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...
CHILDREN COLLIDE + BEN ELY'S RADIO 5 + MONA LISA OVERDRIVE LIVE @ PRODUCERS BAR / Saturday November 15th 2008
Tonight's ill advised escapade into the Adelaide music scene is brought to you by everyone's favourite lead singer: Craig Nicholls from The Vines. What a freaking legend! No really, I have nothing but love for this dude! He's the absolute flaming bag of shit with a smile and a raised thumb on your front doorstep, ringing the doorbell! He is a gift to gonzo rock photojournalists the world over! He's living that dream, that crazy dream we all wish we could dream! Walking on water and swimming the land? Too weird to live, too rare to die? Showing us the way to TRUE artistic freedom!? Fuck yes! I cannot speak ill or end to the glowing admiration I have for both him and all three albums he helped produce with The Vines that are nothing short of modern masterpieces! (and yes I realise they actually wrote FOUR albums, but we'll choose to ignore "Vision Valley" for the sake of argument shall we? *cough*). He's the Pete Doherty of the Australian music scene, he's ground control to Major Tom, he's the Golden God on that rooftop with arms outstretched all stuffed into the ill fitting body of a child filled with endless wonder at a world where none of the pieces quite fit. Aaaaaah Craig Nicholls: baked not fried! For all those who always thought "they never quite make them how they used to" he's the one that proves them wrong again and again! He's from another age, quite possibly from another planet. He's deftly dancing the divide between genius and insanity. He's a child of the sun, illegitimate lover to the moon, listless spawn to the whistling leaves and a mind that floats above us all like a cloud of butterflies!
But then I hear the tragic news just like the rest of you: The Vines have since cancelled all of their upcoming tours due to their lead singer Craig Nicholls and his "deteriorating mental condition"!? Whoaaaa! say it isn't so!? That means no more Homebake, no more Pyramid Rock Festival, no more The Big Day Out appearances or any of their blissfully illbient jams on late night talk shows that we've all come to know and love!? (ie: just like the pure comedy gold that was this their infamous meltdown on the Letterman Show back in 2002? FUCK YES!). Craig Nicholls, what the FUCK happened maaaan!? Even more disturbing, is that they also cancelled all of their subsequent shows, ever so mysteriously, AFTER they played a gig in Adelaide! Damn. not to say any of us are prone to wild conspiracy theories here, but I'd almost wager there'd be a connection in there somewhere: play Adelaide, lose your fucking mind. I'm linking the dots maaan! It happened to Courtney Love at the Adelaide Big Day Out back in 1999, it could happen to any of us. Shit, no wonder international touring acts keep skipping us by. They KNOW about all the shitcrazy mind altering fluoride we put into our drinking water, they KNOW the true potency of our farm fresh "wookie" green. Shit, it almost drove ME insane when I had a mad hit back in June at the Ed Castle (duuude just you try and make sense of anything I wrote for THAT blog!). I mean who's to say what any of this shit DID to Craig Nicholls' brain when he made that all too brief trip to the farside of the moon last week!? Adelaide, we all know it, you play this town at your peril!
