RIDE / CALIGULA — Berlin, Monday 13/7
Lots and lots of people made it to the gig — the tickets completely sold out. This was the place to be seen and a chance for the Perth indie-populace to prove that they were real indie-poppers. (I always thought ‘goth’ was a better word — ed.) If you didn’t make it, you aren’t a real one. There were lots of stripy shirts and long hair and, for the real fans, Ride T-shirts.
Sydney band Caligula were first up, and they were crap! They were trying to be a fusion of indie-pop, metal and funk — which shouldn’t be too hard — but they failed dismally.
Ride were not necessarily ‘live’. Well, maybe for one song they were. Going to the Ride concert was like listening to one of their records or hearing one played at a nightclub. Nothing specky. But Ride must have been good for some people — they even influenced a friend of mine’s girlfriend to change from being a goth and think indie-pop was GOD. (No, this just means she’s caught up — ed.) She started by dumping him that night, five minutes after they got there, and going off with a young and dready indie-popper. Too bad — I guess he didn’t have the right amount of stripes on his T-shirt. I even saw young indie-poppers stage-diving, slam-dancing and pogoing. Plus, two young girls got up on stage to kiss Mark from Ride and then got thrown out. Danny had fancied her and was deeply disappointed when she got up and threw herself at this young boy.
The Rainyard and their groupies were right down in the front rows ... they were probably there to pay their copyright dues.
Ride played two encores. I admit I was surprised when they played the second ... but they’d stopped early. But a good time was had by all ... the indie-poppers.
I’m glad I didn’t pay to get in — I’d never be able to live it down. It would ruin my street cred.
Tank Rat.
(Ross Chisholm paid to get in — what does this do to his cred? ... And can you imagine him as a UK-indie-popper? I can’t — ed.)
CELIBATE RIFLES / THROMBUS / HOGFODDER — Berlin, Friday 10/4/92
Finally got PF#18 to the printer today and decided to go out and celebrate. A coin toss led me to the Rifles (I refuse to call them the Cellies) at the Berlin over Club Hoy at the Melbourne. I’m told the latter were great and the show was fun for all.
I, however, was at the Berlin, and — not having gone to a show here for nearly five years — had forgotten about the, ah, timing of club shows, and arrived at 9:30, hideously early ... an hour and a half of boredom waiting for the first band, at one of those shows where there are hundreds of people present and I know and want to know about eight of them — one of whom worked here and five of whom were playing. It’s the JJJ metal constituency, more or less; you’re entirely welcome to ’em. The boredom was alleviated only by a few minutes’ chit-chat, in the course of which I learnt that a dear friend of mine has taken up smack as a recreational pastime. That really set the cheerful tone for the night.
Hogfodder eventually started. The songs are very basic and they’re very young as a band (if not as individuals ... by a long shot), but further development will happen. Alan needs to relax more ... maybe move at half the speed.
Thrombus are a pop band, not anything else — thrashier and cleaner than last I saw them and lots of fun. They’re good light entertainment ... they’re not out to revolutionise the face of music.
The Celibate Rifles were my personal bright spot. In fact, they blew away the dull grey atmosphere and blew the place up and out completely. They were about one hundred and ten percent on what they were like at the Ozone last year, and they were no slouches then. The Rifles’ records haven’t radicalised my existence lately, but the live show is so unbelievably sharply focused and powerful ... This made the night worth it. I even stage-dove for the first time ever. Hooray. I was near falling asleep near the end (around two o’clock? too late for rock’n’roll ...), but that’s not important.
Got home and discovered the cat had been locked inside and had crapped in the bathroom. That was really the cherry on top of tonight. Must toss coins more carefully in future.
HABITUÉS LAUNCH: YUMMY FUR / THE ELF KING — Beat Room, Saturday 18/4/92
I missed the Rainyard and both Bob’s and the Hunkpapas have been in enough times for the moment; both were just fine. The other two bands need a bit of notice right now, however.
Yummy Fur have the makings of a youth-cult phenomenon. There are six of them, they are very young ... I could reel off twenty or thirty names that occurred to me, but all that would show was that I’d heard those records too. The sound is a sort of ’90-’92 alternative pop mish-mash, tho’ it’s becoming much more individual and defined in the months since this show. They appear to bash together fragments so small as not to be worth tracing, bash it out and not worry too much about what they’re doing ... being precious can come later, there’s music to be done in the meantime. Check ’em out and get the tape — it’s actually better than the live band.
