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...
TYGER TYGER + ZETA + BILLY BISHOP GOES TO WAR LIVE @ JIVE / Friday July 18th 2008
This is episode two. Episode two of four. I'm not just repeating this shit again to remind you that there's an "episode one" you can read that may begin to explain just how I ended up in this mess in the first place, but also to remind myself that there's two more episodes of this shit to go and that I'm somehow going to write them all before this week is through. Fuck! Remind me again why I'm doing this shit? oh that's right I'm fucking insane! But of course we all know there's another damn good reason WHY I'm doing this: granted I don't often admit it and for some of you it may be hard to decipher (what with all the constant ridicule, the insults, and the jokes hurled at my subjects with such boundless glee and demented abandon.. weeeee!); but damnit I do this shit because I love this scene! No really, I'm not even kidding, I do! It gives me so much joy to play with it every week and all I ever want to do is share it with you! Of course while I'm at it I might as well have some fun with it, scam me some free shit because of it (and a whole fuck bucket of other "fringe benefits" that readily and gleefully corrupts the whole "journalistic" process *cough*) I mean shit I AM human afterall! but in the end I do it all for YOU! It's all for YOU wonderful people that make this scene what it is, and damnit, isn't it about time I gave you something back!? Oh yes! for one night, we're spreading nothing but the love baaaaby! :)
So here we are; Jive on a Friday night. A night like any other in the dead of winter. A small but growing gathering all huddled together for warmth by the bar. The air ripe with all the wonder and alcoholic splendour that only night of live music can bring. Aaaaah, what's not to love!?
For tonight, Jive is hosting a launch party for a goofy little band by the name of Tyger Tyger and an EP they've just released called "Come Like A Thousand Doves". Maybe you've heard of them before. Maybe you're a fan. Maybe you're here already and got so utterly shit faced tonight that you forgot everything that happened the minute you walked through those doors and you're hoping I'll fill in the blanks for you. You're not alone. You're amongst friends now..
As thanks to the tireless efforts of these two awesome individuals: the elegantly pimp Stephanie on the left, responsible for the Tyger Tyger street team (and chief executive officer of their soon to be opened South Korean merchandising "fun camp" pumping out a wide range of "Come Like A Thousand Doves" fashion apparel, novelty hat wear, baby milk formula and orbital weapons platforms); the fiendishly cute Emily in the middle, who's chosen to throw her very own teeny tiny birthday party tonight (awwww!) by placing an $800 drinks tab on the bar; and absolutely NO thanks whatsoever to that mouth breathing troglodyte you see to the right *cough*..
..Jive is absolutely packed to capacity tonight! Yup, who knew THIS was all it took? A shitload of obsessive compulsive myspace promotion, a shitload of free alcohol, one arseclown of an internet journalist insulting your ever move and YOU too could go down in history as one of the greats!? Wow! doesn't it make you feel so special to be waiting in line, outside, in the cold and be refused entry to this! Tyger Tyger: you freaks sure know how to throw one FUCK of a party!
BILLY BISHOP GOES TO WAR (****1/2) myspace :: Opening act Billy Bishop Goes To War come as a pleasant surprise. Not only because they're yet another shoegazer band, and they're ever so awesome at it (and clearly our local scene is forever running short of them), but also because they feature the most insanely awesome talents of both Josh Phillips on lead and Tom McCarthy-Jones on bass formely from Poly & The Statics, a band so ridiculously and stupidly beyond all other measures of awesome already over used in this paragraph that they had to break up back in 2007 and start different bands because it was just too much awesomeness for the world to handle. And I'm not stressing this point because any of the other three band members are any less, the very essence and epitome of awesome. Oh no! be prepared, bring protection. Billy Bishop Goes To War, all five of them, awesome! I mean shit, the name right there says it all: "Billy Bishop Goes To War". This is a band too good for a single word name, not even a four word name will suffice, only all five flavours are enough to contain them. They're named after a Canadian musical too. That there spells QUALITY people!
