There’s a common misconception passing as “science” that claims we use only 5-10% of our brains. Whoever came up with that “fact” is clearly an optimist. I’ll wager 90-95% of us use even less than that, less often than we’d like to admit, maybe 5-10% of the time at most. We think we’re smart, we could be smart, we’ve come up with some amazing ideas but we ain’t smart, we’re asleep at the wheel and any minute now some other evolutionary upstart is going to discover we’ve been “shining it on” all this time and we’re going to be eaten. You may laugh now but it happened to the Neanderthals and it will happen to us. Look around you: we’ve have a long and proud history of punishing the brain. We’ve done everything in our power to discourage it. We’ve created Gods, Kings and Queens to do all our thinking for us. We’ve “elected” high officials who disregard it entirely. They create the rules, regulations and fiery retribution against anyone who dares engage it. They define and redefine the definition of “normal” in effort to restrict it. They plot it on a curve. They medicate it right out of our system. They create the daily routine. We love our daily routine. We’re just like everyone else. We all have our roles to play. We’re in the groove. We’re all on autopilot. We’re just like Pavlov’s dog: that bell rings and we salivate to serve even if we forget the real reason why we’re here in the first place. You’ll see it all around you as they plod along down well worn paths. You’ll see it in the mirror reflected right back at you: all cow eyed and sheepish grins, the end product of 3.5 billion years of evolution. We’re the very definition of insanity doing the same shit over and over and expecting different results. Stand tall and be counted each and every one of you, we’re shining examples of the human race!
This is not to say I ever think for a moment that I’m any smarter than the rest of you dribbling dimwits. Far from it, I’m as stupid as they come, I sleepwalk through life just like the rest of you and it trips me up again and again. Take Rocket Bar for instance. Over the years I’ve observed one simple and unassailable fact: nothing here EVER runs on time. Simple I know, yet for all of my “genius” I’ve never figured a consistent workaround for it. I used to turn up at nine and they would leave me hanging till ten. So I’d turn up at ten, and they’d leave me hanging till eleven. I’d twiddle my fingers, curse and swear, then I’d wisen up to it and turn up at ten thirty only to realise NOW I’ve turned up much too late. We do this dance everytime I’m here and it’s done it to me yet again tonight. I know I could just as simply blame Rocket Bar for all this nonsense (just like the time they decided to schedule MTV Kickstart for “doors at seven”, only to leave us hanging till eight thirty instead.. ack!) but no clearly it’s all me, I should be smarter than this! here I am running up these stairs in a mad panic, here I am outwitted AGAIN to the closing refrains of our opening act!? Damn you teeny tiny peanut brain.. DAAAMN YOU TO HELL!!
Mona Lisa Overdrive
I should be more observant, I should be more aware of my surroundings, the very survival of our species may very well depend on shit like this! Yet here I am rushing headlong up those stairs to catch the last five minutes of Mona Lisa Overdrive: a band I’ve seen a million times before this year!? “pfft I’m such an idiot!”. With a sigh of relief I switch my brain off. Sheeeeiiit! I could write this review in my sleep! Even better I could simply plagiarise it wholesale: words, sentences, paragraphs, photos and videos from the seven OTHER reviews I’ve already written (with a few choice words thrown in from that review I did on UK Special back in January too) and none of you monkeys would be any the wiser! I’m laughing at how clever I am, punching these buttons on my camera, going through the motions, phoning it in, and then it hits me: “what the FUCK is Jess their keyboardist doing on the drums!?” WHOOAAA!!! It’s only then that I realise the full scope of it. They’ve switched it up on me, they’ve pulled the rug from under my feet, I’ve been outsmarted again and it took me two whole minutes to realise the error of my ways!? Shit! In any other arena of battle this kind of lapse in judgement would’ve had me smeared all over the curb like a Jackson Pollack exit stage right, but at least rock photography (for the most part) is a little more forgiving. I’m told they pulled this stunt for two or three songs. I’m now arriving at the end of it. It sounds like The Beatles “White Album” spun in reverse, Alex shredding a reed thin sound on his guitar like a sitar, whilst the rest of the band play on like Martin Sheen from Apocalypse Now going up shit creek without a paddle. I half imagine him chanting “Paul is dead, Paul is dead” as five thousand years of accumilated history unravels around us like an imploding house of bricks. I’m standing with my monkey brethren at the start of it all. The black monolith rises from the horizon. I’ve been asleep all this time. It’s all becoming so clear. It’s a quest for fire. I can see it all!
