TOMORROW NEVER KNOWSlight entertainment dimly lit, song on constant repeat, week after week of the same 'ol hamster wheels grinding, wheat into flour, my mind to paste, serving suggestion on crackers, gone totally bonkers, hiccuping monosylables and crawling thru the floorboards, soaking up the stains, blinking thru vertical holds, static erratic dull flickerings, fluid space in amber gurglings, licking up the foam, a morse code battering ram splitting atoms, my hollowed out skull, liver stone shatterings, glass fragments cutting up my feet, goldfish flip flop spinnings, let loose to the senseless semblances of memories so fleeting, bug-eyed and gasping into the void, a deja view, mirrored infinities, the same shit collecting different smells like passport stamps, smacking my forehead thru a deck of cards stacked up against me, howling feedback loopings, dust bunnies multiplying like rabbits, clogging up the airways, splitting hairs, cutting arteries, radiation leakings, transmitted frequencies echo like punching bags, lung puncturings, ping pong balls to mousetraps, catnaps and narcolepts, so many instances folding like samurai steel, layer upon layer we compress crunching carcasses to loose sand, capture the moments, sentiments to sediment, the details corrode, spinning vorticies, dust devils dovetail into my confusion, singing cascades to my own disarray, send everything to the bottom of the pile, compost my identikit composite, we can only hope that tomorrow never knows the fleeting madness of my yesterdays and yet I keep coming back for more!? kill me! kill me now before this kills me!! AAUAUAUAAAGGHH!! ;)
FRIDAY NIGHT yup as you may've guessed, with recent episodes here at SPOZ's RANT effectively bleeding my bank account dry and leaving me nothing but a basket case close to kicking the bucket, I needed a change this weekend.. I wanted something more minimal lo-fi, something more compact and simple.. and so, dodging the usual golden showers of invites for yet another festive THURSDAY NIGHT - the art openings at AVALON gallery, SPANK studios and JIVE, the live bands and all the free alcohol (egads!? what wuz I thinking?) I emerged FRIDAY night squeaky clean for this week's compact 1-2 punch escapades - an entire live music smorgasboard of underground indie stonerisms served up in just 2 venues tag-teamed 100 metres apart for rapid transit.. w00t!
and so to kick things off I arrive at venue #1: THE JADE MONKEY at 9:30PM..
TAUGHT BY ANIMALSfirst up on stage we have the proto-grunge sonic pastiche of TAUGHT BY ANIMALS.. featuring as always - THE MAN WITH NO FACE (aka: JON WALSH) shrieking up a flailing chimpanzee storm in vocals and broken 4 string guitars, PINOCCHIO (aka: NEIL CLARK) skitzing it out on percussion and laptop triggered sample tweakery and BOB THE BUILDER (aka: the ever infamous MATT HILLS) hammering out a cascade of guitar noise, bass, keyboards and backup vocals.. and on the menu for tonight's set, besides being provided with the usual sublimely trashy primate hooting anthems in "GAP PEOPLE" and "THEATRE OF THE WILD MINDS" (from their self titled EP) we were also treated to a whole stack of shiny new material (almost 1/2 a set's worth in fact) all mixed together into the one continuous expertly delivered multi-textured jam.. hmmmm, could it be that there's already another EP in the works so soon after their
launch? the mind boggles ;)
regrettably however, barely 30 minutes and one beer later I must leave this big audio soup, so I can make my way down to venue #2: URTEXT STUDIOS at 14 GRENFELL ST (see last week's blog for the
tour) to catch up with the next band for the night..
ALL MADE OF RUBIESas the creepily noir URTEXT STUDIOS plays host to a set by ALL MADE OF RUBIES at 10PM.. with the shrinkingly vampiric duo of RANI and STACI howling up a hissyfit storm in splintering guitars, bass and vox to MATT's epilectic drumming.. throttling out a set that's very much akin to KAREN O from the YEAH YEAH YEAH's being reared by wolves from birth only to be let loose to the instrumental backing of THE VINES during a hotel trashing fender bender.. shambolic, gutteral and artrock indie as all fuck, but still fucking cool all the same :)
with their blistering postpunk shitstorm blowing thru like a hurricane barely 15-20 minutes after I arrived, I thought I'd stick around a little while longer to see what other asylum escapees this place would serve up for my entertainment (before tag-teaming it back to JADE MONKEY), and so in effort to while away the minutes during changeover, I headed over the makeshift bar, at which point I was offered 2 choices in my intoxic enlightenment tonight - RED PILL or BLUE PILL.. and as much as I'd love to take the trip down the rabbithole tonight with the RED PILL (CARLTON DRAUGHT? ack!), I instead op for this pan-galactic gargle blaster of doom that is the BLUE PILL (500mL cans of AMSTERDAM LAGER, oooooooh crap! :) ) yup, you just know it's all gonna be downhill from here..
