Memory is funny thing and Summer is a sunny thing. It's easy enough to remember the beach at this time of year (sunset, swim, sand...sigh), but when you realize you forgot what you did last winter... then things get a bit tricky.
I’m talking about my new love, here. Whose name rhymes with sjoe, shoe and shoo!
Namely : SHU. as it were.(i wonder wottit means)
i was drooling and gushing over my keyboard about my new faves (tack tack drool) last week at wek. (wek? - no, don't get me started again) and to Everybody i met . "SHU this, SHU that, must see SHU, na na na." my new SHU. (which is good, coz i already ate all my other ones, such is the lucrative lameness of writing about live music) and so on. the songs wouldn't leave my head. mySpace made a lot of dosh from me lastweek, yessiree. (zit true that mySpace chews non-paying users’ bandwidth? isn't that illegal? unethical???)
Then I went to Mercury (it might be gatdonker, but its got great sound when the right monitor man is around) to see them. and hey SHU wow. it was deja vu. i've seen that sound breaking the air before. I’ve felt it. but I forgot. Because we hear with our eyes too?
which begs the question. why didn't i remember them by their sound alone when i was raping mySpace? where do sight and sound join? (I'll answer that in another missive)
it's something about live performance that gels an experience. Galvanizes it, even. Evidently.
SHU at mercury on Friday.
They are tight as a tit’s tart. And they make a small stage shiver. Liquid fire or something. Be swallowed. Be chewed. Be washed up on the shores of your own exorcism. Be inspired and hammered. It is heavy, melodic rock. But it’s not as heavy as Tonight We Die (rock? i need to ask a few questions about this word). Their vocalist has a lady's whinney to her - ag, i mean his voice which is odd for a man with such a large presence, and the bassist looks happy, jiggy, even, which is odd for a bassist. The drummer is the inbetween mc, entertaining the crowds with a steady stream of quips and quirks from his unattainable elevation. Which is odd for a drummer. - aren't they usually the silent, sexy ones? allinall, their oddness makes for a few moments of absolute catharsis. and no, they didn't play my favourite song(cocoon). it was the bassist's fault.
Lots of guitars. Lots of lovely noise. Lots of leaping around and none of the clichés. Unless mad, talented musicians with obedient instruments are becoming clichés. i hope so.
One (beautiful) friend (really, she is superbly beautiful) mentioned that they sound bit too much like the Muse for her liking. As a self-confessed forgetaholic and rock virgin who only discovered A Perfect Circle last week (sies, I know), I must say, it made little difference to me. SHU came first and this is not my first time. I'm going to have to get their album.
Anachronism is a funny thing. It puts that age-old question asunder. (no! not “do you want to sleep with me?”. The other one) Never mind whether the chicken or the egg came first. It's what cracks em that counts.
It’s impossible to be everywhere at once. But I do try.
On the whole, this Friday night is looking awesome for goodnoise across the city, but for one lone lass, it’s a bit too much at once. How’s this for a line up?
| Zula | |
| José Gonzáles | Tafelberg Tavern |
| | |
| Armchair | |
| Tonight We Die and SHU (pta) | Mercury Live |
| | |
And that’s not even scratching the surface. There’s still affliction, the royal waiting room, and manyvarious clubs. Pubs. Bars. Cars. Streets. sheets… I’ll never get to my sheets at this rate; I’ll sleep in my car! If I sleep! Which I do. admittedly.
What I’d like to ask the booking agents is : why do you cram the full fare of the city’s soundgods into two short nights over the weekend? The answer’s implicit, innit? Money.
