:: Tuesday, June 03, 2008

TYGER TYGER + THE SHINY BRIGHTS + LUMONICS
"TRANSMISSION LIVE" @ ED CASTLE / Friday May 30th 2008

FUCK, that's it! I swear I've had it with all this Ed Castle shit!! Oh sure it was fun at first, at first I was more than happy to join in and do whatever I could to encourage it: "it's the Ed Castle! it's shiny! it's new! it's NOT gay anymore! there's band's galore! a beer garden! a kitchen! meals for $10! juggling midgets! gnomes spinning vinyl! come one, come all, laugh it on up and piss up the walls!!". And to think of all the fun times we've had. I mean, how could we forget this night? or this night?, or this or this? and all this before they even officially launched the venue months later with this party? followed by this? and then this? fuuuck! I've been damn near gargling up to me nips in all the festivities. To live in such a golden age of resplendant finery! But now it's gone on for faaaar too long. Everywhere I look? FUCK! everywhere I turn in this arse puppet of a town, this rat bastard of a live venue has it's teeny tiny teeth and claws sunk right on into it! No more damnit; NO MORE!! I've had enough! I must make a stand! I must uphold all that is free and just in this town and make a STOP to this nonsense ONCE AND FOR ALL!!



*cough* yup, riiight after I go see this tonight. Tyger Tyger, The Shiny Brights and Lumonics on stage and shredding it blind for Transmission Live; the biggest most retardingly fuckoff indie smashoff event you'll see this side of May!? and it's at the freaking Ed Castle, AGAIN!? for the six billionth time on record this year!? OH MAAAN I FUCKING HATE THIS PLACE!!



LUMONICS (****1/2) myspace ::
You hear stories like this every damn day of the week. From out've nowhere they come: genetic anomalies, hatched from eggs, fully formed, guitars plugged into amps, drumsticks raised and microphones squealing for the kill. Hyped to hyperbole on blogs, massive on myspace and signed to lucrative deals months before they've even played: their first gig, recorded their first demo or done just about anything but stumble wide-eyed and clueless from out've the garage and into the incoming headlights of infamy. Vampire Weekend, The Arctic Monkeys, Oh yes! they're just the happy accident that makes a mockery out've every other sadsack bastard that's been toiling away in the trenches for decades to crowds of no one by being in the right place at the right time. FUCK! which of course has yet to happen to THIS band as quite frankly nobody ever reads this blog. Lumonics. They sure don't look it: three scruffyarse dweebs staring at the floor and one chick on drums who thinks she's out to win gold at an equestrian event; but damn do they have the sound! All the lush guitar articulance of Interpol, Kasabian and The Music plus a whole gamut of mid to late 80's indie and shoegazer artists from the brooding post punk of Echo & The Bunnymen to the noodling melancholy of The Church; all worked with a maturity in songwriting way beyond their years? Oooh fuck! these geeks are a freak species all to their own..









And so in effort to make a completely sabotage everything I've just said, here's a shittyarse live video I recorded tonight of an awesome song (who's name I've since forgotten) uploaded and downsampled to a teeny tiny youtube. Oh yes! in a year when they're huge, they'll thank me!



THE SHINY BRIGHTS (****) myspace ::
I know what you're thinking. I know what you read two weeks ago. You thought I'd consigned this band to the bargain bin when they played the Queen's Theatre; but this is me tonight, my phantom fists punching myself in the face whilst the mocking cartoon voice of Nelson Muntz keeps taunting me "stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself!". Yup, if ever there was way to describe the 180 degree about-face this band achieved, it would be the sight of these wingnuts hitting me over and over in the face tonight like a frozen halibut securely fixed to the rotary blades of a spinning deskfan. The Shiny Brights. They're a bull in a china shop. They're a catagory five hurricane. They're a trip to Disneyland, a reach for the ritalin and an exercise in exhaustion. They're lead singer Wolfgang running between three microphone stands flapping his arms about like Daffy Duck on crack "rabbit season! duck season! FIRE!" whilst two idiots on guitar and one on bass swing-hit the front of audience out cold with their spastic chicken moves. They're a pack of toddlers clocking animal mascots in the nuts at a kid's party, they're stage antics so ludicrious even a Japanese gameshow fuck full of emo bands bouncing off the walls wouldn't dare touch them and they're quite possibly the most stupidly awesome proof of Darwinism failing to thin the herd I've ever witnessed in action; OOOOH SHEEEIIIT!












I still can't say for sure if tonight's performance was a freak, a blip, a once off in greatness or the first tell-tale signs of dementia; so clearly more indepth study is in order. But if your idea of a party is to slamdance to the sounds of Robert Smith from the Cure being tortured, mixed in with Grinspoon, Expatriate, Editors and The Strokes; as performed by a cavalcade of the mentally ill running amok on a field trip to the zoo; then this may just be the suicide pill you're looking for!



Aaaand speaking of the mentally ill; even more disturbing than the band itself was the rent-a-crowd of evolutionary throwbacks they attracted tonight. Yup, out've all the hundreds of eager scensters flooding this venue by force tonight, these are the two pissheads who ruined it for anyone else vying for the dubious honour of making a dick of themselve on my camera; by insisting I take photos of THEM every freaking damn moment I was out front of stage..




Oh and you'll be sure to see these photos again when they appear on their myspace, their facebook and again on the evening news when they finally recover what's left of them after I beat them to death with the blunt end of this camera for the millionth time they wanted their freaking photo taken. FUCK! "Oh no, of course it was an awesome idea not to drink at this gig and I'm very much NOT rushing to the bar right now in effort to rectify it! weeeeeee!"



