2011: Best of gigs

2011 was my most musically productive year, in regards to gigs. Over the last 365 days I went to 64 gigs/festivals. This smashes my previous years by a long margin. I imagine the increase is due to my photography, but I like to think it was just a great year for live music in Australia!

There was the normal year starter of Future of the Left, followed by festivals in torrential rain, festivals in crazy heat, multiple trips to Melbourne and Sydney for shows, in-store performances, orchestras, flood-benefit shows, cover bands, friends' bands, classic bands playing arena shows, bands I've waited most of my life to see, my favourite band of all time and lots of new bands I'd never heard of before yet became instant fans. What a year.

Despite my bemoaning of the death of the festival, there were too many good ones for me to pass up this year. Most years I'll go to 2 or 3, but this year I went to 6, 2 of them as a photographer. Considering one of them was a 2 day festival (in torrential rain a few days before the floods), it was quite a tiring year.

With so many gigs (I think I saw 237 different sets), it's really hard to do a top 5, so I made an internal compromise and came up with my top 8 gigs of the year that was 2011.

8. Off With Their Heads/Against Me! (4 May, 2011 @ the HiFi)
If you've ever seen Against Me! live, you'll probably realise their inclusion in any best-gigs-of-the-year list is mandatory. Through an extended set you could just see them enjoying playing as much as we were enjoying watching. It's rare to get a synergy between a band and a crowd at a venue of a large size like the HiFi, but everyone in the band and the crowd had massive smiles on their face. Throw in a long set list full of classic songs designed to get the crowd pumping their fists and singing along, bring along another great international punk band in Off With Their Heads and you get a great night of punk rock.

(click here for the original review)

7. Sufjan Stevens (26 January, 2011 @ the Tivoli)
This was my first time seeing Sufjan. Although more of a fan of his acoustic-folk, I knew this set would lean towards his newer electronic stuff. I figured it was worth going just to see the few songs I really, really like. What it ended up being was an ethereal all-encompassing experience. Not just a gig, but a whole show. Sufjan conducted a light, laser and balloon show that added incredible depth to his music, allowing me to appreciate it at a new level. And he still played some of the folk classics.

(click here for the original review)

6. Melvins/Primus (3 March, 2011 @ the Palais Theatre, St Kilda)
No surprise this was going to be on my list. Primus is my favourite band, no matter what, and my trip to Melbourne was purely for this show. The venue was sitting only (heavily enforced by the ushers), but it was in ridiculously comfortable leather seats with plenty of room. Kim and I were right near the front of the upper balcony and we first watched an all-out aural assault by the Melvins with 2 drummers following a classic set of Primus, including a few new songs as well.

(click here for the original review)

5. The Chariot (20 April, 2011 @ Sun Distortion Studios)

Their first tour of Australia and they absolutely slaughtered the venue. The opening bands weren't really to my taste, but when the Chariot came on I no longer cared. The stage broke and was carried out in pieces. A yellow pages phone book was ripped in half and thrown in the air. The bass guitar broke a string, something I thought was nigh on impossible. The bass player was carried out of the venue still playing. Everything was destroyed in a full on noise-assault. It ended with everything in pieces and the band slumped to the floor and me wanting to see it all over again.

(click here for the original review, picture gallery and bonus video)

4. Modest Mouse (21 July, 2011 @ the Prince of Wales Bandroom, St Kilda)
I travelled to Melbourne just for this show. There was a fight in a mosh pit (what the fuck Melbourne indie fans?), there was no Johnny Marr, but it was still one of the best times I've seen Modest Mouse play. They played something off almost every album (fairly rare) even a few impromptu acoustic songs that Isaac has obviously forgotten most of the lyrics for... stopping to apologise at the second or third verse. The kicker for me though was the fact the encore saw them playing for an hour and a half longer than they were supposed to. Is there such a thing as too much Modest Mouse? No. Not at all.

