Soundday

Josh from Sleepy Age

This was one of those big gigs put on in Hagley Park, by Fabel Music / RDU / City Council. There were a whole bunch of act including P-Money, Don McGlashan etc, but we were there pretty much for Sleepy Age, who were one of the first acts. We had been allocated a number of backstage passes, but as per the usual story there weren’t as many as there was supposed to be, so we did the old trick of sending someone out with two passes, and bringing someone in, and then using that pass for the next person. Once you are backstage and it looks like you’re supposed to be there, nobody ever asks any questions

Once backstage, there was a variety of food, watermelons, egg and bacon sandwiches, beer, red bulls etc. This was very welcome at 10 in the morning, as I’d had very little sleep the night before (hur hur), and even less to eat.

Will being buddies with Don McGlashan

Sleepy Age played an excellent set, and I managed to get some decent photos and a bit more video (which will have to wait before it can be uploaded)

We hung around for a bit longer – it was a nice sunny day, and frankly very pleasant just sitting around, but the later bands were quite boring so we decided to leave, and pick up the rental people mover that we had hired for the purpose of going to Barrytown.

Barrytown

The idea behind the Barrytown roadtrip was to see F in Math and The Show Is The Rainbow play the community hall there. It seems like an odd place for a gig, and it is, but other big bands have played there, like Trans Am (who I saw there with Dan G and Marc) and Shellac etc. Bang Bang Eche were also supposed to play, but Zach ended up having to do something else that weekend instead.

There was a bunch of people who had said they were keen to come, and some of them couldn’t make it in the end, but we managed to get Fionn, Netta, Hollan, T’Nealle, Fran and myself all in the people mover by about 8pm. By this point we were already about 2 hours behind schedule if we were to make it to Barrytown before the acts started. To top this off, supposedly it had been arranged back at CALH, that we were to be bringing the PA for the gig, but had never been entirely confirmed.

It’s probably about 11:30pm by the time we finally arrive in Barrytown, seemingly not quite as lost as we thought we were… and the hall is completely shut, and there’s just a bunch of people drinking outside the pub. Oh, looks like the plan has gone completely awry. A couple of people check inside the pub to see what’s going on, and Darren (aka TSITR) is there just having drinks while a busload of German backpackers are in the middle of a pimps and ho’s night. It turns out that a) the promoter of the gig did nothing at all, so the hall wasn’t open, and nobody knew about the gig, and b) we were supposed to be bringing the PA!

Luckily we had borrowed a very small PA and thrown it in the back of the people mover. So it looked like the show could go ahead! Oh, wait, no microphone. Damn. Still the Barrytown pub looked like a fun place to have a drink. Along with Darren, F in Math was there, along with Polka Dot Dot Dot (for some reason). A bit later on (and after spending $10 on wedges, chips AND a jug of beer), the barman rocks up with a mircophone, which apparently he’d found by phoning up all his mates to see if they had one. The show was ON!

Darren Keen aka The Show is the Rainbow, doing his thing

Darren played, and then F in Math, only about 3 songs each, the backpackers didn’t quite know what to make of it, but it was spectacular.

Fionn and T’Nealle jumped on Facebook on the PC in the bar(!) and invited everyone they knew to the Polka Dot Dot Dot show that had just been organised about 30 minutes prior.

We all wandered down to the beach at about 2am, as it was still wonderfully warm out (probably about 20 degrees still) and hung out there for quite a while.

As Netta had work the next morning, we had to head right back to Christchurch without sleeping, and it was my job to drive the return leg, despite having been up for ages by this point, and not really slept the night before. Oh dear.

None of us had really eaten anything either, aside from the wedges, but very much to our surprise and delight, Greymouth has a 24-hour bakery called the “Do Duck In” which had delicious pies and pastries, which we gratefully shoved into our eager faces at about 3:30am.

