Posts Tagged ‘rock’
The Hellenic Club in Canberra is a bit of an odd venue for a rock gig, but as Flynn explained the band just wanted to try something different from performing at the local universities. Fair enough. I didn’t particular like the venue choice but the performance itself was of course awesome.
The stampede to see Toni Childs.
It’s been three days and the post-blues blues are sort of beginning to fade. The 2009 East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival was my first Bluesfest, and proved to be a superb way to pop the cherry and chill out in Byron Bay for a few days.
1. Blue King Brown – I’ve never seen BKB live before but the energy and mood of their whole set was simply joyous. Natalie Pa’apa’a was smoking in some short-shorts and a leetle black singlet. I chugged two Smirnoff Ice’s and danced the whole way through.
2. Seasick Steve – what a fascinating man. The 68 year old guitarist still looks like the hobo he used to be (and took frequent swigs of whisky from a bottle under his chair in between songs) but his sound is superb and his stories are humbling. Easily the crowd favourite among the smaller Bluesfest acts. Read more
On Friday night, I headed to Luna Park to catch a highly-anticipated (by me) gig at the Big Top.
First up was Ash Grunwald, who I’ve been listening to lately but have never known much about. I was surprised by the fact that Grunwald is a one-man show. He does the guitars and vocals and operates a snare, kick drum and toms using his feet. Great plan, in theory, but if you break a string and get flustered (and admit that to your audience), you’ve got no one to hold things while you get your shit together. While Ash rocks at what he does, his feet were half a second behind the rest of him. Get a drummer, son.
"I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines."
I never knew that there were places (homes, institutions or whatever you want to call them) for people who were deaf. Daniel Marando from the diabolically bluesy Maladies sits across from me, staring out the window. Something seems to catch his eye as he turns and waves to an older lady sitting across the room, intently watching the Bold and the Beautiful with closed captions blaring.
“HI MARGARET, HOW ARE YOU?”
On Friday night, Kahlee and I headed over to the Acer Arena to see Sheryl Crow’s opening set for John Mellencamp. After a cracker start with All I Wanna Do, Crow delivered a terrific set of old and new songs, plus excellent covers of Cat Stevens’ The First Cut is the Deepest and Crowded House’s Mean to Me. If I’m going to be honest, the brand new song “inspired by the Dalai Lama” pretty much sucked, but hopefully Shazza will leave the political stuff to Rudd in the future. (Xavier, not Kevin.) Read more
We hit The Tote (a Collingwood pub and band venue) on a balmy Saturday night and were greeted with the wandering crescendos of Three Month Sunset (a.k.a. Gabriel Lewis). In a shameless display of free-flowing post-rock, Lewis caressed his guitar and peered out meditatively to the largely empty bandroom. A little overwhelmed by the grandiose and sheer volume of the set, we joined a small crowd of smokers and beer-guzzlers in the chilled out beer garden where the pensive emanations seemed to settle more fittingly.
Without a doubt, Wes Borland’s new project Black Light Burns is one of the best sounds I’ve heard in years. Straight to the favourite band list. Sophisticated, dark and powerful; both the songs and the album collectively take you on a journey.
The latest interview with Borland I’ve read provides great insight.
The record starts real aggressively, but toward the middle it gets a little more hurtful and hurting, lyrically, trying to express painful feelings, but still in an aggressive way. Then it kind of opens up in the end. And that was the purpose: to attack, then explain, then release and be done with it.
Jye put the call out a little while ago for people to send in music for reviewing, and Julian Rapp from Friendship Records was one of those who answered the call.
