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...
MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS + DAMN ARMS + YOUNG AND RESTLESS LIVE @ THE GOVERNOR HINDMARSH / Saturday September 8th 2007
Oooooo fuck.. heeere we go again! Didn't I just do this already? Wasn't I here before in this exact same spot 18 hours ago? That same shitstorm of arms and legs? That same washing machine woosh of footprints inches from my face? Dammit, the little rat bastards are following me aren't they!? I swear they're stalking me everywhere I go. I'll be walking down a blind alley 3 o'clock in the morning, or tripping through an open field, or looking out a window, or even innocently opening the fridge door and BAM! that same dickhead tidal wave will be coming after me, that same avalanche of human cannonballs ready to fuck me up sideways to sundown. Then weeks and months later, they'll finally track down my mobile phone signal and what's left of my skeletal remains buried deep under 30ft of compacted rubble and plastic beer cups and they're gonna know what happened to me. They'll have it in writing right here on this page, in this final will and testament, this night that has ME in a toe-tag written ALL over it!
Tonight this ever repeating glitch in the Matrix is brought to you by the Governor Hindmarsh and an album launch for the Midnight Juggernauts; or more accurately by the gastric reflux of Rocket Bar cleverly disguised AS the Governor Hindmarsh, fuck full of the same damn indie scensters and club DJ's from the night before. Seriously is it just me, or there's only ONE live venue operating in Adelaide now and they just switch locations, light fixtures and bar staff around to fuck with me? I'm perfectly sane and everyone else is crazy.. weeeeeeeeeee! :)
YOUNG AND RESTLESS
To send me further down that rabbit hole and rubber walls comes the soothing lullaby sounds of opening act Young And Restless; or at least the kind've soothing lullaby you'd expect to receive if you lived in south central Baghdad and lulled yourself to sleep to the sounds of Sunni and Shiite seperatists letting loose car bombs outside your bedroom window. Like fucking hell maaan, whoever thought THESE molotov cock-knockers and their full throttle indie shred were a good opening act for a pantywaist electro night has obviously been getting waaaay too many clever ideas from this blog; shame on you! (and your check's in the mail, will you marry me? :) ). Yup, this was way too fucking early in the night and I was still way too fucking sober but you gotta hand it to Young and Restless they sure as fuck know how warm up a crowd to the point that nothing remains but white shadows blasted to the four walls and a mile wide grin. Nothing but blood and teeth and primal screams set to blacken the sun? OOOOH THE FUCK YEAH! :)
Predictably enough (thanks in no small part to Young and Restless and a bucketload of pre-show cocktails) the crowd out there is already a fucking shitstorm: cats, dogs, toads, bowling balls, buses, brick shithouses and mid-sized planetesimals are all raining down around our ears..
and right there in the thick of it there's lead singer Karino Utomo floating peacefully by just like it's another day at the office, treating herself to a gentle Shiatsu massage from hundreds of roaming hands all looking for crowbars and iron bars to tear this place apart.. aaaaaaah! :)
DAMN ARMS
In effort to somewhat sedate the rioting crowd who are now busily undermining every load bearing point that's still holding the roof up, we are next treated to the mindfucking indie electro minimalism of second act the Damn Arms. Yeah I know what all YOU indie scene geeks are thinking: if these were the SAME new-rave thrash assassins we'd witnessed a year ago when they sounded like the Test Icicles and The Klaxons being beaten to death with cricket bats we'd all be up to our armpits in firewood by now. I mean shit, just take a look at THIS fucked up video: there's not nearly enough drugs in the world you could take to understand THIS song..
so here I am tonight all eager 'n shit expecting the aural equivalent of having my eyeballs pulled out've their sockets, tied to a ICBM missile and sent hurtling through the heart of the sun whilst 50,000 fire ants hollow out my insides to a cascade of whitenoise and instead I'm treated to such normalcy as THIS!? This freaking clubby electro groove you can actually dance to without requiring 6 months of follow up physical therapy and a cleanup crew to find what's left of your shattered skull cavity? What the hell happened Damn Arms!!? Somewhere out there I swear Aphex Twin is driving his tank over your homes and spitting on your graves! Still to be fair, this new recipe Damn Arms is still one mean-arse crowd pleasing groove that few can deny. Sure they may occassionally border on the sort've metronomically precise art-techno that upperclass Volvo driving twats love to masturbate to (ie: see late 80's to early 90's Underworld before Trainspotting made them all popular with the pisshead set) and they may potentially become the Maynard James Keenan of the local electro scene, but when they kick in with those knife edge basslines and let the pounding 4/4 beats fly, who could possibly resist?
Especially not serial scene-stealer Karina from Young And Restless here, who comes bursting in through the crowd to do the spastic rain dance on stage with guitarist Ben Browning. Sheeeiiit.. why is it that all the security in the world is off in Sydney for that pissy 'ol APEC summit this weekend when we've got deranged terrorists like THIS on our loose? yeeeeouch!
MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS
and so in absence of all other available crowd control that would otherwise be at our disposal: water cannons, tear gas, tasers, rubber bullets and rubber chickens it's upto our fearless headliners Midnight Juggernauts to beat us all to dribbling submission instead; and thankfully even for pencil necked dweebs such as these they're more than upto the task. For do not be fooled: a Midnight Juggernauts set is NOT for the light hearted (one handed Volvo drivers beware!); living through (nay surviving) one of their sets is very much akin to what it would be like to experience a San Andreas Richter 9 block flattening whilst a herd of elephants fornicate around your ears. They're Daft Punk's "Discovery" album as performed by oversized Japanese mecha armed with sledgehammers. They're the sound of the insanely obese so fat that they require a forklift to haul them out've the house breakdancing like there's no tomorrow. They're the earth and the moon headbutting over and over till nothing is left but dust and MacDonalds franchises fleeing like cockroaches into the eternal night. Yup, you really can't mistake that ever present pounding of the beat meat tenderising your brain to a dull mush, that unrelenting intestinal chug of the bass that'd even put the energiser bunny 6ft under. Sure it's dumb as all fuck and every damn song sounds the fucking same the minute that pounding groove kicks in, but oooooooh crap does it get the job done. "Midnight Juggernauts" indeed. I mean who the fuck in their illbient mind would be foolish enough to stand up to this green and blue lit brutality?
Yeah ok dumb fucking question on a weekend like this. Just look at those rat bastards flying about out there! Crowd surf to the freakin' Midnight Juggernauts? Fuck.. at this rate you could loop the sound of someone farting into a brown paper bag over and over and those exciteable dickheads will still be hard at it time and time again, missing my face by mere inches every fucking 5 minutes (and knocking out a few other gig photographers for good measure.. tee hee!). Take a good look AGAIN at those badass live shots I took above (wooo.. look at that fluffy hair fly!) and consider they were all taken 3-4 rows back under THESE conditions!? fuuuuck! :)
and so here we are, the last two remaining gig photographers left alive at the end of one fuck of an album launch. Me the intellectually diminishing combat photographer you know all too well and that OTHER halfling you may've seen frequenting the front rows of the Governor Hindmarsh as their official gig photographer (who shall remain nameless here simply because he chose to block his face out with his camera.. you fiend!). Happy as a pair of Beaconsfield miners who've just found sunlight again. Geeeee do ya think Foo Fighters will write a song about us?
and there we have it.. another abrupt ending to yet another insane weekend in the Adelaide music scene, or at least for the amusement of all YOU dribbling fools. Sure I could've gone on for another few pages illustrating in gory details all my beer fueled after-partying at Jive till 4AM, I could've even taken some fuglyarse shots for the ridicule of one and many but seriously, haven't I killed myself rotten ENOUGH for you slackjawed monkeys this week? sheeeeeeesh!
So till next we meet (and you all shout me a beer in gratitude), leave me a freakin' comment? :)
CUT OFF YOUR HANDS + TEENAGERSINTOKYO MODULAR PARTY @ ROCKET BAR / Friday September 7th 2007
Aaaaaaah just another quiet night at Rocket Bar with nothing better to do but fluff my own navel and endlessly consume my feeble mortal mind over the many mysteries of life, death, the universe and the grand insignificance of the human condition.. *cough*.. just kidding, you know I'd never bore you with that, OH NOO! Not when there's plenty of these retarding beer fueled chimps on the loose tonight: holy panfried monkey testicles we're all gonna die.. weeeeeee! :)
The source of this ever shortening of my lifespan (anyone wanna bet if I'll make it to my 40's at this rate?) is not due to yet ANOTHER Timmy Fart Show gig. It's not thanks to Shihad, Cog, Wolfmother, Deftones, Nine Inch Nails or even Queens Of The Stone Age. Surprisingly, it's not even some fart-arse metal gig displaced here from the Lizard Lounge. Nope, it's none other but a pissy 'ol bunch of scenster tragics celebrating the new monthly Modular party.. freaaaky!
THE FEMME FATALES
To warm up this most unexpected apocalypse, we're first presented with an opening set by the Femme Fatales. Although it's their first ever "official" show tonight, most of you may already be well familiar with their work if you'd ever seen THIS guy perform live around town..
