Wagons at Northcote Social Club, Cup Day 2009 redux (aka I am a lazy fuck)

So it's only been about 3-4 months since this event, but since Wagons are awesome all year round, have some more.

Drive All Night Till Dawn

Samson

If I may put on my disgruntled hipster douchebag hat on for a minute, Wagons are sounding a little poppier than when I discovered them and fell in love with their old school, everyone-dies country and western (if you play Draw Blood backwards, assuming you can get it on vinyl, you get your truck, dog and wife back, in that order). As a reminder of their roots (how can you not love a country band that namechecks Danzig?), here's a hit from the wayback machine.

Wagons, Man Sold

Buy Draw Blood at iTunes

Buy The Rise and Fall of Goodtown at iTunes

Wagons at Northcote Social Club, Cup Day 2009

You know this fuckin' chorus... it's two words!!!

Nutrient levels like a vegetable soup dish.

Love Me Like I Love You

Wagons

The Rise and Fall of Goodtown

Buy at Readings

Buy at Amazon

Taylor Project - co-workers who don't suck

Back in the late '90s, when I had no job skillz worth speaking of, I worked at an accounting firm. It was, shall we say, a subculture free zone. When I mentioned that my boyfriend was in a band (a shite band, to be sure, but a band that had original songs nevertheless) my cow-orker responded "Oh yes, my boyfriend's in a U2 covers band". All I could do was nod and smile. I don't think I've really developed my nodding and smiling abilities since then.

In the mid '00s, I worked at a certain statutory authority (won't say who, but I will say that once you work in public service departments that are answerable to a Minister, you start to appreciate statutory authorities, who are answerable to "Parliament" and therefore don't have to give blowjobs to ministers as part of their role - in fact they can deliver six of the best and demand that Parliament beg for more) and met one of the members of what is currently called The Taylor Project. At that time the band was called Because We Can, and clearly their ability at naming bands has not improved at all. Thankfully, there is an almost perfect inverse correlation between how good a band's name is and how good the band are. The Taylor Project have an album out, and a Myspace. You should look them up and see them.

Taylor Project - Ballarat On A Good Day


Last time I was in Ballarat was the last time I saw Uncle Brian alive. At that time, I weighed 90kg and had been single for a piddling 12 months - little did I know that my vow to not sleep with anyone for any reason other than clitoral (in other words, only because I'm horny - not because I'm lonely, bored, depressed or any other excuse) was going to collapse into a tragic punchline. I was 28 and I decided to go on a roadtrip, said roadtrip eventually taking me to the George 2000 Hotel, where the concierge/waitress/bouncer was legally obliged to warn me about the over-28's disco downstairs. My plans to go to bed early were disrupted by the fact that, actually, the over-28's disco downstairs was every bit as obnoxious as the concierge/waitress/bouncer had led me to believe, so I went to the movies at the lovely old cinema next door. I chose Bridget Jones' Diary.

See "tragic punchline" above.

The next morning I caught up with Uncle Brian and Auntie Maisie - strictly speaking my mother's aunt and uncle. We hit a few op shops, where I picked up a goodly selection of trashy novels, including Paula Christian's excellent Love Is Where You Find It, and went for coffee. I had a lovely time, and Brian kicked off a few years later at quite a decent old age. It's a nice way to remember him.

Taylor Project - Making Other Plans

I would just like to say to Chris whom I spoke to at the Espy on New Year's Eve - I wasn't politely giving you the flick, I gave you my Facebook details because I figured it was less invasive than giving out a phone number. I swear I'm not mad at you for squashing me the first time we met.

Taylor Project - Animals (They Dream In Black And White)

In which Sarah and Liz somehow make grinding inevitability sound sexy.

Because We Can - England

Frank Bongiorno, Of Tinnies and Sheilas, Inside Story, 02/01/09

A few quick bullet points

Hello. I haven't blogged lately because I've been having too much fun. I do have what I hope will be a tremendously exciting internet meme coming up very soon, but in the meantime, here are some squibs.

• Old School Unionism - In which an old school Fabian has Ms .45 punching the air and going "Fuck yeah!". It's about the continuing decline in union membership in Australia and the unions' frankly inadequate response, particularly in reference to young and casualised workers. I didn't know the stuff about recruiting shearers in the early days of Australian unionism, so this was a useful eye-opener.

• I've lost about 5kg since leaving uni in mid-2007, and have been utilising my workplace's small but SUBSIDISED gymnasium with inspiration by Stumptuous. Stumptuous provides a feminist view of health and weight training and is refreshingly free of faddism (if you don't count Krista's obsession with squatting). The recent Stumptuous Fitness Model competition was intended to reward women who have made improvements to their fitness in the face of difficulty, perhaps starting from a position of advanced age or obesity. Give it a shot, you're probably nearly as fat as I am anyway.
  

• Just in! Greg Wadley has recently had the opportunity to interview DC Root of ROOT! fame. It's a good interview - obviously done by email, giving both parties the chance to extemporise.

