:: Sunday, January 07, 2007

BLACK HOLE SUN

what, back so soon!? yeah I know, I KNOW! I had all intentions to stay away from writing this monstrosity of a BLOG for at least a month.. I had all intentions on holding out from writing anything till at least early FEBRUARY, for surely only when the ADELAIDE BIG DAY OUT and it's foaming smorgasboard of live music festivities hits like a tsunami on FEBRUARY 2ND would I be finally driven out've summer hiatus in a frenzy of machine gun photography to write more than enough excessive adjectives and expletives to punch holes through reinforced steel and make up for all the lost time you people would've been suffering in the wilderness in my absense.. but until then, fuckit.. I could've easily put my feet up right? I mean shit.. who in their right mind ever plays gigs in freaking JANUARY!? the weather's too freaking HOT maaan.. this is no time to be stuck in blackening unairconditioned sweat boxes with the fried chicken smell of fermenting human decay all around you, whilst dickheads with microphones, guitars and drums scream hurling and sweaty abuse at you for hours at a time!? surely there's better things to do with your time? get out there and get some fucking sunlight already!! I mean shit, have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately!? you're so freaking pale and bony white you make those aliens at the end of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS AND THE THIRD KIND look like the HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS!! your so pale you freaking make MICHAEL JACKSON look CAUCASIAN! take a holiday for fucksake!! is it too much to ask!? it's not like the entire music scene is gonna collapse without you, riiight?

and yet here we are.. because wouldn't ya know it but this battle never ends.. it doesn't take time out for holidays.. there's no hiatus.. every weekend there's another frontline, another charge of cannon fodder rising over the top, another idiot like me clearly stupid and bullheaded enough to report on it all for nary but the madenning buzz.. and people just like you, clearly bored out've your skulls and stuck in your single serving white lit office cubes on a MONDAY or TUESDAY morning, desperate enough to consider THIS as your entertainment: watching and reading about the foul gurgling ruination of others just like you on the weekends in the music scene.. yup, we may not tan, we may not understand the true meaning of vitamin D, but oh baaaaby, we still burn! we still burn like a thousand black hole suns just for you! oh yes, welcome back you crazy kamikaze baboons.. welcome back to SPOZ's RANT! :)


WEDNESDAY NIGHT
lemme see.. I'm barely scraping past the hooting zoo that was my NEW YEAR'S EVE (aaaah, good times! good times!), my brain's still a foaming ruination of ants and subatomic scatterings.. I should've been resting up and taking a well deserved break from my own spiralling self destruction.. but dammit, it's too hot inside a house where most of the windows face the afternoon sun and there's barely a deskfan to cool it, there's nothing on TV, I've got no midweek graphic design or webdesign work to distract me this early in JANUARY.. so fuckit.. what else is there to do but to get randomly stupid out in the streets of Adelaide? and as luck would have it, a few of me fellow grinning idiots provided me with just such a distraction..

so for our first port of call, we're here at WORLDSEND playing a few games of PASS THE PIG at 9PM..



then off to SUPERMILD at 9:30PM, for what was booked to be DJ's spinning "80's and 90's indie cheese" but due to JAMES BROWN passing to the beyond mere days earlier, had now become yet ANOTHER excuse for SUPERMILD to non-stop throttle JAMES BROWN's shrieking start stop funk jams to within an inch of our lives..



and so we escape to the beergarden for longnecks of PALE ALES and all manner of retarding cocktails..



which at 10:30PM, then lead us rather incomprehensibly to the shitty 'ol CASINO and the LOCO BAR for the cheap n nasty cocktails available before 11PM (yeah, I know.. it wuzn't MY idea.. but still, I'd recommend the toothpaste flavoured "HYPNOTIC SOUR" smurf cocktails that I poisoned my liver with.. w00t!)



which then lead us to the all too familiar and retarding sights and smells of the BROWN N STINY at 11:30PM..



and finally, as BLOGS proceeds to twist his intestines into baloon animals with the CRANKY's selection of "ROADKILL" beef jerky, I knew I'd had nearly enough of this rarefied midweek stupidity.. so with the midnight hour swinging by and my last bus due to depart.. I made my exit the fuck outta dodge..