3. Harvest Festival (Kevin Devine/This Town Needs Guns/The Holidays/The Walkmen/Mercury Rev/TV on the Radio/Clap Your Hands Say Yeah/Bright Eyes/Mogwai/The National/The Flaming Lips/Portishead) (19 November, 2011 @ the Riverstage)

Granted, any festival featuring the Flaming Lips will blow you away with their fully immersive spectacular. But this festival was enough to make me actually enjoy the whole day, instead of suffering through a day of mediocrity just to see one or two bands I really like. Harvest restored my faith in the music festival. It wasn't just about music, there was plenty other things to do that were actually interesting as well as plenty of art and installations. The grounds were laid out perfectly with no noise-pollution between stages and the bands were top-notch. I may have also cried when the Walkmen played The Rat. What a magnificent day it was. I wish all festivals were even half as good as this.

(click here for the photo gallery I shot of the day over at Tone Deaf)

2. The Mercy Beat/Trash Talk/H2O/The Bronx (25 February, 2011 @ Step Inn)

The night before the Soundwave festival and this was a hard-to-get-tickets-for flood fundraiser in the tiny-ass band room of the Step Inn. Originally supposed to be featuring Terror on the line-up, flight connections meant they missed out, but it didn't stop one of the greatest gigs I've ever been to. Trash Talk played an insane (as always) set, going all out with amazing energy. H2O showed why they are one of the best hardcore bands and featured guest spots by members of New Found Glory and Terror (who just showed up) and the Bronx wowed us all the way through to the wee hours of the morning, even playing a song they never play live: Strobe Life.

(click here for the original review and photo gallery)

1. DZ Deathrays/Fucked Up (9 December, 2011 @ Alhambra)

They put out one of the best albums of the year and then they came out on a stadium tour with the Foo Fighters. Luckily they threw this gig together quickly. Alhambra didn't know what hit it. Fucked Up played an awesome set that had security confused and saw Damian spend most of his time shirtless in the crowd with everyone going crazy (which of course is his normal routine, but it's still great to see). He even stopped the band and retrieved an evicted punter when security got a bit too over the top. It was full of great songs, DZ Deathrays were the secret opening band playing their first Australian show in god knows how long and Fucked Up were nice enough to stay behind afterwards and meet everyone. Of course there's a bit of fanboy-bias in this choice, but it was just an amazing night.

(click here for the original review and here for my Tumblr-based photo gallery)

Splendour in the Grass Sideshows

So the Splendour in the Grass sideshows were announced today, and there was a huge surprise! Brisbane didn't get any! Oh wait... that's normal. Especially since, for probably the first time ever, Splendour isn't sold out yet.

There's a few I'll consider travelling for, especially since my second favourite band (Modest Mouse) is playing. But I guess, at this rate, if Splendour doesn't sell out, it may just be nicer heading to the festival?

If anything, I hope promoters now realize they can't just recycle the same few international acts with the same 50 Australian bands and call it a festival every few months.

For the list of ones announced in non-Brisbane areas, head here.

Splendour

Going through the list of Allan's regrets, somewhere after about 10 girls, or missed opportunities with girls, we get the 2006 Splendour in the Grass festival. Every year Splendour serves up a great multi-day festival of the best indie and whatever's hip kind of music.

This year, for the second year in a row, they're having it at Woodford, up on the Sunshine Coast. Convenient? Most definitely. But to me, it's always the line up. And this year's has been announced.

