The Vine live review: Roger Waters ‘The Wall Live’ in Brisbane, February 2012
A live review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Roger Waters – ‘The Wall’ Live
Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Wednesday 1 February 2012If rock music is, at its heart, a mad combination of theatre, escapism and expression, then The Wall Live must be the warped apex of what rock music was designed for. It has to be said that this is an absurd concept: a band playing the entirety of an album released 32 years ago, while a 12-metre-high white wall is constructed between musicians and audience. It is the product of a brilliant imagination and a breathtaking commitment to realising an absurd concept, night after night, in a series of far-flung countries over the last 18 months. To think that one man envisioned all of this, notebook in hand, is incredible. The logistics of this tour and stage coordination alone is enough to make my head spin.
Tonight marks the 125th time that this show has been performed since its debut in September 2010. It is a spectacle; an event. Something to get dressed up for; in your best Pink Floyd t-shirt, if the majority of the crowd can be used as a measure. Shortly before the show starts, when everyone’s settled in their seats, a disembodied voice instructs us to turn off the flash on our cameras, as “all you’ll see is white bricks” in the captured image. And that it’ll mess with their projections. A lonely horn plays over the PA in a darkened room. It feels like misdirection. We’re looking around, into the abyss, wondering what’s going to happen.
Then: the band hit the first chord of ‘In The Flesh?’, pink fireworks launch from the stage into the ceiling, and Roger Waters emerges with his arms held aloft like a prize fighter, soaking in the applause while his band casually work through the track. A stagehand places a thick black trenchcoat upon his shoulders, he dons black sunglasses, and says into the microphone: “So you thought you might like to go to the show? / To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow?” By the end of the song, rows of sparks are cutting across the top and bottom sections of the stage, seemingly showering the band in a hail of white-hot fury; flag-hoisting Nazi look-alikes are being hoisted skywards on a mechanical lift; and a fucking airplane descends from the ceiling, somewhere above the sound desk, and knocks over part of the wall while flames lick its exterior. It is the most jaw-droppingly elaborate concert introduction I’ve seen – and I saw Kanye West last week. Someone behind me jokes, “We might as well go home now.”
Waters cuts a distinctive figure on stage. Clad in all-black, wearing white sneakers and luminiscent silver hair; but for the bass regularly held in his hands, he’s pure cat burglar. He is the archetypal bassist/frontman combo, perhaps the best we’ll ever see [Waters vs McCartney? - Ed]. And all of this belongs to him. It’s difficult to avoid discussing economics when it comes to this show. We’ve all paid stupid amounts of money to be here — albeit happily. Though he’s doing three shows at this particular venue, The Wall Live is a once-off proposition.
For the full review, visit The Vine.
The Vine story: Interview with Fat As Butter promoter on Flo Rida cancellation, January 2012
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
An eleventh hour cancellation is every live music promoter’s worst nightmare. Last week, we published an interview with Mos Def’s 2011 Australian tour promoter, who also revealed – in graphic detail – the financial burdens attached to such outcomes.
Another prime example of this type of behaviour on the Australian touring circuit occurred at the 2011 Fat As Butter festival at Newcastle’s Foreshore Park, on 22 October. Headlined by Empire Of The Sun, The Living End and Illy among a line-up of 38 Australian and international acts, event promoters Mothership Music had also booked the American rapper Flo Rida (pictured, with orange) – known for such modern classics as ‘Low (feat. T-Pain)’, ‘Good Feeling’ and ‘Right Round’ – to play the main (‘Fat’) stage at 5.10pm, after The Jezabels and before Naughty By Nature. Twenty minutes before he was due, organisers received a phone call from his tour manager: Flo Rida wouldn’t be able to make it to the show. Uh oh.
The aftermath was covered in detail by FasterLouder, and event organiser Brent Lean posted the following message on the festival’s Facebook a couple of hours after the cancellation: “We’re as upset as you are. We paid Flo to appear months ago and since he’s been on his Australian tour, he’s been an absolute Tonk. He’s been in Sydney today, and he’s had a hissy fit. We did everything we absolutely could to get him here, but he wouldn’t come. We’re absolutely devastated he decided not to be a part of Fat As Butter.”
What happens next, though? What recourse does a burned Australian festival promoter have in terms of recouping the artist fee they’d paid to Flo Rida and his entourage months in advance? I connected with Mothership Music managing director – and Fat As Butter promoter – Brent Lean back in November 2011 to find out.
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TheVine: It’s been a couple of weeks since the Flo Rida incident went down, Brent. How are you feeling about it all now?
BL: Look, we’re OK about it. We’re going about the correct processes to find out exactly what happened. We know the circumstance of what happened, but now we’re in the process of seeking the return of the [performance] fee. That’s with the agent and record company over in America. Overall it’s disappointing he didn’t appear, but we’re happy that we got the message out there so that the fans know exactly what the circumstance was. We’re just being truthful in the process.
At any point during the negotiation process did you have an inkling that this might happen?
No, not at all. We bought the show from another company that was touring him in the country. We were tracking his movements at other shows, leading in [to the festival]. We were aware of certain incidents and bits and pieces that made us wary, but they were more about when he was at the event, as opposed to whether he’d turn up. At no point did we think that he’d cancel, and not show. That was never on our radar.
