Live

Rip It Up, Issue 216, 1 August 1995, Page 38

Live

Mebourne's New Zealand Music Show are looking for new Christchurch sounds for the station. Call RDU for details ... any rumours, phone Hat on (03) 379-6320. HAT DUNEDIN In case anyone is in any doubt, it is bloody cold down here. That doesn’t seem to have slowed things down too much on the music front though ... Sammy’s is finally set to close, after threatening to do so for some time. Sadly, the final, final gig will be of local covers bands, but the night before that is a so-called Alternative Night, featuring 10 alternative bands, including 3Ds, Chug, the Puddle, Suka, the Verlaines, Runt, Cheeseband, the Renderers and more ... New Label Self Recordings is to launch itself at the Empire on September 2, with performances by Alastair Galbraith, Sandra Bell and Darryl Baser, who is releasing his six song cassette EP Subliminal Reactive Catharsis as SF 001... Sandra Bell is to tour soon, to promote her new CD Net, with Sally McDonald playing bass in place of Kathy Bull, who is unable to leave town ... two bands have arrived in town recently with already completed CDs in hand. Barb Waters and the Rough Diamonds have arrived from Australia, and are looking for a drummer and keyboard player. Pivotal and their CD 'Usurper have been in town for a couple of months, and have been well received by local crowds, with several of their songs being currently played on Radio One ... local high school band Doyle impressed everyone except the judges at the Smokefree Rock Quest, and hope to be playing some support gigs soon. With their self released cassette having been snapped up, and songs on the radio, they are a band to watch out for ... most beautiful Geraldine pressing to come my way recently comes from Donald McPherson from Ravensbourne — a low-fi masterpiece. Hopefully he will do a larger pressing next time, ie. more than 20 ... Crude are to release a seven inch Geraldine pressing on Trinder, with an overseas vinyl 10 or 12 inch pressing to come later in the year ... scary band Drugs vs. Grandchildren have also done the Geraldine thing with their new 12 inch release ... IMD have finished recording their compilation of Dunedin artists, which will be coming out Septemberish. The album includes new songs by: Suka, Swarm, Martin Phillipps, Trash, David Kilgour, High Dependency Unit, Jay Clarkson, Chug, the Renderers, Human Soup (D Mitchell, D Roughan, A Galbraith), Bob Scott, Kathy Bull, Tane Griffin, Graeme Downes and Body Bomb ... Swarm, Suka and the Verlaines returned from their national tour, getting good crowds and several strains of flu along the way ... Snort are completing their single at Volt Studios as part of their prize package as winners of Operation Music Storm ... with the departure of bass player Nathan Judge to Nelson, the remnants of Bungalow have formed a new band with drummer James T Kirk (ex-King Loser etc.) ... dance bar Bath St. recently had a successful live gig, with Mink playing from 2 till SAM ... the Crown has just knocked out some walls especially for the upcoming Shihad gig ... Runt are busy promoting their debut CD ... Jay Clarkson is off to tour to promote Fying Nun's rerelease of her Packet CD ... if you have any information for this column, phone David on (03) 4774125.

DAVID MUIR

THE NIXONS, BIC RUNGA, SPLITTER Squid, Auckland, June 30.

It was a night on the likes of which one needed a bloody good incentive to leave the house. It was cold. It was wet. The Nixons were holding their Special Downtime release party. Actually, the latter fact proved incentive enough for me to face the former two, and it certainly proved worth the trip. Splitter were up first. They’re a four piece with a similar sound to frontman Andrew Thorne’s previous band, Thorn. Thorne (with an E — the man, not the band) peddles a fine range of melodic guitar lines. ‘Oxygen’ stood out most clearly in my memory. All this pretty noise really was a rather pleasant way to get things started — although it proved to be a case of getting the evening rolling, rather than kicking it off, if you get my drift. The pace slowed down, but the emotion turned up, when a very nervous looking Bic Runga took centre stage. With her vocals usually kicking in on the first strum of her acoustic guitar, the transformation from shaky to totally controlled, which occurred when she was actually performing, was substantial. Runga is a captivating solo performer, who was warmly received, despite her concern that the audience was not a very noisy one. I know ‘Drive’ will be haunting my head for weeks to come. The Nixons’ arrival was heralded by a lazy Pink Panther jam slinking from the speakers. Red light and lots of smoke completed the atmosphere perfectly. Tonight was the Nixons’ night, and bassist Mike Scott was determined to make the audience live up to it for them. He dished out a japestery line in Aussie pub-rock-style audience baiting, with his tongue a little too loose to be planted firmly in cheek, but it was obvious that was where it was intended to be. In sharp contrast to this tom-foolery, the Nixons set to delivering their unique brand of aural atmospherics: clean and airy on top,

