(pic via comicallyvintage)
I had a dream the other night that Who The Hell let me post a mixtape entitled Bands My Boyfriends Have Been In. Now, aside from being a tacky idea that would make me look like a massive groupie sluzz, it would be a travesty against good taste and the art of crafting a cohesive mixtape.
Essentially, it would be a compilation of nu-metal bands from central Queensland, with one lonely jazz track from my current boyfriend’s band. While none of the bands are offensive on their own, it’d be the combination of uncool niche genres that would really get up people’s noses.
I got thinking about the whole boys in bands thing, and came to the conclusion that my youth and dabblings in the music industry are responsible for all of my heartbreaks. While all these boys were/are great guys (some of them less great than others), I didn’t date any of them for their music, or for the “cool” factor of them being in bands. Seriously, why would you? Young, male rock musicans are terrible to date. Their egos are often the largest part of their anatomy and there are always hotter chicks out there willing to stroke them. Ahem.
At the ripe old age of 21, I’ve stopped banging my head against brick walls and have lucked into a wonderful relationship with a handsome, caring, funny computer programmer who has a jones for jazz and funk music. While he does play guitar well, he also has a fulltime job and a mortgage.
There’s nothing sexier than responsibility.
My guitars are in storage with the rest of my things and I’ve been missing them. I’ve mucked around with my boyfriend’s guitars, but he’s a jazz player who doesn’t use a pick - bashing out power chords on a gorgeous hollow-body just feels disrespectful.
So today, after a morning of blood tests, call centres and other horrid grown-up things, I swallowed my pride and visited Allans Music in the Queen Street Mall. It’s full of big-brand instruments and salespeople who can be counted upon to go for the hard sell without the appropriate knowledge to back it up.
Since I was already in a music store that wasn’t really my kind of place, I threw all pride out the window and played guilty pleasure guitars - el cheapo Squier Stratocasters and speedy-necked Ibanez shred machines. I was in the middle of a particularly cheesy pentatonic riff on the Strat when a man who had been pacing around the store stopped in front of me.
He was covered neck to wrist with tattoos of spiderwebs, skulls and pinups - the sort of designs binge-inkers my age pay top dollar for. This guy was old and grizzled enough to have earned them through years spent bouncing between shady practices and correctional institutes.
I stopped playing and smiled nervously. He smiled back.
“Music is just…” he ventured, shaking his head in irritation as I held the guitar against my chest. He took a deep breath and tried again.
“Love me Tender. Who sang that?”
Elvis.
“That’s right, and it was a movie too. He made three black and white films you know, King Creole, Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender.”
He disappeared down an aisle of ugly Epiphone Les Pauls and SGs, muttering to himself.
I strummed a chord and he reappeared.
“Love Me Tender, it was meant to be called something else. What was it?”
I don’t know. Tell me.
“The Reno Brothers!”
Really? Why did they change it?
“Well, it was Elvis and he was a singer more than an actor, wasn’t he?”
I nodded.
“Well, Love Me Tender was a big hit, a huge hit and that’s why they changed the movie’s name. They nearly didn’t make it.”
Yeah? Why?
“Well, all his fans, his character dies and all his fans were, they didn’t want his character to die. His mother cried when she watched the film for the first time.”
He grinned, clearly delighted to have found, in his mind, a fellow fan of the King. “You must have read up a bit on Elvis, hey?” It was a statement, not a question.
His carer put the acoustic guitar he’d been playing back on the rack and led my Elvis teacher out of the store.
Picked up my copy of Fires of Waco’s new EP only to find the pictures I took at their Browning Street Studios gig used in the album artwork.
Would’ve been more stoked if I was credited, but they apologised to me for what seems to be a genuine oversight. No hard feelings etc.
Every so often, men involved in the music scene who see themselves as believers in social justice get a bee in their bonnet about the oversupply of Y chromosomes in their local music scene.