BIRTHGLOWanyhoo at 10:20PM, the next trainwreck of art-collision finally arrives on stage in the form of BIRTHGLOW.. featuring RAVEN BLUE WINTER (no, I'm not making this shit up) fluffing out cutesy little girly vocals, DRIED UP LEAF (I swear) flapping about like an idiot savant on backup vocals and SUMMER FLAKE from NO THROUGH ROAD (seriously don't believe me? check their
myspace) dicking about in the background with a light accompanyment of guitars and sparse drumming.. making the sort've cutesy arty farty performance piece (think ANGIE HART from 90's band FRENTE attempting a poetry recital) that'd likely get them killed in a hail of hurled beer bottles and thrown furniture in any other venue.. but here in the relative asylum of URTEXT STUDIOS and all the fringe dwelling bohemian space cadets within, gets them nothing but rapturous applause.. sure, they're a near impossible act to mosh, dance or fuckit, even hum a tune to, but if sparse cuddly fluffiness is your kinda bag and you wanna out obscure all the rest of the artschool tragics out there, then this shit will be right flaming up yer musical bunghole ;)
RADIANT CITYsufficiently weirded out by that performance, by about 10:45PM I thought it was time to leave the obsidian murk of URTEXT STUDIOS (wooo.. check out all the trippy silhouettes!) and head back to JADE MONKEY for the next act, as RADIANT CITY from MELBOURNE hit the stage.. presenting us with a minimalist instrumental 2 piece (consisting of ANDREW McLAUGHLIN on guitars and BRAD MARSHALL on drums) as they cooked up an endless sea of howling, squealing, feedbacking proto-grunge guitar loops set to drums that altogether resembled a 30-40 minute uninterrupted SONIC YOUTH inspired wank fest (the kinda space-cadet howling instrumental noodle off where you could pretty much figure out the entire set after the first 5 minutes) but still, as neanderingly stoner and vague as it was, they did pull some freakingly cool noises ;)
VOLUME = COLOUR30-45 minutes and a beer or two later and it was time to switch back to URTEXT STUDIOS as VOLUME = COLOUR hit the stage at 11:30PM.. and initially I'm struck with some serious deja vu, as just like RADIANT CITY moments before, we've got yet another 2 piece instrumental act hailing from MELBOURNE that also features a guitarist and a drummer cooking up an endless sea of howling, squealing, feedbacking guitar loops set to drums that to the casual observer altogether resembles a 30-40 minute uninterrupted SONIC YOUTH inspired wank fest.. I mean shit, now that I think about it..
MOUNTAINS IN THE SKY,
PIVOT, RADIANT CITY and now these monkeys? what the fuck kinda drugs are they tripping on in the eastern-states to inspire all these 2 piece instrumentalists? (surely it couldn't be ICE, otherwise everyone in this room would've been eaten by now) still, you gotta hand it to VOLUME = COLOUR, not only did they set the mood with a fuckoff trippy blue video projection (and finally give me some 1/2 decent light to work with in this blackhole) but all the subtle ambient textures they cooked up (a little bit of SONIC YOUTH chillout, a little bit of mid 70's PINK FLOYD) made for some of the smoothest most blissed out ear candy since ARTAX MISSION's
set with DAMO SUZUKI a month ago.. I could bug out on this shit for hours! ;)
but alas, hours we dont have.. as COLOUR = VOLUME finish up in the next few minutes, I down my 3rd or 4th AMSTERDAM (on top of the 2-3 COOPERS PALE I've already had *burp*), throw myself over the balcony ledge of URTEXT STUDIOS, run down GRENFELL ST and hasten back to the JADE MONKEY for the last band of the night.. *phew*
LOEMAXarriving here just in time to catch LOEMAX's set at 12AM.. as we present on stage - GABE PHILLIPS having a nervous breakdown on guitars and vocals, BRUGH O'BRIEN doing a rather effective SIDESHOW BOB impersonation on bass (complete with a ministry-of-silly-walks spastic leg twitch) and KAMERON TRINDER thrashing out a hissyfit of drums behind them.. as they cook up that peculiar brand of intellectualist art-grunge by way of screaming prog metal catharsis that proves damn near impossible for a drunken idiot like me to penetrate, dissect (and otherwise ridicule) without taking a 4 year intensive post-graduate study to figure the heads or tails of it all.. I mean fuck, if you manage to quote AT THE DRIVE-IN, TOOL, JIMI HENDRIX and MOGWAI as direct influences on your
myspace without appearing like a bunch of utter pretensious wankers then all power to you.. and to their credit they DO somehow pull most of this off on stage too (even if the whole JIMI HENDRIX thing is seriously pushing it ;) )
and there we have it kiddies.. 6 bands in one night, in what I believe may actually be a record breaking attempt for this blog (outside of a BIG DAY OUT) *phew* and so with LOEMAX finally out the door and my mission accomplished, I throw in one last COOPERS for the road and stagger blindly out the door of JADE MONKEY at 12:30AM satisfied that my work here is done for the night..
