Gigomaphone

This all happened a little while ago, so my memory is a little hazy. That’s always the problem with not doing things straight away.

Anyway.

A good friend from university temporarily living in New York was temporarily in Adelaide around the time of my birthday and decided to take me out for a birthday-surprise spectacular.

It was all a giant mystery when Nick turned up. I had a feeling we’d be going somewhere for dinner, but Nick’s navigation into town confused the hell out of me.

The big surprise for me was when Nick said we had to leave the restaurant to head to stage two of the surprise. When we got to the Gov I realised we were there for a band (der) but had no idea who was playing. Jean thought that it might have been Trail of Dead, but the didn’t find their way to Adelaide. It was Bob Evans. And I, to be honest, wasn’t up to speed about Bob Evans. Every time I’d heard him on the radio (in particular doing the Lily Allen cover) I just thought of him as the “guy from Jebediah”.

The warm-up act should never be ignored. People who don’t get to gigs in time for the warm-up are missing out on some greatness. Or terribleness. In this case it was greatness. Steve Poltz seemed like a cool guy. A story-teller if I ever heard one. Like with Charlie Parr, it seems like he plays music as an excuse to get up on stage and have time between songs where he can tell stories. Read up about Steve Poltz on Wikipedia - it’s where I got all my info about him - he’s had a varied and interesting career. His final song was a great little track about an evil guy with a sewing machine who trapped kids and sewed them up on his wall - he thought it was scary but with a happy ending, so would work well as a kid’s story.

So. Onto Bitter Bob Evans. He’s, without doubt, quite a self-promoting and self-indulgent character. The annoying this, though, is probably that he’s good enough to pull it off. He also seemed really bitter that other bands are more popular than him - sure The Pussycat Dolls probably haven’t done much battling to get where they are, but leave them to their thing. There’s no need to be bitter.

Some more bitterness came out when the biggest cheer for the night was when he started playing Not Fair…he played it, but I just couldn’t help but thing that it was done grudgingly.

It wasn’t all bitterness and grudges, though. They play a great song and the Gov is a phenomenal venue. It was very enjoyabe and thank you very much Nick and Gin for the experience!

Thanks to SubPop for releasing a sampler of 14 MP3s. Check them out - some great tracks in there.

When I got the call saying that there was a spare ticket to Birds of Tokyo I wasn’t sure whether it’d be my thing. I’m not overly familiar with the current Australian music scene, but figured that this would be as good a time as any to try to get back into it. Fortunately for me Janelle also likes to support all of the acts that are on the bill, so we got to the venue a bit before the doors opened. After convincing security that it was, in fact, OK for me to bring my camera in with me, we went and got a beer, found some seats (yes, I’m old now) right behind the mixing desk and sat and waited for the show to begin.

I wish I could remember what the name of the first act was.  It was a one-man show with a sequencer playing some music while he sang, quite well actually. I think there were three stories told, but because I seem to have live-gig-music-amnesia, I can only tell you that one of the songs was about going out in Noarlunga. He spent quite a bit of time in with the crowd and it seemed like he was quite comfortable with a mostly-empty venue…and probably has to be.

I hadn’t heard of Trial Kennedy before the night. I started to think that it might be a Dead Kennedys tribute band. Or something that wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as a Dead Kennedys tribute band. Turns out they were a tight band with good vocals. I’m not used to seeing tight bands. Most bands I’ve seen in my punk-influenced life have barely been able to play their instruments, let alone play them at the same speed and with the same timing as two or more people.  To see a band with a singer that could sing was also a novelty.  The guitarist tried/did some Santiago-esque wailing on the guitar, and it mostly worked - just like when I saw Joey try himself at V-festival a couple of years ago. I would go see Trial Kennedy again, without doubt.

My experience with Birds of Tokyo is limited. I’d heard the tracks that JJJ decided were most worthy of being on high rotation a few times and I’d listened through the album a couple of times. I’d picked up the song titles to songs like “Wild Eyed Boy” because the song title is repeated over and over in the lyrics, but for most of the other tracks I had no idea. Without harping too much on what the bands I used to go and see used to do on stage, I’m also not used to bands who basically just stand on stage blasting out highly accurate music with awesomly executed harmonies. Being used to punk band members thrashing around on stage, it was a surprise that all the harmonies were, in fact harmonious and performed at the right time. Bands like NOFX and No Fun At All do harmonise quite a bit, but whether or not they happen at a live show depends on whether the mic has landed somewhere near the singer’s head when they all fell over during a particularly exuberant thrashing-about.

