CASTLE TONES

With this, the latest in the Mistletone showcase series, you got the distinct impression that the label was just plain showing off. Any number of the dozen outfits on this bill would have lured me along to a show, but to jam them all in to one venue across two stages for about eight hours—much of which was spent consuming beer—was kinda cruel.
And the Edinburgh Castle worked a treat! I have to say that I was sceptical of the choice to begin with, especially given the not-so-distant memories of the broken lift and bottleneck disaster that was last year’s Winter Tones at Roxanne Parlour. I now appreciate the lack of promotion of this event, not that there was any shrouded secrecy surrounding the show but there was restraint shown on behalf of the organisers. This allowed for a free-flowing celebration of music without the usual toe treading and elbow charges. In reality, they could have allowed twice as many peeps through the turnstiles. The door staff showed fabulous grace under fire in enforcing the one-in, one-out policy—hats off to them.
Music-wise the diversity was key. Though it’s unlikely that everything on the bill would have been to the taste of many, there was more than enough of an assortment of sounds to ensure there was just a little something for everybody... Ambiguous enough? Seriously, it was such a great evening I’m loath to rag on anyone. For me the Twerps’ effortless entertaining, Kes Trio’s sprinkling of pixie-dust, Dick Diver’s raucous energy (though noted lack of dick diving), Lee Memorial’s arranging and beats, and Ned Collette and Wirewalker’s sonic blockade kicked goals all over the place. In saying that, any of the night’s assemblages were contenders and with acts of this calibre across the board it feels redundant to inject any level of criticism—for once, it’d only be a matter of taste.
Of the four ‘Tones’ parties I’ve attended thus-far, I’d have to say this one’s the champ. This bodes well for the future of the series as there’s been a steady improvement on each occasion. Castle Tones attested to the reality that it takes smart organisation, not just great bands, to pay dividends in punter land. In this instance, intelligent arrangement and great bands produced a memorable night.

Aleks and the Ramps
Midnight Believer
Stomp

It’s impossible not to be caught up in the tidal rhythms of the opening number 'Destroy the Universe with Jazz Hands', which typically contorts into an electro poppy feast. Typical in an Aleks and the Ramps sense, however, is as far from any traditional song writing as you’ll get. Lingering in the peripheries of so many musical genres, they’re impossible to peg down. 'Midnight Believer' is a consolidation of sorts; it acts as the best explanation of their signature complexities to date. All the while, the feel of the album barely resembles the live incarnation of Aleks and the Ramps at all.
You’re greeted by the delicious inky smells of a classy package, complete with gorgeous cover art and poster by illustrator Lily Coates—once you’ve pulled the disc out there’s not an ounce of plastic in sight. There’s a maritime peg to the arrangements that vanishes for spells but returns occasionally to remind you where you are. There’re crafty little samples in spots, clean acoustic rhythms and the banjo makes its marvellous self known throughout.
Structurally this album lends itself to improvisation and as a basis for a live show it will make fantastic root material. Gripe-wise, all that could be slandered upon 'Midnight Believer' is that it’s a little too short. With the sisterly nature of all tracks, one through ten, it’s an exciting prospect to hear it live, start through finish.
The elemental beauty of this recording lies in the crafted hidden treasures continually darting and enticing. The time taken in arranging may’ve been excessive but the detailing pays off. From moment to moment you’re never quite sure where they will take you next. By definition, this is what separates Aleks and the Ramps from anything else I’m hearing right now. There exists within this outfit the ability to pull (musical) rabbits from hats at every turn. It’s a narrative of sorts but it’s by no means ‘once upon a time... the end.’ More James Joyce than John Grisham, Midnight Believer is the literature of Melbourne music, but in no way inaccessible.
Sam McDougall

