Massive update

It's been such a long time since I've done this, but because I've fallen behind, I think it's time I updated my blog in one huge hit. So here's all the tours and news I've been saving over the last 2 weeks to blog about.

Coal Chamber are playing Soundwave 2012
Yes, one of those first nu-metal bands that got me into heavy music are reforming and coming out our way for Soundwave next year! I'm actually quite excited to see them...

Other bands confirmed for Soundwave next year include: Trivium, CKY, Shadows Fall, Devin Townsend, Gojira, The Used, Hellyeah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Dashboard Confessional, Hole, Machine Head, Hatebreed, Kvelertak, Mastodon, Zebrahead and Saves the Day (including a second set of them playing Weezer songs). Wow. Already looking to be a big festival.

Foxy Shazam 
One of my favourite bands from Soundwave this year have pulled out of the Harvest Festival to focus on the UK.

Vasco Era
Noisy indie rockers the Vasco Era are heading out for an Australian tour, playing the Coolangatta Hotel on October 29 and the Zoo October 30.

Vanilla Ice
He's too legit to quit and as such he will be playing Jupiter's Casino, on the Gold Coast. November 13.

Opeth
The Swedish progressive-death-metal-rock band will be playing the Tivoli on December 15. Expect lots of long hair, black shirts, and extended solos to fast drumming.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
These indie-rockers are coming out for the Harvest festival, but have also decided to play an intimate sideshow at the Zoo on November 20.

Free Triple J concert
Triple J, to celebrate the launch of their new digital radio station playing "unearthed" Australian music, are having free shows Australia wide on October 5. Ours will be at the Arena, featuring Bleeding Knees Club, Emma Louise and The Medics. Doors are at 7pm, it's free, but it's first in best dressed.

Valley Fiesta
Free music will be invading the streets of Fortitude Valley on October 7 and 8 with two stages playing great music. For FREE! You can catch Hungry Kids of Hungary, Kidney Thieves, Laneous and the Family Yah and much more. Head here to find out.

Aussie Indie Madness!

So I've noticed lately 2 things:

1. The HiFi has changed ticket providers from OzTix to Moshtix. This blows monkey balls. Moshtix make it ridiculously hard to do tickets (proof of ID, all on the same entry, web only) and charge high ticketing fees. Also, they don't do paper tickets. So no longer do I get the thrill of going to my local record store, buying an actual ticket, going to the gig, and putting the ticket in my collection. I have hundreds of tickets chronicling my entire lifetime of music (hence the background of the blog).
2. Australian indie is on the rise again.

I'll address the second point, as I noticed it after discovering the first point. There's a shit tonne of Aussie indie tours coming up, and a lot of them are upgrading from the smaller venues we've been used to over the years (mainly at the Zoo or even Rics). In fact, a lot are coming through the HiFi right now. Like the following I found while looking for Get Up Kids tickets the other day:

• Gypsy and the Cat, May 14
• Architecture in Helsinki, May 27
• Hungry Kids of Hungary, May 28
• Jebediah, June 3
• Boy and Bear, June 4
• Little Red, June 18
• The Grates, July 1

In slightly over a month, there's 7 Australian bands touring, most of which I'd only expect to play the Zoo or similar. Good for them. Expect hipsters en masse at all of these shows.

Of course they are all 18+, and most of them are less than $30. Should be good fun.

Track and Field

While you read this story, you should play this song in the background.

Presenting: Track and Field.

The idea is the brainchild of a bunch of local band managers. The idea being that instead of having regular music club nights, or an annual festival, they create some sort of fun medium ground. And thus, Track and Field was born. Every few months now they'll put together bands and DJs in a warehouse like space for good party times.

The first installment of Track and Field will happen on June 4 at the Old Museum. The bands include Last Dinosaurs, Ball Park Music, The Belligerents and Mitzi. The DJs will be members of bands such as Hungry Kids of Hungary, the John Steel Singers and the Honey Month.

Tickets will be $17 on pre-sale and $22 later on. I'm pretty sure this is 18+ too, as I imagine this won't be a party without some sort of drinks flowing.

Hungry Kids of Hungary

One of my friends just worships the ground that Hungry Kids of Hungary walks on. It's not hard to see why, they're good guys and they have some really upbeat guitar indie-pop.

I've blogged about them a few times before, so I won't go into too much detail about these Brisbane boys. But following on from their excellent Australian Music Month show in November, they are now going around and doing a string of regional Australian dates. They'll be taking the Honey Month with them and be playing around appearances at both the Laneway festival here in Brisbane and Good Vibrations on the Gold Coast.

Feb 3, Joe's Waterhole, Eumundi
Feb 5, Hoey Moey, Coff's Harbour

Get a free MP3 from their Unearthed site.

All the news in one

I've been neglecting my blog most of this week as life has been busy (as it always is in pre-Christmas/party/cricket season). So here's the condensed news I've been meaning to post here:

Toro Y Moi
... is generally one man making electronic/lofi/chillwave music. He's put together a small band and is coming down under for his first tour, playing Woodland on February 24.

MySpace

Helmet
Page Hamilton of hardcore masters Helmet have said they are coming out here in April/May. I am looking forward to this, Meantime is one of the best albums ever made that started the whole hardcore genre.

That was probably my first introduction to hardcore, late one night as I was watching it on Rage. About the same time I saw a Toe to Toe video actually.

