LIVE

Rip It Up, Issue 147, 1 October 1989, Page 36

LIVE

DINOSAURJUNIOR, SNAPPER, SPUD Powerstation, October 4 The guy standing beside me said that Spud were some North Shore covers ouffit. Yeah? ‘Do The Mashed Potato’@ Isthis all true? Heeb, Sabbath shit makes up the bulk of their set, and then they slip in a song by, of all pop mongers, the Able Tasmans. ‘What Was That Thing’, all effervescence, goes through the Spud-grinder and comes out ... just like another Spud song. If

When The Cat's Away were covering Flesh D-Vice in their own inimitable style, | guess you wouldn'thave noticed either, unless they told you where the song was coming from. And then, Spud finished. Good. ‘ :

Also having a serious offnight were southern slime stars Snapper. But this was much more compelling stuff, so seriously off-kilter that you couldn’t ignore it. Playing most songs at about half-speed, the Dunedin four-piece — also contending with sound problems onstage — never evenfound away to lose on this night. Aman at the front said Snapper were actually a better band than Dinosaur Jnr, so lwentand :

checked them out atthe Venue laterin the week where they almost proved him right (they would have ifthese

yanks hadn’tbeen so hot, but I'm getting to that bit, okay?). Atthe Venue, Snapper proved to a handfulofthe ‘ever dwindling faithful thatthey can - find a responsible enough attitude to performance to go with dense new mindbenders like ‘Can’ and ‘Emmanuel’ and make themselves play like the world beaters they could be. A pity that so few saw that and so many saw ‘em doitso badly at the Powerstation. Soto Dinosaur Jr, apparently about to break up. Despite the messy charm oftheir records, everyone | knew who - had seen them in Europe etc had only bad things to say about the volume of J Mascis's guitar. The guy doing their sound showed me how he could turn the guitar right down on the desk and it made no difference to the excessive

by Shane Simpson and Greg Stevens (The Law Book Co Ltd, Sydney: ~ — 1986). An excellent legal guide to all aspects of the musicbusiness. It =~ coversthe rolesofagents, promoters, managers, producers and publishers, and gives details (relating to Australian law) on tax, copyright, insurance and contracts. Available at university bookshops. ‘ Expensive Habits: The Dark Side ofthe Music Industryby Simon Garfield (Faber & Faber, London: 1986). Cautionary tales from the long historuy of rip-offsin the music

business. Anecdotal accounts of the mistakes made by Elton John, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Sting and many others provide warnings forthe innocent.”

volume in the room as a bank of

Marshallstook care of everything. Sounded good though. Dinosaur Jnr played high-energy all the way. Their State yo-yo champ

female bass player played witha technical virtuosity, the lack of which makes Kim Gordon the weak link in Sonic Youth. The drummer played with sticks like short baseball bats, just to be heard | s'pose. And J Mascis said nota word, played like a demon and sung like he was in a stupor. Songs from You're Living All Over Me and Bug and their stoopid Cure cover (butnot Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Show Me The Way’, buggerit). All up, not nearly as heavy metal as I'd expected from hearsay, and only two bona fide jerko guitar solos. Apart from the fact that they're three clean living kids who mostly drink mineral water (not a Steinie on amp in sight!) the look and sound of Dinosaur Jnris pure Rivers Edge, and they're better than you could imagine. Feck dope. PAULMcKESSAR

THE BATS, BAILTER SPACE, BREATHING CAGE : Christchurch Horticultural Hall, September 15. The Bats, Bailter Space, Breathing Cage and no bar. “Disorientation” was, conceptually speaking at least, destined to ask relatively sober questions of the Christchurch movie scene. No bar. No bar. Justtwo words, but like “one way”, the consequences could be serious if ithappened to be the wrong one. The venue was dry. The organisers (UFM) were taking a brave risk. Would anybody turn upe The attemptto bring Christchurch'’s “biggest” bands to more people at this largish venue (with catering by the Atomic Cafe) was virtuous, buthow would the crowd reactto the absence of such a major supporting act? Effervescence without the kick, or surgery without the anaesthetic? It would be down to the bands — would they be up to ite Atß:4s, Jay Clarkson’s Breathing Cage began expanding. The first (and last) orange juice downed, and attwo dollars a sugarised shottherewas nothing particularly “atomic” about this cafe. Look to the guitars of Jay Clarkson and Greg Malcolm-Boelee for radiation. Breathing Cage have had alot of media exposure lately, largely due to $40,000 and the Rheineck Rock Award. The consensus of the smallish early crowd seemed to be that they deservedit. That Jay Clarkson’s “iron lung” has a strong message there is little doubt. They ingenuously broke the ice of what could have been a very frozen pool. : _ Breathing Cage mix “straight” and “blended” guitar to produce a subtle andsingular sound, broughtto a head inwhat seemed a relatively short time by the interesting ‘Chemistry’. Radio UFM attempted to fill the interlude between bands with a disco. They had the music but notthe watts. The DJ, who had the misfortune to be in aminiature box high above both the stage and the dancefloor, seemed

more like the phantom of the opera than the king of the dancefloor in this hangar-like hall. Knocking the plan, not the man.