revealing a sinister underbelly when poked at. In short, it’s yummy, in a scary sort of way. ‘Down With a D’ was lazily momentous, with drugged up keyboards underscoring the feeling. ‘A World of My Own’ was as electrifying as the strobes which lit it. ‘Eye TV’ sounded like it was being sung from a spaceship. When the ingenious ‘Basement Static’ was played, Sean Sturm's guitar/vocals hand in the proceedings threatened to overshadow anything which followed. Then the band exploded into the gleaming shards of ‘Tick Tock’ (with the Stereo MCs’ ‘Connected’ chorus inserted), and assured nobody would consider switching off. Luke Casey is the Nixons’ new drummer. Not only does he kick ass, but he also does a good line in Roy Orbison covers, which was proven when he took over the vocals for a cover of ‘Mystery Girl’. This was followed by a cover which fitted my evening to a T — ‘Suffragette City’ — so I ended up very glad I’d left the house.

I hadn’t been this intrigued by a New Zealand gig since the Straitjacket Fits split up. I was lying in bed thinking this as the sun rose, when ‘Basement Static’ was followed by Radiohead’s ‘My Iron Lung’ on the radio. I noted the similarities, then drifted off to sleep. It was a strange, but not entirely unpleasant, trinity to dream of (Sturm, Shayne Carter and Thom Yorke, that is).

BRONWYN TRUDGEON

CHRIS ISAAK Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland, July 20

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the man says over the PA, “from Stockton California... Chris Isaak and Silvertone.” If you think that signals the beginning of a good old-fashioned rock and roll show, you’d be darn tootin’ right. Despite a lacklustre crowd and surprisingly low volume (you could sometimes hear rain on the roof during songs), Chris Isaak and his band rocked. Dressed in a range of cool suits (the bands’ matched, Chris’ was flasher), they played their hearts out through a set of old and new material — most of the hits, and quite a few old gems (though not a couple of my fav’s), including ‘You Owe Me Some Kind of Love’, off the second album. The crowd cheered extra loud every time it sounded like it was going to be ‘Wicked Game’, and of course, eventually it was. Chris appeared to sometimes slip into wellrehearsed between-song gags, but his band (some of who have been with him for 10 years) were firing spontaneously, especially when they jammed longer on a few numbers. The minder even seemed genuinely surprised and alarmed when Chris jumped into the crowd and played during a song. Most remarkable is just how good that voice is live — he’s got the goods all right — soaring effortlessly between the aching high notes and a bass rumble, letting rip with a rockin’ yell. Guitar-wise too, Chris really can play his songs, handling much of the lead himself. After the first encore, Chris came back on in a mirror suit (as seen in the ‘Two Hearts' video) and wasn’t afraid to scuff it with a few more energetic numbers, including Bo Diddley’s ‘Diddley Daddley’. The second encore closed the night with a big, breathtaking ‘Blue Spanish Sky’, featuring Johnny Reno on sax. Lame crowd, horrible room, great band, great show.

JONATHAN KING

MUTTONBIRDS, ALT Glastonbury Music Festival 1995, Somerset, England.

