Bereft of all our wealth and our wits, we as a species are pretty much fucked. You know it, we all know it, we’ve known it since birth: small, pink and innocent, screaming into the abyss. It’s in our biology: we have no poison, claws, fangs, horns, spines or armor plating; we have no natural known defences. We succumb so easily to disease, injury, old age; we can never run fast enough. We dream about it nightly: naked and unknowing, exposed to the elements, cowering in the corner while everyone around us laughs. We are alone. We are afraid. We are powerless. We are shaved apes shot into space exploding out into the infinite. Still all is not lost, we all have our means to survive and thrive, and by the time that we’re adults most of us will have become experts at hiding our weaknesses. It’s what we do best. We accumilate an arsenal, we build walls within walls, we become specialists, scientists, artists, architects and assassins at it. We form groups, cliques and strict codes of conduct; we alienate all opposition. We wield knowledge, power, social status, a well stocked wardrobe, weapons of mass destruction and words mightier than swords. We are onions: peel us at your peril, it’ll only make you cry. For me it’s my sense of humour attacking all others with glee and deflecting you from the laughing stock I’ve become. It’s the mad faces I pull on camera. It’s my mad persona, my pseudonym, my predilection for fiction projecting you far away from my increasingly fragile sanity. It’s me writing paragraph upon paragraph of such beguiling gibberish right here and now that you’ll soon forget I’m more than one hundred episodes in and I’ve simply ran out of things to say. We’re all guilty in our own way. It’s our small measure of control against a world grown increasingly chaotic: reality by deception, lies within lies, dog eat dog, defamation, defaecation and territorial pissings. Sometimes I wish I could do away with it all, shed my shell and float as nothing but pure energy but we all make do with what we can..
And it’s through these very same fears that scenster haunts like these will surely mock you. You all know them, every city has one, we all loath them just as surely as we wish we were a part of them: it’s Rocket Bar on a Friday night! Its featureless black walls and teeny tiny sign will greet you, followed by a girl with a clipboard, a bouncer and a needlessly long line. You will be weighed and found wanting but somehow they’ll let you in anyways (just this once). You’ll feel that no matter how many times, even if you’ve gotten your name on the door, that your entry is still conditional. Bowing and scraping you’ll ascend those three flights of stairs into a room purpose built for self loathing as much as it’s there to entertain. You don’t belong here. You wear the wrong clothes, listen to the wrong music and don’t nearly possess the fine androgynous bone structure that distinguishes you from the “master race” now disowning you with nothing but a cursory glance. Impossibly indie, fashionista, art nazi, A-list sycophants, it’s all the above. You’ll bullshit your way through regardless. It’s just like highschool. It’s the years you’ve spent building those high walls around you pulled right under you like a rug. You’re better than all this, you’re laughing it off all the same but deep down inside of you it still bugs the crap out of you.. baaastards!
Admittingly this feeling isn’t always so pronounced, most of it’s just in our heads and after a few too many beers it’s all but forgotten. We have our differences and our many disagreements but there’s so much to love about Rocket Bar: the stage, the lights, the sound, the comfy couches, the touring acts they attract (all second to none), that cute chick behind the bar they just hired who’s way too ridiculously happy to be there (fuck she’s awesome.. someone give her a raise!) all these things make me smile. I keep coming back for nothing less, just like I’ve come back tonight expecting more of the same. It’s an abusive relationship I know but it works. Tonight however they’re really out to get me, they’re out for blood. I can feel it: the paranoia, the self doubt, the numbers stacked against me, the way my skin crawls and screams for me to flee before it’s too late. This is what Rocket Bar does best, this is me wishing I was never born, and as much as I pride myself in the fiendish efficiency in which I dispatch my unwitting victims each week and splatter them all over this page: this one truly has me on edge and cursing the worst..
For tonight Rocket Bar, worshipping upon the almighty altar this is Modular (that which has sustained so much of their alienating über chic all this time), have summoned a once-in-a-lifetime touring act for us in a venue oh-so-small. One with which to blind and amaze us for their Friday night of “Abracadabra” and make us feel oh so unworthy. You know her from her work with with Pnau and Teenager. Triple J’s been enslaved and enthralled by her all year long. NME recently announced her as the sixth coolest person on the planet in 2008. They build them up, they reel me in hook, line and sinker; and I do my utmost to take the fuckers out. This is what Spoz’s Rant lives for. This is a trophy kill like no other. This is Rocket Bar removing all the tables, chairs and couches (clearly just to fuck with me) so they can exploit liquor licensing and fit another 60 people in. There is nowhere to run, there is nowhere to hide: oooh fuck is this shit gonna get ugly!
