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...
TAUGHT BY ANIMALS + LIKE LEAVES + FRIENDS ALBUM LAUNCH PARTY @ THE ED CASTLE / Friday September 17th 2010
I tell you what maaan.. but it takes some serious a-grade dedication, devotion and laser beam dementia to do what I do every week for the Adelaide scene. It takes serious next level ninja shit like "Mr. Miyagi" with a pair of chopsticks. It takes years upon years of battle hardened experience drinking myself blind here! Every week I dive into that deep end maaan.. every week! I hurl myself headfirst howling into that Friday and Saturday night insane asylum stretching ad infinitum and well into my midweek all encompassing.. and I fucking live it! Every week I witness complete and utter chaos barely contained by society or physics exploding around me: hilarious piss stains and faeces flung from wall to ceiling by animal humans, shaved apes and imbecile intellects and I stand here in the middle of it, in this "eye of the storm" and I photograph and I document and I laugh at the sublime comedy of it all knowing that it won't matter shit in five years let alone five minutes but pfft.. do I really give a fuck!? I know I'm retarded for this shit! I'm know I'm a rampaging cartoon character binge drinker unemployable! I know the grim statistics are rapidly stacking up against me too! The music industry is dead, music journalism isn't far behind, Rome's burning as we fiddle with our iphone apps, nobody's paying the bills, art and culture have been reduced to little more than an A-Z bogroll of disposable memes, top 40 chart hits, product placements, televised talent quests and an entire internet population jacked up on red bull who hate on everything.. civilisation itself will be long gone before we even know it! And here I am, living this hilarious contradiction in terms and loving every minute of it!? YOUUU BETCHA!! But it takes a zen like focus to document it, a mad equilibrium, an idiotic balancing act increasingly precarious; I mean last Friday night's tale of drunken debauchery damn near left me in a shit grinning "coma" in riotous defiance to it! And tonight it simply starts up all over again!? Yup and for the sake of my laughably tenuous grip on sanity? I need to seek out the equal and opposite outcome if ever I'm gonna resolve it. A night out where can I surf all the wacky extremes blissfully "sober" without the overwhelming urge to kill everyone? A night out where I wake up the next day with more than three braincells functional to make sense of it all!? It may seem impossible I know.. but fuck damnit duuude? I can still try!
FRIENDS (****) myspace :: Or in other words slightly LESS insane? yup.. sometimes it does help to have a night out where my brain isn't exploding in a billion directions at once, or gargling upto its basal ganglia in beer until it stops working altogether.. or at least until sometime the following Tuesday (or Wednesday?) when I can finally get it to recognise simple shapes and colours again so I can write a fucking blog about it. Sometimes it's good to just take the easy way out: just a few bands, a few brews, a few laughs and me high tailing the fuck out of there without causing myself a debilitating brain injury!? aaaah to live the dream! And as for why I would ever hope to find it HERE at The Ed Castle tonight playing host to an album launch party for the "craziest damn band" in the Adelaide music scene: Taught By Animals? (or at least since The Waterslides broke up in July? or whatever the fuck happened to The Torrens after that infamous show in December!?) yeaaah it's anyone's guess. As clearly I've just dived into the deep end AGAIN for this shit (and if you still don't get WHY? you need only see live footage of their spastic spidermonkey/bass player Gerald Liddle in "action".. yes, yes I know!) except it's also the best damn show happening in Adelaide tonight. I mean suuure Box Elder might also be launching their debut EP at The Metro tonight (and Sincerely, Grizzly in support might even be promising to destroy a drumkit!?) and I might've been to seven album launches ALREADY this year (not counting the interstate touring acts) but they still don't happen every day now do they!? OOOOH FUCK NO!! and when you consider the "a-grade" calibre of their support acts too? duuude how can we possibly go wrong!? Well when it comes to our opening act Friends? the answer to that is obviously we can't. Yup you may remember these antagonistic shit weasels from THEIR album launch back in June, or for their support slot playing Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!'s single launch back in March, or for their infamous appearance trashing the second stage at The Touch Party back in January, or maybe you don't remember anything at all.. short of waking up the following morning missing a few too many teeth laughing upside your head in a gutter (or behind a speaker stack in a shower of glass) either way? their appeal is instantaneous, but not necessarily "universal". No for that you truly need a finer appreciation of all things The Birthday Party, The Dead Kennedys, and Nirvana's "Bleach" album cranked up to volumes that would sand blast walls; or the special kind of "blissful serenity" that only comes from drinking yourself into a rage blackout and being a human helicopter in swinging fists to anyone who dares approach you.. but if you do!? duuude nothing else beats it! (short of being mauled by a pack of Rottweilers of