At a three day festival, Saturday morning might be ‘bad hair day’, but Sunday morning is more like ‘bad headache day’, and most definitely the worst slot to play at Glastonbury. But the Muttonbirds took to the NME Stage at 10.45 AM, and bravely played their 35 minutes worth to a gathering of 50 loyal Antipodeans. ‘Anchor Me’ was the second to last number, and after another forgettable song featuring a French horn, the set finally droned to an end, with Don saying: “Thankyou for having us.”

Clearly, the ‘Birds haven't got the songs — those big songs that can fill arenas. Their introverted songs about being lonely in your bedroom and walking around in the middle of the night worrying are hardly helped by the weak vocal delivery, and are perhaps more suited to a pub type venue. When it comes to attitude, or ‘atitood’, the Muttonbirds seem a little lost for words, and “thankyou for having us” doesn’t really count. With the likes of Elastica, Menswear, the Charlatans and Dodgy commanding the NME Stage over the weekend, playing their sets of slamming 2.5 minute pop songs-with hooks big enough to hang a coat on, the Muttonbirds clearly have to decide if they are going to set up camp in Seattle with the fast fading grunge league, or tune in to what is happening with English pop. ALT, on the other hand, were perfectly in their element performing on the . Acoustic Stage, set up inside a huge circus marquee. The indoor setting gives the advantage of an instant atmosphere. While other performers play squinting into sunlight on the outdoor stages, the Acoustic Stage, along with the Avalon Stage (folk and Celtic), can use their lighting rigs from the first song. The direct contact with the audience can work like magic. The crowd which had gathered on Sunday had been expecting a solo set from Evan Dando of the Lemonheads, but apparently he couldn’t be found. Although a large fan base of young girls left as soon as this was announced, many people stayed. Many more were arriving to see Billy Bragg, who was on after ALT. Billy B may be out of the public eye these days, but he has a large and loyal following, and was playing a record breaking sixth Glastonbury. At 2.30 pm, Tim rushed on stage, explaining he was having to tear himself away from the rugby (South Africa versus New Zealand) while the score was nine each at half-time. With an immediate rapport established, an appreciative crowd of about 2,000 were soon enchanted by the skill of these three professionals playing a handful of fantastic new songs. Tim played drums on many of them, and guitar or keyboards on others, as well as providing the middle voice in many of the three-part harmonies. In a 40 minute set, they moved easily from one musical style to another, with a bit of Celtic folk, a tribal chant/rjiythm, a funky groove and plenty of pure pop. After they left the stage and the applause had died down, someone behind me said: “That was world class,” without any trace of an Antipodean accent. Up next was Billy Bragg, who was greeted like a hero, while poor Evan Dando was booed off after two songs, when he finally took to the stage later in the day. Some people get the mix of time, venue, music and crowd at Glastonbury perfectly right. This year, ALT was one of them.

TONY RICHARDS

WINTER PUNK FEST: SLAMBODIA, DOGBITE, DREADSTAYNE July 14, Pod, Auckland.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any wetter, the god of weather gave us even more of the same. Going out on this night, when many of the main roads were flooded out, required determination, resolve and extra stiff mohawk hair gel on the part of punk punters. Faced with a choice between another bowl of 59 cent noodles beside the glorious warmth of a partially functioning, one bar heater in the litter strewn inner suburban lounges, or the Punk Fest, a hundred or so bods chose the latter, and were probably happy they did so. Put on by the illustrious Jim Ramsay of Headbanger's Ball tame, the gig kicked off with Slambodia’s nasty odes to angst. A fair proportion of the assembled masses immediately began moshing to the foursome’s three minute wonders — 'lnside Your Head’, ‘AK Shits Me’, ‘Beating Off’ and Monkey Cap — before the lead singer stepped back, wheezing from asthma. No matter, the band carried on with assclenchingly tight intensity through ‘My Uncle John’ and ‘Step One', before the now-able-to-breathe-again vocalist rejoined to give us a few more songs with ‘1,2,3,4’ or ‘Oi! OH’ as the chorus. The crowd, predictably, loved 'em. If Slambodia is the old parading as the new, then Dogbite is the old happy to be little more than the old. Essentially a covers band, these three members of the former Punk ‘N’ Disorderly admittedly do their covers very well. Serving up a veritable jukebox (circa 1983) of sing along favourites by the likes of the Dead Kennedys, the Pistols and Stiff Little Fingers, the lads did manage to stamp a mark of originality on their pre-loved set list by throwing in a couple of tunes of their own. ‘Pet Mince’, in particular, shone. More originals please. Whilst the posters for the gig might have