thus concluding my WEDNESDAY night of lo-fidelity wanderings.. a pointless misadventure in pub crawling cheese to be sure.. but it still surely beats frying an egg on me arse at home.. so nice one dudes :)


THURSDAY NIGHT
my slackarse adventures in ecclecticism this weekend next regurgitates me up here at URBAN COW on FROME ROAD at 6:30PM for an art opening.. which, besides being a more than valid excuse to legitimise my own cultural and intellectual superiority over the rest of YOU unwashed masses.. also provides me with FREE WINE :)



the exhibition here tonight, "SENSITIVE LITTLE SOUL" is brought to you by SALLYCAT (aka: the dancefloor disaster better known as "SMASHYCAT") as she presents us with an exceptional array of shiny works embracing the many fragilities of love and loves lost (or, some other such meaningful gibberish as that ;) )



here for example is a nifty little mixed media piece entitled, "IT'S LIKE WE NEVER EXISTED"..



and here we have a photographic work suspended by coathanger, called "HEARTBEATS"..



whilst this vertigo enducing photo I took of the steps leading down from the gallery serves no purpose here whatso'ever but to steal attention away from the rest of her shiny works.. so yeah.. fuckit.. if you wanna see more (and they're really oh so pretty) then come down to URBAN COW, they're on display here for the next few weeks.. absorb, ponder, discuss, reflect.. and BUY UP ALL HER SHIT!! :)



of course, being one to always practice what he preaches, I obviously did ALL of the above in service to the fine arts, except *cough* buy all her stuff (coz seriously, anyone stupid enough to do what I DO for this website on the weekends is not someone you'd expect to find in any kind've full-time employment hahaha!) and so, joining the rest of the starving artists here, we spent the next few hours all huddled around the open bar drinking the place dry before scurrying off like retarding fools into approaching sunset at 8:30PM..



now somewhat grinningly disoriented on 3 large glasses of red wine, and after stomaching the dishevelled luke warm encrustements supplied by KENTUCKY FRIED CARCASS just before closing.. I next find myself here at the ELECTRIC LIGHT HOTEL at 9PM to catch a live set tonight by SAUL WILLIAMS from the USA..



of course, as most of us know, until very recently the ELECTRIC LIGHT HOTEL was otherwise known as the TOP 40 shithaven "THE EXCHANGE", a cesspool of bloating horrors most of us would like to forget..



a place that was best summed up by my one illfated night here back in 2002(?) when my ill-advised (but exceptionally hot) female friend RENEE dragged me here, stuck me in a lineup for a 1/2 an hour.. whereupon I'm next confronted with dickheads tabletop dancing to DJ's pounding NELLY's "ITS GETTING HOT IN HERRRRE", overpriced drinks, baboon metros with their collars up looking to pick fights and all manner of other misplaced flailing horrors, till I fled back to the CRANKA across the road with my friend in tow.. vowing never AGAIN to return.. which of course I didn't, till just recently when I caught a few bands in the newly refurbished and verdent SCANDANAVIAN dirge otherwise known as THE PRODUCERS "BEER GARDEN"..



yup, thank fuck for changes in ownership.. coz no sooner did the new owners arrive here with sledgehammers to remodel the fuck out've this glistening spittle of chrome debauchery, but they also must've brought in a cabal of black robed SATANISTS to desecrate anything and everything that ever dared to worship at the altar of BLING BLING COMMERCIAL and TOP OF THE POPS with a paintjob that could only be described as a S&M BERLIN SLAUGHTERHOUSE meets the accidental killing of BRANDON LEE from THE CROW.. couple that with all the spooky moodlighting, the iridescent fungus tendril chandeliers and all manner of other OCEANIC TRENCH accoutrements and it makes for quite an exceptionally eerie interior.. yup, slap me senseless with a frozen chicken and a baseball bat, but I dare say I'm quite impressed with the turnaround.. this place rocks :)



it would've been about the mid 30 degrees C outside (that's the upper 90's for all you luddites living in the FARENHEIT scale), and easily pushing upwards of 50C inside (yeah fuckit, I think that's probably above 200F, give or take a 100 or so) so for the next few hours till 11:30PM when SAUL WILLIAMS was scheduled to evaporate in a brown puddle on stage.. we did our best to survive the goat melting heat..