You always expect that something may go wrong, and you work every contingency you can to avoid that, but at the end of the day, when the news came through that he was cancelling, that was an absolute shock. We had to go into damage control straight away, because it’s a large festival – with 38 acts appearing – so we had to work out how to fill the spot and advise the punters. We understood that they’d be very frustrated and disappointed by the announcement. We had to go into contingency plans as to how to handle that.
Will you be hesitant to book hip-hop acts in future, having had this experience with Flo Rida?
Not really. You pick and choose where they’re at. Last year we had Ice Cube headline Fat As Butter, and he was an absolute joy to deal with. Very professional; met all of his contractual obligations, we met all of ours; a hug at the end of the night and ‘great job’.
What we do find with some hip-hop artists is that they tend to disrespect Australia, I think. They tend to disrespect the audience and promoters, because effectively – and it happens quite often – they don’t stick to the terms of their contracts. They arrive here, then they’re seeking additional things on top of the contract; left, right and centre. And in some cases, strong-arming promoters into paying for additional things outside of the contract.
Now, in comparison to Australian artists? That would never happen. In the 20 years I’ve been doing [event organisation and promotion], I’ve never had a contract dispute with an Australian artist. Everyone’s up front; everyone signs a contract, everyone knows what the terms are, and each party meets those terms. I find it very disappointing that, for whatever reason, some of the American hip-hop artists can come out here and think that they can disrespect promoters, events, and the audience by, clearly, wanting additional conditions – or money, whatever it may be – outside of the signed contract. And as I said, and I don’t mind saying it: strong-arming promoters into doing that. It’s disappointing.
So without a doubt, buyer beware. All you can do is make sure your contract is watertight, and then you need the strength of your convictions to say, “Well, I’m not going to give you anything outside of that contract.” I think in the past, perhaps, [Australian] promoters have given in to the additional considerations, or whatever they’re trying to put on you, and there seems to be a threat, at times. For us personally, we just don’t stand for any of those sorts of things. If we’ve got indications through the negotiating process that anything like that is going to happen, then we’d rather not have them appear on any of our shows.
For the full interview, visit The Vine.
The Vine festival review: Big Day Out 2012, Gold Coast
A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Big Day Out 2012
Gold Coast Parklands
Sunday 22 January 2012Twenty years into this festival’s existence and strangely, the Big Day Out has less cultural relevancy than ever before. Or so you might believe if you paid attention to the Australian music media in the months leading up to the 2012 event. Or the BDO Facebook page. There irate fans compiled a list: the line-up’s shit, all the acts are tired and stale, they booked The Living End for the 18th year in a row, they’ve been beaten to the punch by specialist festivals booking bigger and better acts, Kanye West isn’t a proper headliner – ad nauseum. No wonder festival co-founder Ken West got vocal with frustrations at such concerns.
So travelling to the Parklands today, I’m half expecting to spend the festival in a relatively empty venue. It’s a pleasant surprise to be completely wrong. This show isn’t sold out – none of the 2012 shows reached capacity, for the first time in a long time – yet it’s hard to discern much of a drop in attendance. Despite the vocal online haters, a summer in Australia without a Big Day Out to look forward to seems a sad prospect. This year’s tour needs to be excellent if the event is to survive, and it needs to start here on the Gold Coast.
Up first on the Orange Stage is Abbe May and her three offsiders, who play compact, elegant rock songs led by May’s strong voice and commanding stage presence. The Perth-based singer evokes memories of Magic Dirt’s Adalita Srsen in full-flight; boot resting on the foldback, guitar held aloft. There’s a lot to like here for rock fans, and she seems to impress a lot of newcomers today as her crowd slowly swells past triple figures. Next on the Green Stage are Stonefield, who’re running 15 minutes late due to transport issues. The four Findlay sisters are forced to swallow the embarrassment of soundchecking their own instruments before a nearly full tent. Once they start playing, though, they’re thoroughly impressive. This tour could mark the beginning of their transition into a band who deserve to be taken seriously: strong musicianship, quality songwriting and a formidable frontwoman in drummer Amy Findlay. They cover Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and it slays: the day’s first goosebump-provoking moment. Funnily, Holly – the band’s bassist, and youngest member at 13 – starts windmilling her hair during the drum solo, apropos of nothing. It’s awesome. The crowd goes wild.
On the Blue Stage, Parkway Drive outline the crossover appeal of their distinctive style of metalcore. By now, they’re essentially a mainstream act, so well-known is their image and presence. In ten years’ time, will we look back on these five Byron boys’ output as one of the defining Australian sounds? I hope so. These songs are etched onto the DNA of a generation of young hardcore fans, and they run through a solid set before a big crowd today. They’re a fine example of a band who clearly enjoy the hell out of their success; there’s nothing but smiles on show today. Singer Winston McCall struggles with the heat but keeps up with his incandescent bandmates; he even manages to catch two airborne water bottles during a single song, ‘Anasasis’. Five huge Parkway Drive-branded beach balls bounce around the D section for the duration of their set, which thoroughly satisfies.
