one fellow's political coverage, music ramblings and general hijinks across decades under a range of guises at several locations often in a state of awe.
back 1990s:
Water damaged, and otherwise damaged. In the Pines some year or so, with MC Genge. RTRFM archives here. What you can’t see is that I’m wearing a freakin’ kilt with that lunatic yellow shirt and the cut-off Op Shop dress underneath. And a goatee… MAKE IT STOP!
Credit: someone else.
back 1990s:
Oh my. Murdoch social club, circa 1991 or so. Evil drink called the Goat of Joy, or as they were called when they came in jugs, for $7, a Jug of Joy, in front of us. Four parts port, 1 part coke. I feel sick thinking about it. Grant’s head hits the table in a subsequent pic, not here. Sheesh. Bad hair too.
Credit: someone.
back 1990s:
On a break from uni visiting home I took this pic. That’s a real joey. There’s a vid of this same scene, filmed about 5 years later while visiting from Hong Kong here.
Credit: Adam.
back 1990s:
My parents’ backyard in Waroona, note asbestos fence, weber, and a bunch of freaks. Anne-Marie in the foreground with my little cousin. Ah, and my home 21st. I have no idea if there is any surviving evidence of the Perth one.
Credit: unknown.
Metropolis Concert Club, Fremantle
Let us take a fleeting glance back to those high-rolling mid-1980s, a time of teen magazines like Countdown and Smash Hits, lime green shirts and a paisley power-pop outfit from Perth called The Stems. Their simple yet unassailable songsmithery endeared them to a huge European music public, propelled them on to play the final Countdown and, as 1987 brought down piles of Perth’s entrepreneurs, so too did The Stems tear each other apart in a messy split which many thought irreconcilable.
Although their dark cloud didn’t float across to this side of the continent on their brief, two date Australian tour, the impact of Marilyn Manson on the popular youth psyche reaches further that the splash of blood and sweat that you may have felt at front-of-stage in Melbourne.
Sandpit hail from the thriving Brunswick Street live circuit of Fitzroy, Victoria, but their coy little lilting tunes are usually the stuff found bouncing between the Merge label in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and New Zealand’s Flying Nun roster. Theirs is the sound of sweet discordance, born of bedrooms and really cheap guitars which go out of tune half way through a three-minute ditty.
Continue reading “interview | Sandpit (1997) – Interview with vocalist/guitarist Brendan Webb”
“Monday I go to watch Sumo wrestling/It’s an easy day to get a good ticket” (One Week from Brand New Knife, 1996)
Their songs bounce from jangling, smiling pop all the way through bashing, smashing punk. They are Shonen Knife, three Japanese grrrls who mix topics of buying Barbie dolls, drinking beer and watching Sumo wrestling with frontal, crunching guitars. With the biggest question being ‘how the heck did these three break from the purely conservative Japanese music mould’, the answer can somewhat be found in their lyricism – it’s still cutesy Japanese youth culture, but the instruments virtually yell with the same excitable fervour of these three battling it out on the Twister board.
Continue reading “interview | Shonen Knife, Interview with Naoko Yamano”
Brenda and Eddy: Young Love Shattered
By ADAM CONNORS and ALISON HUMPHRY
NB 2003: Notes follow in italics. Explanation at bottom.
Chris, the following is the photolisting and basic storyline, ‘go hard’ entwining ya narrative with elements of current events: Romeo and Juliet, the Paxtons, young wedding, Crash, liquor licensing laws, Elle’s WA ads shot by Sydney film company, uni mergers …
Continue reading “Brenda and Eddy: Young Love Shattered | Metior”
A compilation of reviews for a bigger coverage assembled from several writers.
For several thousand music fans, ravers and simple masochists, the first belly laughs of this final Big Day Out were to be had before reaching the ground. Note the frantic screams of the woman station guard as hundreds of kids tried to pile into the two train carriages graciously provided by Westrail. Note the bouncers pouring out the day’s liquid gold – water – at your feet. And note the impenetrable labyrinth of mazes inside the ground which stood solidly for WA’s aggressive liquor licensing laws.
Continue reading “Big Day Out 1997, Bassendean Oval, February 2, 1997”
