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...
LUMONICS + LOVE STEREO + IT'S WARSAW! LIVE @ RHINO ROOM / Friday March 28th 2008
Sometimes I really wish I was supreme dictator; I mean shit, who wouldn't? your very own standing army with nothing better to do all day than parade tanks and missile carriers up and down King William street? 40ft portraits down every street corner giving George W Bush the finger? lounging on the balcony of your obsidian fortress by night with your cronies shooting down stray UN fighter jets and CNN foreign correspondents? a guarenteed spot on the evening news anytime you have something stupid to say? a crack squad of secret police to "disappear" all of your enemies? kidnapping new hollywood film directors each week? all those silly hats, cigars and loose women? phwooaaaaaarr! Sure don't get me wrong being a rock photojournalist DOES have its perks but nothing quite says respect like owning your very own Death Star. Oh the things I would do for this city: free love, free education, legalise psychedelic drugs, all your beer and cigarettes cover your retirement and medical bills, all your electricity and petrol goes into funding cold fusion and flying cars made of nerf, and if that ain't enough? who can say no to robots in every home, teleporters on every street corner and a fully functional light sabre to play with? fuck yeah! So much potential for mischief, so much going to waste! Even here on the street level, here at Rhino Room, Adelaide's only venue to be named after a rhinoceros and yet nobody's ever thought to genetically engineer a midget breed to serve drinks, spin discs and do madarse breakdance manoeuvres? Sheeeesh, no wonder the eastern states are laughing at us! The sooner we toppled this deadbeat democracy and make me emperor, the better!
IT'S WARSAW! (****) myspace :: Still, I'm not the only one wanting to start some shit in Adelaide these days, take opening act It's Warsaw! for example. If history has taught us one thing: it's that music bloggers should be ever mindful of ridiculing other artists lest they turn out to become genocidal dictators. You all know Adolf Hitler started World War II and killed six million Jews but did you also know he was once a failed landscape painter? or that Benito Mussolini was once a failed poet? or that Joseph Stalin was once a mime artist? or that Pol Pot always dreamed of being a master chef? Oh yes! And thus, in NO relation to anything I've just written, we can conclude that Christian is a brilliantly gifted lyricist and this is nothing short of the most awesome live band I've ever seen *cough* (there, that should avert a holocaust or two!). It's Warsaw; they're the kind've mad schitzoid poo flinging art-punk saboteurs and anarchists that we all wish we could beat to death with the blunt end of a shovel if they weren't so damn funny. Watch as they run around like idiots head butting the walls, laugh at they attempt to pick fights with everyone from the audience, the venue, their equipment to anyone in the local scene that might happen to piss them off (lest we mention a certain Adelaide act whom they laughingly referred to as "The Shamcats"?) and cheer as they collapse dead via multiple stab wounds years before their prime. As stupid as they are brilliant; It's Warsaw! are the molotov cocktail this scene's damn near been begging for.
LOVE STEREO (****1/2) myspace :: Such violence, such danger, such giddy flailing stupidity! this band is of course none of the above. Quite like a bloodless coup led by Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, those French gits from Air and a pack of spaced out hippies stuffing flowers into the service end of a rifle (and quite unlike the foaming pink stain you'd expect in response from the Chinese military) they sweep away the madness of It's Warsaw! to leave nothing but peace, tranquility and a whole lot've understated bittersweet melancholy. Love Stereo; they're lush atmospherics and dappled delays, they're the soundtrack to love lost, broken and unrequited, they're U2's "The Unforgettable Fire", Doves "The Last Broadcast", Powderfinger's "Odyssey Number Five" and all those brilliantly tuneful ballads Billy Corgan used to come up with in the early 90's before he became that obnoxious shaved twat in the Muu-muu. Oh yes! Love Stereo; nobody else quite makes overdosing on cocktail of sleeping pills, xanax, diazepam and half a bottle of whisky sound THIS good!