snarlingly used ‘Punk’s Not Dead!!’ as a byline, I still remained only semi-convinced until the widely misspelt Dreadstayne did their turn. Wonderfully messy, their bass heavy mix was worth hanging around for, and provided the highlight of the night for the by now sadly decimated crowd. Pure grinding garage, the band did what they did in fine fashion. Guitarist Antoni Baker was more than capable of some skilfully delicate fingerwork against the backdrop of Marcus Callen’s rhythms, making the group definitely the most surprisingly innovative and un-dead punk crew of the evening.

CRAIG CEE

SEBADOH, GARAGELAND, DRILL Powerstation, Auckland, July 16.

The drunken lecher includes me in the fraternity of man, saying: “Man, look at those beautiful chicks. Woooah! What I’d d 0...” Not exactly the polite geek-boy loser you’d expect at a Sebadoh concert, but it was that type of audience tonight - what you’d politely call the good-time gig goers. They wanted to be rocked. Drill rocked for their last gig ever. Drill do not sound like their name suggests. They are far more tuneful than a boring tool. Their set was full of stop-start songs and guitarists twiddling with their amps. It suggests art wank, but Drill were too unpretentious and melodic to ever wear that label. Garageland, too, rocked. They looked marvellous on stage, like a band with something to prove. Their style may reveal influences in places, but the songs are perfect moments. The new country lounge-lizard angle they displayed just added to the show. If their forthcoming EP traps the right songs, they’re assured success. Sebadoh rocked. And r-ocked and rocked and rocked... for 135 minutes. The Lou Barlow ballads were rare, with ‘Bouquet for a Siren’ a highlight. The set was mainly anthemic powerpop. Barlow did most singing, with bassist Loewenstein’s louder, rawer voice complimenting his bandmate’s restrained style. Contradicting popular wisdom, it was Loewenstein’s songs, particularly off Bakesale, that were the best bits.

The crowd were mean to Barlow, throwing things at him and not really clapping loud enough for him, until he whinged: “You’re taking us for granted!” Oh, we did treat him bad. Barlow was lucky to be kicked out of Dinosaur Jr.. Whereas Dinosaur’s recent Auckland gig was lethargic and mediocre, Sebadoh showed all the fun and excitement of being in a band and making cool music. DARREN MITCHELL HAWKES

PALACE BROTHERS Toast, Burlington, Vermont, USA, June 2

Received wisdom about Burlington is that it’s a rich college town, outpost of trust fund liberalism, gloating over its own supposed ‘character’, or, worse still, ‘old world charm’. This is all pretty much true, but it’s still the United States, so the first car we see after crossing the border from the rural waste-space of Southern Quebec into the Vermont forest (exulting all the while, incidentally, in the hot and cold and colder flushes of the extra suave new Tindersticks album) isn’t a car, but a pickup truck sporting a bumper sticker that says: ‘My wife, yes. My dog, maybe. My gun, never.’ Just the kind of opportunity a professional rock journalist is always on the lookout for (in the absence of a press release to rewrite): the chance to draw a facile analogy between this trifling piece of redneck iconography and Will Palace’s evident readiness to explore/exploit at least some of the hillbilly trappings of his Kentucky background. This should, in turn, serve to remind us once more that, come judgement day, professional rock journalists will find themselves only a circle or two higher up in Hell than, say, whistling bus drivers, or professional musicians. A large cowboy hat and a Southern accent aren’t intended to disguise for a second the fact that the Palace Brothers don’t play ‘authentic’ country or bluegrass, and never have. Rural Gothic tradition is no more ‘in their blood’ than is the influence of urban socialites like Cave and Cohen, and for that matter, Russian symbolist poet Alexander Blok. That’s why their audience is mostly college kids and sundry middle class idlers. The support act