COLDPLAY
KANYE WEST
JANE'S ADDICTION
THE HIVES
PULP
THE LIVING END
THE MARS VOLTA
REGINA SPEKTOR
BLISS N ESO
PNAU
MOGWAI
DJ SHADOW
GLASVEGAS
THE GRATES
DEVENDRA BANHARDT AND THE GROGS
MODEST MOUSE
THE MIDDLE EAST
KAISER CHIEFS
JAMES BLAKE
KELE
THE VINES
ELBOW
ESKIMO JOE
NOAH AND THE WHALE
CHILDREN COLLIDE
THIEVERY CORPORATION
CUT COPY
ISOBEL CAMPBELL AND MARK LANEGAN
BLUEJUICE
THE KILLS
BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS (featuring THE RELATIVES)
ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI
FOSTER THE PEOPLE
THE PANICS
FRIENDLY FIRES
JEBEDIAH
THE VACCINES
GOMEZ
BOY AND BEAR
GOTYE
DOES IT OFFEND YOU YEAH?
CLOUD CONTROL
MONA
SPARKADIA
WARPAINT
MUSCLES (Live)
FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS
THE JEZEBELS
DRAPHT
BRITISH SEA POWER
TIM & JEAN
LEADER CHEETAH
GROUPLOVE
SEEKER LOVER KEEPER
YELLE
KIMBRA
PHRASE
OH MERCY
DANANANANAYKROYD
THE BLACK SEEDS
MARQUES TOLIVER
THE HOLIDAYS
GHOUL
LIAM FINN
THE HERD
YOUNG THE GIANT
GUINEAFOWL
HUNGRY KIDS OF HUNGARY
JINJA SAFARI
WILD BEASTS
ILLY
CUT OFF YOUR HANDS
GARETH LIDDIARD
ALPINE
WORLD'S END PRESS
MOSMAN ALDER
LANIE LANE

I've done that thing where I've bolded the ones I'd go see.

Now don't get me wrong, there's some great artists there that I'd love to see. Heck, my second favourite band (Modest Mouse) was the first announcement. But at the same time, it's the regular Australian indie concert lineup almost. And for ~$500? No. I think I'll take that money, buy flights to Melbourne/Sydney, catch a few sideshows and avoid the camping, the traffic jams, the idiots only there to do drugs and drink and not for the music.

And that's what's going to piss me off. Sideshows. Brisbane never gets Splendour ones. Even though it sells out in microseconds every year. It's a bit of a sham. It grinds my gears.

And FYI: Mogwai, Regina Spektor, Kanye and Coldplay are doing zero sideshows.

90's Mixtape #4: Bands that got big

As many one hit wonders as there were in the 90s, there were plenty of bands that became huge, from genres that would normally not have gotten big. Imagine in 1990 seeing Green Day and thinking how huge they would become? It just boggles the mind. This selection is of bands that have become huge since then, maybe not to the level of being played on Nova, but to the level of being considered gods of their genres.

1. Ben Folds Five - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces (3:54)

Ben Folds was the sound of university students of the 90s. This track, one of his heavier ones, was the opening track to the album that made him huge, the one that had that sobby song Brick on it.

2. Alice In Chains - We Die Young (2:32)

Nirvana was the biggest band in grunge, Pearl Jam possibly the second. And the third, without a doubt, was Alice in Chains. I still remember when the lead singer Layne Staley died in high school, most of my friends had to go home to mourn. It was a huge moment for us, as Alice in Chains was the working class rock music of our area.

3. At the Drive-In - Metronome Arthritis (4:01)

Probably one of the best bands, ever. They had a massive hard working ethic, and apparently gave the most legendary on-stage performances. This was a track that was recorded just before the sessions that gave them their critically acclaimed, and unfortunately last, album Relationship of Command. Before this song they were scrappyish post-hardcore. After this track they defined a style. They then broke up to form the bands Sparta and the Mars Volta.

4. Deftones - Root (3:41)

This track is off of their first album, when they were a burgeoning hardcore band. Still one of my favourite albums, I play this on guitar almost every day. Eventually they calmed down into an electronic/ambient hardcore band that they are now. They’ve become their own genre.

5. Blur - M.O.R. (3:27)

Woohoo! These guys made Brit-rock famous. Unfortunately they wrote the bogan anthem Song 2, but the rest of the album was full of amazing British rock. The lead singer is now the Gorillaz, amongst other bands.