Billy Bishop Goes To War. They're everything blissfully sublime and cinematic that you could ever imagine (and more) if you got Darren Cross (the howling blood clot) from Gerling to front U2's "Unforgettable Fire" with all the Brian Eno atmospheric trimmings. They're Wolf & Cub on an elephant dose of valium, they're The Verve if the drugs actually DID work. They're five band members staring at the floor, singing into their hair and pulling all manner of shadowy shapes on stage because they're just too damn humble to accept that they may very well be the most fuck off brilliant opening act ever to grace a live stage at Jive. Consider me dumbstruck, with a nose bleed, on the floor and convulsing violently, to just how amazing this shit truly is.. YES!
ZETA (****) myspace :: Two weeks ago I went to CD launch. THIS band's CD launch. Zeta. It was, without a doubt, the most utterly and gob smackingly brilliant CD launch I'd seen all year. I was floored, and we're talking Rocket Bar and all three flights of stairs floored here. No shit, this is me falling through that top floor to the ground floor, buried under a tonne of rubble, quite possibly dead and now someone else claiming to be "Spoz" is writing for this blog instead of me. I was THAT floored. Maybe I didn't make this clear two weeks ago when I wrote the blog, but let me make it clear here now. Zeta = awesome. That's an equation right there you could launch interplanetary missions with, I renounce all other science and religion and I follow only Zeta now. I bought their CD. Awesome. Not just in Matt Hill's flawless production, but in the craft of the songwriting. Zeta are ALL about the songwriting. They don't just play music, they make SONGS. Real songs about wanting to point both barrels of a shotgun to your face, pulling a trigger, realising you forgot to load it (again), laughing yourself silly and then writing a song about it. They're a ministry of smiles, they're a passive aggressive tour-de-force, they're a shining example to us all!
Zeta. There's no point comparing them to other bands. We need no thesaurus here. Something For Kate? Sonic Youth? Smashing Pumpkins!? Zeta stand proud on their own merits beyond all adjectives, superlatives or split infinitives to dare to define them. Just to be in the here and now in their awesome presence is enough. Here witness to the sublime circus of it all. Mild mannered leads Anthony and hissy fit Sascha playing the "good cop / bad cop" routine with a pointed desklamp at their murder suspect Tom seething away on drums, silently wondering when those bombs he has stuffed up his colon will finally detonate and kill us all, whilst happy go lucky Clemi on bass delights us all with her fantastic array of novelty stickers. "Get Stuck Into Stamps"? Oh yes Clemi thanks to your shining example, confused windowlickers and indie scensters alike will be licking up a frenzy in your honour. Not just in the wonder that is stamp collecting, but in the glory that is Zeta collecting. Taste the rainbow, oh yes children, taste the love!
And just when our hearts are swelling and bursting with so much insane beauty tonight that we just can't bear it no more, and in absolutely no relation to just how close our blood alcohol levels are to punching out the ceiling and the stars above (thanks Emily, no really, THANK you!), Jive's luxurious velvety curtains part and we're all struck dead, given last rites, buried, risen back and then felled back to our knees, prostrate with mouths agape in awe to the full blown load of this our headlining act! Oh to be witness to such wonder as this!? for tonight we are born again!
TYGER TYGER (*****) myspace :: Yup, lets face it, we were so retardingly drunk by this point: so drunk with beer, so drunk with love, so drunk with all the impossible and ridiculously overblown superlative majesty that was Tyger Tyger's launch party at it's glorious Everest and apogee that none of us have even the foggiest recollection what the FUCK they even DID up there. Was this a gig!? did they even play a single note? Or did they simply spray out the entire venue tonight with a chemical cocktail of chloroform and laughing gas, whisk us off to Disneyland and then back again within the gaping blackhole that was their event horizon. I can only recall that which I captured here on camera: a stage pulled out into the dancefloor, pandemonium, strobes, people fucking everywhere.. then nothing, nothing but a blank expression that is me admitting that I can't remember FUCK of it. How could any of us? Our brains so small, so feeble, so humble to the skull fucking spectacle of it, here since pregnant with hundreds upon hundreds of teeny tiny Tyger Tygers bursting to be let free!? We've seen this before. New York has The Strokes. Sheffield has the Arctic Monkeys. Now we have the Tyger Tyger. The hype, the hysteria.. OH THE BLINDING HYPERBOLE!!
As such, in times like these, when I have forgotten it all and I'm left with nothing else at hand, I have an emergency statement prepared. I've kept it in a hermetically sealed mayonaise jar at Funk & Wagnall's waiting for this moment, quite possibly hoping it would never come to pass. It simply states: "If the radiance of a thousand doves were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one. Now I am become Tyger Tyger, the destroyer of worlds.". Yup, I think in this, and all our thousand fold hangovers, we can relate..