So here's to your speedy recovery from whatever combination of KFC and "secret herbs and spices" you're currently consumed by, here's to your prompt return to melting all our faces off on a live stage and many more incomprehensible sequels to Autumn Shade to be found on all your subsequent albums (ever noticed how there wasn't one on "Vision Valley"? y'know.. *cough* I'm just saying!). Craig Nicholls. We secretly suspect we may've broken you last Friday night (you sure as shit loved to jump around all those chairs) but either way, come back soon y'hear!? It gets awfully dull around here without people just like you to brighten up our lives! *sniff*
Yup there's no doubt about it, this music business is a deadly business, and it's claimed its fair share of lives in the past from Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrisson, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Jeff Buckley, Elvis Presley, Karen Carpenter, Keith Moon, Marvin Gaye, Bon Scott, Sid Vicious, Syd Barrett, Ian Curtis, Freddy Mercury, Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley and Michael Hutchence (to name just but a few). It's claimed Billy Corgan's hair, Ozzy Osbourne's brain, Brian Wilson's sanity, Michael Jackson's humanity and what was left of Daniel John's testicles. It is verily a beast of mythical, biblical and hypnagogic proportions. Indeed it takes many near to otherworldly adaptations that would otherwise defy much of medical sciences collected upon it. It's a reptilian quality as found in Keith Richards, David Bowie and Iggy Pop. It's a freakish unkillability that knows no bounds, no weakness, no conventional weaponry nor fire. You'll find it in neutral tones of blacks and greys that hide the blood and beer stains. You'll find it in an aversion to sunlight, mirrors and vitamin C. You'll find it in the dark growing like a fungus: halfway between a scream and a monophonic ringtone ringing through your ears days at a time. This will become your boot camp in kill or be killed survivalism and combat drinking. This will be your night of the living undead lived over and over. You will begin your tour of duty as a soft lump of clay, a mud monkey, a mind full of straw but one day you'll be carved out of wood and many will be the littering corpses that will one day be scattered in your wake. This is not humanity. This is something else entirely. Maybe I'm one of them, maybe I'll be dead by tomorrow, maybe I'll outlive them all, but I sure DO love it here!
And as much as I understand it any and all supernatural powers you may hope to gain in this scene you gain not through chance luck of DNA, voodoo sacrifices, or blood rites, but through accumilating "frequent flyer points" like nicotine stains into teeth enamel. They become your unnatural ability tonight to blag your way past bouncers and lengthening lineups with nary but a sneeze. They become your ability in following to summon "psychic beers" from the bar, ones that arrive in front of you before you even knew you wanted one. They're those weird looks you get when you realise you've forgotten entirely more people than the ones that now know YOU all too well. Beats me how the fuck I scored any of this shit, but just as soon as I can teleport through time and space, gain telepathy, mind control, and the ability to levitate shit with nothing but outstretched fingers and a raise eyebrow, I'll be sure to start up my very own Jedi Academy to teach it. We'll rule the world in secret. We'll be benevolent freaks and space beings with laserbeams shooting out of our spleens. We'll be like nothing the world has ever seen!
So as I go ever so slightly batshit insane at the tail end of beer three, as the house and stage lights in Producers Bar continue to dim below that which would otherwise escape the event horizon of a blackhole (or in other words, whoever behind the bar was reponsible for this shit under the mistaken belief it looks "arty" deserves to have a tribe of crazed colobus monkeys burst out of their pea shooter in plague proportions) and as the air around me fills with endless excitement and wonder (with a ripening decay not unlike that which tickles your nostrils when barbecued goat meets the wafting of an open manhole cover) I find nothing at all alarming or unusual in my surrounds. This is my home. This is where I belong. In my mind? duuude I'm already gone!
MONA LISA OVERDRIVE (****) myspace :: Our opening act for the night knows all well what it takes to survive the dementia, the self destruction and self depreciating humour that comes with a life "on the road" (and one that is travelled in ever shrinking hamster wheels in the Adelaide music scene). They've been playing gigs every damn weekend for the last six months. They've been working the hard yards and accumilating the liver spots like true career professionals, running ever so precariously close to careening off that cliff all the while. So much so in fact that I sometimes wonder if they even go home anymore, or whether they simply roam these streets living off the land for days at a time. Hiding in the shadows, living by osmosis, absorbing nutrients, vitamins and hallucinogenics from the air; waiting for that fateful drop of a hat, the opening of a fridge door, or the chance gathering of five or more people so that they can play live gig to them. And it appears all this effort, all this investment, all this accumilative damage to their chromosomes is doing their live sound a world of good! Mona Lisa Overdrive. When I first saw them playing live earlier this year they were squeaky clean, store bought and straight out of that box. They had a sound and a stage presence rather akin to what you would imagine all the hallucinogenic grime of The Velvet Underground or The Doors would've sounded like on a live stage as performed second hand by string puppets from the 60's Thunderbirds series. All those stilted sounds, starched collars, angular riffs, and careful clockwork movements that ever so surely demolished and destroyed everything they touched. The dizzying array of broken notes, loose drumming, gibberish and feedback. It was ever so amusing to watch it all unfold, and it's been all the more fascinating to watch as they grow it, quite like a sea monkey, into something all the brilliant and blissfully bewildering tonight!