Still it could be much worse, as much as this venue’s packed to the ceiling full with people we’d happily stab in the back the minute the lights go out, we have it easy! Imagine being on stage, out in front, alone and outnumbered, and playing a tune to this crowd instead? FUUUCK! Imagine exposing yourself, your heart and your soul to every one of these fashion tragics judging your every move!? Imagine if you completely fucked it up out there? Imagine if that’s all they talk about the next day? (or worse still some dickhead goes and publishes a blog about it?). That white knuckled terror, followed by a thin yellow trickle, a small puddle and you dying a little inside? Imagine no more for tonight we’re about to witness it all as it unfolds before us! YEAAAS!
FEMME FATALES
Stage fright. Everyone has their own unique strategy to cope with it. A stiff drink, a pull of the bong, a few games on the Nintendo DS, or maybe just a quick piss on the bar at the Crown & Anchor (if recent rumours are to believed over what Dick Dale from Kamikaze got upto recently cough and no you didn’t hear it from me) but in the case of our opening act tonight they do one even better: they simply live in sweet denial of it! You can see them out there, flapping their arms about, glassy eyes, goofy grins, idiot savants lost in their own little world of boxes within boxes, nu-rave, thrashing factory presets, pulling shapes. They’re completely oblivious to what the crowd’s doing out there: “crowd? what crowd!?” which is rather apt as the crowd for the most part is completely oblivious to them too (oops!). Yup, this is the Femme Fatales giving their all and then simply vanishing without a trace (awesome dudes.. glad you could make it tonight!). At their best you’d hope to find this band anywhere else but here, twatted out of your skull at 3AM whilst a forest of glowsticks explodes around you with the volume turned way up. Here however they’ve truly got their work cut out for them. This crowd ain’t giving them an inch; which is a pity, as despite my long standing joke of calling them the “three point fives” (ie: for the score I always unvariably give them every other time I’ve seen them live: and it appears I gave them again tonight? YEAAS!) they’re actually starting to write some solid shit now. Dang.. whodathunkit!?
Femme Fatales. Ever since their inception there’s been no mistaking their signature sound. They’re a band of right angles, tetris blocks and screaming square notes into round holes. Think the Klaxons, Crystal Castles, Digitalism and Muscles. Or merely think of everything else that is awesome (and equally annoying) about nu-rave, french electro, aliens, Atlantean pyramids, mythical neon beasts shooting fire out of their nipples, you shouting “ZOMG WTF! LOLZ! LASER BEAMS!! LASER BEAMS!” aplenty as you punch fists through a wall and your brain wave activity dropping below that which would operate a single blinking diode. It’s also not too uncommon to find yourself waking up after one of their shows missing most of your teeth, glowing bright pink and green, shaved head to toe and halfway up a tree. Many of you familiar with Parklife or Future Music Festival can probably relate to all this shit (maybe there’s a group session they can all go to now?) or maybe you can’t relate to much of anything but thanks to the awesome power of their music you can now pick up the Cartoon Network through your wallpaper. Awesome. Still thankfully they’re also developing some added depth to their sound too. It wouldn’t go as far as to call it “maturity”, but it’s there all same, it’s a promising progression. You can hear it in the slow grooves, the low vocal, the loping breakbeats and a sound not too dissimilar to Fischerspooner, A Place To Bury Strangers and the spastic happy pants of Big Audio Dynamite: or better yet you can simply get it in this new song simply entitled “Boy”. Sure the crowd didn’t quite get it (I think maybe two clapped at the end) but it sure as fuck had me buzzing of it all the same!