course). And although they might be missing their guitarist Josh Phillips tonight (well he's living in Sydney now, so it's not always a given he'd show up) they more than make up for it in hard hitting brutality. Yup they're just that little more "disciplined" tonight: both razor sharp and blunt in the twin attack of Ben Quici's guitar and Liam Kenny's bass, more ridiculously octopus in amping up the aggression with James Mannix on drums. They tear through their seven song setlist with little or no fanfare, even less regard for "witty banter" throwing in everything from Sorry, On A Bender, Skiptown, Gang Of 49 and Satellite from their album.. as well as two new songs. They're every epitome of the reptilian "fight or flight response" put through a distortion pedal amped up to a hundred. But what really sells it here? is the house mix. I mean it's just the right combination of crystal clear and corrosive and duuude it absolutely kills! (no seriously, it's the best sound I've ever heard this band crank outside of The Exeter.. and that's saying something!) and by the end we're only but howling for more!? Yup that's Friends nailing it right from the outset tonight. They're everything we could ever ask for in a "warm up" act making our blood boil like a screaming skettle.. and seriously who could ask for more!?
LIKE LEAVES (*****) myspace :: And it only gets better with our second act too? Yup it's been MONTHS since I'd last seen them live. Back in May for two minutes of a "blink or you'll miss it" support slot for Tame Impala at The Governor Hindmarsh and before that back in April in support of Die! Die! Die! here at The Ed Castle where they sounded rather like what it'd feel like to be stuck inside a cement mixer being wheeled through an Iraqi soundstorm while terrorist insurgents go off like a 21 gun suicide salute around you (no seriously check out the live video maaan.. it'll make your ears bleed!) both not exactly the best showcases of their "head exploding talent" I readily admit. But tonight it appears they have none of these issues, in fact it's quiet the opposite even, in fact I'd almost go as far to say that this set was downright A+++ in every conceivable way.. seriously! I mean if ever you're wondering what qualifies a live show for a "five star rating" like this? (yeaaah pfft.. what do you care!? I'm not Richard Kingsmill, I'm not RollingStone, I WRITE A BLOG FERFUCKSAKE!!) and there are SO many ridiculous ways to achieve it too! Unique celebratory circumstances (nail a launch party, farewell or once-off event and it's pretty much yours). Overwhelming crowd support (usually as a result of nailing the first.. exploding moshpit or otherwise). Me getting so hideously wasted before the show that your band suddenly becomes the most fuck off awesome thing to ever happen in the history of "awesome" (although I'm not nearly as susceptible to that shit now as I used to be). Pulling the ultimate smackdown on a hecklerand/or hecklers (especially when they're the same "heckler" who wrote a bad review about your Wolfmother support). And then there's what I like to call the "The Crying Game" effect (ie: by being so fucking godawful you're suddenly brilliant). But in the case of Like Leaves tonight? oh they've pulled off the rarest of the rare: the flawless execution. I mean there's just no way you could mess with this shit EVEN IF YOU TRIED!! Firstly you can tell they've rehearsed the fuck out've it, and by "rehearsed" I mean they've been recording an album full of it for well over eighteen months now (in fact I distinctly recall it was going to be released either August or September LAST YEAR) secondly it helps that they've been playing most of their setlist too going on two years now.. but it's more than that tonight. Thanks to all their recording? they've been adding all these extra flourishes, fills and lyrical refinement to the songs. You can hear it in the percussive detail Ryan Manolakis adds to Fruit and Swordfight. You can hear it in the lyrical depth and character Juliet Hunter adds to Mercy Sound. But it's also thanks to the live mix bringing so much of it to the surface too, and yeaaah I know I've mentioned this all before with Friends, but seriously whatever-the-fuck house mixer Alex Ciaravolo is "smoking" behind that desk tonight? deserves a freaking "five star rating" of its own. It's freaking insane! Not since June 2009 at Jive has this band ever sounded THIS GOOD. Patrick Saracino has this totally badass chunk to his bass guitar that feels downright three-dimensional; you can actually hear him harmonising those vocals with Juliet on Bazooka too it's THAT high fidelity. All of Ryan's kitchen sink drumming explodes like a forest where you pick out every individual twig and branch. And the real test of it? comes with Falling For A Fleeting Moment: where for once Daniel Varricchio's distinctly "dissonant" guitar chords DON'T sound horribly out of tune (trust me it's a bitch to get those frequencies right) but more like a quizzical soufflé they're THAT ridiculously righteous! I mean I could go on and on about this shit for days but I swear it was like all the planets aligned with all the atoms in our mind and they all danced as one.. and THAT was Like Leaves' set tonight!? Yup it was a psychedelic symphony, a smorgasboard for the senses, a synaptic shitstorm in blissed out serenity bar none and if they sold it as an opiate on the streets tomorrow? we'd all be dead in days, but shit damn we'd die happy!