The Elf King do not impress me. Mark One is wild about ’em, in which case I suspect brain damage. The primary comparison is Rick Wakeman. I speak with precision here. Bad theatrical prog-rock. No two ways about it, this is the music of the enemy. Nonetheless, it doesn’t quite warrant the PF Jihad Ray™, despite such being standard in these cases; the Lame Gun is quite adequate. They take Rick Wakeman, bits of early Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and a polka band, focus it through a Nina Hagen album (someone in that band owns and loves at least two Nina Hagen albums. Don’t ask me why anyone would ever need more than one Nina Hagen album, or even that one) and if you played the result of that on a Casiotone you’d have a fair approximation of the sound.
This makes them sound more awful than they were. They’re about one level above hopeless. I’m sure they’re lovely people and all, though I wonder about their dancing friends and the way the latter flail about — people just don’t dance that badly in public ... not after the third or fourth time they’ve done so. Perth does not need this music.
MUSTANG! / VACSONICUUM / BOTTICELLI’S ANGEL / PANEL VAN / SPICY BABY TOMATOES — Beat Room, Monday 20/4/92
The white sheet was finally pulled over the face of Hardcore Punk for the last time in late 1991 (vanilla HC — its more flavoured descendants live on and even somewhat prosper); what this means in practice is that bands whose music descends therefrom ((a) the sub-poppers; (b) the funk-metallers) no longer need actively acknowledge or even realise that part of their music’s ancestry, despite it still being a large chunk. They can run on the next stage alone for their own influences. (Doesn’t mean they’ll do it well, but it can be done.)
Thus, accusations of Red Hot Faith No Chili directed at funk-metallers are generally accurate. And simply saying “Sub-Poop” is both sufficient and accurate for bands like tonight’s, and especially for their fans, who do indeed constitute a large chunk of the scene (per se). The effects of the Sub-Pop thingy of five years ago have finally spread, like ripples in a paddling pool, as far as the stages of Perth. Me, I will never own a check-flannel shirt, dread my hair or grow one of those putrid little Sump-Pump* goatees. I hope you feel the same.
These fans are also about the most unresponsive goddamn sub-scene I’ve ever encountered; willing en masse to give a band a response of total silence. Neither applause nor catcalls. Even when the sump-pumpers are pumping their worst, spurting old, greasy black slime desperately in need of a 100,000 mile change out the PA (in the mistaken belief that this constitutes an increase in life and virulence — c.f. ‘murk’ last issue — rather than plain old mechanical wear), they have rarely warranted a response this bad.
And did the Spicy Baby Tomatoes get a bad response; entirely undeserved, I might add. I am informed (forget where) that they have some pure-blood HC in ’em, or did last year or so. Tonight they started with not a goddamn droplet of applause (except me) until they shifted from the good rockin’ stuff to something more straight HC-ish. As the band said, “I’d buy that for a dollar.” Started (Danny says) with “Good Times” by Nobody’s Children (old garage classic), which shows a decent education. What else ... caught a couple of Rollins vocal mannerisms, though it may have been an illusion.
The Spicy Baby Tomatoes have a good grasp of what’s possible after HC and, I’d say, have a fair bit on the ball. The music includes a notable degree of standard vanilla HC (d. 1991, after a long senility), but has a lot more flavour to it; they’re good cooks and I’d keep an eye on ’em for sure.
Panel Van don’t do anything new, but they have a good slant on the old shit. As Danny says, “I like a band that starts off with a bit of a boogie.” The base is early ’70s heavy metal (the first few years after the invention of HM) with a slant relevant to the ’90s. There’s a fair bit of HC in the ’70s mix, but it remains a decent historical reading. There was indeed fine music in those dark days, and tonight.
Must mention the stage diver, who was really entertaining until Tuggy led him off — the time he flung himself off the stage directly to a CRASH on the (at all times empty) floor being particularly inspiring and drawing a good crowd response. (The crowd had woken up by this time.) Even Panel Van’s cover of “In ’n’ Out Of Grace” (Mudhoney) didn’t get the crowd to move (mind you, they danced to the between-band DJ — fuckheads), though they did applaud.