THE TOUCH
Stage fright. There is that, then somewhere waaay off in the opposite end of the scale (doppler shifting well beyond that at which gamma radiation exists) there is THIS band. Their strategy is simple, as much as I suspect they have no strategy in the first place and they’re simply being hilarious dickheads out there. We’ve all seen it in action before. The US military calls it the “shock and awe” tactic. You go in there, you kill everything that moves, you declare instant victory and then you leave without actually proving anything. Which by any other definition I’d simply call the nine-inch-drillbit skullfucking you receive anytime The Waterslides play (and if you really need an example of THAT feel free to commit suicide here) or in other words they’re every reason why the invasion of Iraq was the most awesomely stupid thing ever (but damn was it fun to watch!). Yup, for those of you out there who have yet to be introduced, welcome to The Touch. They’re the band you love to hate. They’re the band you’d love even more to beat upside the head with the blunt end of a fire extinguisher, followed by you emptying a good portion of its contents, followed by you kicking them down those three flights of stairs laughing hysterically moments before their lifeless bodies roll out into the street and they get run over (end scene: best music video ever!). Unfortunately they’re also the band that quite simply can’t be killed (or at least not by using any of the methods as listed above). They are The Touch. They have no fear, they have NO shame and they’re everything you love about flamboyant metrosexuality with indie guitars thrashed at ridiculously fast BPMs whilst both of your eardrums get blown out by a screaming hoard of fangirls inches from your face. You’d rather be anywhere but here (until you realise for some insane, stupid reason, you apparently write blogs about this shit), you also begin to believe Japanese television would freaking LOVE them and yes we must do everything in our power to destroy them
The Touch. They’re the sounds of The Moving Units, Cut Off Your Hands, Bloc Party’s “Silent Alarm” at its most frenetic and something rather akin to Justin Timberlake strangling a chicken (try it home!). More often than that they’re also the all too distracting spectacle of five band members on a stage jumping about like dickheads doing audience participation handclaps and shouting a lot (and the less said about Josh’s spastic dance the better). I’d be hard pressed to call any of it “music” by any sane definition, which means I readily admit I must be missing the point somewhat (as I possess a Y chromosome) but for those of you in the audience who don’t (and are forming a rather effective “media blackout” out front) you’re likely going far too fucking batshit to this junk to care. Clearly they’re a popularity contest, they’re the worst kind of popularity contest and from the looks of it tonight they’re winning (even if they came third in The Advertiser’s “Scene Awards” last Thursday for “favourite local band”.. and yes I shudder to think what would have happened if they ever came first). And yet they never fail to make me piss myself laughing all the same. They’re a parody to the point of caricature. They well and truly belong on a live stage, most definitely THIS live stage: with both exits blocked off, the windows taped shut, the oxygen sucked out of the room till they’re floating in nothing but a vacuum moments before they explode innards all over the walls. And if that hasn’t made it clear enough, then there’s a good chance Josh in THIS video will show you just where to send those flaming projectiles. The Touch? Fuck I love this band!
And so here we are. The Touch have already spontaneously combusted on the stage behind me a good half hour ago. Even more mysteriously all that was left of them: their shoes and their smoke ashes rising from them, walked off all by their own. I suspect this won’t be the last we’ll see of them. Moments later I ducked off to pee, returning to this exact same spot near the stairs leading to the stage; and I haven’t moved an inch since. Everywhere I look, fashion nazis, indie illuminati and scenster girly girls are cramming the front of the stage with their tiny chihuahua boyfriends in tow (ie: small enough that they can fit in their handbags) and there’s no room to breathe, no room for error, one mistimed sneeze is all it’d take and someone’s ribcave is gonna go concave. I fucking hate camping out for headlining acts like this. I’ll be here for another half hour waiting impatiently as a dull ache starts screaming its way up my leg. I don’t belong here. I feel like an idiot. I stick out like a sore thumb. I seriously hope this shit’ll be worth it!