Which then brings us to our headlining act tonight: here to launch their new album (three years in the making might I add) but before we get into all that? since it HAS been a few years now since they've last found themselves put under the proverbial spotlight, blowtorch, magnifying glass or whatever the fuck we want to call it for Spoz's Rant tonight (as I suspect you might have sneezed and missed out on their last "cameo appearance" for Friends' album launch back in June) a quick refresher course might be in order on what to expect here; all of which can also be conveniently found on stage while they conduct their soundcheck too.. like THIS setlist for example. One that appears to double as a shopping list for the Island Of Doctor Moreau; or more accurately an "alternative reality" version as co-run by Syd Barrett, Devendra Banhart and Dr Seuss tripping balls on a phone book full of blotter acid. And my personal favourite listing here? a song that appears to be entitled "Segway Goosehead". Awesome huh!? TOTALLY!! (it's even better when you lick it!).
Or what about these "song lyrics" here? Now I know what you're thinking (and please don't try to correct me as you'll only strain your neck in doing so) but I haven't posted this photo upside down by mistake, it's the right way up, I mean c'mon.. look at the perspective ferfucksake! I mean what are we: bugging out on the ceiling to this shit!? (at least not YET we aren't). Nope in actual fact they've been written in Russian cyrillic script, or perhaps it's one of those wacky reverse cursives that Leonardo Da Vinci used to employ for all his engineering sketches back in the 15th century, or maybe they're not lyrics at all but a genius dope cookie recipe.. either way duuude, who's hungry?
Or what about this dizzying "head explosion" in effects pedals, tweakers and keyboards sprawled out in front of us.. huh? HUH!? Yeaaah ok I admit this pretty much happens at EVERY fucking gig I go to beyond the point of a cliche. In fact I'm almost dead certain if there's LESS than five effects pedals present at any given live venue now it officially counts as an "acoustic show". But imagine what would happen if we daisy chained all of this shit up on the roof and tuned it to 1420 MHz frequency!? HA HA HA duuude we'd be upto our nips and pits in shitcrazy UFOs in next to no time!
And speaking of UFOs.. check out these cymbals. WHOAAAA!! are those "screws" jutting out from the top there? did someone drill that? and for what foul purpose!? I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK KINDA INSANITY ARE WE DEALING WITH HERE!? And as for why I'm making all these esoteric observations just now INSTEAD of reviewing this band.. could it be anything to do with the fact it's taking them almost a full hour to setup this shit!? OF COURSE NOT!! I mean why'd you even think that!? (no really.. what's taking them so long? have they misplaced a theramin or something!? SHEEESH!!).