The same can’t be said for OFWGKTA, the Los Angeles hip-hop collective. Today is the day that the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All bubble bursts. They sound like shit live. I wrote otherwise when they visited Australia for the first time last June, but today’s performance is truly horrendous. It’s not a matter of how the show’s mixed, either: the problem can be isolated to five dudes holding microphones and using them incessantly, rather than sparingly. Each line is barked by the rappers, not rapped. As a result, the sonic nuance that the group exhibit on record is non-existent today; instead, a hodge-podge of disparate, aggressive voices over a backbeat. The crowd at the Boiler Room is huge, and they explode with joy once the five rappers and one DJ – singer Frank Ocean nowhere to be seen, apparently – show their faces. After 15 minutes of watching and attempting to listen to their set, it becomes funny to think about how bad they sound. On record, impressive. Here? Appalling. At times it sounds like they’re just rapping over an mp3; during the Tyler, The Creator track ‘Transylvania’, the group’s original lines can be clearly heard underneath their live raps. 35 minutes in, ‘Yonkers’ could be the set’s only saviour, yet it too disappoints. Tyler barely raps a word; the crowd does it for him. When he does use the mic, he’s drowned out by his bandmates barking his best lines. In a short, it’s a bomb. Which ruins the last chance that this set had of redeeming itself. The crowd leaves en masse at song’s end and I wonder why I’m still standing here.
For the full review and many more photos, visit The Vine. Above photo credit: Justin Edwards.
The Vine story: Interview with Sam Speaight, Mos Def’s Australian tour promoter, January 2012
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Interview: Mos Def tour promoter Sam Speaight: “I literally broke down and cried.”
One year ago, acclaimed American hip-hop artist Dante Smith – stage name Mos Def (pictured right) – was set to tour Australia for the first time. Eleven shows were booked, including headline festival appearances at Soundscape in Hobart and The Hot Barbeque in Melbourne. After failing to appear at his first scheduled performance in Adelaide, he went on to randomly skip four shows of the itinerary. Such was the ensuing confusion, that following the postponements, cancellations and sternly-worded press releases from the promoter, Peace Music, became something of a sport here at TheVine. For background, revisit our news story ‘Mos Def gone missing on Australian tour’. (I’m pleased to note that he made it to Brisbane for his Australia Day show, which was actually pretty great.)
What did those four cancellations mean for Peace Music, though? The promoters were awfully quiet for the remainder of the year, which posed the question: “Did the Mos Def debacle put an end to their live music interests?”. In late 2011, I contacted the company’s managing director, Sam Speaight, requesting an interview about the logistics of touring American hip-hop artists in Australia. “I’d love to do this,” he replied via email. “So often promoters are dragged into the street and shot (proverbially speaking) by the ticket-buying public over hip-hop artists’ cancellations and their childlike antics. Few people understand that, in many cases, the promoters have driven themselves to the brink of sanity and financial ruin to avoid an artist cancelling.”
A couple of days later, we connected via Skype. “The total chaos that seems to govern most of all the management side of these artists’ careers is just dumbfounding,” Sam told me from his new pad in London. “If people knew what went on behind the scenes, if nothing else, it would be a spectacle worth reading about.” He’s not wrong.
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AM: Tell me about the Mos Def tour, Sam. Was this your worst experience with touring hip-hop artists in Australia?
SS: Oh, yeah. That was definitely the worst example of madness and insanity from an international artist that I’ve ever seen, or heard of. Utter madness permeated everything that happened, in terms of the artist’s management, the delivery and management of the artist’s live engagement. He’s since pulled similar things at the Montreaux Jazz Festival. They’ve just gone through a similar experience to what I did, but fortunately, they only had one show to deal with, whereas I had an entire headlining tour.
Let’s go back to the start. When you first confirmed the booking, was there a point at which you realised that things might not go to plan? Were alarm bells ringing at any point during the lead-up to his arrival in Australia?
Good Lord, yes. Even before I signed the contract with his “management”, in inverted commas, I was aware that this was a difficult, tricky, potentially trouble-fraught artist to deal with. I structured as best I could my strategy for dealing with this artist to minimise the potentiality for misadventure in the establishment phase of that project. But all the pre-planning in the world couldn’t have prepared me for the living nightmare that was the reality of doing that tour and dealing with Mos Def. [Laughs] I literally broke down and cried partway through the tour.
You need to set the scene. Where were you when you broke down and cried?
[Laughs] I was at home. It was a Sunday afternoon, if I recall correctly, at my house in Redfern – which I’ve now sold, by the way. I’ve moved to the other side of the world to try and forget all about this experience! [laughs].
I was at home, hanging out with my lovely girlfriend, Gillian. Earlier in the day, Mos’ tour manager had called to advise that the rescheduled make-up show, which had been put in place in connection with one of the shows that he’d cancelled on his tour – the Tasmanian show. He advised that the make-up show would not be going ahead, and they would be unable to play it. Which was a disaster. One of a string of disasters that occurred on that tour. I was in an awful state of mind as a result of that, because it meant yet more massive financial losses, and yet more damage to my company’s name and reputation insofar as I was delivering the show to a promoter in Tasmania, I wasn’t promoting it myself. So there was a third party affected by this madness.