The Tote

The Tote’s future is unwritten

In May, a nine-day closure of Melbourne’s seminal rock’n’roll venue, Collingwood’s Tote Hotel, sent a shiver through the music community. Like a corpse, the building itself seemed to sag on its foundations—her lifeblood removed, it felt as though she could implode on herself at any moment. If the Tote’s walls could speak (and if the carpet is anything to go by, there’s a pretty good chance they can), they’d bombard us with the stories of a true champion of rock music. The calibre of international touring acts that have graced the stage—White Stripes, Guitar Wolf, McLusky, Mudhoney, The Dirtbombs, Hellacopters etc—aside, the Tote’s greatest accolade has been its role in the propulsion of Australian music. Without the Tote serving up live bands and providing a launch pad for local musicians six-nights-a-week, Melbourne’s reputation as a world-class rock’n’roll destination would be seriously jeopardised.
It’s true that the Tote’s demise would only propel another venue, of which there are plenty, to the top of the local pile. And as we’ve witnessed with the closing of Fitzroy’s Punter’s Club, New York’s C.B.G.B’s, London’s Astoria and Wellington’s Bar Bodega, the passing of a music institution, while sad, is unlikely to spell the end. Still, the Tote has served a community (maybe not your local mother’s group, but a community nonetheless) for twenty-five years now and the historical significance of what’s been going on inside her withered frame should not be underestimated.
With the current lease expiring in October, rezoning of the neighbouring TAFE site opening development possibilities, an impending resale, increasing running and security costs, and a crippling licensing debacle, you’d have to say the odds are stacked against the Tote. That said, there’s every possibility that any and all of these problems could be surmounted. A sympathetic buyer may appear and snap the place up for a relative bargain at the current asking price. A ten-year lease might become available at a reasonable rate. The outcome of rezoning could favour a noisy pub and deter residential development of the adjacent block. The headaches of licensing technicalities appear to be over, though there’s little chance the government will back-flip on the high-risk security tag the bar has been assigned.
Hedging words abound—woulds, coulds, mays and mights aplenty—but film-maker Natalie van den Dungen remains optimistic about the future of this venue. Given the harsh reality that a crumbling Tote would create a dramatic finale to her Forthcoming documentary, which was intended as a simple celebration of our home of rock, Natalie insists that her heart remains set on the subsistence of her favourite haunt. “I have film-maker friends that say ‘wow that’d be great for your film,’” she laughs. “But I tell them that I don’t care at all. I would relinquish the entire documentary for the fact that the Tote will keep going.”
And she’s not talking about some fly-by-night project here. Natalie’s film (working title: ‘Loud and Proud’; commonly referred to as ‘The Tote Documentary’) will showcase the culmination of five-year's worth of concert and interview footage. “Initially my desire was to raise some kind of awareness that this is going on right here,” she continues. “I felt like what’s going on at the Tote should be celebrated. Even with nobody in the Tote, it still emanates its own character—it’s a living, breathing organism. You can’t create that without thirty-odd years of things happening and allowing it to grow. And it’s not just the building; it’s all the people it’s attracted. If it was to end, it would be the breaking of a community. The tote is this nucleus, this central point of the music scene. It serves a collective of people who love music. It doesn’t matter if they differ in any other way, they can come together on a musical level. I just wanted to declare the Tote to the world... and then save it.”
But saving the Tote was always going to be a huge task for one woman and a camera. “I had a dilemma when it sold last year. I was thinking ‘what if it shuts down? Maybe I should make the documentary now; I need to get it out there’. But then I realised I can’t save the Tote, but I can certainly help try and drum up some support or awareness.”
To achieve this and finish the Tote project Natalie requires funding. Part of the difficulty in attracting funds is that outside of Melbourne music circles—and dedicated rock’n’roll communities elsewhere—the Tote’s profile is far from huge. It’s loud, it’s dingy and it’s the exact type of place your mother warned you about. So despite the quality of the interview and live footage Natalie’s amassed thus-far, it remains far from an investors dream.
Still, Natalie remains philosophical. “If the people I’m applying for funding from don’t fund the completion of this documentary, they’re not the right people to make this. This is something to get very excited about. I’ve got amazing footage and it’s an amazing subject—it deserves it! Nothing about the Tote feels like it’s being mass produced or spoon-fed. It’s all about the appreciation of music. In this day and age, what kinds of communities are there? There’s sporting communities, there’s online communities, but where else can people of all backgrounds get together, hang out and talk about the world? We’ve got something special here and kind of precious. Anybody who knows this place would find it hard to disagree with that.”
With so many factors weighing against the continuation of the Tote, Natalie is stuck, somewhat, in a holding pattern until the situation is resolved either way in October. From then, she promises, her obsessive documentation of the Tote will finish; though it may take her moving abroad to physically stop her. From such naive beginnings, it is now likely that this film will prove a valuable historical reference. This, Natalie claims, was never the intention. “I didn’t start this to make a good documentary. I started this because I thought it mattered and I wanted to show that to other people. It’s about an open mind and a curiosity and sharing. Without sounding childlike, sharing is such an important thing. A big part of what I’m trying to do with film is to share what I am experiencing with other people for their sake. It makes me happy when people like it. It’s like [seminal Australian comedy] ‘The Castle’... You can’t buy what we’ve got.”