Mona Lisa Overdrive are a microcosm of the 60s, as seen through one of those timelapse films of something that was once ever so squeaky clean since left in your fridge for months at a time growing fur, mold and turning all the colours of the rainbow from inside and out. As they travel ever further up that river, ever deeper into that heart of darkness with Martin Sheen on that boat to oblivion, they're not so much about the boundless youthful optimism of a Beatles "Twist And Shout", or an Andy Warhol pop art print, they've now seen the many faces of the beast that dwells below these floorboards, they've experienced the full horrors of wars fought both imaginery and in actuality on live stages soaked in beer, sweat and despair. They're now drifting towards the end point of the 60's: the Altamont Speedway massacres, the Jim Morrison exposing himself to piss on a stage, the John Lennon with a full crazy man beard severing that chord with a Yoko Ono in tow. And the ever weirder they get, the darker their sound, the more blues they creep into their influences to the howl of feedback and a beat poet off his rails on yet another tangent, the more awesome they become. This is the howling beast of dystopia now realised in full. This is Dave on guitar working his shit like a theramin crossed with a turntable. This is Jess on the keys swaying like a spirit medium possessed by Charles Manson. Its Luke on rhythm guitar lurching like Nosferatu. Its Alex building his very own cult out there in the jungle, for the fateful day when Nixon drops the bombs on us all and the iron curtain falls on the capitalist dream. And it's also THIS song that they chose to close the set with: that crazy one where they swapped instruments around. You caught a glint of it last week in a smoking amp: now you'll get to understand just exactly why! This is Mona Lisa Overdrive proving themselves. This is their sound coming of age..
BEN ELY'S RADIO 5 (***1/2) myspace :: Which brings us a curious contrast when it collides with our second act. Some choose to embrace the heart of darkness and they follow it upstream to the further unravelling of their minds. They're the ones that reveal, rediscover, divinate, nay smoke deep the ashes of the past to find the one path that will lead them to the truth. Whilst others, quite like this wacky three piece from Brisbane, go for an entirely different approach. They go right back to the source when everything is shiny and new again and they start it from scratch. They're the ones that make their shit up as they go along. They're the ones that keep it simple. They're the sounds of punk back when it was all about smashing up building blocks in the sandpit. They're the sounds of Ben Ely's Radio 5. By name alone, some of you may be more than familiar with at least ONE member of this band: Ben Ely, lankyarse goofball, ten feet tall with the scruffy lampchop sideburns bordering on a Lincoln beard. Founding member and bassplayer for Regurgitator (along with Quan Yoemans), living legend. He's been a fixture of the Brisbane scene ever since the early 90's. He's also been known to travel under a littany of other wacky sideprojects when the mood strikes him. From Pangaea to Jump 2 Lightspeed and now Radio 5 he's all about the mad party jam and he's all about the fucking buzz! And with his band of trigger happy misfits in tow tonight (Steve Bourke on bass and Marihuzka Larenas-Esquivel on guitar), they're cutting a direct line straight to our adrenal glands!
Ben Ely's Radio 5. When I originally read about this band, I was told Ben Ely would be playing drums tonight. Somehow I just couldn't fit how any of it could work into any kind of feasible reality that would involve this beanpole being crammed behind a drumkit, and instead started imagining a scene rather akin to that of a clown with oversized clown shoes being stuffed into a suitcase, zipped and closed (followed by me laughing hysterically at the mad spectacle of it all). However the minute I saw him out front setting up with an upright kit, I knew this band would be right on the money. In a nutshell, Ben Ely's Radio 5 is straight up early 80's punk pop at it's infectious best. It's the deceptively simply left hook and uppercut killer swing you find in "My Sharona" by The Knack. Or the spastic enthusiasm of the early 80's cheerleader anthem "Mickey". Or the madenning cocaine drill of Plastic Bertrand's "Ça Plane Pour Moi". Or next to anything as performed by Devo, reduced to its primal fury and dancing on your smoking carcass. In an ever darkening atmosphere of sweat and piss we find ourselves in tonight their delivery also begins to share some stark similarity with the howling menace of Death From Above 1979, but such comparisons are shortlived, as Ben Ely continually shrieks and cheers on the crowd like an eight year old, this is hardly a malicious four on the four rinse out by any stretch of the imagination. Nope, Ben Ely just wants us to party like mad kids on a sugar rush, just like Patience from The Grates. So much so (and considering the pedigree of most if not every other band that ever comes out of Brisbane) you begin to consider this innocence to be indigenous. It's infectious, infinitely likeable, a little bit lost in the swirling black fog before us (so much so I often lost the guitarist and bass player to it) and you COULD accuse them for pretty much playing the same song twelve different ways for only two minutes at a time; but there's a wacky childlike appeal here. Simple, direct, fuck full of energy, duuude sometimes that's all you need to make this shit rock!
