Transmission Live! @ TheEdinburgh Castle, Adelaide(31/10/08)

Tue 18th Nov, 2008 in Gig Reviews

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Adelaide has a long and proud history of serial killing. Ask anyone in the know and they’ll tell you. We put the “S” into laughter. We put the bodies in the barrels. We float them down stream with a smile. We’re the number one murder capital of the world! Forget our shiny collection of rocks, our export wines, our tired and old doddering down perfectly geometric city streets; we’re cleaning it up where it counts! We’re making a killing in all the right places! Adelaide. Radelaide. Deadelaide. The city of corpses. Who could forget the vicious slaughter of Mary Olive Hattam back in 1958, the disappearance of the three Beaumont children in 1966 (still unsolved to this day), the Bartholomew family murders of 1971 (ten victims in total), the murder of university law lecturer George Duncan in 1972 (drowned in the River Torrens), the Adelaide Oval abductions of 1973 (two victims in total), the Truro killings of 1976-1977 (seven victims in total), the high society Family Murders of 1979- 1983 (five victims), the letter bombing of the National Crime Authority in 1994, the Snowtown “body in the barrel” massacres of 1995-1999 (eleven victims) and who knows how much untold malarky in between and since. Adelaide, why hide it? hold your heads up high, expose those jugular veins to the light and let the “red wine” fly! No wonder this is such an awesome place to live in: when every day feels like it could be our last, you live your life to the fullest!

Some of us may begin to wonder how we got to be so lucky, and far from it for ME to look a gift horse in the mouth but I may have a few theories to explain it. Adelaide is a quiet city. A city of the middling classes, the bourgeouisie. The only colony in Australia to be settled by free settlers back in 1836. Well mannered, friendly, articulate, university educated, staunchly conservative we keep to ourselves. We love the theatre, cafes, restaurants and a slight sea breeze in the afternoon. We’re peaceful neighbourhoods filled with smiling faces as far as the eye can see. Or in other words we’re just the sort of eye-witness description the evening news gives us anytime another one is hauled past those cameras, head shrouded, arms shackled to meet their fate: “he was such a nice, quiet man, never any bother!”. Oh sure that’s what they ALL say about Adelaide! It’s why Melbourne and Sydney always give us those wary looks whenever we slip across their borders: nostrils flared to the smell, they sense the danger downwind, they can taste the terror, they know we’re a trouble brewing year by year and we’re long overdue!

You may doubt me still, you may think I’m lying, but I’m out there every weekend, I see them under the cover of darkness. Wild staring eyes, lecherous grins, mismatched shoes, scruffingly unbuttoned, corduroy and cardigan, knuckles hairclad and dragging the pavement, picking up guitars, forming bands. Introverted, autistic, artistic, all pent up with crazy urges to express. Shoegazing, psychedelic, under the influence of curious pills, potted plant and fungal growths. They work your odd jobs, they struggle to get by: washing dishes, sweeping floors, working their hands to the bone and red raw. Nimble fingered, fueled by aggression, handy with an axe. They’ll do anything, just about ANYTHING to make a statement. They’re carving a path. They’re the way of the future. Soon the rest of the nation will hear those dementing screams once more. They’ll see us coming. The entire world will know our names. From the most unlikely of places we will trace their ancestry right back to this point. Here at the Ed Castle it begins anew!