For more information about the Tote Documentary and a kick-arse trailer go to: www.myspace.com/thetotedoco

Sam McDougall

The Swindlers—EP
Review by Samson

If heavy-ended, raucous, honest guitar music’s your bag; the Swindlers debut EP will prove about as reliable your Grandad’s Corolla and as solid as a Volvo station wagon in a crash test. The first few bars of the opening number Oh No welcome you to a familiar corner pub, sit you down in your favourite chair, offer you a pot and say, ‘Here ya go mate, don’t look so glum. Here’s some totally Australian, swaggering, rock-n-blues for your winter worries.’ Then they slap you around a bit for being such a sook.
Once you’ve negotiated the jitter-bug of an opener and waded through the rain-sodden sandbag grooves of the mid-tracks, the seven-handed speed blur strumming of Siren will get you rabbiting all over the place till your knees buckle and eyeballs hurt. The closer Boar Down will lure you back to the flood plains before bashing your brainbox with a combo of vocal, guitar and percussion staccato that’ll force you to spin the whole thing over again just in case you missed something in all the jumping and violence. And you will have, it just gets bigger and better the more it turns. Bloody nice package too!

Pink Fits review

The Pink Fits, the Vandas, Midnight Woolf—the Tote

Holy fuck you get some line-ups at the Tote sometimes. It’s as if the planets align and some dirty little alien lasers a sweet, salty, hip-swaggering little bundle of rock-n-roll straight to Johnstone Street. I’d salivated over this particular show all afternoon, my expectations were higher than a hippy up a scaffold; and from the moment Midnight Wolf hit the stage running, I knew that I was home.
Midnight Woolf are the walking, breathing embodiment of a sweat-factory—and I mean that in the kindest possible sense. From leopard print Drummer, Rabbitfoot Annie, to howlin’ vox-box, Fuzzhound, The Woolf stamped, barked and growled their way through some fast, electric, swampy shit. There’s prickly punk stabs, there’s instrumental thrash jams, there’s covers (New Kind of Kick as a tribute to Lux a delight), and there’s beer swilling good times for all and sundry.
The Vandas broke up the rackety bookends of Midnight Woolf and Pink Fits nicely. That’s not to say these blokes weren’t clamorous, but there’s a polish to the Vandas, and such a well of obvious musicality, that is sure to lead them great places. Their brand is elegantly constructed Australian blues-rock, and the writing’s about as handsome as the duelling frontal combination of Gus Agars and Mikey Madden—they could barely keep their hands off each other. The Vandas’ approach is all-out. With no room for filler it’s a marvel they could’ve written so many impressive songs in a relatively short lifespan—such is the attention to detail.
Fresh from ‘the Gong’, the Pink Fits’ sucked the oxygen from the room with the ferocious tempo of their performance. The opening stanza consisted much new material which unfortunately suffered a poor mix. The Illawarra quartet showed grit in powering through the soupish sound without complaint though, and the mix improved markedly for the back end.
The third act from the Pink Fits was a riot of surf tunes craftily disguised as speed rock. Performing a rare extended headline show allowed the band to delve back to their roots and rip out the kind of shit you’d imagine they played in the Wollongong surf clubs of youth. This was less Hawaiian shirt and ukulele, more tattoos and V8s—the bad-ass, black surf-boarded, punk mother-fuckers from Point Break rather than Keanu Reeves and the girl… If you know what I mean?

