Brisbane Garage Rock, the festival

Is there anything better than garage rock? That raw sound of distorted guitars, not-so-clean bass and fast drum beats with not quite sung, not quite screamed vocals? I think not, I love it to bits. And so does Brisbane, as we're having a full day festival.

On July 9th, from 4pm to 3am, make sure you bring your ear plugs to Woodland, because it's going to be loud, oh so loud, for the Flavours of Skuzz festival.

Highlights for me are the ever funny hardcore boys Dick Nasty (whose song titles are longer and 80% more funny than their songs), Velociraptor (whose band members chop and change each performance, but can include 12+ people) and Undead Apes. For only $25, you're basically paying a dollar for each band. In this post-GFC climate, you won't get a better deal than that, not even on Cudo or Catch of the Day or any other cheap skate website.

The Casualties

Do you remember the good old days of punk rock? Bright coloured mohawks, plaid pants tucked into docs, chains everywhere and rough sounding raw music played as fast and violently as possible? I won't say I miss it, but goddamn it was good. It's the way punk started and the way punk should be.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is what the Casualties are still about, 20+ years after they started their punk rock, probably with their middle fingers raised in a giant fuck off salute to the world.

Sure they're older now, and playing to venues more civilised and not smelling of piss and blood, but that doesn't mean the music's changed. No, it's the same angry punk. And I'm going to be reliving it all come September 8th, when they play the HiFi. 18+.

It's going to be weird watching them in a very nice and shiny and clean HiFi venue.

Hipster tour, take 2

It just seems like the other day that Architecture in Helsinki toured, but... well.. it was. Obviously they really love their new album, because they're coming back around again! September 25 at the Tivoli.

I was going to make some sort of smart-ass comment and make fun of them, but then I remembered exactly how much I do enjoy their music. Dammit.

Redacted

I was about to blog about a new music festival feature Lil' Wayne and Kid Cudi, which included stops in Cairns, Townsville and Brisbane, but it got cancelled rather quickly. Within days of the first announcement actually.

Weird.

Mercy Beat

Brisbane is home of some of the best music in Australia right now, especially if you like your music heavy. And one of my favourite local bands is the Mercy Beat. Imagine if Queens of the Stone Age still had Nick Oliveri singing all the songs and played even more hardcore style.

That's these guys. And they fucking rock.


Last year they put out a tops CD called How To Shampoo a Yak. And although they plugged it a lot then, they've decided to do the whole East Coast run to play it to the whole goddamn country.
We get 3 shows out of it.
July 15 at Kings Beach Tavern in Caloundra
July 16 at Runaway Bay Tavern on the Gold Coast
July 29 at the Beetle Bar

I've blogged about these guys plenty of times before, and there's a reason for it. They're awesome

And the award for the weirdest, non-fitting venue for one of my favourite musician's next Brisbane gig goes to...

Jim Ward. For his upcoming appearance at Alhambra.

Yes Alhambra. The nightclub.

Jim Ward, he of two of my favourite bands: At the Drive-In and Sparta. He's the guitarist in the following video. No, not the one dancing like he's having a fit, but the one standing like a grunge kid over his guitar shouting out the backing vocals:

These days he goes around doing his own acoustic stuff, which is just as high quality as anything he's ever been linked to in the past. See him and his guitar, have a drink in a Turkish-themed night club and try not to swoon like I will be doing.

August 13, Alhambra. 18+

Periphery

Who says you need to play shows and have a record deal to be in a good touring band? Not the members of Periphery, a metal band formed when the guitarist shared his riffs across numerous online forums. But hey, it worked for them, they got signed, and last year they got dragged out to Australia as the opening act for Dillinger Escape Plan. And it was there that they melted our faces with their metal.

And now, they're coming back for their own solo tour. They'll be zooming through the Zoo July 29 (19+), which apparently is close to selling out already, within a week of tickets being released! Melbourne's already sold out, so obviously that tells you how good these guys are.

The Living End tour

Ever since I was yay-high (points to stomach) I've been a huge fan of the Living End. Going through my CD cabinet, you'd probably see they're the only band I own every release of. And what a collection of albums.

My earliest memory of them was on a school bus going somewhere, with all of us singing the lyrics of Prisoner of Society to our teacher's face, as he was getting mad at us. There's nothing better than "WE DON'T NEED NO ONE LIKE YOU! TO TELL US WHAT TO DO!"

Ahh, yes, the good old Living End days. The rockabilly punk days. The days when Recovery was still the best TV show in the world:

These days the Living End are more of the "alternative rock" end of the spectrum, but by no means does that mean they are crap. Or that Chris Cheney isn't one of the best guitarists ever. Hopefully they'll still turn out the hits though, especially on their new album to be released soon.

To support the album, they'll be heading out on tour. September 2, the Tivoli. Supporting them will be one of Ellery's favourite bands, King Cannons.

Apparently they ain't nothin' to fuck with, fo realz.

The reason Wu-Tang is skipping Brisbane apparently.

Thanks for this Pete.

Parklife!

Parklife is one of those yearly kind-of-dance music festivals that I avoid with a passion. Years gone by it would be full of neon-wearing teenie boppers dropping E and generally just annoying the heck out of me with bad music that I just don't care for.

But about a year ago I started watching this show:

It's funny, it's got Aziz Ansari. But even better is that title track that starts it off. The band? Death From Above 1979.

My Canadian friend Michelle spent years telling me I'd like this band, but I never got around to listening to them. But as soon as I started watching Human Giant, I was hooked. DFA 1979 really hasn't left my MP3 player since that day. It's just 2 guys: a bass guitar and a drummer, but the hooks and riffs the write are just noisy and danceable, my kind of music.

They broke up a long time ago, but only reformed this year, which saw their first show end in a riot.

So hang on, what's this got to do with Parklife, a music festival I hate? They're playing probably their only Australian shows there. Goddamn it. I want to see them so badly, but I don't want to pay what I'm going to guess is $150+ to see one band I'd kill to see. Of course there's other bands, they are:

Gossip
Lykke Li
Santigold
Death From Above 1979
Duck Sauce
Katy B
The Naked & Famous
Crystal Fighters
Example
Digitalism
Adrian Lux
The Streets
Simian Mobile Disco
Magnetic Man
Nero
SebastiAn
Diplo
Mstrkrft
Sebastien Tellier
Little Dragon
Gold Fields
Mylo
Wolfgang Gartner
Joker & MC Nomad
Feed Me
Tensnake
Kimbra
The Aston Shuffle
Flux Pavilion
Yacht Club DJs
Harvard Bass

There's a few in their I'd want to see, especially the Streets, who will be breaking up after this tour of their last album. But, not bagging on the genre, it's just not really my scene... But... DFA 1979. GYAH.

It's all going down October 1 at the Riverstage.