11:26PM - So here we are. This is the tipping point. This is the eye of the storm. This is the long wait till the final chapter made ever more urgent and incoherent by the mad anticipation building around me. Thanks to Ben Ely and his pogo playing cohorts applying 40,000 volts of electricity to both nipples for the last 45 minutes in support slot two, the crowd is seriously starting to get restless out here and we're rapidly reaching the golden hour of mass intoxication. I see them going batshit insane behind me, they're bouncing off the walls, they're looking to fuck themselves up every which way rotten and this headlining act couldn't arrive any sooner to kill them all off!
Oh and might I add (despite what may be escalating odds otherwise stacking up me) that I'm infinitely proud to have scored THE ultimate sniper spot for this last band too. Right up in between the two foldback speakers extending out from the middle of the stage. It's like my own fortified cubbyhouse in here. I once grabbed a spot just like this for Wolf & Cub when they played at Adelaide Uni Bar back in May 2007 and duuude it was the best shit ever! Even weirder, I have absolutely no trouble whatsoever simply leaving this spot on a whim, diving headlong into another insane vantage point to the left or right and then simply returning. Wow! It's weird when a capacity crowd is THIS freaking agreeable! We all took turns. Compared to the hell I experienced last night, this shit is nothing short of a buzz I wanna marry and spawn million of babies from. And yes I realise just how fucked up that just sounded *cough* aaaaand we're moving on..
CHILDREN COLLIDE (****1/2) myspace :: Yup, what we're witnessing reaching critical mass here tonight, rapidly climbing up those walls and overwhelming any attempts to otherwise sedate or control it: is a freak phenomenon known simply as the "Triple J" effect. It's an apocalyptic shitstorm you've seen play out countless times before in live venues throughout Australia. Quite by design, quite by coincidence, or quite like a freak convergence of electromagnetism that makes an ocean liner disappear without a trace somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle (only to make it reappear halfway up a mountainside somewhere in the Middle East covered in penguin shit) THIS is a phenomenon that Children Collide is experiencing right now thanks in no small part to their new album "The Long Now", being the feature release on Triple J this week. Yup, never underestimate your national broadcaster and their insane ability to make just about ANYTHING "flavour of the month". They own the hysterical masses. They brainwash us all on a whim. It doesn't matter if your album consists of nothing but the sounds of dogs farting, duck whistles, an insane excess of cowbells, any given members of Architecture In Helsinki shitting into a jar of peanut butter (or pretty much any song released by Operator Please), they press that big red button and before you know it you're upto your nips and sinking fast to a crowd quite like this one tonight. Still, as much as I can gather from previous experience (and an awesome set they thrashed out in Rocket Bar back in April 2007) it's an attention that's more than deserved. They have the name. They have the energy to follow through. They have the venue packed and primed with explosives. I can't see two inches in front of my face. Right here and now is what being killed by the stampede of public opinion swaying drastically in your favour is aaaaall about! Pull that pin, pull back that catapult arm and let that freak fucker fly!
