The
Adelaide music 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 dysfunctioning
splendour as we bring you the highly satirical, laughingly
fictional and intellectually imbecile tales from our rock
& roll wasteland...
MR WEDNESDAY: BACK FROM THE DEAD IN 2010!? (YUP SPOZ IS WRITING BLOGS AGAIN.. NOW WITH 100% MORE NONSENSICAL CONTENT!)
Hi everyone I'm back! Back from what: ahhhh who the fuck cares!? Did I ever leave: clearly not from the look of all these fuckarse retarded photo blogs I've been posting of late (yeah I know I'm completely crap at taking a "holiday" from the Adelaide music scene, and you know what? I'm perfectly ok with that!) but I digress. The reason I feel compelled to write NOW all of a sudden after a month long "blissful summer hiatus" (read: raging alcohol abuse) one that I was half planning on never returning from (need I mention all the writer's block last year!?), and on something that doesn't involve me presenting yet another whimsical installment of "Spoz gets retardingly drunk and pretends to review live bands in effort to justify it all", is all because I discovered THIS in my email inbox last Friday (amongst a billion and one facebook, myspace and twitter notifications I've long since deleted) and once curiousity FINALLY got the better of me, and I opened it late last night (and quite to my surprise discovered it WASN'T spam, a virus, a death threat, or a Nigerian hacker looking to empty out my bank account) I realised what a "momentous occassion" I was witness to here, and figured some of you nitwits might like to know about it.
Understandably it doesn't look like much on the surface (in fact it looks like even LESS when you read the "message" only to discover there IS no message) and I didn't recognise the sender from a can of beans, or recognise the address (as obviously rememberwhatwehad@gmail.com is just some arty farty "alias" tailor made for blissful ambiguity) but when I followed on up the subject link (ie: feel free to play at home) and I stumbled upon THIS, things suddenly got a little more interesting. Yup as far as "band promo" goes, this shit definitely sits on the weirder end of scale.
For what we appear to be dealing with here is either (a) yet another batshit insane "alternative reality game" (aka: a viral marketing campaign gone horribly wrong) similar to one employed in the lead up to Nine Inch Nails' "Year Zero" album launch in 2007 (or that whimsical "kidnapping attempt" The Killgirls pulled to promote their EP last year), (b) an obnoxious art installation of some kind, (c) "someone" out there has truly lost their fucking mind, or (d) it's clearly ALL the above (now that I know who was actually behind it). For this "someone" is none other than Moon and Duncan Campbell: the last two remaining members of Mr Wednesday. WHO!? Well for those of you who CAN'T remember back six weeks (let alone eighteen months): you could think of Mr Wednesday as the Adelaide equivalent of Massive Attack (or simply think of them as the musical equivalent of Bigfoot). For not only are they one of more fiendishingly accomplished art rock and ecclectic electronica acts "alive" in the Adelaide scene today, they're also one of the more elusive. Which only makes ANY news on them (no matter how wilfully abstract) all the more intriguing..
Yup, to put it mildly Mr Wednesday are a little bit "shy", and by "a little" I clearly mean an exceptional amount (and one that only increases as the years wear on). They're also nothing short of brilliant.. which only makes them all the more endearing, or possibly annoying, depending on how you look at it. From 2003 to 2008 they've played only a handful of shows, most of them face meltingly epic (which only makes them all the more epic if you miss one). They released a skull fuckingly sublime debut album in "The Garden Where Parties Grow" back in 2006 (I think they still have copies at Big Star.. um.. somewhere!?). They all but disappeared in 2007 (so much so we all thought they'd broken up). They mysteriously returned in 2008, played a stack of live shows to much "critical acclaim" (and not just thanks to my unwarranted hyperbole I swear!), promised they had at least TWO new "concept albums" ready to release. And then Moon and Duncan promptly "fired" the live band (damn you!), they became a "studio project", only to disappear without a trace AGAIN (read: in a haze of bong smoke), and thus we all assumed they'd broken up, AGAIN, possibly for real this time. FUCK!! Since then drummer Ryan Manolakis moved on to about a billion other successful "side" projects: the most notable of which being a teeny tiny band by the name of "Like Leaves" (HA!). Bass player Lachlan Wilson moved on to Steering By Stars (no shit!). And we all wondered what could've been. Or in other words, if you don't get why I'm raving like a lunatic over what amounts to a "sniff of an oily rag" here promising their "return"? watch THIS live video featuring some of their "new material" back in 2008 and you'll know just what I'm on about..
And now at long last, after eighteen months of relative obscurity, they've released THIS website to herald their triumphant return? Awesome huh!? Of course it's anyone's guess what any of this shit ACTUALLY signifies short of "hi everyone, we're pretensious wankers!!" and there's clearly no new music to speak of JUST yet, or at least not that I can find in the scant cryptic links they offer (I mean hell, maybe there's no new music at all!?). But I did manage to uncover a 46 page PDF document(!?) that may shed SOME light on their future movements (if only you can manage to unravel it). It's buried somewhere on the site if you want to look for it (and no I'm not going to tell you where.. that's part of the fun!). It's part dystopiate sci-fi imagery, part sociopolitical statement, part short story observational, and all kinds of "art wank" rolled into one; but it also shows infinite promise that Mr Wednesday might be cooking up something truly epic here, and that it's coming "soon" (whenever that may be), or at the very least it's a tonne of pretty pictures and what looks like "song lyrics" you can reinterpret like crazy. It may be an album, it may be a whole lot of nothing wrapped in a riddle.. but in the very least it may get us all inspired again to think of our music as MORE than just three minute blasts of indie disco, shouting nonsensical slogans, that dumb jocks and fake tans can fuck to under flashing neon lights, and more about music that can truly make us "think", "feel" and "act". Crazy I know, but they may be onto something here..
So here's to 2010 offering us something new, something different, something challenging and truly unique to melt our faces off. Sure Mr Wednesday might never get their shit together to release anything new THIS year but they're still offering us a sign. Music's not an industry maaan, it's a way of life! And in whatever form it may take: whether it be live, recorded, remixed, repackaged, mashed up or mischeviously retarded!? I'll be right here making a mockery of it on Spoz's Rant. I mean hell, what else am I going to do this year? get a REAL job!? pfft.. don't make me laugh!