Mad Shapes

Far from it for me to leap to insane conclusions but tonight’s murderous rampage doesn’t just begin and end with a half cocked opening monologue. Take our opening act for instance. You may not recognise the name. You may not yet have been caught up in the wake of their razor sharp beats, giddy gallow grooves and skeleton keys but you may recognise their lead singer from some of the wackiest and weirdest of Hollywood’s freak fringe. In Adelaide he’s known simply as Shane “Shep” Shepherd, friendly neighbourhood minstrel from the Mad Shapes, mid 20’s, handy with a guitar but do not be fooled! this is nothing but an alias! “Shane” is in actual fact none other than infamous 80’s actor Crispin Glover. Most known for his role as Michael J Fox’s dweebish dad in the Back To The Future trilogy, lesser known as the “Smack My Bitch Up” villain from Charlie’s Angels with the hair sniffing fetish, early inspiration to the signature look employed by Carlos D (the world’s creepiest bass player) from New York band Interpol, and if you dig even deeper, you’ll discover some of the most disturbingly mindfucked shit that’ll you’ll ever hope to find. And that’s only the half of it. Joining him stage left is their bass player Benny Green: is he Billy The Kidd? Midnight Cowboy? a Village People reject? whoever the hell it is it’s hard to say but I’m hoarding my duct tape and anti-terrorism fridge magnets just in case. And how could we forget their keyboardist stage right. She’s brand new. She’s Lucy Watson. The sweetest damn girl you’ll ever hope to see, beaming with smiles, cute-as-a-button in her wacky little bat outfit, like all her xmases have come at once and secretly responsible for killing off a littany of drummers who would’ve otherwise taken her place (she drinks from their skulls don’t you know!). I dunno whether to fall in love or call the cops. Fuck! They’re a triumvirate of pure evil if ever I saw one and they’re our opening act tonight? Duuuuude let’s face it, it’s already over. I can see the headlines. I’m reading them now in the morning papers. None of us are getting out of here alive!

Mad Shapes. To the chosen few still naive enough to believe they’re nothing but a “live band”; they’re not one to disappoint. They’re the perfect opening act to the apocalypse. They’re the perfect party band. So ideal in fact you could easily imagine them playing the room to an American highschool cliche. I can see it now: parents leave their kids to run amok for the weekend, spiked drinks in plastic red cups, geek meets girl, geek loses girl, geek finds girl slow dancing with the quarterback, geek wins girl to the end, all to soundtrack of this band whilst John Hughes directs. Mad Shapes. They’re the sound of Devo, Datarock, Does It Offend You Yeah? and Hot Chip. They’re a band jam packed with party kitch synths, pogo stick beats, goofy grin guitars, tetris block rocking bass and sing-a-long glee. They’re a band so damn dorky they pull of a cover of Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” that actually manages to OUT 80’s the original. They also have a song called “Halloween” and even more insane, they have their entire EP online to download free. This is their second to last gig before they break up. I’ve only just got here. Damn, what a buzz!

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Fire! Santa Rosa Fire!

For being all kinds of confused is usually the best place to be for our second act. A swift blow to the head, a few too many funny tic-tacs, running with scissors, sniffing glue, starting fires, make believe, doctors and nurses and dress ups; whatever it takes short of a frontal lobe lobotomy to get yourself in the mood is all the better for THIS band. Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! They’re proof to every horror movie cliche that it is always the most childlike among us, standing in duplicate down hallways pointing, wearing white wigs and beaming red eyes, born with funny birthmarks that no way resemble lighting strikes (or Macaulay Culkin) who grow up to become the hellspawn of Satan. And they sure as fuck have come out of their respective closets to glorious dysfunction tonight. It’s their lead singer Caitlin dressed like Princess Leia possessed by the Bride Of Dracula, it’s their guitarist Dave dressed as Teenwolf (complete with a bad-taste standup comedy routine involving Michael J Fox, a fist fight and a bad bout of Parkinson’s disease). It’s Josh on bass doing his very best impersonation of Harrison Ford’s next to nonexistent 00’s film career pre “Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull”. It’s Sam dissolving into the inky blackness on drums as the Wicked Witch Of The West. It’s Andrew doing his very best impersonation of the Invisible Man (so much so that I forgot he wasn’t even HERE tonight). And it’s the unspeakable horror that is Art on the synths that makes me want to curl up into a little ball in the corner and cry myself hysterically till the image of him hissing like an effeminate feline in a tiny masquarade mask fades from memory (wait.. wasn’t he in a scene from Eyes Wide Shut?). They’re an unspeakable horror in everything but the sentences I’ve already spoken. They’re Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! If anyone feeds them after midnight and they get anywhere near a swimming pool, duuuude we’re ALL fucked!

Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! Lazy references have been made comparing them to many other bands in the past. They’ve been fiendishingly accomplished in shifting the blame to all manner of dizzying influences that way. From the heedy humminbird sounds of The Rapture, The Klaxons, The Moving Units (and my strobe light enduced migraine) in their formative years to the ecclectic hippy collision of LCD Soundsystem, Broken Social Scene and Architecture In Helsinki in their more recent iterations. They’re passing them all, they’re pissing all over their graves, they’re doppler shifting in every dizzying swirls of mixed up sounds and fluorescent colours. So much so it’s hard to say WHAT the fuck they sound like now, except to say they sound like Fire! Santa Rosa Fire!, which all things considered (and all weird side effects ignored) is a pretty sweet place to be. Rumours are they’ve just been signed to Dot Dash Recordings (home to Wolf & Cub and Snowman amongst others), their newest “single” War Coward is hitting high rotation on Triple J, they’re set to unleash their candy sounds from coast to coast, I fear for all our mortal souls! This in following is just but a taste of what’s to come: get your insulin injections in advance, this shit’s about to get messy!

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Young & Restless

Some of you out there reading this right now may yet to be initiated into the ways of the Young And Restless. You’re easy to spot in a crowd. You’re the poor bastards who DON’T stick out like a sore thumb: able bodied, clear headed, 20/20 vision, designer labels, able to walk a straight line without collapsing drunk. Standing tall, able to calculate simple sums and subtractions without mourning the missing of long since amputated fingers and toes. You’re the pillars of society, captains of industry, well paying jobs, stern, resolute and humourless, most likely to succeed in being an utter pain in the arse to every single one of us out here in this crowd tonight. You’re an odd couple in everything that doesn’t make you “odd”; and WE are your seething mass, your underbelly. You’ll see us all around you, hiding in the shadows, hiding in plain sight with darting eyes, swinging fists and shambling gaits. We outnumber you ten to one. We’re all out to get you. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Join us now and maybe we’ll do our very best not to enact our simple revenge on you in this screaming monkey pit rather like a blood and bone dishwasher. Maybe you’ll get out of this shit alive. Maybe you’ll tell others what you have seen tonight. Maybe they’ll even begin to believe you. This is war. This is chaos. This is death. This is your funtime happy hour of doom. This is the Young And Restless: if it’s your first night, you HAVE to fight!

For want of better words that don’t involve your lungs being pulled through your throat, blown up like a party balloon and kicked around the room or a while: Young And Restless are about as subtle as Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs fucking a chainsaw. They’re also the sound of her loving every damn minute of it in ways that Quentin Tarantino never quite imagined with a backing band of The Ramones being cheese grated by Neo and Trinity like the “bank vault” scene from the first Matrix movie. Oh yes! I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours, I bet some of you are even passing around those dusty video cassettes from garage to garage sale; but witnessing this live and in the black and blue is an altogether different beast. It’s a smashing avalanche of meat and sweat grinding your kneecaps to paste against stage and foldbacks. It’s a white clad kittycat torpedo known as Karina Utomo shooting over that crowd, disappearing below the horizon, only to be spat back up again and onto the stage. It’s wave after wave of machine gun cannon fodder being splattered well into the next room, riddled with holes big enough to put a fist through, spitting teeth and coming back for more. And it’s us loving every damn minute of it along the way.

It’s also me documenting it all from the front lines like a fresh cow carcass dropped into the Amazon. I know, you’d think I would’ve learnt my lesson by now! I’m well aware that I lost a camera two weeks ago under similiar circumstances and at this rate I’d be looking to lose an arm along with my fifth replacement tonight. Still, it would’ve been the best damn $370 dollars I ever spent and me getting someone else to tie my shoelaces from here onwards for all I care, for nothing quite beats the B12 shot to the spine that bands like these give you every damn time! Oops, and there she goes again! damn feet kicking and flailing inches from my face. Remind me again how I’ve not killed myself retarded again and again covering this shit for you people!? Oh that’s right, there’s really nowhere else I’d ever wanna be than right here! FUCK YEAH!!

We fought the good fight. I saw others out there: armed with photo and video, lens aimed square and pink eyed only to be ground out like paste to the surging storm behind them. It truly IS the stupidest place you’d ever want to be with a camera but you know your risks; you live for nights like these. As for any clear recollection on anything else that was their set tonight? I remember Nugie on drums, Ross on bass and Josh on guitar opening the night with a slow Metallica death grind with “mullets” flailing. I remember: “Satan”, “Police! Police!”, “Dirty Kicks”, I remember some new ones just as brutal, if more skeletal. I remember capturing “No Vibe, No Strobe” (you can see Karina flying out into the beyond only to come crashing onto my head a third of the way in). I remember little else. Fuck! what an awesome rollercoaster ride; let’s do this shit again!

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