The sound of Children Collide isn't the sound of one hand clapping, it isn't the sound of someone stealing pebbles from a blind man and it sure as fuck ain't the sound of a tree falling in a forest if there was no one around to witness it. To get this recipe right, simply add equal parts first album Nirvana with first album The Beatles, add equal parts frozen orange concentrate and gasoline, stir vigoriously and run the fuck out of there before the whole fat fucker explodes in your face and takes out most of the surrounding city block with you. You'll know if you've got the recipe just right when you see the smoking craters you left behind (and the mile high smiley face spray painted yellow on the side of the building next to it) when it promptly makes its appearance on the evening news. That's what it is like to get both barrels of Children Collide aimed at your face at point blank range. They're the sounds of Fight Club making swift work on your frontal lobe. They're the sounds of Project Mayhem demagnetising both hemispheres of your brain. They're Jack's venting spleen pissing all over all the ashes that remain. It's full throttle early 80's aussie bogan rock, very much in the spirit of Midnight Oil or Hunters & Collectors right back to their volatile post punk roots. It makes you want to smash a tinny of VB square into your forehead, it's loud, it's dumb as all fuck and it makes you want to kill every-damn-fucking-thing that moves!
It's Johnny on leads (all snot nosed and punk spit) doing his very best Johnny Rotten by way of Phil Jamieson impersonation as he ties all of his hamstring muscles into pretzels knots jumping about on stage. It's Heath on bass (spinning mad vortices to the left of him) doing his very best Cosmo Kramer by way of John Travolta impersonation as he hammers a punchy rhythm assault to match. It's Ryan on the drums looking very much like a 1920's Chicago mobster as he erases all other opposition to their absolute rule with a tommygun cheese grating. And it's all of the above all but disappearing into the inky blackness before me (that was Producers Bar's non existent stage lighting) as I all but stubbornly refusing to accept defeat by resorting to the flash instead. All except perhaps for a few of these insane "slow synchro" vapour trail shots..
And some of these chance "conventional" flash shots that I took of Heath as a mere afterthought (which besides all the entirely badass shapes he's pulling out on stage really don't amount to much of anything). But still, I know what you're thinking. You're probably wondering, if the light was SO bad tonight why didn't I just take ALL my shots like this instead!? I mean shit, wouldn't this be the logical solution!? Oh sure, except (a) nothing is more annoying to a live band than the sight of some wingnut in the crowd popping off a flash every 2-3 seconds, (b) these flash photos never do anything to capture the "atmosphere" for what it really is in the first place, (c) duuude there's no such thing as a "logical solution" in this joint when you're well into your fifth beer..
Either way, all quibbles aside (and me casually wondering if there's any wildlife preserve in the world that would allow me to import a lazy 15-20 colobus monkeys into this venue and help me enact my laughably fictional revenge on whoever was responsible for this shit lighting tonight *cough*) this was STILL one sweetarse way to short-circuit most if not all of my braincells on a Saturday night. I am one smoking skull cavity. I am two still ringing ears. I am a ribcave now since beaten concave. Aaaaah just another day at the office! Really, I'm surprised there ain't more freaks out there killing themselves retarded quite like I do every damn weekend (or maybe they used to be out there in droves and I've simply outlived them all.. whoaaaaa!).
12:50AM - And so as Producers Bar shuts down for the night, sends in the hounds, the tear gas and flushes everyone screaming and arms flailing out those exit doors. I wonder just what IS the secret to my continuing survival in this music scene. Why have I managed to survive so long when others have fallen? Why I am the only person damn near courageous (or stupid) enough to cover the front lines of this music scene whilst others would much rather pick up infinitely less risky careers options like drug running, prostitution, or investment banking. Why haven't a veritable chumbucket of other copycat killers with their own blogs simply sprung up in opposition to this one, outgunned me by every means available and run me straight out of town!? Is there even anyone left in Australia that could possibly compete with me, or maybe even the world!? I pause to bask in an ego that's now inflating well beyond the orbit of Pluto only then to come crashing down to earth again with the horrifying realisation that there's probably one damn good reason why I'm alone in all this: I'm long dead. I haven't been human for years. I am well and truly NOT of this earth!