(There’s a little thing in my notes at this point that says “Mention record-skating.” I can’t for the life of me recall its relevance to this show, but the only thing I can think of that it could refer to was a happy Sunday afternoon of record-smashing after the Carr Street garage sale. I had all these unsaleable shitawful vinyl records that failed to move even at twenty cents each, so we had fun breaking them to bits [I remember Cassie looked thoroughly delighted with the idea] and skating on ’em. Skating on surplus Eurodisco twelve-inchers is very entertaining. We spent some time falling on our butts whilst doing so, but I’m sure you could securely attach them to your feet and rig two more on some sort of ski-pole arrangement or other. Records slide on road surfaces unbelievably easily — try it yourself if you don’t believe me. None of this has much to do with the show presently under review, but it’s a nice and surely useful slice of life.)
Danny on Botticelli’s Angel and singer Declan: “Metal-soul. Not soul-metal, but metal-soul. It’s like James Brown and Henry Rollins fighting for control over the same body. He has a nice voice.” Declan is a wild dancer. I can see why he went for it so much with a busted leg. The crowd consensus on the band seemed to be that they were a good metal band as such, but the people weren’t interested in seeing metal-bands-as-such. So nyah poo from them, I guess.
(Nick the doorman tells the story of Declan breaking his leg: Declan jumped off the stage and lay there screaming for two minutes ... and everyone thought the screaming fitted in with the song really well. Nick then related the story of a Girlschool show he was at in England, where the guitarist did this utterly amazing lead break lying down ... keeping going all the way through the rest of the song. It was only then that anyone thought to investigate, and found that she was in fact being electrocuted through her guitar and required hospitalisation for third-degree burns. Why isolation isn’t standard on rock’n’roll equipment is a total mystery to me — it’s a simple electronic trick, isn’t expensive and wouldn’t affect the sound at all. Great lead break, though.)
Vacsonicuum, quite apart from the silly name, were hardly world-beating, but certainly did not deserve the completely zero reaction they received. They have some conception of HC (not sure exactly what), but mainly concentrate on the ‘pop’ side of the ‘sub-pop’. (Lower-case, not upper; common noun, not proper.) Not plain HC black and white — there’s a bluish-green tinge to it. The Vacs do, I think, have some vision of what they want to do, although they’ve a bloody lot of work to get there.
The much-touted Molecular Art Slide Show is, ahh, very molecular and arty. It’s a series of blurry blobs and patterns that someone thought decorative. Me, I’m hanging out for ... well, guess.
Doe Eyed / Bethesda / Tsimshian / Never Comin’ Back / On A Point / Harmonics / King Of Parallel Parking / Cute Gang / Ballad / Dirty Lizard
A whole lot of the crowd left during the Vacs, but a lot were here specifically for the ol’ ’Stangers. Mustang! killed it tonight, no two ways about it. Either you recognise their status as direct sonic link to the gods or you don’t.
Their placement in this show (with these bands — barring Botticelli’s — and, especially, with this particular crowd) is somewhat odd, in that they really don’t have a lot to do with the sump-pop branch at all; theirs comes through from places like noisy NZ stuff, American post-hardcore that branched off from HC much earlier than the sump-slops, and so on and so forth. (If you really want to know, ask them. I’m not some kind of goddamn musical oracle. I just Believe in Music.) Though it’s the least bad match for them in Perth Pop City this year and certainly better than most matches they would have had last year.
Mustang! are the boys for ’92 and ’93 and prime contenders in the PF Rock Awards. You owe it to yourself.
* ‘Sump-Pump’ is ©®™ Paul Keller/Ebb! 1990. Flipside may have “... er ... borrowed it! Flattery is the sincerest form of ...” but we at PF have principles.
(The above review was written immediately after the show ... looks really outdated, doesn’t it? The term ‘hardcore’ is, of course, not the one now applied to dance music — ed.)
VOID BENEFIT: FLESHMESH / SWOONERS / BENJI — Beat Room, Thursday 30/4/92
Tonight was basically not promoted. I came down for something to do because I happened to go over that day’s X-Press with a fine-toothed comb. Hence nearly no-one showed up. I chucked ten cents (all I had) in the Void collection tin, though.
Fleshmesh are a three-piece with a huge drumkit. Both the guitarist and the bassist sing. They play standard forms I can’t quite identify immediately, and they did a good job. Someone said they were “U2-ish”; this didn’t occur to me, which may be a credit to them. Not at all radical, but fine.
The Swooners are sort of an alternative mishmash. They could be a lot less indifferent than they are. I asked Sascha (v) afterwards if she liked the Baby Animals (let that jihad ray rip!): “They don’t bother me.” ... bad sign. The female members get ’em points, minus half a point for the singer’s check-flannel. I thought girls had more sense than boys. The bassist has a Sonic Youth Goo shirt, but even Danny has one of those.