Money, money, money. We all know that venues make their cash off our co-dependent licquorific indulgences. And while a lot of us could easily notch ‘alcoholic’ on our weekend Hobbies list, most of us are beholden to its diametric opposite for survival, the Other Addiction. Another four letter word. WORK. (work? What’s that? .. ah. the thing you stop doing when you finally need to rest. Rest? What’s that? And so it goes on. Like I’m going on). It’s a bit hard staying up drinking beyond the witching hours just to listen to heart-wrenching, earth-stomping, soul-lifting sounds and still perform like human clones at work the next day. coffee is a thin disguise; the rampant abuse of the night before the morning after is all in the eyes! Shades look plain silly indoors. Bosses might be beasts, but they’re not dithering idiots. And anyway, besides being unable to afford it professionally, we can ill afford it financially! Which is probably the cruise control anyway. It seems as long as we can afford it, we’ll live the limits to the max, né?
So gigs are stacked up like a bed on bricks, Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday (for the diehards in denial who wish Monday was a band name. As if. (I checked. It isn’t) We all know musicians don’t graft. Right? Wrong.
Don’t believe that some nice sound that makes sweetness in your ears is easily come by.
Have you seen the plastered fingers? Have you seen Kesivan after a particularly passionate gig? Elated. Exhausted. Etc. Music comes from the heart, but it grinds through the body, the brain… it’s no easy task, channelling. And there’s all the unseen stuff that goes into the audio synergy you see on stage– the preamble nitpicking and fiddling together to find a groove(noja, that’s the easiest part, perhaps), holding the frontlines at your day job to pay the bills and betties, scrounging around between the debts for more bucks to buy decks or a decent geetaar, explaining to your Beloved Other why you’re back at four am when the gig finished at twelve (“networking, darling”. “jou ma se networking” comes the terse reply), backstage haggling and pottering about around ums and aahs and how much of managers, bookers, venue owners and groupies to find the right slot on the right night… and then the delivery - music makers put their hearts and souls in the songs, and on the stage. They give us their grief and joy and ego and edginess. We soak it up, saturated by their humanity and talent. We feel ourselves through them. We feel each other. Yes. We do. (but CT boys are mostly well behaved, actually.) We should be grateful. And we are. Most of us are not able to be grateful seven days a week, however. (Unless you’re me, and you can’t help it) (of course, if you’re me, you’re also notorious for falling asleep at gently rocking retrogigs like Mikanic last week. Seeriyuss. I slept through five of the hottest tracks.)
Which brings me back to my gripe. Why all on one night? Yes, weekends are big. Big cash. Big easy. Yes, ok. But so is the demi-weekend, the Wednesday night that tides us over till our weekly dose of two-day freedom arrives). Why can’t we put more great gigs on this night? Coz I’m scuttling around like one of the million minion cockroaches that midsummer has spawned trying to keep up with the lineups. And I keep on missing fucking great stuff.
The consolation is : you’re spoilt for choice. So be a brave new world junkie, and gorge on good sound. (but don’t be too much of a drunkie driver, or you’ll end up looking like a pug. And it won’t be profound. I guarantee you.).
Put your money where your mouth is and let the love move through you. And have a drink on us. ANY day of the week….
(while I catch some zzzs in a cosy corner somewhere. Eish!)
Stages are funny things. Half often all that separates a crowd from a band is the implicit agreement of territories and a step in the right direction. And all them wires. These strips are more like skid marks, they’re so small and dingy. But maybe we like it like that.
The Armchair's slit of stage is so slight that musicians often enter through the crowd. It works for this soundbar. It’s that ultra easy, instantly accessible cool that makes the Armchair the seat of underground sound. That, and the grimey carpets and the sink-into, neverwashed sofas. Our scene might be small, but it’s dirty.
I feel sorry for cramped musicians. The brawling, adoring masses (well, um.) get all the space to bump shoulders and break bread and bones together (think Half Price). They’d no doubt rather be doing it with the stars admirably shaking their asses and venting their catharses in their individual square metres of space, plugged and wired. But they can’t because Air guitars make crap music.