LADYHAWKE
Stage fright. Everyone has their own unique take on it, except for our headlining act who is well and truly redefiniting it to new and awkward extremes and shitting bricks to boot. This is Pip Brown, aka: Ladyhawke and you can tell the minute she hunches her shoulders up those stairs past me, skulks her way onto the live stage and measures up her microphone (only to break out in a cold sweat over the insane enormity of the task ahead of her) that she’d very much rather be anywhere but here, preferably in a dark corner, rocking back and forth in foetal position and howling. She then proceeds to clear her throat, mumbles out a quick hello to the crowd and finally the hardest part of her night is over. YES.. just ten more songs and she can finally get the fuck out of here! Now before I begin to spell out in painful detail just how much of a disaster this gig was (and how!) it bears pointing out just why we’re all here in the first place: Ladyhawke is a brilliant singer, songwriter and she’s produced some amazing shit; you could argue but you would lose. It’s true what they say. I’m not even into this shit and I can’t put it down (and I’m a little embarassed to admit that too!). I discovered her through that song she did with Pnau that I also couldn’t put down: “Embrace”. She truly has one of those voices. She’s reminds you of everything that is awesome about Stevie Nicks, Pat Benatar and Debbie Harry whilst simultaneously making you forget just how entirely dorky it is listening to ANY of that shit in the first place (I know!). On record she exudes the impossibly aloof. She pulls you in with those infectious skipping guitar and synth melodies, those new wave disco beats, that haunting cold as a ice singing voice. She represents everything awesome that names suggests (short of that weirdarse movie featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer). And yes as much as I’m here tonight because I heard all those whacky rumours too (and we all know I’d love nothing more but to relentlessly ridicule her for it) I’m also here for the unique experience of it. Being a music journalist (or a laughable excuse for one) is all about broadening one’s experience for shit just like this. It’s all about taking risks. We all have our comfort zones and I’m stepping well out of my own to witness her step well out of hers: it’s a fair trade and I hope in some weird way we’ll both get something out of it tonight..
Still for all our wishful thinking, she’s off to an awkward start. For being NME’s sixth coolest person on the planet she definitely cuts a strange figure live. With her dishevelled Farrah Fawcett mullet, her blackened eyelids, her teeth jutting out at weird angles, skinny jeans, boots and striped top she resembles more of what you’d more expect to come crawling out of Elizabeth Shopping Centre (or an open sewer) with a cigarette packet tucked under one sleeve than anyone you’d EVER expect to headline Rocket Bar to a crowd as tragically hipster as this one. You gotta admit, she’s a right royal scrubber of a bogan. Still, part of me absolutely loves the sweet irony and if only she’d own it loud and proud she could really shove it down their throats. She’d be just the kind of anti-establishment image this joint sorely needs short of a few molotov cocktails, followed by Iggy Pop pissing all over the stage and everyone screaming for cover; and I’d be right there cheering her on. Fuck the style, it’s all about the substance maaan! But alas she’s just so impossibly shy, she’s just so painful to watch. I can’t bear to look, yet I can’t bear to look away!? oh the agony!
For the most part however it’s still a serviceable performance. Although her delivery falls shy of the microphone, she’s spends most of the set standing there like a statue shitting herself, and you can tell she’s just “phoning it in” tonight; the three piece band around her still do an amazing job at holding her shit together. She says she’s happy to be there. She really doesn’t look like she’s happy to be there. She’ll constantly apologise for herself, wonders out loud why she needs to say anything between the songs at all; only to phone in the next song. Half the time you’ll think it’s awfully cute, the other you’ll wonder if she’ll ever last the distance. It’s hanging by a thread all set: the songs are there but just beyond our reach, the crowd’s loving every minute and singing along (and maybe I’m just getting a crap mix wedged up by the stairs here) but I’m still not quite getting it. It’s not really all that bad granted, but if it wasn’t for how good I remember the songs were on the album I’d probably be at the bar laughing it up instead of being smashed up in a corner here right now taking photos. This is Ladyhawke waaay out her depth and overexposed well before she was prepared for it. This is Modular pulling the wool over our eyes. This is me wincing at the awkward spectacle of it all and wondering just HOW she’ll make it out of here alive..
Still if you close your eyes and fill in all the gaps you might begin to enjoy this shit. As for all of you dying to know the setlist: it began with “Pro Suicide” and “Manipulation”, followed by “Dusk Till Dawn” (as captured on video below), then “Magic”, “Runaway”, “Love Don’t Live”, “Back Of The Van”, “Paris Is Burning” (which I also captured on video but I missed the first few seconds.. damnit!), “Daddy + Jenny” and finally “My Delerium” which was probably her most spirited performance yet as she was probably just happy for it all to be over. For the most part it was JUST like the album (only infinitely more shakey in its delivery) and short of the “trophy kill” it provided for ME (200th artist featured for this year.. YES!) I was still kinda regretting spending all of $30 to see this shit instead of Mammal, Poetikool Justice and Jika across the road at Enigma Bar (dang!) if not for all the awesome photos I was getting: but hey such is the price I pay for taking the insane risk. Ladyhawke is definitely better suited as a studio project rather than on a stage but who knows, maybe give her time to acclimatise and she may actually begin to like it out here; who knows!? never underestimate the power of recreational drugs to really let that freak flag fly!
