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It seemed kind of wrong that such as great band as the Fireballs did not have their own Wikipedia page…so I created one.

The Tote is a grimy pub in a grimy inner-Melbourne suburb. It’s dark and smoky, and the carpets are definitely sticky. How appropriate then, that it is the focal point of Melbourne’s vibrant rock scene which, in case you missed all the hoo-ha, is the best in the world. Just in case you forget this fact, they’ve plastered the walls with signed and mounted posters from some of the best bands of the eighties and nineties - from the Exploding White Mice to the Fireballs.

On this particular night, I was at The Tote to see The Onyas‘ last show for the forseeable future, with the drummer touring with The Casanovas and the other members busy playing with The Egos and running Dropkick records. Also playing were former Revelators guitarist and now one-man band John Schooley from Texas, local act the Lords of Gravity, and Man’s Ruin Burlesque troupe, who were performing between sets.

The Lords of Gravity played a pleasing set of Australian-influenced garage-flavoured retro rock. Note that their photo (above) perfectly captures the feel of The Tote, all other photos were taken with flash so they end up looking far too clean and well-lit. For more authentic experience, read the rest of this entry while wearing dark glasses and blow some cigarette smoke towards your monitor.

John Schooley played a foot-stompingly good set, and his clean-cut good looks made him popular with the ladies…

Burlesque is taking off (sorry) in Melbourne right now (or at least that’s the story that’s going round at the moment) with the Town Bikes, the Voodoo Trash Dolls and Man’s Ruin Burlesque (guys, build a website, quick) doing shows frequently. Some unscrupulous promoters have even been promoting events as a “burlesque extravaganza” and then delivering a strip-show instead. It’s like getting Linda Lovelace when you were really hoping for Betty Page.

Man’s Ruin performed two 3-minute acts. Their show was more cute than sexy; the sort of thing you could take your mother to…if you were the sort of person who goes to pubs with your mum.

The last time I saw the Onyas was an intimate show at the Town Hall Hotel…perhaps a little too intimate; there was no stage and the audience was so densly packed that they were practically standing nose to nose with the band. If you wanted a beer, you had to squeeze between the band members and their mike stands to get to the bar, and I’m sure that the portion of the crowd directly in front of Macka had an “oh fuck” moment when his shirt came off and they realised that they were just a little too close to his bare sweaty flesh.

They were playing to a full house again, but this time the band/audience barrier was comfortably maintained by stage and foldbacks; which was good because, sure enough, the shirt came off again before the first song. The Onyas played their usual chaotic and messy set (which is what everyone was there to see), covering the favourites from Get Shitfaced with The Onyas, Six!, and Heterospective.

They finished the night with an unrehearsed jam with Schooley. It went on just a little too long, and I got the impression that The Onyas were waiting for him to hurry up and finish so that they could get to the bar.

I’ll be looking forward to their next show…whenever that happens.

Coming home from work on the St Kilda Road tram, it was a pleasant surprise to find Dallas Crane kicking off a free set in Federation Square. The Samsung Torch Relay Nominations for the 2006 Olympic Games had been held there that morning, and there was still an ice sculpture and a large ramp covered in artificial snow that children were sliding down on large inflatable rings.

It was a chilly night, and I wasn’t feeling (or looking) very “rock”, wearing business clothes and with a copy of the Financial Review poking out of my bag. There was a large audience, loosely packed to take advantage of the slightly sloped paving down to the stage. Wandering into the throng, I noticed Jimmy Barnes and Wally Meanie - although I would probably be more surprised not to see Wally at a rock gig.

Dallas Crane played a solid and enjoyable one-hour set, covering tracks from their two previous albums as well as a new single, Sit on My Knee, sung as a duet with Jimmy Barnes (which explained why he was in the audience) and appearing on his Double Happiness album.

I had slightly mixed feelings about this. Sit on My Knee has always been my favourite Dallas Crane track. Seeing them play for the first time at Meredith in 1998 when the only songs I knew were Sit on My Knee and the Andre Williams track they used to play is still a music festival highlight. Jimmy Barnes isn’t exactly “Mr. Musical Credibility”, but maybe this will help Dallas Crane finally get airplay on the Austereo network. They deserve mainstream success.

While the crowd grew during the show (despite the cold), and there were lots of heads nodding and feet tapping along to Dallas Crane’s back catalogue, the crowd favourite seemed to be their cover of AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie. Hopefully we’ll see the same response to Sit on My Knee once the single gets commercial airplay.

A free show in the Espy front bar on a Wednesday night doesn’t generally place a band too high in the “my band is bigger than your band” pecking order, but different rules must apply a couple of days before New Years Eve. ARIA nominees and JJJ darlings Butterfingers were in Melbourne all the way from Brisbane. This was an Event…at least according to the teenage girls eyeing off the Butterfingers posters, and no doubt wondering if they would get in trouble if they liberated one from the wall.

Playing first were Eftposse, memorable only for having a name they will come to regret, and playing a Doors cover. The members were obviously musically talented but the music was not suited to a noisy pub venue. They got a big thumbs down from me.

De Jah Groove were basically a reggae party band. All their songs seemed to be about drinking beer in the sun. I’m not sure what they do for the other 10 months of the year when Melbourne isn’t warm and sunny. De Jah Groove managed to get the crowd moving, and I am sure that their songs inspired people to keep the bar staff busy.

Butterfingers played a tight and professional show, covering all the songs from the current album, a song from a previous EP and two new songs. Crowd favourites were (predictably) Everytime, Yo Mama, and I Love Work.

