Gel V.2" on drums appear to be in their towering presence? All that constant screaming, shouting, teeth gnashing and thrashing song after song? Leaving nothing but a smoking crater of shattered porcelain by the end of it? Damn, if ever you wanted to hear gastroenteritis set to music, then let this be your rollercoaster.. oooh yeaah! :)
So it's surprising to see, even after The Gels have had their fill of the first 3 rows and most of the foldback speakers, there's still a zombie hoard of cannon fodder out there begging for more..
and so, quite like the chirping ringtone of an ice-cream truck plowing up roadkills down a suburban ghetto on a frying pan afternoon, we bring you the dessert.. THE DAIRY BROTHERS If anyone else out there (with possible exception of The Beards) could truly speak to the zeitgeist of our politically charged time, of our turning point in history, of our thirst for the revolution, then let it be this band and *cough* their humble ode to the grapefruit.. hmmm?
Such is the diabolical genius that is The Dairy Brothers, here tonight to host their very own calendar launch party. Oh yes! Who else but The Dairy Brothers (and quite possibly the Beards *cough*) would ever be this inspired and THIS insane to pull this shit off and get away with it? Are they a band? Are they a circus act? Are they a freak extraterrestial cult sent here from beyond the Milky Way to show us the way to a more lactose tolerant future? Will this band ever get sick of these entirely outdated (and cheesy) jokes made at their expense? Who knows? fuckit.. either way.. if you ever wanted to know what it would be like to experience The Wiggles and Tenacious D blown up 10ft tall doing a jam set to 130dB whilst a department store sized Toys R Us collapsed around your ears.. and hey, let's face it.. duuuude.. who wouldn't? then (with the possible exception of The Beards) these would be the fuckarse lunatics for yooou! :)
*phew* it's times like these that I wonder where it's safer: in the frying pan or in the oven? on stage, or in the crowd surrounded by these mindnumbing freaks? AAAAUUUGGHH!!
Still, we can rest assured that even at this darkest hour, reinforcements are not far behind and hope springs eternal that we may all see the sunlight once more, as we celebrate the end of one oppressive regime, and usher in the dawn of yet another oppressive regime.. weeeee! :)
The story of how I came to escape this madenning stampede to victory is one without words (and clearly since I was too blitheringly drunk climbing the walls, one without photos either) As the rest of the night? it all blurs into one without memory, obscured quite like the impenetrable forcefield of cigarette smoke that now predictably lingers outside those bugzapper blue doors..
In effort to light my way through, I somehow find myself in possession of these glowsticks..
although clearly I'm no longer in possession of any of my upper brain function..
'til it's effectively lights out and game over, as these two freaks from The Gels hammer through round after round of ales at the bar and damn near succeed in drinking me under the table..
*phew* where I'd wake up next after a night like this is anyone's guess?