Of course no journey “up the river” is ever without casualty. Jimi Hendrix sacrificed his guitar, John Lennon sacrificed his life, Syd Barret sacrificed his brain (I sure as fuck have lost most of mine) and tonight Mona Lisa Overdrive sacrificed a guitar amp. Again I was too late to heed the warning. Here I was still taking photos of the band, still dumbfounded to their maddening dysfunction when a friend yells into my ear: “I think I smell something electrical burning!!”. Of course it was much too loud and I completely misread what she was trying to tell me. All I could hear was “I think they sound like Electrical Bernie!!”. I half imagine a spaced out hippy in a purple dinosaur outfit, large psychedelic block letters, pressed onto vinyl, collecting dust at a garage sale next to that Star Wars disco record for $2.50. I ask her to repeat it, still no wiser and then the smell hits me..
This was their guitar amp (aka: “Electrical Bernie”) over 41 years of age going up in smoke moments after their last song, this is me cursing all my dumb luck for arriving much too late to this party (and yet arriving just in time to capture the best bit) and this is Mona Lisa Overdrive very much living up to their namesake at the end of it all. Fuuuuck! I no longer doubt their mastery in the dark arts. These freak geniuses of unknown species (or genus) are not of this earth, they’ve come from outer space! I breathe in those fumes, I breathe deep all that history and my mind lights up like a xmas tree in their passing. Whoaaaa! there is no turning back now. We’re opening new doorways of perception. We’re tuning into new frequencies. We’re unlocking single, double nay triple digits of arcane alien intelligence. Who knows what madness we will unleash!?
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Sly Hats
Which is just the kind of mad trip you’ll experience after living through our follow up act. Some take peyote to get here, some drop acid, some boil up some “funny” fungus they find growing under the sofa cushions, others may simply slip all three ingredients into a dime bag and sneak it inside of a guitar amp back in the 1960’s so the cops won’t find it (only for it to be let loose like a demon spirit on an unsuspecting rock photojournalist late 2008.. whoooaaaa!!); either way it’s a well documented phenomenon. Lose one of your senses, lose three or more, circle the drain deep into a dribbling delerium and what little remains at the bottom of that tea cup will surely make your mind explode all around you when you stop to think about it. Sly Hats. They’re the proof to the fortune cookie wisdom that claims the whole is much more dangerous than the sum of its parts. Look past the bespectacled stick insect on the guitar: one Kamerah “Hats” Darling shrinking away from the light, channeling all the nervous nerd energy of McLovin, DJ Qualls, Rick Moranis and Stephen Hawking combined. Look past his ever so captivating (yet equally nervous) female companion on the cello, her coy glances through smoke lit eyes, how she’s clad in black velvet like Emma Peel from The Avengers, how she’s not even there at all. Look past all their awkward silences, look past their backing tracks numbered one through to four, look past it all, tune it all out, and your ears will fill and your heart will drown with the most potent of black and blue despair. It’s the sweetest thing. It’s the saddest thing. It’s the beginning and the very end of it all!