Jason Collett
The name is probably not familiar, but he's one of the guys in the Canadian indie powerhouse that is Broken Social Scene. He does a lot of solo work too, and he'll be coming down under to play that (and I'm hoping a few BSS songs).

January 13, the Zoo. 18+.

MySpace

(hed) P.E.
These guys were one of the early bands about a decade ago, in the rap-rock movement. And they had a few good songs (Bartender still gets played by me a lot). They've just released a new album, which I've queued up but yet to listen to, and are doing a run of tour dates.

HiFi, January 28. 18+

MySpace

Cam/Mikey (Cola Wars/Bodyjar) Acoustic Tour
These two are the main drive behind the Australian punk bands Cola Wars and Bodyjar. They've jumped on the "old punk bands' lead singers doing acoustic tour" bandwagon and are heading out to play all of their classic Cola Wars and Bodyjar songs on acoustic guitar.

Boys & Girls (X&Y), December 16, 18+

ZZ Top added to Bluesfest
There's really nothing else to say here. It keeps getting better.

And girls go crazy about a sharp dressed man.

The Like
The all-girls garage rock band the Like, fresh from supporting the Strokes on their last tour (which missed Brisbane, bastards), are coming back for a solo show.

February 18, the Zoo. 18+

MySpace

Thank God It's Monday
Carlton Dry are sponsoring Monday night shows all around the country. First up for Brisbane will be local boys Hungry Kids of Hungary, fresh from playing the sold out Triple J Aus Music Month a few weeks back.

December 13, Birdee Num Num, 18+

MySpace

I Exist/Phantoms Wet n Wild Split
It's not really news, but I like it. One of my favourite gigs of 2010 so far has been the little basement show in West End featuring Phantoms and I Exist. Apparently they enjoyed that tour so much, especially their side trip to Wet n Wild, that they are currently recording a split EP with songs based and named after the rides. Awesome.

(Thanks JHat for the photo. He goes to a lot of gigs (some I'm at) and takes way better photos than I can ever hope for. http://www.jhatphoto.com/. Although I think he cheats with his careful placing of flashes, and knowing the bands).

I Exist
Phantoms

Triple J Aus Music Month

So last night I went along to the Australian Music month show at the HiFi, put on by our youth network, Triple J. It was an amazing night of Brisbane music. First up were Ball Park Music, playing their funky rock.

They rocked pretty hard, but I about lost my shit when they bought out a special guest for a song: Dave McCormack (of Custard and the Polaroids fame). Sure, he just played percussion and a single song, but it was amazing.

Next up were the Hungry Kids of Hungary, who my friends were excited to see. I've seen them a few times before, and their live set was slightly less exciting than Ball Park Music. However, for a few of their tracks they bought out a bunch of friends to play extra instruments and sing the backing vocals for a Kylie Minogue song. That was definitely the highlight of their set.

Finally were local boys the John Steel Singers (plus a chick from Little Scout playing glockenspiel. I totally swooned for her). These guys get better everytime I see the, and I am just sad that their recordings don't do the grandeur and large sound of their live set any justice what so ever.

And the best part? They bought out Robert Forster (from the Go Betweens) to play a few songs. He played about 3 covers with them, and even did a stint on acoustic guitar.


The whole night was an amazing show of just some of the talent Brisbane has on offer. But it didn't end there. Oh no. All of the artists came back out for an encore, including Robert Forster. Massed on stage together they covered the Saints' Know Your Product. And I recorded a crappy quality version of it:

Once Triple J post the recorded audio for the night, I'll redub it to have it sounding awesome. Great night.

EDITED: For the redubbed video

John Steel Singers and the Australian music bonanza

Let's step back into my time machine right now. Wind the numbers back to 2008. Chuck had just returned from his first international work trip, 2 weeks spent at 5000 metres above sea level in Peru, struggling to work in the oxygen deprived environment where there was neither phone nor internet (but surprisingly a large number of heavily armed police officers). He had only been back for a few hours, struggling to adjust to being able to breathe and speak English again. When he got a text message from his girlfriend at the time breaking up with him.

Devastating.
Childish.

And for that reason alone, I've been avoiding the shit out of the John Steel Singers for the last few years. Given how the Brisbane live music scene works, with all the same bands playing with each other, it's been a hard slog.


What's that? You don't see the connection? Hmm, yeah, I should probably explain that. The girl is good friends with this band. Petty? Yes. Childish? Yes. But so is getting dumped via text message. But time heals all wounds and I actually have seen the Steelers (that's the name I've just decided to give them, let's hope it sticks) a few times, I have a few of their songs, and you know what, I like them. A lot. As discussed a lot recently, their guitar heavy (and jangly style) guitar indie is really tickling my musical bone this month.

Apparently I'm not the only one jumping on the band wagon. As Triple J has selected them to headline the Australian Music Month show at the HiFi! Good for them. They'll be sharing the stage with other Brisbanites such as Hungry Kids of Hungary and Ballpark Music.

Not only that, they're off around the country to launch their new album Tangalooma, named after the resort of dolphins just off the coast here.

Wed 17 Nov: THE HI-FI, BRISBANE
Triple J Australian Music Month show also starring
Hungry Kids From Hungary + Ball Park Music + special guests

Thu 18 Nov: COOLONGATTA HOTEL, GOLD COAST
Fri 19 Nov: GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL, BYRON BAY
Sat 20 Nov: SPOTTED COW, TOOWOOMBA

Here's their Unearthed page. Can anyone say free mp3s?