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...
SKYBOMBERS + CALLING ALL CARS + BOOSTER LIVE @ ENIGMA BAR / Thursday July 17th 2008
This is episode one. Episode one of four. Episode one of four fucking good reasons why what I'm about to attempt for Spoz's Rant this week should never be attempted by anyone EVER again. Episode one of four fucking good reasons why YOU should've gotten out've the house at least ONCE to sample this madness this weekend. Episode one of four episodes burying me under six feet of compacted dirt if I wasn't otherwise alive and well to retell this tale to you now. Granted, you've seen this shit before. The four night bender isn't without precedent on Spoz's Rant. We all know I'm fucking insane. You need look no further than the threeweeks in a row I pulled of this shit from late February to mid March LAST year followed by the grand finale in the following April that was The Pixies, Jarvis Cocker, Gnarls Barkley, Groove Armada, Har Mar Superstar (featuring Fabrizio from The Strokes) and an Artax Mission face melt at FAD Bar (R.I.P.) to understand the true meaning of insane. You think I should've learnt better by now. You think I'd be nothing more than a smoking crater and a teeny tiny obituary written in limerick form in the back of Rip It Up or dB by now (pffft.. like they'd publish anything I'd write!) but since I'm clearly the only one left in the Adelaide scene still stupid enough to document this shit each and every week; fuckit, here I am at it again! Four nights in a row. Four episodes in one week. Four of the most awesome reasons why this festering shit hole is the ONLY place to be in 2008..
FUCK! what the hell am I thinking!? Four nights of this shit!? It was hard enough just writing up the ONE last week. I'm so over this shit! why do I go to all this effort!? WHY!? I'm sure as fuck not getting paid to do this, I ain't getting any younger, I gave up a full time job, a chance at any kind of stable relationship and most of my internal organs for THIS!? FUCK! And yet right here at Enigma Bar tonight is the ONE reason why I so love this shit, right here is where it all begins. These three bands and a mad fucking buzz that keeps me coming back for more.. YEAAS!
BOOSTER (***) myspace :: Although you wouldn't know it from this first band. Booster. Are they a rock band, a blues band, a devil finger thrashfest to all the excess and depravity that was 80's cock rock with your nuts in a vice!? Equal parts Eagles Of Death Metal meets Tenacious D meets Homer Simpson with a few too many crayons jammed up their sinus cavities? Is the joke on us, or is the joke on them? And just what exactly is swimming around in the mind of their singer drummer Sean Kemp to come up with all this demented genius time and time again!? It's hard to say. They're a mixed bag of nuts to be sure, but even on a lazy Thursday night session such as this: performing an opening set rife with more needless jokey interludes than usual, to a roaring crowd of maybe ten people (plus three suspiciously underage groupies huddled out by the foldback stacks) and a guitarist falling asleep somewhere in the middle; they never fail to get a party started..
Amongst all the songs from their first album, "Prozac" still proved to be the highlight (with its always welcome psychedelic freak out in the middle), but the real surprise came in the form of a whole host of new songs from their upcoming album. Sounding somewhat like The Hold Steady covering Jimi Hendrix's back catalogue in your kitchen at 7AM after one fuck of a house party, it's a bluesy taste of what's yet to come. This song "You Dog" is just but one of them, dig it..
CALLING ALL CARS (****1/2) myspace :: Momentarily lulled into a false sense of security with the happy go lucky sounds of opening act Booster, the shock and awe that was Calling All Cars hitting up a live stage was rather akin to the fun and games you'd get from letting lose a pack of rottweilers on a kindergarten. All the mad thrashing, the flailing, those teeny tiny bodies flying about in the air like ragdolls? Those of you lucky enough to catch their support slot a month ago when they toured with Shihad would've known what to expect; but I sure as fuck wasn't prepared for this! This was the kind've wake up call that comes with a glass of ice water thrown at your face followed by two charged paddles of a defibrillator. The same wake up call that comes in a skinny aluminium can, gets mixed with taurine, mixed with jäger, causes sudden death and goes on to sponsor extreme sports that involve cannon balls, fire and midgets. And this would've been your first episode for the week ghost written by commitee if I hadn't drunk nearly enough beers to survive the blast radius. Oh yes! If ever there was a reason to crawl out've your environment controlled cocoon on a nipple shattering night in the dead of winter, on a Thursday; then THIS band would be it!
Calling All Cars? Oh no, they'd be calling in air support and orbiting ICBMs to bomb this place back into the Stone Age after they're done with this joint. Think Shihad's "General Electric", The Hives, Greenday at their 90's snot punk best and countless so called "emo punk" bands far pissier than them being thrown into a wood chipper. Or don't think at all and kill every fucking thing that moves. We should be thankful there were only thirty people up here to witness this tonight, or we would've made the front page of the papers come Friday morning. And THIS is how they chose to close the set tonight!? Sure, it's not the craziest shit I've ever seen at Enigma (that prize easily goes to Airbourne or The Inches), but it definitely comes a close 3rd..
SKYBOMBERS (****) myspace :: Which makes for a surprising anticlimax with this final act. Surprising in that, in any other world slightly less fucked up than the one I chose to live in tonight, this would've been the headliner responsible for the foaming red stain soaked deep into the floorboards at Enigma that would've henceforth been known as the "oops you just stepped in Spoz" footnote of your night, if only they could get enough DNA and dental records to prove it (and if only Calling All Cars hadn't beaten them to the punchline moments earlier). Skybombers. Subtlety they are not. They're The Vines, The Vasco Era, The Beatles "Twist And Shout", and one of those mad song and dance routines on The Muppet Show where somebody loses an arm. They're just the sort've pentacostal snake handling meltdown in whiskey soaked rock and blues that Jive next door would absolutely blow a load over. And they're just the sort've psychiatric prescription spilling over into double digit pages you wish someone would just hand to their singer Hugh (with all his googly eyes and nervous twitches) before he goes off on another tangent and fucking kills someone..
Granted they're giving it their all out there and this is one fuck of a finale for a Thursday night. They're running, screaming, thrashing and flailing their arms about in the insane belief they can fly. They're reanacting the book of Revelation, American Psycho, Clockwork Orange and the entire Quentin Tarentino back catalogue using nothing but three chords and nothing left to lose; but I can't help but smile, yawn, find a nice comfortable spot on the floor and fall asleep to this. Although I also suspect I may've become desensitized to this retarding carnage over the years, so your experience may differ. Skybombers: bring a lit match and they'll bring the rest..
And so there we have it: one episode, three bands and three more episodes to go. As much as I probably SHOULD'VE been pacing myself, as much as I should've called it a night right there and then and rested up easy for what lies ahead; what's the bet you'll find me out and about till the wee hours with THIS idiot and his entourage drinking imperial pints at the Rosemont instead (and take one guess WHICH of those two pints is the one I'm drinking too)..
Oh yes, I really am THAT insane! A fact that may become all the more apparent when you see just what is yet to come this week. Stay tuned midgets, we've barely dipped our toes in it! :)