up next, I briefly step foot into THE CRANKA, note that it's completely dead (despite DJ TRIP doing his very best to whip the llama's on the dancefloor into a frenzy) and so, fuckit.. it's off to the UNEARTHLY GARDENS to see what mischief I can get myself into..
and it doesn't taken long in my drunken wanderings before I cross paths with these like minded mischevious twits from TRIXIE PLAIN, happily trashing everything and everyone in their path.. yup, in my retarding state of intoxicance, these are JUST the sorta freaks I can party with..
although the party is somewhat shortlived for the ever infamous piss hurricane that is W SHANE FORSTER, who's having so much fun making a hooting twat of himself in the sawdust and pine chips tonight (scattering chairs and knocking over bottles as he goes) that he's rather promptly ejected by garden security as a "danger to public saftey".. bwaaahahahaha!
and speaking of random drunkeness, it's at about this moment that I receive an MMS from my brother DAVE in MELBOURNE (yes, that's right.. I have actual BLOOD relations, I wasn't spawned in a test tube! the horror!) who manages to one up all my efforts here tonight as he proceeds to gloat over his drunken party antics with JESSE HUGHES, lead singer and moustachioed freak machine from the EAGLES OF DEATH METAL (that's my stinky 'ol brother grinning there on the right.. you all have my permission to hunt him down and kill him, or y'know, just piss in his cornflakes or somethin') yup, clearly the only way I'm gonna beat his effort tonight is if I somehow manage to get JOSH HOMME pregnant.. *cough*
anyhoo.. 3AM swings by without any JOSH HOMME kidnappings, everyone promptly gets thrown out've the UNEARTHLY GARDENS and so it's off to the stinky 'ol CRANKA to further roll my carcass down that staircase to oblivion.. and wouldn't ya know it but now that the garden's have closed, the CRANKA's now crawling upto it's armpits with pissheads..
case in point being LEE from TONY FONT SHOW and his lunatic entourage, who only minutes earlier failed to talk their way into making a mess out've SUGAR NIGHTCLUB down the road..
and so like every other kamikaze moth to the flame, they too are drawn to make a mess of the CRANKA instead (hmmm, if only I had a dollar for every time a beer glass shattered in this place.. hahahahaha!)
after spending the next hour or so till closing tearing the place apart, we eventually get thrown out the door at 4AM and all head down to the RUNDLE FALAFEL, where I happily space out until I realise they've got no hotdogs left (to think I could've started the infamous SPOZ DOG again!) and after onsidering all the alcoholic abuse I inflicted upon myself earlier tonight (which has altogether made me a few cars short of a carpark) by 4:30AM I make the smart decision to get the fuck out've there before they serve rotating bit of my carcass in there..
thus bringing to a close yet another ecclectic and random night of live entertainment.. eeeee! :)
SATURDAY NIGHTin a repeat performance of last night's tag-team action down GRENFELL ST, I'm back once more at the JADE MONKEY at 9PM as I catch the electro ecclectic cheese ensemble of SOJOURN, MUNCHKIN and THE BLACK DOVES..
whilst simultaneously sampling the freakingly obscure artrock selection of WOMEN MOVING FURNITURE, SHIVER LIKE TIMBER, THE ALPS and JAPANTHER down the road at URTEXT STUDIOS..
