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...
LADY STRANGELOVE + CITY RIOTS LIVE @ ED CASTLE / Thursday April 24th 2008
Welcome to The Edinburgh Castle Hotel, aka: The Ed Castle, aka: "we're not gay anymore!". Never heard of it before? *cough* weird, neither have I! Here on the corners of Gray and 233 Currie Streets. Home to the indie, the art rock, the geek, math, fuzz pop, psychedelic, awkwardly dressed, stuttering, lazy-eyed, knock-kneed, hungover, space cadet and shoegazer scenes (or at least that's what they tell me). Proprietor of interesting smells. Haven to the chronically unemployed (yet artistically gifted). Bee keeper to the guitar pedals of the infinite. Welcome! And for those of you known to suffer frequent bouts of amnesia, insomnia, narcolepsy, stroke, head concussion, aneurysm, nose bleed, shortness of breath, blind spots, vertigo, recreational drug use or are prone to finding yourself at the pointy end of a coffee table after yet another one of your 3PM alcoholic blackouts (and thus don't remember any of the sixteen bands I've covered over the eight other times I've been to this place); welcome to you too! For tonight is official opening night for this "brand new venue"! and thus all that is ridiculously old news to ME about this place (and the 2-3 chance idiots who may actually read this junk each week), is news to ALL OF YOU! YEAAAS! pop those corks and spray the walls up on high, it's paaarty time!
And of course no opening night party tonight is ever complete without hiring the services of these two professional nincompoops: Simone "Flappy" Muppet and Joe "Brain Injury" Blogs to shut down this joint in record time. Throw in free alcohol before 9PM, two live bands (including the infamous Lady Strangelove) and a veritable cast of thousands to soak it all up and it's any wonder why we didn't all end up as a smoking crater on the evening news.. weeeee!
10:27PM - Here I am at the newly opened bar in the beergarden, I think I'm about 5-6 beers in already (half of those free), my blood alcohol absorbed somewhat by all the free finger food that's doing the rounds fresh from the newly opened kitchen (serving a classy lunch and dinner menu / 7 days a week / all for only $10 a meal from what I've seen.. wooo!) and the place is packed and climbing the walls fast. Fuuuuck! I've never seen it this crazy here as obviously I've NEVER been here, this is the first time I've been here and it's always been this crazy *cough* YES! Let's just forget I was here just LAST week. Speaking of which, time to hit the 'ol bar again..
CITY RIOTS (****) myspace :: First band for the night. I don't think I've ever been this drunk this fast since that time I thought it'd be hilarious to hit a friend's engagement party, empty out an esky full of alcohol on an empty stomach, skull three stubbies of West End Draught in a row only to wake up the next morning on a mattress, surrounded by my own vomit, in a backyard, in the rain. Or that time me and a friend appeared as a cartoon on the back of the Sunday Mail when we thought it'd be hilarious to moon a police search helicopter. Or that time I got thrown arse backwards down whole a flight of stairs as a joke. Or that time that.. wait.. where was I? *cough* Oh yeah, City Riots! If I wasn't finding it next to impossible to aim a camera in the dark without falling over right about now, I'd be comparing them to End Of Fashion, Faker, Kisschasy, The Killers or any number of disposable indie-pop bands you used to see "performing" in episodes of Charmed or The OC because their slackarse writers came up 3-4 minutes short of dialogue each week (damn, and to think Modest Mouse agreed to do this shit once? yeeouch!). Yup, that's City Riots. They may be cheesingly radio friendly, flailing about and yelping song after song of catchy boy-gets-girl / boy-loses-girl choruses like a busted up car alarm but the very fact they've mastered all the above without making me want to violently off myself makes them nothing short of a triumph!
City Riots: expect to see them win a fuck bucket of Aria awards next year (in the unlikely event that Ben Lee, Missy Higgins or Bernard Fanning don't release anything stupid in the same year), play the American MTV music awards, tour the world countless times over and die a bloated mess of heroin, fried chicken and STD's before their 30's. And be further amazed over just how I managed to capture THIS shit on video tonight despite not being able to stand upright..