2:09AM - Still, I think we can all agree THIS is one of many reasons why beer was invented in the first place: "existential crisis? feel like you don't belong? feel a little too much like a Tuesday? fuckit, let's all get plastered!". So after drinking all those insane thoughts right out've my head at Producers Bar, I stumble out those doors and into the night with renewed purpose. I mean all insane paranoia aside, I think my track record pretty much speaks for itself! 46th week of the year and I still haven't been killed? not even once!? awesome!! And thus in following I find myself on Hindley Street, clearly looking to push my luck beyond that which any occupational health and safety would otherwise endorse, and am then faced with two options: do I pick Supermild and a lengthy lineup with all the other lemmings scrambling to be let inside for the last two hours..?
Or do I pick Jive? for reasons that may quite possibly involve them letting in next to any idiot who ever stumbles their way (and plying them with enough alcohol to fill a swimming pool five times over), only to invite them to roll around the dancefloor, arms flapping, making sea lion noises (otherwise known as yet another indie night of "Gosh"), and thus in following exhibiting every reason why everyone here tonight should be swiftly struck off any organ donor list for presenting a blood alcohol content slightly short of that which constitutes a fire code violation..
And clearly since a third and infinitely more sensible option (ie: getting the first bus or taxi and getting the fuck out of here before this shit kills me!) never entered my mind; after a summary glance over in the opposite direction that showed me in no uncertain terms that the line outside of Supermild wasn't moving any time soon, I found my answer and soon headed into Jive.
2:15AM - And so upon walking in (drawing little or no attention from the crowd before me) I quietly make my way up to the bar. I catch the eye of one of the few bartenders still working here who doesn't want me dead for all the jokes I've made at Jive's expense in the past (hi Luke!), I order my seventh or eight beer, I pay my money in return and then mere moments before I can take my first sip of that sweet sweet nectar *BAM* I'm ambushed by Nick Hadley and his highly attuned "beerdar". Yeah fucked if I know how this shit happens to me everytime either!? Sometimes I secretly wonder if all of Adelaide has simply worked out some kind of short messaging service that alerts and updates everyone to my ongoing alcohol consumption (damn you facebook!), or maybe upon the seventh or eighth beer my ears simply emit a dog whistle that draws everyone from far and wide!? I mean seriously duuude, how the fuck DO all these dribbling fools know!?
2:17AM - Either way before I can figure it all out (and possibly link it up to all those other shitcrazy sirens that always fire off in Jive anytime anyone even sneezes near an exit sign), Nick Hadley (drummer from Dead Popes Of The Vatican, recreational trainwreck) is soon joined by many more of his knuckle dragging neanderthal tribe: as they pop up all around me, from the balconies above, from the walls before me, from the carpets below my feet, surrounding me from all possible angles and subsequently blocking every available means of escape.. heeeelp!!
2:29AM - It's moments like these that I'm rather reminded of my favourite recurring nightmare. It always starts out the same way. It's the end of the world. It's the apocalypse. It's the postcript as directed by Roland Emmerich by way of George Romero. I'm the only one left alive to a cityscape of broken egg shells. The rest of the planet has since been overrun and crawling with zombies, vampires, werewolves, aliens, leprecauns and cannibalistic sock puppets and I'm running for my life. It always ends the same way: me about to be killed in entirely gruesomes way only to wake midway between a silent scream and a ribcage rupturing heart attack. Yeah, fucked if I know why I'm mentioning it now but it sure makes you think now doesn't it? hmmm..
2:59AM - First of all it does bring into question the unique species of lunatic you always seem to find in these haunts into the hysterical hours of the night and whether any of them could actually be defined as "human" or whether they're simply another species altogether. I'd hazard a guess they're no longer the mere mortal you could otherwise so easily dispatch with a silver bullet, a crossbow, chainsaw, cricket bat, sawn off shotgun or sharpened stake aimed true to the heart. I'd also wager they don't respond all that readily to crucifixes, mirrors or sunlight. I dare say most are more than fascinated by such things and pretty much any shiny object is guarenteed to draw them from far and wide. It's pays to dress in neutral tones of blacks and greys. Don't make eye contact. Don't make any sudden movements. Be ever mindful of the exit signs. Your continued survival and the continuing supremacy of the human race may very well depend on it..
