:: Sunday, March 26, 2006

BEWARE THE IDIOTS OF MARCH

when the bogans come out to play / Adelaide's music scene runs the fuck away.. runs for the hills.. runs for the beaches.. runs and hides under 6ft concrete.. reinforced steel.. canned food.. off the radar and off the grid.. relying on geothermal energy supplies.. geiger counters and blaring emergency klaxons.. recycled urine for water filtration.. bean sprouts, fungus and hydroponic nutrient algae.. vitamin supplements.. light goggle therapy and extensive libraries of light entertainment.. whilst the walls are soundproofed to hide the squealing car tires and hooting baboons above.. and there, underground we bide our time.. scanning the tv and radio frequencies.. lying in wait.. waiting for the signal.. waiting for the CLIPSAL INDIE 500 to be over.. and when the fumes subside and the hangovers settle like leadweight snowflakes above ground, the bunker hatches pop like kettles and the advance team astronauts emerge to reclaim the streets.. armed with their high powered tranquilser rifles, stun grenades, hoses and riot gear they blast the city clean of the mullets, the beer cans, the novelty foam hats and the burning car wreckage..

order is restored.. the reign of terror is over.. and (for another year at least) we can all return to our lives once more..

this then, is my lost weekend when all the bogans came to town..
finding what entertainment I could amongst the burning wreckage they left behind..


FRIDAY NIGHT
we begin the night at JIVE tonight to sink a few pre-show pints before sampling the rarefied post-punk sounds of MY SISTER THE COP and melbourne band DAMN ARMS at the ROCKET BAR (since, as reputation has it THE ROCKET BAR is a notorious late starter..)

several games of fooz follow..

STUCKEY (arriving at 8PM and already exceptionally trashed after sampling many pre-pre-show pints) attempts to "be the ball"..



obviously, beating him in fooz didn't prove to be that much of a challenge tonight.. however, catching up to his level of inebriation DID prove to be too much a challenge for all of us combined..

as a wise man once said - "to prevent your opponents from drinking you under the table, it helps to begin by lying on top of it"..

many beers follow.. some band's who's name I forget (or rather, wish to forget) fire up on stage.. we play more games of fooz and miss the start of MY SISTER THE COP.. more beers follow and I think we miss the entire set.. and something tells me this just isn't the night for it (too much weirdness afoot).. so sufficiently fuelled up, we switch plans and decide instead to face the mullet hoards head on, heading east down Hindley St to the CRANKA..

upon arrival.. we find the venue and surrounding streets crawling with race-car baboons of various shapes, colours, sizes and smells.. the sound of beer glasses shattering every 2 minutes rings thru our ears as the air runs thick with team colours, 3 day neck passes, flying chairs and erupting fights.. entering the chaos we almost run foul of a fist fight ourselves until a mysterious undercover cop emerges and breaks things up..

with the hooting crowds rapidly decending into anarchy.. we thought this would make for the best environment to stage another one of our dumb photographic pranks.. as we celebrated all things AUSTRALIANA with this grand display of unity and soaring patriotism..



yup, why beat each other senseless in a mindless drunken rampage after a car race when you can soak in the glory of 100's of COMMONWEALTH GAMES medals we've won this week by beating other backwater 3rd world nations to a steaming pulp..



SIERRA LEONE? ISLE OF MAN!?? SEYCHELLES? WE TOTALLY KICKED THEIR ARSES MAAAAN.. YEAAAAH!



some people just looked really confused..



whilst others were simply overcome by the emotion of it all..



so much so that it also started affecting the rest of the crew..

"sometimes.. I feel there's so much beauty in this world that I just can't take it.."



"I'd like to thank the ACADEMY, the foreign press.. and the makers of COOPERS PALE ALE.."
(and remember kids to drink responsibly.. or THIS could be YOU!)



beyond this point.. the rest of the night became a dribbling mess.. more broken glass.. people flying this way and that.. cops arriving and leaving.. a dancefloor with reversed gravity.. eventually it got to be a little too much even for me and I got meself the freakin' hell out've there on the last drunk bus home..


SATURDAY
I began tonight by seeing AEON FLUX at GREATOR UNION in Hindley st.. I knew it wuz gonna be shit.. almost every single review told me it wuz gonna be shit.. and to make matters worse my bus ran late by 15 minutes tonight so I missed the first few minutes of it.. but, I couldn't give a shit either way.. any wacky sci-fi / cult cartoon based action movie starring CHARLIZE THERON in a skintight black outfit pummeling the shit out've people wuz alright by me.(and considering how heavily braindamaged I wuz from the night before.. I felt like the perfect target audience for this cheese.. ;)

it wuzn't much to speak of.. but with the trippyarse sci-fi storyline, action n special FX.. it wuz just wot I needed.. 90 or so minutes where I could switch off my brain and enjoy the ride.. eeeeee!

after the film, I emerge at 11PM looking for more dumb things to amuse me..