The drive back was uneventful, aside from that the crazy Japanese CD player would only play 2 discs from all the ones we had, and both happened to be Australian country bands, and that I’m pretty sure I fell asleep at the wheel at least twice, depite stopping a few times for quick power naps. Frankly, we’re probably lucky to all still be alive…

Gigs:

Little Pictures (x2): Fran mentioned that these guys would be hitting town, and I remembered seeing them at her alternative craft fair event last year, so I thought I’d pop along to give them some support as it’s got to be hard playing in an unfamiliar town.
Anyway, their first gig is at some weird multi-level club, in the basement level. Apparently the event is some end-of-semester student thing, and there are a very very young and very very drunk kids running around. Dressed in fluro. Throwing up all over the place. Most of them luckily spend their time upstairs away from the bands. I actually had to talk my way past the bouncers because I looked too old. Good grief.

Little Pictures at Pony

Managed to have a good chat to Mark and Johanna from LP anyway
Their second gig (well it was their third actually, they played a show at The Tote as well) was at Pony, which was a much more age-appropriate venue. Even though their set started at 2am, by that stage, the place was packed out, and they were a real hit with the crowd that night, who were begging for encores by the end of it. GG guys

Angelspit and Baal: This was actually the night after the first Little Pictures gig, and held in the same venue. This time, however, instead of a few drunken teenagers, there was probably a hundred or so cyperpunks and goths in full dressup, dancing away to Industral rock from Japan (Baal) and Electro/Industrial from Sydney (Angelspit). Both bands were pretty awesome, both Clara and I enjoyed it a lot

The Mars Volta: Since Clara put me onto these guys a while back, I’ve become a fairly big fan… mainly their album “Deloused in the Comatorium”, which is pretty epic. Anyway, we both got tickets for their gig at the Forum Theatre, which is pretty epic in of itself:

Forum Theatre Mezzanine

Forum Theatre Auditorium

It has this crazy painted-blue ceiling, so it feels like you’re standing outside, in this crazy Roman Colosseum sort of place.
The Mars Volta themselves… hrmm.. well they played for about 3 hours, and as far as we could tell, it was only material from their new album, which neither of us like anywhere near as much as “Deloused”. They seem to be big fans of the super-extended jam versions of their songs with additional sonic wankery toppings. They were very tight and had moments of sheer brilliance, but it got old after a while, and a bit of self-editing I think would have helped my enjoyment considerably.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself with nothing to do, as plans I had fell through, and then I remembered that Joe Satriani was playing in town that night, also at The Forum. The Friday night show had sold out a long time beforehand, so I didn’t think there’d be any tickets left, but I went along to the box office at 7:30 or so anyway, and yes, they did have some available. Joe was excellent – I managed to get a decent spot, and could see and hear everything pretty well. Stu Hamm was pretty good on bass, although it sounded like the crowd were booing him at several opportunities.. I later found out they were yelling “Stuuuu”, which is some kind of in-joke with him. Videos here: Cool No 9 and Summer Song.

The Greenmatics: This is a band that a friend of Frans is in… Mel has been living in Melbourne for a couple of years, so it was very nice to be able to head along to their gig at the Roxanne Parlour – which is pretty hard to find (typically), and have people to chat to. Mel’s friends are crazy, like good crazy

Tricky: This was at the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda, on the day before Fran arrived back in town to visit. Ended up going by myself, mainly because a certain friend of mine who is a massive Tricky fan, was feeling too broke to come along, which was a huge shame. The gig itself was pretty awesome – the singer he had, which is a replacement for the one he used on the records, was amazing. Tricky himself “sung” on a handful of tracks (something for which a reviewer later gave him crap for), but he spent most of the time ‘conducting’ the band – being the producer that he is. Anyway, the show utterly rockes. Videos here: Pumpkin, Black Steel, Overcome.

People:

Well, this is going back quite a few weeks now, but the notes are there so here we go…( in roughly chronological order – I think)

Went out with Dana (the American girl I met at a cocktails meetup thing ages and ages ago) again, this time out to Pahran, because neither of us had been out that side of town before. Ended up wandering around looking for suitable bars… we managed to find a couple, including a very cool tiny little place, which was more a cafe than a bar, but it had a DJ playing in the corner, a going fireplace, a bunch of friendly looking people who seemed to all know each other, and Monteiths Golden on tap. It kinda had a bit of a “Sputnik Cafe” vibe – for those of you in Chch who remember that wonderful place We also managed to stumble upon the infamous Revolver bar, which seemed pretty cool… but mind you, we there during it’s more civilised hours – it’s open all weekend without closing….