my photography arch-nemesis LEJLA the midget (looking to challenge me to a round 2 camera deathmatch after our pitched battle at RHINO ROOM last month), chose smurf blue bottles of water..



whilst I hit the bar for round after round of stupifying PALE ALES to level out my camera reflexes since reduced to flubbery by the red wine ingested earlier this evening (and yes, I understand this would normally be a flawed strategy to get MORE drunk, but amazingly enough it made ALL the difference :) )



SAUL WILLIAMS
after 3 hours of no-name DJ's spinnning underground hiphop weirdness and other such downtempo illbient nonsense, SAUL WILLIAMS finally stumbles onto stage just shy of MIDNIGHT to much hooting applause..



only just recently slaying the crowds at the FALLS FESTIVAL over NEW YEARS EVE.. he's at it again tonight, pounding out this sweatbox, despite being struck with a particularly lethal dose of the flu..



backed by an ecclectic barrage of industrialist razorblade stabbings and gravitron electrobootie cascades as provided by the freaky rastafarian explosion here on laptop loops and synth barrage..



and the broken beat deconstructions channeled here by this funk astronaut with the fuckoff sunglasses on the drum-machines.. you could tell this was going to be no ordinary hiphop block party jam..



as SAUL WILLIAMS microphone assaults would be better described as the works of a firebrand intellectualist slampoet and leftfield punk activist, than your usual weapons grade bling bling, bullets and bitches drive-by-lyrical-shooting you get from most of the laughingly cartoonist hiphop these days..



serving up equal measures of machine-gun lyrical flows in charged hypno philosophy and psychedelic brain charged demonology all quantised into a martial crunch of hammering and splintering breaks..



intersperced with rapid fire poetic accapella's that lobotomized the room to a gulping goldfish awe..



and despite the mercury levels bursting thru the roof, clouds of steam rising from the floor like a sauna and all the walls awash in the fried chicken smell of hundreds of us here soaking like sponges.. even with a bad case of the flu, this hooting fiend STILL managed to power on regardless..



until eventually, after an hour or more of his rapidfire multisylabbic spitting..



SAUL WILLIAMS hits the floor in a gurgling puddle (with a particularly unfortunate (yet hilarious) case of trouser "tenting") and leaves the crowd here slaughtered like headless chickens and grinning ear to ear to one helluva skull splitting, mind expanding experience in sledgehammer urban poetry.. ROCK! :)



we spend the next 1/2 hour or so drinking ourselves stupid at the bar.. SAUL WILLIAMS pops by to say hi (friendly enough dude, considering he somehow managed to make conversation with us fermenting unintelligible chimps.. hahahaha!), I find myself near drunk enough to buy a mix CD called "KRAK ATTACK" off the DJ with the fuckoff wacky sunglasses (and wondering the next day what the FUCK I bought meself into.. hmmm, do I dare put this shit on the stereo?) before finally piling out the door around 1:30AM..



we drop by our usual last port of call (abandon hope for sobriety all ye who enter here!)



knocking off the last of our inebriancy in accompanyment to the usual cavalcade of brain casualities..



whilst STONER ANDY here is now vowing to renounce all other music in service to SAUL WILLIAMS (after renouncing all other music in service of all that was WOLFMOTHER after their gig at THE GOV in late 2005)



whilst.. shit.. where wuz I? oh nevermind :) (sometimes you just gotta love this place.. hahahahaha!)



finally at around 2AM or so I call it a night and stumble out the exit doors..



arriving home in a dribbling heap somewhere past 2:30AM.. aaaaaah :)