I initially arrive at JADE MONKEY thinking there's gonna be 3 bands on, with the first one set to appear at 9:30PM.. except since THE BLACK DOVES mysteriously pulled out just last week (leaving a scattering of disappointed groupies milling about outside) and last minute replacements
EMDEE (from the NORTHERN TERRITORY) have also since made a no show in effort to meet a 12AM commitment at the UNEARTHLY GARDENS, I discover there'll be nothing on till well past 10PM.. bugger..
WOMEN MOVING FURNITUREand so fuckit.. it's off to URTEXT STUDIOS to start the night with this blitheringly obscure 3 piece act called WOMEN MOVING FURNITURE.. which could only be described as the 90's slacker rock of PAVEMENT mixed with 3AM pissed karoake and a poetry reading.. still, as utterly shambolic jam sessions on stage go this stuff wasn't too entirely crap, get some random dancing puppets and robots shooting laser beams on stage to this and you'd almost have something insane enough to go on tour with BECK ;)
SOJOURNstill, 20 minutes of this was more than I could handle till my brain collapsed into a singularity and sucked all of reality into it, and so after downing my 500mL AMSTERDAM as quickly as I could (without causing myself irreversible blindness or liver spots) I headed back down to the JADE MONKEY at 10:30PM to catch SOJOURN's set.. as their ecclectic ensemble (including a new live drummer) soothed the air around me with lightly dappled ambient electronica.. producing an ambience altogether like a hippy granola version of mid 80's PINK FLOYD mixed with the chillout tribal grooves of ENDORPHIN whilst heavily sedated on chronic amounts of marijuana.. yup, it may sound like something you'd dose mental patients with during rec room "playtime" so they dont chew up the furniture.. but give me some acid, shrooms, horse tranquilisers, hippy chicks and some paint and I could really party out to this shit.. wooo! :)
with SOJOURN now since disappearing back to the AGE OF AQUARIUS and the crystal pyramids that spawned them, I thought I'd switch channels back to URTEXT STUDIOS for 1/2 an hour in effort to catch either SHIVER LIKE TIMBER or THE ALPS at 10:40PM.. but upon arriving here, not only do i discover I just missed SHIVER LIKE TIMBER (apparently they sounded like some spaced out folk duo) and was 1/2 an hour too early for THE ALPS.. *bugger*
and so it's back down GRENFELL ST again like a freaking yoyo..
MUNCHKINas I arrive back at JADE MONKEY a little past 11PM, just in time for ever familiar sounds of MUNCHKIN.. featuring the ever lurking shadow puppets of DALE "CRAZY FROG" TAYLOR fanging out the funk wah-wah on guitars, GEDDY "SUPER GEEK" WALTERS attempting to channel all the 80's synth doom of DEPECHE MODE on bass whilst capably fronted by the smooth and seductive lung puncture warbles of KALIAH "THE BUDGIE" ALICE as she works the cocktail slink of MICHELLE PFEIFFER as reinterpretted by PATIENCE HODGESON from THE GRATES on a spastic red cordial muppet bender (oh and of course, let us not forget the ever mysterious 4th member, DOLLY the LAPTOP, who provides a circus of spikey 808 beats and icey synths to grind this whole monkey out in style).. sure, they may occassionally sound like a midair collision between GOLDFRAPP, PORTISHEAD and THE SNEAKER PIMPS on a bad acid comedown when all the equipment blows up on stage but you still can't help but grin ear to ear when you see these exciteable trigger-happy nutjobs have at it all the same.. electronica is not dead!! electronica is not deaaad!! (oh yes, they're gonna kill me now :) )
JAPANTHERafter a blistering 45 minute set and a funked out encore, those exciteable MUNCHKIN's pogo out thru the ceiling with much hooting applause, I finish my COOPERS PALE (the only effective antidote to counter all the other hilarious shite I've been drinking tonight) and head back down to URTEXT STUDIOS to catch the final act, JAPANTHER fresh from NEW YORK.. upon arriving a little past 12AM, I find the main stage spat up into the middle of the room, moodlighting provided by shitty little desklamps propped up by milkcrates around the drumkit and a seething crowd pushed right up into the band's faces.. yup, I gotta hand it to these URTEXT monkeys.. they really know how to make a headlining act look SO fuckoff indie it hurts.. this was the most fucking badass setup I'd seen all night and it suited the band brilliantly, as they punched out a dirty noise punk assault right up in our faces sounding just like what you'd imagine DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 would've been like back in the NEOLITHIC period before they were domesticated by the man n shit.. yup, nothing but distorted megaphone style vocals, shitty looped samples triggered from a tapedeck, psychotic guitars, pounding dirtyarse beats, this one skinny punk idiot who looked like JOE STRUMMER making a fucking chiropractic pretzel of himself out front of the crowd, all played out in a venue that looked like a condemned homeless shelter? fuckyeah!! if you missed this shit (coz it'd hafta be hands down the coolest shit I'd seen all year) then kill yourself now, you missed one of THE gigs of the year! woooooooo! ;)
*phew* with the dust finally clearing from the aftermath of that punk juggernaut, I did my civic duty of drinking the bar dry (and hey check it out, they got DR TIMS now! woooooo!!) before finally falling down the elevator shaft back to street level, in search of where the night would next randomly send me..
