Random Play: “Thank you, you’ve been a lovely audience”
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Neil Finn gives fans some good banter..... "the best cold beer is ... Vic" :)
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Motorhead, Chch Town Hall in 1984, loudest concert I've been to. Saw a guy with his head buried in the speaker stack at one stage.
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Gordons, Rhumba Bar, mid 1980. Only 4 of us there as it was pre-Future Shock EP. Two of us consisted of a skinhead and a drunk skinny guy who the skinhead wanted to beat up and was chasing around the venue for half the set until the bouncer removed them both, leaving just me and my girlfriend.
Surreal and blisteringly loud. Good tho...
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A very humid night at the ka in 2003 when fiery furnaces were playing......loads of hippies in the audience and it was the first night of the very shiny new smoking ban. All you could smell was stale beer, rotting carpet, farts and some incredibly overpowering b.o.....I remember thinking at the time "Oh wow, so THAT's what cigarettes masked.....actually that might be more preferable"......
Shellac playing at squid with Chris Mathews from the Headless Chickens heckling Steve Albini between every song.......
Any number of auckland chills gigs at the Galaxy would end up with the Sir Dorr bouncers inevitably beating up at least 3 people.
And tinnitus? Ears destroyed in the space of 3 weeks by Tackhead (muffled for 4 days after that...) and swiftly followed by the said Headless Chickens.....never did quite recover after that, so earplugs became a necessity.
And oh my word that Bad Brains gig!
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Amen. I never leave the house to see live music without them. Proper ones that knock out 35 decibels. If I can't get any, I won't go. I think that loud music is a major unrecognised health and safety issue. A venue should not injure its patrons.
Actually, I recall a knowledgeable discussion here about which earplugs to buy for gigs -- could we reprise that?
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and it is a New Zealand company as well.
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Completely different. This was a salad fork. I don't know where that sits on the rock'n'roll scale, but I imagine it'd be quite low down.
I once had a fork thrown at me from a passing car while I was cycling up the Ngauranga Gorge.
I still have that fork.
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You came to a fork in the road then?
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I'm glad some of you enjoyed Ry n Nick this week. Had a good seat for Welly and fell sick on Monday and am only back at school today so missed it. First time that's happened to me.
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Talking Heads at His Majesty's Theatre. Not loud, no flashy lights. I don't recall any dancing. Utterly mesmerizing.
I still hate them for tearing down His Majesty'sTalking Heads tore the place down? Hell of a gig!
I'll get me coat....
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Never mind. Just snagged a Calexico ticket at next years Wellington Festival.
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volume-wise, the Ramones at the Powerstation would be mine. Insanely loud, you couldn't even make the out the kick and snare - it was like having your head inside a full-spectrum noise generator with tiny breaks every two minutes which were exactly long enough for 1-2-3-4 and away they went again. there's a point where it stops being sound and all you sense is a rattling sensation.
mystifying really, but we jumped around all the same. god only knows what they played...
having said that I have to admit I used to find that buzz in your ears when you finally crashed oddly pleasurable.
funniest crowd interaction had to be the pissed-up plonker who tried to start an argument with Jello Biafra about vegetarianism...and the Fits gigs at the Gluepot when everyone was smitten with Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventure.
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Except Nick Lowe didn't play Cruel to Be Kind in Welly
WTF? I love the 'Every Breath You Take'/'Better Be Home Soon' school of jolly tunes with seriously bitter and fucked up lyrics -- something Kiwi pop does disturbingly well.
Oh well, we'll always have YouTube and Friday is only a day away:
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funniest crowd interaction had to be the pissed-up plonker who tried to start an argument with Jello Biafra about vegetarianism
Speaking of Jello Biafra, a great description of lively crowd interaction during a Dead Kennedys visit to Auckland in 1983:
They slam into Moral Majority. A song about organised religion. The messy frantic song breaks down toward the end as fighting sparks out on the dance floor between punks and bootboys.
“HOLD IT!” Biafra shouts. “If you want to fight, get the fuck outta here. If all you wanna do is spread violence, why don’t you just leave? Why don’t you just fuckin’ leave? Yeah, you.” He points to a skinhead. “You’re too small,” Biafra points to his head, “Up here.” This provokes more loud cheers and clapping from the crowd (“Dog bite on your leg”).