FRIDAY NIGHT
waking up dead upturned like a cockroach, in an incoherant haze of heatstroke and hangover, it took a considerable effort to resurrect my weary corpse today.. but with grim determination and a thirst for frosty ales and humming eardrums.. I gathered all my strength and my scattering braincells and embarked upon the city's nightlife once more.. first arriving at my basecamp at 9PM for two happyhour beers.. before arriving here at my live music destination tonight, THE RHINO ROOM at 9:45PM..



on the menu for tonight we have THE BLACK DOVES, TONY FONT SHOW.. and um.. shit.. what the FUCK was the 3rd band tonight? (weird.. normally remember these things) I think they might've been called DICE BABOON.. yeah fuckit.. either way, near face melting heatwaves or not.. it was gonna be one helluva night :)



THE BLACK DOVES
first to flip onto the frying pan, we have the stabbing goth love massacre of THE BLACK DOVES at 10PM..



featuring the screaming guitars of SCOTTY "I SWEAR I'M NOT ALLERGIC TO SUNLIGHT!" IBBETSON..



the intestinal gurgling bass drones of CHRIS "I AM FRED FLINTSTONE'S EVIL TWIN" BROWN..



strangling vocals by recent blond lobotomy, MARIO "LUNG PUNCTURE" SPATE..



shrieking harpy vocal accompanyment by KATE "ROCK EISTEDDFOD MASSACRE" JAY..



stabbing homicidal drums by TONY "NARCOLEPTIC BAR FIGHT" IRISH..



and um, fuck.. I dunno, some keyboardist they always seem to stick way in the back.. I think his name is ADAM? sure, he's like the goth rock version of WHERE's WALLY.. but he shreds up some mean-arse synths :)



watch whilst they proceed to flail away the meat from our bones for the next 40 or so minutes.. screaming themselves unconscious to a backing of hellfire metronome beats and bass, fuzz guitars and icey synths to odes of loving themselves rotten with icepicks, kitchen knives and chainsaws.. whilst a crowd of their ever faithful minions in the crowd flap around like toasting muppets in a factory fire..



till SCOTTY bursts an aneurysm in his brain and blacks out cold on the floor.. bringing to a close yet another stabbing performance in SADO-MASOCHISM set to dentist drills and morphine drips (or just like the sounds of those gits from MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE being beaten to a bloody pulp in a back alley by ALEC EMPIRE and TRENT REZNOR on a CRYSTAL METH binge.. or at least, in my wildest dreams it does ;) )



TONY FONT SHOW
two bottles of BECK's at the bar later (wooo, only $5!) and we have TONY FONT SHOW up on stage at 11PM..



and since, lets face it, I've pretty much reviewed these grinning twits in glowing terms every other fucking weekend here on this blog for more than a year.. and surely yer sick to DEATH of me name dropping them all the time (their sadistic band manager is holding my entire family to ransom.. help! HEEEEELP!!)



and I vowed to stop making fun of guitarist RICH this year after all the ridicule I gave him LAST year (aaaah, good times! goood times!) and quite frankly, I've already done every single narcoleptic LEE, hissy fit in a toystore MATT and "I AM SATAN SPAWN" PHIL drummer jokes to last a fucking lifetime..



and surely you know well by now that these freaks are probably worth seeing at least once.. or fuckit, maybe even twice (the band manager is gonna send me fingers and toes dammit.. FINGERS AND TOES!!)



and surely you've already heard that they're playing at the ADELAIDE BIG DAY OUT this year.. opening the GREEN STAGE and playing with other such stinkyarse local acts as those spastic indie scene tragics FIRE! SANTA ROSA FIRE!, POLY & THE STATICS (aka: the P-STICKS) and um, *cough* MORALS OF A MINOR..



and I KNOW you'll be there in yer 1000's making a fucking mess of things out there when they play.. you'll be destroying yourselves in a hooting bloodbath.. you'll be making them proud dammit! (and maybe their band manager will make good with her deal and return my family with most of their limbs still intact..)