A few hours after I dealt with that disaster, I got a call from my tour manager, to say that he’d been asked a question via [Mos Def’s] managers, the question being: “Are there any other shows that we can play on this tour? Can you please investigate booking us some more shows? We would like to try and play some more shows.”
This is three or four days before the end of the tour. I remember reaching this psychological breaking point, where I’d been assaulted by this emotional nightmare every day for a month, in the lead-up to the rescheduling of, then delivery of this project. I said to my tour manager, “I can’t believe you’ve just asked me that question. You know how much money I’ve lost here. You know that the tour’s four days from completion. Are you totally insane? Who in the southern hemisphere is ever going to book this artist ever again? After what’s gone down here, for a start. And further to that, how on earth would I be able to organise any new shows within the space of four days given the fact that I’m staring down the barrel of financial ruination?”
That was basically just what tipped me over the edge. I just remember being in my living room, just losing the plot. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back! [laughs]
But it gives you an insight into just how warped and twisted, and how absolutely separated from reality the awareness of management – within the scope of that being a professional function – is, in the minds of these artists. They seem to live in such a bizarre, self-constructed reality that is so far away from what you might describe as career management, business, or just basic logic. [Laughs] Their worldview and outlook… it’s difficult for people like me — and I assume like you, too — to understand people who have to justify their existence by earning a dollar, which is then pursuant to them doing a good job of things, and being a professional. This is just a world that a lot of these people seem to be able to avoid living in.
And Mos Def’s a great example. If you Google, you’ll see that in the last 12 months there’s been a spate of these absolute last-minute cancellations. If the cancellation or postponement is done in a way that allows the promoter some opportunity to minimise their losses and to at least deal with the ticket buying public in a professional fashion, so that it doesn’t damage that artist’s fanbase and the promoter’s business, then cancellations are unfortunately sometimes a part of doing business in the music industry. But that’s not the approach that’s usually taken in these situations by these American hip-hop artists. More often than not, there’s very little justification if any given for it. It’s oftentimes just a childish whim, whereby they’ve decided that something about the project isn’t to their liking, or they’ve got something better to do that day, or they don’t feel like getting out of bed that morning.
As a result of that, they’re perfectly happy to – in some promoters’ cases – turn people’s lives upside down, and send peoples’ whole businesses spiralling toward the ground without any thought for basic humanity.
This is probably a long bow to draw, but I see a lot of this same attitude toward happily disregarding other people within the scope of business, and totally ignoring the massive financial ramifications of doing something like cancelling a show 24 hours out, to the problems we’re seeing across the entire global financial system at the moment. You’re basically talking about an approach to doing business that is morally bankrupt. It’s the exact same underpinning ideology that I see caught up in the actions of Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America, whereby these people are perfectly happy, without a single qualm in the world, to destroy peoples’ lives, trash peoples’ businesses, send people broke, without even a second thought. Just as long as – whatever they decided to do that day, gets done. I think that’s what really drives at this. The financial system that these people are participating in, and their actions, by association and as a function of that system, are absolutely and utterly morally bankrupt. But that’s a very long view, I guess. [Laughs]
For the full interview, visit The Vine.
The Vine story: “My Top 10 Musical Moments of 2011″, December 2011
A list of my ten favourite music-related memories and moments from 2011 for The Vine, reproduced below in its entirety.
My Top Ten Musical Moments of 2011
by Andrew McMillenAs we hurtle towards 2012 and the holiday season, TheVine has asked our critics to give us their Top 10 best music “things” from over the past year — whatever the hell they may be and in whatever haphazard fashion they so declare. Go.
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10. The Drones at The Hi-Fi, October 28 2011
I didn’t review this one. I went by myself. I don’t think I even spoke to anyone at this show. But over two intense hours, The Drones reinforced why they’re my favourite band. ‘I’m Here Now’, in particular, blew my mind. I think the bit where Gareth sings, “…and for the first time now, I’m looking right at you” is my favourite moment in any Drones song. Cathartic. It kinda goes without saying, but: never, ever pass up an opportunity to see The Drones live. Here’s footage from Sydney, the night after I saw them:
9. Les Savy Fav at Laneway Festival Brisbane
This was one of those “you had to be there” kind of shows, so I’m a little hesitant to include this on the list. But Christ, are this band incredible live! I haven’t seen one man own a room – or, in this case, a tin shed – like this before, and doubt I will again (until Les Savy Fav visit Brisbane again). Watch this video, and keep in mind that the rest of their 45 minute set was just like this:
I tried to describe it. Excerpt:
“Some bands simply have singers; guys with strong vocals that get the job done. Some have frontmen; guys who, in addition to singing, take it upon themselves to keep the crowd pumped. I’m reminded of that quote from Almost Famous, where the singer is like “You know what I do? I connect. I get people off. I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off”. This is entirely apt when discussing Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav. To say that his performance sets the Inner Sanctum alight is to understate the obvious. For the next 45 minutes, he owns the room. A chubby, bearded, near-bald man with a hell of a voice and (metaphorical) balls the size of grapefruits, has – within minutes of the band taking the stage – commandeered an orange vest from TheVine’s photographer, Justin Edwards and marched through the crowd; extra-long corded microphone in hand, singing in people’s faces, rubbing himself against poles, and drinking whatever people offer him.