And so, in furthering effort to kill off what's left of my ever dwindling audience (hi mum!): not only do I have a live video to inspire your hasty exit from this mortal coil, but you can also download their freakingly awesome (free) seven track demo EP here.. YES!
LUMONICS (****1/2) myspace :: Attempting to explain this final headlining act tonight is rather akin to attempting to unravel the indecipherable logic behind Smurf reproductive systems, Tripitaka's gender in Monkey Magic or whatever the fuck the Architect says to Neo in Matrix Reloaded. We all know bands like this aren't born under a mushroom once every blue moon, they don't emerge fully formed from eggs hatched on mountain tops nor can they use such words as "vis-a-vis", "ergo" and "concordently" whilst dressed as Colonel Sander's without looking like a total dickhead (Wayne Coyne, I dare you to prove me wrong!). And yet a band like this still dares to exist. Lumonics: they're Echo & The Bunnymen, Kasabian, New Order's "Get Ready", Interpol's "Antics" and The Music's "Welcome To The North" in one ridiculously oversized Japanese mechanoid killing machine; they're armed to the teeth with martial crunching breaks, guitars that squeal all the colours of the oscilloscope, an ambient widescreen approach to songwriting that's infinitely that more articulate than their simple simian DNA would betray and a diabolical wall of sound that cannot be killed by conventional weapons. Or in other words: I so wish I could make fun of this band but I can't. Damn you Lumonics, damn you all to hell! GNAAAARRRGGHH!!!
Whether we can simply blame this genius on some freak eugenics experiment, a creative singularity brought about by a convergence between ipods, high speed broadband connections, wikipedia, myspace and youtube or simply me huffing that weird fungus growing under the refrigerator is hard to say. Either way, see for yourself with this live video.. they rock! :)
2:11AM - It's at this point, in closing of this Rhino Room gig, that I'd normally have something meaningful to say. Something poignant. Something that speaks to all of us. Something that will inspire generations to come and perhaps something that'll explain just what the fuck is up with all these rhinoceroses that are clearly and glaringly absent from Rhino Room. But of course I don't. So fuckit, guess I'll have to wing the rest of the night like I always do..
2:27AM - The Exeter on Rundle Street. Beats me how the fuck I ended up here. One moment I'm throwing myself arse backwards through a second story window from Rhino Room onto the street below; there's a cacophony of shattering glass, sirens and random screaming and next thing I know it I find myself here at the bar in the Exeter ordering myself a beer. Weird..
3:04AM - Although, cleary there's no surprise how I ended up here..
3:09AM - Or that I'd bump into this familiar idiot soon afterwards.
3:16AM - I believe this next photo of Joe Blogs and Cody urinating on Union Street speaks for itself. As to why I'd actually chose to take this photo and worse still decided to publish it for the whole world to see, is a mystery best left unanswered. Although, come to think of it, it does begin to explain why neither RollingStone or Spin Magazine are answering any of my phonecalls..
3:40AM - Still when all else fails, nothing is more entertainining than making fun of those entirely more drunk than you are (and then publishing it onto youtube). As we present, for your dubious viewing pleasure, the slapstick comedy routine that is Joe Blogs making an absolute twit of himself in Flungry Craps. And no, I have NO freaking clue who that other person is either..
3:49AM - Continually amazed that we don't get thrown out by late night security for doing this kinda retarded shit each and every weekend, we finally throw ourselves out onto the street..
3:55AM - At which point I do my bit for the environment by disposing of Joe Blogs in the nearest available ATM terminal and then getting the hell out've here before the cops arrive..
Thus bringing to a conclusion yet another entirely nonsensical edition of Spoz's Rant: that should prove once and for all, that despite all my insane delusions of grandeur, that nobody should ever, EVER give me absolute power. If this is the sorta retarded shit I can achieve with one bus ticket, one taxi fare, 6-7 beers, a warped sense of humour and a digital camera? then who's to know what untold horrors I could unleash if I had a few well placed nuclear warheads? yeeouch!