as after phonecall and an SMS, I find myself here at ENIGMA BAR at 1AM.. I dunno what the FUCK they're putting in the beers here tonight, but this place is packed, it's sardine packed, I can't move anywhere without accidently putting someone in the hospital.. so here I am helplessly trapped near the entrance, captive audience to SIMONE whilst she demonstrates the latest in a long line of her freakishingly befuddling accessories.. I can't quite translate what her exciteable arm flapping is trying to tell me (especially in our combined alcoholic states).. so you tell me.. is this (a) meant to be a collapsible mini shot glass? (b) a hygienic sneeze cover? (c) a pinocchio lie detector? (d) a contraceptive device for the incredibly diminuitively endowed? (e) does it dispense dietary supplements? (f) all of the above? aaaaah fuck this.. I'm going to the bar ;)
which in my corrupting english dialect can only mean one thing, my home away from home, the curse of my existence.. the.. yeah, fuckit.. you know where.. as chances are here is where I'll get married, where my wife will give birth and where I'll be buried (all quite possibly on the same day too) yup, the sooner they burn this place to the ground.. the happier we'll ALL be! :)
for truly if there is a hell on earth, it would be here.. this most foul and wretched hive of drunken villainry that plays host to such retarding characters as these two.. *cough* don't make eye contact, back away slowly, find an exit.. and FLEEEEEEEE!!
although why I would flee to here at this exact moment, whilst SIMONE puts into practice option "d" on JOE here? *cough* embarassing!
and so it's onto the dancefloor, albeit fleetingly before I'm sent screaming for cover once more by the sight of DJ IAN BELL (aka "FATBOY SLUM") busting a move here to the abject horror and amusement of many (if only I kept more of these shots, I'd have this animated right about now.. hahaha!)
and since this drunkening point of the night, like all the weekends before it, merely serve as a shameless shooting gallery for all you cheap thieving bastards who like to steal hilarious photos for your own myspace profiles.. fuckit.. FRANKIE, this one's for you! ;)
yup, it's all gone spiraling to hell now.. 4AM has come and gone.. JOE, SIMONE and most of the rest of these brain casualties have already been dragged off by the paramedics or to the "morgue" to sleep it all off.. and so, we the few, we the brave, we the still barely upright decide to make our famous last stand at SHOTZ nightclub.. dammit, if we're gonna go down, we're gonna go down with a fight and we're gonna take aaaaall you mofo's with us! AUAAAGGHH!!
of course, obviously (if I could remember) I could tell you what happened here, I could show you all manner of ridiculous photos, I could boast all number of crazy escapades both tantilising and terrifying and I could explain how the fuck I got what I thought was a bruise on my right arm from last week (but people tell me is actually a BITE MARK!?).. but yeah.. fuckit.. I can't remember a fucking thing.. *ahem* ;)
and so, on that utterly vague and incoherent note, my weekend draws to a close like it always does.. with my dull grinning death head circling the pillow into oblivion, and me altogether questioning both the logic and reason behind it all.. aaaaah, 'twas the best of times! 'twas the blurst of times! oh if only I was a blurst all the time! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! :)
Previously on Spoz's Rant:
The Line Begins To Blur 