At times, his performance veers toward the unbelievable. Like when he grabs some silver paint from his bag of props – the dude comes prepared with all manner of costumes and supplements – and rubs it all over himself, before dropping into the front row and leaving gigantic silver handprints on the faces of the entire front row. Or when, right near the end, he marches through the crowd, picks up an orange security barrier, and has the crowd hold him aloft while he stands and sings. All the while, his gun band thrash away at their idiosyncratic style of danceable noise-punk, with barely a glance toward the mesmeric insanity of what their singer is doing. Even as it happens, it feels like one of those performances that you’ll be telling people about for years to come. Harrington redefines the boundaries of what’s possible and acceptable onstage.”
8. Nova Scotia – Nova Scotia
This fine debut was released at the start of the year, but it’s still one of 2011’s best albums. They’re an indie rock band who live in Brisbane. They’ve hardly toured outside of this city so you’ve probably never heard of them, but believe me, they’re worthy of your attention. Try this track:
Excerpt from album review: “Final track ‘The World Is Not Enough’ is the best cut they’ve put to tape. Built around an instant-classic bassline and subdued guitar licks – which must have been tough for the three guitarists – the song does an abrupt about-face at the halfway mark and becomes another thing entirely. The inclusion of brass instruments late in the piece is the final inspired decision on an album full of them.”
Buy the album on their Bandcamp.
7. Warpaint [pictured above] visiting Australia twice: Laneway Festival and Splendour In The Grass
I would be even happier if this was an annual occurrence. A fantastic band.
Laneway review excerpt: “On the Car Park Stage, four women called Warpaint prove themselves as one of the day’s highlights, soon after shouldering instruments and counting in. I spend most of the set in awe of Stella Mozgawa, whose control and power behind the drumkit is a thing of rare beauty. While all four of the LA-based band are strong instrumentalists, Mozgawa is the band’s beating, metronomic heart. She’s not a particularly flashy player, but the way she dominates her kit with an insistent, rolling flurry of notes has to be seen to be believed. Warpaint’s sound is rarely brash; they often opt for creeping subtlety in their guitar lines and vocal delivery, though there are occasional moments of raised heartbeats, as in standout ‘Undertow’. The crowd increases as their set progresses; quite possibly the result of text messages sent across the festival instructing friends to come witness this shit-hot American rock band. Highly recommended.”
Splendour review excerpt: “Under the McLennan tent, Los Angeles quartet Warpaint are the closest thing to perfect we’ve heard so far today. They write intelligent dream pop and deliver it in an effortlessly smooth style. In Sydney-born Stella Mozgawa, they’ve got one of the best rock drummers alive. It’s clear that Warpaint live, breathe and love their music. They toured with the Laneway Festival only a few months ago, but they’ll always be welcome on these shores.”
6. Witch Hats – Pleasure Syndrome
An incredible second album from one of the best rock bands in Australia. I hope I don’t have to use the phrases ‘criminally underrated’ and ‘underground’ when describing Witch Hats for much longer. Here’s a taste: ‘Hear Martin’, the first single from an album which you can – and should – buy directly from the band. Here.
5. Eddie Vedder dedicating ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ to — the very recently deceased (at the time) — Mike Starr, at Vedder’s first show of his Australian tour, 10 March 2011
This broke me. An incredibly sad, beautiful, powerful, unforgettable moment. I had a strange feeling that something remarkable would happen at this show, which is why I brought my audio recorder along. I was right. Excerpt:
“Though Vedder’s performance – nearly two hours long, and featuring nearly two dozen songs – is thoroughly entertaining, there is a very dark moment embedded toward the end; curiously, right after ‘Betterman’, a track whose narrative shifts from depressed to optimistic across three minutes. Here’s the moment transcribed below in its entirety.
[Vedder finishes playing ‘Betterman’. Crowd cheers. A few moments later, a woman yells from the back of the room, “That was beautiful, Eddie!” Crowd cheers again.]
Vedder: Thank you very much. First night of a new tour – that’s exactly the kind of support you appreciate.
[Crowd laughs and cheers.]
Vedder: There was a, um… the first tour our group ever went on was with another band. It all seemed… I mean, it’s still new and exciting, but you have to work at ways to make it new and exciting. It was just a trip. It was just mind-blowing, starting out. I’d never actually been, like, in a band, and on tour. I’d played little shows here and there. But this was, like, the real thing. There was another band that we were with, and they had records out, and I was kind of looking at them to see how to behave. It was pretty intense. There was a guy in that group – the group was Alice In Chains, that we toured with.
[Crowd cheers.]
Vedder: The guy who played bass in that band, his name was Mike Starr. Our orbits changed a long, long time ago. We hadn’t seen him for years. He’d been going through a rough time for quite some time. Uh, yeah. I don’t know if you heard, but he’s no longer with us, as of yesterday. I’ve just been thinking about him. A lot. I don’t know what anybody could have done. It’s just really sad when life, and living life, and all that the planet and the people on it have to offer; and all that you can offer it, and them. It’s too bad when sobriety’s just not enough to keep you alive.
[Crowd applauds. Vedder begins playing ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ by Neil Young. It's heartbreaking.]”