so fuckit, I'm not gonna write anything more about this band.. I ain't covering any more of their gigs.. I don't care if they thrash out "THINGS TO DO IN THE DITCH" till LEE blacks out into a coma.. I don't care if they grind out "HOLD ON" till the walls vibrate, I don't care if they bang out "DISCO SUICIDE" till MATT explodes.. I dont care if they cook up a whole batch of new songs even more fucked up than "TRUCK STOP FUCK STOP".. I wont even freaking move an INCH if they play "JAPANESE COWBOYS" IN freaking JAPANESE!!



and I don't care if their band manager starts sending me loose teeth and eyes in bags of ice in retaliation.. I've had it!! YOU HEAR ME!! DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH THEM!! I'VE FREAKING HAD IT!! I'M NOT GONNA TAKE THIS NO MORE!! START SENDING ME BODY BAGS FOR ALL I CARE.. I QUIT!!



seriously, I'm not writing another damn live review for these arseclowns till the BIG DAY OUT.. HA! see how they like that huh? yeaaah! that'll show 'em to take advantage of all I've done to promote them!!



wait.. you mean to tell me they aren't playing another gig TILL the BIG DAY OUT?



*shit* those bastards!! they drew me in again..



and so.. just like sands through the hourglass and camels through the eye of a needle, after TONY FONT SHOW's set I'm predictably found at the bar ordering up more BECK'S to drown myself like a rat..



and you know when it really is WAY too freaking hot in the mean streets of ADELAIDE when, in the first time in months JOSH (aka: TONY FONT SHOW's resident party gimp "J-BABES") is found wearing neither a shirt NOR a tie on a night out on the town.. damn.. if this isn't a sure sign of global warming? then what IS!?



much mindless and hilarious beer fueled hijinx continues in RHINO ROOM for the next hour or so.. till BECKY arrives, notices I've been nicking all her beers all night and all gets shirty with me, screaming "FREAKING HELL SPOZ!!? DIDN'T YOU NOTICE THAT THESE BEERS HAVE GOT ME NAME WRITTEN ALL OVER 'EM!? EEEEEESH!!".. so it was at this point (and with my pockets filled with all the psychotropic drugs I stole from SCOTTY's "personal stash") that I decide to flee the scene for more greener gilled pastures..



arriving at my ever so predictable pissing hole on the corner of UNION and GRENFELL ST at 1AM..



being retardingly fueled on more than enough beers to float and SINK the TITANIC twice over, it didn't take long till I found an equally lobotomised JOE BLOGS doing his best to stay afloat upstairs.. and for reasons I can't quite fathom, I'm somehow challenged by him to a drink skolling contest TWICE in the space of 5 minutes..



*WARNING! - THE FOLLOWING DRUNKEN SCENES MAY DISTURB MOST (BUT POSSIBLY AMUSE SOME) VIEWERS!*

so, with my back teeth floating I knew I had to unload.. and it is at this moment that I find one of those plastic beer cups lying in the urinal below.. and as many of us do in our drunken moments, I nudge it gently upright with my foot and proceed to pee into it, chuckling to myself that I've managed to fill it to the brim.. JOE BLOGS comes stumbling in soon afterwards, sees what I've poured from the tap and suddenly comes up with the sort've genius prank that only 6 drinks and above will inspire..

so, after rushing for a few wads of tissue to dry the outside of the cup, he goes and picks it up..



initially he tests it for floculants, solvents, salts, nitrates, aromas and oh so tangy lemon-lime flavours..



before, for cheap shits n giggles (and quite literally for the basest of "toilet humour" hilarity) he decides to take this fine vintage of mine for a ride around the venue (quite thankful that JOE BLOGS was insane and near drunk retarded enough to pick it up and carry it around and NOT me.. bwaaahahahaha!!)



so here we are posing amongst the drunks, proudly holding aloft our favoured foamy beverages..



with none of our fellow revellers any the wiser over the ACTUAL contents in JOE's cup..



whilst I'm doing my best not to totally lose my shit laughing at how close some people may unwittingly get to finding out what exactly is IN that cup (and kinda thankful nobody DID ever taste it.. I think? *shudder*)



whilst NICK from SOFT WHITE MACHINE pretty much figures it out straight away.. *damn*



so, fuckit.. time to take it out on the dancefloor..



hmmmmm.. checking the cup level, nope I don't think he's spilt any of it yet.. *phew*



so, why not take it upstairs for some more public appearances?



take a brief moment to reflect on just how far my piss has travelled tonight..