6. Bush - Bubbles (3:02)

Another British band, but more of a grunge one. They hit the time huge in America with a song called Glycerine, but this song is off of the Mallrats soundtrack. The lead singer ended up marrying Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, got happy, stopped writing good music and is now an actor.

7. Fugazi - Give Me The Cure (2:59)

Fugazi formed from the ashes of the short-lived hardcore band that invented straight edge (they even wrote the song that NOFX covers): Minor Threat. Although not the relentless hardcore of Minor Threat, they introduced indie and melody to create some quiet, yet still hard songs. They still kept the hardcore ethic though, every concert they play is all ages and cheap as chips. That’s the only way they’ll play. They are truly in it for the music, even after 30 odd years.

8. System Of A Down - Sugar (2:33)

You know System of a Down. Their first album though, especially this song, was at the forefront of my drug days in the 90s. The album, this song too, was basically about bad drug trips. This one is about mushroom men.

9. A.F.I. - Malleus Maleficarum (4:01)

I also hope you know A.F.I. Before they were glam-punk, they were a great west coast hardcore band. I wish I had known them during these days.

10. Nine Inch Nails - Big Man With A Gun (1:36)

Nine Inch Nails were so huge in the 90s (and so feared) that I remember my teenage books (Animorphs in particular) always had the loners, the losers, or the trouble makers listening to their music.

11. Modest Mouse - Doin' the Cockroach (4:18)

Modest Mouse in the 90’s were a balls to the wall noise-rock band with existential lyrics that either made you think or got you lost. But halfway through each song the lead singer Isaac would just lose it, and play as much noise while yelling as he wanted to, until he pulled it up slow. Not as good these days, but still an amazing indie band.

12. REFUSED - New Noise (5:09)

The single off their groundbreaking album, the Shape of Punk to Come. They actually showed us in this album the music scene 10 years on, and like any great band releasing an amazing album, they broke up immediately afterwards. Oh, and Swedish. You should listen to this whole album, it is just hardcore royalty.

13. Poison The Well - Artists Rendering of Me (3:20)

There was nothing like the hardcore of today before Poison the Well. And they are still going strong.

14. Beastie Boys - Sabotage (2:58)

Yeah, they mainly do hip-hop. And got huge off it. But this is a great little track with an awesome video clip.

15. Incubus - You Will Be A Hot Dancer (4:17)

Incubus are now a pretty boring indie band. But when they started, they mixed together funk and metal in a brand new way. Their bass player is one of the few reasons I ever bought a bass guitar.

16. Maxïmo Park - Graffiti (2:46)

Ask girls my age about this band. They love them and so do I. But for some reason, their cabaret style just gets the girls.

17. Spiderbait - Shazam! (2:03)

Australia’s favourite band, whenever the drummer was singing they produced much better and heavier songs like Shazam!

18. Beck - Sexx Laws (3:41)

Beck is just one of those artists that is around a lot, and has been for years. He’s put out weird electronic music, he’s put out acoustic music, he’s put out rock music. But the album I best remember him for is where this track came from, full on big-band trumpet style music. Probably not your taste, but it’s just fun with a bit of a risqué subject.

Download

Chuck's Top Ten albums of all time (as of this week at least)

I got asked the other day to name my top 10 albums of all time. It was a throw away topic of conversation, but one that left my head reeling. What exactly makes an album one of my all time favourites? I made a shortlist of about 50 albums, but then I added more and more that I kept forgetting about. I dug through my records, I dug through my MP3's, hell, I even dug through my parent's 12" from the 70s.

The list covered all generations, from Creendence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory in the late 60s, Neil Young's Harvest in the early 70s, Tears for Fears' Songs from the Big Chair in the 80s, Dr Dre's Chronic in the 90s, Taking Back Sunday's Tell All Your Friends in the early emo 2000s and even as recent as Los Campesinos! and Dangers' albums of 2010. But none of those albums made the cut.

