ZETA LEAGUE + TYGER TYGER + THE HONEY PIESLIVE @ RHINO ROOM / Friday December 7th 2007
Rhino Room. 9PM. A survivors tale acted out on another Friday night. 50,000 tonnes of rubble and nary a braincell left to light the fuse. I am central processing unit. I am battery farm. I am vacant stare, flickering to the wick, witness to this cumiliative lie. I am none of the above. Avalanche after avalanche. Grind my bones. Wheels within wheels. Defy my gravity. Fall up those stairs. Burn two means to this end and light my way out. Feed my escape. Yes! Is this poetic insight? Is this brain damage? Quite possibly a bit of both. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in over 4 months and this 9 to 5 "experiment" that I've foolishingly embarked upon is bleeding me dry way before my night's even started. Here at the Rhino Room with toothpicks to my eyelids. Song on repeat. My mantra. My meditation.. aaaah to still be alive! :)
but alas.. collapsing world wearied at the entrance, I discover to my horror that some arseclown has already beat me to my punchline: Tom Gleason, standup comedian, having a right 'ol laugh-in upstairs until the merry moonlit hour of 11PM. FUCK! 11PM!? On a Friday night!? Why dammit, WHY!? My head is already beginning to fill with sand. My vision is fading. My mind swims with wild and delerious thoughts. All hope is lost. Surely I am one blink away from waking up in a stainless steel box with a tag on my toe. Not even Christian Bale as a walking skeleton would go to these extremes for his art! and then just as my hyperboli reaches new and ever more stupifying lows I'm gently reminded by the girl at the door that they offer a downstairs bar for pre-show drinks.. *cough* well, fuck.. um.. ok then! :)
Alcohol. Yes! The one thing that can keep me awake now! To be stupid. To be upright. To be in eeringly precise control of my base motor functions? We could only hope for so much! This is my weekend at Bernie's and my autopilot shall guide me.. could I ask for better surrounds? If ever you choose to collapse dead in any location in Adelaide between the hours of 9PM and 11PM on a Friday night, then let it be this one! For above all other gimmicks: the tag-team DJ's from the band formerly known as Central Deli wooping up the cut + mind paste, the bartender with the pink sombrero and hidden camera tracking your moves on screen, the swirling lights, the ceiling projections, the cunningly positioned spastic bubble machines, the resplendent grafitti adorning the beer garden enclave.. nothing beats the simple joy of drinking yourself retarded to wall projected 4 player Nintendo Mario-Cart 64.. oooohyes!! we are truly living in salad days! :)
So, it's a little bit distracting when 11PM comes flying by like a frying pan to the face and reminds me why I'm really here this night. Upstairs. Where live bands now await..
THE HONEY PIESOpening for the night, we have two acoustic guitars on stage with two unfortunate looking mouth breathing dweebs flailing around behind them. One you may recognise as Jon Marco from everyone's favourite (and now defunct) Sunday afternoon hangover: Poly & The Statics, the other *cough* not so much. As much as any person in their right mind would usually be screaming for the exit signs at the mere sight of the much dreaded "opening acoustic act", this duo does a fair whack at inspiring the reverse and soon forms a flock of unwashed masses seated before them. As such, think of them as the hippy headfuck sounds of Devendra Banhart, the testicles-in-a-vice yodel of Tiny Tim and the shrieking car alarm of John Lennon running all four walls of a white roomed acid bender as they almost make us believe the 60's revolution never went away whilst we float away blissfully to the sounds of their lightly soaked sibilant guitars.. aaaah, dying in a pool of one's own vomit come 1971 never sounded so sweet!
TYGER TYGERFollowing up second we have another live act that appears to be smoking from the ashes of foremost obscurity: Tyger Tyger. You may recognise the lead singer and one of the guitarists (no not that disco headcase with the afro, the other one!) as Travis the shitkicker and Mick the dick from Adelaide's ever infamous blue's band Unspoken Things. They released 2 albums, nobody bought them, aaaah but to live the dream! *cough* since then, Travis's main claim to fame (besides alcohol abuse) has been in starting all manner of bar brawls as Adelaide's most notorious trash talking heckler; a fiendish talent in acid spit that has inadvertantly lead him to front this band: Tyger Tyger. They're "Mexican Radio" by 80's band Wall Of Voodoo. They're The Strokes with a calypso swing being arseraped by The Arctic Monkeys as fronted by Micheal Hutchence. They're every single limey geezer from Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels buying a bullet to the head. They're the most oddball assortment of evolutionary deadends you're ever likely to see front a stage and they'll damn near fight your mum if you crossed them. See them now before Alex Turner sue's them for ripping off all his best moves.. this shit rocks!
As one would expect from such a fullblown chromosome dysfunction, the crowd (and one wandering guitarist) responds the only way they knows how: as cannonball after cannonball in flailing limbs, double deckers and head collisions come crashing around the foldback speakers..
It's quite a spectacle to behold, even more so when it continues to multiply and mutate into ever more inebriated forms paying homage to the most unlikely of partytime circus acts..
ZETA LEAGUESure, don't get me wrong, Zeta League are one brilliant band. They're everything you love about Brian Molko with a headcold and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth attempting to kill himself at 3AM with the blunt end of a toothbrush and a bottle of painkillers. They're 80's suicide opus "Pump Up The Volume" making you wanna throw metal in the microwave, they're "Leaving Las Vegas" with a whiskey bottle chaser. They're the closing song to "Donnie Darko" with a slow ponderous lounge groove and fuzzing guitars you can dance small circles to. Dammit.. they're every reason you have to curl up in foetal position in a dark dark room on a cold winter's day with nary but a thin sliver of light leaking from the curtains waiting for the pain to go away.. and yet through it all, throught all it's deepest darkest most maudlin layers, that same arseclown procession in flailing celebration comes crashing into the stage: lemmings with wild-eyed grins, drinking deep from the night. Aaaah what better way to meet your maker again and again? :)
and so I take my leave, satisfied in another battle hard fought and won: knowing that somewhere, somehow, this will all makes sense; even if not in this night.
Previously on Spoz's Rant:
Push Upstairs / Silent Episode 