11:42AM - Back to the beer garden to mingle with the crowds once more (and to mingle my braincells up with beers 7-8.. yeeouch!), I'm further treated to a festive fireworks display..
Simone's many talents in animal husbandry and grooming techniques..
and whatever the fuckarse insanity Lucy is attempting to do to my camera here (eeeek!) before I think better of it all and run screaming back inside for the next live band..
LADY STRANGELOVE (****1/2) myspace :: Few words can describe what it is to experience Lady Strangelove live on stage. The lights, the colour, the movement, me splattered all over the floor howlingly drunk making retarded sea lion sounds. If this was any other of the many millions of gig reviews you've already read I'd likely be making some passing references to (a) the entire Amazonian rainforest on fire going through the eye of a hurricane, (b) the collected works of Hunter S Thompson used as acid blotter, (c) the closing scenes of "2001 Space Odyssey", (d) the closing scenes of "Requiem For A Dream", (e) both those movies on splitscreen muted to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon", (f) Chemical Brother's "Dig Your Own Hole" crossfaded with "Led Zeppelin II", (g) a sperm whale turned inside out to the sound of Tibetan chanting, (h) Spongebob Squarepants, (i) this website. But since I was happily splattered all over that floor howlingly drunk making retarded sea lion sounds tonight, you're just gonna have to take my word for it..
Still, for those of you out there still looping the refrains of that Badger Badger song and laughing hysterically as you light another one, those of you who're still trying to dig your way out've all those Pringles packets, off the sofa, out've the living room and into a live venue to see this band, then maybe THIS video will give you an idea of what to expect..
Or if you're still clueless, maybe Kim's performance art interpretation may help..
Although I suspect, like many such things of its ilk, that it may take at least a half hour till their "buzz" starts to kick in. Just look at all these happy customers after the set.. weeeeeeee! :)
Yup, it's in moments like these that Matt Hills: house mixer, may find himself reaching for his hidden control panel. The one he never tells anyone about. That one with the two buttons on it: the red one that says "emergency lockdown", and the blue one that says "administer gas"..
2:14AM - Moments after the screaming, the flailing, the flames and the sight of one lone figure flying out've the Ed Castle on an ejection seat to safety, I black out cold, only to come to here at Jive; seemingly dragged out here by Joe and Simone. For what purpose I know not.
As luck would have it, Count Dracula (aka: DJ Craig) was hosting some kinda 80's theme night here and foolishly we saw fit to walk right into it. Unfortunately we forgot to pack any garlic, silver, holy water, flame throwers or crossbows. Which kinda surprised me considering what Simone is usually known to carry in that handbag of hers (fireworks: check! novelty olympic medals: check! dog grooming comb: check! anti-vampire weaponry? "oh crap!").
2:30AM - So, with no other option out've this deathtrap (besides a dancefloor ahead of us and all those exit doors behind us that make the screaming sirens if you dare but sneeze on them), we came to a desperate solution. If we could just get drunk enough, the blood alcohol alone would prove too deadly (if not for us, then definitely for the DJ). In haste we stocked up at the bar.
Yup, after all that junk we drank at the bar, the bloodsuckers wouldn't dare go near us.. weeee!
3:04AM - We finally make our escape down Hindley Street. Which, as always, would've been a whole lot quicker if Joe Blogs hadn't decided to pull Jackass stunts on every vehicle we passed by. Hmmm, it's moments like these that I'm thankful he didn't find any witches hats.
3:55AM - A whole hour flies by with very little but the dimmest of recollection. Did we raid Mickey D's on West Terrace by force, burgers and fries held aloft in triumph, only to flee into the surrounding wilderness like howler monkeys to feast upon the remains of the night? did any of us ever actually make it home from this night alive? or are they burying us still, out there in the western badlands under a pile of our own rubbish? my mind is an empty vessel, nothing but ashes and smoke and we're all taking turns to piss in it lest it become a fire hazard.
Oh, and as for what ANY of this has to do with the Ed Castle and its night of nights tonight is anyone's guess. Suffice to say, one never takes to a launch party lightly; even on a Thursday!