Sly Hats. They’re just like Pandora’s Box: ever so tiny, yet ever so lethal with a littany of dread. They’re the sound of dappled guitar, downtrodden, drowned in the thickest of reverb, plunged deep into the very heart of hell. They’re the sound of cello strings slow slicing the vein, the swing of the rope, the drop of the chair. They’re the sound of heartbreak and that feeling still lingering that you could never hope to win back. You’ll want for nothing more than to wallow here for days, you’ll want for all your days to be blacker than night, you’ll want for nothing more than for these two lost souls to echo and amplify your endless oceans of woe right back at you. Awesome! So subtle, so simple, so damn near terrifying: Sly Hats. It’s in the way that Kamerah sings ever so falteringly behind his mic, his thin mousey lisp drawing ever shallower lung fulls of air. It’s in his partner and how she cowers from the light like she barely has the strength to continue. It’s Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison in the body of Woody Allen. It’s Beth Gibbons from Portishead starved of air. It’s Meg from The White Stripes doing “In The Cold Cold Night”. It’s Thom Yorke’s skeleton giving up the ghost time one last time. They’re a backing track ticking like a doomsday clock, they’re counting down the hours and it’s me never wanting to leave. Wow, this is some seriously fucked up maudlin shit but fuck me I can’t get enough of it! Sly Hats, they quite simply killed us all!
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Clue To Kalo
And then just when we’re well and truly lost howling in the corner, our minds working overtime to the sudden burst of white noise, weighed down by a million and one thoughts all exploding from none and all of it pointing to the end of the world: the clouds break and up comes a chorus of muppets singing as one. A sound that could be none other than the whacked out hippy swansong of our headlining act bringing us home. Clue To Kalo. Yup, when all else has been let loose to unleash chaos upon the world, they’re the one happy thought that remains. They’re the one teeny tiny voice within us all that says everything will be alright. Sure we’ve been laughing at it all this time. Sure we’ve been laughing at it in disbelief. But it’s always been there, ever since the 60’s. Clue To Kalo. They’re the space cadet sounds of Simon And Garfunkel. They’re the sunshine pop of The Mamas And The Papas. They’re the tie dyed, fancy free and cheese cloth insanity of Woodstock and the summer of love. They’re the sounds of you skipping barefoot through open fields of green moments before the riot police drop the tear gas and let loose the dogs. They’re a fine line between genius and insanity. And they’re you absolutely giddy, goofy and oblivious to it all, stuffing a flower into their service revolver, painting a giant daisy on a combivan and rediscovering your inner child. I understand it’s fucking crazy, I realise it’s the last thing you’d ever think of but when all else fails, perhaps this shit truly IS the best solution we have!
Granted I’m rarely one to believe in such cheerful nonsense. They’ve always had a hard task convincing me before but something about tonight’s set brings it all into clarity like never before. I’m nodding my head, I’m tripping along, I’m dull cow eyed, sheepish grin and yet I’m in a totally different place, my mind’s ablaze, everything looks the same but it suddenly all makes sense! To any outside observer I realise it still looks like an utter impossibility. Most genius is. It’s barely held together by Mark Mitchell on leads, all nervous stammerings and clumsy grins. It’s aided by Curtis (playing his second to last show tonight, as alas the team of 12 puppeteers who animate him every night have since lost their jobs just like everyone else in the Bush administration) as he captivates us all with an oversized beard, fumbling away on an ever shrinking array of ill fitting guitars, flutes and mandolins. It’s Ellen Carey, all squeaky childlike innocence and twee keys, looking so artschool aloof she’s not even there. And it’s Alan, all spider limbed adolescence (I’m told he may finally be celebrating his 13th birthday tonight.. yippee!) keeping it loosely on time on the drums. Yet tonight may very well be the most coherent set I’ve ever heard them play! It’s freaky. It’s like an octopus. The “brain” rarely knows what the limbs are doing but when you see the whole picture and all the colours start dancing around you, it truly IS a wonder to behold!
But don’t just take my word for it! (or hysterical lack of it) take one look at our crowd tonight and their wall to wall wide eyes, beaming smiles and giddy handclaps (cunningly disguised as stone-cold poker faced ambivalence in a way that only Rocket Bar can ever achieve) and it well and truly says it all! Take this gleeful gimp for instance: he was there right in the thick of it all night and he spent next to the entirety of their set on cloud nine loving it on up! Look at him flapping his arms and mincing about, swinging wildly between lemon face, psychotic breakdown and jazz fingers. Right here is what Clue To Kalo is all about! Doesn’t it make you wish you were right here with him!? (or quite possibly hiding off in the distance with a tranquiliser gun?) YES!
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