Sam McDougall

Black Lips

By Samson McDougall

 

Atlanta rockers the Black Lips smacked Australian shores in 2007, taught us how to party and left a trail of carnage in their wake. The Meredith Music Festival show was the business that myths are made of—a vomit soaked, man-pashing, up-tempo sweat-fest. The follow-up performances at the Arty and the Tote set new precedents for touring rock bands. They came, they got drunk, they experienced the city for a week and they punched out some of the performances of the year with a range of local supports including Eddy Current Suppression Ring, The Stabs and Straightjacket Nation.

            Needless to say, touring with the Black Lips is not your average fly-by-night routine. There is a commitment amongst the foursome to thinking, and playing, outside of the square. Their resultant ethos has pushed them to the extremities of comfortable rock-n-roll destinations, including a trip to underground clubs in Israel and an emergency exit from India upon accusations of public homosexual acts.

            It’s from the American interstate on the back of their latest release 200 Million Thousand that Faster Louder caught up with gag-jerking singer-guitarist Cole Alexander. Despite the Black Lips’ relative longevity (it’s hard to believe they’ve been doing this for almost a decade), Alexander remains adamant that age is not yet slowing them down. “We’re stronger than ever, we’re still robust and fertile,” he laughs almost imperceptibly through the crackle and delay of a mobile phone from the tour bus. “It’s actually getting easier. We try and stay chill and save energy until we’re on stage. I won’t talk a lot and just try and relax on a couch. I’ve had a lot of problems with sustaining my voice but it’s gotten stronger over the years and now I can sing a lot better. Some guys work out at the gym a couple of hours a day; I just play on stage for forty-five minutes. I just save all my energy for when I’m on stage.”

The Georgian roots of the Black Lips transcend their sound with equal portions of country, blues, old-style rock and punk. Still, Alexander recalls, it was no easy feat to break free of the Southern mindset and actually get their material noticed. “From a musical standpoint it [Georgia] was rich in resources like blues and country music. But as far as an industry for what we were doing, it was kind of tough. It felt like if we had’ve been in New York in the early 2000s and picked up on the whole rock thing there, we could’ve got big. We needed an outlet and once we started getting out of Georgia we started meeting with some success.”

There exists a nostalgic grainy finish to the Black Lips’ recordings that’s reflective of their adoption of analogue techniques. 200 Million Thousand pushes this ideology to the extreme with the newly released CDs being recorded directly from an original vinyl press. So is vinyl likely to (re-) take the World by storm? Is it the way of the future, or simply a grasp at the past? “There’s definitely been an increase in our vinyl sales,” Alexander continues, “but a lot of kids still download our stuff for free. I’ve always loved vinyl personally; if you listen close to the new CD you’ll hear a little crackle.”

“As soon as I started buying vinyl records I was hooked. It really wasn’t the sound quality that was the issue. In high-school I wanted to hear Grandmaster Flash and I couldn’t find the CD anywhere, so I went to this friend’s uncle who was a DJ or whatever and I could buy hip-hop records from him. I’ve always liked vinyl for the fact that you can find the stuff that’s not on CD or on the radio. I think eventually the CD will become extinct; we’ll be left with digital and vinyl.”

To be swept up in a Black Lips live experience is to be beaten about the brains with some unstoppably enticing tunes and an insatiable urge to get rotten. After all, if the kids on stage are in a frenzy then why not? Alexander explains that while the raucous nature of their reception in Australia was outstanding, the Black Lips harbour a similar response wherever they go. “We had a great time in Australia and it’s always good for us to go to rock towns and rock cities where people are really enthusiastic about rock-n-roll music. In saying that it’s pretty hard to differentiate as to whether it was much different or any better than anywhere else. The reaction is kind of similar all over the World. Even in India where it’s stricter, we played this one show where everyone went crazy and let everything go. There exists this kind of Universal rambunctious-ness.” Indeed.

