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!

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.

I got an e-mail from my partner/girlfriend/mother-of-my-child a couple of months ago with a link to Venuetix. I hadn’t heard that Frank Black was touring, so was quite surprised when it wasn’t a Frank Black tribute band.

Violent Soho

I had no idea what to expect from the support band. I’d never heard of them, and only found out their name, Violent Soho, from the ticket as I was walking to the gig. They looked young and a little angry and when they started they were a little out of time and a little out of tune. What they lacked in tuning and tightness they made up for in raw energy and volume and it worked.  There was much thrasing about on stage and had there been a larger crowd I expect there would have been stage-diving and crowd-surfing, but it’s hard to do without a crowd near the stage.

Violent Soho

Then it was time for the main event. Frank nonchalantly walked out on stage and picked up a guitar, said hello and started playing something from Dog in the Sand (I think). If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed that he was a roadie doing some final tune-up of the guitar - until he started singing. Then it was blatantly obvious that it was Frank Black.

The first few songs were done solo. Just Frank and an electric guitar. After some timing confusion, Frank decided to give up on the first song and moved onto the next song, which I think was Los Angeles. It was very cool seeing these tracks performed live. As is nearly expected when seeing an artist of Frank’s calibre, every song sounded different from the album tracks - in a good way.  It would have been quite intimate if it hadn’t been for the loonies up the front who felt compelled to yell all the lyrics at Frank (in the wrong time) and continually waving the sign of the horns in his face. Then the high-five requests, which were shot down in flames with Frank asking them to stop waving their hands and stating that his contract doesn’t allow him physical contact with the crowd.

Boy, you sure can holler

Once the Band joined Frank on stage most of the tracks seemed to be from Bluefinger and Svn Fngrs with Frank telling the story about a…business man, maybe….rock star who comitted suicide.

As expected, it was a phenomenal gig. HQ is a good venue for live music and is a photographers haven. There are so many vantage points and the management doesn’t seem to mind DSLRs being brought in.

I hope the drunk guy who passed out behind us woke up…

Frank Black and Band