Which would of course make perfect sense if I didn't happen to be so ridiculously drunk right from the outset that I simply started shooting everything that moves and now I'm well and truly fucked in the thick of it. Still look on the bright side, if ever I DO go missing, and days later my bloated carcass ends up washing up ashore on a beach somewhere in South East Asia with my head gone missing; it'll surely be THIS shit as recovered from my camera's memory card (ie: rather like Cloverfield) that'll give the police all the insane evidence they need to hunt down the real killers (or better yet provide you with the most awesome "file photo" for the evening news ever!).
3:32AM - Thus in following and for no apparent reason whatsoever (pffft who ever needs a segue in this blog?) I feel the need to take photos of these two idiots up in front of me, for the simple fact that one of them is up on the other one's shoulders and clearly THIS is the most awesome thing ever. Which is hilarious for all the reasons that we're clearly way too drunk to remember that we actually pull this shit every damn weekend and not for the dawning realisation that this also means none of us have a chance in hell in running for political office. Oh and would you also believe if I told you I actually file every single one of these trainwrecks under a series simply entitled "drunken idiots" and I have collected upwards of three thousand shots so far!? (yeah I know! I really thought I would've collected many more of these by now too).
3:36AM - Mel the midget soon makes an utterly random cameo appearance into our zombie apocalypse. Only to be kidnapped by Sean here for reasons I can't quite fathom, but quite possibly involving a much beloved monster movie from the 1950's and something you'd otherwise find bursting out've the swamp with fins and gills. Of course this isn't to say Sean Kemp is actually EVER the kind of dribbling monstrosity you'd expect to find terrorising citizens in any midwest town of the United States (although clearly this is not through any lack of trying).
Mel endlessly amuses us all with her shitcrazy (bordering on paranormal) ability to deflect any camera lens from photographing her entire face (for reasons I can never quite fathom) whilst simultaneously requesting I take further photographs exhibiting the exact same ego introverted batshit insane tendancy (which granted is all the more amusing the more you collect of them!).
And no, for the life of me, I've got no fucking clue why. Are we simply culture jamming and tearing down all the established orthodoxy that is the "15 seconds of fames" as it eludes to Andy Warhol and the rapidly anachronism that was the fame obssession of the 20th century..?
Is this simply a sly visual commentary on the privacy invasion presented by facebook, myspace, social networking and the 21st century surveillance society that followed it that isn't the dystopia we quite imagined, but one that we're willingly participants in!? is THIS what we've become..?
Are we nothing more than freak species of otherworldly origin documenting the further degradation of what it is to be human? is there any hope for us all!? are we doomed to walk the world as ghosts and shadows? as mirrors reflecting upon reflecting yet revealing nothing at all!? is this my nightmare coming back to haunt me over and over!? OH THE HUMANITY!?
3:38AM - Eventually all this intellectual and existential gibberish simply becomes too much to bear. Indeed it IS true what they say: "sooner or later the survival rate of just about everyone drops to zero". As demonstrated here by Nick Hadley as he comes crashing to the floor, all the weight of the world since consuming him all at once (or quite possibly just all the alcohol he consumed since reversing the force of gravity under his feet. Either way, dude? awesome!).
3:54AM - I take one last beer hostage (maybe two or three more), I feed the hunchback his bucket of fish heads (oh shit wait.. that's just Ryan!) and then I fly out that door quite possibly considering that bus home, although more than likely collecting yet more evidence for why I'm no longer the sort of illbient beast that can be defined by any laws of medical science..
4:17AM - Because I clearly don't know when to quit, I try my luck with Supermild again. In my two hours of absence it appears that line outside still hasn't moved an inch. The minute I take my place in it, I can hear the bouncer before me barking "no more! no more! we're closing! we're closing!" just like he always does an hour before they actually do. You'd think at this moment I would simply take the hint and follow suit, but again I manage to pull one of those freaky Jedi mind tricks (that seemingly only come from accumilating all these "frequent flyer miles" of mine) and with barely a nod or a wave, I simply walk right on by him and down those stairs.