            

OW, MY FREAKIN’ EARS!

 

You wait for it all year, wiling away those long winter months, coat clad, scarf necked and boot shod into bleak Melbourne nights. You all congregate in the same scraggy haunts on Wednesdays, scouring the music papers for news of summer concert and festival delights to warm you heart in sweet anticipation, all the while keeping up with treats on offer around your inner-suburban winter traps.

            Then it’s upon you. Last year kicked off a little earlier than usual with Flip-Out at the Corner—with the highest quality, wall-to-wall calibre of acts and no filler, we can only hope that that one comes back! Then everything changes. Life becomes such a frenzied mess of over-indulgence and aural abuse that your every day existence is shoved into a ditch until the heat comes off. Jobs are forgotten and lost, significant others alike. You are reduced to a warm tinnie gripping, singlet wearing, stinking, and greasy-skinned credit card disaster. But who can blame you? It gets better every year and you’re not getting any younger that’s for sure.

            Meredith looms large with the promise of new talent and mad hallucinatory gaffer-tape Dictaphoned tent conversations to mark the end of the working year. You tramp out of the Supernatural swamp area with mud-invaded orifices and little recollection of anything but The Bronx’s set and some dude breaking his shoulder during the nudie run. Oh, and the rain… always back to the rain.

New Year hits hard with promise of more camping madness—you’d think you would’ve learnt your lesson last year, or at least have enough emotional scabbage from the Meredith washout to convince you it’s a terrible idea. Thankfully you’re better prepared this time as pastel-clad teens vomit red cordial and dry-root amongst the sheep shit crusted pasture of the obnoxiously overpopulated (and priced) festival grounds. It makes you feel a bit tired but thankfully your sweet camp-site allows you the luxury of retiring early and leaving them all to it.

Not wanting to be left lagging when the lunacy is over, there’s the local stuff to keep up with as well. Unfortunately the regular venues won’t relent with killer bills. After all, was it not the Drones at the Forum and Eddy Current at the Corner that topped last year’s best-of-gig lists? All the while you’re hammered by sideshows. You visit the Forum, the Palace, the HiFi the Corner. There’s a nasty Christmas comedown thrown in there for measure—much to the vexation of family members.

You are treated to all the worldly marvels of the first Australian leg of All Tomorrow’s Parties (if the rumours are true then we’ll be graced again next year), where fans of proper music can escape the bubble-wrapped fanfare of tweenie-fests and appropriately appreciate profound performances from the cream of local and international produce. You catch Dirty Three doing Ocean Songs; elsewhere, Fantomas perform The Director’s Cut and Public Enemy prove It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us (them) Back—you could hardly fathom last year’s Sonic Youth does Daydream Nation—the Don’t Look Back series ensures a marvellous time for thirty-somethings loath to let go of their dissipating youth.

            The kids build towards the Big day Out where you all sweat in the stifling racecourse car park and punish yourselves for being Australian. We grown-ups steal into the V.I.P. area where at least the expulsion of a weak bladder seldom results in a half-hour ordeal. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays throw up more gigs; frenetic sideshows erupt like pox all over the arse of your week—it’s the silly season after all—and then there’s the weekends. Thankfully you get a breather (of sorts) at Neil Young at The Bowl and then maybe catch Leonard Cohen sulking; it feels as though the dust may settle a little.

            Then February arrives with Summer Tones—finally they’ve got this one right—by fuck, the line-up’s astonishing! St Jerome’s—skinny jeans and Oakley Frogskins; Soundwave— inclined to angular black fringes and scowling; Alice in Chains at the Palais—joy for the creaking bones and backs of the slightly more antiquated; Nine Inch Nails—machine noise and body-paint; and finally the backmarker, Golden Plains, to signal the end of it all—though with the class of the bill this year it’s going to be chaos until we drop mid-March. That’s of course if you consider the Blues and Roots, V and Splendour festivals to be of a dissimilar ilk to their summer compadres—outsiders thrown at us during the off season to remind us of what has been and what’s to come around again—hardly the same. And that’s only the weeping scab on the surface of it all; of course there’s the unyielding continuum of local established and developing talent you’ve been neglecting in the speed blur.