This was Benji’s first show with Stuart Medley (ex-Fur Versions) replacing Rolf Farstad (ex-Wash) on bass, and the sound of the band was still unclear, but nevertheless a lot better-defined than previously. Not bad at all.
Fifty-cent middies are king.
MARS BASTARDS / RAINYARD — Beat Room, Friday 8/5/92
The Rainyard played better than I’ve heard them in a while — I remember their FM rock sound a few months back at the Void launch ... they’re really on the ball tonight. We even danced. The instrumental prowess wasn’t spoiled by the odd vocal bum note from Liam. (Cue Peter Sellers folk-song sketch.) Adrian chucked his drumsticks into the crowd, but we threw ’em back. Be ecologically sound.
Def FX (Dead Fucks) were playing at the Berlin tonight and the Mars Bastards must have been in competition with them — all the dance-beat songs ran seven minutes or more. (And “Astound Me” was precisely the right song to start the proceedings.) Ian Freeman had cut off the Rolf Harris and was working on a Sub-Pop goatee to match Jeff’s. Gil retains his facial hair, which is a really bad idea. I gotta say it. Cliff was clean-shaven tonight and Shaun never has succumbed to the temptations of facial pollution ... the show before the Northbridge Festival was intensely scary due to the fur on four out of five band members. Hey, Kids: Don’t Do Facial Hair, Fool!
Um, what else ... John Reid pointed out that the dancers who aren’t the standard Mars Bastards groovers are actually a lot groovier than the aforementioned Groovers themselves.
For some reason known only to God, we went to Brannigan’s Hell-Hole Dive (near corner Hay & Irwin Streets) afterwards, as part of the Mark “Gudinski 1996” Ghirardi contingent. The place has both pub and nightclub licences and so is open all the time.
Cans four dollars, lemon squash TWO DOLLARS FUCKING FIFTY. Sign: “Middies $2.” I go up to bar. “Middie.” Get middie. “Two sixty.” “The sign says ‘Middie $2.’” “What?” “The sign says ‘Middie $2.’” “Oh ... You can’t have it.” The bar-person then pours the drink down the drain. I guess it was being able to read that really foxed ’em.
The music was disco, the crowd was strictly suburban twenty to fifty and the dancefloor was filled with writhing sekketries and office clerks (in their office clothes) who wish they could live in Ocean Reef too. 1975 haircuts at the bar. Y’know, it’s comforting to know that places like this still exist ... it gives the jihad new focus. Further impetus.
ROSEBUDS / TIRED STARLINGS — Shenton Park, Friday 10/7/92
Missed the first band, apparently a duo — was occupied in the back room of the front bar watching the video for the single on continuous loop, mopping up the dregs of the champagne, chips and cocktail franks (the latter looking unbelievably repugnant under dim lighting) and chatting to the remains of the launch crowd. The great news was that MDS finally pulled the old finger out and got copies of the single to the House of Wax on that very day. (Ask Kim for the story — I’m sure he’ll tell anyone. In detail. MDS’s delivery habits don’t augur well for their quest to be the seventh major, never mind Shock having [with Ed Kuepper] beaten them to the punch for first genuine chart hit. Of course, Shock’s attitudes to payments are ... oh, never mind.)
I was trying to think of a reasonable encapsulated description of the style the Tired Starlings play in — pop songs starting from the ‘power-pop’ mould, but with the jangle factor cut down to near zero and the guitar crunch and drums turned way up; you know the stuff, there’s a fair bit of it about at the moment — when Brad hit the nail right on the head! ’70s pub rock. Oh well. I might mention that they did a nice pop version of “No Fun”.
The Rosebuds were a pleasant surprise and not at all what anyone was expecting — not the power-pop crunch stuff (see previous paragraph) favoured by the Chevelles (or not much, anyway), but really incredibly nice jangly melody stuff with non-standard chords and all — none of the I–III–IV–V pattern (“Stepping Stone”, slight return). Particular goodies “Anytime” and the travel song in the encore. The band was no polished wonder, but are definitely a band, as in functioning unit, which is the important thing; the polish can come later. (The Stay-In-Tune brand strings — as used by the Baby Animals! — consistently failed to, but that didn’t stop ’em.) Should record soonest reasonably possible. This was a fine start indeed.