This is my terrible problem: if I sense everyone raving about a band, I'm out of there before you can say Thom Yorke. And I'll wait till about 5 years after they've had their day and disappeared off the face of the planet...and secretly love them! I must have rock-historian disease, or something. I have to enjoy everything retrospectively... I'm also still trying to catch up on artists I never knew during their day -- so last week I was listening to Dusty Springfield, Hunky Dory by Bowie, the Temptations. I had my experimental music phase a long time ago when I was hanging around black clad bookish girls in the vain hope that after a night of Jarry's Ubu trilogy performed by some avante garde troupe in a hell hole somewhere in Fitzroy we could cruise over to the Black Cat for a chinotto and light discussion about how becoming precedes being, and then maybe later she'd let me pop my Converses under her bed.

These days I prefer air guitaring at home to Thin Lizzy. I get about as much sex.

• NEW EYEZMAZE!!! Great idea, too - solve four separate mazes, you win when the family members are brought together. Not original as such, there are lots of games where you need to get multiple figures to the portal, but the fact that the mazes are in completely separate frames fucks up your shit just that little bit more.

Coming very soon - Rufus from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure...

ROOT! Supposed He Was Out of the Question

Having seen ROOT! several times over the last few months, it was inevitable that the album wasn't going to be as awesome as the live shows. Whereas on stage DC Root sounds angry, or as angry as he ever gets in public, on the album he sounds like he's on Play School. It's like Tony Martin's story about seeing Neil Diamond live, but in reverse - whereas Diamond failed to deliver the line "Good Lord!!!" as promised on Hot August Night, on the otherwise awesome album version of Back to Mine, the bit about wrapping a brick in the cover of a book on management theory to take someone out of their comfort zone is mysteriously missing. Similarly, on School Mum (see below), the line "skinny girls with big fat issues/see you later, ain't gonna miss you" just disappears. Don't get me started on the fact that Crown Tower Blues isn't on the album at all.
Still, not everyone has had the privilege of having seen ROOT! five times in as many months, so those of you who have been cursing us Melbournians to the sky can finally taste the ROOT!y goodness. You'll like it - it's funny, it's bouncy, it bears only a cursory resemblance to country & western. And if you buy it, they'll be able to afford to tour, so you know what you need to do. Give ROOT! some much-needed touring money.

School Mum
Free file hosting from File Den

I took the "the temperment type" quiz on gURL.com
		I am... melancholic According to Galen's ancient theory of temperaments, people with melancholic temperaments are often perfectionists, and are analytically oriented. They are said to be sensitive and loving, but may also be hard to please because of their high standards. Read more... What's your temperment?

mp3s yay!

I'm on an downloading spree at uni before I lose my library privileges this Sunday, and have grabbed some awesome stuff recently.

Our Monk - A Little Monk (bandwidth stolen from Sandwich Club, a great blog of Aussie music that you should totally check out)
Our Monk are from Sydney, and this is a great, Beatle-y track with jangly piano and a jaunty melody suitable for walking out in your zoot suit swinging a diamond-tipped cane. I hope they play Melbourne at some point. (Oh man, I'm checking out Our Monk's myspace and they are more Beatle-y than I imagined, but not in a shitful Oasis-y way.)

Hello Saferide - The Quiz (myspace)
Singer/songwriter Annika Norlin is Swedish, but sounds Irish. The Quiz is a great little (2 and a bit minutes) minimalist song grilling a prospective boyfriend on his bad habits, possibly revealing a few quirks of her own ("Can you always wear socks cos I'm still scared of feet"). Bounce on over to her website to check out her more poppy material.

The New Morty Show - Unskinny Bop
My taste in hair metal runs more to Guns'n'Roses and Motley Crue than (cough) Poison, Bon Jovi (I can't go on, ugh), but this nu-swing version just makes it aaaaaaaaall right.

ROOT! - Shazza and Michelle
It's frankly pretty weird to be able to see a member of TISM's face. This country outfit is TISM quiet man Humphrey B. Flaubert's new joint, with a new album in the pipeline. In keeping with Humphrey's (now "D. C. Root") "good cop" persona, Shazza and Michelle channels all the Pollyanna family values that TISM stood for, a tale of two innocent country nurses who enter the Australian Idol competition and get swept up in the shifting, changing shattering world of fame, fashion, fashion and fame. But nay, our doughty country maidens fall not for the glitz and sleaze of the entertainment world, and return happier and wiser to their country nursing home, smug in the knowledge of having deeper human values than ... ok, it's not quite that bad. It's actually quite sweet-natured, and very catchy in true TISM style. Nevertheless, I am eagerly waiting for Family First to grab a TISM track (And The Ass Said to the Angel, Wanna Play Kick To Kick?, perhaps) for their election campaign.

Root exclamation mark comma the band

An exercise in both kinds of music (country AND western), which TISM fans may find oddly familiar...

ROOT! The Band

(For the benefit of non-Australian readers, the word "root" is a slang term.)

A gig is being played...

Sunday 17th June
Spanish Club
59 Johnston Street Fitzroy (Melbourne, Australia)
2pm kickoff
$15 - it's a big show including Bob Log III, The Meanies, Adam Simmons of Toy Band fame, and a big stack of others, to 'celebrate' the closing of the Spanish Club as a music venue (it's too close to residential homes, apparently).