TYGER TYGER (*****) myspace ::
And speaking of publicity whores (camera or otherwise), here's everyone's favourite small breed of dog humping your leg in the form of THIS headlining act. Oh yes! it's been a hard yard, it's been nothing short of a pissing contest out there, spitting teeth and blood, each band trying to outdo the last like their lives depend on it and yet Tyger Tyger have come up trumps tonight in a way that only six too many band members and a kitchen sink could ever possibly achieve. Tyger Tyger; clearly more than just a reaccuring joke at the expense of lead singer Travis and his dubious claim to puberty: "hey look it's David Spade! it's Macaulay Culkin! it's Jodie Foster! it's an oversized fucking weasel? not the face! not the face! AAUGHHH!!"; tonight they're on fire, screaming, rolling around the floor, flapping their arms about and burning skidmarks as they fly up all four walls of this room. Yup, if ever they could've been accused in the past as being nothing but a frat party on a panty raid; tonight they've come at us combined like a sixpack Voltron attack robot more deadly than any Vodka Cruiser and a mad dash of rohypnol..







Any other band (eight appearances in this year, and already dangerously close to overexposure) would probably start to get a bit tiresome by now. I mean shit, there's only so many times I can hear those same damn songs and actually come up with NEW shit to write each week (seriously don't get me started on Tony Font Show or Lady Strangelove), and I've already done that lame Arctic Monkeys comparison to death by now, but to give credit where credit is due: they're never shy in trying out new shit, no matter how potentially retarded! Take this random girl for example: she was pulled out onto the stage tonight after Travis made an odd request for the crowd to present a "redhead" for his amusement midway through their set. Aaaah just look at her all wide-eyed with wonder: who KNEW what mischief Travis had planned for her!?



As quite frankly he didn't know what the fuck to do with her either (and promptly ran away to hide behind his keyboards until she went away). Aaaaah, it may not've been the most rock and roll move to pull, but it's comedy gold like this that makes this shit all the more worthwhile!



Still despite these occassional Freudian slipups, the ever emerging national security threat that is Nick's afro and Tim continuing to vy for the "Honourary Carlos Dengler Award" for the freakiest looking bass player alive NOT already in Interpol; Tyger Tyger were nothing short of the most freakingly awesome thing I've ever seen on a live stage since pretty much the last time I made an equally misinformed and needless superlative such as this.. YEAAAS!





And as for all those songs I'd already heard a million times before? it's just my luck they're also continuously coming up with new junk. Take this mad hit for instance: I can't remember if it was called "Buttons And Levers" or "Fuck Mutton and Big Beavers" but whatever the fuck it was; with this crazy trumpet and that triple drumming, how COULD you go wrong?



2:38AM - Here's Mick and Mannix celebrating at the end of the gig, lurching into the crowd..




and here's the littany of destruction they left scattering in their wake..




..including the 2/3rds spilt contents of this bottle of red tipped midset by Trav on another one of his flailing rampages. Yup, all in all it was a resounding sucess for all present tonight! (except perhaps for the poor bastard responsible for cleaning up the mess afterwards.. weeeee!)



2:47AM - The festivities continue with a tag-team of indie DJs thrashing the usual assortment of whatever-the-fuck-annoying-dancefloor-fillers they flog to death on Triple J high-rotation these days (ie: The Wombats, The Presets, MGMT, Sparkadia, Cut Copy.. etc etc); packing out the band room to a heady throng of scensters, indie dweebs and fashion tragics..



With some DJs infinitely more willing to make a twit of themselves on camera than others..



3:50AM - Whilst I did what any other respectable rock photojournalist would do, and got shitfaced the FUCK away from that dancefloor (before those two idiots chased me for yet ANOTHER photo), as supplied in inebriance by one Brendan here from Lady Strangelove..



3:56AM - I quite don't know what the hell I ordered from the bar, as I believe all four of those beer taps were involved in unison into the one glass here; is it a draught, is it an ale?



4:03AM - But the results are always the same: me making an absolute dick of myself on camera with a stolen hat (or appropriated jacket in this case: as nicked from Shane from Tyger Tyger) for the amusement of all and thus undoing all the hours of hard work I put into this site each week trying to sound respectible.. aaaaah, and who would have it any other way?



4:11AM - Thus bringing to a close yet another dribbling night into oblivion where I've ended up once AGAIN at the Ed Castle; rapidly making this THE running Crown & Anchor cliche-in-need-of-an-insulting-nickname for 2008 (Ed Castle: "The Arsehole" anyone?).



And this is me swearing I shall be doing everything to uphold what little journalistic integrity this site has left (pfffft.. like I had ANY to begin with!) by vowing not to let this pissy little live venue monopolise all the gigs still left gurgling down the drain of this fair city. There's a whole other scene out there just waiting to be explored and I vow to cover it all! YES!! YOU WILL NOT TAKE THEM ALL ED CASTLE!! NOT AS LONG AS I STILL HAVE AIR TO BREATH!! HA! HAVE AT THEE!! (aaaah and what's the bet I'll be eating my words NEXT weekend?) Spoz's Rant: we're not biased, but we're sure as fuck easily corruptible to the highest bidder! :)

Previously on Spoz's Rant: Booster + Penelope Suicide

:: Spoz 2:34 PM |
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