the dandy's rule ok

so it's been a week since i went to see the dandy warhols but haven't had time to blog until now.

where do i begin...this gig made me remember why i love live music so much.

it was like a drug...it was better than any drug. it left me on a high that lasted all week. the band was amazing.  I went to the thurs night show with warren, and we managed to get front row position. i was right in front of zia (she winked at me twice and i felt special) and one of the best things about the night was just being surrounded by people who share your obsession. it's been awhile since i've seen one of my top five play live, and its been awhile since i've bothered pushing my way to front with the moshpit crowd and sung at the top of my lungs to every song. and it was fabulous. I made two new friends, and i realised that i no longer need to drag my friends along to gigs they don't really care about, that it's ok to go on my own..that shared excitement over seeing a band you adore automatically gives you a reason to bond with the strangers around you (unless of course they are drunk dickheads -see below). 

consequently, the next night when i decided to go to the second show, i didn't really care that sue bailed on me. she thought i wouldn't bother going a second time alone, but i wouldn't have missed it for anything, despite the fact that it prob didn't quite live up to the first night...the band was awesome once again but it was obvious that most of the hardcore fans had been at the first show. the friday night crowd was somewhat lacklustre and disinterested...it didn't help that a bunch of very drunk eighteen year old girls who obviously had no knowledge of the band besides "bohemian like you", pushed everyone out the way to get to the barrier and began shrieking "i love you" in high pitched teenage-girl screams like they they were at a justin timberlake concert. it was kind of funny though, instead of bonding over the band, this time us few hardcore's up the front were united in universal annoyance.

but to get to the most important thing...the music. it was sheer fucking brilliance. they played for 2.5 hours both nights, and played everything i could have hoped for. highlight was definitely mohammed...damn that song is awesome live! which reminds me, check out this clip...wasn't from the melbourne gigs but it was the closest thing i could find to relive the experience.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=A48LhleZCmY

the dandy's definitely rule, ok.

good times are a'coming

obama is president.

hot chip is playing the big day out and dirty three will be at all tomorrow parties.

could this day get any better?

wishing for december

arghhh! i am drowning in a sea of assignments and exams! this is when i start to curse my lack of discipline....why did i not start all this weeks ago??

things i dream about enjoying in summer, when i am uni-free!

- picnics in the park

- music, music, music and more music (i am making up for last summer in spades!)

- lots of beach time

- catch up on reading books that are NOT about SARS, ecosystem change or tuberculosis

- night market at vic markets

- st kilda festival (on my birthday this year, yay!)

- moonlight cinema

- spiegeltent

- sunday sessions at the espy

- riding and running (i AM going to get fit dammit!)

- generally being able to be a functioning human being again

only 3 weeks to go.....

WKAP- further analysis

so, i've finally managed to pick myself up off the floor after a week and a half of AFP (amanda fucking palmer) sensory overload...this album has lived up to my anticipation and expectation a hundred times over.....i think the last album i listened with such intense enthusiasm was radiohead's ok computer back in '98. it's unlikely WKAP will make the nme and rolling stone lists of best album of all time like ok computer does...in fact given the dresden dolls have always been a bit leftfield and uncategorisable the album may not even chart at all, but by god, this is an awesome recording, and even with ben folds' stamp all over it, it's definitely amanda's finest work.

'guitar hero' is probably my favourite track (though its a very tough call), and it and 'leeds united' have had me dancing constantly round the apartment like a maniac, the build on 'another year' almost has me in tears on every listen (can there be a more beautiful song about procrastination?), 'runs in the family' still blows me away as much as it ever did when i first heard it at the spiegeltent last december, and 'oasis' may just be the catchiest song about date-rape and abortion ever written.

the thing is though, it's hard for me to know if it is purely the music alone that has captured me with this album, or whether it's the whole package of the music, the art and the woman herself. ever since the first time i saw the dresden dolls play live at the corner hotel several years back, when they were plagued with technical problems and amanda was obviously frustrated with the constant keyboard issues, i have been blown away with the honesty portrayed by this band, both on and off stage, and their obvious connection with the audience and their fans. never have i seen a band so real. amanda in particular. while now well-known enough to be considered  at least a moderately high-profile celebrity, she is still down-to-earth enough to invite her fans for a game of soccer on a random london oval, stay back after shows to chat, and publish her intimate musings on her blog. i sometimes wonder how other bands have not caught on to this concept..... because even though the music on its own is fantastic, part of the appeal of the dresden dolls is the respect they show their fans, and the feeling of inclusiveness they convey...as though it' s just two of your good friends up there playing sold out shows worldwide to 2000 odd people at a time. This has ultimately worked for them and won them an extremely loyal following.