4. The Dandy Warhols at The Tivoli, May 31 2011
This is one of few shows I witnessed this year that I wish I could relive. Despite going to dozens of gigs and nearly every major festival that visited south-east Queensland in 2011, I find myself returning to this particular set. An unlikely Tuesday night highlight at the tail end of a national tour. Magic. Excerpt:
“What if I put it to you that The Dandy Warhols are one of the best American rock bands alive? The more I watch and listen tonight, the more plausible it seems. I didn’t walk in expecting to happen upon this realisation. It hit around halfway through, when the rest of the band left the stage—keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Brent ‘Fathead’ DeBoer for a toilet break, apparently—which left frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor to unveil his “secret weapon”: a solo version of ‘Every Day Should Be A Holiday’. I doubted whether he could pull it off. The Dandys tend to work through sheer volume, I figured, not cutesy, sentimental moments better suited to stadium schlock-rockers. I was way the fuck wrong. From the first downward, loosely-strummed chord, CT-T begins singing. Right near where I’m standing—up the back of the balcony— a bunch of middle-aged men begin bouncing around, arms around shoulders, singing along at the top of their lungs. Then, what seems like the entire crowd joins him to harmonise during the chorus. Its ascending melody is irresistible; contagious. Over a thousand voices follow his trajectory: “Anytiiiii-hiiii-IIIME / Baby let’s goooo-hoooo-HOOO / EverydAAAA-AAaay-aayyyyyy / Should be a holidaaaaaay”. Which sounds fucking stupid on paper, sure, but in the flesh, it’s hair-raising. He gets to the line in the second verse – “Super cool / The Dandys rule, okay?” – and…I can’t disagree. All of a sudden, I realise I’m watching one of my favourite bands.”
3. Daring to criticise Tool’s Big Day Out sideshow in Brisbane (see here)
Even though I’ve been a hardcore Tool fan for around half of my 23 years, when I saw their Brisbane show the day after the Gold Coast BDO in January, I had forgotten just how intense their fanbase is. So when I wrote a mostly positive live review that poked fun at a few elements of their oh-so-serious concert, I was surprised at the reaction from a handful of Tool fans who took umbrage at my decision to criticise the band. It’s worth clicking the above link and reading through all 31 comments to witness the sheer blind insanity that Tool invoke in certain people, but here’s a sample of awesome eloquence:
“SHUT THE FUCK, UP AND GO BACK TO YOUR UNEDUCATED,OVER CRITICAL CORNER, WITH YOUR CD COLLECTION THAT NO DOUBT, CONSISTS OF SHIT LIKE “SOMETHING FOR KATE” “OPERATOR PLAESE” “MILLI VANILLI” “MGMT” AND THE LIKES, AND refrain from slowing down the natural evolution of mankind!”
And from the same commenter, this time sent to me via TheVine’s personal message system:
“Put your pen down, and do the world a favour…. kill yourself!!! Kind regards. Pete.”
2. Gotye feat. Kimbra – ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’
I was in Odessa, Ukraine with my girlfriend when I saw this video for the first time, soon after Gotye tweeted its release in early July. Our hotel’s shonky internet connection meant that we had to pause halfway through to let the rest of it load, but once viewed in full, the song’s power was remarkable. Even then. Incredibly, it still is, even after hearing it hundreds of times. The intertwining male and female vocal harmonies toward the end of the song still give me goosebumps, every time. Watching the pair duet at Splendour 2011 was a revelation: the crowd response was extraordinary. I knew then and there that this track would win the Hottest 100 (and wrote as much for Mess+Noise). Simply a killer tune.
1. Tyler The Creator – ‘Yonkers’
32 million YouTube views and counting, this still stands up as my favourite track of the year. Released in February seemingly out of nowhere – I hadn’t heard of Odd Future before ‘Yonkers’ – this sparse, menacing narrative sent me and many others down the rabbit hole of discovering a prolific and diverse catalogue, one self-released by a group who only just left their teens. Coupled with an instant-classic music video and verse after verse of memorable lyrical hooks, ‘Yonkers’ is a modern hip-hop masterpiece. Though nothing on Tyler’s 2011 release Goblin came close to the quality of this first single, this young writer/producer and his crew of collaborators certainly made their mark this year.
The Australian album review: The Roots – ‘undun’, December 2011
An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.
As concept albums go, Philadelphia hip-hop band The Roots’ Undun isn’t too far removed from reality.
Dubbed an “existential retelling” of the life of a fictional American man named Redford Stephens, who lived between 1974 and 1999, Undun “seeks to illustrate the intersection of free will and prescribed destiny as it plays out ‘on the corner”‘.
Drugs, violence, desperation and regret play out in the narrative contained within these 14 tracks.
The tale begins at the end of Stephens’s life: in Sleep, MC Black Thought raps: “All that I am, all that I was, is history / The past unravelled, adding insult to this injury”. In Make My, the protagonist, still in a disoriented state, concludes: “If there’s a heaven, I can’t find the stairway”.
It’s a fascinating and original approach to urban storytelling that remains compelling throughout the album’s 39 minutes.
After 13 albums together, the Roots’ sound has become so distinguished and refined that it’s simply a joy to hear them at the height of their game. In effortlessly smooth track Kool On, each instrument – guitar, bass, drums, keys, vocals – can be clearly identified in the mix. Drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson can be relied on for at least one classic beat an album; on Undun, it’s The OtherSide.