It took a long time for the crowd to really warm to the music. Whether that’s because we’re in Adelaide, they were all too busy recording video on their phones to put on YouTube or because the band started playing slower songs so they could finish with the more crowd-surf-friendly songs I don’t know. I would have liked another hour or so of Birds of Tokyo, provided I could have got some caffeine into me, and I think the rest of the crowd would have enjoyed it too - if the level of excitement kept increasing at the same rate security might actually have been required on the night after another hour or so.

On the last track or two Trial Kennedy and what’s-his-name from Noarlunga joined Birds of Tokyo on stage, and proceeded to tape up the lead-singer. Which I think was a nice gesture, especially since they didn’t even try to make him fall over by taping up his ankles or anything.

I will go again if they make it back to lil’ ol’ Adelaide.

Here are my photos from Birds of Tokyo on Saturday night in Adelaide. Review to come.

Here’s the full set of Big Day Out 2008 photos from my Flickr photostream.

Cool drum syncopation, a little bit of falcetto, some interesting guitar sounds and a lot of rock, rock, rock.

3.5/5

Greg Graffin is the frontman for long-running punk band Bad Religion. Unlike most punk-frontmen he’s not furious about the state of the world. He seems to be more disappointed. That partental-type disappointment that’s much, much worse than being yelled at. Bad Religion have always been linguistically interesting, challenging me, at least, with the language used. I spent quality-time with a dictionary while listening to Bad Religion albums. Good times.

American Lesion really lacks the punch of distorted guitars and aggresively sung lyrics, but for an aging fanbase who might like the idea of having something mellow on that still, to those who know what it is, carries with it a message not that different from those carried by Bad Religion.

There’s a pleasant remake of Cease from the album The Gre(a)y Race, removing lots of layers of guitar, but adding a piano with lovely embellishments along the way.

This isn’t an album I would sit down and listen to every day (unlike Spoon - Gimme Fiction and The National - Boxer), but it’s definitely a good album, worthy of regular listenings.

3.5/5

Spoon frontman Britt at Big Day Out in Adelaide, 2008.

Artist: Spoon
Album: Gimme Fiction
Year: 2005
Tracks: 11
Length: 43m 48s
Label: Merge

I’m pretty sure that the first time I heard Gimme Fiction by Spoon was on a stinkin’ hot afternoon in Paul’s car, getting a lift home from work. It was one of those “You need to listen to this…” moments. Paul put on I turn my camera on and I just didn’t get it. At all. I thought that it was repetitive and simple. It just didn’t do anything for me after a long day at work.

I don’t think the problem was that it was hot, in the afternoon or that I was tired after a day of sittin’ around behind a desk. The problem was that I didn’t know what I was supposed to be listening for. The bass and drums are really imposing in the mix and combined with the winding out of the 4G63 under Paul’s bonnet I heard nothing but bass, drums, a little bit of guitar and lots of falcetto. I was considering writing “too much falcetto” but I don’t think that there’s such a thing. Even the BeeGees could do with some more. It wasn’t until I acquired the album and listened to it like all music should be listened to the first few times (unless it’s live) - with headphones in a relaxed environment without visual distractions - that I realised that there was much, much more to I turn my camera on. Small, bright flourishes and subtle high-pitched notes give the track a huge range that I just didn’t notice the first time I heard it. It’s a great track. And it’s the second worst track on the album.

(continue reading…)

Charles Baby is a singer/song-writer from Melbourne. I would really like to pigeon-hole him, but I don’t know what to call his style of music. Singer/song-writer’s a genre, right?

The lyrics seem a little bit self-deprecating, but it’s not clear if his songs which are mostly written in the first-person are of himself or someone else.

The world is an opponent is a  half-hour, 6-track EP that would work very well as a regular voice/guitar recording, but it has been embellished with drums, glockenspiel and backing-vocals amongst other things. While I think that they are unneccesary and the recording would work very well without it, it does add another level of interest to the music.  The sound is well-mixed and produced but it doesn’t in any way sound “manufactured”.

I don’t think there’s all that much more to say about Charles Baby other than that I hope that he tours/comes to Adelaide so I can see him live. And write about it here.

3.75/5

It’s been decided that the score resolution is too coarse.  It has been decided that scores will still be out of 5, but with quarter-point resolution.