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.
The Stooges are one of those bands I like but not enough to do much about (I own one album), but when I heard Kim Salmon was playing with Mick Harvey at this belated tribute to the late Ron Asheton I thought I'd better go and see that. I never saw Bored! during the early 90s - the whole "Geelong scene" left me pretty cold, me not being interested in scenesters - so I had the always interesting experience of having pretty much no idea who anyone on stage was. It did occur to me at one point that this was probably the closest I'd ever get to seeing the Scientists, though.
Kim Salmon & Mick Harvey, Raw Power
I will confess right now that I had no idea what was happening in the first part of Bored!'s set, and found out through a review in InPress. For the first half, Fiona Lee Maynard was on vocals in a tribute to Asheton's version of Destroy All Monsters. It was great fun, but of course I didn't know any of the songs, although a stylish version of These Boots Were Made For Walking was accompanied by the snazziest blue snakeskin cowboy boots I have ever seen (not pictured).
After Fiona's contribution the guy in the video below got on stage and proceeded to kick the shit out of us. I have no idea who this guy was (and neither do you, you can't see a face in the video), but I needed to scrub beer, glass and possibly blood out of all of my clothes the next day.
I'm not gonna pretend I had an idyllic childhood - it frankly sucked - and, like all bullied children, I had my refuge. Others had dungeons and dragons or SF - I had rock music. If, for any reason, I'm ever called on to discuss my religion, I'll say I'm an atheist or agnostic (depending on whether it's a nice day or I've gotten laid recently), but it would be pretty reasonable, given the role that music plays in my life, to describe myself as a "rockist". Consider the following:
ROLE IN FAMILY LIFE: My mum recently confessed that my parents' marriage is based entirely on the fact that "we both love rock'n'roll music". We spent a lot of time travelling (in one jaunt, we were on the road for six months in a hotted-up F100), and in that time not once was the radio off. We would sing along to "House of the Rising Sun" in our genetically-disadvantaged voices, in a painful but effective bit of family bonding. When we settled down nothing changed. I would wake up on a bright sunny day to be informed that, although the desktop hides Ita's hips, Barnsey's imagination is strong. When my mum discovered my dad was screwing around on her, she sang him Mental As Anything's "If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?" Alhamdulillah, they got back together after awhile, owing to the healing powers of rock'n'roll (and possibly being too cranky for any other partners).
RITES OF PASSAGE: Beginning with my seventh birthday, I would annually receive a gift certificate for Brashes record chain. The first album I ever bought myself was with one of these. Given my avowed love of disco, you will not be surprised to learn that the album was The Pointer Sisters' Greatest Hits. In addition to the rite of passage of learning responsibility for one's musical choices, I also learnt the taste of bitter disappointment as the season's current hit, I'm So Excited, wasn't on the album.
It's not just me, though: my sister and I were sitting around at Mum's place, as young adults, listening to Black Sabbath's Paranoid. My mum sighed nostalgically and told us, "I had my first passionate kiss to this song."
RITUAL AND SACRIFICE: As you would expect from a family of devout rockists, we owned a pretty decent stereo. My dad had this alarming habit of putting a pillow on the floor, putting the speakers on each side of the pillow, plugging in the headphones and switching the settings to play through both speakers and headphones (no, I don't know why it had this function either), lying on the pillow with the headphones on, cranking it up to 11 and playing Stairway to Heaven, loudly declaring "This song is better than an orgasm!!!".
Unsurprisingly, he suffers from tinnitus these days.*
*Just to let the truth ruin a good story, the tinnitus is probably industrial rather than a result of musical self-abuse, but this couldn't have helped.
ADORATION: Despite my self-description as a "rockist", I don't shy away from great pop and electronica, and as a kid I was a Durannie. I was deeply in love with John Taylor, and have only recently realised that he's actually a pretty decent bass player. My devotion was such that, when offered a chance to learn to ride horses at the age of 11, I refused, because The Reflex was showing on whatever shitty afternoon music video show was the shit at that age. (It was hosted by Jonathon Coleman and was called "Live Wire", if I recall correctly. It definitely wasn't Simon Townsend's Wonder World, which I also watched religiously.) I never really liked horses.
ADULTHOOD: For my 18th birthday, I was given tickets - plural - to the Angels at EV's in Croydon, an all ages venue. I say plural because originally, my mum's best friend's husband had bought one ticket for me. His wife tore him a new one and demanded that he buy me another ticket - a pointless and humiliating exercise for this friendless wonder. I asked some people who didn't really hate me if they wanted to go, but they were washing their hair. I tore up the extra ticket in fury, and went by myself. It's still one of the greatest rock performances I've ever seen, and I still go to gigs by myself.
Disappointingly, they didn't play Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again.