The final four tracks – the “Redford Suite” – consist of a beautiful, elegiac orchestral arrangement. It’s the final surprise on an album that further solidifies the Roots as genre leaders.
LABEL: Universal
RATING: 4 stars
The Roots – undunThis review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on December 31. For more of The Roots, visit their website. The audio for ‘Make My‘ is embedded below.
The Australian album review: Witch Hats – ‘Pleasure Syndrome’, December 2011
An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.
Witch Hats – Pleasure Syndrome
Though this Melbourne quartet has been associated with jagged, sneering punk rock on previous releases, a second LP, Pleasure Syndrome, finds Witch Hats in pursuit of something less dark, more beautiful.
The bass-heavy swagger and distorted guitars are still in place, but singer Kris Buscombe has clearly been honing his ear for pop songwriting in the three years since the band’s debut, Cellulite Soul.
This repositioning of the sound has worked: those put off by Buscombe’s wounded howl and his bandmates’ discordant squall in the past will now enjoy songs such as In the Mortuary, a quasi-acoustic ballad featuring pretty lead guitar phrasing and Buscombe’s sweetest voice yet. These 10 songs are more confident than anything the band has released before.
First single Hear Martin – built around a creepy keyboard line and written from the perspective of infamous gunman Martin Bryant – is the most accessible track here. It’s followed by Ashley, whose persistent bassline underscores the album’s most unsettling track. Buscombe revels in exploring the darker side of humanity, as best evidenced in album opener The Bounty, a gritty tale of frontiersmen scalping their peers for “fifty a head”.
Witch Hats has heart, skill and wide appeal, and Pleasure Syndrome gives 10 more reasons descriptors underrated and underground should be associated with this band no longer.
LABEL: Longtime Listener
RATING: 4 ½ stars
This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on December 31. For more Witch Hats, visit their Bandcamp. The video for ‘Hear Martin‘ is embedded below.
The Australian book review: ‘HipsterMattic’ by Matt Granfield, November 2011
A book review for The Australian, reproduced in its entirety below.
Retro types in pursuit of the vacuous
HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster
By Matt Granfield
Allen & Unwin, 303pp, $24.95
First a definition, for understanding this central premise is crucial. The 2000s-era wave of hipsterdom, Matt Granfield writes, began as a quiet and conscientious uprising that unfolded behind the scenes.
“Long-forgotten styles of clothing, beer, cigarettes and music were becoming popular again. Retro was cool, the environment was precious and old was the new “new”. Kids . . . wanted to be recognised for being different — to diverge from the mainstream and carve a cultural niche all for themselves . . . The way to be cool wasn’t to look like a television star: it was to look as though you’d never seen television.”
Thus, the modern hipster. In the wake of a crushing break-up, wherein his ex-girlfriend – who works for Triple J, “the biggest hipster radio station in the country” – accuses the author of not knowing his true identity at age 30, Granfield decides to “throw everything into becoming a particular brand of person”. It helps that he’s halfway there: in the words of his best friend Dave, the author is “probably the biggest f . . king hipster I know”.
This is not a particularly strong foundation for a book, yet Granfield redeems himself after a tenuous start by sampling and experiencing a wide range of styles and activities enjoyed largely by the cooler kids. Almost all the action takes place in the inner-city suburbs of Brisbane which, as the author proves time and again, are fertile grounds for would-be hipsters. It’s helpful that he lives in New Farm, adjacent to the grungy nightlife hub of Fortitude Valley, “the sex shop and strip-joint capital of Australia”.
By day, Granfield runs a social media and PR agency and writes and edits for the ABC’s The Drum and Marketing Magazine, yet his professional life is almost entirely ignored. This is a curious decision, as viewing the advertising industry through hipster-tinted glasses might have made for interesting reading.
Instead, Granfield grows a beard, learns to knit, gets a tattoo, runs a fashion-oriented market stall (for one day), buys a fixed-gear bicycle online and takes a photography course using only his iPhone. All par for the hipster course.
A visit to Ikea shows the author at his best: “In 5000 years when alien archaeologist anthropologists want to identify the point at which human society began to devolve, they will dig up a homemaker centre car park and find the skeletons of 2000 white lower middle-class suburbanites, loading flat-screen televisions they can’t afford into Hyundais they don’t own, buried and perfectly preserved under a volcano of interest-free store credit paperwork.”
Such moments of brilliance are rare, unfortunately, though Granfield’s writing style, which flits between inner monologue and punchy dialogue, is enjoyable on the whole.
Occasionally, he digs beneath the flimsy veneer of hipster culture and unearths some interesting points, such as how Triple J staff are sent so much new music by record companies that they don’t have time to discover anything for themselves; or how indie record labels aren’t interested in what’s cool, only in what will make them money, a process that relies on some hoodwinking of hipsters.
The narrative draws to a close as Granfield explores drinking alcohol, trying to enjoy coffee (by drinking 12 shots in a single session) and alternative lifestyles. “There are three reasons why people choose to be vegetarians,” he writes. “The first is because they have a moral objection to eating animals. The second is for medical reasons. The third is because they’re trying to impress a girl.” Guess which category the author falls into?