(Ooops, how did THAT photo get in there? bwaahahahaha!) Yeah I know I REALLY should go easy on the new band for once and bypass all my usual "initiation" antics (fresh fish! fresh fish!) but lets face it would it be fair on all the OTHER first timers that I've destroyed in the past if I did? HELL NO! So here goes nothing: Femme Fatales are without a doubt one of the most enthusiastically CRAP bands I've ever seen live since the ear splitting brain injury that was Circus Arcade back in July 2006. A band that I shall henceforth refer to as "ShitDisco" till they play otherwise (if only that name wasn't already taken). Still before they can sharpen knives to slit my throat let me clarify: they are actually surprisingly talented and enjoyable at BEING an utterly crap band; so much so you begin to wonder if this was their diabolical intent in the first place. They achieve this lofty height by aping other such brilliantly crap (new-rave) acts as Datarock, LCD Soundsystem and the Klaxons, mashing every single fuglyarse factory preset on their Micro-Korg's to death, singing atonally and trashing all of their equipment to within an inch of their silicon lives. For what they CLEARLY lack in talent this four piece band more than make up for in bucketloads of spastic enthusiasm.. fuck shit up yo! :)
"Waaaaaaiit four piece band!? duuude, I'm only counting 3 members here!".. well of course, no review of the Femme Fatales would ever be complete without including a few shots of this rent-a-crowd dickhead in the audience; just look at that lankyarse bastard go.. weeeeeeeeee! :)
TEENAGERSINTOKYO
Clearly this is going to be an impossible act to follow, but next in the firing line Teenagersintokyo (so scenster they neednotforpunctuatingspaces) are no shrinking violets for the ultraviolence either. As much as their annoyingly catchy video suggests, these Sydney-side midgets (and one uber dork on the drums) would like to think of themselves as being impossibly cool like THIS..
Whilst the reality of hearing them live is a LITTLE different. To begin with, what's most readily apparent is how the brilliantly the lead singer sounds like a malfunctioning car alarm. You'd think this is a bad thing but funnily enough when it comes to indie scenster acts of this tragically fashionable ilk, wailing offkey over every damn song is actually a GOOD thing! Take Interpol or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for example: both brilliantly fashionable scenster acts that I love to death, both utterly shite lead singers (overdosed on suicide pills or howling torture victim? take your pick!). From this alone Teenagersintokyo are destined for great things, thankfully though they not only follow this ear bleed up with all the best bits of New Young Pony Club by way of She Wants Revenge, but they also possess one of the most horizontal floor fucking A-grade rhythm sections I've heard in any interstate touring band period. With a stabbing bass grind reminiscent of The Cure at their early 80's body popping best mixed with a tribal stabbing percussion that sounds like a hoard of pygmy headhunters on the prowl, this is a buzz you just can't beat!
However, unlike the Femme Fatales before them (who are blessed with the A-grade flailing dickhead quotient to really bring the party home) it's upto lead singer Samantha Lim to really kick Teenagersintokyo's set into overdrive with the time honoured (bordering on cliche) tradition of the Rocket Bar lap-of-honour through the utterly indifferent scenster crowd. Yup, apparently it IS true what they say: after you've seen Central Deli Band demolish an audience here, nothing short of setting yourself on FIRE is gonna get a reaction from this place..
CUT OFF YOUR HANDS
Which brings us rather neatly to the final headlining act for the night, Cut Of Your Hands. For a quick refresher course on WHY these monkeys are rapidly building a reputation for blowing shit up large, you could either (a) read my previous live review (back when they toured with Young And Restless in June this year), or (b) space out to this music video instead..
Clearly Cut Off Your Hands are rather neatly bridging the divide between jangling 50's pop-rock at it's most saccharine and indie dance punk at it's most spastic drillcore extremes. As for their live act, think James Dean's idiom: "live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse" and you'd be halfway there. Throw in The Hives, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes and what sounds like a Happy Days band on a violent methamphetamine binge and you'd be well on your way to splattering all four walls of the emergency ward with what's left of your remains. I know it all sounds so innocent in their music video but when you're here amongst it all, one minute it's all shit's and giggles, then BAM! there's a stampede of 50 footprint's inches from your face..
If the sight of their lead singer Nick Johnston being crowdsurfed up into the ceiling isn't nearly insane enough for you (again we all know you've seen much worse from this website)..
then surely the sight of all the crowd surfers and that monkey enclosure thirsting for blood out front of stage is sure to drives those last few nails home into your coffin.. and to think people STILL wonder why I go through so many freaking cameras covering this shit? ;)
With the crowd effectively flatlined to a five block radius by that tsunami, it takes a indie electro DJ as near retarding as this one to bring the party poppers back to life on the dancefloor..
Cue the obligatory Spoz's Rant roll-call of drunks, punks, pinheads and serial club hoppers to mug up the camera lens in ways never specified (or recommended) in the user's manual..
how all they always manage to find me is anyone's guess? either way, something tells me my camera's 12 month warranty's flushed down the toilet when these loons are about.. yaauuughh!
and dammit, how did THIS freak get into the blog AGAIN for another week running!?
*cough* yup there we have it kiddies: yet more in a long list of reasons why Rocket Bar should be putting a large percentage of my beer money towards my future medical expenses. I've said this many times before and I'll continue to say it well beyond the point of no return: how I've not been killed doing this shit every damn week is anyone's guess?
(but really would any of us want to live our lives for any LESS? :) )