TAUGHT BY ANIMALS (****) myspace :: But at long last they DO begin.. and duuude has it been a journey and a half in getting here too! Yup for those of you blissfully unaware Taught By Animals used to be all over this Adelaide scene like a spastic pandemic back in 2006 to 2007.. maaan they were practically inescapable they were THAT ragingly omnipresent! But the good news however? is that they were just THAT kind of serial offender (before the term "Mona Lisa Overdrive" was even invented) that you could totally imagine seeing six billion times in a row and STILL find something new to trip balls to.. duuude they were that ridiculously inspired! Calling them a "psychedelic band" clearly sold them short for this shit; picturing everyone from The Pixies, Sonic Youth to a tribe of Colobus monkeys jamming in a wind tunnel might get you close; but they truly had no comparison in the Adelaide scene. The last time they ever released anything on record however was a seven track self titled EP back in January 2007 (as much as the band now suggest it's an album). Since then they lost two band members in guitarist/bassist Matt Hills and drummer Neil Clark in 2007-2009; with some suspecting that their one original member Jonny Walsh on lead had completely lost his mind as a result (little did they realise that he was that colourfully shitcrazy to begin with). Only to gain two "new" members in guitarist/bassist Gerard Liddle and Luke Fazakerley on drums (only just this year). And as much as it has been a ridiculously epic odyssey in getting here tonight? (most of which I won't even get into) it appears they've at long last found their "power trio" again. Firstly it's with Gerard's utterly insane antics matching inch for inch every one of Jonny's hysterical outbursts on lead. I mean you can't miss him covering the length and breadth of the stage like the very personification of ADHD with an amplifier, and I readily admit the first time I ever saw him pulling this shit? it was like a mad hit of the bends (I think it even caused me a nose bleed!). But once you combine that with Luke on drums? the whole dynamic starts to make perfect sense again. I mean I didn't pick it before but he used to be the drummer for Winter's Lament and he's totally out of his "Einstein" mind for this shit. For one he custom built his own kickdrum.. all 28inch diameter of it; even going as far as to design the shell on CAD so the skin would fit seamlessly like a glove. He built his own sampler, HIS OWN FREAKING SAMPLER.. from scratch! And if we gave him nearly enough time? oh he'd totally give H.G. Well's "Time Machine" a run for his money if he hasn't already got one on stage tonight (in the very least it'd explain why the walls are oscillating in such a peculiar way) and it's with him that they find their newfound "stability", but it's also in the way that both Jonny and Gerard push him to the most ludicrous extremes that gives them the infectious energy in pushing it forward. In the loosest of terms you could describe this shit (as in their current incarnation) as being rather like The Flaming Lips circa "Embroyonic" covering Aphex Twin's "Richard D James" as reinterpretted by The Mighty Boosh's "Spirit of Jazz" only with all the spastic fuzz cranked up to a thousand; or rather like every one of Jim Henson's hallucinations come to life. It's all chaotic time signatures, rapid fire guitar riffage, bass rhythms going off like a motorbike, nonsensical shrieking catcalls with a billion and one frenetic changeovers in between, and it totally does your head in the first time you hear it; but then it actually starts to grow on you something fierce. It's like you just let yourself sink into the sublime insanity of it all, tune your mind to static, go ever so slightly cross-eyed to Gerard's utterings between songs: "this will totally end the debate on whether we're more than just a salamander" (along with Jonny's weird "oollaa space creature full power" catch phrases he loves to pepper throughout) and it all just becomes so clear like a mad acid trip. They cover the length and breadth of their new album (with a few optional extras like Deer Antler Song off their "first album"). It only gets weirder and weirder with each song. And somehow I survive it all whilst staying (relatively) sober and it only gets better!? Yup that's Taught By Animals. They put the aphasic back into art rock, they sound like a lunatic aslyum set to music, they're rising from the ashes like a phoenix? aaaah welcome back you hysterical space cats.. it's been far too long!
