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...
MR WEDNESDAY + THE SEA THIEVES LIVE @ THE GRACE EMILY / Sunday July 20th 2008
Episode four. The finale. The earth shattering climatic conclusion to everything you've ever come to believe was EVEN possible from a teeny tiny blog on the Adelaide music scene! And if you're seriously thinking this week was sorely needing an extra FIFTH episode then I believe you and my hangover should talk. No really! you can add him here as your myspace friend, here on facebook and even here as your MSN buddy (oh yes! and this joke is about as side splittingly funny as your chances of finding ANYTHING at the end of all those links.. weeeeee!). Wow, episode four huh? I really hope you enjoyed all three of the previousepisodes and I really hope they were just as wildly entertaining as it was for me to write them all. Shit damn! it really IS quite the achievement isn't it? And maybe one day, far off in a wild and wacky utopian future when we're all living on the darkside of Uranus because we've jettisoned way too much garbage into the sun, we'll look back at this illustrious blog from the 21st century and wonder: "when IS Spoz ever gonna get to the fucken point!?" *cough* oh yeah! silly me I almost forgot! :)
Episode four. Sunday. The recovery lounge. The final resting point of my swiss cheese soul: since grated, dessicated and sprinkled into a teeny tiny shot glass and set on fire.. mmmmm zesty! If hair-of-the-dog ever had a name and a place to call its own, it would be right here at The Grace Emily. No more a perfect venue could ever have been invented to host your fullblown psychotic breakdown. Are you a shut-in? growing your hair and fingernails long? peeing into milk bottles? come to the Grace Emily! It's all in the details: this veritable shitstorm of oddball memorabilia, walls to ceiling festooned and festive, an endless array of spastic knick-knacks! YES!
Which becomes all the more befitting for tonight's wild and wacky entertainment as the live stage becomes equally festooned with its own endless array of the spastically knick-knackered. Who knew it was actually physically possible to have just THAT much junk stuffed onto the ONE tiny live stage and ever hope to fit people on it too!? and who knew it was also possible to use the word "festooned" three times in the one live music blog? The Grace Emily, that's what!
And what could be better than an overload of spastic knick-knacks on stage, I hear you ask!? Look no further than THIS Hawaiian built teeny tiny hardcore-as-FUCK ukelele! Oh yes! let it never be said we don't take you to all the brightest hootenanny hotspots in this town!
THE SEA THIEVES (****1/2) myspace :: The ukelele of course could only be the work of these two fine fools: The Sea Thieves. Maybe you recognise them as the two faceless drones who serve you all that rat poison behind the bar at the Jade Monkey every night: Zac the laughable imp and part time psychic, Naomi the mild mannered librarian of liquors and assassin of accordians. Maybe you recognise them from their many on screen appearances from Lord Of The Rings. Maybe you recognise them as those two mysterious midgets who craft you new pairs of shoes every day in the dead of night? Or maybe you don't recognise them all, thanks to all their hard work every night tending to your alcoholic amnesia. Indeed it IS a rare sight to see them outside of their faerie lit cages to prove they even exist outside the realm of myth and magic. Bigfoot? The Loch Ness Monster? UFOs? Osama Bin Laden? how else could we hope to explain Zac's unnerving ability to predict your drinking habits even before YOU do? or Naomi's telekinetic ability to speak without words? They're The Sea Thieves that's what, and oh yes they are very real! and tonight they bless us with a ridiculous array of magical musical toys and lightly dappled acoustics that only a Sunday night at the tail end of a four day piss bender and a class five hangover could possibly ever accomodate..