does a wretchedly soft-boiled version of ‘Candy Say’, and they’re not, to my knowledge, played on Country FM. Anyway, four so-called Brothers are assembled to show off a fairly slick new sound tonight: a drummer whose unobtrusiveness, both as a physical presence and as a player, is almost exaggerated; a discreetly long haired keyboard guy struggling manfully with all the piano, organ and bass parts; and an electric guitarist who looks like Otis from Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killen whose job is quietly to gainsay whatever the vocal melody is doing with his delicate, absent minded inventions. Then there’s Will, who confirms the mythology that sprang up when he wasn’t paying attention by looking about 18, in a denim jacket and the aforesaid cowboy hat, playing an acoustic guitar several sizes too big for him. When he sings, he sounds as young as he looks and, curiously, about a hundred years older at the same time. On record, this effect is heightened by a habit of using two almost identical vocal tracks just slightly out of synch, like the phantom of his old age haunting his youth, or something (which isn’t necessarily all that deep or mystical — think of Coppola’s silly Dracula). Live, though, it’s just the strangest symptom of a generalised, almost systematic, perversity (slow learners,, please note: this is in no way the same thing as perversion). Whenever one of the young Werthers of Burlington or Montreal is foolish enough to call out for the song by which he likes to cry himself to sleep, it’s immediately struck from the set list, and Will isn’t shy about telling him so. They do ‘All Gone, All Gone’, and a weirdly syncopated version of ‘Agnes, Queen of Sorrow’, from the recent Hope EP, but most of the set is brand new, and as cold and dry as a heart could desire. Country, sterotypically all about honesty and reassurance, becomes a slippery, deceptive surface, belying an unsentimentality that’s so far from down home it might have bean beamed in from Neptune. Sure, the lyrics are about horses and death and drinking (subject matter that leads you to expect a nice warm rush of instrumental emotion every so often), but it never comes, and you’re left confused and shivering. The beauty of these songs

is that, in the words of Hitchcock (Robin, not Alfred), they were ‘born with something missing’.

MATTHEW HYLAND

PREMATURE AUTOPSY, DELUGE Exchange Tavern, Hamilton, July 20.

The Exchange is new territory for me, and boasting an interior look somewhere between Cobb & Co and Auckland’s Boardwalk Bar, it’s an odd place to see a band or two. A motley mix of bikies, punks and metallers were gathered around the bar to catch tonight’s dose of heaviness, and certainly they weren’t let down. First on is Auckland band Deluge. The guitarist is wearing a Napalm Death shirt, and this is as good a reference point as any. Deluge play slightly less beats per minute, but play for many more minutes, and like the UK speedsters, they deal to their audience in a brutally heavy fashion. The roundhouse knockout of their three quarter hour set was a bombastic number called ‘Bloated Beast’, where the vocalist’s guttural howls battled for supremacy with wave after wave of maximum velocity guitar. Despite an atrocious sound mix, from where I stood Deluge definitely pleased the assembled, although the vocalist’s parting comment — "thanks for that great round of indifference” — suggests he underestimated how much this scene was being dug. This was Premature Autopsy’s sixth show on their Modus Operand! tour, and they have this live caper sussed. Their set consists of superfast noisesome notions, propelled by a solid rhythm section that’s tight without sounding regimented, while, blessed with this supportive base, monstrously heavy riffs are dropped by the two guitarists. The true spark to this performance, though, is a raucously charismatic frontman who stomps and staggers across the stage, all the while roaring his vocal chords into oblivion. Without the knowledge of song titles, it’s impossible to single out exceptional ‘tunes’, but each and every one was an exercise in intensity, and a thrill I hope to repeat before too much longer.

JOHN RUSSELL