Where are all the chicks? Why aren’t there more female band members, music writers, roadies, or sound techs? In an issue of the sorely-missed hardcore magazine Death Before Dishonour, editor Lochlan Watt wondered,
In a male dominated music scene, where there exists a number of females screaming for equality and to have their intentions and passions recognised as being genuine, there seems to be a lack of them actually getting into it and getting involved beyond simply going to shows and getting tattoos.
Here’s the thing - a lot of females just aren’t interested in getting involved, and the ones who are interested are too busy creating opportunities for themselves to have the time to whinge about equality. Sure, it’s important to have female “voices” and “perspectives” on the “music scene”, but the last time I checked, equality doesn’t mean giving a shitty sound engineer work just because she is female.
I’d like to leave you with this photo taken by John Hatfield.
In a group of dudes at a hardcore gig, only my friend Big Will (front and centre in the navy shirt and green shorts) is actually “getting into it”. The rest of of them are standing there with their beers, arms crossed. I don’t know if the surplus of dicks is the biggest problem here.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - ‘Search and Destroy’ (Iggy & The Stooges cover)
Call it blasphemy, but I think this cover is actually better than the original. Don’t get me wrong; I love Iggy & The Stooges and Anthony Kiedis is a total Iggy wannabe, but the Chilies version is more fun and powerful.
Fugazi, man, what a band. Seriously. This is one of my favourite songs of theirs, and I think it relates nicely to the recent hype over the iPad and the people who engage in it.
Fugazi - ‘Foreman’s Dog’
Here’s an all new version
Teeming with distractions
Trojan horse rolled backwards
Mastered by your own device
Then splice in, then cut to the sad sorry image of some grinning ‘caster
Staring at a sinkhole
Piling up disasters
Making the footage raw
Now parade the muscles
Trying to make their dicks grow
Warring with their bodies dimensions oversold
I wonder if I pierce it will my body stop lying to me?
Now mouthing mile a minute
Blasting like a furnace
Fogging up the lenses with the dampness of spew
Loss of concentration
Loss of obvious laws of stimulation
Signed anonymous
It’s a stock set up
Man check it out!
A well worn cop’s shoe’s kicking out a door frame
Class war extra
PR-ing like a foreman’s dog
What a slob but I guess you know
He’s got to make a living somehow
Tossing a wild eyed greaser right onto the pavement
Scanned into the bright light maxing the pixels to glow
How did it come to mean nothing but this?
After the ordeal that was Soundwave ‘08, I needed a year off before giving this festival another chance. I’m glad I did, because this was without a doubt the best festival I’ve ever been to. Yes, the lineup was great and all that, but they also had free water. That’s right folks, FREE WATER. Anyone who whinged about the vendors selling water for $5 a bottle clearly likes complaining more than being hydrated.
Since Closure In Moscow were unceremoniously kicked off the festival for being “ungrateful cunts” (the promoter’s words, not mine), Canadian psychobilly band The Creepshow were the first on the main stages, and I really enjoyed them.
Sunny Day Real Estate are a truly underappreciated band, and their 12:30 slot on the main stage did them no favours. Members of Paramore and Jimmy Eat World were watching and singing along sidestage, which was cute. They played all the songs I wanted to hear from “Diary” way too early in the set and droned their way though almost the entirety of their incredibly boring second album. No wonder bassist Nate Mendel left to join the Foo Fighters.
Food, Dippin’ Dots (best thing about summer festivals) and a bit of ISIS. The metal tent was actually really pleasant, and it was nice to be able to appreciate the atmospherics of ISIS in the shade.
My friends and I decided to get amongst it for Alexisonfire, which involved standing in the crowd for 45 minutes enduring Eagles of Death Metal’s set. I get that being a seedy sex fiend is Jesse Hughes’ schtick but after an entire set’s worth of banter, he was more of a creepy old uncle than a dirty sexy rocker. Next!
Alexis opened with “Drunks, Lovers, Sinners and Saints” and of course, the first person to faint was a ranga girl who hadn’t been keeping her fluid levels up. Once she went down, it was like quicksand - bodies pulled under by the fallen. Here’s a bit of mosh pit etiquette for young players: this is a crowd at a music festival, not a scrum in a game of rugby union! If someone falls down, help them up - don’t step on them!
