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Rip It Up, Issue 169, 1 August 1991, Page 36

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SPERM BANK FIVE MCOJ & RHYTHM SLAVE HALLELUJAH PICASSOS SHAFT Gluepot, Saturday July 27. Four bands is a marathon effort. The last band does have a hard time of it. Especially when the PA will not respond to the gentle touch. Though nothing deterred an audience determined to enjoy itself. The entertainment was a mixed bag. SBS were hosts for the evening in flavour of the year Release Party. Well known do-it-yourselfers, they release on cassette Slave To Momba in response to QE2’s apathy. SBS are loose and dirty. This is one of their endearing qualities. They rumbled forward with their grunty bottom end. Overdriven with samples from Channel Hell and metal textbook guitar riffs. Simon singer wore this week’s guise of body:long nose: ‘Fuck Knows'. Though they surprised us all with the light-handedness shown during ‘Ska Belly Sneakers’. Joined on stage later by MC OJ and Rhythm Slave during new song ‘Bruno The Wandering Sheep’. SBs's mega rock anthems do have strange names. Grungy but good. Full-on but fun. MC OJ and Rhythm Slave kept it brief, positively snappy. They loped around the stage telling it like it is. Snazzy programming from the Straw People and the more predictable from George “Mother” Hubbard. The Parker Project this is not. Listen up brothers for ‘Money Worries', it's dope. Shaft started the night rolling. Shaft look unhip, they are unhip. They went ontoo long. They drove the PAtoo hard. Shaft should be the resident

band in a lift. However, some great twin lead breaks from John Segovia and Bob Cardy. Last here though second up were the Hallelujah Picassos. This too, their second gig for the night, having played the Dog Club earlier. What a fine - band. Mixing it up everytime. Take a fistful of thrash, place guitar in front of amp, stir it up with a large dose of psychedelic reggae. Throw in a dash of shivering finesse. Picasso Core will fuck your mind! Fronted by Roland Rorschach. This boy is better than a night in Bangkok. He sings, he dances, he wields a mean axe. The other axe in the naff-shirted hands of Peter McLennan. Peter hangs the airs of strong Picasso melody lines. Strong too, the foundation cement of Johnny Pain’s bass. Let's hear it for the drummer. Bobbylon on the rise. His back talk crooning is pure silk. God gave us Boom Boom Washington. God gave us the Hallelujah Picassos. Auckland at its tribal best. A damned fine night. ‘ BARBIE SHIHAD - HEAD LIKE A HOLE FREAK POWER 2 Powerstation, July 12. ; Well attended and worth the wait. Since their last northward excursion in May last year, Shihad have gone from strength to strength. The expectations were high for this evening. Freak Power started the evening and after a timid start they buckled down to some seriously strung out noise making that got the audience on its feet. The sound was especially full when Joolz took up the guitar from some retro 70s lead work. These Freaks are now in the studio working on a vinyl release. Shihad's touring partners Head Like A Hole certainly won themselves an Auckland following on this night. A

totally naked guitarist paraded the stage and all eyes seemed to be focused on his manly aftributes. Their music was a tight and crafted Sub-Pop din but it seems obvious that their emphasis was on humour. Sureto dis-grace our city again in the near future. . The young gods Shihad hit with a polished and loud performance as was expected. They kept interest levels high, previewing previously unheard material such as the excellent ‘Screwtop’. Certain New Zealand music luminaries seemed especially interested in their cover of the Skeptic’s ‘Affco’. LUKE CASEY GW McLENNAN ' DAVEDOBBYN Sammy’s, Dunedin, Aug 1. In keeping with the last time the Go-Betweens played Sammy’s, people stayed away in their thousands. And there were no excuses this time — this was a one night stand, there were no Orientation second nighters. So where were the musically aware university herds — the supposed basis for McLennan’s cult status2 Who knows, but the intelligentsia were there, all 249 of us. : The evening kicked off quite nicely with David Kilgour and Noel Ward picking their way through some very charming songs from Kilgour’s forthcoming solo album. It was a no rhythm section night but this particular Dave’s relaxed and unaffected style made the songs speak for themselves and Noel, who plays on the album, was the ideal complement. The other Dave — Dobbyn to be exact — coupled a brief solo acoustic spot as a warm-up to McLennan’s appearance. Dobbyn’s off-the-wall and probably off-the-cuff repartee balanced GW's more restrained, softer persona but delivery aside we were