My shortist came down to about 20. And looking at it, it wasn't surprising if you know me. It covers the wide range of music I like. I stripped out multiple albums from the one band (damn you Modest Mouse) and stared at a list of 15. I then said fuck it and made the 10. So here it is. But first, some honourable mentions. Albums that just missed the cut:

Finch - Say Hello to Sunshine
Buckethead - Monsters and Robots
The Vandals - Hitler Bad. Vandals Good.
Against Me! - As the Eternal Cowboy
Alexisonfire - Crisis
Between the Buried and Me - Alaska
Poison the Well - Opposite of December
The Bouncing Souls - How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Brand New - Deja Entendu
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

10. Suicide Machines - Destruction by Definition

A surprising start, right? Not really if you've ever been in my car. My mate Elliot once commented how this album had never left my car in a year. And it's true. I play it almost weekly.

But what makes this album a classic to me, is the upbeat mix of punk, ska and hardcore. This album was all about kids having a good time and enjoying life. Let's just make a band and play all the styles of music we like singing songs about whatever is relevant to us. The Vans Song was all about shoes, New Girl is a guy boasting about his new girlfriend to whoever is within ear shot and Hey Ska is just a classic anthem of being confused about growing up.

Everytime I listen to this I just have flashbacks to being 14 and playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (#1) on the Nintendo 64 as well. Those were carefree days.

9. The Roots - Game Theory

In a generation of throw away hip-hop albums, that generally show case 1 or 2 songs with "skits", this is a diamond in the rough. It's not got the outstanding tracks that their album Phrenology had, but this is one of those albums of yesteryears, where the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.

It builds up with a sample criticising wars before launching into what could almost be described as a broody post-punk kind of feel of False Media, with Black Thought touching some deep and meaningful territory. It builds up through In The Music before hitting full crescendo in Here I Come (quite possibly my song of 2006) before bringing it all the way back with Can't Stop This, a touching and hauting tribute to their friend.

While listening to this you ride the entire wave of emotions.

8. The Fratellis - Costello Music

There is nothing about this album to make it a classic. It's far from anything original. But that's exactly why I love it. Costello Music was not recorded to change the face of music, it was recorded simply to make you dance. And it manages to do that for me every time. The up beat tempos channel Clash style punk as well as elements of ska and dance. It's just fast and full of energy.

7. Sonic Youth - Goo

I am probably a little more than slightly obsessed with Goo. I have the CD. I have the re-issue 180 gram 12". I also have the album cover on a shirt. That last one is purely for the art appreciation of the cover. So musically, why is this the best Sonic Youth album from the 16 released in 30 years? And it's the songs. Goo is a hit factory.

Dirty Boots starts the album the way I like Sonic Youth: noisy and full of guitars. Kool Thing, featuring Chuck D of Public Enemy, is almost as mainstream pop-rock as Sonic Youth ever got. Mildred Pierce on the other hand is as far away from mainstream rock as it gets, a post-rock song ending with 30 seconds of almost pure grindcore. Goo demonstrates everything that is Sonic Youth, all in 11 tracks.

6. Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese

There was no doubting that Primus would feature somewhere in my list and Sailing the Seas of Cheese is the obvious choice. Interesting, it is also the 2nd album on the list that featured a song on the soundtrack to the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (and Goldfinger almost made it as well, that must say a lot about the time I came into music).

Seas of Cheese holds the greatest collection of Primus songs, with most of them being outstanding tracks. The redneck drawl of Jerry Was A Racecar driver, the Tom Waits yelling-through-a-megaphone story of Tommy the Cat, the fast bass slapping of Is It Luck, the repetitive art-rock of Bastards and Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers and the what the fuck moment of Grandad's Little Ditty... This album is everything Primus is. They've got great songs on all of their other albums, but that is generally padded by a few filler materials, of which Seas of Cheese has none.

The day I saw the album played live, front to back, was one of the greatest days of my life.