Anyway, things got a bit hectic, so I crowd surfed my way over the barrier to safety. I lost my hat, copped a fist to the face and almost had the sneakers ripped from my feet, but nothing broke or bled, so I’m calling it a win.
As much as I’d like to pretend that I crowd surf my way to freedom on a regular basis, I was a bit shaken, so I watched the rest of Alexis’ set from the safety of the bar. It’s really not a festival unless you pay $9 for a midstrength can of beer.
Paramore pulled the biggest crowd of the day, and even with a fill-in guitarist were tight as all get-out. Their songs are so catchy and well-written and Hayley Williams is one of, if not the best front-woman our generation has produced. Anyone who can dance around in skin-tight pants and still sing like she does without being out of breath or missing notes gets my respect. They played all the hits you’d expect (Misery Business, Decode, Ignorance, Brick By Boring Brick) and a few surprises (Pressure, Let The Flames Begin).
I’d seen Placebo during their Meds album tour in 2006, and had a sneaking suspicion their set would vary just enough to include shitty new material. I was right. Their new drummer couldn’t keep time with the backing track, sending the whole band out of whack. They weren’t engaged in what they were doing and are probably only still touring so they can pay their mortgages. I snuck off to a secret bar behind the grandstand that had lush grass and shade and just listened to the bulk of their set. Apparently they had videos, but really there’s only so much you can polish a turd.
AFI were just fantastic. Davey Havok has finally realised it’s possible to be masculine and flamboyant (something the frontmen in the bands either side of AFI figured out years ago) and their live show is all the better for it. Their set was made up of material from their most recent three albums and since I’m not one of those fans that has been there since day dot, I was pretty happy with that. They also showed Placebo how to play to a backing track.
Dave Navarro, I wish I still had my virginity so I could offer it to you. Jane’s Addiction were without a doubt the sexiest band on the lineup and when Dave busted out a solo… hoo boy. I got chills during “Three Days” (played far too early in the set in my opinion), and that was even before Perry Farrell bought the geisha girl dancers on stage.
Jimmy Eat World are a bunch of boring-looking white dudes singing ab
out feelings, but gosh, they do it well. Their Bleed American and Clarity albums were a constant soundtrack to my life in the later part of high school and my first love. The songs off the latest album were nothing special, but they made up for it by playing EP track “No Sensitivity” and ballads “Hear You Me” and “23”. I may or may not have shed several nostalgic tears during their set. That’s emo for you.
I wished I’d seen Glassjaw, Meshuggah and Anvil but there just weren’t enough hours in the day.
(Festival photo by Kristina McDonald, band photos by Kylie Keene, dodgy photos by yours truly.)
Soundwave festival hits Brisbane tomorrow and I’ll be there seeing some of my favourite bands. It’s primarily a metal/punk festival, and their internet forum is full of hilarious questions from festival-goers.
Mosh tip #1 - don’t let people step on your face
Such are the perils of an all-ages festival, although I’m a bit concerned about that pregnant woman. If I see her tomorrow I’ll rub her belly for good luck. 
Mosh tip #2: Being straight edge won’t help you in the mosh.
Drink plenty of water and be sensible regarding sun and hearing protection. Cancer and deafness aren’t scene, trust me.
Alex Stenweiss invented the album cover as we know it to create a new art form:
“I love music so much and I had such ambition that I was willing to go way beyond what the hell they paid me for. I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music.”
So:
In 1940, as Columbia Records’ young new art director, he pitched an idea: Why not replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? The company took a chance, and within months record sales increased by over 800 per cent. His covers for Columbia — combining bold typography with modern, elegant illustrations — took the industry by storm and revolutionized the way records were sold. …. He launched the golden age of album cover design and influenced generations of designers to follow.His new book, Alex Steinweiss: Inventor of the Modern Album Cover, was recently honored.
[Image: Alex Steinweiss Bartok, Concerto 3]