there for the songs — and McLennan has quite a repertoire. ‘Bachelor’s Kisses’ and ‘Right Here' were perfect, as were ‘Haven't | Been A Fool’ and ‘Easy Come, Easy Go' from ’ Watershed. Although conspicuous by their absence were the ‘Putting The Wheels Back On’ and ‘Sally’s - Revolution’ gems. Dobbyn’s ‘Whaling’ sounded great — even in such revered company and McLennan’s new (and yet to be released) songs showed that - he is going to get even better. The 249 were not disappointed. GEORGEKAY - ROYCE TDOYCETER SWINE MACHINE LOVES UGLY CHILDREN Subway, Christchurch, August 3. : After tearing round fo the Subway at Bpm (a reasonable time | thought for a three band line-up) | was slightly annoyed to have to sit there for three quarters of an hour before anything even looked like happening. | was : here to see three bands | had seen before and really liked so | was expecting it o be a good night. Royce T Doyceter were straight into their cow-punk mutant country sound. First tune was alright. So was the second one. In fact, they were all alright. Well worth going to see once for the novelty value of a band who does Sesame Street covers. But, as people remarked, “Yeah, funny, yeah lightweight, but how many verses of ‘The drug addicts are the people in your neighbourhood’ can you take before chewing your own leg off in boredom?2” Go see them, once. Next up was Swine Machine. With songs having the same trademark driving bass lines and swift chord changes they had a good sound but not much variation. | enjoyed them and some songs were excellent but some had that ‘How many ways can four chords be strung together to make a

song’ feel. And they really didn’t look like they wanted to be there. But then all was redeemed as they rattled out an eclectic cover of ‘This Charming Man’. With doorman Chris singing it was enough to make everything alright again and for once they looked like they were having fun. And finally Loves Ugly Children. It was earplugs out time as | prepared for the white noise assault which had people walking out of their last gig. But no, the mix was hot and the band was smoking. Song after song powered out of the speakers. Simon’s vocals were perfect, screaming one moment, whining the next. We all sang along to ‘Good Thing’ and were suitably impressed by the Z grade lead breaks we had heard so much about. They had energy and speed and | didn’t want their last song ‘Stranger Song’ to ‘eve end. | left with that slightly depressed (I'm sure everyone who's in a band knows what | mean) “Shit they were good” feeling and trotted off home, eardrums intact. SHANE INWOOD HONEY LOVE KALEIDAPOPS : ANONYMOUS GURU ; Powerstation, July 6. | reviewed Anonymous Guru a couple of issues back so I'll just reiterate now that they're basically Pussy Galore in Spinal Tap wigs: attractively inarticulate rage (compounded tonight by the fact that there are fewer people present than were at the soundcheck) thinly disguised as Westy codpiece-rock. They'll hate being described like this, but last fime singer Jason objected to being called a surrogate Iggy, the spoiled brat. Now | want to make it clear before | damn Kaleidapops for all eternity that I'm not doing so because | don't understand pop music. I'm quite aware that, say, the Associates, Motorhead

and Blondie are great pop groups in their different ways, but Kaleidapops really are dire. First they mis-spell their own name. This is a sin that shouldn't be underestimated, because although pop should look dumb it also has to be knowing. Worse still, they sound like Bitumen Waltz covering.. . . oh, covering someone, isn't sounding like Bitumen Waltz bad enough? They've got the pedantic clean guitar sound and the ridiculously ineffectual novelty percussion rack, and they play Semi Lemon Kola length sets. They just don't understand the subtleties of pop: they're kitsch where they should have been camp, predictable where they should have been obvious {tricky one that), and where they should be just a little bit perverse they're desperately, tragically quirky — as in Split Enz, or Ringo Starr solo singles, or Hey Hey Its Saturday. If they want to be Teen Porn Rock Stars they should learn some attitude from Honey Love. You can tell that these people want to be adored because they arrive ten minutes after they were due to go on, they make their normally shy, retiring bass player wear make-up like the rest of them and when Shiree Love snaps his fingers a small horde of hitherto unseen adolescents comes literally running out of the shadows. They keep their fans under control with cryptic messages and judiciously timed lolly scrambles (!) and the fans return the - favour by singing along as one to songs about the band and their wild rock'n’roll lifestyle (titles like ‘Teenagers Only’, ‘Teen Porn Rock Star’ and even a theme song, ‘l'm In Honey Love'. All bands should have theme songs). The music is exactly as you'd expect: sugary melodies, layers of sticky distortion, and high energy arrangements. Lots of people hate it (always a good sign) but tonight they were somewhere else. -

MATTHEW HYLAND