Breathing Cage were followed by Bailter Space. Alister (who putthe

G-Force in NZ guitar) Parker’s Bailter Space are one of the best things to have happened to NZ music for quite a while. Reassembled in Gordons-guise, this band is nothowever the Gordons regenerated. People already familiar with their Nelsh Bailter Space EP and the more recent heavy-weight Tanker LP should know that Kilgour or not, thisis aband of “new men” who look to the “A-head” and nottothe back. -

Their definitive style of dynamic, deceptively subtle, industrial duty white-noise pushes new frontiersin sound and sensitivity. Like any good band they strike chords of empathy and isolate particular feelings that take you along with them, saying things about these times that need saying. With ‘lnvisible Life’ the growing crowd quickly orientated to the dance floor. The point was made: some fuels come from within. That was followed by largely new material off the :

forthcoming, as yet untitled album, which by now should in the pipeline. Colossal drums, guitar, Halvorsen vocals and sampled soundscapes (on ‘Pizarro’) brought back the conversation stopping buzz of the Nelsh Bailter Space days. : Bailter Space do not so muchfill a venue with sound so much as attempt to redefine the walls. This gig was no

exception. The sampled sound and searching vocals added a further dimension fo something already dynamic. If ‘Earthfed’, ‘Pizarro’, Visamiser’ and ‘Lanehead’ are anything to go by, they should be showered in Titantkisses. = =

The Bats played sometime after 11. The thing about the Bats is that they spend too little time inthe dark. A bit - like the Go-Betweens with no “Go”, - they've been around so long thatit's easy to forget just how tight they've become — it's hard to concentrate long enoughtotell. The Songs For The

Fireside EP nearly summed it up. This bandis accepted and good, full of

goodwill and enthusiasm. An uncynical band that brings people together and makes them dance, but seemingly just forthe sake of it. Perhaps this is reason enough (it certainly seemed in the spirit ofthis gig), but celebration is always better with more of a point. If it's tempting to say that the Bats are sharpening themselves out of a point, it should be remembered that they recently flew to the giddy heights of ‘North By North’ and ‘Made Up In Blue’ ltwould be good to see more of ‘The Other Side Of You'. Hang me upside down. . Altogether, ‘Disorientation’ was a success. The venue was good. The numbers, peaking at 450 plus, were

better than hoped for. The drinks were terrible.

LUKE STRONGMAN

NO ’ Kardomah Cafe, Sydney Firstis a pounding that hits dead centre in the balled junction of spinal column and pituitary gland; the succession of hammered blows that is Kevin McMahon’s bass and a machine-drum pulse blurring together. Then guitar, scything through it all like - the roar of some drunken collossus, wailing, slurred, thick with distortion. (Michael Sheridan is looking well pledsed, his sneer slipping into a grin and back again. Picks off another crush chord without overmuch effort.) Last of all, a snatch of sampled life from Marie Hoy, the Horowitz of the instrument. This one is a looped scream, feeding back upon itself, the words barely distinguishable: “OUT of the way get

OUT ofthe way get OUT—". - ; An oblique reference, or plain good advice? Whatever, it can mean only one thing: after too, too long, No have retfurnedto Sydney. Ollie Olsen sings passionately, his voice hoarse and urgent, his gestures and lyrics togethersignalling an edge few of us will everreach, let alone cross. The lightshow is simply immense, strobing and stuttering without pause, casting downturned faces deep in welled shadow, finding the raised edge of amuscle and outlining it as precisely asascalpel. | thinkthe word I'm fumbling for here is “catharsis”. Andthose newer songs debuted on their last sojourn, indicating a shift slightly further in the direction of House music— slightly funkier rhythm patterns, agreater groove — now seem completely assimilated: ‘Hyper-Reality’ is a sideways glance into another, higher level of perception and ‘Systems of Events’ shudders ancimoves like a freighttrain through a desert, pausing justlong enough for Olsen to whisper something and all four membersto lean into their mikes and shout the slogan of this frantic night: “TOTAL ; DESTRUCTION!" Whence it all begins again— the chaos and its attendant glory. - ' Andthe (big) kids love it. The front rows, | will later discover, are almost entirely comprised of Melburnians, imported specifically for the night's excesses. One after another they climb onto the stage to stand poised on its brink, swayingforamomentasthe

crowd urges them on. Then they do it: jump, launching themselves outwards. Landing heavily, getting up, doing it again. When, in ‘Loss’, Olsen articulates

their dilemma, (“Sometimes I feel like | wanna get drunk and fuck up my life") the house erupts. Sweat pours, folks fly further and land harder than one ever thought possible. Equal parts hardcore thrash and hip-hop shakedown, this is the sound of the end of the decade; the soundtrack forthese plague years, the recession years, these frantic, troubled wonderful times in which we move. Put simply: No are nothing less than the most relevant, excifingand unflinchingly contemporary band in this hemisphere, if not the world entire. Their albums to date are available on Au-Go-Go Records: listen, and be awed. ]

SHANE DANIELSON

BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO Powerstation Sept 25 It's a strange thing, purism. Anyone expecting Zydeco in its swampy, two-stepping roots style would have been bitterly disappointed. The rest of us weren'tgoing to let purism get in the way of a good time, so when Buckwheat rocked, so did the Powerstation. Basically, the lls Sont Partis Band were aftight blues / soul showband spiced up by Buckwheat's Accordian and Patrick Landry’s wild rub-board. (The man could dancetoo—W.Axl Rose eatyour heart out.) They gave us sharp versions of some New Orleans classics, notably ‘Let The Good Times Roll’and ‘Walking To New Orleans’. They were fluid, bluesy and rambling with some nice solos. You justhad to enjoy them. Unfortunately, the more recent material seemed alittle :

over-rehearsed, especially in the encores, although it did at imes give the band a chance to show off their skill.

Butthere’s no show without punch, and Buckwheat was in fine form. He laid down them accordian solos with real - flairand vocally he gave us a taste of real blues, raw and exuberant. To top it all off, Buckwheat had managedto get James Brown’s hairdo out of prison especially for the tour. He'd also borrowed the Godfather’s style of

totally unintelligible stage banter, which isn'tsuch a bad thing if you're going to introduce the entire touring party one by one. Still, it's all part of the show and this show was good enough to make youignore the gibberish, the purists or whatever, and just party.

KIRK GEE