REGURGITATOR + NEW PANTS + I HEART HIROSHIMALIVE @ NIGHT TRAIN / Saturday October 13th 2007
Art and suffering. Since antiquity they've gone hand in hand. Almost to the point of cliche. Famous after you're dead. Suicide, madness, pills, booze, shotgun to the head and some dickhead on Australian Idol yodeling your song in all the wrong octaves at once to a crowd of ringtone zombies screaming for more. To think that all the most intelligent, inspired, innovative and heart wrenching wonder you'll ever experience originates in the most vile and despressing of urban settings. Liverpool in the early 60's, the grime and crime of New York in the late 70's, Manchester in the 80's, Seattle in the early 90's, Melbourne any day of the fucking week, the Cranka.. hmmm, WHY I'm thinking such thoughts right now as I ascend the golden stairs of Night Train on a Saturday night? *cough* no reason.. no reason at all! :)
I mean, just look at these pristine black painted walls! these glorious black lights! this awe inspiring up and down architecture of functionality and raw pragmatism! all those smiling pasty white faces clad in tones of black and blacker! beer in plastic cups? cigarette ash and asbestos? oh to be blessed with such magic and wonder! Clearly the music here is REALLY gonna suck tonight.. and yet here I am. Weird. You'd think I'd be making a point here..
I HEART HIROSHIMAbut instead of leading myself to any obvious litigious conclusions (HA!) I'll just introduce the first band of the night instead, I Heart Hiroshima. Trainspotters to the blog may remember these scruffy looking nerf herders from their brief appearance back in
April 2006 at Adelaide Uni Bar when they supported The Grates, some of you scenster geeks may've seen them later that year when they played Enigma Bar, whilst the rest of you are probably staring at me blankly and waiting for the dick and fart joke (wooo, look.. Sonic the Hedgehog!). Yup, this is I Heart Hiroshima: two guitarists, two lead vocalists, one on drums and no bass player. They punch out that unique brand of infectious jangly-guitar, off key singing, indie-pop, mind numbing brain-candy that conjures up all manner of 60's cliches involving lava-lamps, op-art, Andy Warhol and blond go-go dancers in white boots bopping in cages. You remember that ONE bouncy little number the Breeders did back in the early 90's before drifting off into obscurity? "Cannonball"? That's these zippy little midgets, delivering the goods song after song, like a high hit of vitamin C. Simple, dumb and direct yet ridiculously effective.. ooooh FUCK YEAH!
NEW PANTSUp next is a goofy little band by the name of New Pants. They're from the magical land of China (yup, that's like a whole other country on an entirely different hemisphere n shit, they've even got their own internet! woweee!). To witness them live is to imagine every single oldskool Super Nintendo theme tune you remember from the late 80's to early 90's performed as a karaoke routine (wait.. isn't all that shit Japanese?), before being crossfaded with The Cure, Soft Cell, New Order, Flock Of Seagulls and She Wants Revenge as the ultimate 2 Many DJ's kitch-electro mashup from hell. Continue to throw in all manner of confusing performance art seguey's involving cue cards, a impromptu head massage given by the keyboardist to the bassplayer, spastic hiphop flows and a flappy armed female rent-a-crowd of Chinese fans swooning and screaming hysterically to every 8bit power ballad they dished out and you've got yourself one freakingly bizarre, yet infinitely brilliant bowl of fruit loops. Yup.. only from the wacky world of Asia could you ever conjure up a band THIS ridiculously fucking cool! weeeeeeee! :)
REGURGITATORand all this is simply the support act to the living hell that is 1.3 billion people packed into a carcinogenic crawl space, crash landing on my head every fucking minute all in homage to a pissy little headliner from Brisbane by the name of Regurgitator. Yup that's right, freaking Regurgitator here at freaking Night Train.. WTF! You may remember them from their classic album from 1995 "Tu Plang Kon Uauk", from their 80's cheese hit from 1998 "Unit", or maybe more recently (and infamously) from their fuckarse retarded "Band In A Bubble" publicity stunt they pulled on Channel V back in 2004 (seriously, did ANYONE buy that album?). Either way, chances are with a crowd like this causing you a head injury on constant repeat for over an hour you wouldn't remember ANYTHING from tonight except for the mad bludgeoning of one flailing body after another attacking you from above and six months of hospital rehabilitation. Seriously is it just me being a kamikaze nitwit, or is it getting WORSE out there? :)
Yup, I really don't call this shit combat photography for nothing: killing myself in the front lines having all those happy dickheads above crushing my compact lens back into it's body like a frightened turtle at regular intervals before flying headfirst into the band to do laps around the stage has gotta be doing WONDERS for my camera warranty! WOOOO! (so please bare that in mind when you see that ONE crappy photograph I managed to score of their drummer.. yeeeouch!). And as for the entirely trivial detail of their live set tonight? Latest radio rotation "Blood and Spunk" opens in a swirl of alien smoke (see first two photos) followed up by a healthy mix of oldskool hits: "Black Bugs", "Kung Fu Sing", "FSO" and everyone's crowd favourite "I Sucked A Lot Of Cock To Get Where I Am", throw in a whole bunch of other shit from the last 3 half-arsed records that nobody recognises.. *cough*.. one encore, and that'd be yer monkey!
Nothing but itchy trigger punk, hiphop, pogo-stick electro-pop and all us crash test dummies grinning ear to ear as we're thrown about the room.. aaaaah, sweet oblivion never sounded so good! Who knew a festering sink hole like this could be witness to such wonder? :)
Previously on Spoz's Rant:
It's Warsaw + Late Night Matinee 