He also tries to start the ultimate hipster band, while making occasional references to past musical experiences. Like his advertising industry sidestep, this is another curious decision on Granfield’s part, as his history includes a stint in a relatively successful indie rock band. Another missed opportunity, perhaps.
Fittingly, the photos that appear within these pages were all taken using the iPhone app Hipstamatic, which uses software filters to give off the effect that the images were taken using an antique film camera, not a smartphone.
This kind of retro fakery is central to the conceit of hipsterdom. By holding a mirror up to hipster ideals through his pursuit of a new identity, Granfield convincingly exposes the true absurdity of it all.
Andrew McMillen is a Brisbane-based freelance journalist.
This review was published in The Weekend Australian Review on November 26. For more Matt Granfield, visit his website or follow him on Twitter.
The Australian album review: The Necks – ‘Mindset’, November 2011
An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.
On their 16th album, this Sydney-based trio opt for two 21-minute long tracks rather than the singular instrumental piece that characterises most of their past releases.
The opener, Rum Jungle, is a claustrophobic jam laced with menacing bass notes, jarring piano chords and insistent cymbal-tapping.
It’s a consuming piece of work; from the initial five-minute mess of noise emerges some flighty piano progressions and, later, a fiercely strummed electric guitar – a rarity among the Necks’ overarching modus operandi, which is best captured in the title of their 1998 live album, Piano Bass Drums.
Rum Jungle is thematically similar to their previous release, 2009′s Silverwater, in that its sustained creepiness invokes a sense in the listener of being constantly on edge.
Track two, Daylights, marks a distinct shift in mood; its gentle, noir-like atmosphere is a breath of fresh air. Its gradual uncoiling has more in common with the soothing perpetual motion of their 2003 release Drive By, which won the trio an ARIA for best jazz album.
This contrast between light and shade works well, and the absence of a narrator invites listeners to fill in the gaps themselves. Mindset is a fine addition to one of the most consistent catalogues in contemporary Australian music.
LABEL: Fuse
RATING: 3 ½ stars
This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on November 26. It’s my first album review for the paper. For more on The Necks, visit their website.
The Vine story: The Flaming Lips ‘Zaireeka’ iPhone experiment at 4ZZZ Brisbane, November 2011
A live review-of-sorts for The Vine. Excerpt below.
The Flaming Lips – Zaireeka iPhone Experiment
4ZZZ Studios, Brisbane
Sunday November 20 2011
“There’s a lot of things where, when you think about them, you think they could work. But it’s different when you do them.” Wayne Coyne, singer and songwriter of The Flaming Lips, is sitting before a microphone at Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ. It’s 12.50am. Four hours earlier, Coyne and his band headlined the Windmill Stage at Harvest Festival. Now, at Triple Zed, he’s here to lead something that’s never been done before: an attempt to simultaneously play all four albums of the Lips’ 1997 album, Zaireeka, live on the radio, in sync, via 160 iPhones split into four groups of 40 fans.
“It’s tough to get this many people together, and to be doing it live on the air, and not knowing whether it’s going to work,” Coyne says. “But you seem to be open to the idea of experimentation, and I think your audience will be forgiving enough if it’s not perfect. Everybody out here is having a good time, so that seems to count for something.” He’s right. The station’s three floors and car park are buzzing with the excitement of iPhone-wielding fans, harried-looking Zed staff, and plenty of hangers-on who’ve snuck in via the back entrance just to be a part of it all. Judging by the sunburns, most spent their day at Harvest. Many are in altered states.
The singer is being interviewed on air by Zed presenter Brad Armstrong, who began petitioning his ‘Bring The Lips to Zed’ campaign in late August. Armstrong eventually got through to Coyne’s camp, and the two have been in touch for weeks leading up to his arrival tonight. “In the end, you and me were texting back and forth,” Coyne says to the 23 year-old presenter. “There was a couple of times you were calling, and we were just getting ready to walk on stage. I was like, ‘Hey Brad, I can’t talk to you…’” The pair laugh. Armstrong is nervous; his mind repeatedly blanks during the interview. “But persistence is a good quality, for sure,” the singer smiles. “You seemed like you were interesting to work with. Now I’m at the mercy of your organisational skills.”
Though Armstrong is clearly enjoying himself in the booth, he’s shot himself in the foot somewhat. He’s the default mastermind of this whole operation. While he eats up airtime, a handful of Zed staff flit between the groups, trying to make sense of it all. Guest ‘conductors’ include Richard Pike from PVT, a dude from The Holidays, and local punk duo DZ Deathrays. None of them have any idea what they’re doing. Someone forgot the seemingly obvious step of supplying radios for the four groups; these are eventually put in place, while Armstrong attempts to lead a test run. In the preceding week, the 160 iPhone holders were instructed to download the Atomic Clock app and transfer one of Zaireeka’s four discs to their phone, plus a test track. Eventually Armstrong communicates that everyone should set the test track as an alarm for 1.32am, and then hold up their phones so that microphones can pick up the sound. Zed staff then run throughout the building, yelling out the same message. Watching all of this unfold is exhausting.
For the full story, visit The Vine, where you’ll also find a gallery of photos taken by Justin Edwards, including the image used above.