The Sea Thieves. In layman's terms they could be loosely described as Beck's "Sea Change", Tom Waits on prozac, The Shins on valium, Radiohead on morphine and one of those dusty old wood panelled radios from the 1930's crackling out a sweetly soothing lullaby moments before the Nazi's invade your motherland. Or better yet pick up a copy of their album "Hiding In The Shade" load it onto your ipod, have yourself an absolute blinder of a Saturday night, get thrown out by security, pick a fight with the taxi driver, spend five hours walking home instead only to misplace the house keys, break a window to get in, find out you're in the WRONG house, throw up everywhere except IN the bowl, collapse dead, crawl out've bed, reach for the headphones, reach for the panadol, collapse on the couch, tune the tv to static and space out to THIS with your eyelids flickering! It's all there in the sweetly muffled acoustics, the squeak, the groan, the crackle, the swoon, and the total look of confusion when you attempt to piece together just WHAT the fuck you did last night (followed by a broad smile when you realise the cops never DID find out where you buried all those bodies). Oh yes! right here, spread eagled on the carpet, eyes rolling back into your skull and listening to this shit is the ONLY place to be! :)
MR WEDNESDAY (*****) myspace :: Which makes it all the more perfect the prelude to act two: Mr Wednesday. Here in on a cold winter's night in July. The clinking of pint glasses, the chatter of conversation, small, whimsical, yet bordering on the meaningful, broken intermidently by the shout of "two shots!" from the pool table behind. Five lost souls swimming in a fish bowl: awkward and academically unkempt find themselves onto a live stage. One imagines the Grace Emily simply picked them up living homeless off the street, hoisted them in here using one of those retractable claws you use find in novelty skill testers, dropped into place amongst the crawl spaces between the clusterfuck of drums, keyboards and guitar amps, drugged upto their eyeballs and then told that THEY would be playing the part of Mr Wednesday tonight. For as we all know, the REAL "Mr Wednesday" were kidnapped years ago by some vast Orwellian organisation (or quite possibly Telstra) and are currently being re-educated into believing that 2+2=5, free will is a myth, and there is no such thing as Santa Claus, evolution or global warming. Oddly enough though the crowd here doesn't seem to mind, as every available space on the carpet before them responds in kind with the vacuous smiles of countless refugees fled from the same torture chambers: sprawled, seated, sedated and blissfully bleery eyed. The perfect setting for a night of Mr Wednesday..
For Mr Wednesday are not just five barely conscious musicians and a 45 minute set (with an optional encore) of the blissfully narcoleptic and meticulously melancholic; but an ideal! A quiet riot raging against the corporate machine! A constant struggle against a white noise world of systemic compliance, 9-5 forced labour divisions, territorial pissings and 30 second sound bites! They represent the silent strength and solidarity to be found in passive resistance, of becoming educated and socially aware! of become more than just processed meat, but a people's revolution for autonomy and actuality! (and I'm also told they make an awesome frozen yoghurt too!)
Mr Wednesday. It's all there in the genius of their slow cooked arrangements, how they shuffle their feet about on stage: like lost children, idiot savants, autistic architects to the grand design. How they weave in those layers of articulate guitars, bass and keys like dappled sunlight sifting through autumn leaves, singing a song for the fallen, blown about in a mad cacophany of drums as one lone plastic bag does its dance amongst it and Ricky Fitts from American Beauty lights another joint, breathes in, bursts into tears and collapses dead unable to cope with it all..
Which either makes this set tonight one of the most skull fuckingly experiences I could ever have hoped to flatline my feeble brain to on a cold winter's night, or it was absolute rubbish and I simply slept through it all instead *cough* Yup sometimes you can never quite tell with one of my live reviews can you? (waaait.. didn't I give this 5 stars? oh riiiight, sarcasm!) So fuckit, here's another new song "War" off of one of their yet to be released "concept" albums, so you can decide for yourself! May it give you the strength to soldier on for another day; quite like one of those cold & flu jingles they're always so dangerously close to sounding like.. weeeeeeee! :)
Aaaaaah I ask you, what better way is there to spend a Sunday night after you've lived through a weekend quite as ridiculous as mine? Where else but here at the Grace Emily!? Here's to you Mr Wednesday and The Sea Thieves! you've damn near made my insane journey complete!
And so as I collapse on the pavement outside for the last time with a smile on my face and not a single coherent thought left buzzing in my brain; we bid fond farewell to episode four and all the other episodes the fell before it. Knowing full well that even in it's entirety this story was only ever ONE story to tell, one story of many, one for every every single pub, club, live venue and mad fool living it up amongst this Adelaide scene. This as always, I give to you!
MONA LISA OVERDRIVE WISH @ PRODUCERS BAR / Saturday July 19th 2008
Episode three of four. Two down, two to go? Saturday night? YAY it's a fucking Saturday! We all know what that means: "Five days of work.. one whole day to play.. c'mon everybody wear your rollerskates today.. it's Saturday it's a Saturday Saturday it's a Saturday it's a Saturday it's a Saturdaaaeeeeeaa.." (aarrggh.. kill me now!) Or at least it would've been if I hadn't already done me a whole MONTH of Saturdays THIS Friday night (with a few extra on Thursday) and woke up today feeling like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and three MCs from De La Soul had just ambushed me in a back alley and beaten me fives ways to NEXT Saturday (FUUUCK what a Friday!). No not for me, I seek something a little different from MY Saturday. I seek escape. I seek a clean slate, redemption, contemplation and some hair-of-the-dog, pint sized medication all rolled into one! I seek the chewy nougat centre that only the east end Palace cinema could ever hope to provide! Oh yeaaah! thank fuck for the Hollywood summer blockbuster! :)
My choice was obvious. My choice was there WAS no other choice. It was the same movie every other dickhead and dog were scrambling to see this weekend: "The Dark Knight". Fuck the live scene, the live scene can wait! I've waited all year for this! Batman! FUCK YEAAAAH! And as for what I thought of it all? (a) yes it IS as ridiculously awesome as everyone says it is, (b) the first half of the movie will totally confuse the fuck out've you, but (c) it totally makes up for it by the second half, so much so (d) you'll want to see it twice, and (e) it has the most horrifying use for a "pencil" you'll ever damn near see. Bring your brain, bring refreshments, you'll fucking love it!