            Eventually you’ll find yourself trudging out in a Victorian Southerly on your way to: the Tote, the East, the Northcote, the Birmingham, the Corner, the Espy, the Evelyn, the Empress, the Edinburgh Castle, the Toff, Old Bar, Pony, Ya Yas, or any of the countless other champions of the Melbourne music world—all the gems… Perhaps the Gem? You’ll arrive again at one of the dark, smelly, wondrously beer-soaked jewels in the crown of this fair city and breathe it all in, stop for a pot and scour the music pages for news of up-coming local delights and forthcoming summer festival pleasures. You’ll remember then that it’s not so bad amidst the sleepy chill of the back end of the year—rather pleasant, in fact, to be holed-up in a dark room on a dreary eve with some swampy guitar noise for company. And as the bands roll on through you’ll realise just how lucky you are to live in a town where it’s there for the taking week after week, year-round. In a corner you’ll vow to march on for the cause; because, undoubtedly, if these gifts are not perpetually embraced then they will surely be lost. Use it or lose it as they say… Amen to that.

 

Samson McD

Australia is the hottest place on Earth today and Melbourne is the hottest town in Australia!

Today is likely to be among the hottest on record in Victoria, and the effects of the heatwave are adding up across the state.

THE weather bureau tells Lou Bennett it's 44 degrees. But he trusts better his own thermometer, rigged up on the back verandah. It says 52.

Fire crews scramble to contain Bunyip Park blaze

Increasing wind fans flames as fire pushes towards towns.  

• Warning for fire-lighters
 
• In the line of fire
• Fury over arsonist
 
• Death trap
 
• Fire updates

GOAT HUSBANDRY

T'was a sad day at sunny Waimarama yesterday.

Dave had to part with his much beloved goats; Mr Pickles, Mischief and Glenda the nanny. Though Glenda made it clear that she was very unhappy to be forced from her half-pipe home (due to recent events I'd be happy to see the damn skateboard ramp razed to the ground for its insubordination and abuse of my elbow), my parents are now goatless and none the happier for it let me tell you. Goodbye my bleating, cloven-hoofed friends. You will be missed by all, good luck and best wishes...

Fishin' at dusk...

The lazy sun setting over the sleepy town of Waimarama, Hawkes Bay.

I'M ON REDBUBBLE CHECK IT OUT

I'M ON REDBUBBLE (arts site) AS thesamsonite.

CHECK IT OUT!

Appro says, 'shuddup and throw me the ball stupid!'

My mate Appro reckons that nothing is as sweet in life as a new ball or stick. The waves continue to crank and strangely there's still no surfers in sight. I'm migrating back to sunny Melbourne on the 3rd of Feb, so I'm inclined to try and relax a little more also. It's kind of impossible to get too stressed here in this sleepy little corner of the world. And hey, things could be worse right... I could have two broken elbows.

To the untrained eye, this outlook would create a perfect setting for breakfast. For the surfer with a broken arm, this vista is both cruel and torturous. The waves here in Waimarama have been cranking for a week now, with barely a soul in the water. What's worst though, is that you wake at a sparrow's fart here and have to endure hours of longing every day. Still, it's not to bad on the eye... Just a little hard on the brain.

Another day in a fishing/surfing paradise being tortured with a broken arm. It seems the local paper is cashing in on the 'shark frenzy' this summer although I'd be more concerned with the amount of boating/river deaths so far this year. Apparently 300 million sharks are slaughtered each year; I'd wager that this is fractionally greater than shark fatalities on humans (The last death in NZ was way back in 1976). I don't reckon the media does the fish any favours with shock headlines directed at ignorant bumpkins.

Still, there is some beauty to be found in the garden... Ain't that nice.

Photo diary 1

So i decided to illustrate a day in the life of an unarmed man but my day started out a little more exciting than most...

Fishing with the grown-ups @ Karamea, NZ.