4:19AM - It is here that I'm soon ambushed by Bec the bartender (infamous scene stealer from the Ed Castle) who seemingly has no issues whatsoever with anything pertaining to Andy Warhol, the 21st century narcissist paradigm or anything involving a post graduate degree in philosophical masturbation in effort to explain it all (man I can talk some gibberish sometimes!) and is simply getting her own back on her arch nemesis Sophie from Producers Bar for all the photos she's been sneaking into the blog of late. Aaaah duuude I ask you what's not to love?
This in following, would be one of those photos where anyone ELSE would probably make some hilarious reference to a "threesome" followed by a male chorus of guffaws, high fives, pint glasses clinking, rifles being shot in the air, and everyone else congratulating themselves for just how ridiculously witty they all are (as clearly I've never done THAT shit before) but of course I won't because I'm ever so educated, not entirely circling the drain drunk, and I didn't just make that joke anyways in some ever so convoluted around about way. Oh fuck yeah I'm insane!
4:26AM - And then I had one of those completely batshit surreal moments, surreal in the sense that I almost suspected someone had just spiked my drink with every OTHER element in the periodic table not already found in Adelaide tap water, and hadn't just bumped into Hollywood actor Clive Owen. Shit! Whodathunkit!? here crumbled like a folded up newspaper, ever so slightly shitfaced drunk in Supermild past 4AM on a Saturday night!? Wow! You may remember him from such movies as Sin City, Children Of Men, Closer and King Arthur. You may've heard the rumours all night that he was here drinking it up after a hard day's night shooting for a new film quite possibly involving Scott Hicks. You may also begin to suspect that I'm simply talking complete and utter rubbish, but I swear it was him! Right here in person, and true to the idiom, ever so shorter in real life (and quite possibly covered in green fur). Of course we wanted to get a photo with him and a whole rugby team of us while we were at it but he wasn't all that into it *cough* so in effort to prove once and for all that I am THE preeminent source of journalistic integrity in this town, I cooked it up in Photoshop instead. And yes, I swear this is EXACTLY how it happened too!
4:35AM - After having a lengthy (and utterly incomprehensible) conversation with Clive Owen, that mostly involved him giving me the evil eye, till in my blithering drunk way I finally got the hint and left him to his beer (no really, he's the nicest bloke once you get to know him!) I stumbled out into the beer garden, half not believing my luck, only to bump into this shit outside: which is either the most eye bleedingly hysterical thing you've ever seen, the most damn near horrifying thing you've ever seen, just another night at Supermild after a few too many beers, a little something for "the girls", me pissing myself laughing for a good five to ten minutes, or all the above..
4:37AM - And then I went back inside and got a whole lot more drunk. I mean is it just me, or is it seriously getting weirder out there. I know I like to joke about it and all, but duuuude what the fuck is going on with this city!? I swear any minute now some half mythical, quite possibly fictional, farcical, excuse for a bibical retribution is going to nuke us from space and all that is going to be left of this mad science experiment is going to be a million pillars of salt and one sign swinging on rusty hinges that simply reads: "End of season 7 Buffy cliche, exit 500m". Still, fuck is it hilarious documenting it all. We may be far from anything even remotely resembling reality but it sure is one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Damn, is anyone else hungry right about now?
4:47AM - And so as I leave it all behind for another weekend, stepping over the littany of corpses: some still smoking, others simply nursing bottles or glasses that litter shattering in my wake to the last bus home (or quite possibly a taxi since it appears I've just missed it) I wonder over my insane luck and just how I managed to survive yet another one of these nights with most of my teeth intact. I understand it's not for everyone. Some of us run screaming. Some of us find ourselves in rubber rooms with all the sharp corners filed down. Some simply wake up to just how ridiculous it all is and get real fucking jobs. Either way, I'm just glad to be a part it!
The music business is a dangerous business, a deadly business, a foolish and frequently redundant business. Most art is. It's exactly how it should be. Whether it be nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy person or ever so much more (and often at the same time). It kills us well before our prime and it immortalises us for centuries to come. It is both the creator and the destroyer. It is both love and hate intertwined and we'd be nothing without it. Just think, Adolf Hitler was rejected twice by the Academy Of Fine Arts in Vienna and then he went insane and destroyed most of Western Europe. Hmmm yup, I believe there's a lesson in that for all of us!