“Why don’t you leave if all you want to do is hit people. You wonder why no-one respects you, and now we know. Macho insecurity, here we go again,” Biafra continues. The skins are fighting, abusing Biafra and sieg heiling. Biafra pistons the mic twenty feet out at them and hits one in the jaw. The bootboy tries to climb up onto the stage. An old hippie roadie lets loose a flying kick, but the lucky skin is pulled back by his mates just in time. He retreats, continuing to yell abuse, and spit blood. Biafra taunting him: “How hardcore. I’ve got a song for you called Nazi Rednecks Fuck Off.”
Sourced from Andrew Schmidt's Mysterex. Link here:
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Except Nick Lowe didn't play Cruel to Be Kind in Welly
WTF?
Or in Auckland either. Like I said: could have used more Lowe. (He did play '(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding', though. Very pretty.)
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Or in Auckland either. Like I said: could have used more Lowe. (He did play '(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding', though. Very pretty.)
Sure, and I can get why any musician would get sick of playing "the hit" for the quintillionth time, but, folks, sometimes there's a reason why that song is the one that stuck.'Cruel To Be Kind' is pretty pop-tastic, with just the right edge of snotty attitude in the lyric.
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oh, and just remembered the possibly overblown story of Chris Knox giving Henry Rollins some from the stage as he was supporting the steriod-munchers spoken word gig at the Silo (?).
apparently - I didn't see the end result - Rollins didn't take the banter in great spirit, hoisted Chris off the ground and pinned to him to a wall while advising him not to do it again.
fair dinkum?
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Is it wrong to say that I'd pay to see Fight Club: The Musical, with Rollins and Knox in the role of Tyler Durden. :)
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Beenie and the Jets?
Is it wrong to say that I'd pay to see Fight Club: The Musical, with Rollins and Knox in the role of Tyler Durden. :)
Fight Club 2: Beenie Man & Elton John?
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apparently - I didn't see the end result - Rollins didn't take the banter in great spirit, hoisted Chris off the ground and pinned to him to a wall while advising him not to do it again.
fair dinkum?
I seem to remember Graham Reid writing about this. If Graham's out there, maybe he can pop in and, er, lay it on us. I have a vague memory of the story but not sure how reliable -- I wasn't there (if there's one thing I hate more than Rollins' music it's his spoken word, although I admire what he's done in publishing; but overall a hugely over-rated individual in my view).
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On the subject of reviews I recall being given an assignment at university by William Dart, where we had to a attend a screening on of Jazz on a summers day and then submit a review before lunch time the next day. To which a large number of my fellow students baulked and complained that it was an unreasonable deadline. That was in the 90's I can only imagine what sort of response it would draw from students now days.
Also funniest band interaction was St. Germain at the Bruce Mason, when they stopped and asked (in broken English) the crowd to stop clapping along. Bless
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From Graham's interesting look back at Rollins' first NZ tour:
The night of his performance (at Silo or some small theatre like that if I recall) one of the supporting performers didn't turn up and Chris Knox had to wing it for about an hour.
It was an exceptional performance by Chris who played some songs but also engaged in a free-ranging banter with the audience there to see Henry.
One thing I remember clearly was someone asking Chris how much he earned for doing Max Media in the Herald. Now I have never thought money was one of those off-limits subjects and if anyone ever asked me how much I earned I always told them.
And Chris was like that too, he gaily said how much before tax and how much after and laid that particular bogey to rest.
I had the greatest admiration for Chris being able to command that audience for so long with humour, honesty and little more than a guitar and a smile.
In the course of winging it however he inevitably mentioned that Henry would be up soon and that it should be good, or something mundane and inoffensive like that.
Chris and his partner Barbara told me later that Henry, for reasons unspecified, took great offence at this and nailed Chris in the backstage corridor, had him up against the wall by the collar and indicated that if he ever mentioned his name again -- and how dare he, who did he think he was etc -- then Chris would be his for breakfast.
Or something like that.
Rollins clearly had not learned to get over himself.
Chris drew a funny cartoon about the incident, as I recall.
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asked (in broken English) the crowd to stop clapping along
Oh *man* do I hate clapping along. HATE. I mean, unless there are people actually doing the whole 'take them to church!' thing up there on stage, I want a clap-free experience during the songs.
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I recall an incident a a Leonard Cohen gig where the audience seemed to be more of a jazz persuasion than a Singer/Songwriter/Poet sort of an audience. The crowd started clapping after every solo from the supporting musicians, which I thought rather disrespectful to Mr Cohen. In my best inquisitive extraterrestrial manner I asked my partner, in a not too quiet tone, "What is all this with the banging together of the hands" As we got up to leave I was informed by the woman that was sitting next to us that I had ruined her evening with "All my complaining"
Geez, who are these people?.
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