The girl I mentioned in my last post.. didn’t really work out like I thought it might… eventually she had some time off during the weekend, so we arranged to meet up at Pony, to Little Pictures, and whatever band happened to be on before them. I get there, and she’s with this other guy, who she had mentioned meeting a little while earlier, but said they were just friends. They were definitely not just friends. Ah well, move on….

Managed to catch up with Greta, who is the younger sister of a guy I was friends with in primary school, who has moved here in the last 6 months or so. Went down Brunswick Street to find a cafe to get something little to eat and have a chat… we got pretty lost looking for the Black Cat, which is a place we both knew. It was hopeless Turns out our stories in how we ended up here are pretty similar. Anyway, headed into town after that, went to Murmur, which is a little bar, which I was a bit hesitant about the look of at first, but turned out to be pretty damn cool. We met up with some friends of hers there (including someone who was in the same year as me at the same high school… we knew some of the same people…. small world!!), and moved on to the Croft Institute, which is a two-level place, with the bottom level all decked out like a 3rd Form science lab, with the benches with sinks in, and science-y glassware all over the place.. very cool.

Also I’ve been helping Clara out with her computer woes. It hasn’t gone well so far… as most computer woes tend to do… I’ve also got her hooked on my Outrageous Fortune DVDs. Can’t blame her really, it’s the awesome

Went out again with Dana, this time to the Espy, hoping to see a band (whose name escapes me now), as neither of us had been there before either Turns out the band we wanted to see didn’t start till like 1:30am, so we went to the back room to watch whatever band was on in there. Whoever they were, they weren’t good. At one point, what we could only presume was one of the band member’s girlfriend got on stage and started to attempt to play the Tamborine… quite half-heartedly, while holding a can of coke. It was so appalling, we just had to stand there and laugh Then we wandered around St Kilda seemingly in an attempt to play every pinball machine in every bar we could find. Anyway, the night ended well. I’ve been hoping to catch up with her again, but her pending work-related trip overseas, plus the millions of vaccinations required seem to be conspiring against me

Movies:

I saw the Get Smart movie, and was actually surprised at how good it ended up being. Cool.
Managed to find a couple of really good box-sets of the original Battlestar Galactica (which is truly cringe-worthy) and the Evil Dead trilogy. These things make me a happy chappy.

Stay tuned for the next episode (hopefully coming pretty soon) in which Fran visits town again, we see a band from Iceland, an awesome movie on a stupidly big screen, eat rather too well, see an old friend, and get a rather sad bit of news…

Highlights:

• The Gin Club at The Gem in Collingwood – basically we were looking to go to a gig, and it was Sunday night, and I’d heard that this was on. We get into this tiny little suburban pub, and it’s totally packed out, standing room only. We then find out why; The Gin Club are just fantastically awesome. They’re a 7 (or so) piece from Brisbane, and all the band members write songs, and take turns at doing their songs. Everybody sings. At once. Just awesome
• Empanadas and other South American sweet foods in Fitzroy. Also Churros.
• Going to the State Library, both NGV galleries, seeing all the graffiti art in the laneways.
• Managing to go to the galleries, Queen Vic markets and Luna park… on the one day of the week that those things were individually closed… no forward planning FTL.
• Lots of wandering around town
• Some really terrible grunge band at Pony. Followed by a better indie punk group afterwards
• Catching up with Becca / cocktail bars

Photos here

Gigs and Zombies

Went to see Liam Finn play at the Evelyn on the Wednesday, supported by The Gin Club. Both really great performances, again, totally packed out. Saw The Gin Club again the night afterwards at the Northcote Social Club. Becca was supposed to come along, but was super tired after an epic week at work…