BRIGHT LIGHTS SMALL CITY TAPE LAUNCH: WOODEN FISCHE / VIOLET SLIDE / VACSONICUUM / BENJI / MUSTANG! — Shenton Park, Friday 17/7/92
The doors opened at 8:00pm and there were ninety-two people here by 8:20 ... all projections were on Guy Blackman being a rich man tonight. And he’ll have earnt it, too — the dude (almost said ‘guy’) is eighteen and has done more (zines, shows, a compilation tape) than I would have thought possible at eighteen. Scary stuff.
All the people here are impossibly young. Christ! Why can’t the Perth scene just die and leave us eldsters to lament on the good ol’ days and lie about how great they were, rather than have all these young folk come along and have even better new days, leaving us practiced whingers obsolete? Fuck! — may have to gain some joie de vivre or something.
(Any sweet young thing who thinks they could do a better job of PF should apply at the usual address: you’re probably right. Then I can go to the retirement home safe and happy.)
For some reason, there was a Pernod promotion going on: walk in, get a free dose and then (presumably) go the the bar, buy three Pernods in a night and get the chance to win incredibly tacky Pernod promotional rubbish. The poor Pernod woman (in a nice red, blue and white uniform, no less) was in the wrong pub tonight. Most of these kids have just graduated from orange juice and still get a major thrill from the act of going up to a bar and asking for a beer.
Wooden Fische are very young and a poppy sorta band. I’m not in a ‘sounds-like’ mood right now, but they have gtr/bass/drums and a vocalist who flaps his arms a lot; all would look sloppily appealing to a certain breed of first-year arts student. I liked ’em and would see them again.
The mixer should be shot. ’Twas incredible the difference between Violet Slide up close and down back. The band do indie-pop in the current fashion whose closest easy comparison is the Rainyard (if you like them, you’ll like Violet Slide), but the songs are more diverse and they’re into playing with good sounds. The singer will catch girlies like flies.
You should always throw balloons amongst an audience to brighten things up.
Vacsonicuum had their new singer, one week out of rehearsal. Danny says “Sonic Youth and Yoko Ono ... but the wrong Yoko Ono.” (He just got the CD box.) They’re four hundred percent on what they were (see elsewhere); he still hates ’em.
Benji were lots of fun — a bit of entertainment in there. The singer’s shirt should be worn with flares and only available on prescription to registered addicts. Relaxing is very good for bands.
Oh boy, oh boy, I got my night made tonight — drank three Pernods and got a prize: a Pernod cap! Definitely the best toy of the night. I had so much fun with this. Danny says I look like a redneck. A retarded house-painter. The Lawnmower Man. It’s amazing what petty amusement you can get out of low-grade promotional rubbish. A rock’n’roll show isn’t just the sounds coming out of the PA; it’s a cumulative aesthetic experience, and everything counts.
(Hey, it could have been worse ... I could have won a Pernod bumbag instead.)
Mustang! started slow, but fired up to full by the end. Remember: drink safe. Mustang! in full flame are the sort of band to inspire meaningless purple prose. Let’s just note that Hamish did a great dive through the drumkit (the expression of thorough bemusement on Chris’s face was worth it) and that I had “Never Comin’ Back” playing in my head for a coupla days after. In fact, I got home that night and played that one song off the compilation over and over and over. What can I say.
D.M.3 / CHEVELLES — Coronado, Saturday 19/9/92
The Chevelles were minus Duane tonight, who was extremely ill. This actually resulted in a pretty fine set, in that the three remaining put in 110% effort to make up for his absence; and a 110% effort always shows. The sound is also a bit more open with one guitar doing the work of two — said ‘openness’ being but a fine line away from ‘full of holes’, but the Chevelles’ two-guitar sound is a bit overfull anyway and so they remained on the right side. Looking and being a touch vulnerable and doing a great show anyway worked well tonight.
D.M.3 are Dom Mariani’s latest. The songs are as advanced as the Someloves/Orange and the playing is a bit more rocky, not so much straight pop. Yeah, they were fine too. But they had some competition in the performance stakes.
YUMMY FUR / ROSEMARY BEADS / MARDI PICASSO / SLEEP FURIOUSLY — Grosvenor, Saturday 26/9/92
Sleep Furiously are three of Yummy Fur plus singer and keyboards. They favour the Cure, Siouxsie, the Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush, Sundays, complete this list yourself — what happens when goths, oops, indie poppers with a small talent start a band. (They wore their hearts on their T-shirts.) All can play/sing very well, though the singer doesn’t move at all. A fine showing for youngsters. Persist.