Even though all four members were playing live instruments, most of the songs were played the same way they sound on the album as so many of the songs rely on samples and effects from a backing track. This is a good thing in my book. The first time I see a band I like to hear exactly what I expect. They can save the “I’m sick of playing this song every night” polka version of their hit song for the next time I see them play.

I would definitely see this band play live again, and I’m curious to see how their next single sounds on the radio…oh, and I think my girlfriend is a Butterfingers fan now.

Soulseek is the new Napster. This is something of a backhanded compliment; I was endlessly frustrated by the lack of features of the Napster client but, at the same time, the user-base was large enough that I was able to find some wonderfully obscure music and talk with people who were into the same long-dead independent label bands as I was.

It’s been more than four years since Napster shut down in March 2000. Most users moved to AudioGalaxy, which was superior in every way. Songs that were offline could be queued, it was easy to see which song was the band’s most popular, it could make suggestions for bands that were similar to the one you were searching for, and it could still recognise a song even if the filename had changed.

I wrote a tearful eulogy (posted here soon…) when AudioGalaxy was shut down, and it proved a kind of “tower of Babel” event for people sharing their MP3 collections. Users scattered to the four winds. Every half-bright teenager living in his parent’s basement released his own P2P client to talk to one of the many new decentralised file-sharing networks. And commercial software companies saw a golden opportunity to lock users into applications infested with spyware, then failed to see the irony in suing people who broke their copyright by re-releasing their software without spyware.

I’ve been recommending that people switch to Soulseek for the last year and a half, which is funny because I’ve only started using it in the last couple of days (you cease being an early adopter the day you leave university). Word on the geek grapevine has been strong though, and now I’ll add that the user-base is large enough for me to find most of the bands I want to check out, the client is free from spyware and, apart from the developers ignoring features AudioGalaxy had 3 years ago, this software is highly recommended.

Good things do not last. Soulseek’s heavily centralised design makes them an easy target for lawsuits. Expect this one to get shut down by the “powers that be” real soon now.

I have the best girlfriend in the world. This Valentine’s Day, with flagrant disregard for Australian copyright law, she made me a mix CD.

1. Machine Gun Fellatio - (Let Me Be Your) Dirty Fucking Whore
2. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins - Frenzy
3. Le Tigre - Eau d’Bedroom Dancing
4. Tami Hart - Drunken Love Song
5. Revolting Cocks - Do You Think I’m Sexy?
6. Cake - Love You Madly
7. Candye Kane - I Don’t Want Nobody (To Have My Love But You)
8. PJ Harvey - This Is Love
9. Nancy Vandal - Piss In My Weetbix
10. NERD - Brain
11. The Sailors - I Wanna Be Your Woman
12. Sleater Kinney - Oh!
13. Ping Pong Bitches - I Love You Necrophiliac
14. The Bobbyteens - Let’s Get It On
15. Jack Off Jill - Love Song
16. The Eels - World Of Shit
17. Cake - Where would I Be?
18. The Supersuckers - Hangin’ Out With Me

It’s always a little embarrassing when you get something completely and publically wrong. Like singing along to a classic hits station in the car and being told that Carly Simon wasn’t really singing about clowns in her coffe; or being in primary school and finding out about oral sex, only not quite getting it and thinking that it meant kissing with your tongue, and then spending the next six months gleefully pointing it out in your high-pitched voice at every opportunity. ewwww. theeey’re having oral seeeex.

My face is still a little red over that one…

Watching this happen, the funniest part is always the moment of realisation. Where they step back, rewind and re-analyse what they’ve been doing with this small but crucial new piece of information. The question in the top of their mind is always “how much of a dickhead have I made of myself?”

It must be a thousand times worse for a band. You can’t re-edit an album once it’s been released, and you can’t make people forget a hit single (unless you appeared on Popstars or American Idol). This brings us to some cringe-worthy examples.

Nosebleed Section, from Adelaide hip hop crew Hilltop Hoods is on high rotation on JJJ right now. It starts with a dedication to “my people in the front in the nosebleed section”, and the chorus samples the title lyrics from the Melanie Safka song “People in the front row”. Unfortunately, the nosebleed section is the name for the seats right up the back of a stadium - named for the tendency of people to get nosebleeds at high altitudes.

One of the more popular songs on Rocket Science’s Contact High album was the Isaac Asimov-inspired “One Robot”. It even contains a quote from his book; however none of the band members must have actually read it, as it as the book is titled “I, Robot”, with the “I” meant to indicate self-awareness.

The second track on Ice-T’s 1991 O.G album, is a woman giving a faux-academic analysis of Ice-T. It contains the quote “…after further analysis of his music I can deduce that he is the epitome of anti-disestablishmentarianism who embodies the entire spectrum of the urban experience and struggle.” So he’s against separation of church and state? That’s not very street.

Maybe we should all just not use words we don’t understand.

Download Sticks and Stones from the self-titled mini-album from Ground Components. [ 3.8 MB ]

Ground Components debut album featuring tracks Crying Time, Sticks and Stones, Staying Afloat, Soul Rebel, Burning Out, and We Could Have Been is out now on Love and Mercy.

Download MP3s from Jed Whitey’s album Mongoloid Cage Match.

Are You Ready To Hate Us? [ 4.0 MB ]

I’m OK (You’re Fucked) [ 4.9 MB ]

My Own Private Altamont [ 1.8 MB ]

Download the video clip for “She Said“, the hit single from The Surrogate. [ 12 MB DivX ;) ]

This track features Becky (from The Mavis’s and now Junkatique) helping out on vocals.