5. Modest Mouse - Lonesome Crowded West

Musically, this album should be a disaster. It makes no sense. The mix of instruments at times is so borderline to being noise and at other times so soft that you strain to pick it up. The music itself throws out all theory and the lyrics are just pure whacked out nonsense. The only thing holding the madness together is Isaac Brock. And wow, he does.

The loud noisy freak outs of early Modest Mouse is what I love best about the band and Lonesome Crowded West has both Shit Luck and Doin' the Cockroach, both songs that build and layer noise into an explosion. Mellowing out the album are folkie tunes like Jesus Christ Was an Only Child, Long Distance Drunk and Bankrupt On selling.

The whole album teeters on the edge of lunacy with polar swings back and forth. The sound is huge for only a 5 piece band and marks the turning point of their career. They've mellowed out a bit since this album but this is what defined their sound as a band.

4. Decemberists - Picaresque

Nautical European folk music. That is all.

But really, there is no modern story teller like Colin Melloy, the lead singer. Each track of Picaresque tells a story. And sometimes it is a very long story. That sounds like a sea shanty (The Mariner's Revenge Song). The music of the album paints the scenes almost as good as the words and you can just imagine yourself there. And when you're not imagining yourself in the story, you are imagining yourself around a campire in 19th century Europe listening to the gypsy nomads telling a musical story.

3. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

The most hated of Bob Dylan's albums (well at the time at least) is my favourite. This is where Bob Dylan turned his back on folk and his musical past. This is when he embraced the future and became a full electric rock band. And really, not much changed. Sure it was louder with more instruments, but there's still that Bob Dylan poetry through the whole album. And if anything, the band helped him write some really long songs, with great lyrical content. Doing that on a single acoustic guitar would've driven most listeners crazy. It was not quite the birth of rock 'n' roll, but Like a Rolling Stone, the classic opening track, launched mainstream rock to the world.

2. Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombation In 12 Bursts

“They told me that the classics never go out of style, but…they do. They do. Somehow, baby, I never thought that we would too.” And with that intro to the album, Refused summed up their greatest and their last album, the band famously imploding a few months later in the middle of a US tour. This album is everything the title makes it out to be: it was the shape of punk to come. Breakdowns, electronic instruments and noise, classical interludes, songs shifting 180 degrees in the middle, singing with screaming, simple riffs coupled with complex harmonies, clean guitar leading into crunching distortion, it's all there. And these days the music world is overrun with it.

There is simply no better manifesto to everything this band stood for then this album. The album’s foreword states that “ideas can be expressed over any soundtrack” and this was the ideal soundtrack for it.  The raw anger and disgust at capitalism and the politics of the modern world that was the core belief of the band is just released and jammed down our throats through Dennis' angry vocals and the bone crushing accompanying guitar work.

It's not just the music, it's the whole album. In the modern age of CD's and downloads, an album package is just something to hold the music. Not this album though, their entire philosophy and manifesto is there in the notes, for all to see.

1. At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command

Relationship of Command mirrors so many aspects of Refused's Shape of Punk to Come, it's scary. Both albums were the band's final ones, scoring them their hard worked for success before the bands imploded. Both albums sound nothing like their previous work. Both albums took hardcore music to places no one had imagined.

Whereas Refused went the way of a crushing manifesto, At the Drive-In continued their absolutely gibberish: guitars that followed no musical path with lyrics of absolute nonsense. And it was amazing.

Personally, this album is what woke me up to music. 9th grade, my mate lent me the CD. 2 days later I had bought it (for $6.99 in Best Buy's up and coming artist display). A year later I had learnt most of the bass guitar parts and played along to it daily. 10 years later I am still listening to it over and over again, wishing for someone else to make music this fresh and new to me again.

The songs on the album have all been hand crafted with such intricacy, listen to the bass in Quarantined play with the sounds of the storm, the piano in Non-Zero Possibility, the crazy guitar in Cosmonaut... every single sound has been strategically thought out and placed. perfectly. It's a masterpiece.