Mardi Picasso was Martin, Claudine and Cathi in their first pub gig in God knows how many years ... they did fine; a fair few slips, but THE CROWD WAS ON THEIR SIDE and that’s what’s important. Claudine really goes for it in the songs she does in French. (“Mon Chemin” was a killer.) “After Hours” (Velvets) sounds really cool in a Belgian accent.
This is the first time I’ve heard the Rosemary Beads; all songs sound like Tim listens to his Velvets LPs a bit much. However, they hit it tonight. A full dancing floor, no less. And Cathi’s viola is wild. The Viola from Hell, no less. Gretta’s voice is great — more, please. Tim should sing in his upper octave, however. This band has unstoppable esprit de corps — they all know and believe in exactly what they’re doing. Not perfect tonight, nor a lot revolutionary, but there wasn’t much wrong with this.
Yummy Fur were fine. Don’t remember a lot and I didn’t take any notes, but hey. So I’ll use this space to reveal that Martin Gambie’s musical career started at the age of fourteen, when he stole his ten-year-old sister’s ukulele. And she still hasn’t gotten it back.
DAVE GRANEY / NEIL PRESTON — Club Original, Sunday 29/11/92
A quick acoustic show slipped in before the Nick Cave support. A buck’s a buck, after all. Neil Preston starts proceedings, assisted by new Month Of Sundays guitarist Grant Ferstat — not revolutionary stuff, but quite fair and reasonable. Dave Graney has Rod Hayward of the Coral Snakes along to assist. Dave looks and sounds like he’s had a huuuge smoke before going on stage (we have no reason to assume that this was actually the case ... Viv says he looks like a wooden Indian), but what he’s rambling on with before each song with (the talk being of comparable length to the song itself) doesn’t really require thought. So yeah, he’s the King.
(I love the way the story before the song virtually makes the lyrics superfluous. After their intros, a lot of these could have been instrumentals.)
(Coolest before-song tale: about the three people who die and the only things left of them are the affectations they put on to piss off the world ... nothing else. No other substance remains. Now, that’s a scary story.)
Dave Graney is the sort of person you wish you’d had as an uncle when you were a kid.
ARC / ROSEMARY BEADS — Pocket’s, Thursday 3/12/92
Pocket’s Pool Lounge used to be the Ozone. The front band room (expressly designed for live music) is now nowt but a pool hall. The front bar is as always, with any band present crammed into a corner, but that’s fine.
This was the second time I’d seen the Rosemary Beads, and they really hit it. Gretta had a Guns N’ Roses singlet in the style of a Jim Beam shirt. I really approve of a viola held like a guitar. Cathi plays it over her head, behind her back, with her teeth ... well, not quite, but she sure goes for it and it’s worth seeing. In his lower octave, Tim Underwood sounds just like Steve Kilbey. (“And looks like Eugene Kelly from the Vaselines!” — Guy.) Perhaps it’s the absence of drums, but they’re a lot better tonight than when I saw ’em before.
The Rosemary Beads had some fun at the WAMI Awards this year. Chunky (’92’s V-Capri, but possibly not as dumb) played one song. Tim voiced his disapproval. Then a second song. Disapproval again. Then Chunky said the goddamn dumbest thing you could say in a nightclub full of six hundred musicians: “Well, if anyone out there thinks they could do better ...” So Tim called their bluff. (Clopped across dancefloor in Chelsea boots in best OK Corral manner ...)
Tim Underwood gets this year’s award for defender of the faith, keeper of the musical flame for the prestige elite (that’s us). And he even got an anonymous slagoff in the X–Press letters section. Buy this man a drink. (Straggly hair, big nose, pointy boots, star quality. Go on.)
(By the way, I hereby defy X–Press and Encore Productions to sue me for the following statement: Many, and sometimes all, of the ‘letters’ printed in X–Press are in fact written by the editorial staff. Furthermore, this practice has been in place for many years. Go on, write a letter — it stands a better chance than you think.)
(By the way, wasn’t it interesting how no-one outside the industry daisy-chain showed for ‘Ausmusic’ day this year? Hype will be exposed, music shall live, the prestige elite shall rise again ... etcetera.)
Arc are a very good Everything But The Girl soundalike. “The guitarist is the bastard son of a thousand Chapterhouses. Or a thousand Pale Saints. One or the other. Take your pick” — Bernard. “Sundays” — Guy. I didn’t mind them at all, though I’m not really that keen on the style at all. Is it the season for this kind of thing or something?
David.