11:11PM - Satisfied in a Saturday night well wasted in a passive pursuit oddly more cerebral and challenging than I ever imagined (who knew a comic book movie could ever aspire to this!?), and since no episode of Spoz's Rant is ever complete without at least SOME live music content; I took a quick stroll down Grenfell Street and Producers Bar just to see what I could dig up..
Aaaaah Producers Bar! Adelaide's best kept secret outside of every other live venue in this city that you would've never heard of before if you didn't otherwise read this blog; Producers Bar! A place ripe with infamy! How could we forget Saul Williams back in January 2007? Har Mar Superstar in April 2007? The Red Paintings in July 2007? Mani Neumeier in January 2008? Mammal in April 2008? All these posters pointing to battles hard fought and victories hard won within these very obsidian walls that stand before me!? Walls that verily drip the blood of rock!? And tonight we add yet another chapter to this illustrious hall of heroes with the one, the only..
Oh fuck.. what the hell!? Yup, welcome to yet another exciting monthly installment of "Wish": indie alt prog and electro, the one stop party central for Adelaide's party scene! And what could be MORE awesome than original recipe "Wish" I hear you ask? Well look no further kiddies, for tonight we have Olympics style Wish! Oh yes! everything you could've ever wanted from team sports, shaved heads, drug abuse, urine samples, national anthems, armpit stains and camel toes but were too afraid to ask!? it's all here tonight! WOWEEE!! dare to contain the excitement!
*cough* damn, does anyone else hear crickets chirping in here, or is that just me?
But.. wait.. where are you all going!? come back! we've got plenty of fun! No really!! We've got endless hours of entertainment right here! like, the amazing Colonel and his busted up knee!
A wild and wacky selection of alcoholics to be lurched, leered, spat on and thrown up upon!!
Did someone say novelty hat wear!? oh yes kiddies, we have novelty hat wear!
And then there's bartender Sophie. Aaaaah Sophie! everyone loves Sophie! How's tricks Sophie? how awesome is it to be working a Saturday night like this!? Sophie? Sophie!? hello.. anyone there? *waves hands frantically*.. damn, she's gone and frozen up again! Quick, hand me that box of matches so I can throw some lit ones at her.. see if she blinks! wooohehehahaha! :)
Aaaaah Sophie, sweet innocent, flame retardant Sophie! she loves nothing more than to make entirely unnecessary appearances on Spoz's Rant, so much so that she's simply overjoyed to see that bartender Bec, her "arch nemesis" from the Ed Castle has beaten her to the spotlight timeandtimeagain. Oh yes! nothing is more entirely awesome in this world than to see yourself in Spoz's Rant! Isn't that right Sophie? Sophie!? oh shit.. now I've really done it! heeeeelp!!
But of course Sophie always sees the sunny side of life. Why? Cause she's Sophie! Sophie's awesome! isn't that right Sophie!? and so to show us that it's all fun and games on Spoz's Rant, she's presented me with a complimentary cocktail (of entirely dubious origin) to celebrate everyone's good fortune! awwww thanks Sophie! no really, you're the best! :)
And so, as I sip this soothingly sweet nectar of the gods that may or may not contain trace amounts of ebola, dioxin, botulinum, Japanese pierus, smallpox, anthrax, thallium and a whole lemon zesty wedge of awesome! I eagerly await the appearance of the final band of the night..