VIRGIN SACRIFICE: The loss of my virginity, at the age of 19, involved no music at all. Unsurprisingly, it was shit.
To be honest, this has nothing to do with any specific event in my life, although it was a huge hit at an impressionable age and is one of my favourite songs of all time. It's mainly here as a reminder that Stephen Cummings was totally hot back in the day, and prematurely gray 30 year olds still totally do it for me.
There is a new Electric 6 album out. It's called "I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master." This appears to be the first single.
If you've really missed TISM, but are more interested in the prosciutto and melon-like pairing of rock and disco than in lyrics that "make sense", I strongly recommend uncritically absorbing all of the Electric 6's oevre. Or egg.
I had an awful day on Friday - I'm trying to come off some prescription drugs, and the side effects are quite yucky. I had to go home from work in the middle of the day, costing me $100 in lost wages, and I wasn't entirely sure if I had gastro (caught from visiting my grandfather in hospital) or it was just the pills talking. I went home and slept for 6 hours, then miserably contemplated losing the money I'd paid to see Stereo Total at the Northcote Social Club. Anyway, I had something to eat, took a couple of parrots eat 'em all and hauled my sorry arse up to Northcote from the Deep South (ie Malvern). I'm so glad I did.
One lesson learned from this experience is that you DON'T have to loyally suffer through mediocre support bands, especially when withdrawing from happy pills, but under any circumstances, really. No matter how gorgeous the guys are (although the female drummer from whatever groovy nonentity was on when I got there had some very interesting tattoos), they suck and are 99.99999% unlikely to become The Next Big Thing, and even if they do they still suck. I went for a delicious felafel at the local Turkish halal kebabery and felt much better - a far more productive use of my time than breathing beer and farts because of the off-chance that I might not be able to be RIGHT UP THE FRONT (and when I got back I ended up front and centre anyway). Considering it was a sold-out show I feel quite fortunate - where are all these Australian fans coming from? Do Stereo Total get played on radio here? Or are there shitloads of people in Melbourne who are just as happy to get all their music off the internets as I am?
I was a tiny bit surprised by the singer's appearance, which is stupid of me - Françoise Cactus looks quite a bit like your high school's bursar (the person who handles payments, whom you just know has some kind of secret life involving latex). The show was charming and affable - odd descriptions for a punk rock show but they're an odd band. Françoise's naughty schoolmarm aura contrasted nicely with Brezel Göring's wild man of avant-garde thinger. They did a lot with minimal equipment, managing to fill a room with only a tiny drumkit (one snare, two hi-hats and an effects pedal) and a synthesiser - the bit where Göring played the pipes around the stage was especially priceless. For 'L'amour À 3' they dragged a slightly surprised (but very hot) Asian dude on stage to do the 'wa-OooOoo' bit. When they invited the audience on stage during 'Wir tanzen im 4-eck' (we are dancing in a square, we are dancing concentrated), someone nicked the banner that can be seen in this video, and the show halted while they entreated the souvenir-collector to give it back. I was hoping that during the fake encores (don't get me started on fake encores - just play the frickin' songs already) they'd play I Am Naked, but alas, clearly this was the mandated-by-law Song That Ms .45 Loves But Touring Bands Won't Play.
Whatever you do, you must see Stereo Total if they play in your town - the audience is HOTT!!! and the show is hilarious and warm and fluffy. To compensate for the tragic lack of I Am Naked, here's the German version on video, complete with HOTT!!! but slightly tubby people in their unterhosen.
This is the first in what I hope will be a series on music from the Middle East and its diaspora. I've discovered a few bands I really like, many of them Iranian - there's just something about repression that stirs creativity, or it does if you can avoid getting locked up.
These ladies ("Abjeez" = "sisters" - their brother is their soundman) are Persian by way of Sweden and the US, collaborating between continents via the internet. Their sound is highly original, mixing reggae, pop, flamenco and anything else you can hear (I can hear a kazoo, myself). This is an irresistibly catchy song with variety in its 4 and a half minutes. It's in Farsi, so of course I can't understand it (curse living at the arse end of the world!), but I get the impression that it's funny... (Eddeaa means "Pretension".)
More to the point, this is a great video - it takes me back to the 80's when video was exciting and new and people actually gave a shit about how the video looked. (Yes, I am fully aware that I'm getting all "In my day I had to walk 20 miles through ice and snow in bare feet to watch MTV at my cousin's house", and that for every Sledgehammer there was ... a bunch of other forgettable shit. The point is that this video is of the calibre of Sledgehammer, OK?) It was made by the husband of one of the sisters, who rejoices in the name Dr. Frank J. Suckdasti. I don't think this version is very high quality - try visiting their website for better quality.
Hear some samples from their album Hameh (Everyone) at CD Baby, and particularly enjoy that album cover!
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