Now as much as I suspect Taught By Animals might have dipolarised both hemispheres of my brain with their live set just now (and how!) it's been an exceptionally chilled out night tonight. Duuude it was like the entire Ed Castle, bricks and all, just lit up a monster spliff, dutched itself out floor to ceiling and we all had a party inside, it was freaking awesome! And weirder still? I totally enjoyed all the above insanity with barely a "blood alcohol content" to account for it too!? (yup and it was truly living the dream!). And by "barely"? yeaaah I've obviously left out a large part of the story here. You see while I was off watching all those bands in the band room tonight, I also had a "Simone" to deal with in the beer garden. Obviously she needs no introduction (I mean we all know she's the "Paris Hilton" of Spoz's Rant, bane of my blogging existence, fanclub secretary, totally not my girlfriend, etc). And yet as much as I've done my utmost NOT to feature her in another episode this week? despite the fact she's been flapping her arms about like a demented albatross hoping I'd take a photo of her!? (you fiend!) I should at least acknowledge her on two accounts. Firstly because she's done her utmost to get me drunk tonight despite my repeated "protests": by (a) ordering me up a jagerbomb (damn you!), and by (b) ordering me up what she likes to call a "Tesquila Tamascamamo": one shot tequila, one shot tomato juice with 3-4 drops tabasco (so named for the insane shrieking noise Simone makes everytime she drinks one freaking the fuck out because she has absolutely ZERO tolerance for chilli sauce) awww I know, what's not to love!?
And also for this wacky lego man novelty keyring that she was waving about in my face all exciteably that, wait for it.. totally comes with it's own night light!? "WHOAAAA FUCKING FUCK FUCK!!". Yes I know! And you should've seen the billion and one OTHER photos we took where she was pulling silly faces with it too, let alone all the photos where she was twirling about in her dress because she was attending some random work function whatever-the-fuck earlier tonight and she totally wanted to show it off and..? yeaaah *cough* aren't you so glad I edited all this crap OUT!? I mean I know she's at least five kinds of adorably insane and everything.. but enough is enough!
3:49AM - And so, many many hours later after "accidently" editing out all the other hysterical gibberish that Simone might've wanted to contribute to the blog this week.. although I'll readily admit that yes that keyring DID totally blow my mind (and I'm not even shitting you!) we find ourselves here at Supermild. And just to signify this utterly auspicious occassion (in every way that it's totally not?) here's a whizzbang photo of the floor leading out into the beergarden. And not just because it's even MORE stupidly awesome than all those other stupidly awesome photos I didn't publish tonight (she twirled her dress people.. TWIRLED HER DRESS!!) but also because.. yeaaah I think it pretty much speaks for itself now doesn't it? and is that dude wearing shorts!? AWESOME!!
4:25AM - Here's a photo of Simone gagging on her beer (or shit, maybe it was my beer!?). And I know what you're thinking.. the crucial difference being? she wasn't looking to have her photo taken at the time and thus it'll amuses me to no end to publish it (over a few hundred others where she DID.. tee hee!) because yes I'm an utter bastard, and yes I'm perfectly ok with that.
4:27AM - While I think we can all agree that THIS photo of Simone here using Mathias like a "spastic poodle wig" is the single most awesome photo of the night (no really tell I'm wrong!) in quite the same way that Mathias is likely wishing there was a spare fire extinguisher nearby. I mean just LOOK at that shit, is that freaking hilarious or what!? huh? HUH!? yeaaah screw this I'm outta here.. but not before I take a few more shots of him looking hilariously awkward. WOOOO!!
Yup tonight I was the calm little centre of the universe, or maybe I was a chewy nougat centre, or maybe I was caramel, or maybe I was a caramello koala..? or wait, errrr what the fuck am I talking about again? Nope all ridiculous distractions aside (and believe me there were plenty to chose from tonight.. DAMN YOU SIMONE!!) this was just what my beer battered brain sorely needed (especially after last week which I sorely needed for the three months BEFORE that) that one teeny tiny night of relative "normality" where I could stay blissfully "sober" against all the odds stacked against me (and here I was stupid enough to seek it out at a freaking album launch!?) except for all the times "you know who" kept buying me drinks (except for those drinks at Supermild!?) where I could be at peace with all my thoughts at last.. or at least until Taught By Animals totally scrambled them, poached them, fried them? boiled? devilled? pickled!? aaaah crap! Yup if ever there was a lesson to take from tonight (and believe me I'm struggling here) it's that no matter what I do for Spoz's Rant now? yeaaah I'm pretty much screwed! But hey? all debilitating brain damage, writer's block, insomnia and "missing Saturday night episodes" aside.. would I seriously want it any other way!?