Long ago, there was a balance. Artists would politely defer and escape, and then be raucously hauled back for a final taste. Satisfied audiences. Groovy. Then it got a bit silly. I think musos were still finding their fusion feet and had their genres spliced – they went all theatre on us - waiting for the crowd to wait for more the way that overeager, under-adored actors do. (though thank willy they didn’t link hands and stand around expectantly like thespians with dumb, plastered smiles.) If they skipped offstage it would be superfast to take a drag of some girl’s cigarette and they’d be back like a boomerang with a HelloYouDidn’tMissMeDidYou kind of a face, before recommencing the game and giving us our hungry (or overfull) dues. Now they get their fags from the crowd (à la Taxi Violence) and when they’re gone, they’re gone. No fat lady. No rendition. No fokkol. So there’s no need to come back, then? No matter what we want? Is a coy tip of the hat, a “Thank you, that’s that” enough? Hell no. Leaving the rest of us post peak to wander around like zombies, not quite finished, not quite free, is not very cool.
So if, like me, you don’t get enough either, do what toddlers having tantrums do – open your mouth and stamp your feet. Otherwise, try my other solution: give them a bit of what they deserve by going backstage at the very point that they vonttoo bee ahloan. A bevy of gushing groupies might just chase them back on to give us our afters. And then maybe next time they’ll give it up a little easier when we want more.
I said, we want more.
Smooth. Shmooze. Booze. The Little Sinners on the Sabbath.
Farrell Adams and the Little Sinners were tight on Friday night. They celebrated his first
Rayelle rocks. She takes the prize for the prettiest and she takes violining to a new level. The awkward stance kin to fiddlers and pluckers of undersized string instruments is so last millennium. Under her chin the violin sings, shouts, skips, slips, screams, and laughs as a passionate dance unfolds naturally against her unearthly beauty. I bet whatsername Vanessa Mae is jealous.
Discerning ears and eyes pointed out the bass player immediately, for his fingers and his fine looks. And again, chatting about it the next day.
I found it hard to point fingers at the best of the Sinners, but one thing is for sure. With the voice of an unshaven angel, Mr Adams knows how to seduce a crowd. Fully dressed.
Sweating in a concrete cube underground at the noYetSoUnderground MOPPP opening (Month of Peoples' Photography, poeopols! get widdit and support the emergence of lowbrow Artttt even if it is a little middleoftheroad to start with) a dreadless Fletcher smiles, “the thing with a boy band is not which one you want to sleep with, but how to choose between them!” his eyes twinkle, and we laugh, because we know that we know no better than anybody else the power of the punani and the peter...
but i digress. we're talking about Southpaw : a clutch of pretty boys who make some meanEasy noise.
Try not to smile.
Southpaw. TKO.
Harris Tweed is like very plucked eyebrows
What exactly makes it "indie"? That they know how to sing in minor keys? It's pop. It’s over produced, and it doesn’t breathe.
I was imagining violins and moments of peace. Instead it’s just another pseudo-American radioband. Pffff.
Nice to hear a full sound stripped down. an Acoustic set at Zula. This one was raw, and beautifully imperfect.
Check them out.
www.myspace.com/thesleepersdreamspace
Black Betty is made up of 3 beautiful women serious about making beautiful music.
Sexy. Swift. A great build up, reminiscent of the olden days of house and e and all night crescendos building to a sunrise climax. But tempered.
Glitches and snaps and flicks and crunches. Hi pitch and deep and low.
Like Paul, only… more playful. And they sample old hits that make you realise they’ve been around for a while. Hits like short dick man and others I’m too tired to remember.
Satisfied?
Now go sleep.
in no particular order
Vocal harmonies textured and emotive
mm. this is sound fucking.
It is not middle of the road, sell out commercial junkie sound. it is not groupie-gorging badhair, roaring superstars. it is not the tip of a hat or the tip of a scale. It is not half baked, unread, or unreal. It is not tripped out headread cyberpimp slapsound. It is not odious, orderless expertimental. It is not sentimental. It is not drugs or sex or hot or cold.
Jazz is the soul singing. To know it is to feel.
