The Fearless Vampire Killers,Mona Lisa Overdrive @ TheEdinburgh Castle, Adelaide(22/08/08)

Tue 2nd Sep, 2008 in Gig Reviews

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And then, just as the night is plummeted to brand new lows (wow, what’s to bet THAT stunt will be the one to pull all the ratings this month!), I receive an SMS on my phone and sweet relief in the form of a teeny tiny encore gig at the Ed Castle.

Mona Lisa Overdrive

I’ve been through hell and back again. I’ve lost all faith in humanity, I’m losing my precarious grip on gravity and I’ve had more debauchery and depravity punching holes through my retinas than a back to back movie marathon featuring Jackass 1 and 2 followed up by The Wiggles on a bad tab of acid. So it’s with sore eyes and a sore head that I great Ed’s opening act Mona Lisa Overdrive. “Fuck! not these idiots again!?”. Yup, normally I’d be sick to death of this band by now. I mean shit, is it just me, or have these pissants been playing to every dickhead and their dog of late? Sheeeiiit! it’s almost getting to the point that you can’t open a fucking fridge door without them popping up between the milk and cheese and busting out a mad medly with that freaky little gnome who flicks the light on and off. And it’s not like they’ve got a wide repetoire to draw upon either. It’s the same fucking Velvet Underground song playing 50 billion times over isn’t it? FUCK!! Why am I even writing this shit!? But just when everything’s about to fall apart tonight, just when I’m about to piss this whole thing off for good, Mona Lisa Overdrive and their skull fuckingly brilliant set remind me just why I do this shit in the first place! YEAAAS!!

I mean, let’s not dick around here; on any other night, Mona Lisa Overdrive are more style than substance. Out’ve all the other Adelaide bands you’d see out there: band’s who look like they fell out’ve bed drunk and merely grabbed the first thing within arms reach with the least amount of flies buzzing all over it (shit, not like I can talk!), we at least gotta give these dapper dweebs credit for looking the sartorial assassins of cool. But past all that, I’ve never quite understood what the hype was all about in their music. Not until tonight that is, tonight they fucking nailed it. Maybe it’s just the mix in the Ed Castle that does it, maybe it’s just the ever present air of bong smoke wafting in like a cool breeze from the beer gardens, but I’m feeling this shit! I’m burning my draft card, dropping out, tripping out and I’m joining the revolution! It’s thrashy as fuck. They’re out of their fucking minds. They’re tearing it all apart and putting back together back to front. They’re howling sea of distortion and sneering dissent. They’re five flavours of dirt singing as one. It’s like Queens Of The Stone Age doing “Sick Sick Sick” in a kaleidoscope and I’m right in the middle of it. SHIT YEAAAH! This is what the fucking BUZZ is all about!!

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The Fearless Vampire Killers

And just when the going’s good, it only gets better. Granted in my weakened and delerious state you could drag just about any shaved baboon on stage, stuff a guitar, a bass, two drumsticks and a microphone in their hands give them MORE than two fucking songs to play with and I’ll die happy. Go back and play those first five videos back to back and you’ll know just how desperate my brainspace has become (no offense guys we all know it was enough to get out’ve THAT circus with all our teeth still accounted for). But right here is where it’s fucking at! Granted there’s only five stoners out there in the crowd and you could hear a bug fart in the spaces between, but this here may very well have been the BEST show I saw all weekend. No shit! This was the oasis in the desert! All it took was these four freaks, their 60’s psychedelic freakout, their op shop shirts and me torturing myself to death at Rocket Bar tonight and I was home free! weeeee!

The Fearless Vampire Killers in sound rather neatly sum up what is rattling around in my skull right now as a loose approximation of thought. They’re the reptilian core, the peanut piston, the kill or be killed rapid fire response with an adrenaline chaser. They’re Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Brian Jonestone Massacre, Led Zeppelin II, The Vasco Era and a bag of cats fighting. They’re a quartet of illbient acid artists raised by wolves. They’re a twizzle stick on bass plugging out the most insane toilet s-bend in brown notes I’ve ever heard without dropping a load in kind. They’re an anachronism, they’re a surf guitar mindfuck set to film, they’re a Quentin Tarentino soundtrack to a room full of schoolgirl assassins scattered in a sea of red as Uma Therman walks away with a smile. Fuck, what a finale! You freaks have damn near saved my life!

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And then it was all over. I am dead. I am long buried. I am bones and dirt. I am fossiled, unearthed, reassembled and put on display giving the finger to a fossilised astronaut, a giant letter M and two tiny letters T and V. A fitting end methinks. Or at least it would’ve if I hadn’t found myself at the other end of town hours later drinking myself retarded in effort to forget everything I’ve spent upto 15 hours writing up now. Sheeeeiiit.. what a night!

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