MONA LISA OVERDRIVE (***) myspace :: Tonight Producers Bar and a cast of thousands (some of them even visible with the naked eye!) have already played host to the skull fucking crescendo in sticks and pipes and strings that was Trixie Plain and Swords: two of Adelaide's best reasons to bang your head repetitively into a wall since toaster met bathtub met Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit". But like any other wild night south of the border such as this one, they've well and truly left the best till last: Mona Lisa Overdrive. Not to be confused with their mild mannered private school mannerisms, their neatly tailored mod couture, their well rehearsed cacophany of clanging organs, guitars and mud mixed 60's psychedelia; Mona Lisa Overdrive are a band best appreciated counter intuitively. Like all the great jazz artists before them, your optimal experience with this band best lies between the notes, between the negative spaces and between the whimsically psychotic. One minute they're the Velvet Underground, next they're The Doors, and next you find yourself up to your armpits in whale song and white noise with no fucking clue how the hell you got there. Don't look to the bottom of that glass. Ignore the curious powdery white residue that may quite possibly signify that Sophie is trying to kill you. No, look to the stage and the band performing that find line between genius and insanity. That there is what Mona Lisa Overdrive are all about!
When they're just a four piece band playing "songs"; they're coffee table kinds of cool. Get your lava lamps, your oil light, your black light, your go-go boots, your oversized bird cage and your wild and wacky Laugh-In camera angles and dance yourself up a storm. But when they're well and truly totally losing their batshit minds out there, when their drummer Alex is shrieking and fisting holes into his drumkit, when their guitarist Dave finds himself magnetised to the wall chasing in and out of his own shadow like a rock skimming over water, when they're all drifting upstream on a suicide mission to kill Kurtz, they're nothing short of a mind fucking exclamation point and an EEG sustain as I hit the floor. Oh yes! dare to sample all ten minutes of THIS live video and you TOO will be living in same crawl space of crazy I now like to call "home"..
12:38AM - Hours later, or quite possibly mere minutes later; it's really hard to guage the exact flow of space and time in moments like these (fuck, guess whatever was in that cocktail must've kicked in now!) I awake as if from a dream, staring in endless fascination at the glowing red glow of the Producers bar fridge. Is that you jebus? have you come to save me!? weeeeeee! :)
1:28AM - Yup, in all the hours that follow as I black in and out've consciousness, right here is pretty much the highlight: when my sleep is interrupted by a bunch of these mouth breathing lunkheads, flapping their arms about in the mistaken belief they were here for Tyger Tyger's CD launch tonight. Wowee! who knew this was all it took: one emptied shotgun, four or five garbage gags, a shovel, "a few quiet drinks" at the bar and I'm home free at last!? YIPEEE!!! :)
2:42AM - Shit spoke too soon! For no sooner did I utter the fateful phrase "a few quiet drinks" than these two serial alcoholics come bursting through the doors: Joe and Simone, to kidnap my drug addled carcass for furthering mad science experiments.. OOOOH FUCK! here we go again!
I should probably attempt to explain why exactly they're dressed like piss swilling bogans from Elizabeth Shopping Centre, but we all know there IS no explanation. Just leave your brain at the door, piss your diseased liver goodbye and just hope and PRAY you don't end up stuffed into a stainless steel filing cabinet with a tag on your toe by the time they're through..
3:17AM - And as much as I would've loved to provide more detailed running commentary on just WHERE the hell these laughable lunatics dragged me to for the rest of the night, or for that matter anything else I may be embarassed to admit we may've all done, since I somehow "conveniently" forgot most of what happened, your guess is as good as mine! All I do know for certain is at some point we found ourselves circling the drain fast here at the Cranka..
3:31AM - A few too many beers at the bar (and whatever the fuck else) later my camera lens gets flooded with a deluge of drunkarse photos that for the life of me I can't remember taking..
*cough* yup, that pretty much sums up my Saturday night right here..
4:13AM - Before rather promptly losing Joe Blogs, as he blindly stumbles off to Shotz to drink himself even furtheringly retarded (if that was even possible). Whilst me and Simone follow suit moments later, only to completely lose him: unsure whether he simply caught a taxi, he got lost gargling leaves in a gutter somewhere, or he got kidnapped by space aliens instead..
5:23AM - Only to end up here at the end of the night, eating fuck knows what (wait, did that pickle in my burger just move!? quick.. kill it! KILL IT!) here at the one place I dare never speak of by name: Humpty Craps, Frumpy Dacks, the Hippity Shits (or whatever the hungry fuck you want to call it..) wondering why I always gravitate to this festering shithole everytime my blood alcohol percentile starts hitting the double digits. Why? cause I'm a fucking idiot.. that's why!
And so as I collapse dead on my doorstep, only to wake up the following mid afternoon in a bath tub full of ice, both kidneys, liver and pancreas missing, in the middle of a pentagram drawn out in rock salt and lined with goat skulls and candles reading a little note lovingly hand written by Sophie in my own blood: "come back anytime! the drinks are on meeee!!" I wonder, just HOW the fuck am I gonna do another night of this!? oh yeah! that's right.. I'm an idiot.