I swing past ENIGMA BAR.. with knowledge that a somewhat drunken SEAN would be lurking around the beer garden to provide cheap entertainment.. upon spotting him and a few lunatics from the band SUMI.. we next find ourselves at the K-BOX (of all improbable places) for some drunken karaoke..

inside, we find ourselves led into an exceptionally cramped room.. barely 4 x 6 metres in size.. packed with 15-20 people.. filled mostly by a large black round leather sofa with one tiny TV monitor stuffed to one end of the room.. people were singing.. more than 10 people at once.. offkey and out've time.. at the top of their lungs at stadium rock reverb levels to the point I could hardly even hear the original song beyond all the atonal screaming..

after about 20 minutes or so of having my eardrums blasted by this torture beyond all measures even US military officials would consider inflicting on political prisoners in IRAQ.. we made haste the fuck out've that room and out've the venue..

(and yeah.. I could've taken photo's of all this, but I reaally didn't wanna further incriminate anyone involved in this insanity.. hahaha)

looking for much needed sources of beer and live rock, SEAN and I then headed back down HINDLEY st to JIVE to catch a gig by THE EXPLODERS, SWAYBACK and THE TRAFALGARS.. and with SEAN's jedi mind abilities, we managed to score ourselves free entry..

THE EXPLODERS
THE RALPH WIGGUM BAND (aka: THE TRAFALGARS) were already done for the night.. so we arrived just in time to see headlining melbourne act THE EXPLODERS in full flight, blasting everyone away with their full throttle 70's flavoured bong rock intensity..




chugging fuzz guitar riffage, hammering nonsensical whisky vocals, trigger-happy drums and moshpit insanity? fuck YEAAAAAAH!



for added entertainment, SEAN here, provided the audience with his own distinct lunatic moves on the dancefloor..




look at that freak go!




YEAH! SEAAANIE!! CUT SICK YA FOOOOOOKIN' MANIAC! YEAAAH!! WOOOO!!! ROCK!!



after 2-3 quick beers and about 20 minutes of this set (in wot amounted to a live music hit n run) we fled out've there in search of the next venue to rampage..

COST OF 3 PINTS COOPERS PALE ALE = $13.50
COST OF 20 MINUTES HIT N RUN ENTRY = $0
LIVE BAND, THE EXPLODERS + PISSHEAD SEAN? = PRICELESS!

and for more cheap larfs.. here's a series of photo's of SEAN pissed out've his eyeballs continuing his antics with an air guitar performance on the ground outside JIVE..






obviously I needed a LOT more beer to catch up..

NATHAN KAYE
we next headed to THE GRACE EMILY to catch a funny little solo act by the name of NATHAN KAYE - yet another one of those crazy surfer singer/songwriter multi-instrumentalist types from up north.. but damn wuz this crazyarse hippy talented..

here he is doing a 15-20 minute DJ set, covering a whole range of songs, all entirely from beatbox.. which is seriously trippy when you consider it's vocals, beats and rhythm all done simultaneously with just the ONE set of vocal chords..



he also managed to play the guitar like it wuz some kinda 16 stringed insane middle-eastern sitar swallowing a harpsichord type contraption.. y'know the sound.. all these rapidly triggered cascading plucked notes zinging past your ears in metallic squeaks and wails.. and you can almost hear that crazy multi-octave arabic wailing in accompanyment.. "AAAAEEEEEE OOOOOWAAAAA NEEEEE AYA YA YAAAA!!"



yeah.. real psychedelic shit.. I dunno if it wuz something they put in my beer here.. but this wuz really melting my brain..



overall.. it made for over an hour and a 1/2 of the most impressive, schitzoid chameleon sounds and comical strangeness I've heard in a long while.. like all the wacky hallcinogenic home grown shit yer hippy parents from the 60's took, but without all the nasty side effects.. "like woaaaaaa.. I can smell the colours and see the sounds maaan! YEAAAAAH!"

throw in a drumkit played by a team of 10 meercats and a breakdancing llama.. and you'd have y'self a real world music experience to transcend all borders of time n space.. (something to consider dude.. trust me.. everyone loves a breakdancing llama)

about 1/2 way thru the set, SEAN disappears for locations unknown.. at which point I then team up with CRAZY ANDY (the A-grade stoner) for further adventures in late-night beer fueled stupidity..

more beers follow.. and with the GRACE EMILY closing up.. we make our way to the opposite end of the city to the CRANKA to see wot further madness is afoot..

cue more idiotic flailing around a drunken dancefloor to some of DJ IAN BELL's dodgy brew of post-punk / 80's new wave / mashups and electro pop cheese.. bumping into some lunatics from TONY FONT SHOW doing likewise.. more beers.. more stupidity on the dancefloor.. and so forth.. rinse.. repeat.. gravity reversing.. brain damage.. headspins.. more beer..

finally at around 3:30AM I'd had enough and exit the CRANKA to catch me the last late night bus home.. only then to find SEAN, who after disappeared over 3 hours ago, has weirdly enough found himself at the same spot at the end of the night.. whoaaa.. trippy..

and so, here's the last drunken photo at the end of the night we had to have..




it was a lightweight weekend..
a disorienting swirling chaos of a weekend..
a weekend that amounted to little much more than inconsequential stupidity..
and yet.. as stopgap weekends during a shitstorm INDIE 500 go..
this one did the job, nicely..

Previously on Spoz's Rant: Timmy The Monkey

:: Spoz 5:52 PM |
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