Didn’t do much on Friday except go to work… was in a bit of a “bleh” mood…

Saturday, I went along to see the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle – that’s where bunch of people dress up and act like zombies while wandering around the downtown part of the city…

I didn’t manage to get hold of anyone for the shuffle, and still hadn’t managed to rustle up anyone to do anything for that night, so at the last minute, I decided to go see Shihad who were playing at Hi-Fi just down the road, and it looked like there was going to be door sales…

So I turn up after getting some food, and there’s a bunch of people just standing around outside waiting to line up for tickets… and there’s this girl standing there by herself, looking a little upset, so give her a quick smile. Then comes time to line up, and she comes stands next to me, and eventually I grow a pair and start to talk to her. Turns out she’s from NZ too and has only just moved to Melbourne a few months ago and doesn’t know anyone. She also went to the Liam Finn gig on Wed, and also the church gig he did in Christchurch back in November (which I also went to)… Anyway we spent the rest of the night hanging out, chatting, dancing to the band and generally getting on pretty well. She handed me her phone for me to put my details in.

Turns out I was a dumbass and didn’t check the number when I put it in, and ended up leaving a digit out…

How did know? This afternoon I hadn’t heard (and was getting impatient) so I go to google and put in 3 identifying things about her (name, where she’s from and occupation), and her bebo page is the first result Amazingly enough, it’s set public and I send her a message asking if she wants to go for dinner/drinks..

I get a message back a couple of hours later saying she tried to text me earlier, but I’d got my number wrong… and that she had only set her page to be public for a couple of days, and that she’d had an awesome time on Saturday and yes, she would like to come out for drinks etc soon.. It turns the reason she was at the gig by herself was that she was supposed to be meeting someone there but got stood up!

Geohashing

Readers of XKCD will know about Geohashing. Basically, every day you end up with a random GPS location (somewhat nearby) that you are supposed to try and get to, and then, like take a photo there or whatever.

This Saturday’s location was out in the middle of nowhere – I had to catch the train out to Ringwood station (which is like 45 mins) and then met up with the rest of the group of Internet Randoms to get in a car and then drive like another hour and a bit to get to the park. Along the way we run into another geohasher going to the same place… except he was cycling all the way there.. in the rain…

We then managed to get lost in the park for at least an hour – the road signage was wrong, and I couldn’t get the GPS in my phone to work without a network connection… Eventually we had to ask someone at a house nearby.

“Hi we’re trying to get here (pointing to the map)”
“What’s there?”
“Erm, nothing really. We’re just trying to get to this exact point”
“Why are you trying to get there?”
“Errrr….. ummm…..some friends told us to”
“Uhhh ok…. well you’ve totally gone way past it, and these roads on your map, don’t exist any more etc”
“Thanks”

We finally did manage to make it pretty darn close to where the point on the map was. We took a bunch of photos – mine here and Gnat’s here.

It’s been a busy few weeks!!

Nightwish played at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, which is a grand old place, (think like the Theatre Royal in Chch) and totally appropriate for their gothic overtones The new singer, Annette, though not as operatic as the old singer, was great, they did mostly stuff from the new album that she sings on, but she handled the old classics very well too. Also, she’s hilarious.

Iron Maiden was nothing short of full on epic grandness of the biggest scale. Pretty much stuck to the old classics, which everyone sang along to. Both gigs were allocated seating, and people were actually sitting down, which I couldn’t understand.. I stood for most of it anyway.. I managed to get a seat right at the back of the arena, but pretty much in the center, so the view was good, if a little far away. Video screens helped

Videos from both gigs are at http://youtube.com/user/haxtheplanet

I tried to see the excellent Disasteradio play at the Northcote Social club last night, but I arrived just as he was packing up. He’s in town for a couple of weeks though, so I’ll catch him at one of those other shows.

That’s about all really, aside from the truly horrid experience I had with a girl I met at the goth club in town, but that’s life I suppose and these things happen.

Ah, and I’ve finally managed to arrange to get the rest of my worldly possessions sent over from NZ – Fran will be glad to get her garage space back, and I’ll be glad to get my guitars and PC back

~joff