*ahem* and no, I have NO freaking idea what the hell he's doing here either..



although it does look oh so arty on top of the pinball machine.. don't it just? ;)



and so, finally after a long and colourful (but mostly yellow) eventful journey throughout the venue, JOE BLOGS finally set the waters flowing free back from whence they came (although, the more observant of you will notice that someone in our absense has filled YET another cup up ready to go.. bwahahahahaha!)



but as expected, things rapidly spiral out've control when LEE stumbles into the scene of the crime and JOE BLOGS jumps him in attempts to silence him (eeeesh! the quicker I get OUT'VE here, the better!)



*Y'SEE - I WASN'T EVEN KIDDING WITH YOU PEOPLE, THAT SHIT IS MESSED UP!!!*

yup.. just remember kiddies, DON'T EVER TRY THIS yourselves.. leave this for the professionals (as I shudder to think if more people were ever insane to attempted this.. especially if they were stupid enough to use a PINT GLASS!?) hmmmmm.. on second thoughts.. what the HELL were WE thinking!!? AAAUUGGHH!!



obviously at this point of night, nobody's quite in their right mind.. heatstroke and alcohol can make you do some truly bizarre things (makes me wonder, did SHIRALEE ever get her red mesh top back? hmmmm) ;)



so, that's it.. I'm freaking outta here.. you guys are all barking insane I tell's ya!



and so, with the pint glasses reaching for the sky (and with me now forever worried about just how well those glasses get washed after use) I stagger blindly off in search of my "SICKBUCKET" home at 3:30AM..



making for one helluva pissy night of live music insanity and beer fueled depravity :)


SATURDAY NIGHT
after those last two lairy nights out, and the howling condition of wrong I woke up in today (especially after I saw those photos I got last night.. eeeeeesh!) tonight I had all intentions of having a "quiet" night out.. so, in efforts to get away from it all and recharge a bit, I decide to catch the new 007 film, "CASINO ROYALE" at ACADEMY CINEMA at 9:15PM.. and yeah, for those of you who haven't seen it and are wondering if it's any good.. I'd recommend it.. it's like they did a "BATMAN BEGINS" to the entire JAMES BOND franchise and came up with a movie infinitely more gritty and fuckoff nasty than anything that toffee bastard PIERCE BROSNAN was ever involved in (even if I did quite enjoy "GOLDEN EYE").. it's got some freaking insane action sequences (especially the opening chase sequence.. yeouch!) and that BOND GIRL they have, EVA GREEN? holy sheeeiiit.. yeah, go see it.. I'd give it 4 stars out've 5..



a few hours later I pile out've the cinema at about 11:30PM and step on over to the festering craphole that is the CLOWN N SPANKA, with no intention to really piss on tonight..



although clearly these dribbling baboons had a different idea.. so what else was I to do, but join them on their crazy adventures (for it 'tis my solemn duty to report on such things.. come hell or high water!)



yup, there goes SEAN KEMP's NEW YEAR's resolution to NOT appear drunk in SPOZ's RANT in 2007 ;)



of course, any and all alcohol fueled dementia on a SATURDAY NIGHT invariably leads us to staggering blindly into SHOTZ at about 2:30AM.. but for a change of pace (and after the cavalcade of urinary horrors witnessed JUST last night in this blog) I think I'll just leave what happens at SHOTZ at SHOTZ where it belongs..



thus bringing to a close yet another messy weekend of grinning horrors that is SPOZ's RANT.. which makes me wonder, if this is how 2007 begins, what insanity do I have to look forward to for the REST of the year!? the mind boggles kiddies.. the mind does indeed boggle.. do you dare see what we come up with next? ;)

Previously on Spoz's Rant: Street Spirit (Fade Out)

:: Spoz 11:27 PM |
...