1:07AM - As the smoke clears from yet another sold out show at Jive, we could probably also relate to THIS guy out front. As right now, crack paramilitary squats from the liquor licensing commision are busting through those doors with battering rams and dragging these individuals to safety and cult deprogramming, in the hope that one day they may be reintegrated back into society. Such was the Yucatan sized crater left in the wake of Tyger Tyger's launch this night.
1:27AM - And like all other "must see" events of the social calender this week, Tyger Tyger's launch also attracted the more refined and fashion forward of Adelaide's hipsters and scensters. Look no further than the satorial splendour as modelled here by Stef and Emily..
This bold choice in mix and match pirate, goth corsettry and can-can dancer as modelled here by the always stylish Wenna. Take note fashionistas (and don't forget your eyedrops) for you'll be sure to see this signature "look" in many a spring and autumn catwalk later this year..
And what of THIS splendid display of flamboyant scarfery and dubious haberdashery!? Bravo to you madame *cough* I mean "sir" for such a whimsical choice in fabric, cut and colour.. YES!
Oh and who could forget these carnivorous harpies giving us all the best angles in satin, lace and high waisted jeans, flown fresh from Rocket Bar especially for this occassion!? Oh yes Paul the angry midget (Jive's glassie to the stars) be impressed! you're amongst greatness tonight!
1:54AM - The excitement continues well into the heat of the night as we're further blessed with the insanely good taste in music that could only come from Transmission's finest indie dancefloor DJ's. Look at them up there, in such high spirits! they know they're in with a winner!
2:06AM - Meanwhile backstage, festivities of a "different kind" are raging as Tyger Tyger and their a-list entourage make their indelible mark in the history books of Jive. Oh yes! Future generations will look upon these hallowed walls hence and wonder "why daddy, why were these walls painted a different colour come Saturday morning!?" WHY!? Tyger Tyger! that's why!
This is pride ladies and gentleman! Pride in all the alcohol and illbient narcotics that it took to reach such lofty heights! Hold your head up high Tyger Tyger: be bold, be brave! be damn near petrified as you load that shotgun and unload shell after smoking shell in that which you inspired from your teeming zombie masses. First Jive, and then the world! WOOHEHEHAHAAHA!!
*ahem* wait.. wuh? what the fuck was I on about just then!?
2:18AM - Thanks to all those Transmission DJ's the dancefloor is raging. Hit after utterly disposable Triple J high rotation hit is blazing up the walls with such heat it's a super charged plasma, whilst I wrack my brain in the attempt to figure out just WHO the hell that blond is who's been sneaking into all my photos of late, and just where I've met her before.. hmmm?
2:37AM - Here's Stef, Tyger Tyger's elite promotional assassin, simply overjoyed that all her hard work in the last six months has proved to be such a downright scary, runaway success..
And this is her even more overjoyed, moments later, when I showed her that photo.
3:07AM - Yup, even in this last remaining soul still waiting outside, in the freezing cold, all night, starving, cold, driven half mad by his final act of desperation that drove him to cannibalise the rest of his brethren to survive; even he's having the time of his life! YES! JUST LOOK AT HIM! this launch isn't just for those of us inside, this launch is for all of YOU too.. weeeeeee! :)
Such insatiable hunger, such wide-eyed terror from yours truly in the attempt to capture it all with his life still intact. This is what YOU have to look forward to Tyger Tyger! Expect to find people just like these following you wherever you go now: camping out on your front lawn, rifling through your garbage, chasing you down the street with crowbars, pitchforks and burning torches. You can't buy this level of hysteria. Oh no, you earnt every last drop of it!
And so there we have it. We've reached the end of it. Here, reduced to a primordial blubbering mess that all other nights could only dream of. What a Friday night! What a launch party! What a way to live!!? Where else but Adelaide's music scene could you celebrate the night like this!?
And this is you wondering at the end of it all whether I'm really THIS genuine in all my praise of all this awesomeness or whether I'm simply laughing myself stupid over it all and taking the piss again? *cough* yup, that's really gotta be bugging the absolute crap out've you, huh? :)