something about the dresden dolls makes me feel like i'm 16 again...totally obsessed with music, totally obsessed with a band that's my whole world and just feeling that i just want to do something/anything to convey how much impact their music has on my life.  i'm jealous of all those teenage fans on the myspace page, bonding together by not sleeping for 18 hours, consistently refreshing the webpage so they could preorder the limited addition amanda palmer autographed album packages, posting to each other about their mutual obsessive infatuation with this artist. I am nearly 30, i'm too old for that kind of hardcore fandom anymore. having said that, i got sucked in...i didn't join in their conversations, but did decide i also wanted the signed package, so stayed up for hours refreshing the webpage and enjoying reading all the postings till about 3am when i could hold out no longer and fell asleep.

despite the fact i was very tired and somewhat grumpy at work the next day, it was kind of awesome to do something just a little bit hardcore fanlike again. (although it did turn out i didn't have to be that hardcore after all, i still managed to get the signed package when i woke at 8.00am the next morning, but hey, the intent was all there).

anyhow it's late, and i have to get some sleep, so enough gushing for one night...i was supposed to study tonight but once again have been distracted by music.....

engineered rat brains are the future!

so...at work last week we had yet another team bonding session to "strategic plan" where we want to be five or ten years down the track (i failed to mention that if i was still in the organisation in five or ten years, my strategic plan was to execute some sort of murder/suicide pact).  anyhow it was all routine boredom until one of the senior managers suggested that the future direction for our detection area was not in remote control robotic devices to detect nasty substances, oh no, but rather we should be investing in engineered "smart" rats that could be sent in to hot zones where us humans daren't go...

suffice to say this comment kept hung, kate and i amused for days thinking about a rat in a gas mask entering a hot zone and giving a-ok paw signals back to base, diffusing various explosive devices with it's little rat paws, and squeaking out warnings. 

then yesterday, kate found this: 

http://www.herorat.org

wtf??!! 

p.s i am slowly regaining my power of speech re:WKAP and will post about it soon....

WKAP is out!

today I am blown away and speechless......

Amanda Palmer = fucking genius

broads, black metal & bitd

well, it has been quite a musically diverse weekend to say the least. 

i went to see the broad gig at hamer hall on friday night and have to confess i was pleasantly surprised (and not just because i was at the bar drinking shiraz next to chris lilley from "we can be heroes"). i was fully expecting to watch five chicks, five different musical styles, one playing after the other, some maybe good, most not really my taste...whatever....

but i was impressed! the four (relatively unknown) girls plus deb conway were all onstage together, they alternated playing their own styles (jazz, folk, country, and a bit of hippy deep forestish kind of folk) engaged in humourous light banter with each other between songs, harmonised together, and incorporated different instruments throughout the performance (accordian, banjo, drum, even recorder!). it was a great show (yes even the country chick!) and i can totally recommend laura jean (the hippy deep-forestish one who confessed to being a nerd..yeah! there's hope for me becoming a musician yet!), liz stringer (the other folk chick, sounded deep, husky and rough as guts when she spoke, could hardly believe it was the same voice when she sang), and alana stone (the jazz one who won me over with keyboards and definitely had the funniest between-song banter). 

...and i must admit the acoustics at the art centre always tend to win me over, regardless of the artist... a tone-deaf banshee could wail there and probably sound fantastic.

In a slight change of scene, 24 hours later i found myself at the barley corn hotel in collingwood, watching alex's mates' band wardaemonic spew some kind of black substance from their mouths, whilst looking like zombies decked out in KISS makeup and making tortured guttural sounds that left me thinking that the lead singer better have good private health cover for all the throat nodule operations he's inevitably going to need later on in life.

here's the thing about metal (proper metal i mean, not big-hair 80's metal or that nu-metal shit of the late 90's), i actually really get into a lot of the music. i love the fast guitar and the orchestration.  it's when the singers open their mouths that i get turned off. why do they do this?? i like to think that i'm quite broadminded with my music tastes (i'm pretty sure there was absolutely no-one from hamer hall at the barley and corn on sat), but i just can't get it! why have any kind of melodic sound if the vocals just destroy it?

on the plus side though, this gig was great for my metal education, as i never really had an idea of the difference between metal genres, in particular death and black metal (something that  is essential  to know for day to day life). turns out the only thing you really have to remember is black metal=screechy singing, death metal=cookie monster vocalisation*. wardaemonic appeared to fit somewhere between black and death metal, as there were a couple of screechy moments, but in general it was sounding more and more like cookie monster was behind the vocal mic. (as brooke so aptly remarked "is he actually singing words")

in the end we bailed at about 11pm and went to BITD, a place we were much more familiar, and brooke and i sang and danced and air-guitared our hearts out to gunners, KISS and def leppard till 3am. For those about to rock, we salute you! 

*a term officially trademarked by dennis